Lauren Takes Leave (13 page)

Ben gets off his bicycle and comes over sort of shyly,
pulling a tennis ball from his jacket pocket. “Wall ball?” I ask.

He merely nods his head as we walk over to the racquetball
wall set up on the other side of the park. Wall ball is a third-grade
phenomenon. The rules seem to have been passed down through the ages, from
out-going third-grade boys to incoming third-grade boys, perhaps through some
sort of formalized, recess-based ceremony that only they know about. Keeping
the traditions of this ritual alive in playgrounds and blacktops of this great
land is critical to the culture of nine-year-old males.

In September, when I asked Ben how he learned about this
game with all its very many complicated (and sometimes contradictory) rules and
regulations, he shrugged. “I just did, that’s all.” I pictured him being sworn
to secrecy behind the jungle gym before being handed a neon-yellow ball.

I love playing wall ball with Ben, talking about our day,
laughing about nothing.

Even if he does keep changing the rules and I always lose.

“Mom, I have to tell you something,” Ben says,
concentrating more than necessary on the wall and the ball.

My mom-gut clenches in automatic response, but I keep it
breezy. “Sure, pup, what is it?”

“You didn’t put my homework in my folder, and I got a zero
for the day.” He eyes me now, accusingly.

“I didn’t?” I say, emphasis on the “I,” as in “Why would
I?”

“No,” he agrees. “You did not! And I missed recess to do
it over and now I have to do a whole extra packet of work just because!” He
stifles a sob. “And it’s all your fault!”

Missed recess? Assigned a whole extra packet?
Well,
it’s not my fault that your teacher is a bitch,
I think. I take a deep,
cleansing breath and say, “Putting your homework in your folder is
your
responsibility.” Though the fine line is quite wavy between his list of
responsibilities and my acts of indentured servitude.

“I’m not doing it,” he shouts, hurling the tennis ball at
me and trudging over to the swing set. “You can just write a note to my teacher
explaining what you did.”

And you can just go to hell, my friend
, I think,
’cause
I’m not doing that.

“Don’t talk to me like that!” I call after him.

“Ay, Dios mio!” Laney exclaims from the blacktop, where
she is standing with Becca.

“What?” I ask, jogging to their side. “Becca, are you
okay?”

She nods from under her bicycle helmet and silently points
at Laney.

“She
bit
me!” Laney says, clutching one hand in the
other. “Like a dog.”

“No!” I say. But I’m not really sure of that, so I ask my
very quiet five-year-old. “Becca, did you bite Laney?”

“We were playing a game called Cats and Dogs!”

“Becca!” I yell. “You never hurt someone
on purpose
.
Only accidentally!” Which might not be the best way to explain what I mean,
because Becca’s nodding her head in furious agreement.

“I didn’t mean to, Mommy! Really!”

How many times have I heard that from her, I wonder,
trying to catalogue the most recent examples. Last week, it was a boy down the
street who she didn’t mean to punch, and the week before that it was a
teacher’s aide on the playground who she “accidentally” kicked in the shins.
Since she started kindergarten, I’ve spent more time at Becca’s school than at
my own.

“How did this happen?” I say, looking to the sky for an
answer.

“Well,” Laney begins, “first, we pretended that we were at
a kennel…”

“No, Laney, not
this
,” I say, gesturing to the
small, jagged teeth imprints in her flesh. “
This
!” I say, sweeping my
hands across the playground in a generous motion. “My life! The way things are
fine and then, suddenly,
bam
, they aren’t! They are very not fine!”

“Oh,” she says. “That’s like, what do you call
it…existential, right? I am going back to the house to clean this and put on a
bandage.”

Everyone else has left the playground now that the sun is
setting. Metallic creaking from Ben’s swing and the chirping of a few birds are
the only sounds besides a roaring in my ears. I sit cross-legged on the
blacktop and rest my head in my hands, trying to still my pounding heartbeat.

We were having so much fun
, I think.
Why does my
time with them always have to slide into chaos and stress?
I try to flood
my mind with serene images: a turquoise ocean, a palm tree, the hot sun.

It helps, a little.

“Googly’s here,” Becca says, gently tapping me on the arm.
“And I’m sorry.”

“You’ll have to apologize to Laney back at the house,
Becca,” I say, sighing. “But I thank you for saying it to me, too.”

I stand up and walk with her toward our favorite little
pooch, a gray Poodle who always has a pink bow in her hair.

“Hi, doggie,” Becca says, petting the sweet animal.

“Wearing your sweater today, I see,” I say, talking
directly to the dog.

“Yes, we’ve just come from Miami, where it is so warm, and
she loved it,” Googly’s owner, an elderly man with a French accent informs us.
“But here, the evenings are still chilly, and Googly is very sensitive to
cold.”

“Aww…” We nod, petting the dog and making a big fuss over
her. Ben ambles over slowly. He doesn’t acknowledge me, but he has picked up
the tennis ball and now throws it for Googly. She dashes after it and grabs it
but won’t give it back. My kids think this is hysterical.

Their laughter lightens the mood and helps me start
breathing again.

Maybe all we need to ensure family harmony is a dog with a
sweet personality and comedic flair.

“She’s not much of a retriever,” her owner acknowledges.
Googly wags her tail in agreement, eventually giving up the ball.

“My turn!” Becca shouts, throwing the ball for the dog,
who looks lazily past it and decides instead to chew some dandelions. Ben runs
after the ball and a game of catch ensues.

“So, Miami, huh?” I say, by way of conversation with this
man who I see all the time but whose name I do not know. At this point in our
relationship, it would be sort of awkward to ask, so I let it slide.

“Yes. It was splendid,” he says, nodding at the memory. “Such
an easy trip, you know. So many direct flights from New York, so many
wonderful, dog-friendly hotels in South Beach. The best little getaway I know
of,” he sighs.

I sigh too, wrapping my arms around myself in the crisp
evening air. “Sounds perfect.”

It’s getting late. I announce that it’s dinnertime, and we
wave good-bye to Googly and her owner.

The kids spend the entire walk home—and most of
dinnertime—pleading for a dog of their own.

I’m thinking about Googly, too. How nice it must have been
for him to get away from chilly New York for a few days.

Right before Laney leaves for the evening, I remind her
of tomorrow’s schedule. “You will need to take the kids to the bus in the
morning, so be here by eight.” She nods. I don’t tell her why, that I’ll be on
a train to Boston to pick up a sweater and then meet a friend for coffee. Even
in my own head it sounds crazy. “And I have that party to go to at night, so
I’ll just be home to change around dinner time before going back out. I’m not
sure what Doug’s schedule is,” I say, unsuccessfully trying to keep the
annoyance out of my voice.

“Okay, then. Bye, mis amores!” Laney calls out, blowing
kisses to the kids. “I had fun with you today!”

Later, as I’m cleaning up in the kitchen and overseeing
Ben’s homework, I panic.
Homework
, I think.
What’s my homework
tonight? Tests to grade? Lesson plans to write? Reading, to stay a chapter
ahead of the class?

The rolling seasickness passes as I remember: I’m on
leave. No tests to grade this week. No lesson plans to write, no books to read
for class, no parents to e-mail. Relief washes over me like warm rain.

“Hey, Ben?” I ask. He looks up from his homework. “Wanna
have a family game night tonight?”

“Really?” The surprise in his eyes tells me all I need to
know. “With a championship round and everything?”

“Indeed. Championship round and everything. The World
Series of board games.”

“With me, too?” Becca asks, coming out of the bathroom. “I
can have a family game night, too?”

“Of course! That’s why it’s called ‘family.’”

“And Daddy, too?” Ben adds hopefully.

I pause. “Um…sorry. It’s Tuesday, Daddy’s tennis night. He
won’t be home until ten or ten thirty.”

Ben looks down at his homework and scratches his head.

“I know, pup. I probably won’t see him tonight either, if
that makes you feel any better.”

He finishes his math worksheet and begrudgingly follows me
into the den.

“Yay!” Becca calls, pulling out all the games. “Which one
first?”

After an hour of board games, followed by baths and
stories, my kids are tucked in and the hallway feels sleepy. I tiptoe down the
stairs and into the darkened kitchen. Doug won’t be home from his tennis match
for two hours.

Time for Facebook.

I loved high school so much that, sometimes, I miss it.
Doug thinks I teach middle school in order to help me recapture my youth.

I tell him he’s crazy.

But I also think: Is it so bad to want to recapture your
youth?

Nothing brings me back to high school faster than a status
update from a person I haven’t seen since 1988.

The pale glow of the computer screen is welcoming. I sign
in and check my home page for updates.

Jamie in California is making challah.

On a Tuesday?
I think. That woman is always making
challah. It’s like she’s trying to out-Jew the rest of us in cyberspace.

Liz has another gastrointestinal bacterial infection and
has been in the bathroom for two days. Liz shares way too much.

John in DC sent out another invitation to an online
political rally tomorrow night. This one is called Who Cares? The answer is Not
I.

Photos of the Wallin family. Ugly kids, poor things.

Ellen has beat her high score at Bejeweled Blitz!
Challenge her to a game and see how you do. Or don’t.

And then there’s one from a person named Ninth Wonder. He
wants to know if I have any used contact lenses that I could send to him for an
art installation he’s working on. “I live in a tent now in the Adirondacks, so
you can just send them to my PO Box,” he advises. Huh?

I scroll through my list of friends to try and figure out
who this could be. When I see that he and I have Lenny Katzenberg as a friend
in common, I send a private message to Len.

Who the hell is Ninth Wonder and how do we know him?

While I’m waiting for a response, I decide to stalk some
more long-lost high school and college friends. Tonight feels like a good night
for Dan.

Dan’s this one ex-boyfriend from college who is
particularly fun to follow. He lives in Colorado with his wife and three kids;
naturally, the whole family is really outdoorsy. Dan spends all winter
uploading great images of kids bundled in ski parkas and helmets and masks
coming down the slopes. The only way to tell the kids apart is by the colors of
their jackets. There’s Romy, in pink, riding on a lift. The boys, Parker and
Hunter—though I don’t know which is which—together with their snowboards. Dan
and his wife Lynn, with their big, Chiclet-white teeth, at the top of a
fake-looking, white-capped mountain.

I hate the outdoors. But sometimes I like to pretend I’m
Lynn, married to Dan, living in Colorado with my three adventurous,
mountain-loving children. Tonight we are sitting by the fire in our huge log
cabin. Romy has just come back from mucking the stalls in the stables (I’ve
added horses to the fantasy, though in real life I hate them, too), and all the
boots and hats and layers of a life spent in nature are piled in the
generous-sized mudroom off the kitchen. Dan has made his famous homemade
popcorn, and we are playing charades in our waffle-weave long johns. I don’t
celebrate Christmas, but in this reverie, every day is just like the Hallmark greeting
card version of that holiday.

There’s an open bottle of wine in the refrigerator calling
my name. I pour a large glass, put away some dishes, turn off the kitchen
lights, and move back over to the computer.

By now, Lenny has written back to me:

I think “Ninth Wonder” is Sean Mallory, from high school.
He’s finally gone off the deep end. What a freak. Hey—that wasn’t much of a
response to my video today. You’ve let me down.

His video! My Botox! I forgot. I type in a response as fast
as I can with my self-taught, three-fingered technique.

Am such an idiot! I’m so (with like ten million o’s) sorry.
I was in the doctor’s office and didn’t have time to write more. But I thought
it was brilliant. Truly. Hilarious.

And maybe just a tad bit sexy.

I hit “send” and immediately regret it. I am e-freaked out
by my own e-forwardness, which requires several sips of wine to wash away.

Lenny writes back.

Can we chat somewhere more private? I hate fb.

Score one for e-forwardness.

We switch to our own e-mail accounts and continue our
conversation, the online version of moving into a dark corner of a crowded bar.
I can almost feel Lenny’s hand on my elbow as he steers me away from the masses
of potential onlookers.

I only get up from the computer once, to refill my wine
glass and to grab a handful of chocolate kisses, which I pop like…well, like
candy, actually.

From: [email protected]

Better. Now, what was that you were saying about my video?

From: [email protected]

That it’s hotter than one of Jamie’s freshly baked challahs?
That I like how you shake your moneymaker?

I can’t believe I just wrote that.