Spy Mom (66 page)

A mommy posse has certain unwritten rules. First, we aren't going to talk about anything that falls outside the home sphere. Politics, old jobs, current events, and extramarital affairs are off-limits. Stress about school choices, Halloween costumes, picky eaters, and sales at the Nordstrom shoe department are acceptable. Well, we do give some leeway to Sam when he attempts to broaden the conversation but that's only because we feel sorry for him, having to masquerade as a mom and all.

We live in a nice happy bubble and no one is pretending otherwise. But the bubble has a shelf life and it's getting closer to its expiration date. Our days of sitting on benches, watching the kids play in the sand and slide down the slides, are limited. Recently, Claire said her old company asked if she would consider a small consulting gig during the week.

“Nothing serious,” she said, already on the defensive. “Some mentoring of the new recruits. A few hours a week. That's all.”

She was met with silence. Finally, Avery spoke up.

“That's really great, Claire.”

“Well, I didn't say I was going to do it. I never said I would do it.” With that, she burst into tears and Sam looked like he wanted to die or at the very least go find a bench occupied by professional football players or anyone more masculine than crying mothers. Reinventing yourself is not without issues. I should know, having done it a number of times.

My last personal reinvention began one night in the slums outside of Manila. I was chasing a woman who used an orphanage as a front for her far more lucrative business of selling feedstock chemicals for nerve agents to the highest bidders. I mean, who would ever suspect the Sweet Caress Home for Children as being anything other than what it appeared to be? And even if you did suspect, you'd never admit it. People would simply dismiss you as being cynical and angry and who wants to be called cynical and angry? Davina Castillo had the moral high ground, dedicating her life to saving these poor rejected little souls, so it was next to impossible for the local authorities to pin her down as a hard-core criminal. She was Mother Teresa gone to the dark side.

And, of course, she knew I was coming. They always knew I was coming. If you used that as a criterion upon which to judge my career as a spy, I would certainly warrant a check mark next to “needs improvement.” It left me little choice but to chase after her and she, smartly, headed straight into the slums of Quezon City, where a person could uncomfortably disappear for decades. My Filipino was perfect but I had blue eyes and pale skin and I might as well have been from Mars as far as the locals were concerned.

The streets were snarled with traffic and the air thick with a yellowish pollution. The dwellings were constructed of cinder blocks and discarded pieces of corrugated metal. Tattered sheets and tapestries thrown over bits of twine stood in when the residents ran out of scavenged building materials. As I walked down the center of an alleyway littered with empty plastic bottles, Styrofoam packaging, and mildewed cardboard boxes, a handful of children watched me with intense dark eyes. Eventually one would come up and offer information in exchange for a handful of money.

“Lady, you want help?”

“I'm looking for someone,” I said. “Her name is Davina.”

“Oh, yes. I know her. Mrs. Davina. Her brother lives near here.”

Nice. She's making millions dealing in illegal chemical weapons and she won't even buy her brother out of the slums.

I handed the boy a pile of small bills and, grinning, he gave me very specific directions to Davina's brother's shack.

She was surprised to see me but tried not to show it.

“You seem to be leading a double life,” I said to her in English, my finger loosely positioned on the trigger of my gun.

“Aren't we all?” she said, with a brief nod of her head.

There were three of them and they obviously took their jobs as bodyguards seriously. And then there it was, that split-second hesitation on my part.

I don't want to die here
, whispered a voice pushing up from the dark recesses of my consciousness.
There are so many things left to do
.

I remember that moment as the beginning of the end. An elbow jab to the throat of one bodyguard, a knee to the skull of the second, and a foot to the groin of the third saved me, but I could've lost everything in that split-second pause. Now Davina and I stood, guns drawn, staring one another down.

“I have nothing to lose,” I said. But I was still rattled by the voice and I didn't sound convincing. “You've all that money. And think of the children.”

“Who cares about the children?” she said with a smirk that I resented on behalf of the kids. “And I won't be able to do much with the money if I'm in an American jail, now will I?” I saw her clench her teeth, ready to absorb the kickback from firing her gun. But I was faster, I was trained, and that had to count for something.

My bullet hit her dead center in the forehead. Her bullet hit the roof, putting a hole in the tin panels and letting rays of light burst through as if I were receiving a message directly from God.

Simon was really mad I killed her.

“We needed her,” he said, when I returned to Washington. “She knew things and now her brains are all over the floor of some Manila slum. Good work, Sally.”

“She was going to kill me,” I pointed out.

“That really isn't my problem, is it?” he said, leaving me to contemplate what horrible locale he'd send me to next to make his point that I shouldn't have shot Davina in the head.

I never told anyone about the voice that made me pause in a Quezon City slum. But I didn't have to. The seed had been planted and I was already beginning to reinvent myself.

Belinda, holding Cooper and bellowing for Amanda to stop beating up Carter, looks exhausted. Cooper is four months old and demanding. She swears she isn't going to make it. It is our job to assure her she'll be fine even if secretly we're horrified by what we see. Her eyes are sunken into her head and her skin is the color of a fresh bruise. She hasn't brushed her stringy hair in what looks like weeks and I can only guess about her teeth.

“Amanda is acting out her hostility,” she says, trying to nurse Cooper, who is kicking and screaming and turning red as a beet. “She covered his head with a blanket yesterday and when I caught her she said she thought he was cold. And I wanted to hit her. I really did. Is that wrong?”

Well, yes, but confirming the worst to someone on the brink is unkind in lots of ways.

Avery steps in to give the perfect answer and we all nod our heads in agreement and thank the heavens we aren't Belinda. After a few afternoons on the playground with Belinda and Cooper, Claire announced that Owen would be an only child. Fortunately, Belinda was too tired to take offense.

I watch Theo and Carter rolling around in the sand and laughing. I never had siblings. I have no idea what it's like. Would you be hitting each over the head with metal Tonka trucks in an attempt to secure the bulk of limited parenting resources for yourself or would you love and protect one another no matter the cost? Amanda has apparently decided the resources are rightly hers and suffocation is a perfectly reasonable way to get them back. The guilt at having ruined Amanda's life is written all over Belinda's face. She is nothing short of a tragedy at the moment.

Avery takes the little bundle of Cooper and begins bouncing him around, cooing sweetly in his ear in a way I never managed to pull off without looking ridiculous. Cooper immediately stops shrieking, nuzzles down in his fuzzy green blanket, and goes to sleep.

“He's so beautiful,” Avery whispers. She desperately wants another child but can't seem to make it happen even with medical intervention.

Sam rolls his eyes. He demanded a promise from his son that if he agreed to be Carter's nanny and hang out with the likes of us all day there would be no more babies.

“Two is enough,” he told us. “I only have two hands. A third baby would require me to grow another arm and I'm too old for that nonsense.”

His son, having no alternative but to meet his father's demands, went off to the doctor the next day. Such is the way families are made in the modern economy.

I'm undecided on the idea of a second child. There's no denying the ticking grows louder every day but sometimes I'm still able to ignore it. Could I love another child the way I love Theo? Is it possible to have that much love and not be crushed by its implications? I rest a single hand on my mostly flat stomach and wonder briefly what such a child would look like. Would he have my hair, my eyes? Would he come out speaking Tagalog? Would he be a she?

My reverie is interrupted by the silence. Everyone is staring at my son, who's involved in an animated conversation with a nanny.

The nannies sit on the other side of the playground. We would never consider sitting on their side of the playground and they would never sit on ours. It's perverse playground etiquette that makes no sense whatsoever. The nannies all speak Spanish except for one who speaks Russian and she sits alone. Occasionally, I hear them ranting about an employer or a charge and when they catch me staring, I look away.

Theo is gesturing with his arms. He is telling them something about Luke Skywalker and C-3PO but I'm too far away to catch the details. The nannies are laughing.

“Lucy?” Sam says accusingly, as if I have been holding out on him. “When did Theo learn to speak Spanish?”

I can't exactly say I don't know so I lie. “The cleaning lady speaks to him and she has been, um, coming a lot these days.”

“Wow,” says Avery, still bouncing a sleeping Cooper in her arms. “He's really got it down. Can you keep up?”

Oh, yes. And later I plan on teaching him Mandarin.

“Sort of,” I say. “Theo, go play! We don't have much time.”

He waves good-bye to the nannies and heads back to the sand pit. My cheeks are red. Lying is about to become a whole lot more complicated.

“That's fabulous,” says Claire, her brow furrowing in concentration. “I'm going to sign Owen up for lessons immediately. He should know a second language by now. How is he going to get into Yale if he can't speak a second language?”

Poor Owen. Someday I'll owe him an apology.

As we sit on the benches, watching the kids, listening to baby Cooper's little snores and basking in the familiarity of the scene, the conversation turns back to the issue of where to send the kids to kindergarten. We'll beat it to death and when we are done we'll start all over again from the beginning. It's what we do and, for now, it allows us to ignore what is just on the horizon, the call to reinvent ourselves yet again. But the truth is, I'm starting to wonder if I have what it takes to pull it off one more time.

My in-laws are sitting on the front steps when Theo and I pull up from the playground. Is it time for me to give them their own key? That's a thought too horrifying to contemplate with any seriousness right now. But they should be happy because this is the day when the earth is going to move, the heavens open up, and William II and Rose Marie are going to be asked to babysit. I'm confident that William II's reaction will be nothing short of jubilant. The jury is still out on Rose Marie.

Part of William II's acute obsession with grandfathering after his brush with death was a desire to take Theo places. He was tickled by the idea of a trip to the zoo or the aquarium or the beach or the ice cream shop two blocks away.

“How wonderful!” he'd say. “I don't think I've ever been to an aquarium.”

“Of course you have, dear,” a tortured Rose Marie would answer.

“Well, not with my grandson,” he'd counter.

He thought he might take up skiing.

“Will never has time to take Theo skiing but I do,” he'd say. “We'll rent a house. Slope side! I have
time
.” And he would pause for a moment to savor the idea of time, of being alive instead of being dead. “I love skiing.”

“You've never been skiing, dear,” Rose Marie would remind him.

“So we'll take lessons together. It'll be fun!”

My mother-in-law has taken to accessorizing her St. John suits with a look of permanent resignation.

If there were an alternative, I'd take it, but I'm in a situation and I don't see any other way. I took Theo along on one of my misadventures before and learned my lesson. I will not make the same mistake twice.

Yes, it's time to begin letting go even if the idea leaves me weak in the knees. Theo has to live in this world and not the one from which I came. I have to trust that others can keep him safe and love him as much as I do. I have to believe it even if on some level I know it's not possible.

“Theo,” I say, opening the garage door, “how would you like to go to the zoo with Grandma and Gramps this afternoon?”

“Can I ride the train?” he asks, apparently unaware of the world shifting beneath him.

“Of course,” I say. “Gramps loves the train.”

“He loves everything!” Theo says with wonder. “Are you coming?”

“No.”

“Okay.” He's unfazed. I have clearly overestimated my own importance. “I can show them how to get there. I know the directions.”

“I have no doubt about that,” I say. “Now hop out and say hello. In English, please.”

William II squeezes Theo so hard it looks as if Theo's eyeballs might pop out of his head. Then he tosses him up in the air without any look of strain on his face. Rose Marie, who visibly blanches every time she hears the name “Grandma,” air kisses me and then looks disapprovingly around the living room. It's a disaster but certainly not the only one on this fine San Francisco day.

As Rose Marie settles them into the guest bedroom, which includes replacing the 100-percent-recycled toilet paper with something softer than sandpaper, I float the plan to Gramps, without getting into the specifics, of course.