The Fun Parts (3 page)

“You don’t want to say what?”

“I believe you heard me.”

“What if I just quit?”

“God, can you afford that? Lucky you. Can I quit with you? Do you have us covered?”

“Okay, Laura. I understand. It’s okay.”

“You’re a real sweetheart,” Laura said.

“I’m a schmuck,” Tovah said.

“Always a fine line.”

Tovah winced admiringly.

Now Dezzy turned from the ladder and shoved herself at Tovah’s shoulder. Her frizzy hair scratched Tovah’s cheek. The girl’s breath carried sour fruit.

“I love you, Tovah!” Dezzy said, gurgled through surplus saliva. Desdemona wasn’t slow, just charmless, a sloppy need machine.

One of the other kids, a funny boy named Ewen, tugged on Tovah’s jeans.

“Tovah,” he said. “Can we read about the tigers again?”

Because Laura did in fact care about the boys and didn’t want them to notice her revulsion, they’d become Tovah’s responsibility.

“You can change them, the boys,” Laura had told her. “Erase the predator patterns in their brains. Make them docile and generous. I’d do it myself, but I get so nauseated.”

Tovah’s Dezzy duty was a drag. She wanted to read to Ewen, but if Dezzy didn’t want to join them, the morning would turn dire. Dezzy would collapse and wail. A real Trojan widow scene. It made Tovah wonder what went on at the House of Gautier. Randy Goat hadn’t been making drop-offs or pickups this week. A young Tibetan woman came instead. And what did Mrs. Gautier do with her time? Or was that blond woman at the home visit even Dezzy’s mother? Now Tovah found the narrative becoming dense. Dense wouldn’t do. She was ready to wrap this up, find another—what did they call it?—situation.

Dezzy licked and nibbled Tovah’s neck. Tovah hoisted the girl away from her.

“You don’t want to skin lip?” Dezzy said.

“What? What did you say?”

“Ouchie. Put me down.”

“Tigers, Tovah,” Ewen said, tugged.

*   *   *

Mr. Gautier offered too much money for the babysitting job. It was more like a call girl’s fee, even factoring in Dezzy’s unpleasantness, but this was no era to demur. Tovah took the gig. It would be a noon-to-midnight shift on Saturday. Mr. Gautier had meetings, a benefit dinner.

Tovah had never babysat, not even in high school, but at least she was starting at the top. This wasn’t a few hours at the neighbor’s house, with Tovah paid in cable TV and leftover casserole. This was big bucks to encamp in a palace on Central Park West and monitor a brat while Mr. and Mrs. Gautier lorded it over the city’s top-shelf kowtowers. Maybe they’d bring her white-frosted cake in swanned-up tinfoil. Everything seemed so pathetic and exciting.

She knew she should mention the offer to Laura, but she enjoyed the secret, side-business feel of it. There was something odd about Mr. Gautier, to be sure, but even if he returned home in his tux, tipsy from champagne, and his wife excused herself and retired to what she might refer to as her chambers, and when she was gone Mr. Gautier, while plucking sharp green bills from his silver clip, accidentally brushed his well-preserved knuckles against her breast or her bosom or her (perhaps let’s just say specifically) unusually responsive (based on informal polls of friends) nipple, and they locked eyes and giggled and then, for no reason at all, kissed, skin lipped, as some tiny persons would have it, until they heard a noise, a door off the den or a loose board in the refurbished hallway, maybe the wife returning to the kitchen for her bedtime book, one of those wretched memoirs with a blurred photo of a schoolgirl on the jacket, and upon hearing the noise, they, Randy and Tovah, froze and broke apart in thrilled fright—even if all of that happened, she wasn’t sure she would tell Laura. In fact, she knew she wouldn’t tell her, so why mention the babysitting job at all?

Besides, it would be awkward in a few years, when Tovah was—and let’s be totally random here—Randy’s new wife, the mother of his baby, and Tovah found herself, for example, president of the board of Sweet Apple, which had the power to hire and fire directors as she (or she and the board) saw fit. Of course, without question, Tovah would endorse a renewal of Laura’s contract. The woman needed a viable wardrobe, but she’d proved herself a more than capable employee. Besides, there would be so many other things to worry about, such as the transformation of
Glyphonym
from a ludicrous glossy bursting with trust fund doggerel to a rigorous journal where the best poets, regardless of tradition, would connect with one another and a larger audience. A few poems a year by Tovah would not be unseemly. Other editors did it.

Plenty more so-called luxury problems might rear their plush heads. You had to hire the right people, make certain that the nanny wasn’t teaching the baby Cantonese by mistake, or the cook wasn’t drizzling the wrong oils on Tovah’s salads, not to mention the guaranteed Stukka dives of bitchery from the ditched blond wife. Tovah didn’t know a thing about her, but the woman’s gold-digging implements had been edged enough to carve out some precious metal from the Randolph Gautier vein. Doubtless they could leave nasty divots in the flesh of her usurper. Still, the state of alert would be worth it because of the baby, the baby that would be hers and also nestled in cozy plenitude, the combination she never thought possible.

*   *   *

Dezzy didn’t come to school on Friday, so Tovah e-mailed Mr. Gautier to make sure the date, or the job, rather, was still on. He did not respond all day.

Sweet Apple exhausted her. Her boys—Ewen, Juanito, Medgar, and Shalom—had been hanging all over her, begging her read to them or play airplane or lie on the carpet as a launchpad. Tovah wasn’t sure if she had deactivated their predator wiring. It was hard to tell when they were such relentless puppies. She fell asleep on the train home and nearly missed her stop. She’d need some quality rest to handle Dezzy tomorrow, if that was still her destiny.

The call finally came as she finished her radicchio.

“You e-mail me?”

“Yes. About tomorrow.”

“It’s better to just call me. I don’t check e-mail much. But I see your e-mail in my browser. It scared me. I didn’t open it. Does it say you’re not coming? Don’t tell me you’re not coming. Jesus fucking Christ. I counted on you. I put my neck on the chopping block convincing Connie that you weren’t just some tight little piece of … well, whatever, but a real—”

“I’m coming, Randy Goat!” Tovah cried.

“Huh?”

“I mean, I just e-mailed to confirm. I’m certainly planning on coming to watch Dezzy, so you and your wife shouldn’t worry about a—”

“My wife?”

“Yes, I met her at the home visit.”

“Connie’s my sister. That’s who you saw. She’s always trying to horn in on the raising of Dezzy. I guess I let her. It’s easier that way. Dezzy’s adopted. She was my goddaughter, and her parents were killed. Okay, what the hell are we doing? Are we phone buddies or something?”

“No,” Tovah said.

“You bet your ass we aren’t. I’ll see you tomorrow at eleven.”

“You said noon.”

“Stay flexible, Tovah.”

A few minutes before eleven the next morning Tovah waited outside the building. She wore a dress that was maybe too chic, especially given the bleached-out T-shirts she favored at school, but after Dezzy went to bed, there’d be some spare hours to relax in a beautiful apartment. She thought she’d do it in style.

She knew she’d never be back after today. Since the phone call, she’d been mortified by her matrimonial fantasy. You think you know yourself, the world. You believe you’ve got a bead on everybody else’s bullshit, but what about your own? She’d had delusions of using this man because he somehow deserved it. Now she wondered if she even deserved to watch Dezzy. At eleven she pushed the buzzer. The elevator, just as Tovah remembered, opened into the plum-colored foyer.

*   *   *

She felt the hand on her shoulder even while asleep, and the whole day whizzed through her, all the games and snacks, the walk to the park, the Winnie-the-Pooh books, the TV programs full of anxious furry creatures, the sudsy bath, the creamy noodles, Dezzy’s kissy snuggle at tuck-in. Tovah had come to the study afterward to read. The leather Eames had pulled her into sleep better than a pill. She blinked up at Mr. Gautier. He smiled, and his eyes looked fogged. His bow tie hung limp around his collar. His tuxedo took on a rumpled sheen in the lamplight.

“Wake up, little Toh-Va, wake up,” he sang.

“Mr. Gautier.” Her voice sounded deeper, liquored, in her ears. Her ears seemed stuffed with silk.

“How was your evening?” he asked. He sat on the coffee table beside her.

“It was perfect. How was your evening with the muckety-mucks?”

“Actually, I lied about the event. I don’t know why. My older son got married today. Evan. He’s a lawyer, she’s a doctor. They will be very happy or something.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“No. They’ll thrive. It’s just been a long, emotional day.”

“Was your ex-wife there?”

“Like I said, an emotional day.”

Mr. Gautier stood.

“Drink?”

“I should go.”

“You should have a drink with a sad old man first.”

Mr. Gautier fetched Scotches from the kitchen, handed her one, and lowered himself on the arm of her chair.

“Is that comfortable?”

“It’s an Eames ream,” he said, laughed, stroked the back of Tovah’s neck.

“What are you doing?”

“Tovah, let’s be realistic. You’re not the high school babysitter. I don’t play bridge with your father. We’re grown up and broken, just like everybody else. Stop acting like a precious flower.”

Tovah set her drink down on the coffee table, rose, squeezed past Randy Gautier. She walked over to the bookshelf and stared out the window at the lights of the avenue, the darkness of the park. She pictured wolves, packs of them, leaping the gates.

“You know,” she said, gathered herself. “It’s very hard. Here. In America. In the world. For women. It’s a fucking nightmare. Our choices are no choice. Everybody has a goddamn opinion, but nobody ever wants to help. The politicians, the culture, they push the idea of family, the importance of the mother, and they also push the idea of opportunities for women, but they screw us all on the stuff that counts, that will make it real. We are alone and suicidal or we have children and are suicidal. The only women who escape this are the rich. All the accomplished women in history had servants. I’m convinced of that. Even if it’s not true. It certainly feels fucking true. I’m sorry. I’m babbling. Why am I going on about this? It’s stupid. I’m just cranky. Must be getting my period, right? That what you think? Well, fuck you, and of course I am. But that’s not it. Maybe I wasn’t ready to wake up just now. Maybe I’m tired of waking up. Nothing changes when I do. Nothing ever suddenly … Christ, I’m sorry. I should just go. Maybe I should just…”

Tovah turned and saw that Mr. Gautier had tugged his penis out of his tuxedo pants. He gave a shrug and, like a loved boy, beamed.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m listening.”

the DUNGEON MASTER

The Dungeon Master has detention. We wait at his house by the county road. The Dungeon Master’s little brother, Marco, puts out corn chips and cola.

Marco is a paladin. He fights for the glory of Christ. Marco has been many paladins since winter break. They are all named Valentine, and the Dungeon Master makes certain they die with the least amount of dignity.

It’s painful enough when he rolls the dice, announces that a drunken orc has unspooled some Valentine’s guts for sport. Worse are the silly accidents. One Valentine tripped on a floor plank and cracked his head on a mead bucket. He died of trauma in the stable.

“Take it!” the Dungeon Master said that time from behind his laminated cardboard screen. Spit sprayed over the top of it. “Eat your fate,” he said. “Your thread just got the snippo!”

The Dungeon Master has a secret language we don’t quite understand. They say he’s been treated for it.

Whenever the Dungeon Master kills a Valentine, Marco runs off and cries to their father. Doctor Varelli nudges his son back into the study, sticks his bushy head in the door, says, “Play nice, my beautiful puppies.”

“Father,” the Dungeon Master will say, “stay the fuck out of my mind realm.”

“I honor your wish, my beauty.”

Doctor Varelli speaks like that. It’s not a secret language, just an embarrassing one. Maybe that’s why his wife left him, left Marco and the Dungeon Master, too. It’s not a decent reason to leave, but as the Dungeon Master hopes to teach us, the world is not a decent place to live.

*   *   *

Now we sit with our chips.

“If they didn’t say corn, I wouldn’t think of them as corn,” says Brendan.

He’s a third-level wizard.

“Detention?” Cherninsky says. He stands, squats, sits, stands. He’s got black bangs and freckles, suffers from that disease where you can’t stay in your chair.

“He chucked a spaz in Spanish,” I say. “I heard one of the seniors.”

“The teacher rides him,” Marco says. Marco despises the Dungeon Master but loves his brother. I like Marco, but I’m no fan of Valentine. I’m a third-level ranger. I fight for the glory of me.

The door smacks open.

“Ah, the doomed.” The Dungeon Master strides past us, short and pasty, with a fine brown beard.

He sinks down at the desk behind his screen, which on his side has all the lists and tables for playing printed on it, and on our side has a mural full of morning stars and fire. We’ve been ordered never to touch the screen. We never do, not even when he’s at detention. The Dungeon Master shuffles some papers—his maps and grids. Dice click in his stubby hand. Behind him, on the wall, hang Doctor Varelli’s diplomas. The diplomas say he’s a child psychiatrist, but he never brings patients here, and I’m not sure he ever leaves.

“When last we met,” the Dungeon Master begins, “Olaf the thief had been caught stealing a loaf of pumpernickel from the village bakery. A halfling baker’s boy had cornered our friend with a bread knife. Ready to roll?”

“I don’t want to die this way,” Cherninsky says.