Page 27 of A Happy Catastrophe

“Hi! How did she do at the drop-off?” she asks breathlessly. “And isn’t this just the best school? Did you adore Josie and Karen?”

“Hi,” I say. “Yes, it went well. And she actually seemed fine. Talked to the other kids, didn’t blink an eye over my leaving, and was even looking like she was going to stage a coup to let the hamster run races around the classroom. So I’m perfecting my Mom Eyebrow Raise.”

“Let’s see it,” says Emily.

“It’s not all there yet. So no judging.” I take off my sunglasses and arrange my facial expression just so, so that my right eyebrow can arch slightly menacingly. I’ve seen my mother silence an entire minivan carpool of screaming little girls with this trick.

“Hmm,” says Emily. “I find it helps if you crook your mouth around just so, too. But you’ll get it. Like this.” She demonstrates by making perhaps the scariest face I’ve ever seen. She actually shows a glint of teeth. “Hey, so how are you? Do you have the first-day jitters, too? No offense, but you look a little stressed.”

“Her mom left,” I say.

“But that was the plan, wasn’t it?”

I tell her the whole story: no good-bye, no warning, not even a visit to the classroom to look the teachers over and say nice things about what a great year it’s going to be. Changed Fritzie’s official last name on the forms to Patrick’s and vanished.

Emily reaches over and touches my arm. “Come to the playground with us this afternoon. Do you want to? Maybe Fritzie is going to need to work off a little bit of steam.”

“I’m supposed to go back to work. I have a wedding consult to do at four.”

“Just stay for a little while then. We’ll get treats from the ice cream truck and let the kids do their thing. I think the sprinkler system is on, and they can run through the fountain and cool off. And you can meet the other moms. We’re going to be your people now. Might as well come get to know us in our native habitat: the playground.”

“Thank you. I do have questions.”

“I’ll bet you do. Like, what the hell are we doing? Is that one of the questions?”

“That’ll come later. Mainly now I want to know what everybody carries in their giant bags.”

“Oh,” she says airily. “Three-course meals, including appetizers and snacks. Thermoses of vitamin water. Tourniquets, antibiotics, antipsychotic drugs. A bottle or two of wine. A corkscrew. A laptop. Headphones. iPhones. A thousand dollars in small bills. A stun gun.”

You see? This is why I love Emily Turner. Something tells me I may need to borrow somebody’s stun gun right away.

When Emily and I get to the school cafeteria, where we parents are supposed to wait for our kids’ dismissal, I see Fritzie hanging with a group of little boys, still wearing her baseball cap and hopping around like she’s perfectly at home. Her face lights up when she sees me, and she comes running over, only to get stopped by one of the teachers. Apparently kids must wait in a certain area until they’re fetched.

Karen sees me and frowns just the slightest bit. Which—I’m not going to lie—makes my heart sink a little bit. Did there end up being a hamster incident despite my amateur Microscopic Head Shaking? Am I going to have to resort to using words next time?

But no. She’s just marking kids off from the checklist on her clipboard and struggling to put names to faces. She tells me, smiling sweetly, that Fritzie had a good day, that she’s going to be “quite an asset to the classroom, a real lively personality,” and I beam as though this is such exciting news, even though it could also be a euphemism for “most disruptive human being ever.”

Fritzie is jumping from one foot to the next and waggling her head back and forth, which makes the baseball cap fall on the floor, and a red-haired kid swoops in and grabs it and pretends he’s going to eat it. Fritzie screeches, “Don’t eat my hat again!” and takes it back.

“Wow, you’ve had quite a day defending that hat,” says Karen. She smiles at me. “Everybody loved her hat. A couple of people even thought it might be delicious to eat, isn’t that right, Fritzie? Which was sort of crazy!”

And she gives Fritzie a big good-bye hug.

When we’re on the way to the playground, trailing behind Emily Turner and a whole gang of moms and their kids, I say, “So was it a problem, your hat?”

Fritzie shrugs. She seems like she’s in a very good mood. “Nah. It wasn’t a big deal. It fell off one time, and Max picked it up and put it on his own head, and then this boy named Laramie took it and said he was going to put ketchup on it at lunch and eat it, but then I got it back, and he chased me around the classroom, and we knocked into the table of folders and they all fell on the ground. Big deal. I picked them up.” Then she yells at the top of her lungs at the boy slightly ahead of us. “Laramie!” she calls, and then again. He stops and turns around, and she throws him the hat.

“Here,” she says, “you can have it!”

He runs over and grabs it. “Really?” I notice he was walking by himself, looking over at the other kids with a kind of longing.

“Yeah!” she says. “It’s yours. But don’t eat it unless you’re very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY hungry. And don’t put ketchup on it!”

After he bounces away with it on his head, I say, “Wait. That’s your hat. Why did you give it to him?” and she says, offhandedly, “I dunno. He needed it.”

She dances sideways and backward all the way across the street, and I keep having my heart stop and restart. And once we’re there, sorting ourselves out and claiming benches, the moms all open up their magic bags and hand out healthy snacks, carrots and bottles of special water and little packets of dried kelp and something called Pirate’s Booty, and I get to sit on the bench next to Emily Turner and her friends Elke and Lily and Sarah Jane, all of whom are wearing the most fabulous footwear I’ve ever seen—clogs and sandals and whatnot—and we feed the children these wonderfully healthy snacks from sweet little ecologically sanctioned containers, and pick up their backpacks, and then someone mentions lunch like it’s a thing we should have been thinking about, and so we gather up everybody, plug Sarah Jane’s twins into a massive eighteen-wheeler stroller, and wrangle Elke’s toddler, and off we go, to lunch down the street at a sushi restaurant, where it’s California rolls and sensational games with the soy sauce bottle and plenty of happy exuberance.

There’s a tension headache starting to pound just behind my eyeballs. But I try to be grateful for every moment that Fritzie is happy and carefree and playing with friends. I look up at the sky and squeeze my fingers one by one, intent on appreciating.

Patrick said we would deal with it.

It’s not until Fritzie and I are making our way to the subway that she suddenly says, “Hey, where’s my mom?” She’s skipping from one foot to the other when she says it, intent on not stepping on any cracks. “You know why I’m doing this, Marnie? Because you can break your mother’s back if you step on one,” she says. “I don’t know if you know that or not.”

“I have heard rumors about that,” I say. “But once when I was a kid, I was mad at my mom so I stepped on every single crack, and her back has stayed fine all these years. So I have serious questions about whether it’s true.”

o;Hi! How did she do at the drop-off?” she asks breathlessly. “And isn’t this just the best school? Did you adore Josie and Karen?”

“Hi,” I say. “Yes, it went well. And she actually seemed fine. Talked to the other kids, didn’t blink an eye over my leaving, and was even looking like she was going to stage a coup to let the hamster run races around the classroom. So I’m perfecting my Mom Eyebrow Raise.”

“Let’s see it,” says Emily.

“It’s not all there yet. So no judging.” I take off my sunglasses and arrange my facial expression just so, so that my right eyebrow can arch slightly menacingly. I’ve seen my mother silence an entire minivan carpool of screaming little girls with this trick.

“Hmm,” says Emily. “I find it helps if you crook your mouth around just so, too. But you’ll get it. Like this.” She demonstrates by making perhaps the scariest face I’ve ever seen. She actually shows a glint of teeth. “Hey, so how are you? Do you have the first-day jitters, too? No offense, but you look a little stressed.”

“Her mom left,” I say.

“But that was the plan, wasn’t it?”

I tell her the whole story: no good-bye, no warning, not even a visit to the classroom to look the teachers over and say nice things about what a great year it’s going to be. Changed Fritzie’s official last name on the forms to Patrick’s and vanished.

Emily reaches over and touches my arm. “Come to the playground with us this afternoon. Do you want to? Maybe Fritzie is going to need to work off a little bit of steam.”

“I’m supposed to go back to work. I have a wedding consult to do at four.”

“Just stay for a little while then. We’ll get treats from the ice cream truck and let the kids do their thing. I think the sprinkler system is on, and they can run through the fountain and cool off. And you can meet the other moms. We’re going to be your people now. Might as well come get to know us in our native habitat: the playground.”

“Thank you. I do have questions.”

“I’ll bet you do. Like, what the hell are we doing? Is that one of the questions?”

“That’ll come later. Mainly now I want to know what everybody carries in their giant bags.”

“Oh,” she says airily. “Three-course meals, including appetizers and snacks. Thermoses of vitamin water. Tourniquets, antibiotics, antipsychotic drugs. A bottle or two of wine. A corkscrew. A laptop. Headphones. iPhones. A thousand dollars in small bills. A stun gun.”

You see? This is why I love Emily Turner. Something tells me I may need to borrow somebody’s stun gun right away.

When Emily and I get to the school cafeteria, where we parents are supposed to wait for our kids’ dismissal, I see Fritzie hanging with a group of little boys, still wearing her baseball cap and hopping around like she’s perfectly at home. Her face lights up when she sees me, and she comes running over, only to get stopped by one of the teachers. Apparently kids must wait in a certain area until they’re fetched.

Karen sees me and frowns just the slightest bit. Which—I’m not going to lie—makes my heart sink a little bit. Did there end up being a hamster incident despite my amateur Microscopic Head Shaking? Am I going to have to resort to using words next time?

But no. She’s just marking kids off from the checklist on her clipboard and struggling to put names to faces. She tells me, smiling sweetly, that Fritzie had a good day, that she’s going to be “quite an asset to the classroom, a real lively personality,” and I beam as though this is such exciting news, even though it could also be a euphemism for “most disruptive human being ever.”

Fritzie is jumping from one foot to the next and waggling her head back and forth, which makes the baseball cap fall on the floor, and a red-haired kid swoops in and grabs it and pretends he’s going to eat it. Fritzie screeches, “Don’t eat my hat again!” and takes it back.

“Wow, you’ve had quite a day defending that hat,” says Karen. She smiles at me. “Everybody loved her hat. A couple of people even thought it might be delicious to eat, isn’t that right, Fritzie? Which was sort of crazy!”

And she gives Fritzie a big good-bye hug.

When we’re on the way to the playground, trailing behind Emily Turner and a whole gang of moms and their kids, I say, “So was it a problem, your hat?”

Fritzie shrugs. She seems like she’s in a very good mood. “Nah. It wasn’t a big deal. It fell off one time, and Max picked it up and put it on his own head, and then this boy named Laramie took it and said he was going to put ketchup on it at lunch and eat it, but then I got it back, and he chased me around the classroom, and we knocked into the table of folders and they all fell on the ground. Big deal. I picked them up.” Then she yells at the top of her lungs at the boy slightly ahead of us. “Laramie!” she calls, and then again. He stops and turns around, and she throws him the hat.

“Here,” she says, “you can have it!”

He runs over and grabs it. “Really?” I notice he was walking by himself, looking over at the other kids with a kind of longing.

“Yeah!” she says. “It’s yours. But don’t eat it unless you’re very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY hungry. And don’t put ketchup on it!”

After he bounces away with it on his head, I say, “Wait. That’s your hat. Why did you give it to him?” and she says, offhandedly, “I dunno. He needed it.”

She dances sideways and backward all the way across the street, and I keep having my heart stop and restart. And once we’re there, sorting ourselves out and claiming benches, the moms all open up their magic bags and hand out healthy snacks, carrots and bottles of special water and little packets of dried kelp and something called Pirate’s Booty, and I get to sit on the bench next to Emily Turner and her friends Elke and Lily and Sarah Jane, all of whom are wearing the most fabulous footwear I’ve ever seen—clogs and sandals and whatnot—and we feed the children these wonderfully healthy snacks from sweet little ecologically sanctioned containers, and pick up their backpacks, and then someone mentions lunch like it’s a thing we should have been thinking about, and so we gather up everybody, plug Sarah Jane’s twins into a massive eighteen-wheeler stroller, and wrangle Elke’s toddler, and off we go, to lunch down the street at a sushi restaurant, where it’s California rolls and sensational games with the soy sauce bottle and plenty of happy exuberance.

There’s a tension headache starting to pound just behind my eyeballs. But I try to be grateful for every moment that Fritzie is happy and carefree and playing with friends. I look up at the sky and squeeze my fingers one by one, intent on appreciating.

Patrick said we would deal with it.

It’s not until Fritzie and I are making our way to the subway that she suddenly says, “Hey, where’s my mom?” She’s skipping from one foot to the other when she says it, intent on not stepping on any cracks. “You know why I’m doing this, Marnie? Because you can break your mother’s back if you step on one,” she says. “I don’t know if you know that or not.”

“I have heard rumors about that,” I say. “But once when I was a kid, I was mad at my mom so I stepped on every single crack, and her back has stayed fine all these years. So I have serious questions about whether it’s true.”

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