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It somehow didn’t sound right, and I said so.
“He later told us the mother had signed over all the parental rights to him and didn’t want anything to do with the baby. They stayed with us for a while, then he got a nanny and moved back to his place.”
Simone said she thought that Zoë would probably be the only woman in his life.
“Maybe she’ll train him,” I said.
“You think?”
“She’s a girl, right? Maybe she’ll teach him how to talk to girls, how to get out of his head more?”
Whenever I saw Will after that, he would avoid me. He’d rather take out his phone and scroll across the screen than make conversation with me.
But he had been so nice to me about the job, being accommodating about my studies and not trying to tie me into a fixed work period or anything. If I could do it until the winter skiing season opened, I would have enough time to find a cool job to go to and have the money to fix all my problems.
Things were looking up.
Or so I thought.
Chapter 4
Will
On Saturday mornings, Zoë and I head out to the park. This has become our ritual and both of us love it, for entirely different reasons, of course. For Zoë it is all about the food, the junk food, to be specific. We start off with breakfast and she has learned that I will let her get away with more on Saturday mornings.
So, it’s often waffles for breakfast, pancakes, or buttery soft pastries we pick up from the bakery down the road. Then, after an hour or two of playing in the park, if there is an injury like a stubbed toe or a fall off the swing, an ice cream must follow. Zoë will come to me with a scratch on her arm, or maybe she tells me she bumped her knee. Sometimes, she will declare to my face, “Did you see how I fell, Daddy?” and instead of admitting I wasn’t watching her, I will immediately jump to my feet, start gathering our things and look for the nearest ice-cream truck or lolly stand.
Occasionally, she will follow that with a demand for a corn dog and as it is Saturday and the weekend and it really is the only time that the two of us are together without anyone else around and I want to be the fun guy in charge, I say yes. I think she knows this. I’m fairly sure she’s onto me and playing me for every last dollar.
I don’t mind, though.
My own treat at these Saturday mornings in the park, is observing the hot mommies and the even hotter nannies. But listening in to their conversations is my true guilty pleasure. I usually have my sunglasses on and headphones as if I were listening to some podcast or music. But it’s just a foil.
I have my favorites and they change. Lately, it has been a new mom called Courtney. She meets a group of moms, and they watch their toddlers throw sand in each other’s eyes while pretending not to notice. I sit with my back against a tree and plug my earphones into my phone, fumbling and pretending to listen, but my focus is on the group of moms and especially Courtney. Mostly because she is clueless. Completely and utterly lost when it comes to parenting.
I love listening to her trying to figure out how to parent, as if it is a hack you can watch on YouTube, two minutes and you have it all figured out.
“You guys, have you like, ever given your little ones, like a spoon or two of brandy, you know, just to get them to sleep?”
The moms explode with indignant horror at the thought of giving their children anything but the cough syrup recommended by the chemist.
“But my mother-in-law swears she gave all her children booze, and they would sleep through the night,” Courtney would wail.
“How much of a drinker is you husband now?” someone would comment drily to sniggers all round.
I remembered how Zoë struggled to sleep in her first year and how exhausted I was until I realized that she loved the sound of the dryer. I made her a kind of seat on top of it, and she would fall asleep instantly, to the sound and vibrations of the dryer.
So much of parenting was figuring stuff out on your own. All the books, the magazine articles, the experts with their bestsellers and advice columns, really didn’t know what is like for anyone bringing home a child for the first time.
Our first week with Nikki as a nanny had passed by uneventfully. There were no mistakes and no mishaps. Everything when smoothly. She’d arrived on Sunday evening, with a few bags and I’d shown her the room, which she had clearly liked.
“Oh, look! An actual view!” she’d remarked as she stood at the window. “Our windows face the back of the building next door. That’s why we’ve always kept the drapes drawn.”
The schedule was simple. She got up and helped get Zoë ready for school, dropped her off and picked her up again. Had lunch ready, made dinner for all of us and after her bath at night, she was off. She had every Saturday and second Sunday off, unless I made special arrangements with her.
When I asked Zoë how the first week with Nikki had been, she’d said it was “okay”. Not exactly the enthusiastic response I had been waiting for.
“Just okay?” I pressed her.
