She laughs. “Fair enough.”
The phone rings again just as Cori’s reaching for another egg roll.
I don’t move. On the TV, Chandler’s saying something about his father wearing women’s clothing and the studio audience is losing it, but I’m not really hearing any of it because my whole body just went rigid. Cori and I both stare at the beige cordless phone sitting in its cradle on the kitchen wall like it might suddenly sprout legs and come after us. It rings four times, five, six, and then finally stops, leaving this heavy silence that somehow feels worse than the ringing.
Cori picks up her egg roll and takes a bite. She doesn’t bother asking who it is.
We go back to circling ads, and I’m grateful she’s letting it drop. But I can still feel the weight of those phone calls sitting in my chest, the knowledge that I can’t avoid this forever. Eventually, I’m going to have to face it.
The thing is—and this is pathetic, I know it’s pathetic—but some sick, twisted part of me is almost glad they keep calling. Not that I’m going to answer, because I physically cannot make myself pick up that phone and hear my mother’s voice on the other end, that particular frosty tone she gets when she’s furious but trying to maintain her composure, like she’s performing even her anger. But I need to know they’re still trying, that they’re angry enough to call six times in two weeks, that I haven’t been completely erased from their lives. That I still exist to them, even if it’s just as a massive disappointment.
It’s like wiggling a loose tooth with your tongue even though you know it hurts, even though you know you should just leave it alone and let it fall out on its own. But you can’t help it. You need to keep checking to make sure it’s still there, still attached to something real.
My parents were around when I was growing up, technically speaking. They lived in the same house, appeared at school functions when their schedules permitted, hosted elaborate dinner parties where I’d be trotted out in whatever dress my mother had picked for me to smile and be charming for whatever director or producer or studio executive her and my dad were hosting. But it was Eileen who actually raised me. It was Eileen who knew I hated carrots and loved my grilled cheese sandwiches extra buttery and cut diagonally, that I liked my orange juice without pulp and who who sat with me when I had nightmares about forgetting my lines in the school play.
But I didn’t know that was weird at the time because everyone I knew lived like that. All of my friends had wealthy parents who were busy being important. We all went to the sameschools, had the same tutors, spent summers at the same houses while our parents did whatever important people do.
Except Valerie Baker.
The memory surfaces, vivid and unbidden, as if conjured by the smell of cheap Chinese food. My fourth grade best friend. Valerie with her gap-toothed grin. Her father, a man my parents never bothered to learn the name of, coached her soccer team. He built her a treehouse with his own hands, a summer-long project of sawdust and sweat. Her mother braided her hair into intricate coronets every morning and tucked notes into her lunchbox:You are my sunshine! Remember, you’re amazing!They had a feelings chart on their fridge.
I was so consumed by a jealous, hungry ache that I dropped her. I exiled myself back to the familiar, chilly landscape of my own world, where parents were elegant portraits on the wall, not people who showed up in your everyday life. Valerie’s life was a mirror showing me a reflection I couldn’t bear to see: my parents’ absence was a choice.
And now those same parents are calling me six times in two weeks and I can’t pick up the phone, but at least they’re still calling. At least I’m still worth being angry at.
“Annie.” Cori’s voice pulls me back. She suddenly jerks forward so fast she almost knocks over the container of lo mein, and she’s pointing at something in theVillage Voicespread out between us on the floor, already stained with soy sauce and probably some sesame chicken. “Look!”
I lean in. She’s pointing at the childcare section, a domain I’ve avoided like a minefield.
NANNY NEEDED: Seeking responsible, patient individual for 4-year-old daughter. M-F, hours vary (typically 8am-5pm, some until 6pm). Flexibility required. $10/hour. Columbia University area. Experience preferred. Call Leo Roussos, 555-0147.
My brain, now a finely tuned instrument of financial despair, calculates instantly. Ten dollars an hour is a princely sum in my new economy. Forty to fifty hours a week. Four hundred, maybe five hundred dollars. Rent, groceries, tokens—and a whisper of breathing room. A flicker of a future that isn’t predicated on immediate ruin.
I gnaw at the delicate skin of my bottom lip, a childhood habit I thought I’d gotten rid of but apparently haven’t. “It’s a child. Like, a real, human child.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Cori’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Annie, ten dollars an hour is incredible! That’s like—that’sreallygood money.”
“I lack the fundamental qualifications of a nanny, Cor. I’ve never changed a diaper. I don’t know any nursery rhymes. I’m not entirely sure I can even identify a four-year-old in a lineup.” My voice pitches higher, edged with a panic that feels absurd even to me. “What if they still need help wiping? I have…issues with that.”
Cori blinks slowly, as if processing a transmission from a distant, baffling planet. “Have you ever…interacted with a child? For more than, say, thirty seconds?”
“Define ‘interact.’” I wrap my arms around my knees. “I’ve been in the same room as them.”
“Did you ever babysit growing up?”
I shake my head, and she’s staring at me now with this expression of complete bewilderment, like I just told her I’ve never seen the ocean or eaten pizza or something equally fundamental to human existence.
I shake my head. The concept was as foreign to my adolescence as budgeting or public transportation. The girls in my orbit didn’t babysit; we had babysitters. An endless procession of au pairs and grad students and “mother’s helpers” who existed in the peripheral vision of our lives, tasked withkeeping us fed and vaguely supervised while our parents attended to the serious business of being important. Children, in my limited, curated exposure, were like exotic, poorly trained pets—prone to sudden noises, unpredictable discharges, and a distressing lack of regard for personal space. I didn’t understand them. What do four-year-olds even do all day? What do they like? Are they potty trained at four? Can they hold an actual conversation or is it all just gibberish? Do they still take naps? I genuinely have no idea.
“Wait, really?” Cori’s still staring. “You never babysat? Not even once?”
“Never.”
“That’s how I made literally all of my money in high school. Every weekend, sometimes weeknights too. That’s how I paid for my pointe shoes.” She’s shaking her head slightly, like she’s still trying to process this information. “I just—I guess I assumed everyone babysat.”
“My weekends were kind of…different?” I wave my hand vaguely in the air, trying to encompass all of it without actually having to say it out loud. The premieres and the parties and the standing around in whatever designer dress I bought with my dad’s black card that week.
“Right.” Cori’s voice softens, that particular tone she uses when she’s navigating the minefield of my old life. “Okay, but Annie, it’s really not that hard, I promise. Kids are just little people, you know? You talk to them, you play with them, you make sure they don’t, like, stick a fork in an electrical outlet. Four-year-olds are actually pretty fun—they’re old enough to communicate what they want but they’re still young enough to think you’re basically magic. And plus, they think a Band-Aid and a cookie can fix almost anything.”
