Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship (9781609417291) Page 13

  “Actually, she threw it across the—”

  “Whatever. Look. Here’s what you’ve got to understand.” Clackety-clack. “Children are special, different from adults. That’s why there are people like me,” she said, waving to the wall full of framed degrees, “who specialize in the unique challenges of children’s psychology. A child won’t grieve the way you and I grieve. It’s like this: My tia Maria, she’ll go to every funeral in Queens just to get a good cry. Sure, she’s related to most of the dead, but she’s not going there for that. She’s going for the cry. And I mean cry—absolutely wailing, hurling herself over the coffin, whatever. It gets the grief out of her, you know, she lets it free. She knows it for what it is. But a child of seven years, she’s too young. She can’t bend her mind around ‘gone forever.’ ”

  “Now, wait—wait. Grace doesn’t understand that her mother’s dead?”

  “Not really. I got a cousin that age who still thinks Goldie is coming back, even though she saw the bloated fish go swirling down the porcelain chute. Of course, it doesn’t help that my uncle keeps buying her look-alikes and calling them ‘Goldie.’ She’s had seven of them. My cousin’s got an understanding of divine resurrection better than anyone at St. Joseph’s Parochial.”

  Jo leaned back in her seat, as much to get away from the finger-daggers as to try to grasp what this doctor was telling her. Her phone vibrated again, making a whirring noise in the small office.

  “Can’t do that with a mother, though—can’t keep Grace thinking her mom’s coming back—because she isn’t, and as time goes by, she’s going to understand that more and more. That hard realization, it’ll come in spurts. Yesterday you saw one of those little ‘spurts.’ Maybe the first.”

  “No, no,” Jo objected. “It had nothing to do with her mother. She lost her marbles over macaroni.”

  “Transference. It wasn’t the macaroni and cheese. That’s not true—it was the macaroni and cheese, in the sense that it was a trigger.”

  “A trigger.”

  “That’s her favorite food, right?”

  “That’s what her aunt told me.”

  “Well, maybe you didn’t give her the right kind.”

  “Right kind.” She felt like a freakin’ zombie, repeating everything.

  “Listen.” Clackety-clack. “Children are creatures of habit. I got a patient who’ll only eat Land O’Lakes yellow American cheese, right from the deli. You give him any other brand, or the kind that comes in plastic, and he totally loses it—I’m talking about a full-blown, blue-face, end-up-in-a-seizure kind of tantrum. Whatever kind of macaroni and cheese you gave Grace, it was the wrong kind. Your job is to find out what kind she likes and then serve that to her next time.”

  Jo sank deeper into the chair.

  “You’ve got to remember, too, that this is only the first incident you’ve noticed. She’s probably been doing all kinds of weird stuff. Sleepwalking, for example. It’s very common for young children under emotional stress to have a hard time sleeping. Her eating habits might be disrupted, too.” The doctor searched the file again. “Didn’t you say she wasn’t eating much and that you suspected she might be chewing on something weird?”

  “Cardboard.”

  “Totally in profile. I’ll warn you: It’s going to go on. Every child acts differently, but she might act out in school, too. Fighting in the playground, being disruptive in class. They’ll try to diagnose her attention-deficient but be wary—that’s not it. Grace will be a Ping-Pong ball of emotions. She’ll hit you with one, and then she’ll veer off, and there’s no telling in what direction. Your job as her guardian is to be alert for the moments, steer her away from self-destructive and violent behavior, and let her grieve in her own way.”

  Jo’s insides went liquid. She was going to faint. She really was going to completely pass out, and not in a Southern-girl kind of way.

  “Because it’s not going to end anytime soon,” the doctor continued. “Grace lost her mother, and that’s forever. She’ll be thirteen and getting her period for the first time and suddenly she’ll burst into tears because her mother’s not around to share the moment with her.”

  A red haze passed over Jo’s vision. Dr. Rodriguez started writing something on a little blue slip.

  “This will help, for a while.” The doctor tore off a prescription. “It’s mild, but it’ll help with her sleep.” She started writing another one, rat-a-tat-tat with the nails. “And this can tide her over the worst of the shock. When you bring her back for a re-evaluation in eight weeks, we’ll see about adjusting the dosage—”

  “Dosage?” Jo stared at the papers. She knew the drug—lately, she’d considered getting some for herself. “You’re going to give Grace antidepressants?”

  “They’re very mild. Hardly have any effect. She’s traumatized. Grace needs time.”

  “No.”

  She hadn’t thought she’d said it out loud.

  “It’s your choice—but consider it. On a temporary basis. For both your sakes.”

  The doctor put on her glasses and stood up. The interview was over. Jo stood up, too, on unsteady feet, her phone dancing in her bag. She clutched the two blue prescriptions in her hand. Dazed, she walked out of the office and around to the playroom to fetch Grace.

  “Okay, Grace,” Jo said, staring at the smudge of her thumbprint on the little blue papers. “Time to go.”

  Grace didn’t say a thing. She bent over a pile of blocks she was building into a castle.

  “Grace—”

  “I’m almost finished.”

  Jo crushed the papers in her hand. She’d had Grace for barely two weeks and already she was considering drugging her. Everything in her gut told her that wasn’t right, but how could she trust her gut? What did she know about raising a normal, happy kid, never mind an emotionally and psychologically traumatized kid? What did she know about different kinds of macaroni and cheese? What did she know about the long-term care of a potentially violent and grieving child? How could she possibly deal with the day-to-day demands of a needy kid when her Martha Stewart friend had a husband who could barely control his own three-kid brood?

  Her hands shook. More than her hands were shaking. She was shaking, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. She sank into a red plastic molded chair too small for her Kentucky ass. She trembled, and trembled, like the damn phone in her pocket.

  She snapped it open to Hector’s frantic voice.

  “Listen, Jo, you gotta be straight with me. Are you lying on a beach on some tropical island? Because if you are—”

  “Gawd, I wish I were.”

  “Then when are you coming in?”

  “Soon.”

  “If you don’t come in real soon you may as well kiss your client good-bye.”

  Jo closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “What now?”

  “Miss Sophie is moving in on this presentation. She’s got the whole office rooting for Miss Crackhead to be the face of Mystery, and all the graphics guys are working off her specs—”

  “What, you haven’t come up with an alternative? Do I have to come up with everything myself?”

  Hector went silent. She could hear his hurt through the connection. In the background, Jo could also hear the clicking of fingers on keyboards, the rumble of adult conversation, and the hum of a printer. The noises were like a lullaby to her. She wanted to go to the office. She wanted to tell Hector it was okay and she was sorry for being a bitch. She wanted to be in the office—and away from this—so badly that it hurt.

  She’d never been one to take drugs, but now she was wondering if she shouldn’t order some of Grace’s medicine for herself.

  “Hector… I’m sorry.” Jo forced herself to stop shaking. “That was unacceptable, and completely unfair. I know you’re under pressure, and I do appreciate that you’re covering for me.”

  “You need to show your face, boss.” Hurt lingered in his voice. “Because, if you lose this client, you mi
ght lose your job, and if you haven’t noticed, this young man has hitched his wagon to your star.”

  “I’ll come in today.” She gazed at Gracie’s bent head, her knotted hair, and her too-short jeans. She took a deep breath. She would go to work. She would get her mind off all this. She would have a lively discussion among creative individuals. She would talk about last night’s episode of Law & Order by the coffee pot. “I’ve got a few things to do first, but I should be in by lunch.”

  When Jo flipped her phone closed, she understood three things, in swift succession.

  First, she remembered last year, when one of the publicists had brought her two-year-old boy into the office. Her usual day care had fallen apart, and the employee had had no more vacation or personal days left. She’d sequestered the kid in a conference room with Sesame Street and then stepped out for a meeting. When she got back, the kid had scribbled all over the walls with a Sharpie. Cost fifteen hundred bucks to repaint the room, plus they lost the use of it for a week, and though Jo, like all the rest of them, had murmured words of understanding, out of earshot she’d made herself clear. Next time, the woman should take an unpaid day and stay home with the kid.

  Now it would be Jo herself dragging a kid into the office. A kid that could potentially do a spew-the-pea-soup, spinning-head kind of thing over something as small as not getting the right pencil. And, like that flush-faced, exhausted publicist, Jo had little choice.

  Second, she remembered vividly the sight of her mother coming home every night with her shoes splattered with blood. Telling Jo that it was nothing but a poultry-packaging factory, but it paid better than the five-and-dime, and it kept a roof over their heads and food on the table and clothes on Jo’s own back. If her mother kept at it, maybe she’d move up to supervisor, and then they could finally fix the curling linoleum on the kitchen floor.

  Third and last: Jo understood, fiercely, why Kate had blown her cork and taken off for India. The wonder was that it took so long.

  “Are we done now?”

  Grace stood in front of her with unblinking brown eyes and a mouth the color of a wild strawberry.

  “Yeah, kiddo.” Jo stood up and slipped Grace’s coat off the purple peg. One-handed, she helped Grace into it. “We’re done, all right, just like burnt toast.”

  “I don’t like burnt toast.”

  Things Grace doesn’t like: (1) Benito’s mac and cheese. (2) Burnt toast. (3) My sense of humor.

  “Well,” Jo said, “I’d bet my best pair of shoes that you’ll like the next place we’re going.”

  “Aunt Jessie once said that to me. And I told Aunt Jessie I don’t like Lots o’ Tots.”

  “What?”

  “It smells funny from all the babies. And they cry all the time.”

  “Grace,” Jo said, casting a nervous smile at the receptionist as they wound their way out of the office, “we’re not going to Lots o’ Tots.”

  “Aunt Jessie left me there forever.”

  “I’m not leaving you, kiddo. In fact, you’re coming to work with me.”

  Grace went silent. She wandered down the stairs. Her shoelaces flopped around, untied. Can’t seven-year-olds tie their own shoes? At the bottom of the stairs, Grace gave Jo a shy look. “Do you work on mountains?”

  “Uh… no.” Jo held the door open into the bright October day. The kind of day Rachel would have spent biking through the Adirondack trails. “I work in an office. With phones and faxes and big rooms where you can play—”

  “You got ’puters?”

  “Lots of them.”

  “At Lots o’ Tots they had ’puters. I liked the ’puters, but they wouldn’t let me play at all.”

  Jo scrambled: Was there an extra computer in the office? And did they have any games on them? Could she dig out a laptop she could set up and install some game onto it?

  “I just started whacking the moles,” Grace said, “and I got all the A moles and most of the B and I was working on the C moles and teacher told me I’d had ’nuff. And the C moles were the funniest. They had long legs, and they were quick.”

  Jo caught sight of a taxi with its light on. She hailed it, clasping Grace’s hand. “Well, I know just the place to hunt down that very game, Grace, and then we can set you up at my office.”

  And maybe, at least, I can save my job.

  J. C. Richards was one of the biggest specialty toy vendors in the city. Its flagship store sat in prime real estate on Fifth Avenue. Jo had been there a few times, buying presents for the children of office staff, and Kate’s kids, but whenever possible she sent an assistant to do the deed. For it always was, just as it was today, an absolute screaming madhouse of over-sugared kids.

  Appropriately, a jungle was the theme for the first floor. An enormous baobab tree swirled up from the center, with tile paths curved around its base. Stuffed pythons hung from the branches. Colorful birds perched among the silken leaves. Monkeys swung on wires from one branch to another, and a nine-foot giraffe stretched its neck toward the greenery. Chirping and screeching and the roar of a lion played on a looped soundtrack, piped in through discreetly hidden speakers, just loud enough to hear over the screeching of kids.

  Grace’s eyes widened. “Whoa…”

  “This place is hog heaven, eh, kiddo?” Jo crouched to her level. “And guess what? Today’s your lucky day. I’m going to let you pick out one toy—anything you want.”

  She squeaked, “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  Here comes the nine-foot giraffe.

  Grace slipped out of Jo’s grip and raced to the seventy-pound hippo. Jo wandered after her, wondering how she was going to get that in a cab and to her office; she wasn’t sure this place had delivery. But as soon as she reached Grace’s side, Grace zipped off to the lion, and then reached for a snake. She wrapped it around her neck like a—well, like a boa—then flung it off, just to race off in another direction, toward the building blocks. Then toward the science sets. Oh, God, please don’t let her pick the chemistry set. Jo imagined the conference room in flames. But Grace trotted off to the action figures, and then to the costumes, and then she discovered the escalator to the second floor and a whole other world of clay and plastic beads and tiny interconnecting building blocks and computer games and aisles and aisles of dolls.

  They found the “Whack-A-Word Educational Computer Game (Learn to Read!).” The specs showed that it should run with no problem on Jo’s laptop. Jo tucked it in a basket and told Grace that it didn’t count as a toy. Grace raced off to the next aisle. Jo took the opportunity to answer another one of Hector’s calls, plugging one ear and trying not to scream to be heard. Jo remembered that she’d seen a hot young Kenyan crooner on a late-night show last night. He’d been billed as a “black Frank Sinatra.” Who said the face of Mystery had to be a woman? Wouldn’t that blow everyone’s minds, and bring more attention to the campaign? She sent Hector off to find his agent and contact him with a proposal.

  By the time she dropped the phone into her purse, Grace had paused over a play table full of railroad tracks and magnetic trains. She was rolling one of the cars in her palm.

  “Is that what you’re going to choose?” Jo asked, thinking that the wooden set cost more than she’d spent on toys in her entire life. “Because that sure looks like a whole heap of fun.”

  Grace didn’t answer right away. She put down the car she was playing with and picked up another. She perused it like she was trying to read hieroglyphics on the side. “You said I could get anything, right?”

  Here comes that nine-foot giraffe. “Anything you want, kiddo.”

  Grace put the train down. She turned on one heel and walked back toward the aisles, passing the arts and crafts, the shelves full of pre-school toys, the Play-Doh, and the baby dolls you could feed, change, and make fart. Grace walked to the very back row of the store, until she reached the corner. Then, rising up on her toes, she fingered down the third box from the wall. Not the second, not the first. The third box,
on the fourth shelf up from the floor.

  What Grace held in her hands was an old-fashioned Barbie doll, complete with sweeping blue eye shadow, flowing golden locks, and a pink organza ball gown strewn with golden sparkles.

  Jo looked at Grace’s face as she’d never looked before. Looked at how hungrily Grace eyed the doll with its oh-so-perfect figure and its high cheekbones and arched feet shoved into faux glass slippers. Looked at Grace, with her flyaway long hair and floodwater pants. Noticed the dirty pink ribbon she’d tied around her wrist like a bracelet, and the pink canvas sneakers that had seen better days.

  Grace mumbled, “Can I have her?”

  The realization came to Jo like a splatter of puzzle pieces whirling into a new and unexpected design.

  She imagined Rachel, passing this aisle with Grace in tow. Imagined what Rachel would say, catching sight of a fashion doll. Look at these, Grace. No woman in the world looks like this. Freakishly skinny, huge boobs. And who the hell wears dresses like that anymore? C’mon, let’s go to the Rollerblades.

  She imagined Jessie, exhausted from driving one relative or another to doctors’ offices, tugging Grace into the day care. No, Grace, you can’t come today. You’ll be staying at Lots o’ Tots. Maybe tomorrow old Mrs. Henson will keep an eye on you. No, Gracie, it’s after-care for you. Don’t you like the snacks they serve? Then you can play in the playground. Grace, bring your GameBoy, honey, we’ll be at the doctor’s office for a while…. Grace, your mother’s tired. Go ride your scooter outside, okay?

  She imagined Rachel losing all her dark pixie hair as the chemotherapy for the cancer ravaged her, as the fast-moving disease sucked the glow from her face and the softness from her skin. And she took to wearing a blond wig, because that would be Rachel’s sort of humor, going blonde before she died, and anyway she wouldn’t want to frighten Grace with the balding truth.

  Rachel, you should have told us. We could have helped.

  Jo fell to one knee. Grace still wouldn’t meet her eye. Her knuckles whitened on the box.