Page 3 of Pick-Up
I watch them go, then rise to standing with a creak. I feel more like lying on the sidewalk in fetal position. A minute later, the administrator returns.
“Thank you for your help,” I say. “This morning was a doozy.”
“That’s fine.Thistime. You can sign up for reminders and the weekly newsletter on the school’s website.”
“I have. I swear. Multiple times.”
“Uh-huh. Okay, Mom. Have a good day!”
At school, I don’t have a name. I am Bart’s Mom. Nettie’s Mom. Sometimes, I’m just “Mom” when the teachers and administrators are feeling cute and can’t place me among the myriad other women in their shearling jackets and jogger pants.
I have been dismissed.
By now, the street has grown quiet, returned to its almost suburban calm. This is New York City. Two blocks away, the subway rumbles underground, a convenient yet apocalyptic hellhole drizzled with urine. Ten blocks in one direction, the bodegas get dustier, the streets become less Sesame. But here, in this tiny enclave, robust trees, manicured sidewalks and the sweet school building, with its colorful flags and murals, betray its domestication. This is no concrete jungle. It’s more like a well-tended zoo, its edges babyproofed and softened.
Normally, I go straight home to work after drop-off or take a run, like all the other parents. But, today, I am on a mission. It’s Spirit Day on Monday and I will not fuck it up like Silly Sock Day. I’m already patting myself on the back for all my good mommying.
The school swag table, set up outside only on Friday mornings, waits ahead of me like a winning ticket. No line!
Just as I’m about to approach though, I am intercepted by a creature who will not be put off. Mom Who Never Stops Talking.
“Sasha, hi! It’s beenforever.”
She’s nice enough. I’m pretty sure her name is Lisa, but sometimes I think it’s Lorraine. Or maybe Lauren. Either way, it’s too late for me to ask. We’ve chatted on the street and at school events on and off for years since Nettie started kindergarten. She’s one of the few moms I know at this school, where circumstance and maybe marital status have rendered me largely antisocial. Still, I’m clued in enough to know she’s a patrol cop on the school’s information highway. And, for all the reasons, you don’t want to get on the bad side of a gossip.
“Hi… you!” I say. “Ithasbeen so long! How’s Olivia doing this year?” Of course I know her daughter’s name. Because, like me, this mom doesn’t have her own name. She isOlivia’s Mom.
Asking a question. Rookie mistake. Because, my Lord, once you get this woman going, there’s no end to her rambling. Don’t even think about trying to interrupt.
“Oh, I’m glad you asked, actually, ’cause I’m kind of freaking out!” She leans in and begins stage-whispering about her daughter’s struggle with waking up for school. Sometimes Olivia wakes up ontime. Sometimes Olivia is cranky. Sometimes Olivia melts down on their way out the door if she can’t find her snowflake pom-pom hat.
Oh, Olivia.
Olivia’s Mom is wearing an electric-pink helmet—like maybe she borrowed it from one of her offspring? And she’s leaning on a bike, but she doesn’t seem motivated to leave. There’s a fall chill in the air, but somehow she is perfectly at ease in a tie-dye T-shirt and spandex bike shorts that I’m guessing might be maternity (no judgment!), her shoulder-length black hair pulled back in a low ponytail.
“Like somedays, I come upstairs and she’s already awake,” she says, her pale cheeks flushing pink as she gets worked up. “But then on other days, it’s like after seven a.m. and I have to wake her up and, just this morning, she was lying on the ground—I mean, you know how kids are—just kicking and screaming because we didn’t have any Frosted Mini-Wheats left, and I mean…”
I am eyeing that table of school-branded T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats with mounting anxiety. The stacks are dwindling, and it looks like the VIMs manning it are beginning to pack up.
(VIMs or “very involved moms” is shorthand my friend Celeste and I created one night while drunk on orange wine to refer to the mothers who are somehow able to juggle constant volunteering and their lives. Moms of whom I am in awe because—when do they watch TV? Celeste’s own mother was a VIM, and she still falls short. Every time I feel guilty, I play that single-mother card in my head—and I am magically off the hook.)
“Do you know what I mean?” Olivia’s Mom is saying. She’s kind of a VIM herself. “Of course, you don’t. Nettie is basically perfect. And so are you. Even your yoga pants are cool. Where did you get those? I grabbed some at Target the other day, but have you noticed lately that—”
I open my mouth once, twice, three times to interject. I raise a hand to interrupt Lisa/Lorraine/Lauren’s athleisure monologue midstream and excuse myself, but there is no oxygen. I can’t make it past a single syllable.Tha—! Ma—! To—!
The other VIMs—a white brunette in a PS421 baseball cap and a red down vest and a Black brunette with sunglasses on her head and the same vest in green—are opening the cardboard boxes at their side and beginning to transfer mugs from the display table back inside. I get a jolt of panic, a vision of Bart’s tear-streaked face playing in my head like a horror show.
So I behave like any trapped animal would and begin backing slowly toward the school paraphernalia. For every step I take backward, Mom Who Never Stops Talking takes one forward, rolling her bike closer to me. I have stopped listening to her verbal diarrhea. She is not deterred.
As I speed up, she speeds up—step back, step forward, step back, step forward—and then suddenly I am smashing into something hard. I lose my balance and fall on my ass on the sidewalk. The sidewalk is also hard.
“What the hell?!” I hear someone say. And I’m pretty sure it’s not me.
Once I get my bearings, I swivel to see what I’ve slammed into. Only it’s not a what. It’s a who. He is tall with that combination of tan skin and sandy hair that no one actually has. Perfect bedhead, perfect five-o’clock shadow. Simple, cool, well-cut clothes. Throwback Jordans on his feet. Basically, he’s too good-looking not to be an asshole. And he is looking down at me with confusion and,yes, disdain.
Oh, this day!
“What the hell?” he repeats.
