“Ledger!” Diem yells from her bedroom. “Help me!” I walk down the hallway to go see what she needs. She’s on her knees in her closet, digging around. “I can’t find my other boot—I need my boot.”
She’s holding one red cowboy boot and rummaging around for the other. “Why do you need boots? You need your cleats.”
“I don’t want to wear my cleats today. I want to wear my boots.”
Her cleats are next to her bed, so I grab them. “You can’t wear boots to play baseball. Here, hop on the bed so I can help you put on your cleats.”
She stands up and flings the second red boot onto her bed. “Found it!” She giggles and climbs onto her bed and starts putting on her boots.
“Diem. It’s baseball. People don’t wear boots to play baseball.”
“I am, I’m wearing boots today.”
“No, you can’t—” I shut up. I don’t have time to argue with her, and I know once she gets to the field and sees all the other kids with their cleats, she’ll let me take off her boots. I help her put on the boots and take the cleats with us when I carry her out of the room.
Grace meets us at the door and hands Diem a juice pouch. “Have fun today.” She kisses Diem on the cheek, and then Grace’s eyes go to Diem’s boots.
“Don’t ask,” I say as I open their front door.
“Bye, Nana!” Diem says.
Patrick is in the kitchen, and when Diem fails to tell him goodbye, he stomps dramatically toward us. “What about NoNo?”
Patrick wanted to go by Papa when Diem started talking, but for whatever reason, she called Grace Nana and Patrick NoNo, and it was so funny Grace and I enforced it enough that it finally stuck.
“Bye, NoNo,” Diem says, giggling.
“We may not get back before you,” Grace says. “You mind keeping her if we aren’t?”
I don’t know why Grace always asks me. I’ve never said no. I’ll never say no. “Take your time. I’ll take her somewhere for lunch.” I put Diem down when we get outside.
“McDonald’s!” she says.
“I don’t want McDonald’s,” I say as we cross the street toward my truck.
“McDonald’s drive-through!”
I open the back door to my truck and help her into her booster seat. “How about Mexican food?”
“Nope. McDonald’s.”
“Chinese? We haven’t had Chinese food in a long time.”
“McDonald’s.”
“I’ll tell you what. If you wear your cleats when we get to the game, we can eat McDonald’s.” I get her seat belt buckled.
She shakes her head. “No, I want to wear my boots. I don’t want lunch anyway—I’m full.”
“You’ll be hungry by lunchtime.”
“I won’t, I ate a dragon. I’m gonna be full forever.”
Sometimes I worry about how many stories she tells, but she’s so convincing I’m more impressed than concerned. I don’t know at what age a child should know the difference between a lie and using their imagination, but I’ll leave that up to Grace and Patrick. I don’t want to stifle my favorite part of her.
I pull onto the street. “You ate a dragon? A whole dragon?”
“Yeah, but he was a baby dragon, that’s how he fit in my stomach.”
“Where’d you find a baby dragon?”
“Walmart.”
“They sell baby dragons at Walmart?”
She proceeds to tell me all about how baby dragons are sold at Walmart, but you have to have a special coupon, and only kids can eat them. By the time I make it to Roman’s, she’s explaining how they’re cooked.
“With salt and shampoo,” she says.
“You aren’t supposed to eat shampoo.”
“You don’t eat it—you use it to cook the dragon.”
“Oh. Silly me.”
Roman gets in the truck, and he looks about as excited as someone going to a funeral. He hates T-ball days. He’s never been a kid person. The only reason he helps me coach is that none of the other parents would do it. And since he works for me, I added it to his schedule.
He’s the only person I know who gets paid to coach T-ball, but he doesn’t seem to feel guilty about it.
“Hi, Roman,” Diem says from the back seat in a singsong voice.
“I’ve only had one cup of coffee; don’t talk to me.” Roman is twenty-seven, but he and Diem have met somewhere in the middle with their love-hate relationship, because they both act twelve.
Diem starts tapping the back of his headrest. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”
Roman rolls his head until he’s looking at me. “All this shit you do to help little kids in your spare time isn’t going to gain you any points in an afterlife because religion is a social construct created by societies who wanted to regulate their people, which makes heaven a concept. We could be sleeping right now.”
“Wow. I’d hate to see you before coffee.” I back out of his driveway. “If heaven is conceptual, what is hell?”