“Why are you eating your candy that way, honey?”
“Because this is how Mommy does it when she’s in the bathroom.”
“Robby, will you take that candy away from your sister?”
“She’s not my real sister,” I heard from the back seat.
“Well, I’m not her real father,” I said. “But that has nothing to do with what I just asked you.”
I looked in the rearview mirror. Robby was glaring at me through his orange-tinted wraparounds, one eyebrow raised, while tugging uncomfortably at his crewneck merino sweater, which I was certain Jayne had forced him to wear.
“I can see that you’re very cold and withdrawn today,” I said.
“I need my allowance upped” was his response.
“I think if you were friendlier that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Doesn’t your mom handle your allowance?”
A huge sigh emanated from him.
“Mommy doesn’t let me sit in the front seat,” Sarah said again.
“Well, Daddy thinks it’s okay. Plus you look quite comfortable. And will you please stop eating the Skittles that way?”
We suddenly passed a three-story mock-colonial monstrosity on Voltemand Drive when Sarah sat up and pointed at the house and cried out, “That’s where Ashleigh’s birthday was!”
The mention of that party in September caused a surge of panic, and I gripped the steering wheel tightly.
I had taken Sarah to Ashleigh Wagner’s birthday party as a favor to Jayne, and there was a sixty-foot stegosaurus balloon and a traveling animal show and an arch made up of Beanie Babies framing the entrance and a machine spewing a continuous stream of bubbles around the backyard. Two weeks prior to the actual event there had been a “rehearsal” party in order to gauge which kids “worked” and which did not, who caused trouble and who seemed serene, who had the worst learning disability and who had heard of Mozart, who responded best to the face painting and who had the coolest SCO (special comfort object), and somehow Sarah had passed (though I suspected that being the daughter of Jayne Dennis was what got her the invite). The Wagners were serving the lingering parents Valrhona hot chocolate that had been made without milk (other things excised that day: wheat, gluten, dairy, corn syrup) and when they offered me a cup I stayed and chatted. I was being a dad and at the point at which I vowed that nothing would ever change that (plus the Klonopin was good at reinforcing patience) and I appeared hopefully normal even though I was appalled by what I was witnessing. The whole thing seemed harmless—just another gratuitously whimsical upscale birthday party—until I started noticing that all the kids were on meds (Zoloft, Luvox, Celexa, Paxil) that caused them to move lethargically and speak in affectless monotones. And some bit their fingernails until they bled and a pediatrician was on hand “just in case.” The six-year-old daughter of an IBM executive was wearing a tube top and platform shoes. Someone handed me a pet guinea pig while I watched the kids interact—a jealous tantrum over a parachute, a relay race, kicking a soccer ball through a glowing disc, the mild reprimands, the minimal vomiting, Sarah chewing on a shrimp tail (“Une crevette!” she squealed; yes, the Wagners were serving poached prawns)—and I just cradled the guinea pig until a caterer took it away from me when he noticed it writhing in my hands. And that’s when it hit: the desire to flee Elsinore Lane and Midland County. I started craving cocaine so badly, it took all my willpower not to ask the Wagners for a drink and so I left after promising to pick Sarah up at the allotted time. During those two hours I almost drove back to Manhattan but then calmed down enough that my desperate plan became a gentle afterthought, and when I picked up Sarah she was holding a goody bag filled with a Raffi CD and nothing edible and after telling me she’d learned her four least favorite words she announced, “Grandpa talked to me.”
I turned to look at her as she innocently nibbled a prawn. “Who did, honey?”
“Grandpa.”
“Grandpa Dennis?” I asked.
“No. The other grandpa.”
I knew that Mark Strauss (Sarah’s father) had lost both parents before he met Jayne and that’s when the anxiety hit. “What other grandpa?” I asked carefully.
“He came up to me at the party and said he was my grandpa.”
“But honey, that grandpa’s dead,” I said in a soothing tone.
“But Grandpa isn’t dead, Daddy,” she said happily, kicking the seat.