My Year of Casual Acquaintances (South Bay #1)

8.

As it turns out, the kids need me again the following morning. Michael calls first thing to inform me that Heather is no better today. He says he really has to get to the office early to crank out a proposal following yesterday’s new business presentation, and he’ll drop Benny off at 8:00 a.m. sharp. He makes me swear on the proverbial stack of Bibles that I will keep Benny in the apartment, that I’ll text him first before going outdoors, and that under no circumstances will I take him to Seaside Fitness again.

This all happens so fast that I don’t even have a moment to think about my rudely interrupted workday until Benny has arrived and I’ve fed him a bowl of instant oatmeal. When I review my daily calendar, I find an appointment that has slipped my mind. Bill Bayliss, an important advertiser from Phoenix, is visiting LA, and I’m scheduled to have lunch with him in Marina del Rey, about a half hour’s drive from here.

Robert has arranged the lunch himself. Our advertisers enjoy it when the publisher trots me out to meetings, where I give my little rehearsed speech about how we couldn’t attain our lofty editorial goals without their dedication and support. When Robert is present, he follows with a talk about all the awards my team has won and the independent studies rating us as the preferred publication among engineers for twenty years straight. It’s a crock, but it impresses the clients . . . and it’s kind of an ego trip for me. There is no way I can blow off this meeting.

What to do? Seaside Kids might have offered a solution, but Michael has declared it off-limits. And I don’t dare call him to renege on helping with Benny. I’m already skating on the thinnest of ice, and it won’t take much for me to plunge through the cracks into more frigid and turbulent waters.

I call Sunny to accept her offer of help. She arrives at the apartment less than fifteen minutes later.

“I didn’t realize you lived so close,” I say.

“Well, actually, I—” She hesitates. “Never mind. Hi Benny. My name is Sunny. Like the sun in the sky, you know?” She gives him a warm smile.

He nods shyly.

“The sun is shining this morning. Would you like to draw a picture of the sun?”

He considers the idea. “I want to make a tide pool picture. Maybe I can draw a sun smiling over the water.”

“That’s a really great idea,” she says.

“We went to the tide pools yesterday after we read this,” I say, handing Sunny the tide pool book. “Maybe you two can read it again today, and Benny will tell you about what we saw. Or you can use it to help him with his drawing.”

Benny settles down to play with a plastic firetruck while Sunny and I empty his backpack. Then I show her around the kitchen, where we discuss options for his lunch and snacks. Thanks to her prompt arrival, we can spend more than an hour together before I have to go.

The three of us play with his dinosaur activity box for a while, and as Benny becomes gleefully absorbed in hatching dinosaur eggs with Sunny, I retreat to my office to do a little work. When the time arrives for me to leave for my lunch appointment, I bend down and encircle Benny in a hug. “Sunny is going to be your babysitter for a few hours.”

“I thought you were my babysitter.”

“You’re so lucky to have two sitters to play with you,” Sunny says. “Your GrandMar won’t be gone too long.”

“Okay,” he says, appearing to be on board with the plan. Today there is no crumpling of the face, no need for distraction. He has warmed to my friend in no time at all.

As she walks me to the front door and out of Benny’s earshot, Sunny asks, “Do you think he’ll be okay with me?”

“I do. And I’ll keep an eye on my phone so we can stay in close touch.”

“Sounds good.”

“Sunny, thanks again. You’re a lifesaver.”

On the drive to Marina del Rey, a fluttery sensation stirs in my belly, followed by a rush of heat. This is the physical response that occurs when I’m overcome with guilt. It’s like an internal blush of shame that follows self-centered behavior. I first noticed this reaction when my former housekeeper had to cancel because of emergency gall bladder surgery. My immediate thought was not one of concern for her, but rather: Why did this have to happen now? We’ve invited twenty people for a cocktail party, and I’ll have to clean the house myself. Bring on the guilty flutter and the slow burn in my tummy.

Trying to ignore this feeling, I ponder what I’ll say to Michael when he arrives later to pick up the child. Before Benny spills the beans, I will have to confess to leaving him with Sunny. I think Heather will be okay with the idea, but Michael is another story. He’s such a nervous hoverer that the term helicopter parent doesn’t begin to describe him. How can I frame my actions in the most acceptable light?

I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it.

. . .

There’s a saying, “Be careful what you wish for,” and right now I’m regretting that I wished for a return to the era of the three-martini luncheon. If there was ever a day I did not want to resemble a character in a 1950s Madison Avenue drama, today is it.

It’s 2:30 p.m., and we’ve occupied our window table at Marina del Rey’s most popular seafood restaurant for over two hours now, admiring the sailboats that glide past as Bill Bayliss sips vodka gimlets contentedly. That mid-century alcoholic classic, which features four parts gin to one part Rose’s lime juice, served on the rocks with a wedge of lime, is my client Bill’s beverage of choice. He’s demolished three thus far.

I select a low-alcohol French rosé and limit myself to a solitary glass, which is like total abstinence given my usual habits. My nerves are so raw from worrying about Benny that I don’t experience even the tiniest buzz. It’s not Benny I’m worried about as much as Michael. He texts me once an hour to confirm that everything is fine. I, in turn, text Sunny for updates.

She responds lickety-split:

Sunny: He ate a big turkey sandwich, everything but the crusts. And a banana. I cut it into pieces and made it into a happy face.

I excuse myself and walk outside for five minutes to call Sunny and Benny. I speak in turn to both of them, relieved to hear Benny’s little voice chattering about all the fun things they’re doing.

Half an hour later, another text update:

Sunny: He isn’t asleep yet, but he’s quiet. I’ve given him three books, and he’s lying on the bed looking at them.

I forward this information to Michael as if I were supervising Benny myself. With every text, the lie elongates like Pinocchio’s nose. My conscience is troubled by this deception, though I know Benny is safe and content. Still, I’m impatient to get back home, and I devise every trick in the book to conclude this tedious meeting. When Bill and I study the dessert menu, I cluck and say, “Strictly entre nous, the desserts are not good here. I’ve tried a few, and . . .” I tip both hands into a thumbs-down posture.

“Oh, thanks for the warning. In that case, I’ll have a little fromage. They can’t screw up cheese, can they?” Bill says with a chuckle. He summons the server and orders a small cheese plate, along with a glass of port to “go with” as I try to mask my disappointment.

Half an hour later, I glance at my phone—no more messages from Michael, thank God—and I say, “Oh my gosh, this has been so pleasant, I lost all track of time. Can you believe it’s three o’clock?”

Responding with only a dopey smile, Bill has reached an even mellower state than the overripe wedge of camembert that drips across his cheese plate.

“I hate to spoil the party, but if you and your driver don’t hit the road soon, you’ll be stuck in nasty rush hour traffic going back to your hotel,” I say with a wag of my index finger.

“At three o’clock?”

“You’d better believe it. Los Angeles evening rush starts about now and doesn’t end until after seven. Come to think of it, I don’t understand why they call it rush hour.”

At last, I’ve caught his attention. “Let’s be on our way, then,” says Bill.

I raise my hand to scribble a faux signature in the air, signaling the waiter to bring our check. I thrust a credit card into his hand with only the briefest glance at the itemized bill – though I look long enough to note the daunting total damages. Robert has been grumbling that ad revenues are off, and he’s nitpicking our expense accounts, which is uncharacteristic. Still, I’m under his strict instructions never to let an advertiser pay. As I hurry out to retrieve my car from valet parking, I shoot a text to Sunny:

Mar: Heading home from client meeting. Thanks for covering with Benny. And no argument, I am totally paying you.

It’s about a quarter to four when I turn my key in the lock and open the front door. Michael is perched on the couch, rigid with attention, lying in wait for me, and there is no sign of Sunny or Benny.

My eyes widen. “Michael? What are you—”

“Shhhh.” He interrupts me in a fierce whisper. “Benny’s taking a nap.”

I lower my voice. “What’s going on? Why are you here?”

He picks up his cellphone from the coffee table and thrusts it in my face. “I’m here because of this.”

Displayed on his screen is my last text message to Sunny, thanking her for covering. I realize with a sinking heart that I didn’t send that text to Sunny. I sent it to Michael. On accident, as Whitney might’ve said.

“When I read this message, I drove right over here to find out what the hell was going on.” Though Michael continues to speak in a whisper, his voice drips with venom.

“So you sent Sunny home?”

“That is correct. Wait—no. I couldn’t send Sunny home because she has no home.”

Now he might as well be speaking in tongues, so incomprehensible is this latest remark. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought it was negligent yesterday when you stuck Benny in the childcare place,” Michael says, “but today you left a homeless woman in charge of him?”

“She’s not homeless.”

“She is. I asked her where she lived, and she told me she was between places right now.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“Let me finish.” His tone is growing darker by the minute. “You never listen. I pressed her on it, and she admitted she’s living in her car. Maybe you could’ve bothered to find this out yourself before entrusting your only grandchild to her.”

Dear God.

I puzzle out how best to keep the situation from escalating. Benny is fine, I reason to myself, so it’s likely that Michael is reacting more to my deceit than my negligence. It’s not like I left the kid unattended at the water’s edge. “Even if Sunny doesn’t have a home right now, that doesn’t mean she’s mentally deficient or incompetent. She’s intelligent, calm, and totally responsible,” I say to him, struggling to sound calm and responsible myself.

“So you’re confident this woman’s credentials are impeccable, even though you’ve only known her a few months.” A few weeks is more like it, but I won’t correct Michael on the math.

“She kept offering to help with Benny for a couple of hours, and I had an important work meeting, so I took her up on it. I didn’t want to bother you—”

“It’s always an important work meeting with you, Mother.”

I’m in deep caca whenever he calls me Mother.

He continues. “Nothing has changed. You were pulling the same crap when I was a kid, leaving me alone all the time.”

“I never left you alone until you were much older than Benny,” I say, protesting the unfair comparison. It’s true when Michael was ten or eleven, I’d sometimes go out for an hour to meet with a client or freelance writer in the late afternoon. But latchkey kids were common in our area back then. Some of the neighbors’ children were unsupervised for hours after school every day until their parents returned from work. “You were fine with being alone.”

“How can you be so sure? You weren’t there. There were lots of times I wasn’t fine with it.”

“You never gave any sign of that.”

“You never asked. Even if you had, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Like I said, you don’t listen. Your work life has always come first.”

The conversation is going nowhere, so I change course. “Can I get you a cold drink or something to eat while Benny finishes his nap?”

He shakes his head. “No. If he naps any longer, he’ll never get to sleep tonight. I’m going to wake him up and head home.”

“Do you want to bring him again tomorrow?”

“No, I do not. I can’t believe you would even suggest it after everything that’s happened these last two days.”

“I know you’re upset, but keep in mind that Benny has been fine through all of this, and he hasn’t been unsafe for a moment. Everybody is trying to juggle a difficult situation – you with a sick wife at home, both of us with a lot of work stress right now.”

“Riiight,” he says, but the way he draws out the word, I know what he really means is “wrong.”

“Michael, it’s not easy being under this kind of pressure when you’re in your mid-twenties. I went through it myself. I hoped you and Heather would wait longer to start a family and not repeat the same mistake your father and I made—”

“Mistake?” He no longer bothers to lower his voice. “Is that what I am to you, a mistake?”

“Oh God, of course not. All I meant was that it’s harder to handle that kind of responsibility when you’re young. We struggled with it big-time ourselves.”

“Oh, now Heather and I are the irresponsible ones? That’s a fine one coming from you after all the terrific ‘help’ you gave us this week.” He makes air quotes with his fingers when he says the word help. As he storms toward the bedroom where Benny is napping, he says, “Don’t worry, we won’t need any more of your ‘help.’ If you want to talk about mistakes, leaving you in charge was my biggest one.”

Ouch.

On their way out, as Michael carries the sleepy child against his shoulder, Benny says, “Bye-bye, GrandMar,” and gives me a sad little wave. Even the kid can tell I’m up shit’s creek. For twenty-seven years Michael has been my son, my sole offspring, but whenever we have a dispute, I still don’t know how to make things right with him. My well-meaning words tumble out twisted into knots that only tighten when I try to unravel them. Every time we part on bad terms, the ache of regret in my chest is palpable. After he leaves with Benny, I find a text from Sunny.

Sunny: So sorry about what happened. We need to talk. TMO morning?

Mar: Sunny, none of this is your fault. Yes—tomorrow.