The Manny

Kathryn looked at me. ‘None of them play well. Look at them; they can barely get the ball up into the hoop. They’re not strong enough yet.’

‘Yeah, I guess. He’s just down.’

‘Not always down. It’s just sometimes,’ Kathryn answered.

Barbara Fisher turned around from the row in front of me. She was wearing tight jeans, a starched white blouse with the collar turned up against gravity and an expensive-looking fuchsia cable-knit sweater. She was too tan and as thin as a Giacometti statue.

‘Ohhh, here’s the busy-bee-worky-worky-mom at a game.’

I jerked back. ‘I know it means so much to him.’

I looked over her head towards the boys.

Barbara moved her head up five inches to block my view and make another point. ‘We were talking at the school benefit meeting about how hard it must be for you, never being able to get involved in Dylan’s activities.’

She was so annoying.

‘I like to work. But if you choose not to work outside the home, I can certainly understand. It’s probably a more enjoyable lifestyle.’

‘You’re not doing it for the money. Obviously. Phillip’s such a heavy-hitter lawyer these days.’ She was whispering – she thought – but everyone around us could hear her. ‘I mean, you can’t possibly be contributing much financially on a scale that matters.’

I rolled my eyes at Kathryn. ‘I actually make a pretty good salary, Barbara. But, no, I’m not really working for the money. It’s just something I like to do. Call it a competitive streak. And right now I need to concentrate on Dylan’s game because he can be competitive too, and I’m sure he’d like me to watch him play.’

‘You do that.’

Kathryn pinched my arm too hard because she hated Barbara more than I did. I jumped at the pain and smacked her on the shoulder.

She whispered into my ear, ‘Amazing Barbara didn’t find a way to bring up the new plane. In case you missed the billboard, Aaron’s Falcon 2000 jet finally got delivered this weekend.’

‘I’m sure I’ll hear about it soon,’ I answered, staring out at the court. Dylan was now attempting to block a shot, but the player ran right around him towards the basket and scored. The whistle blew. Warm-up over. All the kids retreated to their sides in a huddle.

‘You know what’s so obnoxious?’ Kathryn whispered to me.

‘So many things.’

‘They can’t just say, “We’re leaving at three for the weekend”, which would actually mean they are leaving at 3 p.m., either by car or train or some commercial flight or whatever.’ She leaned in closer to me. ‘No, they want you to know one thing: they’re flying private. So suddenly they start talking like their pilots, “Oh, we’re leaving for the weekend, and it’s wheels up at 3 p.m.”’ She shook her head and grinned. ‘Like I give a shit what they’re doing in the first place.’

When I first married into this crowd, coming from middle-class, Middle American roots, these Upper East Side families naturally intimidated me. My parents, always donning sensible Mephistos on their feet and fanny packs around their waists, reminded me all too often that I should keep a distance from the people in this new-found neighbourhood – that back home in Minneapolis, it was easier to be haaaaapy. Though I’ve tried to adjust for the sake of my husband, I’ll never get used to people throwing out their pilot’s name in conversation as if he were the cleaning lady. ‘I thought we’d take a jaunt to the Cape for dinner, so I asked Richard to please be ready at three.’

Dylan was on the bench with about ten other teammates as Coach Robertson threw the ball in the air for the first string. Thankfully, Dylan was excited by the game. He was talking to the kid next to him and pointing to the court. I relaxed a bit and let out a breath.

Two minutes later, a sippy cup ricocheted off my shoulder and landed in Kathryn’s lap. We both looked behind us. ‘So sorry!’ said a heavily accented Filipina nurse. The McAllister centipede was trying to manoeuvre into a row of bleachers behind me. Two of the younger children were braying like donkeys. This was the kind of thing that really got Kathryn going. She was no stranger to poor behaviour from her own children, but she couldn’t stomach the lack of respect the bratty Park Avenue kids spewed at their nannies.

She looked at them and turned to me. ‘Those poor women. What they must put up with. I’m going to do it. Right now. I’m going to ask them which day is which uniform character and see what they say.’

‘Stop. Kathryn. Please. Who cares?’

‘Hello? Like you, the obsessive list keeper, wouldn’t want to know?’ Kathryn smiled. ‘Next time you’re at Sherrie’s house for a birthday party, sneak into the kitchen and go to the desk next to the phone. There’s a bound colour-coded house manual that she had Roger’s secretary type up. Instructions for everything – I mean every single thing you could imagine.’

‘Like what?’

‘I thought you weren’t interested.’

‘OK, maybe I am a little.’

‘Timetables for the overlapping staff: first shift, 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., second, nine to five, and third, four to midnight. Schedules for the pets, for the dogs’ walkers and groomers. Directives on which of the children’s clothes should be folded or hung. How to organize their mittens and scarves for fall, for winter dress, for winter sports. Where to hang all the princess costumes in the walk-in cedar closet once they’re ironed – yes, you heard me – after they are ironed. Which china for breakfast, lunch, dinner and season: seashells for summer, leaves for Thanksgiving, wreaths for the Christmas holidays. I can’t even remember half of it.’ Kathryn pressed on, ‘It’s priceless.’

‘You know what’s even sicker?’ I added. ‘I’d want to get cosy under my sheets with a mug of hot tea, and read every goddamn word of that insane manual before bedtime.’

Thirty minutes later, the game was going strong. Suddenly Wilmington scored and the crowd jumped to their feet and roared. I stepped on top of the bleacher to get a better look, almost falling on to the Barbara Fisher creature. Then Wilmington stole the ball again from St Henry’s. My Dylan, in sync with them for once, wildly trying to block the ball while his opponents threw it back and forth around the key. Time was running out before half-time. Wilmington was up one point. One of their players made a bold move to score again, but the ball bounced off the hoop. They grabbed the ball and tried again. This time, it bounced off the bottom corner of the backboard at a hundred miles an hour. Right at Dylan. Miraculously he caught it, and was completely stunned. Looking petrified, he surveyed the distance to his basket on the other side of the court, miles and miles to go before he scored. Then came an opening between two opposing guards and Dylan sprinted. The crowd cheered him on. I looked at the timer: 07–:06–:05–:04. We all counted the seconds before the buzzer rang. Dylan was directly under the basket. Oh please, God; scoring this shot would rock his world.

The shot was clear. He looked at me. He looked at his teammates rushing towards him. He looked back at the basket. ‘Shoot, Dylan, shoot!!!’ they screamed.

‘C’mon, baby. C’mon, baby. Right up there, you can do it.’ I dug my nails into Kathryn’s arm. Dylan took the ball, grasped it in both his arms like a baby and fell to the floor sobbing. He just could not shoot. The half-time buzzer honked. Silence on the court. All eyes on my little mess of a boy.

CHAPTER TWO Morning Sickness (#u1fd351cf-23a5-5afa-9c80-1f12c4bf974b)

‘So what’d he say this morning?’ My husband Phillip was leaning over his sink naked, wiping a dab of shaving cream off his ear with a thick white towel.

‘He says he’s fine, but I know he isn’t.’ I stood half-dressed at my own sink three feet from him, jamming the mascara wand back into the tube. ‘I just know he isn’t. It was really bad.’

‘We’re going to work together to get him through this, Jamie,’ Phillip answered calmly. I knew he thought I was overreacting.

‘He doesn’t want to talk about it. He always talks to me. Always. Especially at night, when he’s going to bed.’ I crinkled the crow’s-feet around my eyes.

‘By the way, I know what you’re thinking right now and you look thin and very young for thirty-six, and, secondly, I don’t blame Dylan for not wanting to relive it. Give him a few days. Don’t worry, he’s gonna make it.’

‘That was a big moment, Phillip, I told you that last night.’

‘Fourth grade is tough. He’s going to move on. I promise, and I’m going to make sure to get him there.’

‘You’re so good to try to reassure me. But still. You just don’t understand.’

‘I do, too! There was a lot of pressure on the kid,’ Phillip continued. ‘And he freaked out. Let it rest or you’ll make it worse.’ He patted my bottom and walked towards his dressing room. At the door, he turned around and winked at me, his expression full of his easy confidence.

He peeked back into the bathroom. ‘Enough with Dylan. I have a surprise for you!’

I knew. The shirts. I tried very, very hard to switch gears.

Phillip disappeared again into the bedroom and yelled behind him. ‘You’re going to faint when you see what finally arrived!’

The shirts lay nestled in a large navy felt box on the bed. Phillip had been waiting for them with more anticipation than a child on Christmas Eve. When I returned to the bedroom, he had pulled the first two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar custom-made shirt from the box and was carefully peeling off a sticker that held the red tissue paper wrapping together. The tissue was thick and expensive, soft like a chalkboard on one side and shiny and slick on the other. The paper made a loud, crackling noise as he tore it open to reveal a shirt with wide yellow and white candy stripes. Very British aristocracy and very every other lawyer we knew.

I had no patience for shirts that morning. I walked down the hall towards the kitchen.

‘Jamie! Come back here. You didn’t even …’

‘Give me a minute!’