The Manny

‘You smell so good. So clean. I love your shampoo,’ he whispered.

I wasn’t having any. ‘You have got to listen to yourself this morning.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s the client meeting. It’s gotten me nervous. And now you’ve gotten me hot.’

I slapped his hand. ‘You can’t say Chinese people are little idiots within earshot of the kids. It’s so offensive to me, first of all, and if they ever heard you …’

‘You’re right.’

‘And if Alexander lives in a small apartment, you don’t need to use that as a criticism against his father, who happens to be a world-class musician. What the hell kind of message do you think that sends?’

‘That was bad.’

‘So what are you thinking? You’re driving me crazy.’

He tried to unzip my shirt. ‘You’re driving me crazy.’ He tickled the back of my ribcage.

Gracie banged on the door.

‘Mommy!’

‘Stop.’ I laughed, despite myself. ‘I can’t take it. I’ve already got three children. I don’t need a fourth. It’s a cuff-link hole, OK? Can you try to get a grip?’

‘I love you. I’m sorry. You’re right. But those shirts cost me a lot of money and you would think …’

‘Please.’

‘Fine. Let’s start again.’ He opened the door for me, gallantly motioned for me to go through it and carried Gracie back into the study like a bundle of wood under his arm.

Dylan was staring out the window, still furious. Phillip sat down at his desk chair and concentrated once again on his son. ‘Dylan. I know the homework’s hard. I suppose if you can give me some time and not ask when I’m rushing to the office.’

‘You weren’t here yesterday, or I would have asked you to help then.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Phillip grabbed Dylan’s hands and tried to look him in the eye. But Dylan pulled away. ‘You’re a big boy now and you’re old enough to do your own homework without your mother or father. If you need a tutor, then we can discuss it, but it is almost seven thirty and I have my car waiting and you have to get to school on time.’

Dylan flew on to the sofa in abject frustration. ‘Oh, maaaaaan.’ He laid spread-eagle on his back, his eyes buried in the crook of his elbow. He was too old to cry easily, but I know he wanted to. I also knew that if I went to hug him, his fragile composure would crumble and he would lose it. I kept a safe distance.

‘All the moms can’t do the math homework, and all the dads in my class have to do it for everyone. It’s not fair that you won’t help me.’

‘Were you spending too much time on your Xbox?’ Phillip looked at me. ‘Jamie, we’ve got to start monitoring his time with those screens, it’s just too …’

‘Dad, you’re the one who bought me Madden 07!’

‘He doesn’t play video games until he’s finished with his homework. He knows the rules,’ I answered. ‘You know, today’d be a good day to ease up on the rules around …’

‘Dylan,’ he said tenderly, now sitting on the edge of the couch. ‘It’s just that Daddy has a hard time understanding sometimes. I love you very much and I am so proud of you and I will figure out some time tonight to get this done.’ He tapped him on the nose. ‘You got it?’

‘Yeah.’ Dylan stifled a smile.

Gracie appeared at the doorway of Phillip’s office with a small pink pair of plastic Barbie scissors and raised them in silent offering.

Phillip looked at her. Then at me. Then he laughed out loud. ‘Thank you, honey.’ He pulled Gracie over and ruffled her hair. Then he picked up Dylan and gave him a huge bear hug. Just when I was convinced Phillip was a real monster, he would do something that would make me think that maybe I could still love him. In my moments of deep honesty, I tell my friend Kathryn I might leave Phillip at some point down the road. We drift, he’s impossible, and then he acts responsible and fatherly and I think I’m going to try to make this work after all.

‘Dylan, we’re going to get through this together. As a family.’ Then he turned to me. ‘Give me the old shirt. I’m late. Call Mr Ho for me and tell him he’s got twenty-four hours to fix all ten shirts. If I have to deal with him, I’ll call in a hit squad.’

We rode down in the elevator together with backpacks and cell phones and jackets flying everywhere: my husband, Dylan, Gracie and baby Michael, Carolina the housekeeper with our Wheaten Terrier Gussie, and our nanny Yvette. The fact that Phillip had moved beyond his buttonhole tantrum didn’t mean he was actually going to engage with the rest of us. Dressed in his lawyer suit and shiny black shoes, he was readying himself for a client meeting and successfully ignoring the chaos around him. Jamming his cell-phone earpiece into his ear, he started dialling his voicemail with his thumb while he pressed a thick bunch of folded newspapers into his hip with his upper arm.

I picked up Gracie with one hand and put a clip in my hair with the other. Yvette, filled with pride over her well-kept charges, dressed my two little kids like every day was a Sunday church day in Jamaica. And since she’d been with us since Dylan was born, I didn’t interfere. Gracie was wearing a red gingham dress with matching red Mary Janes and a huge white bow the size of a 767 on the side of her head.

‘Mommy, are you going to pick me up or is Yvette?’ Gracie started whimpering. ‘You never pick me up.’

‘Not today because, you know, Tuesday is a work day, sweetheart. I have to go to work all day. But remember I try to pick you up on Mondays and Fridays.’ ‘Try’ being the operative word there: though I worked at the network part-time, my hours were erratic and increased to full-time when a story broke. This lack of consistency wasn’t easy on the kids. Gracie’s delicate face began to curl up in that look I knew so well. I brushed her hair down with the palm of my hand and kissed her forehead. I whispered, ‘I love you.’

Dylan’s backpack was bigger than he was. He pulled it around to find the Tamagotchi on his keychain and began poking at it like a mad scientist. Just like Daddy with his BlackBerry.

‘I can’t do a conference call at 3 p.m.’ Even if we’re in an elevator, Phillip insists on returning voicemail messages the second he hears them. ‘Call my secretary, Hank, she’ll work it out. Now let me give you a full report on the Tysis Logics litigation …’

‘Phillip, please, can’t that wait? It’s just so rude.’

Phillip closed his eyes and patted me on the head and then put his finger up to my lips. I wanted to bite it off. ‘… It’s just going to be a hell of a crapshoot for the following three reasons – let’s start with the stock split; we don’t even have enough shares authorized …’

Michael grabbed at my skirt from his stroller and dug his nails into the inside seam, tearing a few stitches out.

Carolina pulled tighter on Gussie’s leash as the elevator stopped on the fourth floor. Phillip shot her a scary look; apparently he hadn’t recovered from the missing nail scissors.

The elevator door slid open for a white-haired, seventy-eight-year-old man wearing a striped bow tie and a beige suit. Mr Greeley, a stuffy Nantucket old-timer from apartment 4B, had recently retired, but still wore his suit every morning to get his coffee and papers. Somehow he mustered the courage to step into the packed elevator only to have Gussie begin feverishly scratching and sniffing at his groin as if he’d found a rabbit hole. Carolina yanked at the leash and now the dog was standing on his hind legs with his front paws on the door. Phillip was still barking into his cell phone about battle plans. I nodded at Mr Greeley with an apologetic smile and a pleading look in my eyes. He, meanwhile, focused on the elevator’s descending numbers, pointedly ignoring us all. In the two years we had lived in this building, he had never once smiled back at me – all I ever got was a discreet nod.

The door slid open again and we poured into the marble lobby. Clutching his overflowing, Dunhill briefcase, Phillip waved goodbye and rushed ahead, jamming his earpiece further into his ear. In his distracted mind, his meeting had started five minutes ago. ‘Love you!’ he yelled without looking back. The doorman, Eddie, offered to carry something, but Phillip paid no attention and bolted into his waiting car. As his Lexus peeled away, I could see the Wall Street Journal snap open in front of him.

Yasser Arafat’s motorcade had nothing on ours. With Phillip’s car out of the way, my driver, Luis, pulled up in front of the awning in our monstrous navy-blue Suburban. Luis is a sweet, forty-year-old Ecuadorian man who works at our garage and speaks about four words of English. All I really know about him is that he has two kids and a wife at home in Queens. For fifty dollars a day – all cash – he helps me drop off Dylan at eight and Gracie at eight thirty. Three days a week he also waits while I come home, change and play with Michael, then he takes me to work at the television network by ten. It doesn’t escape me that for two hundred and fifty dollars a week in Minneapolis, my mother could feed us, pay all the utility bills and still have some left over.

Eddie helped me place Gracie into the car seat as Dylan climbed clumsily over her, brushing her face with his backpack. ‘Dylan! Stop it!’ she yelled. I kissed Michael in his stroller who reached out for me and tried desperately to yank off the shoulder straps binding him to his seat. In an instant, Yvette put a tiny Elmo doll in front of his face and he smiled.

In the rear-view mirror I watched Gussie’s Doggy Daycare van take our place. On the side of the van it read ‘The Pampered Pooch’. The doors slid open magically for Gussie, and Carolina managed to get in a big kiss on his head before he disappeared inside to greet his slobbering pals.

I closed my eyes as we drove the twenty blocks up Park Avenue to Dylan’s school, grateful to be out of eye-contact range with everyone. Luis never spoke at all, just smiled his warm Latin grin and concentrated on dodging the taxis and delivery trucks around us.

Gracie was young enough that the motion of the car made her sleepy, so she stuck her thumb in her mouth, her eyes fluttering like butterflies as she resisted slumber. Dylan grabbed some electronics from the back of the seat. His thumbs sped over the keys of his Game Boy as he knew I’d let him continue if he put the sound button on mute.

‘Gracie, stop! Mooooooooom!’

My head ached. ‘What is going on?!’

‘Gracie kicked my hand on purpose so I missed the last few seconds and now I’m back at level three!’

‘Did not!’ Gracie screamed, suddenly very alert.

‘Dylan. Please,’ I pleaded.