No babies. That was Cinda’s number one rule when she flipped through the binder at the babysitting service counter, scanning the listings, making phone calls and filling up her day planner. A late start was good: less time before bedtime. The higher the floor, the richer the family. The Upper West Side tipped better than the East. Parents of only children worried too much, checking in on the hour, but too many kids and the job started to feel like one. And while Cinda babysat most nights — sometimes booking two families back to back on weekend — she only did it for the easy money.
She lived for the moment the parents left and she could plug the kids into the TV. The click of the bolt released something inside her, a space she filled with gelato and smoked salmon and whatever else looked expensive in the subzero fridge, gorging herself and then sprawling on the master bed, still dressed in her coat and boots. Sometimes she dozed off, awakening to the sight of adult faces looming over her. Taking in their concerned expressions, she always believed, for a moment, that this concern was for her. In three months of regular babysitting, she had never been called back for a second job with the same family, but that was fine. The binder was fat with possibilities. She would never run out of work.
As the elevator slid shut behind Cinda and hiccuped down its tube, she glanced around, checking out the foyer. Fwaw-yer? Foe-yay? She wasn’t sure how to pronounce the word, or even if it was the right word for this room into which the elevator had spit her — a room bigger than her shared dorm room. A real oil painting hung behind a leather chair that looked scuffed but deliberately so, as if it had been lovingly attacked with a whisk. Next to the chair was a table holding a vase of white tulips, chopped short so their heads barely peeked over the rim. Cinda had always thought that long-stemmed was best, but everything in these apartments flaunted her ignorance. There were only two doors off the foyer, meaning this family had half the floor to themselves, which led her to believe that she had chosen well when she picked this job from the binder.
A warlock or something opened the door. He was wearing a black cape and a woman’s baggy nylons, tied in knots at the toes, trailing like umbilical cords on the hardwood floor behind him. He looked at her with an expression suggesting that he expected something from her, but also expected to be disappointed.
“Aren’t you going to let me in?” Cinda asked in the sugary voice she used with children when adults were around, even though no parent had materialized behind the boy to rush through introductions and instructions before rushing out.
“You’re not Annie,” the boy said. His voice was high and raspy, like he had a cold.
“Who’s Annie?” she asked, reaching out to tousle his hair but then thinking better of it. His hair was so pale that it looked see-through, and it was greasy, hanging in strands like corduroy.
“Our other babysitter,” he said. “She was teaching me magic.”
“We’ll have fun, you’ll see, I’ve got some tricks, too.” Cinda was no good at flirting, and she wasn’t surprised that her lackluster performance failed to move this child, who remained wedged in the doorframe, arms locked across his sunken chest. She got this same warm welcome from most of these New York City kids, whose parents left them night after night in the care of the college babysitting service, its name their only reference needed. “We’re buying our old lives back,” one dad had said, “and it’s not cheap.” He tallied the amount he was shelling out to take his wife to some dumb romantic comedy — $100, when you added Cinda’s babysitting wages and cab fare to the cost of tickets and popcorn — as if he expected her pity, or maybe for her to cut him a deal. But she didn’t feel sorry for him. Rich people needed things to spend their money on. That was why you could buy a bar of soap for a dollar at the grocery store, or for ten dollars at Kiehl’s. It was still just soap, Cinda thought whenever she worked up a thick lather in the shower, daring her roommate, Allegra, to comment on the speed with which her bar whittled down to a sliver.
“Are you a magician?” she asked the little boy, who kept flicking his cape in a way that reminded her of a flasher she’d seen in Central Park with Allegra, back in late September, when it was still hot enough for picnics and it still seemed possible that the two roommates might become friends. When the flasher had opened his tan trench coat — like something from central casting, Allegra said later — yanked down his fly and pulled out his bright red doggie dick, Cinda had screamed, “Check out the pervert!” until he scuttled over the fake looking rocks and disappeared. Allegra primly told Cinda that she should’ve just ignored the man, instead of giving him the reaction he obviously wanted, but Cinda hadn’t been able to control herself. The rage that suddenly overtook her was as unexpected and out of place as the flasher himself. She didn’t trust her feelings anymore. It was like someone had yanked up all the stop signs inside her, guaranteeing a crash.
“He’s learning how to make things disappear and then come back,” said a pale little girl who had appeared beside the boy, wearing a white doctor’s coat that hung to her ankles. “Like pennies and stuff.”
“Cool,” said Cinda.
“I’m Sophia,” the girl volunteered, and Cinda thought, of course you are. This was her third Sophia this week. The little boy was going to be Charlie or Sam, a name that belonged stitched on a mechanic’s shirt.
“Hank,” a man called from inside, and Cinda chewed on the corner of a smirk. “Aren’t you going to invite our guest in?” He squeezed between the two children, who twisted around his legs, sitting on his feet the way Cinda remembered doing to her own father. Here was the source of the children’s colorless hair, but unlike them, his skin was tanned and leathery, except for the pale flap of his upper lip, where he must have sported a mustache until recently. It gave him a Muppety look, at once goofy and insincere. She introduced herself and he shook her hand, his palm clammy.
“Cinda,” he repeated slowly, as if rolling a new taste on his tongue, unable to decide if he liked it. “Short for Cinderella?”
“Yes!” said the little girl, clapping her hands.
“Lucinda,” Cinda said, feeling like something was being taken from her.
“Too bad,” he clucked. “You might have met your Prince Charming tonight.”
“Ha.” To her own ears Cinda’s laugh sounded canned, even hostile, but he seemed to buy it, the pale flap of his mouth broadening into a grin. “Let me take that,” he said, reaching out his moist hand for her jacket.
“That’s okay,” she said, taking a step back. “I think I’ll keep it on for a while.”
She could feel the perspiration breaking across her forehead and prickling at her armpits, but she faked a shiver, trying to wrap her coat tighter around her body. The buttons gaped across her breasts, and the belt didn’t fit her waist, but she’d been reluctant to poke a new hole in the cloth. It was the nicest thing she’d ever had, by far. The cashmere wool blend felt as soft as the inside of her arm, and made every other material seem coarse and plastic-y by contrast. Still safety-pinned inside the collar was a creamy envelope containing a receipt stating that the coat had been paid for in cash, which Cinda took to mean that she could return it for cash, if she chose.
“You sure?” the man said. “The radiator’s working overtime. It’s blistering in here.”
“I’m good,” she said, borrowing a hated expression of Allegra’s.
Part Two
Cinda followed the man and his children into the apartment, which was a shocking mess: piles of toys and clothes covering the Persian rugs, overturned take-out cartons spilling congealed chow mein and petrified falafel across a coffee table facing a flat screen TV, flickering on mute. Cinda’s sense of smell was still hijacked, and she thought she detected the buttered popcorn stench of dirty diapers. The job listing in the binder had named two kids, ages three and five. No babies. In keeping with her rule. Well, maybe one of them was slow or untrainable. One time, she’d taken care of a twelve year-old boy who still crapped in his pants. His parents hadn’t warned her — the smell clued her in then, too — and she punished them by ignoring the stack of giant diapers in the bathroom, letting him sit in his mess until they returned. She had admired the boy for not complaining, even though he was obviously uncomfortable and humiliated, shifting on his seat and sniffing, as if the bad smell were coming from someone else, or maybe just to remind her of her job.
“So Cinderella,” the man said, “What’s your poison?”
“Excuse me?” She was perched on the edge of a low white couch, wondering how it stayed pristine in the midst of such filth. It must have been the maid’s day off. She certainly hoped they didn’t expect her to do any straightening up.
“What’s your pleasure?” the man said. “Gin and tonic? Pinot Grigio?”
“Oh,” she said. “No thanks.” There was nothing in the contract against drinking, but after going months without even a beer, alcohol made her head spin, and feelings floated to the surface that weren’t useful or trustworthy. Allegra, who kept a bar on top of the mini-fridge in their dorm room, had stopped offering her a nightcap after Cinda ignored her suggestion that she might contribute a bottle to the collection. “I think she’s fundamentalist or something,” Cinda had overheard her roommate confiding in another girl from their floor, the two of them smoking in the window that overlooked Broadway, tapping long ashes into Cinda’s favorite college mug.
“You’re not one of those no-fun girls, are you?” the man said.
“No,” she said, although what if she was? Why was he treating her like a call girl? And where was the wife? No doubt in the bedroom, still primping. Before long she would appear, dress half-zipped, to ask whether she should wear her hair up or down, the dangly earrings or the studs, slingbacks or mules. As usual, Cinda would pretend to have definite opinions on things that made zero difference. She’d help ease a zipper over a still thick waist, careful not to get any hair caught in the teeth. It was all part of the service she provided for people buying their old lives back.
“I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon,” the man said.
“Was I late?” Cinda asked, glancing at her wrist before remembering that she’d thrown away her Timex, along with her platform thongs and the jeans that would be out of style (if they weren’t already) by the time she could zip them up.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he repeated, “so that I could have a Pastis.”
“Oh,” Cinda said, glad that at least she knew what Pastis was. Allegra had brought a bottle back from France, the first stop on her solo summer “travels” (she never called it a trip) around Europe, a graduation gift from Daddy, although to hear her talk it had been hard work. She kept urging Cinda to travel, insisting that she’d never grow up until she experienced the world, all on her own.
“I don’t like to drink by myself,” he went on. “It’s a slippery slope, and I want company all the way to the bottom.”
“Okay,” she relented, because it was easier just to give in sometimes, and she was tired of being the no-fun girl. “But just a little.”
“A splash,” he agreed. “It’s basically mouthwash.”
He disappeared into the back of the apartment, leaving her alone with the two children who sat at her feet, staring up at her with their spooky pale eyes, willing her to do something, she had no idea what. The silence felt awkward, charged like a held breath. The TV was still on, playing a cartoon no less, but they seemed more interested in her. She felt the urge to make faces at them, but she resisted, not because she didn’t want to scare them but because she didn’t want them to get her in trouble. The man and his wife would have to leave soon. Until then, she could act nice.
It’s not that she didn’t like kids, but they reminded her too much of her own childhood, which she recalled as one long period of waiting broken into endless chunks: waiting to be picked up, always the last; waiting for the day, the week, the school year to end; waiting for summer to wrap up, only so it could all start over again; waiting for a time when she could make her own choices, about what exactly, she couldn’t remember. Waiting to stop waiting.
“It is hot in here,” she said, to fill the silence. She felt slick half-moons spreading beneath her breasts, which were squeezed into two sports bras, one on top of the other. She didn’t want the sweat to seep into the silk lining of her coat, so she took it off, carefully folding it to hide the envelope still safety-pinned inside the collar.
After receiving the coat, she had kept it hidden in the back of her wardrobe for a week, afraid that if Allegra saw it she’d start asking questions: like what a girl on a full ride, who had to babysit every night of the week for spending money, was doing with a three thousand dollar pricetag dangling from the back of her neck. But like most people who never had to worry about money, it didn’t cross Allegra’s mind that anyone else would either. When she came back to their dorm room in the middle of the afternoon one day and caught Cinda trying the coat on, she merely whistled her approval and asked to try it on herself, which Cinda let her do with mingled pride and reluctance, trying not to hover until Allegra finally gave it back.
“It’s huge on me,” Allegra pointed out annoyingly. Then she went on to pronounce that all you really needed in life were a good coat, good shoes and a good watch, that if you had those three things, you could skimp on everything else and still look effortlessly chic. Allegra was always uttering frivolous statements with the utmost solemnity, never attributing her quotes to the fashion magazines she pored over instead of her books. Cinda knew that her roommate was full of shit, but her lack of originality also meant that much of the world shared her opinions. And if enough people thought something, then it might as well be true.
Part Three
The little girl started to cough in a way that sounded forced, like she was acting sick to get attention, but once she started she couldn’t stop. From deep in her chest came a popping and crackling sound, and a spray of spittle completed the sad display. Cinda covered her mouth, an indication that the girl should do the same, which the child ignored.
“Aren’t you going to play with us?” she whined, once she had her raspy breath back.
“Fine,” Cinda said, sounding less than enthused now that there was no adult listening. “What do you want to play?”
“Doctor,” the boy said, wiping his nose with his forearm and leaving an iridescent snail trail of snot. “She only always likes to play doctor.”
The girl rummaged in one of the piles on the floor, pulled out a stethoscope that looked real, not a toy, and climbed up onto Cinda’s lap. Then her hand slithered down the front of Cinda’s sweatshirt, finding its way under the sports bras with more dexterity and speed than many grown men, to cup her breast.
“Don’t,” Cinda exclaimed, grabbing her bony little wrist. “Stop that!”
“Sophia’s molesting Annie,” Hank announced in a sing-song voice as their father returned at just that moment, holding two glasses of cloudy, venomous green liquid, ice cubes clinking softly against the glass.
“Cheers,” he said, sitting next to Cinda and offering her a glass, not even seeming to notice that daughter was pawing her.
“Please tell her to let go,” Cinda said. She tried to pull the child’s hand off, but the girl pinched her nipple with surprising force. It reminded her of the puppy that had bit Ludovic’s finger one day last year when she was hanging out with him at the garage, trying to write the Statement of Purpose for her college application. It sounded so official. Statement of Purpose. “What should I say?” she asked Ludo, but as usual he had no answer for her. His boots were sticking out from under the car, where he lay on a wheeling tray. That was all she could see of him. He looked like the witch trapped under the house in Kansas. He was hiding from her, from the sight of her. If he’d noticed she was getting bigger, he hadn’t mentioned it.
Ludo claimed to be seventeen, so that he could still take classes toward a diploma, but his crow’s feet and tobacco-yellow fingers set him apart from the high school boys. He slept on an air mattress in the back of the garage where he worked, living off microwave burritos and popcorn. Sometimes, when his friends were busy, he took Cinda to the dollar theater that played movies right before they went to DVD. When Ludo opened his wallet to pull out a single bill, she tried not to stare at the baby picture caught behind the plastic display window. The baby had black hair and green eyes, just like the woman on whose lap he was propped. Without ever needing to be told, Cinda understood that Ludo was saving everything to bring them over, the baby and its mother, to buy his old life back. His family, he called them. Well, that’s what they were. He never lied to Cinda, or promised her anything. She took what she could get.
The puppy had appeared out of nowhere at the garage that morning, no tags or collar, the size of a guinea pig. It had the blocky, oversized head of any newborn thing, and Cinda kept feeding it microwave popcorn, laughing as it jumped high in the air to catch each kernel, snap snap, never missing a single one. She started throwing the popcorn at Ludo’s legs, and the puppy would dive under the car and catch those kernels too. It was hilarious when it mistook Ludo’s finger for a kernel and he shrieked and cursed, stranya, which meant shit, and was the only word in Croatian that she’d learned. Less funny was when Ludo rolled out from under the car, still lying on his back, flicked his arm and sent the puppy flying. There was a sound like an orange striking a fence, a soft thud followed by a yelp and then silence.
A mistake, he said, meaning an accident, but what was the difference?
Now she fought the urge to fling this little girl against the wall.
“Stop it!” she said again, digging her fingernails into the girl’s wrist.
“She told you she doesn’t like that,” the man said mildly, as if someone else might like to have her nipple pinched by a strange child, and at last the girl released her, slumping into the gap between Cinda and her father on the couch.
“I only wanted to listen to your heart,” she said.
Cinda took the glass of Pastis and downed it in three medicinal gulps.
“Where’s Annie?” the girl whimpered. “I want her to come back.”
“Well then you shouldn’t have flushed her keys down the toilet,” the man said.
“It’s not Fia’s fault,” the boy said. “Annie told us she could make things come back again. She said she could do magic.”
“Annie made the penny come back,” the girl cried. “She did! You saw!”
“Who’s Annie?” Cinda asked.
“Some babysitter who came a few times,” the man said. “She made a big impression on them. I’m not sure why. Not much to look at…” His eyes locked onto Cinda’s breasts, and the hunger in his gaze made her want to throw her drink in his face. If there had been anything left in her glass, she probably would have. The girl tried to crawl onto her father’s lap, but he pushed her off.
“Give this one a chance,” he said.
“Annie made the penny come back,” the girl said to Cinda. “What can you do?”
I can put you straight to bed, she thought. I can ignore the sound of you crying from behind your bedroom door. But instead she said in her sugary voice, “I’d be happy to read to you, or to play a game, as soon as your mommy and daddy leave.”
“Mommy’s not here,” the girl said. “She’s on a trip.”
“Oh,” Cinda said.
“A work trip,” the boy added. “That’s why we can’t go too.”
“But she’ll be right back,” the girl said. “Right, Daddy?”
The man’s gaze met hers, his eyes drowning. She sensed that he wanted her to be his conspirator, but she didn’t understand what he wanted her to sign on for, what secret he was silently imploring her to keep. The girl was still trying to crawl into his arms, and finally he picked her up and deposited her on Cinda’s lap.
“Give this one a chance,” he said again.
Cinda was surprised when the girl slumped against her, sucking her thumb. For a moment, the rhythmic sucking sound was the only sound in the room, regular as a heartbeat. The child was warm and soft, and astonishingly light. Still a baby, really. Cinda noted how she didn’t turn around, perhaps pretending that the lap upon which she’d found herself was a familiar one. She didn’t know what to do with her arms, where to put them, and she decided to revise her policy. No babies. No toddlers. No kids under five. She could be that picky, if she wanted. That’s how many jobs there were, printed and filling the binder. She’d never run out of choices.
Part Four
Cinda looked at her watch again, not caring if the man noticed, in fact hoping he’d take a hint. She’d been sitting in the filthy living room — or great room, or whatever they wanted to call it — for forty-five minutes, and he had still shown no sign of starting to get ready for his night out, wherever he was going. He was wearing ugly wide wale corduroy pants that were loose at the knees, and a pair of plaid flannel slippers with matted fleece linings, his feet bluish white inside them. She hoped he knew that he had to pay her for this time as well. She was starting to feel almost panicky with impatience for him to leave.
“So Cinderella, tell us about yourself,” the man said.
“What do you want to know?” she asked. Why was he interviewing her for a job she already had? A job which she no longer wanted.
“What’s the number one most interesting thing about you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know. What is this?”
“Just making conversation.” He pulverized an ice cube between his teeth and swallowed, his Adam’s apple jogging. At close range, his pores emitted a sourness that made Cinda doubt that the Pastis had been his first drink of the evening. “That’s what people do,” he said.
“I’m from Pennsylvania,” she said. “The western part. I was top of my class.”
“And what are you studying now?” he asked.
“I’m going to be an English major, I think, or maybe art history. We don’t have to declare until second year.”
“Art huh,” he said, sounding bored. “Who’s your favorite?”
“My favorite artist?” she repeated, to buy time. She drew a blank whenever anyone asked her what her favorite anything was. “I like Cindy Sherman,” she said at last, glad to have come up with a name more original than Rembrandt or Renoir, and because she really did like Cindy Sherman, even though she had only seen one of her prints so far, hanging on the wall in the kitchen at one of her very first babysitting jobs.
She had arrived in New York at the end of first-year orientation, a week after everyone else got to school with their Ikea comforters and halogen lamps, their plastic shower caddies and Klimt posters. Classes hadn’t started yet, but the desirable work study positions at the library and computer centers had all been claimed, and she lacked the energy (and the wardrobe) to pursue internships like Allegra, who’d already secured a position at a PR firm specializing in pet pharmaceuticals, writing press releases about breakthroughs in feline asthma prevention. “Babysitting is for teenagers,” she chided Cinda. “Why’d you even come to New York if you’re not going to take advantage of the opportunities at your doorstep?” But all Cinda wanted to do was sleep, and she couldn’t afford a job that didn’t pay. Babysitting seemed like the perfect answer, as long as she didn’t have to handle any actual babies.
She had not yet learned how to decode addresses. For this particular job, which was maybe the third or fourth she called to book, she had to travel all the way up to Washington Heights, to a grimy white brick building with no doorman. The woman who answered the inside apartment door was wearing a sling from which emerged one drumstick arm, ending in a scarlet fist with fingernails like grains of rice. At this sight, Cinda almost spun around and bolted. She was about to stammer an apology when the woman explained that she’d hired her to play with her five-year-old son, while she and the newborn got some rest. “I’m drained,” she said. “Literally drained. All she wants to do is nurse around the clock.” Only then did Cinda realize that the woman was actually nursing as they spoke. From inside the sling, the sucking sound was unmistakable, even if you’d never heard a baby nursing before. Occasionally it made a gurgle of pleasure.
Cinda felt a wash of relief. This had to be the woman’s own baby then, still tethered to her body, still feeding off it. But no sooner had this thought passed through her mind than she felt the pins and needles in her own breasts, which were still so swollen, hard and veiny and sore, that she couldn’t sleep on her stomach. She wore an XXL sweatshirt all the time, even to bed, to hide her distorted shape from Allegra. The doctor had advised her not to squeeze her breasts, saying that this would induce “the let-down,” prompting her body to keep producing milk instead of absorbing it. So she fought the urge to relieve the pressure. But her body refused to understand that its milk wasn’t needed. Every morning, under the stream of the hot shower, milk would bead at each nipple and then spill down the swell of each breast, down her still swollen stomach, down the drain. My breasts are crying, she thought. The thought made her queasy, the melodrama of it, as did the feeling of the let-down provoked by another infant’s cry.
Cinda stood there, frozen, afraid that the milk might soak through her layered sports bras, her tank top and t-shirt, all the way through the orange hoodie she never took off. Thankfully, the woman was too tired to notice her distress. She told Cinda that she and the baby were going to go lie down in the bedroom for a while, and that she and Sam — that was the little boy — could do whatever he wanted.
Sam wanted to bake cookies. In a daze, Cinda searched for a tube of dough in the fridge before he directed her to a big cookbook propped up on a stand. He knew which cobalt blue canisters contained flour and brown sugar, where the measuring cups and spoons were tucked away, and he cracked eggs into a bowl with almost comical solemnity. Following his lead, they measured and mixed and dropped dough by heaping tablespoons onto an ungreased sheet, and before long the apartment filled with the smell of hot cookies. For Cinda, who had never fixed anything more complicated than mac-and-cheese, it seemed miraculous that they’d pulled it off. The smell lured the woman out of the bedroom. The baby was asleep in its sling, thank god, entirely hidden from view, and Cinda almost forgot about it while they sat in the kitchen, dunking hot cookies in milk like a TV family.
On the kitchen wall hung a photograph of a woman wearing a pillbox hat, staring through a dotted veil with an expression like nothing in the world could surprise her, for good or bad. The woman explained that it was a self-portrait by Cindy Sherman, a piece of art she had bought as a consolation prize when she didn’t win the Oscar. She laughed when Cinda asked if she was an actress and explained that she was a costume designer, listing some of the movies she’d worked on. The few Cinda had seen seemed to embarrass her, while she looked disappointed when Cinda admitted that she’d never even heard of the one that got the Oscar nomination. “I knew I wouldn’t win,” she said. “The academy has a narrow understanding of what a costume can be. The prize always goes to a period piece. Bodices and hoop skirts. People don’t realize that we still wear costumes today. A hooded sweatshirt,” she gestured at Cinda. “A pair of combat boots. You choose how the world sees you. You put on a costume every time you get dressed.”
It was the kind of thing Allegra said all the time, only it sounded profound and true coming from this woman. Cinda had recently received the black trench coat in the mail, but she hadn’t worn it out yet, afraid that something might happen to it if she did. “You might receive a thank-you gift,” the social worker had told her when she signed the papers giving up all of her rights. “A token of appreciation for everything you’ve done.” Cinda had opted for a closed adoption. She didn’t want to meet the woman who would raise her child, to say thank you, to be thanked. The word seemed useless in this context, insulting and insufficient, but what else was there to say? The expense of the coat made her feel bribed, but that was okay. What shocked her was how much she loved it, right away, a feeling she’d never had about a garment, or anything else for that matter.
“This is a good coat,” Allegra had pronounced. No, Cinda wanted to correct her. It was perfect. She had never had anything perfect before, which was how she recognized the difference.
When the baby woke up, its warbly cry seemed to come from a great distance, muffled through fleece. “Again?” the woman said, sighing as she collapsed into a rocking chair, scooped the baby out of the pouch and her breast out of her bra, flinching when the baby clamped onto a dark brown nipple the size of a salad plate. As the sucking regulated, the woman looked down, not at her infant but at the street below the window, where people were streaming out of the subway, carrying briefcases and groceries and pushing strollers as they headed home at the end of the day.
“So many people,” Cinda said.
“That’s what I love about New York,” the woman said. “When I’m up nursing at two in the morning and I look out this window, I always see someone else up too. You’re never really alone here. You always have company.”
That’s when Cinda had started to cry, unable to stop even though she was mortified, somehow managing to apologize, saying that she never cried in public, and when the woman asked what was wrong, she’d told her everything, this stranger who had seemed so amazing, unlike anyone else she’d met, who didn’t rush her out the door, who waited until Cinda finished before she stood up and told her that what she’d done must have been very difficult, she could only imagine, and she gave her a little hug, the warm, breathing bump of the sling coming between them, and then she put a hand on her boy’s head and escorted Cinda to the door, saying that she didn’t realize how late it was, that she really appreciated the nap and the cookies, and she paid Cinda twice the official rate, telling her that she’d call, but of course she never did. She had her children already, draining her and then filling her up again with love. Cinda hadn’t expected more. Anyways, she never went back to the same apartment twice.
“Cindy Sherman,” the man repeated. “Never heard of her.”
“She takes pictures of herself disguised in makeup and clothes,” Cinda explained, paraphrasing what she’d read later, “so that she looks like different people, even though they’re all self-portraits.”
“Sounds pretty self-absorbed,” he said. “If you ask me, which you didn’t.”
“What are you talking about?” Cinda said.
Part Five
The man was sneering. There was no other word for the twist of his mouth, lips hard and pale. Cinda had the sudden realization that he hated her. Whatever rage she felt for him, he felt double. It was confusing.
“Like I said, pretty self-absorbed. Do you realize that you haven’t asked me a single question since you got here.”
Cinda thought back, trying to determine if this was true, before realizing that she didn’t care. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll ask you a question, if you want. What are you still doing here?”
“Excuse me?” he said. “This is my home.”
“Yeah, and I’m the babysitter,” she said. “You hired me.”
“Actually,” he said, “my wife hired you. But you make a good point. You’re here to take care of the kids — that’s what you’re being paid for —so why are they hanging all over me?” In fact, the little girl was still sitting on Cinda’s lap, still sucking her thumb, although her body was rigid now, stiff as a pole. The boy was clinging to his father’s legs, wrapping him in the bat wings of his cape, face pressed to his shins.
“You’re their dad,” Cinda exploded. “I’m a stranger. As long as you’re still here, of course they’re going to want to be with you. We’ll be fine once you leave, so maybe you go already.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, his voice infuriatingly calm now. He didn’t seem bothered by her outburst. In fact, he seemed to relax into it, which only provoked her further.
“I don’t understand,” Cinda said.
“I’ve got nowhere to go,” he said. “I’m right where I want to be. Home sweet home, or something.”
“Then why did your wife hire me to babysit?”
“My wife,” he said, spitting the word like a bottle cap, “has taken leave for an indeterminate period.”
“Oh,” Cinda said. He’d been left. Dumped. Who could blame the wife? “Sorry,” she muttered, an afterthought. But she wasn’t. She felt trapped, as she imagined the woman herself must have before taking off.
“Yes, well, so am I,” he said. “So are we all. Things are still in transition. She’s still figuring things out, that is to say her next move, and whether it includes us, or at least me. But in the meanwhile, she has been so considerate as to arrange help. Every evening, when I get home from work, the nanny leaves, and then someone new appears. It’s a big surprise, right kids? The best part of the day.”
“I want my mommy,” the little girl wailed, turning around so that she was facing Cinda, pressing her face between the breasts she had earlier grabbed. Cinda knew that she should feel sorry for the child, who had deep purple circles under rheumy eyes and a face so pouchy it looked middle-aged already. She knew she should feel sorry for the little girl, but the anger wouldn’t let up. Give this one a chance, the man had said. Like he was auditioning her to play the mother to his heartsick kids. She did not want this part.
“I’m going,” Cinda said, standing up, the child still clinging to her, suddenly much heavier than before.
“But you haven’t even finished your drink,” the man said, his voice stripped of its former smoothness. “We got off on the wrong foot. I always come on too strong, I’m sorry. Please stay a while longer. Have dinner with us, at least. It will upset them if you leave after a fight.”
“Sorry,” she cut him off, prying at the girl’s fingers, which were hard like the tips of a starfish but finally came free. She shoved him at the man, harder than she intended, ignoring the child’s rattling, phleghmy cries.
“I’ll call the babysitting service,” he threatened.
“If you try to report me, I’ll tell them that you weren’t going to leave, that you were drunk and you made me feel uncomfortable. It’s all true.”
“You bitch,” he said. “What’s the matter with you? Why are you so cold? You know what you need?”
Cinda ran out of the apartment before he could inform her. It wasn’t until she was on the street, hurrying away from the building in the skim blue light of dusk, that she noticed that she was shivering. She had left her coat on the low white couch, folded around the envelope holding the receipt and the note card.
Thank you for everything.
That’s what the note card said, in a handwriting so perfect it looked like a computer font. No name, just as Cinda had wanted. Nothing to give her — the new mother — away. Thank you for everything. What else was there to say?
It was dark now, but not really. It was never really dark in New York. The city had flipped on its lights. People were funneling into cabs and restaurants, and down into the subway, which shrieked on its tracks, skidding from side to side. By the stairs leading underground, a tree loomed from a displaced square in the sidewalk grid, its roots busting through the concrete. Cinda stood beside the tree and looked up at the windows of the apartments facing the street. As always, she imagined a woman behind glass, sitting in a rocking chair, holding a bottle to a baby’s mouth as she looked down. If Cinda were wearing her coat, the woman might recognize her. Whenever she wore the coat, and she passed a woman with a baby, she watched the woman’s lips, waiting to see them form the words, “Thank you.”
“You’re back,” the man said, already standing at the open door, her presence announced by the uniformed doorman. He sounded sheepish, even grateful — not belligerent as she’d expected — and her anger deflated as quickly as it had pumped her up, leaving her feeling limp and ridiculous.
“I forgot my coat,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Sure. Well, come on in and get it.”
The coffee table had been cleared to make room for a pizza, the frozen kind, and the kids were eating slices with their hands.
“She’s back,” the girl said, sounding more excited than Cinda would have expected. The child turned to her brother, who flicked the hem of his magician’s cape again, showing off his mom’s baggy nylons. “Did you make her come back?” the girl asked, and he shrugged, looking up at Cinda with his pale blue eyes.
“Yeah,” she said. “He did.”
Her coat was right where she’d left it, folded up on the couch. Cinda sat down next to it. She was about to put it on when she reconsidered. She might as well stay for pizza, she thought. Maybe she’d even get paid.
