the key, the hammock, and the scooter

a story

Jan 05, 2024

the key

The babysitter is there among the parents in the school turning circle at 2:05 pm to collect my children, walk them home, and entertain them while I am away at work.

They probably hug her and then throw their backpacks on the ground and zoom around. They would be excited to show any friends at pickup that they have a babysitter. That’s probably how they come to walk home with K, who lives nearby, and who is picked up each day by her young father, whose only job in the world seems to be trundling a stroller with his toddler to and from the school for K’s drop-off and pickup.

They all walk the quarter mile to our house where K begs to stay and play. “She comes over all the time,” the dad mumbles to our babysitter, trailing off with “it’s totally cool,” and rattling the stroller with his toddler on home, leaving the child behind, with no additional discussion.

K has round pink cheeks and is extremely flexible. Half the time I see her in the living room, she’s folded herself backwards into a barrel and is rolling along the carpet or handwalking herself down a wall. She’s sweet. We’ve had her over several times and while her parents did offer to reciprocate one time when we walked her home, the offer came just as we watched the baby sister toddle unassisted out to the edge of the porch and topple over. I caught her just as the fleshy part of her forehead met with the concrete step. “Yeah … yeah!” I said, “Okay, we need to get home!” We never let S go over there.

So K has now joined the crew. The 21-year-old babysitter—a student who lives in the share house next door—is managing. I picture her with J jumping off the steps and S with arms wrapped around her waist and K furling and unfurling the white of her belly through a series of gymnastic moves. The babysitter will let them into the house then fetch some afternoon tea.

The secret key hiding spot is J’s red sneaker on the back step. Inside is a golden key on a key ring shaped like the state. It has been put there by my husband for the babysitter. Only the golden key doesn’t open the door because it’s from before we changed the locks. It’s only theoretically a key now—I saw how the lock jingled into pieces when the locksmith took it out. So the babysitter is locked out with S, J and also K.

the hammock

It’s this key that brings Noodles back into the story. It’s only because the babysitter is locked out that Noodles leaves work to drive home and let them in. It’s only when he focuses on the string of babysitter texts that he asks: wait, is she watching three children? Answer: yes.

Once we sort that out it’s my turn to text the mother a terse why is your child with my babysitter come pick her up! I’m 200 miles away, so my only contribution is the ding of pointy texts. She promises that her partner is on the way to collect K.

The dad walks back to our house, without the stroller and baby this time, and finds the babysitter and the kids playing hide and seek on our porch. He says he needs to use the bathroom and takes himself into our babysitter’s house next door. When Noodles pulls into the driveway 20 minutes later, the dad is still in the share house. Still? Asks Noodles. Uh, yeah, still. Confirms the babysitter.

So Noodles walks over. The dad is pushing the fly screen door open just as Noodles gets there. The man smells like a petrol spill, and mumbles something before climbing into the neon porch hammock, which is sewn from three brilliant beams of internet CMY(K). The babysitter sometimes wraps the kids in the hammock and pushes them while they squeal. Now the random dad is in it. He just needs a rest. Just for a minute.

Have you been drinking, man? Asks Noodles.

No man, I’m just super tired, says the man.

You have to take your kid home, says Noodles.

Okay, says the man, whose eyes flutter closed.

Finally he climbs out of the hammock and wanders into the backyard, then course-corrects and finds our porch. He takes his child home. She’s happy to have had a playdate for a bit.

I call the mother a little later. I can’t picture her face while I have her on the phone, and since I’m calling from an Office where I am wearing a Blazer, I can feel the secretary creeping into my voice. “I just wanted to touch base on this afternoon,” I say, if you can believe it. “Your partner apparently smelled strongly of alcohol and seemed intoxicated.”

I Ieave a space for her to decide where this will go.

“Oh!” She says, “He doesn’t drink! But he’s on new medication that makes him drowsy. And I’m so sorry, he said the babysitter had given permission to watch K.”

I wasn’t expecting that. More secretary voice: “That doesn’t … that’s not what happened though. He just wandered off and left her. And he had been drinking. He fell asleep in the porch hammock. He used my babysitter’s bathroom. She’s a student.”

I can hear this all being absorbed by the carpet on the other end at her workplace.

the scooter

The next day I was still 200 miles south, and the dad showed up to the 2:05 pickup looking as though he might fold up like an umbrella stroller any moment. Swaying, nodding off. Enough so that the school noticed. The carpark monitor came over to talk to him as the man struggled not to go fully boneless. It turns out that if you’re on foot, it’s difficult for a school not to release a child to you. He said he was tired and that was the end of the conversation. This information was transmitted to me from several eyewitnesses, all of us stumped, with our mountains of parenting books and attachment angst, about what you do in this case.

I was on the train headed north when I got a text from the mother later that afternoon:

I just wanted to thank you for speaking with me yesterday. [X] had a small stroke this morning and we’re currently in the hospital.

“A small stroke!” said Noodles. “Then showed up to pickup!”

“I’m using that the next time I have a hangover,” said a friend at work. “Sorry, small stroke.”

By the Friday, I’m back in town to handle school drop-off and pickup.

We’re walking to school in the morning when the dad goes blitzing past us in the other direction in unicorn pajama pants and a hoody, paddling furiously on his daughter’s tiny scooter. “Hey you guys!” he yells, hammering over the mismatched squares of pavement, with no recognition whatsoever that anything in the world is out of place.

We give an uptight wave.

[Noodles: A small stroke!]

The weekend passes without playdates for S or J. S wants to know why she never gets to go to friends’ houses like she did in Brooklyn. “Let’s invite a friend over,” I say.

The family scoots right out of the frame a couple of weeks later, after S tells us K is changing schools. I miss K, she says many times more. The warm weather passes, and the hammock lies empty.

I buy a lockbox for the back porch, and put a shiny silver key inside.

In lieu of links

Just a note that anything trending at the moment seems even more manufactured or recycled than usual? “The main thing I realized when I became an Old is that everything happens every twenty years.” —Rusty Foster

This is true for everything, but especially parenting things. Put another way: