Chapter 7 Footwork #3
“We weren’t abused or anything.” My voice sounds defensive. My childhood wasn’t all bad.
“You were neglected,” he says gently.
I shrug. “It’s why I was determined never to do that with Hannah.
I was going to stay in one place. Not date casually.
The kid comes first.” He nods, looking serious.
I add, saying it for the first time, “I think I thought if I got back together with Nick, it would prove that I wasn’t like my mother.
That I wasn’t going to keep bouncing from man to man. ”
He frowns a little. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
I nod. “You mean as a kid? It had its upsides. I learned to cook. By the time I started college, I knew how to make a mean spaghetti carbonara.”
“And now,” he adds, “you don’t rely on anybody but yourself.”
It is so staggeringly accurate that it forces me to laugh. “Well, men don’t have the best record of showing up. I trust Abby.”
“And then she moved away.”
The fact that he gets it feels unexpectedly huge. I feel tearful, which feels ridiculous in the middle of a playground. “Your turn. Tell me about your playgrounds growing up.”
“Well,” he says, “this giant rock reminds me of this beach I used to go to as a teenager. I was a lifeguard. And the beach had this huge rock we’d climb on.” He smiles. “I lost my virginity behind that rock.”
“So this rock brings back dirty memories?”
“Not the playground part, but yeah.” He grins, but then the smile fades. “She was the first girl my brother stole from me, actually.”
“So he makes it habit of this.”
“I went to therapy for a while,” Ollie says as we watch Hannah debating some finer point of her makeshift tag game with another child.
“I told you that. And I realized my father was the one who pitted us against each other. I think he thought it would give us a competitive edge. Sean and I dealt with that differently, though. Sean ignored everything my father wanted: he left Australia to get away from my dad, then dropped out of college, didn’t go to law school.
And I emotionally checked out. I stopped reacting.
It hurt Sean’s feelings, I think. Like I stopped caring about him when I stopped trying to one-up him. ”
“And Sean restarted the game by stealing your wife?”
Ollie lets out a breath. “God, I hope not. I hope Phoebe means more to him than that. But it definitely means that he won, if there was a game to win.”
Hannah appears beside us, wiping sweat from her brow. “Ice cream?” she says pointedly to Ollie.
We introduce Ollie to Mister Melty-Face, our nickname for the SpongeBob popsicle that you can buy from the ice cream pushcart vendors in the park. It has two large, dark eyes that tend to roll slowly out of its head, and Hannah and I have a tradition of eating it while making horrified screams.
“Noooooo!” Hannah demonstrates. “Not my face…!”
“Not my eyes!” I cry.
Ollie pretends to melt down onto a park bench. “Noooooooooooo… I’m melting! I’m melting! What a world, what a world…”
Hannah considers him. “You’re not a good actor.”
“That’s why you have to do the acting, not me.”
“I’m very good at acting.”
“I remember,” he agrees.
Hannah’s energy starts to flag after a couple of hours, and Ollie drives us home. When I glance at her in the backseat, she is playing Nintendo with her eyes drooping and her head leaning on the window. Eventually, even the cheerful beeping and golden coins can’t keep her awake.
“Thank you for today,” I say quietly as Hannah snores behind us. “I know it wasn’t…”
He looks surprised. “It was a good day,” he says.
I try to force a smile instead of getting emotional; there’s no point in being desperately grateful that he stuck around for an afternoon if he’s not planning to do it again. “Well, for the record, I thought your Wicked Witch of the West was brilliant.”
“I believe that’s known in theater circles as getting mixed reviews.”
I look out the window. If he is deciding between getting back together with a cute blonde dancer or an overworked single mother, I can’t blame him for choosing the simpler option.
He glances at me. “You can rely on people, you know,” he says gently.
“Thank you.” My voice is so quiet that I am not sure he hears me.
Ollie’s god-tier parking skills are still in effect when he arrives on my street and finds an available space thirty feet from our front door.
Hannah is still asleep—or feigning it, more likely—so I pick her up while Ollie grabs our cooler.
Hannah blinks herself awake on my shoulder, then squeezes her eyes shut, ready to hitch a ride by pretending she’s still out cold.
Ollie offers to take her, but I shake my head.
I get a vision in my head of some future where I could just hand her off to him and think it was the most natural thing in the world, and the thought feels dangerous.
Don’t get addicted to that idea, I tell myself firmly.
You’re an addict; don’t get drunk on a fantasy of happiness. You know where that leads.
As we approach the building, I notice a motorcycle parked right outside my building in the usual no-parking zone. I stop walking entirely when I see who is leaning against it, looking at his cell phone. Hannah senses my tension and sits up.
“What’s wrong?” Ollie asks, but Hannah is already sliding herself out of my arms.
“Daddy!” she calls, running forward.
Nick glances up and then throws his arms out to Hannah.
“Baby!” he calls. He is wearing another one of his ‘bad boy rebel’ outfits: signature cowboy boots, tight black t-shirt stretched across his chest, dark jeans.
He looks stupidly handsome; that’s one reason he’s gotten away with so much over the years.
Ollie lingers behind as I step forward.
“Hey, Nick.” My arms fold across my chest out of habit.
“Laur,” he says, his eyes flickering to Ollie and then back again, “sorry to drop in like this. I was staying with a friend in Philly when I got the news that I booked the tour with The Big Lie. I borrowed his bike to drive up and tell you.”
I know the band—it is the same one that hired him as a replacement guitarist during Hannah’s April break.
They are a successful rock band, their sound a pop/alt-rock hybrid somewhere between the All-American Rejects and The Strokes, and much more mainstream than anything Nick has booked before.
Their lead guitarist made the tabloids a couple of months ago when he went to rehab, and Nick filled in for a couple of shows.
“That’s great news,” I say kindly, because it is, and I’m not going to deny Nick this victory. I can sense Ollie’s tension as he stands nearby.
“I’m officially part of the band, too,” Nick goes on. “Not second guitar, not filling in… I’m lead guitar player for the next few months while they see what’s happening with Theo.”
“Congratulations. That’s fantastic, Nick.”
Hannah eyes him curiously. “Will you be in New York?” Hannah knows how to cut to the chase.
“Well,” he shrugs, “we have a couple of dates here, yeah. I won’t be around much this summer, but I can take you on tour with me for a while if your mom is okay with it.” He looks at me. “We can get a nanny for her or something, if you have work.”
A nanny? That means Nick will be making real money. Nick glances again at Ollie, who finally steps forward.
“Nick Marceau,” Nick says, putting out his hand. Of course he’s going to mention his last name, because it is still my last name.
“Oliver MacCormack.”
Nick shakes his hand, his eyes drifting to me again, an unspoken question there.
“I’ll just say good-bye to Ollie,” I say, letting Hannah continue to pepper her father with questions.
Ollie and I step a few feet away and he politely hands me the cooler. Part of me thinks I can read Ollie’s mind perfectly: the irony, the awareness that Nick is handsome, the fact that Nick has finally ‘hit it big’ and decided to show up immediately.
“Is this where I tell you not to worry?” I ask, trying to sound teasing.
He smiles flatly and leans forward slightly. “You don’t owe me anything,” he says quietly.
That’s the exact wrong thing for him to be thinking, but I can’t come up with a way to convince him of that in front of my ex-husband. “Thank you for today. It was nice.”
“Nice.” He nods. We can’t even hug good-bye without rousing Hannah’s suspicions. I squeeze his arm once, then watch him walk to his car. When I glance at Nick, his head is tilted slightly to one side as he shifts his gaze between me and Ollie’s old Mercedes.
I walk back toward him; Hannah has wrapped herself around his leg like a boa constrictor.
“I’m not staying,” Nick says. “I gotta get my friend’s bike back. But we could grab some dinner?”
I nod. What else is there to say in front of Hannah?
We have dinner at a Mexican place around the corner that I know from past experience is willing to cook Hannah some chicken nuggets, another one of those parental compromises that I swore I’d never make until I was making it.
My plan was to expose my daughter to all sorts of interesting world cuisines, but it served only to reinforce her unwavering love for bland Middle-American fare.
The great nugget compromise feels emblematic of my parenting.
Nick doesn’t ask me about Ollie during the meal.
He asks Hannah about her day, though, and gets all the important details: Hannah got to play on her Nintendo Switch but only in Ollie’s car.
She hasn’t met Ollie before, but he teaches dance.
She wants to learn dance. Taekwondo is going pretty well.
Mom is learning to dance. Every one of these comments is punctuated by Nick looking at me and then very deliberately looking away while I sip my iced tea and look out the window.
Nick talks a bit about the tour, which is covering almost the entire country, followed by a possible two-month leg in Europe.
He is radiating quiet excitement about it all, and I am happy to see him so happy.
In spite of everything, I can’t begrudge him the joy that fills his whole being.
He has worked hard for this; that much I know.
When we leave the restaurant at sunset with half of Hannah’s nuggets in a take-out container, Nick walks us back to our building and gives Hannah a huge hug, then sends her inside so he can speak to Mommy alone for a moment.
“It won’t last,” Nick says quietly, “that guy.”
“It’s really none of your business. And it’s not serious.”
“You let him meet our kid and it’s not serious?”
I look away for a moment. “Hannah had a birthday party that got cancelled. I brought her along. And I don’t have to defend myself to you.”
“Fair enough. But I know you, Laura. And he’s not the one. He’s going to bore you.”
“Because he shows up on time?”
“Is that the best thing he has going for him?”
I sigh. We both seem to decide not to fight. “Congrats on your tour,” I say.
“Thanks.” Nick gives me a gentle smile. “I’ll call you soon, okay?” He runs one hand down my arm, then waves at Hannah, gets on his borrowed motorcycle and drives away. Hannah watches him through the window of our lobby with a dreamy expression, like his exhaust fumes are made of rainbows.