Chapter 7 Footwork #2
A reserved parking space near Central Park? Why not offer to fly us on his Concorde jet?
“Alright,” I say, glancing outside. The weather is really perfect. “I’ll let Hannah know.”
“Thank you, Laura.”
I don’t know what he’s thanking me for. I don’t know why that makes me happy.
When I explain the plan to Hannah, she is reluctant to go into the city to sit and listen to music, but I promise her there will be dancing, and playgrounds, and that she can bring a bag full of snacks and coloring books…
and I promise that she gets to use her Nintendo Switch on the car ride, which seals the deal.
Apparently, I am one of those terrible parents who buys good behavior with screen time, but I have decided to live with it.
If anyone wants to come after me for it, they can find me on Single Parent Lane, with the rest of the residents who don’t give a damn.
Ollie calls my phone when he is downstairs, and Hannah and I come down to find him waiting in front of our building next to a tan Mercedes that’s at least ten years old.
It feels like a reverse image of the dates in my early twenties when the guy was smoking a cigarette and leaning against his shabby red sports car.
Ollie is wearing a button-down short-sleeved shirt, and he looks put-together and nicely groomed, but emphatically not cool.
“It’s my mom’s old car,” he says as he gestures behind him. “It’s not exciting but it only has thirty thousand miles on it, so I feel like I have no excuse to get rid of it.”
I glance around at the lovely, soft seats as I sit down. The car smells faintly of leather and Ollie’s warm cedar scent. “I usually refuse to travel in a mere Mercedes,” I announce, “but I will make do.”
“I’ll bring the Bugatti next time.”
“Please do.” I introduce him to Hannah, who doesn’t remember him from ‘Take Your Child to Work’ Day and seems largely uninterested in chatting, as she immediately settles into playing her Nintendo.
“I bribed her with screen time.”
He shakes his head. “Shameful. Next, you’re going to tell me you sometimes buy her ice cream from a truck.”
“Ice cream?” Hannah immediately perks up. “Are we getting ice cream?”
Ollie glances at me. “Sorry.”
“Oh, you’re buying it for all of us now.”
We don’t end up needing to go to his parking lot because Ollie finds street parking only two blocks from the park—a miracle that I don’t think I’ve ever managed once.
We walk through the park and track down an empty bench to one side of the large open performance space.
A small crowd of people, mostly over fifty, are seated in chairs as the big band warms up on the outdoor stage.
Ollie unpacks the picnic basket he’s put together, and I pull out the cold drinks and coloring books that I brought with us in a cooler.
“Do you want to dance when the music starts?” Ollie asks me.
“What kind of dance?” Hannah narrows her eyes, looking between us.
“You know Ollie teaches dance,” I tell her.
“Ballet?” She examines him.
“Not ballet.”
“My friend Fiona does Irish step dancing,” Hannah says.
“I do not know Irish step dancing.”
Hannah frowns. “Tap dance?”
“No, but I can tap dance,” he says. He catches my delighted look and shakes his head. “No.”
“I will give you one of these very nice grapefruit seltzers if you demonstrate some tap dancing for us.”
“Oh, is that how things are going to be?”
“Please?” Hannah says. “I want to see you tap dance.”
He sighs and looks around. “I feel like a smudge-nosed 1920s shoeshine boy.” He does a quick little tap dance for us, about thirty seconds long.
“I couldn’t hear the tapping,” Hannah sighs. “But good otherwise.”
“Oh, thank you.”
“He teaches swing dance,” I say. “West Coast Swing.”
Hannah demands an explanation, and Ollie takes my hand to demonstrate just as the band starts up. Hannah watches us for a few moments, then jumps out of her seat.
“Teach me,” she says. “Mommy’s not good.”
Ollie laughs and gives me a glance to get permission, then begins to teach Hannah some steps. It reminds me of two years ago in the conference room at work: Hannah is an absolute sponge for his attention, and I can see right away that Ollie is not going to get a chance to sit down anytime soon.
He runs her through three separate twists, and then she tells him to spin her as many times in a row as he possibly can. He counts them off for her. “Ready? One, two, three, four…”
She gets dizzy and stops after seven times.
“It’s harder on concrete,” he says. “You need a slippery floor to get up to ten.”
“I can’t work in these conditions,” Hannah says wearily, sitting back down. I think of Abby; that’s a phrase that probably originated with my sister.
“Laura?” Ollie smiles at me. “I know you’re not as good as Hannah, but do you want a turn?”
I smile and concede to dance with him for a minute or two before I step back. Hannah is looking at us suspiciously.
“Can we go to the playground now?”
“Let’s eat first,” I reply. Hannah wolfs down her sandwich and announces that she is ready to go.
“Hannah,” I say, “why don’t you read or color for a minute while the rest of us finish eating?”
For some reason, I want to prove to Ollie that my daughter actually does read books; she isn’t a feral creature who insists on having her way all the time.
But she’s not letting me have that small victory.
She flatly refuses to read any of the books I’ve brought and then starts begging for more time on her Nintendo, arguing that there’s no real difference between letting her use it in the car and letting her use it in the park, which makes more sense than I can admit to.
“There are squirrels here,” I say. “See if you can find their hiding places in the trees.”
“That’s boring,” she wails.
When she sees that I’m not going to budge, she flops down on the bench and watches us eat, sighing wearily.
I feel exposed. I’ve never been around Hannah in the context of a date.
Even though she’s not being particularly terrible, I can supply the monologue in Ollie’s head: This is how she raises her daughter?
When I have children, they will sit quietly landscape painting and reading Watership Down while their parents finish their conversations.
I thought like that myself once. I figured that being the opposite of my mom would be sufficient for doing a good job: I would not drink heavily, I would set boundaries, and I would take my children to enrichment classes and cultural events.
My children would be creative, academic, confident but polite, definitely not addicted to video games.
All of those plans relied on having another parent to help me out, it turned out. The best I can say is that Hannah has never had to drape a blanket on me while I sleep off a bottle of wine. It’s something, but it’s never felt like I’m getting it right.
Ollie watches me closely as we pack up the picnic. When we get up to walk toward the playground, we fall behind Hannah by a few feet.
“Thanks for putting up with her,” I say.
“There is no putting up involved,” he says firmly.
“She’s being deliberately difficult.”
“I can’t imagine where she picked that up from.”
I laugh, and he squeezes my hand once. I think about how we’re supposed to act like we’re not dating in public, not just because of Hannah but because of our jobs. The very prohibition is making me feel rebellious.
And because I can’t leave well enough alone, I say, “So is your dance partner Eliana back in town? I think she came to one of our practice sessions at Manhattan Swing this week.”
He nods, his eyes fixed on Hannah running ahead of us. “Yeah, she’s back in New York for a bit.”
“Oh yeah?” I sound really casual. Definitely cool and not jealous at all.
“Yeah. She texted me. She is looking for a new partner.”
“Ah.” Is she asking you? Does she want you back? Do you want her?
“I have to talk to her about it. We’re going to get a coffee,” he says.
“Okay.”
He stops walking and looks directly at me. “Hey. Don’t worry, okay?”
“Even if I was the type to get jealous, I would have no excuse after two dates.”
He nods. “I appreciate that, but I’m still asking you not to.”
“So I should cancel the private detective I hired to track your every move?”
“Completely up to you. I don’t want to cut into a small businessman’s freelance income.”
“As long as he’s filling out his 1099-MISC forms,” I say lightly.
“And doing proper withholding of his social security taxes.”
Hannah decides to introduce Ollie to the giant playground in the middle of Central Park, with its mountainous rock to climb, and then immediately takes off to play with another child. She seems to have her Aunt Abby’s tendency to want to befriend strangers in New York City.
“So where was your favorite place to play as a child?” Ollie asks as we lean against a wall near the giant climbing rock, watching Hannah from a few yards away.
“Where was yours?” I say.
“Ha,” he says. “I’m not falling for that twice. No changing the topic. You go first.”
“Well, the place where I lived the longest had a really fun abandoned garage that we would play in.” I catch Ollie’s appalled glance.
“It wasn’t unsafe. It was actually magical.
The house behind us was abandoned, and the garage was right by my yard.
We collected garter snakes, and we made a little gang with the other neighborhood kids where we pretended to solve crimes, and that lasted until we moved again. ”
“That sounds fun,” he says warily.
I point to a tattoo on my wrist of two flowers. “That was the house where my mom grew these.”
“Japanese peonies,” Ollie says, surprising me with his accurate identification.
“They were the only plant my mother succeeded in keeping alive. I got these flowers when I was twenty-one because I thought they represented Abby and me. The one good thing that survived my mother.”
Ollie’s eyes are filled with sympathy.