Bang and whimper

Moments after finally surrendering to unconsciousness I wake to sobbing. I pull myself out of bed and lie down beside Grayer as he thrashes around, battling the monsters who have chased us out of our rest.

"Shhh. Shhh." I try to take him in my arms, but not before one of his flailing limbs manages to whack me in the eye. "Ow, shit." I sit up.

"I would appreciate it if you didn't use that kind of language in front of Grayer." I look over to see Mrs. X silhouetted in her mutton-sleeved nightgown by the doorway. "Well?" she asks, making no attempt to come closer.

"I think he had a nightmare."

"Okay, then. Just try to keep him quiet. Mr. X has his tennis tournament today." She disappears back down the hall, leaving us alone.

"Shhh, I'm right here, Grove," I whisper as I stroke his back.

He shakes, turning his head into my neck. "No you're not. You're gonna go away." He begins to sob against my shoulder.

 

"Grove, I'm here. I'm right here."

He pulls back slightly and raises himself onto his elbow, puts his small fingers on my cheek and turns my face to his. In the dim glow of the Grover night-light he looks intently into my eyes. I hold his gaze, taken aback by the intensity of his expression, as if he were trying to memorize me. When he's finished he lies back down, his body slowly relaxing as I curl around him, whispering our monsters away.

Unable to get back to sleep, I exhale the last of my cigarette into the shed, stubbing the smoke out into the wet grass, and look back at the house framed by the moonlight.

"Woof!" The still unnamed X pet nestles against my ankles.

"Shhh, you," I say, reaching down to scoop her up like a baby, her slick paws brushing my chin. I carefully make my way through the wet grass up to the back door, pulling it open slowly and cringing at the unavoidable creak. I step out of my damp tennis shoes into the kitchen.

She wriggles to get free as I nestle her into the crate. Shaking with agitated exhaustion, I stare at the refrigerator. I tiptoe over and open the freezer door to pull out the vodka, desperate to be knocked out. But the icebox light reveals that my little survival swigs have made a noticeable dent in the reserves. I hold the bottle under the tap before returning it to its spot under the frozen veggie burgers. I hate what this trip has reduced me to. I swear, another week and I'd be mixing crack in the bathroom.

On my way upstairs I see that someone has finally taken the receiver off the hook in the living room. It's about time. I crawl under the scratchy wool blanket to await sleep, half-dreaming of Ms. Chicago parachuting onto the front lawn at breakfast.

I'm awakened two hours later by Grayer trying to scramble over me to get to the bathroom.

"Nanny, it's time for breakfast."

"In where? France?" I'm so exhausted I can barely see. I hold on to the wall as I follow him to the bathroom and help him pull down his pajama bottoms. While he's relieving himself I pull open the shade, squinting as the bathroom is bathed in orange light.

I pull a sweatshirt on over my pajamas and we shuffle downstairs.

"What do you want for breakfast?" I ask, bending over to pick up the puppy.

"No, Nanny, leave it," he whines, turning his back on the cage. "Leave it in the box."

"Grayer, what do you want for breakfast?"

"I don't know. Froot Loops?" he mumbles as I heave her up onto my shoulder. She barks and licks my face.

"Sorry, bud, you know we only have Soy Flakes."

"I hate Soy Flakes. I said I want the other kind!"

"I want a personal life, Grove. We can't always have what we want." He nods. I give him Soy Flakes, which he pokes at while I take the puppy outside to relieve herself.

At eight o'clock I wake at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Mrs. X descends in yet another Nantucket outfit she bought at Searle and casually places the phone receiver back on its cradle. "Grayer, let's turn off the TV. What do you want for breakfast?"

"He al-" I start to say.

"I want Froot Loops! I wanted it, but Nanny wouldn't give it to me."

"Nanny, why didn't you feed Grayer?" she asks, turning off the television.

"I WANT IT! I NEED IT!" he screams like a baby into the dark screen, rousing the dog into a yelping frenzy.

"Cut it out," I say quietly, and it silences him for a second until he remembers this isn't my show. Full-on screaming ensues and doesn't stop until he's eating his second chocolate doughnut and the TV is back on. I yawn, wondering if they'd get him a hooker if he cried hard enough.

"I believe I've made it clear, Nanny," she says, looking down at the retriever as if she were vermin. "That I don't like the dog in the living room. Please put it back in the garage." I pick up the puppy. "Have you packed Grayer's activity bag for the club?"

"No, I've been keeping him company."

"Well, he seems occupied for the moment," she says.

I nod, picking up the bag with my free hand.

"Also, did you get more wipes?" What, with the private chauffeur you got me? I can't even get myself to a drugstore, you fucking freak.

"Um, did Mr. X pick them up when he was at the store?" I ask just as the phone rings.

Mrs. X picks up the receiver. "Hello?" She stares at me while gripping the receiver. "Hello!" She slams the phone down, shaking the bamboo table. "I don't know if he did. Did you put it on the shopping list?" She rests her hand on her hip.

"I never saw yesterday's shopping list."

She sighs. "Honey?" she calls upstairs. "Did you get more wipes?"

Silence. We all stare expectantly at the ceiling. Finally we hear the sound of slow footsteps on the stairs. He descends wearing his tennis whites and makes a direct beeline for the kitchen.

"Did you get wipes?" she asks his back. "Honey? You know- those little cloths I use to clean Grayer?"

He keeps walking, then stops at the door, turns to me and says, "Tell my wife I got what was on the list," and disappears into the kitchen. I can hear Mrs. X exhale slowly behind me. Won-der-ful. Ladies and gentlemen, for the remainder of the show the role of Fucked will be played by Nanny.

"What, in the name of Christ, is all this racket?" The senior Mrs. X stands in a Pucci zip-front robe in the doorway, flinging a bejeweled hand toward the television. "Can we please turn off that godawful purple dinosaur?"

"No!" Grayer spews chocolate crumbs on the couch.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth," Mrs. X says, rubbing her temples. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Black, like ink." Neither woman moves, indicating that the onus is on me to produce this inky coffee.

"Elizabeth, why don't you go sit on the porch and Nanny'll bring your coffee out there?"

"Do you want me to catch pneumonia?"

"How about the kitchen, then?" Mrs. X asks, buttoning her cardigan.

"I don't suppose my lazy son has gone to get the paper yet?"

"No, but yesterday's is still on the table."

"Well, now that would have been useful yesterday. Honestly, I don't know why you insist on spending your vacation here in this ... hut when you could have come and stayed with me on the Cape and Sylvia would be serving us all eggs right now."

"Next year, Elizabeth, I promise."

After returning the dog to her crate on the kitchen floor, I'm scooping grounds into the filter when Mrs. X comes in. Mr. X abruptly stands up from where he's been studying The Economist at the kitchen table and goes out the back door.

She takes another long exhale, biting the side of her mouth. She opens the fridge, grabs a yogurt, holds it for a second and puts it back. She brings out a loaf of bread, flips it around to look at the nutrition information and returns it to the shelf. She closes the door and pulls down the box of Soy Flakes from on top of the fridge, giving it a once-over.

"Do we have any grapefruit?" she asks.

"I don't think Mr. X got any."

"Never mind, I'll eat at the club," she says, putting back the box.

She walks slowly over to me, tracing her fingers along the counter. "Oh, a boy called here for you a few days ago. It was a terrible connection, though..."

"Really? I'm sorry-"

"He's not the kid who lives on eleven, is he?" she asks.

"Actually, um, yeah." I get a coffee cup out of the cupboard, silently willing her to drop the conversation.

"I recognized the name, but it took me a few hours to realize from where. I was wondering how you knew him. Did you meet in the building? Was Grayer with you?" The lurid image hangs between us of me not only having sex on her bed, but enabling said sex by letting Grayer take a nap. Hard to say which she'd find more alarming.

"Yeah ... It's funny ..."

"Well, he must be quite a catch for you." She walks toward the windows and looks out at Mr. X standing in the yard with his back to the house as the fog lifts. "His mother was telling me that his last girlfriend-she was so beautiful. Every time I saw her in the elevator I'd tell her she should go in for modeling. And always so pulled together." She turns to eye my pajamas. "Anyway, she just went to Europe on a Fulbright. I don't suppose you'd ever consider applying for a program like that? Though I doubt NYU students are eligible for awards of that caliber."

"Well... I wanted to work after graduation ... that is, I'm not really interested in international fieldwork so-" But she's already walked out. I lean against the avocado-green linoleum counter, my jaw gaping. The coffee machine clicks off.

"Dear Mrs. X, you suck," I mutter as I pour.

"Pardon?" I whip around. Mr. X stands behind me, stuffing a doughnut in his mouth.

"Nothing. Um, can I help you?"

"My mother said you were making coffee."

I pull down another chipped cup, still having a minor Fulbright attack. "Does your mother take milk and sugar?"

"Nope, black, black, black."

"Should I not have used a filter?" He laughs and for a second he looks just like Grayer.

"Nanny! Where's that coffee?" I hustle back to the living room, trying not to spill.

"So I said to him, if he thinks he's going to screw me he's got another think coming!" Mrs. X has a pained expression as Elizabeth regales her with the trials of getting her pool properly serviced.

"Nanny, why don't you get him dressed? We're going over to the club. Honey, you and Mommy are going to spend the whole day together watching Daddy play tennis." Grayer barely looks over from the TV.

I kneel to dress him in front of Sesame Street.

"No, Nanny. I want to wear the Pooh shirt, I hate that one," he says when I hold up the Power Ranger shirt.

"Poo shirt! That's disgusting!" Elizabeth X cries as she stands to go upstairs.

"It's Winnie-the-Pooh, actually," I clarify as she passes.

I'm tucking the offending shirt into his shorts when Mrs. X comes in from the kitchen.

Ring.

She pauses briefly to raise the receiver a few inches and then slams it back down again. "No, that won't do." She waves down at me. "We're going to the club. Get one of those Lacoste shirts I bought him."

"No! I want to wear this one!" He prepares for another gale.

"Grayer, that shirt isn't appropriate," she says definitively. She picks up her handbag to wait for us while I wrestle him into the new shirt and rebrush his hair.

"Nanny, his shorts are wrinkled. Oh, well, I suppose they'd just get wrinkled on the ride over anyway." I wonder if she's considering making him stand in the car, hugging the front seat all the way to the Nantucket Yacht Club.

"Grayer, stay by the car while Mommy and Nanny get our beach things," Mrs. X calls after him as he runs up onto the golf course abutting the club's parking lot. She sighs, opening the trunk, and begins to load me up. Mr. X and Elizabeth have already trotted off to the courts for his first game.

"There you go." I have a straw bag containing everyone's clothing changes swinging off my right elbow, a duffel bag full of lotions, sand toys, and sporting goods hanging from the other elbow, and an enormous pile of beach blankets and beach towels in my arms, to which she adds two fully inflated floaties. I lift my chin obediently so that she can tuck the orange plastic securely beneath it.

"Grayer Addison X, I SAID WAIT!" she screams into my face and over my shoulder, sliding her little yellow Kate Spade tote up to her elbow and sauntering forward, hand in hand with Grayer, yellow silk sarong billowing in the cool breeze. I tighten my arms around the pile, trying not to trip as I precariously navigate behind her. She greets the entire club as she passes, remembering each mother and child by name. I follow her, thankful that the floaties have positioned my head at such an angle that no one can tell if I'm rolling my eyes. Which I am. A lot. We kick off our sandals and walk down the wooden planks to the sand.

She weaves in and out of umbrellas, before pointing her head at a plot of empty beach to indicate where I'm to set up camp. Grayer skips in circles around the blanket as I lay it out.

"Come on! Let's go swimming! Right now. Right now." I look over at Mrs. X, as I anchor the blanket with a bag, but she's already immersed in conversation.

"Let's get your suit on, Grover." I take his hand to walk up to the cabana that someone named Ben's brother has lent us for the week while he's in Paris. I close the wooden door, leaving us in damp semi-darkness, with only slivers of sunlight peering in through the slats and onto the white boards. He pulls open the door the moment his other foot is through the top of the shorts.

"Wait, G! Got to lather up." I hold up the Chanel Bebe SPF 62, which I am constantly forced to slather on him.

"I hate that stuff!" He tries to make a run for it, but I grab his arm.

"How about you put it on my face and I'll put it on yours," I offer.

"Me first." He gives in. I squirt the white cream on his fingers and he smears it over my nose. I gently cover his, trying to get his cheeks at the same time so we can get out of the cabana before sunset.

"Nanny, we are taking turns! Don't cheat," he admonishes, generously slathering my ears.

"Sorry, Grove. I just want to hurry up and get this stuff on you so we can get out there and go swimming." I cover his ears and chest.

"I'll do it myself, then." He smears his hands on his arms and legs, covering about a fifth of his exposed skin. I bend down in the doorway, attempting to even it out, but he runs away from me back down to the sand. Ten pedicured toes stop in front of me.

"Nanny, don't forget to put sunscreen on him. Oh, and there's a jellyfish warning today so you better bring everything up to the pool. See you later."

I schlep our stuff back up to the pool, only to discover that the water is slowly being drained out after a small child had an "accident." We head over to the Little Schooners Playground, a bit of an overstatement for a rusted swing set in a shadeless, fenced patch of sand. The sun beats down mercilessly as Grayer attempts to play with the seven other children, none of whom is close to him in age. We all pool beach supplies, taking turns coloring, throwing a ball, and picking our noses.

After he threatens to hurl a two-year-old off the swing set for her juice box, I leave our stuff and lead Grayer over to the clay courts to get drink money from Mr. X. For a good twenty minutes, we stumble along the bleachers in the heat searching for his match, but find it difficult to pick him out of the crowd of middle-aged men wearing visors.

"That's him! That's my dad!" Grayer keeps shouting hopefully, pointing at various men in tennis whites, only to have them turn around with disconcertingly unfamiliar faces.

When we finally spot him on the last court Grayer throws himself against the fence, gripping the wire with his fingers and screaming, like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

'DaaAAAAaadddDDdyyyyYYYYyyyyyy!!!!"

Elizabeth hisses at us disapprovingly as Mr. X marches over with a murderous look in his eye. I guess Grayer "the political prisoner" doesn't fit in with the image he's been cultivating all morning.

"Come on now, sport, don't cry," he booms for the whole court to hear. I put my hands gently on Grayer's shoulders to pull him back. "Get him out of here!" he whispers fiercely as soon as he's close enough that he won't be overheard. "And here." He pulls his cell phone from his belt and thrusts it through the fence at me. "Take this goddamn thing with you."

He stalks back to his game before I can ask him for the money. I look up to Elizabeth, but she glares straight in front of her, blowing smoke coolly to the side. I shove the phone deep into my pocket, and pick up Grayer, who's screaming, and lug him, still screaming, to the parking lot, because I have no idea where else to go.

When I am about two minutes from teaching Grove how to drink from the sprinklers we finally track down Mrs. X at the golf course.

"There you are!" she exclaims, as if she's been looking for us for hours. "Grayer, are you hungry?" He droops to the grass, still hold............