Page 16 of The Devil You Know
He’s got sixty seconds.
I’m praying that Mila starts late, but sure enough, at three o’clock on the dot, she stands up to address the parents. “Hello, everyone, and thank you so much for coming,” she says. “I am so glad you all could make it. The children will be singing a few holiday songs for you.”
I glance one more time at the back. Still no Ben.
Mila signals the children, who start singing. I’m pretty sure the song is “Frosty the Snowman,” but I only know because I’ve heard Leah singing it nonstop around the house. At the time, she seemed to be able to belt out the words perfectly, but now she’s standing there with theother kids, mumbling lyrics in a monotone in no particular order. If you told me they were singing “Stairway to Heaven,” I’d have no choice but to believe it because they’re completely unintelligible. The only thing I can make out is Leah mumbling, “Frosty Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy…”
I consider getting out my phone to record this. I probably should. But considering Leah is basically just standing there chanting “Mommy” to herself, I’m not sure it’s worth it. Plus the video quality on my phone is terrible.
After they finish “Frosty the Snowman,” they launch into “Winter Wonderland.” Leah isn’t singing at all at this point. She is, in fact, standing in front of the room, picking her nose. Yeah, I’m definitely not taking a video of this.
The second song concludes with a huge burst of applause. And then… it’s over. How can it be over already? I took off half a day of work to watch my daughter pick her nose for six minutes?
Of course, that’s when Ben bursts in to the daycare, his cheeks pink from the cold. He pulls off his black woolen hat and hurries over to me. “Hey, are they starting soon?”
“It’s over.”
He stares at me. “It’sover?”
“I told you to get here early.” I know I’m not supposed to say “I told you so,” but damn it, Ididtell him so. Doesn’t he ever get tired of being wrong all the time?
He looks down at his watch and then back at me in astonishment. “I’m five minutes late.”
I shrug. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s over.”
“Well, great.” Ben lets out a sigh. “Did you get it on video?”
“I forgot,” I say, which is better than telling him that there was absolutely nothing that happened in the last several minutes that was worth videotaping.
I can see Mila glaring at us across the room. We’re quite a couple—I failed to put Leah in a dress and Ben missed the whole concert. We’re not winning the Parents of the Year Award any time soon.
“Well, now what?” Ben asks me.
“I don’t know.” I look over at Leah, who is busy socializing with her friends. “We could take her to that McDonald’s with the play area.”
Ben groans. “McDonald’s? Do we have to?”
Ben is a food snob. He hates fast food with a passion. He doesn’t make a fuss if I take Leah to McDonald’s, but he doesn’t want any part of it. He says one of the things he hates the most about living out on the island is that the food here is universally awful. He insists you can’t get good sushi anywhere within a thirty mile radius. Maybe it’s true, but I don’t care. I actually like ChickenMcNuggets. Although Ben gives me a hard time if I call them “McNuggets” instead of just “nuggets.” He hates McBastardization of food names.
“She likes it,” I say.
“It just smells so… disgusting,” he says. “How can you stand it?”
“Well, why don’t we take her to Eleven Madison Park then?” I suggest. Eleven Madison Park is one of the swankiest restaurants in Manhattan—it’s something like two-hundred bucks for dinner. Ben took me there once, and I don’t think he could afford to eat anything besides ramen noodles for the next two weeks.
Ben rolls his eyes. “I just don’t like McDonald’s, okay?”
“Noted.”
He eyes the door. “Maybe I’ll just go home.”
“You can’t leave yet!” I say. “We have to socialize for a few minutes.”
That’s my least favorite part of these events: socializing with other parents. These are people I would never be friends with under any other circumstances, but because we all have kids at Mila’s preschool, we are forced to make small talk. Usually about the preschool and our kids, since we have absolutely nothing else in common. At least on playdates, we can talk trash about Mila.
Exactly on cue, a woman named Ann approaches me, nibbling on one of the sugar cookies that Mila hasprovided as the event’s refreshments. Ben and I both hate sugar cookies. Leah apparently does not hate sugar cookies because I can see she’s got one in each hand.
“Wasn’t that great?” Ann says to me.
