Page 2 of Summer Skate

JESSICA

New York City, present day

I GET UP WITH THE SUN , which I’ve never done before, in any prior stage of life.

But once you have children, suddenly you’re a confused but obedient farmer, ready to plow the fucking fields of the Upper East Side.

You see, they’ll be awake soon, the children , and I’ve learned that I have to do a significant amount of yoga plus a cold plunge in which I’m hoping some form of baptism occurs, before I have the power to deal with them.

So, I take my preparatory measures. Is that sweat dropping onto my yoga mat, or tears? Depends on the morning.

By 6:45, my time is up. My five-year-old daughter is awake, making demands.

I start by getting her dressed for school, shoving clothes onto her while she’s flopping on the bed like a fish.

She could not be less helpful if she were doing it on purpose, which she more than likely is.

I used to strive for cute outfits, but the bloom is off the rose now and I strive for a look that screams “not in violation of public decency laws.”

She takes a solid ten minutes to choose a pair of pants, which turns out to be the only pair of pants that has a hole in it. I tell her no.

“Some clothes are meant to be ripped, Mom! It’s fashion ,” she says.

“But these aren’t jeans! They’re regular pants!”

I let her wear them. What the hell. I don’t know what the kids are wearing these days. Maybe it is fashion.

I get myself dressed in a T-shirt and leather miniskirt.

I don’t care how early it is. I’m not showing up to this shit in exercise clothes.

The Upper East Side moms have ruined exercise clothes for me.

I once went to drop-off in a short black dress and fishnet stockings and one of the moms told me I looked like I had spent the night in Mick Jagger’s hotel room.

You know what? Nicest thing she’s ever said to me.

I hustle my daughter into the kitchen for breakfast, which is sort of like herding a drunk cat that wants nothing to do with you. But I focus. I keep my eye on the prize. If I don’t give her constant cheerleading for this harrowing journey, she will go astray or stop altogether.

Do you want yogurt or cereal?

. . .

Yogurt or cereal?

. . .

Answer me, please.

Pancakes!

No. No pancakes. Only on the weekends.

Waffles!

No waffles.

Why?

Why? Because I fear that anything more than a two-step process might break me. So I plead. I bargain. I lodge a bunch of threats against her dearest stuffed animals. “Choose a breakfast or the elephant gets it.”

There’s crying in the background, which means I must now address my two-year-old, who is wailing from his crib.

I will never understand why kids wake up and cry.

Imagine, as an adult, the state you would have to be in to wake up from sleeping and head straight into tears.

Are they crying because it’s over? Because that I might understand.

He’s a second child, used to a steady level of neglect. It’s part of his lifestyle. So I throw a banana into his cage and he stops.

Good monkey.

The difference between a first child and a second child is that a first child gets toast with butter and jam and the crusts cut off and the second child gets a piece of bread.

By now you may be noticing a distinct lack of a second parent.

But he’s there. Oh , he’s there. You see, dads are blessed with the uncanny ability to never hear their children cry.

So, he’s there but he’s in bed, lounging, and one kid could be losing a fucking ear and he will not budge from that spot until something crazy happens, like he himself has to pee.

Then, if I’m lucky, he’ll take a shower, with vague plans to help me after, once everything is already done.

Having kids is fun! Instead of having morning sex, you fight over who gets to eat breakfast sitting down.

And I want to have sex with my husband. I really do.

My husband is Alejandro Martinez. He is extremely hot and hails from Mexico City.

He is tall, dark, and handsome but the specific kind of handsome that knows about the South American markets.

However, nowadays we spend most of our time together taking care of our children, and during that time we’re usually pissing each other off, which does not lend itself to sex.

The baby is crying again.

“He’s trying to say something!” my daughter yells from the kitchen.

“What is it?” I reply.

“Help!”

After breakfast, I face my greatest challenge of the morning: getting my daughter to pee before we leave.

I once saw an episode of Euphoria where the main character was so depressed that she couldn’t make it to the bathroom to pee.

Couldn’t stand up. Couldn’t exert the muscles necessary to walk the thirty-five feet to the bathroom.

You watch her struggle, crawl on the ground as time collapses to create one endless, suffocating loop, life passing her by as she cries and screams and whimpers. I relate to this.

After peeing, my daughter will attempt to tear apart the house in one final blow to our empire.

I don’t really care about the bed being made, but I feel a legal responsibility to make sure her rummaging in the drawers doesn’t result in a small object on the loose that my son could swallow.

He doesn’t eat pizza with the slightest speck of green on it, but I’m somehow worried he’s going to take down a lithium battery.

The baby is at least partially to blame for my lack of progress at work. Because in case anyone is trying to locate my brain, it’s busy keeping track of the various shoes of the dolls in my house, to make sure my son doesn’t mistake them for M he’s nearing the end of his thirty-minute shower, and I don’t want to interrupt the spa session he’s been having this morning.

I grab my phone. One missed call from my agent.

I take a deep breath. I text him: I can’t talk right now.

Call you later . I slip my phone into my backpack, and we head to the lobby.

We have a five-minute walk to school. You’d think I’d be home free.

But no. Because that’s when the question-and-answer segment of our journey begins.

What is a church?

What kind of people are immune to snake bites?

How much cake will I get on my birthday?

Why is there nighttime?

If grown-ups have babies and kids don’t, then who had the first baby?

I tell her: I don’t know, ask Daddy, or sometimes just “okay” because I’ve lost track of whether she’s asking or telling. Then, suddenly, she wants a scary story. You want a scary story? Sure. How about this one: Our nanny calls in sick.

As we walk, she is clutching a love letter she wrote to a boy in her class.

She is so excited to see what his reaction will be and asking if it is better to give it to him on the street or in his cubby.

And with this, I suddenly understand all the romantic problems of the world.

Because I’ve seen the boys in her class.

They don’t deserve this much consideration.

She needs someone more mature. I keep thinking: Is there a third grader you could give this to?

At some point between Madison and Park, my daughter has a question about her legs.

She stops walking. She decides that she can’t walk.

Like an idiot, I stop to ask: “What’s wrong?

” I lean down. She’s whispering. After the fourth repetition, I figure it out.

She says that when she walks short distances, they don’t hurt.

But when she walks long distances, they do.

I drag us onward. So she has legs. She is in possession of a pair of legs.

We maneuver through the crowd of chatting parents and noisy children.

I am holding my daughter’s sweaty palm, dragging her forward to the teacher, turning a smile on and off at the parents I know, like a light switch that somebody keeps hitting over and over.

I can feel my backpack vibrating, my phone pressed between my shoulders, a shot of stress running through me, because I can’t believe he’s calling again, after I just sent that message. It’s not even nine a.m.!

We make it to the door. And more importantly, the teacher. The handoff is about to take place. It feels precarious. Like making sure a bee goes through a keyhole. But then, it happens.

Once she’s inside, my hands are free, but my soul is still trapped.

The half block between school and the outside world is a minefield.

Because now I am faced with another obstacle: the other moms. And not just any moms. The moms who have chosen to stay, to linger, to socialize.

And those are by far the worst kinds of moms. There’s nothing I respect more than a mom who drops her kid off and then gets the fuck out as quickly as possible.

But they don’t care about my respect, just mundane chitchat about the weather, what coat they chose to wear and why, their designer handbags slung over their shoulders. The scene. The scene .

“Oh! Jessica! Do you want to join us for a moms’ lunch on Friday?”

“Ohhhh, sorry, I can’t,” I say, kicking off this Oscar-worthy performance with a wince of pain.

“Oh no. Got plans?”

No, I just . . . don’t want to .

And then I delve into the details of an emergency dental procedure. I write fiction for a living. Details make all the difference.