Page 2 of The Five Year Lie

“Oh, Ariel! Have you signed up for the picnic yet?” This question is lobbed at me even before I can extract my son from his bike seat.

Even so, I take my sweet time removing Buzz’s helmet and hoisting him down to the ground. When I finally turn around and acknowledge Maddy—one of the preschool’s pushiest PTO mothers—she offers me a clipboard with a dangling pen disguised as a daisy.

Reluctantly, I take it from her.GRADUATION DAY PICNIC SIGN-UP SHEET!it reads.PLEASE TAKE ONE SLOT FOR YOU, AND ONE SLOT FOR YOUR PARTNER!

That’s a lot of exclamation points for a Monday morning. The list of jobs is numbered from one to thirty-six. That’s two for each of the eighteen kids in Buzz’s class. The choices range from baking two dozen cookies to running the sack race.

The whole thing makes me feel salty. First of all—since when do preschoolersgraduate? And then there’s the careful use of the wordpartner. Some of Buzz’s classmates have two mommies or two daddies. So that was thoughtful—but only up to a point.

“What if I don’t have a partner?” I ask Maddy. “Am I still supposed to take two slots?”

“Oh.” Her smile fades by one or two notches, and her eyes reflect genuine puzzlement, as if the existence of single mothers has never occurred to her. “Just do the best you can.”

So I scan the list. The easiest options—napkins, compostable paper plates, and drinking water—have already been nabbed. I scribble my name beside the request for ten watermelons and a chef’s knife to cut them up. Then I note the date—three weeks from now. Somebody’s an overachiever. I hand back the clipboard.

She glances at it, and I brace myself to hear her say something about my half-hearted volunteerism. “Pro tip,” she says instead. “You can use folded cardboard to make a guard for the knife. That’s how I avoid slicing the lining of my bag.” She pats the Tory Burch tote under her arm and smiles.

“Good idea,” I say with the closest thing I can muster to a smile. Then I take Buzz’s hand and walk him into the old brick building.

In Buzz’s classroom, several children are already ransacking the dress-up box, pulling out velvet cloaks and outlandish hats. Buzz pastes himself to my thigh, though, and doesn’t move to join them. He always takes a couple of minutes to warm up to the chaos of preschool.

“He’s a quiet child,” my mother, Imogen, always says. “Watchful.”

Just like his father, I’m always tempted to add. But I never talk about Buzz’s dad.

Buzz likes school, though, so I just ruffle his hair and wait him out. And sure enough, after he watches the action for a minute, his grip on my hand loosens.

His teacher—the wise and kind Miss Betty—approaches us. “Good morning, Buzz. I have some new hats to try on today. And I got the sand table out this morning. See?” She points toward a quiet corner of the room.

My son’s eyes shift to the sand table, and he drops my hand.

I lean over and plant a kiss on his sweet-smelling head. “See you after lunch.”

He flashes me a quick smile before heading over to the sand table.

“There we go,” Betty says. “Good weekend?”

“Absolutely. We helped my mother with some gardening. There was lots of whistling. Sorry.” Buzz is the only kid in his preschool class who can whistle, and he does it constantly. Sometimes it’s tuneful. Sometimes it’s not.

Betty’s eyes crinkle in the corners when she smiles. “I don’t think he even knows when he’s doing it,” she says. “And there are worse habits. Enjoy the day.”

I take one more glance at my child. He’s already holding a tiny rake and smoothing the sand, his lips pursed in a whistle.

Sometimes when I look at him, I just ache.

After drop-off, I pedal slowly toward the office. It’s a warm spring day, and let’s be honest—no one is going to fire me from my lowly job in the family empire for being a couple minutes late.

Seagulls screech overhead as I navigate the twisty brick streets. I never imagined I’d live in New England forever. I always assumed I’d be off making art in Dublin or Prague. Or at least Brooklyn.

Then life happened. Namely Buzz. But there are worse places than Portland, Maine, especially with ample babysitting and a free place to live.

My setup is just about as cushy as a single mother could ever expect. I work part-time for my family’s tech company. That paycheck, combined with my trust fund, keeps me flush with enough cash to afford all the things that privileged four-year-olds enjoy—private preschool, day camps in the summer, and trips to the children’s museum.

It also allows me to spend three afternoons a week pursuing my real passion in the studio—creating blown glass.

Even as I walk my bike into the office building, my mind shifts to a series of flasks I’ve been making. Their sides are flattened and blocky. Like the facets of jewels. I’m experimenting with an ombré effect, where the bottom of the vessel is made from colored glass that slowly gives way to clear at the neck...

“Careful, Ariel.”