And later that evening, Ruby received her first playdate invitation from a certain [email protected].
Hi, Karen. I got your e-mail from Ms. Millburn. Would your daughter, Ruby, like to come over for a playdate with my daughter, Charlotte, one day after school next week? Tuesdays and Thursdays are best. We live right near the school. I can pick her up and take her home with Charlotte. Let me know when you have a chance. All best, Susan
Karen immediately wrote back.
Susan, thanks so much for writing! I’m sure Ruby would love to have a playdate with Charlotte. Next Tuesday is perfect for us. I will let Ms. Millburn know that you are bringing home both girls. What time should I or my sitter pick Ruby up from your house, and what is your address? Thanks and regards, Karen
Susan replied.
How’s five o’clock? We’re at 321 Pendleton. See you then!
At first reading, 321 Pendleton failed to register with Karen as anything more than an address. A split second later, to her horror and fascination, she realized it was Nathaniel Bordwell’s address. That Nathaniel Bordwell. Which meant that Charlotte was most likely Nathaniel’s daughter (or granddaughter) and Susan his wife (or daughter, or daughter-in-law). What were the chances of Ruby befriending the one child in a school of seven hundred whom Karen would have wished her to stay away from? She supposed the odds were one in seven hundred. But now that Ruby had beaten them, what was she supposed to do?
Karen knew it would be prudent for her to write back and say she’d forgotten about a prior engagement and needed to reschedule and then fail to do so—and hope that, in the intervening weeks, the two girls lost interest in each other. But the truth was that it also pained her to have to contemplate canceling. She’d been so tickled on Ruby’s behalf to receive the invitation, which had somehow confirmed for Karen that she’d made the right decision in taking her daughter out of Betts. (What mother doesn’t want her child to be popular and have lots of friends?) Plus, Karen knew Ruby would be tickled too. And what were the chances that the Bordwells would go to the school administrative office and discover that the address that Ruby’s family had registered her with at Mather was, in fact, their own? Moreover, if the discrepancy between Ruby’s real and fake addresses should ever come to light, Karen could always claim it was a mistake on the part of the school.
“Guess what—your new friend Charlotte invited you on a playdate!” Karen couldn’t resist telling Ruby that evening.
“Really?” said Ruby.
“Really.”
“Yay! I wonder if her mom will let us play Minecraft. Charlotte loves Minecraft so much she’s going to be an Enderman for Halloween. She already has her costume picked out.”
“Wow—that far in advance?” said Karen, who had lost the ability to differentiate between her daughter’s excitement and her own.
Hungry Kids was such a small organization that, at times, everyone’s job bled into everyone else’s. Because of this, Molly had asked Karen to coordinate an Easter Sunday feast and egg hunt at a soup kitchen run out of a Baptist church that was practically in Karen’s backyard—or, really, the backyard of the Fairview Gardens public housing project.
Karen’s first decision as organizer was to fill the plastic eggs that the children would hunt for with tiny boxes of raisins rather than the usual milk chocolate morsels in colored tinfoil. In the back of her mind, she worried that the switch was a patronizing and Scrooge-like gesture, akin to the no-candy e-mail that Laura Collier had sent out to her daughter’s class the autumn before. But then, part of Hungry Kids’ mission was to encourage healthy eating habits in a population at high risk for diabetes. Ever keen to instill a sense of social responsibility in her only child, Karen had decided to bring Ruby along to the event, explaining that they’d be “serving a fancy lunch to people who can’t afford to do anything fancy.”
“I have to serve?” cried Ruby. “I’m just a kid!”
“You don’t have to serve,” said Karen. “But maybe you can help carry a few things to the table. Is that too much to ask?”
“But what if they’re heavy?”
“Then you don’t have to carry them,” said Karen, sighing. “You just have to be nice. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“Plus, there’s going to be an Easter egg hunt.”
“Really?” Ruby sounded suddenly more enthusiastic.
“Yes,” said Karen, who didn’t have the heart to tell her about the raisins, not least because Ruby had always detested them. Secretly, so did Karen.
On the Sunday in question, Karen woke inexplicably late to find a cold rain beating on the windows. Distressed, she reminded herself that the feast was scheduled to take place in the church’s basement, not outside, and that the Easter egg hunt was easily moved into the church proper. There were plenty of hiding opportunities in the pews. Keen to keep up morale, Karen texted these sentiments to her two-person volunteer corps, who were due to arrive at the church in advance of her and set up. Then she went to make breakfast.
Ruby was in the living room Netflixing a salacious tween sitcom that, in all likelihood, she’d been watching for an hour already. It was one of the mysteries of the universe why her daughter, who struggled to wake up for school, voluntarily woke at dawn on weekend mornings, seemingly fresh and rested. The situation with her husband wasn’t all that different: Matt had a standing Sunday-morning basketball game that he was religious about attending, but during the week he seemed unable to get out of bed before ten. Was it unfair to expect consistency in others?
“Sweetie,” Karen announced at quarter to eleven, “it’s time to get dressed for the Easter lunch. Now.”
“Can I just watch the end of the show?” asked Ruby. “There’s only five more minutes.” There were always five more minutes.
“I’d really rather you turned off the TV,” said Karen. “You’ve been watching for almost three hours already, because Mommy was being Bad Mommy and felt like doing her own thing this morning.”
“Pretty pleeeease?” moaned Ruby.
“Fine, but only if you promise to get dressed up,” said Karen, who, when it came to parenting, didn’t see any harm in bargaining.
“I promise,” said Ruby, who not only honored her pledge but who felt compelled to try on every dress in her closet, the majority of which she’d outgrown two years before.