to.
“It’s not. It’s just really boring. All I want is to not stay there all day.”
Lainie looked sideways at her. “Do you want to babysit?”
“For you?”
“Yeah, for me. Our nanny’s mom is sick and she’s going home for a couple of weeks. I was going to ask Kristen to do it, and then get my mom and Brian’s mom to fill in, but if you’re really looking for something to do, that would be awesome. It’s just for the mornings, mostly, and some early afternoons.”
“Sure,” Claire said. “Why not?” She hadn’t babysat in years.
“Great,” Lainie said. She smiled and sat back like she’d figured everything out. “Plus I’ll give you free classes at the studio.”
“You already do that.”
“Yeah, but now you’ll really earn it.”
CLAIRE HAD FORGOTTEN HOW BORING babysitting actually was. She’d blocked out the way that when a four-year-old is building a tower out of blocks, sometimes all you can do is keep looking at the clock, sure it’s standing still or maybe even going backward. Babysitting could be so quiet, so devoid of conversation, and just when she thought she’d go crazy, it became loud, a fever pitch of whines and screams and toys hitting the floor.
Claire remembered babysitting for Bobby Foley once, the summer he was obsessed with Pokemon, and they’d been sitting on the floor in his bedroom playing. He started showing her all the Pokemon cards that he had, explaining to her the difference between the characters, how some could fly and some could run fast, and she’d been nodding and then just lay down on the floor while he went on, seriously, ranking his favorites, telling her what who would win in a fight.
She’d murmured, “Mmm-hmm” every once in a while, closed her eyes for just a second, and then woke up twenty minutes later when the door downstairs slammed shut. Bobby was still next to her, babbling on, and she didn’t even think he noticed that she’d been sleeping. Claire had shot straight up and wiped the drool off her face, her heart pounding as she tried to look awake before Mrs. Foley came in the room.
She’d been horrified after that, felt like the world’s most irresponsible babysitter. And now she was babysitting again, spending her days with three little boys, who seemed just as bored with her as she was with them, glancing at her every once in a while to see if she was still there. Tucker screamed every time Lainie left, and then spent the rest of the time wandering his pudgy baby body around the house, picking up anything that wasn’t nailed down—shoes, the remote control, cell phones, coasters—and rearranging all of it. Every once in a while he’d stop to stare at Claire, trying to figure out if she was responsible for the absence of his mother.
Jack didn’t seem to be taking to the situation any better. He was a judgmental child and always had been. When he was a baby, he’d look around the room at everyone, his mouth turned down, his dark eyes taking everything in. Lainie had taken Jack everywhere with her, to bars or friends’ houses, where they would put him to sleep in a bed, with jackets stuffed on either side of him so he wouldn’t roll off. He’d stare at them while they drank wine, his little baby lips pursing and un-pursing as he listened to them talk. Now, when Claire arrived, he gave her the same look, as though he couldn’t quite figure out what she was doing at his house. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t know what she was doing there either.
Each morning when Claire arrived, the boys were half-naked—sometimes in just a diaper, sometimes wearing a shirt, or one sock, or a pair of pants. Lainie was always rushing around no matter what time it was, pausing to put an item of clothing on one of the boys, or stopping to smell their butts to see if they needed a new diaper. Claire would stand in the corner and watch as Lainie raced around and finally ran out the door. It made her tired just to watch.
The third morning she was there, Claire poured Jack some cereal and leaned against the counter to watch him eat. Jack took a bite and then looked up at her. “This milk tastes spicy,” he said.
“It tastes spicy?” Claire asked and Jack nodded. Claire picked up the carton and sniffed it, and a thick, sour smell hit her nose right