I sit back down, I down the last of my piss-warm beer and say the inevitable. “So, you wanted to talk.” Might as well get it over with, so I can call Mabel and see what’s going on.
Mom sets Hope’s empty bottle on the table and looks at me. “School starts a week from tomorrow, Ryden.”
“I know.”
“What are we going to do with this little munchkin?”
I stare at my plate. “Alan can take her after school while I’m at soccer, and then I can pick her up and drop her off here before going to work.”
Mom shakes her head like she can’t believe how thick I’m being. “First of all, it’s not fair to rely on Alan like this. You’re not paying him, and it’s his senior year too, you know. Hope isn’t his kid.”
I wish she were.
Whoa, where did that thought come from? I mean, if I had it all to do again, obviously I would have put on a fucking condom, pill or no pill. But that’s not what the thought was. The thought was I wished Alan were Hope’s dad. That would mean everything would be the same—Meg would be gone, Hope would be here. Only, Meg and Alan would have…
No. I do not wish that at all. He’s just so much better at taking care of Hope than I am…
“Ryden?” Mom says.
Huh? “What? Sorry, I was spacing out.”
“I can see that. Please, we need to focus. This is serious, bud.”
“Sorry.”
“I think you should really rethink the Alan thing. But the more pressing issue is what we’re going to do with Hope during the hours when you—and Alan—are at school.”
“I wish Downey High School had a day care center like UCLA does,” I say on a sigh.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think there’s much of a demand for that.”
True.
Mom gets up and helps herself to another beer. She doesn’t offer me one this time.
“I’ve tried everything I could think of, Mom. I called Grandma and Grandpa, I went to Meg’s parents’…I don’t know what else to do.”
Mom nods. “Your check from Grandma and Grandpa came yesterday,” she says. “I put it on the hall table for you. Did you see it?”
“No.” I’ve been d-i-s-t-r-a-c-t-e-d.
Mom’s looking at me, and every time I glance up from my empty plate, I catch sight of her tired eyes and hate myself just a little bit more for putting her through all of this.
Finally she says, “I asked around, did some digging. We have a couple of options.”
“You did? We do?”
“Option one: There’s a government-subsidized child care facility downtown that offers a sliding fee scale. I called them, and they would charge us $275 a week.”
I’m about to say that sounds amazing—I make about that at Whole Foods. I’m sure Mom will help with other expenses while we figure it out. Maybe I can ask for a raise at work too. But she keeps talking.
“The environment there isn’t great though, Ryden. There are a lot of children and not enough staff. Hope probably wouldn’t get very much, if any, personal attention. And the facilities definitely leave something to be desired. And who knows what kind of germs are being spread around.”
“Well, what’s option two?”
“My friend Selena offered to share her nanny with us, which was very generous. The nanny is wonderful. It would be such a nice place for Hope to go to every day. But they live in Addison, so you’d have to drive more than a half hour each way before and after school.”
Which means I wouldn’t make it to soccer on time. A half hour there after school, another half hour back to Alan’s, then back to school. I’d be almost an hour and a half late to practice every day. Yeah, Coach would stand for that for, oh, about four seconds. And then I’d be gone. Off the team. Sayonara, UCLA.
“And we’d have to contribute to the cost,” Mom continues, “because the nanny’s rates would go up since she’d be taking care of another child. Selena said two hundred a week should be fine.”
So my choice is between handing over my entire paycheck so Hope can go to an overcrowded, budget day care where she would get ignored and probably catch some nasty ass infectious disease, or quitting soccer and spending a lot more time in the car for $75 less a week and for Hope to get a much higher quality of care.
I bang my head on the table. “My brain hurts.”
Mom takes a deep breath, clearly about