The Chocolate Money Read Online Free PDF Page B

But I know her limits. However, maybe I can ask for just one more thing.
    “Babs, will
you
come to the breakfast?”
    “You know I don’t do breakfast, Bettina.” Her tone is now cross, verging on offended.
    I really don’t want to be alone at the breakfast. I come up with an outlandish idea, but it just might work.
    “Can I ask Mack?”
    “What?” she says, as if I have asked to eat her cigarettes.
    “Mack, you know . . .”
    “I fucking know who Mack is. Of course you can’t ask him. Mack has his own stupid kid to deal with, and this is not
Fantasy Island.
He is
not
your dad, and the sooner you forget this crap, the happier you will be.”
    “I wouldn’t tell anyone he was my dad. Just a friend of the family.” I can’t get this scenario out of my head.
    “Bettina, Mack is not a family friend. He’s not even my
friend.
We are fucking. That’s all. Even we don’t do breakfast. And he barely knows who you are.
Point finale.
”
    I don’t tell Babs about our night together. As much as I want the actual Mack to come, it’s more about having a grownup with me. I will look like a complete loser if I show up alone.
    As if she can read my thoughts, Babs says, “The parents at Chicago Day don’t matter. They’re a middle-class clusterfuck. You could just go by yourself. But you aren’t gutsy enough.”
    She’s right about that.
    Then Babs offers up a solution. It’s depressing, at best, but it will save me from total humiliation.
    “Why don’t you ask Stacey? I fucking pay her way above her skill set, and while you’re at school, she does nothing but watch soaps and practice smoking in front of the mirror.”
    As much as I really don’t like Stacey, she’s better than nothing. But she’ll be hard to explain to Wendolyn. Almost none of my classmates have nannies. A few have them, but only because both parents work, and even then they are called babysitters. Not permanent; just filling in until Mommy and Daddy get home. And in any case, the father would still make time to come to the breakfast. Even if it meant missing a couple of meetings. Bringing Stacey is like showing up with the doorman.
    But of course I take Stacey to the breakfast. She seems thrilled to get out of the aparthouse and fill in for Babs. She trades her tight jeans and Dr. Scholl’s for an old red silk dress, a hand-me-down from Babs. I am almost touched that Stacey thinks to dress up.
    The cafeteria smells sweetly of syrup and sugar. The seventh-graders serve us as we go through the buffet. Despite my worries, the students are so excited to be with their fathers they hardly notice I have brought my twenty-one-year-old nanny. And unlike the mothers at Chicago Day, the dads will not tuck this fact into their brains somewhere, eager to gossip it about later. No, the daddies are thinking about their children, then getting back to work. But Wendolyn notices, and this time she seems to actually feel sorry for me.

4. Sex at Our House
January 1980
    T HAT WINTER, BABS sleeps with Mack all the time. He’s over at the aparthouse constantly. It is late at night when he comes, and early in the morning when he leaves. I’m supposed to be sleeping, but on Mack nights, I sit by the door of my bedroom. Listen.
    They no longer confine themselves to her bedroom. Just start on the back stairs. Sisal with the steepest incline. As Babs and Mack crawl up them to her bedroom, I can hear Mack’s steady humming and Babs’s puncturing expletives:
Jesus! Fuck! Finger my cunt!
When Babs’s door clicks shut, I take their place on the staircase. Mack usually leaves a shirt behind. Babs tells me later she likes to suck on his nipples.
    I run my hands over the shirt’s cuffs and finger the buttons one by one. Sometimes I give them tiny kisses, being careful not to get spit on the edges and leave marks where there should not be.
    Mack’s shirts smell so good. Nothing overwhelming and obvious, like Babs’s perfume. Just clean and woodsy like moss. I know I