How About Tuesday Night

Fairfield Porter, Girl in Woods, 1971, Courtesy Parrish Art Museum

The Blakes rented a house off campus on Water street with a swing set in the backyard. Mr. Blake had lengthened the rusty chains for Sam and Rory, their three-year-old twins. I was their babysitter my freshman year in college where they were visiting professors from Oxford. Mrs. Blake had posted a handwritten note with a phone number on the bulletin board outside the cafeteria. I saw it on my way in—I worked the sandwich bar at lunch and thought I’d call if the note was still there at the end of my shift.

You needed a dime then to use the pay phone down the corridor in my dorm. We need someone to watch the children Tuesday nights—we’re in a drama club, you see. Is $4.50 all right? And so it was that every Tuesday night, I rode the bus into town with my homework in my backpack to watch the twins for $4.75—so much for my bargaining skills.

The hand over was always at the swings. Mrs. Blake in her black wraparound skirt and a turtleneck, silver hoops on her ears, her blond hair tied in a loose bun, lacquered chopsticks holding it in place. She pushed Sam, then Rory, who sat on the wooden planks in matching big-buttoned cable knit cardigans, swinging to and fro, Higher Mummy, higher! they shrieked. I’d arrive in the early evening when the days were long and the remains of a meal, the last sips of red wine, a heel of bread, covered the rose metal table in the yard. I liked taking her place, that she seemed happy to see me, and that I didn’t have to go inside just yet. But Sam and Rory’s lips trembled when she bent to kiss them goodbye. Don’t go Mummy. Why must you go? as if it was something they said that made her leave. They’ve had poached eggs on toast but they’ll need a bath before bed, and she was gone, taking her wine glass with her. Always poached eggs and toast, never a word about what I could eat. So I learned to save half my sandwich from lunch to eat after I had tucked in the kids.

Often we stayed outside for an hour or more after they were gone, in no hurry to go inside, pretending we were being defiant staying out so late. I stood behind them listening to a sweet banter, their British accents still fresh, not ironic, little fingers curled tightly around makeshift chains, the half-moons of their fingernails glowing in the waning light.

I carried them inside in the crook of my arms and they giggled when I called them sacks of russet potatoes. We’re not rusty potatoes! they protested. 

In the kitchen they climbed the stools knees first while I stirred Ovaltine into their milk and peeled and sectioned green apples. They watched intently as I ran the knife in a perfect spiral, paring the fruit the way my grandfather had taught me, crying: 

Mummy never peels apples!

Then what does your rabbit eat?

We don’t have a rabbit, silly!

Are you sure? I thought I saw a bunny under your bed!

A game of hide and seek would follow—all three of us squealing, giving chase to the invisible bunny, ending at last in the bathroom. While I ran the bath, I urged them to undress and get in with bunny because he was very dirty from playing in the yard and they needed to scrub his ears, handing them each a soapy sponge. And while they washed the rabbit, tugging on its ears and letting it slip away causing a great deal of splashing, I shampooed their soft curls and sang the same silly rhymes my mother used to sing to me in the bath, and neither of us cared about water pooling on the bathroom floor. I lifted them out one by one. Rory first because he was the Maharajah and I had to wrap his turban just so, and then came Sam, grinning into the folds of the towel I draped around her shoulders. We curtsied and called her: Your highness.

They padded to their bedrooms where I insisted on making their rumpled beds, smoothing the sheets and tucking the corners. What’s the use of that? they asked. What’s the use? Oh, what’s the use? I’d chant, fishing out a sock, a small airplane, a barrette, throwing them over my shoulder, and they’d run to catch them, giggling like crazy. At last in their pajamas, they yawned in synchrony under comforters I pulled to their chins. I told them the story of the old woman who lived in the woods, each time adding a small detail to a well worn tale of that snowy evening, when there was a knock on the door just when the little old lady was about to make a cup of elderberry tea. One by one, all the animals in the forest came to her cabin seeking shelter from the cold. Soon, a bear, her cub, a mouse and his wife, a donkey, a parrot, a wolf, and so on, curl up by her fire until there is no more room, and she latches her door, calls goodnight to each of them, and I whispered goodnight to Sam and Rory.

It was always just after eight when I checked the clock on the stovetop. Ravenous, I would eat my sandwich standing up in the kitchen. On the third or fourth Tuesday night, I opened and closed every cabinet until I found a box of After-Eights and ate two, only to go back again and again, because who eats only two mint chocolate wafers? And bolder still the next Tuesday, when I scooped coffee ice cream into a cereal bowl and held a spoonful in my mouth, letting it melt slowly on my tongue, for I had never tasted coffee ice cream before. Standing in the kitchen doorway, I observed the quiet domestic still-life of the Blake’s living room, the random composition of their objects suddenly filling me with longing, a yearning to be an adult, with a record collection and wine glasses—all still too distant to ever belong to me. 

I looked through their albums and chose Bob Dylan, lifting the cover off their turntable to remove Sarah Vaughn. I drew the curtains in the front window and turned off the lights to dance alone in the dark with a bowl of ice cream. What was it about being in someone’s living room, eating their chocolates, coveting silver hoop earrings, hearing these lyrics: Why wait any longer for the one you love, when he’s standing in front of you?, that at eighteen, I was suddenly so tired of being a girl? Tired of homework and final exams and clay bottles of Blue Nun for candelabras. Tired of scented lip gloss and wireless bras and flannel nightgowns. Slamming car doors interrupted my reverie and I ran to hide the bowl and yank Dylan from the turntable. I looked every bit the interloper, blinking wildly when they opened the front door and stopped mid-sentence to watch me sprint outside, not waiting for my money, and poor Mr. Blake shouting: I can give you a lift if you like!

All week I expected Mrs. Blake to call our dorm number and cancel next Tuesday night, but the call never came and the pattern of our evenings remained unchanged. No sooner had I tucked in the children, that I played house with myself, once even brewing a pot of coffee to pour over the ice cream, and another time, a splash of cognac. I even tried on Mrs. Blake’s silk robe that hung from a hook on the bathroom door and tied the sash, then quickly took it off—a line I couldn’t cross. I relied on these unaltered rituals, the dancing in the dark, the After-Eights, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, the coffee ice cream they kept replenishing, though we never spoke of it, to measure the hours, the days, the weeks before my next birthday when I imagined I would be transformed.

When summer came, there were teary goodbyes to Sam and Rory with promises to write. The Blakes returned to England and I went to Macy’s. I had spent little of my earnings and I bought myself an ivory silk robe.

Thirty years later, in a living room with vases and candles and photographs in silver frames, I keep the freezer stocked with ice cream and make our babysitter a nice dinner before leaving for a night out. I hope she, too, will tell a good bedtime story, that she will keep herself awake with chocolate and sugar. I doubt she will find the cognac, and whatever she listens to on her Ipod, I’ll never know.