This Was Not the Plan Read online

  I let out a long, jittery exhale. That’s the best answer he can give me, I tell myself, short of offering me my job back.

  “Thank you, Fred. I really appreciate that.”

  “I have a plan. I just need a week or so to work out some details. Can you hang in there for me?”

  “Yes,” I say, feeling my eyes fill with tears of relief. “Yes, I can do that.”

  “Good. You’re a terrific attorney, Charlie. You’re the best guy I have. We’re going to move past this. You’ll see.”

  “Thank you. I’m so grateful,” I say, and let out an embarrassing sniff. I wipe my tears away with a quick brush of the hand. Thank God for Fred, I think. He’s always had my back, from the minute I stepped foot into Hardwick. And he’s got my back still, when I need his support the most.

  “Nonsense. No need for gratitude. This is business,” he replies, though I can hear emotion welling up in his voice, too. “So, how are you feeling? Lorraine tells me the doctor gave you a clean bill of health.”

  “Yes,” I say, with an embarrassed laugh. “Just a little stressed out, as it turns out.”

  “Aren’t we all,” he says, and we laugh together. “I’m glad to hear you’re doing okay. And Caleb? Are you getting to spend some time with him?”

  “Yep, I’m with him now, actually.”

  “Oh, that’s great. Well, I don’t want to keep you. You go enjoy the day with your boy, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say, smiling. “Fred, thanks again. I just—”

  “You don’t need to thank me, Charlie. Just doing my job. I’ll be in touch.” And with that, Fred is gone.

  And, I realize with utter horror, so is Caleb.

  The Disappearance

  The sandbox is empty.

  The nannies that were sitting on the bench beside the sandbox just moments ago are gone. I scan the swings and the slides. I peer beneath the benches, behind the water fountain. I begin to call Caleb’s name, over and over, louder and louder, panic rising in my throat. There is no response. There is only the rustle of wind in the trees and the far-off honking of the cars on Fifth Avenue. In the distance a baby begins to cry.

  The gate to the playground, which bears a sign indicating that it should remain closed at all times, is open. When I see that, my heart drops into my stomach. It’s scary enough to lose sight of a five-year-old boy in a fenced-in space; it’s another thing altogether to lose him in Central Park. I take off, sprinting towards the gate. I’m just outside the playground when I realize I’ve left Caleb’s scooter by the park bench. Too late, I think. Scooters can be replaced. Kids cannot.

  I screech to a halt at the gate, unsure of which way to go. To the north is Cedar Hill, where I take Norman for his morning run; it’s possible Caleb’s headed there. To the south, though, is the boat pond, where Caleb likes to feed the ducks and watch the miniature sailboats glide by. I close my eyes and say a little prayer; something tells me to pick ducks over puppies. I turn south. Ducks over puppies, I keep saying to myself, like a mantra, like a prayer. Ducks over puppies. Please God, let him have picked ducks over puppies.

  A passing baby, who apparently thinks I’m involved in some kind of high-speed game of hide-and-seek, begins to laugh and clap her hands. “Bbbbbzeeee!” she shouts gleefully from her stroller. The mother frowns as I whiz past. She pulls her phone out and begins to dial. I momentarily envision being arrested for losing my child. I feel bile rising in my throat as my feet slap the pavement.

  My head spins when I reach the boat pond; there are children everywhere. A little boy with fuzzy white-blond hair scoots by on a Razor. I reach out before realizing it’s not Caleb; his mother glares at me and moves protectively between us. Across the water, two girls scream the Dora the Explorer song. There are dogs everywhere, running and sniffing and heading off down countless paths leading away from the pond.

  It’s hopeless, I think as I shout Caleb’s name. This is it. Now I’ve actually lost everything.

  The sunlight is almost unbearably bright. The voices around me are growing softer. I think I’m about to pass out, when suddenly the crowd parts and I see him. He’s squatting at the edge of the boat pond just thirty feet away, his hand dangling dangerously close to the water.

  “Caleb!” I shout. “Caleb!”

  Caleb looks up from what he’s doing. When he sees me, he smiles and waves, as though we’re old acquaintances who just happen to be bumping into one another.

  “Hi, Daddy!” he sings out, then turns back to the pond. He hasn’t got a care in the world.

  “Caleb!” I drop to my knees when I reach him, wrap my arms tight around his small torso. “Thank God, thank God you’re okay.” I rock him back and forth, the way I used to when he was a baby. “Please, don’t ever do that again. Don’t ever scare me like that again.”

  He pulls back, his fists pushing into my chest, and examines my face. He reaches up and touches my wet cheek. He looks perplexed. “Why are you crying, Daddy?”

  “Because you scared me,” I say, my voice hoarse. “You can’t just run off like that. I need to be able to see you all the time, okay?”

  Caleb’s face crumples like a piece of old Kleenex. “I’m sorry,” he says, staring at the ground. “Fiona wanted to see the duck babies. I told her to ask but you were on the phone.”

  I try to hug him again, but he’s having none of it. He wriggles out of my arms, his small Croc’d feet kicking me in the shins. I’m still panting from the sprint, and I don’t have the energy to fight him.

  “Off, Daddy,” he says, frowning. “Off.”

  “Okay, buddy.” I raise my hands in surrender. “Off.” I stand up, brush off my shins. I swipe my eyes discreetly with my sleeve. I realize I’ve cried more in the past five days than I have the past five years.

  Get it together, Goldwyn, I tell myself, like a coach giving his team a half-time pep talk. Stop crying. Man up, for Chrissake.

  “How about,” I say, with a big phony smile, “we go buy some bread from that hot dog cart and we feed it to the baby ducks?”

  “Yeah!” he says, punching my leg for emphasis. “That’s exactly what I wanted.”

  “Cool, bud. Let’s do it.” I reach down and grab his hand. I hold it tight as we walk over to the hot dog cart. Even when we get there, I don’t let go. I know I’ll have to eventually. Not right now. Not quite yet. To my relief, Caleb doesn’t seem to want to let go, either.

  • • •

  For lunch, I let Caleb eat a giant pretzel smeared in ketchup from the hot dog vendor. I momentarily consider whether or not ketchup can be considered a vegetable before remembering that tomatoes are actually a fruit. Still, I’m willing to consider it a nutritional victory; it’s better, anyway, than what we ate for breakfast. Caleb picks at his pretzel the same way he did with his donut hole, carefully peeling off the crust first until only denuded bread innards remain. Mira used to do that with her bagels. I always thought there was something so sad and exposed about those decrusted bagels.

  “You want?” she used to say, pushing her plate towards me while absently reading the New York Times.

  “But the middle is the best part.”

  “And that’s why I saved it for you.” Then she would smile at me, revealing her ever-so-slightly-overlapping front teeth, and she would tuck a tuft of white-blond hair behind her ear, and I would fall in love with her just a little harder.

  “You want it, Daddy?” Caleb says, holding out the pretzel inside.

  I’ve been staring at his pretzel, I realize, remembering Mira.

  “Oh,” I reply. “No. You should have it.”

  “Okay,” he says, and shrugs. “I’ll save it for you just in case.”

  “You ready to head home?”

  “We left my scooter in the playground.” He skips off in that direction.

  “It may not still be there, buddy,” I say, jogging after him. Our chances of reclaiming that scooter, I think, hover somewhere around zero percent.

  “It’ll be ther
e,” Caleb replies, confident. There’s something about his faith in humanity that both warms and breaks my heart.

  “We can always buy a new one if it’s not. Okay, bud?”

  Caleb doesn’t respond. He takes my hand and pulls me towards the playground gate.

  “See?” he says when he opens it. “I told you.”

  Beside the bench, right where we left it, is Caleb’s bright-purple scooter.

  “Well, look at that,” I say as Caleb reaches up and gives me a high five.

  The Sads

  I sleep poorly that night, plagued by dreams of losing Caleb. I awake skittish, jumping at everything from the sound of the alarm clock to the drill from the construction site next door. It’s as though my paternal instinct has gone into overdrive, trying to compensate for yesterday’s horrific mistake. Though Caleb begs me to let him ride his Razor to camp, I decline, buckling him firmly into his stroller instead. My nerves can’t handle him dodging traffic on the two-inch aluminum scooter that Zadie affectionately refers to as “the Death Skate.” No way. Not after yesterday.

  While Caleb is at camp, I run to the grocery store, armed with the highly specific list of organic foods that Zadie has deemed acceptable for Caleb’s consumption. It takes me twice as long as I anticipated, and I find only half of the items. I sprint back to our apartment, but the soy ice cream sandwiches have melted by the time I reach home.

  I’m heading back towards the school when a heavy and unexpected downpour blankets Manhattan. Within minutes my clothes are stuck to my body and my feet are squishing uncomfortably inside my sneakers. Two mothers with umbrellas wrinkle their noses at me as I push past, my head swiveling left, then right, looking around for Caleb.

  The scene is grim. Several caretakers, myself included, are late. Their unclaimed charges line the front hallway of Madison Avenue Preschool in various states of meltdown, like a toddler version of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Jeannine French, the program director, stands at the reception desk, her arms crossed and her face pinched into an expression that reads: I really don’t get paid enough for this.

  As usual, it’s not hard to spot Caleb among his peers. Today he’s wearing bright purple running shorts and a green tank top last seen on Richard Simmons in Sweatin’ to the Oldies. Caleb’s socks are pulled up almost to his knees, and the laces of his pink Converses are, as usual, untied. When I was Caleb’s age, my clothes were a constant source of embarrassment for me. Money was always tight in our house, and so Zadie and I wore a lot of hand-me-downs from older kids in our neighborhood. Even in the best-fitting ones I felt conspicuous, like someone would be able to tell my sweater wasn’t originally mine just by looking at it. I experienced an almost dizzying rush of envy every time I saw fathers and sons in coordinating polo shirts or bathing suits. It crushed me whenever I saw pictures of my own father in the newspaper in his sharp suits and ties. I swore to myself that my child would always have new clothes. Sometimes when I see Caleb I have to remind myself that he is actually wearing new clothes. Today he looks like someone dressed him straight from the half-off bin at the Salvation Army.

  He’s sitting alone on a bench beneath a giant quilted rainbow, his Dora the Explorer backpack on his lap. He looks sad. When he sees me, he waves with both arms like a shipwreck survivor about to be picked up by the coast guard.

  “Hey, bud. How was camp today?” I ask, though from his mood I can already guess.

  He shrugs, declining to answer.

  “What did you guys do?”

  Before Caleb can say anything, a stroller slams into the back of my calf. I look up, surprised, and find myself face to face with Hunt Callahan’s wife.

  “Oh, hi,” she says, her voice dripping with disdain. “Could you maybe, like, move? You’re sort of blocking the way.” She raises her eyebrows; no easy feat, given her obviously deep commitment to Botox.

  I glance around, verifying that there is, in fact, ample space to navigate a stroller around Caleb and me. There is. I refuse to budge.

  “Well,” I say, “we’re almost ready to go here—”

  “MOVE IT,” her toddler commands from his stroller. He points at me with a single fat finger. I can’t help but notice that he’s dressed in chinos, a button-down shirt, and loafers. “MOVE IT OR LOSE IT.”

  “Excuse me?” I say, bending down towards him.

  “We’re in a rush,” she says, more agitated this time. “You’re really going to have to move.”

  I open my mouth to retort but realize Caleb is looking at me, gauging my response. I step back, holding Caleb’s hand in my left hand, his stroller in my right. She pushes past so fast that her long, highlighted ponytail whips me in the face.

  “Please,” I mutter through gritted teeth. “Don’t want you to miss your spin class.”

  She whirls around, her eyes blazing. “What did you just say?”

  Whoops. Gulp. I hadn’t actually intended for her to hear me.

  “I said enjoy your spin class,” I say as pleasantly as possible. I point to her SoulCycle bag for emphasis.

  “Oh,” she says. “Thanks.” Then she turns on her heel and flounces off through the entry doors.

  “That boy’s mean,” Caleb whispers when they’re gone. “He said Dora is for babies.”

  “Well, he’s wrong, buddy. Dora is for everyone.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Caleb says, and squeezes my hand three times.

  “Tough crowd around here, right?” I look up to see a bearded guy smiling at me. He’s holding hands with a girl Caleb’s age. Her cockeyed pigtails scream my dad did my hair this morning.

  “I’m Tom,” he says. “This is Delaney.”

  “Hey,” I reply, with a cautious smile. “I’m Charlie. And Caleb.”

  “I know,” Tom says, with a polite nod. “I’ve seen you. Not too many other dads around here at pickup.”

  “Yeah. Seems that way.”

  “So, is this, like, a temporary thing for you? Or are you now a ‘SAD’?”

  “Am I sad?” I repeat, frowning.

  Tom smiles. “No. A ‘SAD.’ S-A-H-D. Stay-at-home dad. Some guys pronounce the H, you know—‘SAHD’—like ‘Saab’ or something. I prefer ‘SAD.’ It’s poetic, don’t you think?”

  “Poetic as in depressing?”

  He laughs. “Yeah, or hilarious. Either way, potentially the worst acronym of all time.”

  “This is just temporary for me. Couple weeks, maybe.”

  Tom nods like he’s heard that line before.

  “I’m a lawyer, actually,” I add quickly. “White-collar defense. Been at a firm in the city for ten years.” Then I shut my mouth. I have no idea why I feel compelled to give this guy my résumé. Judging from his Birkenstocks and T-shirt, which reads We Interrupt This Relationship to Bring You Football Season, I’m not sure my professional credentials are going to carry much weight with him.

  “Sweet,” he says, and nods.

  “So, what about you?”

  “Yeah, this is my jam,” he says, gesturing to the lobby filled with kids.

  “Cool. That’s very cool.”

  “Yeah, it is,” he says with a genuine smile.

  “Daddy, time for dance,” Delaney says, pulling at his sleeve.

  “Listen, man, I gotta run. I don’t know if you’d be interested, but on Thursdays I always meet up with a bunch of guys and their kids. If it’s nice we go to Sheep Meadow. We play kickball, Frisbee, whatever. Or we try to, anyway. If the weather’s bad, we meet at someone’s house. It’s a cool group. Maybe you and El Capitán here can swing by sometime.”

  “Thanks. I’ll think about it,” I say, though I already know I won’t. I have way too much going on to spend the afternoon throwing around a Frisbee with some dude who looks like he just got back from Burning Man.

  “Great.” He fishes around in his pocket, digs out a pen and a napkin that looks like it might contain used gum. He writes something on the napkin and thrusts it at me. “Here’s my e-mail address. This would be a lot easie
r if I had a business card, huh?”

  “Thanks,” I say, stuffing the napkin in my pocket. “I’ll see you around.”

  “Yeah, see you,” he says, and ambles out the door like he’s got all the time in the world.

  • • •

  “I met another dad at pickup today,” I say casually to Zadie on the phone that night. “Some guy named Tom. He’s a stay-at-home dad, apparently.”

  “Oh, yeah, Delaney’s dad. She’s a sweet girl. She was in Caleb’s class last year. Caleb likes her.”

  “So, how many are there? Stay-at-home dads, I mean?”

  “You mean, like, nationally?”

  “No, I meant, like, that you’ve seen around.”

  “A few. There were some really successful moms in Caleb’s class, you know. Tom’s wife, Morgan, ran Sheppard Capital.”

  “Wow,” I said, surprised. “I know that firm. They’re really good. I always thought Morgan Sheppard was a guy.”

  I can hear Zadie rolling her eyes through the phone. “Of course you did.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She doesn’t immediately respond, but instead lets out a long, labored sigh. “You know she died giving birth to Delaney,” she says. “Some kind of infection.”

  “Jesus. That’s horrible.”

  “Yeah, it’s just unthinkably sad. Tom’s a terrific dad. He used to be an art teacher. He’s so laid-back, always smiling. You should get to know him.”

  “He invited me to hang out with some dads’ group he organized.”

  “You should go, Charlie. That sounds great. And it would be good for Caleb, too. He’s shy, but once he gets comfortable, he might like being around other kids. I’ve been trying with the playdates, but it hasn’t been easy.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’d really, you know, mesh with Tom and his friends.”