Mark Trainer

     Braintree thought he might write a book someday about being a stay-at-home dad. It'd be divided into chapters, each beginning with an epigram by one of his favorite writers. It'd be part how-to manual, part wry observations about things he'd seen—things you might not know if you hadn't been a dad looking after kids.
    He sketched out the book in his mind as he paced the park that year: days when there was no one to talk to, days when there was nothing good on the blogs he looked at on his phone. He knew a few moms—parents of Zack's friends, the moms Margie had spent time with when she stayed home. But mostly it was just the unknown moms, the nannies, and Braintree.
The unknown moms all had kids younger than Zack, adorable little toddlers who blew spit bubbles and teetered beatifically into their mothers’ arms when called. Zack had bitten one of these cherubs in a sliding-board dispute. And ever since, the unknown moms eyed Braintree with even more suspicion than before. The nannies tended to be as indifferent to him as they were to the other moms. Braintree imagined the unknown moms were at least a little curious how he came to be here. The nannies had seen too much to care.
   The only nanny who stood out from among the others was Big Bossy. He'd noticed her the first day they'd come to the park after he'd left his job. She was an immense Russian woman who parked herself across a bench meant to hold two. Braintree estimated the diameter of one of her arms to be greater than that of his waist. She looked after a beautiful dark-haired three-year old, managing her with blunt Slavic commands and never leaving her bench. As much time as he and Zack spent at the park, they'd never once seen Big Bossy arrive or leave. It was just possible, Braintree thought, that she never did come and go, that the child was dropped off by the parents on the way to work and collected on the way home, and that Big Bossy sat stolid and unmovable, leaves collecting around her in autumn, icicles hanging from her nose in February.

   On a night the previous spring, they got Zack to sleep at 9:30.  They'd put him in bed at 7:45.
   "So," Margie said.
   "That little fucker puts up a hell of a fight," Braintree said. He didn't even wait to see if Margie would react. "Sorry."
   They were putting their dinner together in the tiny kitchen, stepping past each other, getting in each other's way.
   "So," Margie started again, "I got a call. There's a slot on the metro desk opening up. Ronnie says he's expecting me to apply.”
   Braintree's fingers flubbed the salad spinner as he took it down from over the sink. "Full time?"
   "Full time."
   Braintree knew he was supposed to have an opinion. "Is it something you want?"
   Margie looked away for only a second. "Yeah, I want it."
   Already Braintree was doing the nanny math.
   "But a nanny?" Margie said. "I don't know."
   "Letting a stranger raise your child," Braintree muttered. One or the other of them had to say it whenever the subject of nannies—theirs or somebody else's—came up.
   Margie nodded. "You know you've never—" She stopped. "Didn't someone in your office go to a contract arrangement? That guy with the lisp?"
   "Frank. Yeah, he works from home."
Margie rinsed her hands under the faucet, then dried them with the dish towel, finger by finger. "Would you ever consider something like that?"
   Braintree looked past her to a guy in the alley behind their house who was going trash can to trash can, lifting the lids to see what was inside. He skipped theirs.
   The subject hung between them, unaddressed, for two days. It was Friday when Braintree had his meeting with Natasha, the weekly one during which she droned and droned. Today it was the Blackstone campaign. Braintree's firm did a lot of PR for non-profits, but their bread and butter was campaigns for candidates whose platforms conformed to the firm's founder's mission. This generally meant hopeless progressives with zero budget. Braintree's colleagues were all either on-the-move twentysomethings looking to build their portfolios for better jobs, or people like Braintree, who worked there because it was the job they could get.  Natasha might have cracked thirty already—she'd move on soon.
    She seemed to be finishing up, going back over the deliverables timeline. Braintree nodded, but didn't write anything down—she always put it all in a follow-up email.
   "There's one more thing," she said. He heard a quiver in her voice. She slipped out of her seat and closed the office door. She didn't sit down again. "This campaign is a big deal, John. We're incredibly lucky Blackstone went with us. We haven't had a congressional race since '04, and I don't think we did such a great job with that one." She was making a point of maintaining eye contact, but her teeth were going at her lips during the pauses. "If we're going to do this right, we both need to give one-hundred percent. And I've got to tell, John, for about the past year I feel like I've been getting about fifty from you, maybe fifty-five."
   If that, thought Braintree.
   "I know you've got a young child, and I know how important the family piece is to you."
Braintree felt a faint flush of humiliation—he was really getting chewed out. He saw that poor Natasha had been practicing this all week. She'd been a little edgy the past few days, and now he knew why. At the moment it seemed to be killing her: perched on the front of her desk, her knee was bouncing up and down, and when she broke off a couple of times to clear her throat, the noise was so pinched and high-pitched, it sounded like the beginning of a seizure. He really felt he should help her get through it.
   "I guess what I'm saying is, I think you need to ask yourself are you ready to step up and do what needs to be done here."
And she stopped there. She was through the worst of it. Her expression pleaded with him. He waited. She had a clock on her shelf made from a geode. Thing must weigh ten pounds at least. And the framed group picture from the company retreat last year.
   "Maybe," he said at last, "it's time to talk about how we can maximize my usefulness to the organization."

   Zack picked up a handful of stones from under the playground fence and raised his arm toward Braintree, who sat on a bench.
   "Easy, buddy," Braintree said. "We don't throw rocks." Zack's arm stayed raised. Braintree didn't know if anyone was actually watching, but it sure felt like it. There was always an aspect of performance anytime parents gathered with their children. Nothing was so very different about what they said and did with their kids, it just came out a little stagey—they all had an eye on the audience.
   "I throw rocks," Zack said. "I throw rocks at you."
Distraction, Braintree thought—Margie was a big fan of distraction. "Wanna go down the slide upside down?" The arm sank an inch or two. "Show me how you can go down the slide upside down."
   Zack's large blue eyes considered him—Margie's eyes, trying to decide whether to buy some stream of bullshit he was feeding her. The rocks rained down on Braintree. He put his hand to his face.
   "Idiot," said Zack. If no one had been watching before, someone was now. He could feel the eyes on him and even see Big Bossy sit a little taller on her bench to get a look. Now it was a tightrope walk. He could give in to the impulse to grab his flesh and blood by the throat and watch him cry, or simply repeat the simpering assertion that we don't throw rocks and pretend it had any effect on Zack. What the hell, he thought, let's split the difference. He took Zack by the upper arm. "We don't throw rocks," he hissed through clenched teeth. He waited until Zack met his eyes and pointed to the bench. "Sit," he seethed. Zack's shoulders sunk and he galumphed over to the bench like a condemned prisoner. Zack planted himself in the seat with an exaggerated expression of shame. At least he was staying put. Braintree ventured a look around at the moms. They looked slightly horrified. Mission accomplished.