They tell Frida to stick with the distracted, neglectful tree house dad. At least he’s not violent. At least he’s not a drinker. At least he can get a job after he leaves.
“At least he’s got big hands,” Linda says. The whole table giggles.
* * *
The fathers’ school is housed in an abandoned redbrick hospital. Built two hundred years ago, according to the plaque at the entrance. There seem to be more guards but fewer cameras. There’s a long winding driveway lined with manicured rosebushes, a garden next to the entrance that’s crowded with sunflowers.
Meryl says it looks like a place where they’d film a zombie movie. Frida reminds her about Helen’s crazy nurse fantasy, the idea that men might find the pink lab coats erotic. Is it just her, or do the fathers’ instructors seem to be younger and more attractive? They seem to be wearing more makeup. Several wear dresses beneath their pink lab coats. One is wearing heels.
They’re led to the pediatric ward, to a room that must have been a playroom for sick children. All the furniture is child size. The walls are cream. There are sun and rainbow and cloud and teddy bear decals on the windows.
Several cohorts with dolls of the same age practice together. They’re assigned to groups of six: two mothers with girl dolls, one father with a boy doll. Frida and Linda practice with a Latino father named George, who has an asymmetrical haircut and a tattoo of a winged beast on his forearm.
Emmanuelle rubs George’s arm, trying to make the creature disappear. She asks for Jeremy. She asks for food. Why are there toys but no food? No outside.
“It sun.” Emmanuelle points to the window. “Mommy walk!”
“Remember to say please. I’m sorry, sweetie. We’re not playing with Jeremy today. We’re making new friends. You’re going to make so many new friends this month. We’re going to play, and we’re going to learn. Remember, you said you’d help me.”
Emmanuelle wraps her arms over her belly and rocks herself. “Jer-my,” she says softly. She’s never been this fond of another doll.
Frida misses them too. At least the dolls can hug. Yesterday, Tucker asked if they could sit together in the cafeteria sometime. He tried to grab her hand, but she swatted him away, then hated herself for doing so. If he tries again, she’ll let him. She doesn’t want him to choose someone else. She’s heard Charisse, the blond Wilson Phillips fan, might be interested.
She thinks of Tucker’s hand on her elbow, imagines his hands on her wrists. She is a bad mother for thinking about him. She is a bad mother for wanting to see him. She is safer without him here. Sexual tension is interfering with everyone’s parenting. The mothers sit with their backs arched. The fathers flex and gaze, their eyes panning up and down the mothers’ uniforms, as if the body inside is still worth something.
Toy laptops are distributed, one for every three dolls. Once the laptop is in play, George’s doll dives for it, knocking over both girls. He won’t apologize. George hugs his doll from behind, trapping his limbs. He looks like he’s delivering the Heimlich maneuver. It’s the hug to soothe aggression, a move that’s only been taught to parents of boys.
“Well done,” Ms. Khoury tells George. She suggests that Frida and Linda watch and learn.
Frida provides the hug to soothe physical injury, the hug to soothe emotional upset. Emmanuelle asks why the boy is mean.
“He’s not mean. He just likes you very much. That’s how boys show their feelings.” She tells Emmanuelle about Billy, the little blond boy who kissed her in kindergarten. Every day, Billy teased her mercilessly, called her ugly, pulled his eyes into slits and made ching-chong noises, rallied other children to make fun of her. Then, one afternoon, in the far-off time when children played unsupervised, when the playground was nearly empty, she heard someone running up behind her. She felt a kiss, such a hard kiss on the cheek that he almost knocked her over. She didn’t realize who it was until he was halfway across the field.
“I didn’t tell anyone until I was eight.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t want anyone to know that he liked me.” Frida squeezes Emmanuelle’s arm. “Boys are complicated.”
After lunch, a coy hour filled with seductive napkin dropping and silverware twirling, the instructors assign them to new groups. Frida and Meryl practice with a young Black father named Colin, who co-slept with his toddler son and rolled over during a nap and broke the boy’s wrist. They glean his background in bits and pieces as their dolls fight over a toy car. Colin is a baby-faced twenty-one-year-old, about five shades darker than the green-eyed guard and taller than him, with a short beard and a faint Southern accent. Speaking only to Meryl, as if Frida isn’t even there, he describes himself as a people person. He was in college before this, a business major. No wife or girlfriend is mentioned. Meryl spends the afternoon with her lips gently parted and her head tilted to the side.