Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

The way Art tells it, Don was completely unfazed. He collected his magazines and held them against his chest.

“Only thing I wanted to take with me, anyway,” he said as he lurched out the front door.

I took the wheelchair ramp down its long, gently sloped diversion from the front doors. Art waited for me at the bottom, his face now expressionless, his posture screaming Let this be over. I followed him through the parking lot, past rows of cars backed carefully into their spots. He stopped in front of a silver Pontiac Vibe. The left side mirror was cracked.

“Kids,” Art said. “You know how it is.”

“Sure,” I said, though, thankfully, Seth wasn’t old enough to drive yet.

He popped the hatchback and I stacked his boxes inside, closing the trunk lid with a thud. We stood there awkwardly for a moment; was this a handshake occasion, or were we going to hug it out? Art solved my dilemma by reaching out his hand.

I took it. “You take care of yourself,” I said. “Sorry about all of this.”

“I’ll be all right. Who knows? I might take up golf.”

“Call me if you do.”

He folded himself into his car. The engine started neatly and Art was composed enough to look left, then right, then left again before exiting his spot. I watched him drive slowly through the lot, toward the sun’s setting orb, shielding my eyes against its glare. I’m not sure why, but I felt responsible for him while he was still on company property. Once he made it off the lot, I felt, he’d be all right.

After his car was absorbed into the end-of-day traffic, I turned back toward the building. The sun was glinting off the large windows, and I couldn’t face going back inside. I decided, instead, to walk home. The air was warm, my car would survive the weekend where it was, and I had my phone. I could file my report on Art’s firing on Monday.

I tucked my hands into my pockets and took a shortcut through the parking lot to the main road. Home was a mile away, and the sun felt warm on my face. I closed my eyes for a moment to concentrate on the feeling of it, and I guess that’s why I never saw it coming.

Friday’s an ordinary day at the daycare, if there is such a thing when you have thirty children between the ages of one and four under your supervision. There are no visits to the emergency room, despite the fact that Carrie Myers gets a penny stuck in her nose. The parents make their usual number of calls, from zero, in the case of the Zen 20 percent, to ten, in the case of Mandy Holden.

It’s all because of the video cameras. Standard issue in daycares these days: twelve cameras (six in the baby room, six in the toddler room), all strategically positioned so any concerned parent can watch their child all day long via streaming video if they want to.

I’m glad Seth graduated prior to the invention of the Daycare Cam. I tell myself I’d be in the Zen 20 percent, but I have enough evidence to the contrary to know I would’ve had the camera feed open on my computer screen eight hours a day.

But since that was never a possibility, I can let myself feel annoyed when I catch a scuffle out of the corner of my eye on a toddler room monitor (they’re arrayed around my desk like I’m the head of security, which, I suppose, I am), and I hear LT’s wail through the wall moments later. I count down the seconds. Three, two…

“Hi, Mandy,” I say as I pick up the phone, not bothering to pretend I don’t know who’s calling. Mandy Holden calls between five and ten times a day with questions ranging from her son LT’s caloric intake to any incident she picks up on from the black-and-white video she watches all day long. (He’s called LT after his father, Trevor, because he’s “Little Trevor” in looks, expression, everything. Around here, when the parents aren’t listening, he’s referred to by the name he’s earned: “Little Terror.” Thank God the video plays like a silent movie.)

“Did you see that, Claire? That other kid—”

“His name is Kyle.”

“Whatever. He pushed LT over! He needs a serious time out, and if you’re not going to talk to his parents, I will.”

“You know I can’t call a child’s parents every time there’s an isolated incident.”

“Isolated incident! He did the same thing last week.”

“Actually, if you’ll recall, it was LT who pushed Kyle that day. Kyle pushed back in retaliation.”

“Retaliation my ass. I saw the whole thing.”

“I’m sorry, Mandy, but I reviewed the video as per your request. LT was definitely the aggressor.” In fact, at this very moment, LT’s meting out his revenge on Sophie Taylor by stealing her snack. I’m sure I’ll be getting a call about that too.

“Are you suggesting my son has anger-management issues?”

“Of course not. I’m simply saying that three-year-olds, particularly three-year-old boys, often get in scuffles. You can’t read too much into it, no matter who the instigator is.” I glance fondly at the picture of Seth at that age pinned above the monitors. He’s smiling with a little-teeth grin, a perfect mixture of mischief and innocence.

“Instigator!”

I pause deliberately and lower my voice. “However, if you’d feel more comfortable removing LT from our care, you’re perfectly entitled to do so.”

I’m playing my trump card. Every daycare in town is full to the max. Mandy isn’t going to give up her slot unless LT’s taken out of here on a stretcher.

“I never said anything about taking LT out of Playthings,” she huffs.

“Well, I seem to be getting a lot of these calls lately, and we do have an extensive waiting list.”

I can hear her grinding her teeth. “I’m expressing concern for my child, Claire. I don’t think that deserves a threat.”

“Now, now, calm down. You know we all love LT. We don’t want him to leave. I want you to be happy.”

“I’m happy,” she says. “LT is happy.”

“That’s great. So we don’t have an issue?”

“No. Everything’s fine. I have to get to a meeting…”

“Talk to you soon.”

We hang up and I rest my head in my hands. I love running Playthings, I really do, but sometimes, particularly on the days when the Mandys of the world are in high gear, I wish I were back in the grown-up world, dealing with grown-up problems.

Of course, that world was full of adults complaining about the way their babies were being treated too.

Much to the chagrin of some of the parents, my lunch hour’s a sacred thing. I don’t accept calls—in fact, I can’t be reached at all, and unless you’re a fellow student at the music conservatory, it’s like I don’t exist.

This is a rule I implemented soon after I started Playthings, when I was still being swept by the waves of sadness connected to why I chucked my law career and started the daycare in the first place.

“You need to make time for something purely yours,” my doctor told me when I complained about having trouble sleeping, and the general listlessness I still felt. “Something that brings you joy. Did you have anything in your life like that? Before?”

I could’ve taken the easy road and told him that what I used to do was run frantically between work and child care, that I hadn’t had time for anything else. I hadn’t had much time for me. Instead I said “Piano” in a small voice, even though I hadn’t played in years. I no longer even owned a piano; we’d left it behind when we bought the house because it wasn’t worth paying the extra money the movers wanted for something I touched only to wipe away the thin layer of dust that marred its glossy surface. It felt like an easy decision then, but now I wasn’t so sure it was the right one.

“Piano it is,” Dr. Mayer replied in a voice that brooked no opposition. And something about it, something about how it was connected to me before, caught hold in my brain.

I left his office and drove to the conservatory, which was located a few minutes away. I parked my car and looked through the windshield at the brightly painted building. Like Playthings, it was clearly a place for kids. I could see the child-painted mural inside made up of bass clefs and off-proportion guitars, a relic from my own childhood, many hours of which were spent in that very building. They gave adult lessons too, they always had, but the whole thing screamed Suzuki Method, and I almost didn’t go in.

But I’d said I would, and so I did.

In a few minutes, I had a lesson scheduled for the next day with Connie. The receptionist had met my tentative request for Mr. Samuels, the kind teacher from my youth, with a blank stare.

Connie was a taciturn Germanic blonde who’d somehow ended up in Springfield. (“How?” I asked early on. “Complicated,” she replied in a clipped tone that invited no further questions. “We work on scales today.”) When she realized that I knew more than basic chord structures, she started giving me increasingly complicated pieces. And once my muscle/brain memory kicked in, I started to make something of them.

I kind of hated Connie in those early days. (I suspect the feeling was mutual.) I complained to Jeff one night, a few lessons in, that Connie had missed her calling as a drill sergeant.

“So quit,” he said as he stripped down to his underwear and climbed under the covers. “If you’re not having fun, fuck it.”

I slipped in beside him, resting my back against the headboard. I flexed my fingers. They were full of a dull ache, like the early onset of arthritis.

“I kind of feel like it’ll be fun eventually. Or maybe that’s the wrong word.” I paused, not knowing how to talk about looking for joy, and how it sometimes felt like it was just a few notes away.

“Well, she can’t be the only game in town, right?”

He was right, but the two younger teachers I tried were so used to the kids-who-were-working-just-hard-enough-to-appease-their-parents that they’d grown soft, their fingers slow. When I sight-read the pieces they’d put in front of me, saying, “Now, this should be a real challenge,” they’d get these funny looks on their faces, like that wasn’t supposed to happen. One of them told me bluntly: “You should be playing with Connie.” The other simply “forgot” our lesson one day and never called me to reschedule. Either way, I got the message.

So back I went and here I am, sitting on the hard piano bench in a room with perfect acoustics playing Debussy’s Reverie. Connie’s standing next to me, waiting to turn the page. My right foot’s working the damper pedal, my left heel’s keeping time. As the haunting melody tumbles out, I lean in, like I’m trying to catch the notes, gather them close. And now there’s un poco crescendo and the music’s flowing through my fingers, into my chest, suffusing my brain. The world is receding, receding, and yet I feel, for lack of a better word, alive.

When I get home around five, Seth’s at the dining room table pretending to do his homework. But our in-need-of-replacement TV is still emitting that strange, staticky sound it does for the minute or so after it’s been shut off, so I can tell what he’s really been up to. Now what I need to decide is whether I’m going to call him on it.

Letting Seth be home alone for the hour or so between when the bus drops him off and when Jeff or I get home is a new thing we’re trying since he turned twelve in February. He lobbied hard for the freedom, showing us that he was old enough, responsible. He kept his room clean, his grades went up, and he actually put down his PS-whatever-they’ve-gotten-to-now when we asked him to. We agreed to it on a trial basis until the end of the school year. If he doesn’t screw up, we’ll talk about making the arrangement permanent.

It’s nice to have the extra money, though I miss the chats Ashley (Seth’s long-term after-school babysitter) and I used to have at the end of the day, the updates she’d give me about how Seth acted when Jeff and I weren’t around. As Seth gets older, the opportunities to observe him when he isn’t aware of it are few and far between. Teacher-parent interviews, reports from his grandparents, my chats with Ashley, that’s about it. Now, if I want to know what my son really thinks, I’ll have to resort to spying.

Seth raises his head slowly and gives me the smile that melts my heart every time I see it. I’ve steeled myself against it to a certain extent (I had to), but it’s worked on babysitters and women in grocery stores his whole life.