Sprung At Last

I call the Y, as The Stepmother requested, and learn that they don’t do parties any more, but the phone call solves a lot of problems. They have open swim on the day of the party, so The Stepmother can simply bring any number of girls and pay for them at the door. She’ll need to find another place to have cake, but she had mentioned a sleepover, which I assume will be at the father’s house.

 

This all sounds good to me, so I call and tell The Stepmother. She says, that’s not right, and begins to cry again. She can’t do it at his house, they don’t live together anymore; maybe I could find her a hotel with a pool? Could I reserve her a room in a hotel that has a pool they could use? The girl is asking me and asking me, The Stepmother sobs: I have to keep being a mother to this girl – she’s already lost one mother, she can’t lose two.

 

I tell her I will find out the name of the hotel where a friend of mine did something similar. She promises to pay me back for the money I spend, though I haven’t agreed to spend any.  I wonder about this, but mostly I wonder why an Ex-Stepmother is throwing a party, but without cooperation from the child’s father.

 

I call another mom, who recently hosted the Birthday Girl at her own daughter’s pool party. I’m trying to understand what is going on, I tell her. Oh, she called you too? Other Mom tells me.  She called me right before my daughter’s birthday party. She wanted me to make it a joint party for the two girls. I told her no, Other Mom says, but that I would be happy to help her coordinate something if she needed help, and that was the last I heard.

 

Other Mom and I talk a bit more,  and it seems like the problem, really, is that The Stepmother wants to throw a party and just doesn’t have a place to do it. We agree that we are willing to co-host something for this girl.

 

I call The Stepmother, and ask her to please get me a headcount of no more than six girls, and Other Mom and I will put something together.  She cries with gratitude, and thanks me for being part of The Village It Takes To Raise A Child.

 

I don’t hear anything else from her.

 

A few days later, Other Mom calls me. The Stepmother has been calling her, she says. Yes, she received a guest list – nine girls, none of whom we know: The Child is not included, and neither is Other Mom’s daughter, until Other Mom points it out.

 

Other Mom tells me, it’s too bad nobody told me the date, because we have plans that night. Can you give me the information for the pool that you found?

 

I pass along the information, and that is the last thing I hear of The Birthday Girl, her Stepmother, or her party.

The two girls didn’t drift apart, though: The Birthday Girl has a Skype account, and The Child and she spend a lot of time video chatting after school. I tried to warn off The Child in the futile way parents do, but she brushed me off: It’s just that Birthday Girl is having a very hard time. Things are hard for her. Her mother died. Her father and stepmother are getting divorced.

 

Her determination to hold on to her elementary school friends is renewed after the failed Niagara Falls trip, and for her own birthday party, The Child decides to gather together her elementary school girlfriends for a sleepover. Although several of her friends have moved on to the same middle school The Child attends, the others have not. She waxes nostalgic: I want a night with my real friends.

 

I plan a simple sleepover on a very unfortunate night, right when school starts. Many of the girls can’t stay overnight, but the mothers all call and make plans for their girls to attend and stay as late as they feel they can. We make party food and arrange gift bags filled with silly striped kneesocks and the usual candy. The Child carefully decorates the plain bags, each one personalized for its intended recipient: six girls, six bags.

 

The Stepmother’s email is the only one I have for that family, but I receive no response to several email inquiries. I am reluctant to call Birthday Girl’s father, since the subject of the iPad repairs I paid for will likely come up, or worse, not come up but linger in the frosty air. The Child informs me the girl is coming, though. She’s positive. They’ve discussed the party plans on Skype.

 

A few hours before party time, The Child comes downstairs in tears.  She’s not coming, she wails. Birthday Girl.

 

I had assumed this would be the case, but ask, Why not?

 

I don’t know, wails The Child.  She  didn’t make sense. Her dad has to work so she has to be at her sister’s house.

 

I inquire, Why can’t her sister bring her? She can stay here as well as there.

 

This thought had not occurred to The Child, who disappears back upstairs, reappearing a while later, even more distressed.

 

She can’t come! She has some friend over at her sister’s house. She hesitates before the next statement: She doesn’t even seem to be upset about missing it.

 

I try to soothe the child, but her plans for an elementary school reunion are ruined: she will not be consoled. I try to help her understand the difference between reasons and excuses, but she wants no part of it. Birthday Girl’s life is so hard, she tells me, and things are so complicated. She finally cheers up when her other friends arrive.

 

After the party, Birthday Girl’s gift bag remains on the table for several days, but when I attempt to remove it, The Child says no, she will give it to the girl when she sees her. I wonder when that will be, if ever, but put the bag on a side table, where it remains for several months before I rearrange some furniture and it finally disappears, unnoticed.

I don’t mind helping at a birthday party, or even helping to throw one, although I’m a little put out by The Stepmother’s request that I help organize something a couple of days before Christmas, accompanied by a request to front money for the party. Promises of repayment notwithstanding, I don’t have tons of extra cash. If she knew me better, she would know that.

 

But she doesn’t know me better. We chatted once, when she was married to The Birthday Girl’s father, and she picked the girl up from a sleepover. It was not a long chat, though she seemed pleasant enough.

 

Sometime after that, The Birthday Girl slept over again. She made me somewhat uneasy: She seemed mature for her age, and I had heard stories from other mothers – and The Child – about her behavior at school. Making a boyfriend of someone else’s crush was one incident that stuck with me. Not nice, and not typical for fifth grade, it seemed to me.

 

A couple of days after that sleepover, I discovered The Child’s iPad was cracked – and not a little, with webbing all over the front. She didn’t want to tell me, but it had happened when The Birthday Girl was there. Birthday Girl was playing with it.

 

The Child had saved the money to buy this iPad, and kept it in perfect condition in two years of constant use, so I did not have any trouble believing her version of events. Still, I was diplomatic when I called The Birthday Girl’s father. I hate to make this call, I said, but there was some expensive damage when your daughter was here.

 

He was frosty, and unpleasant, and said he would get back to me, which he did, but he is challenging: It wasn’t like that, according to his girl. He grudgingly offered to pay for half of the repairs, and though I did not expect the conversation to go well – how could it? – there was no half-apology (“I’m sorry this happened”), nor any indication of half-hearted consequences (“I’ve had a talk with her, and impressed on her the need to be respectful of others’ property”). In short,  he will pay me, but he is the wronged party, not The Child and certainly not me.

 

I paid for the repairs myself, and was relieved The Child was no longer at the same school as this girl. The two would drift apart: The family didn’t live anywhere near us, and we most decidedly had no other ties.