Hashtag Date Night » Bridge Eight Press

The sitter cancels, same excuse as last time. My fingernail catches the back-seamed tights I’d just pulled on as I journey back into jeans. I lay the snagged nylons on our unmade bed, marveling at how I fall into line. We’ve gotten very good at dealing with disappointment, haven’t we.

Later, I’ll try to salvage the fantasy, commission some sort of mutual pleasure from this impulse purchase, this relic from a lingerie section that’s three aisles over from the fabric softener. We’ll giggle as you finish tearing them with your teeth—such naughty monsters we are. I’ll snuggle into your armpit as we fall asleep to a nature documentary.

First, food. Something fast, as always, though tonight’s curveball mandates alcohol. A tricky feat. Nothing in this vast expanse of interchangeable suburb can compare to our favorite bar on your old block—the one where you got mugged, back when we had to take two buses to see each other. Things are simpler now.

You suggest a diner in a nearby town known for its big-box chains. “Yelp says it’s train themed,” you say. “He’ll love that.” You’re not wrong. At the moment, everything is Thomas. Bathing with Thomas. Putting makeup on Thomas. Transforming a plate of buttered rigatoni into Thomas. “Cinders and ashes,” I say, using our private language, stray burrs of kiddo-speak that resurface in our dreams. I jam pedicured toes into wool socks and grab three coats.

***

I feed coins into a meter that grants us an hour to park downtown, a generous moniker for a single block of businesses that, aside from the diner, all close at five. As soon as we enter the play area that occupies the restaurant’s front half, he’s smitten, as you predicted. He runs laps of excitement, trying to absorb it all.

I wish I could feel the magic he finds in the shabby train table with its battered corners, littered with cabooses loved a bit too well. All I see is worn paint under chew marks, each indentation sheltering billions of germs. You hold his shoulders, steadying him on the stepstool as he presses every button on a model train display that hasn’t been dusted this decade. Only half of the buttons work.

The college kid making balloon animals by the front window smudged with tiny handprints gives him a fish that promptly pops, and I comfort him with one arm. With the other, I hold a menu, in which I spy the revelation that this place has my favorite IPA on draft. Perfect.

We venture beyond the play area into a sea of high chairs, some overturned to nestle siblings’ infant carriers between splayed legs, their feet sticky with crumbs. A man in a conductor hat gestures toward the counter’s only empty stools and shoves an extra-tall high chair between them. Ingenious.

From our perch, we watch him play. The room fills with families; more runny noses join him at the train table. We order burgers and a grilled cheese. When our beers arrive, we clink glasses, toasting his sippy cup in absentia. You wipe a fleck of foam from your upper lip with the soft flesh between your thumb and what I’ve started calling the pointer again. “Hashtag date night,” you mutter, and I laugh for the first time all day. For a moment, we’re the only people here. Maybe we’ve figured out this whole parenting thing: trains plus booze.

A wail echoes across the room. Actually, more of a shriek. Is it my kid? I can’t tell. Should I be able to? Because I can’t. You can’t either, but no one expects you to. We can’t pick him out of the gaggle, so you volunteer to check on him. I tell you to stay, relax, enjoy your beer. What a good wife I am.

When I stand, I see blood on the floor. Another kid shuffles his Crocs through it, leaving a trail of red shoeprints. I run. I locate the blood’s source: my son’s mouth. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

“A big kid hit him,” offers a girl dressed as Elsa, but I don’t see any big kids; to me, they all look like babies. I hug him to my chest and wipe his tears and stroke his hair and pull back his upper lip, steeling myself for a missing tooth. They appear intact but look like that day he found fruit punch mix in the back of the pantry and tore into the packet like a wild animal.

I lug all thirty pounds of him, still wailing, past the bar, grabbing the diaper bag before rushing to the dim hallway in the back. “Everything okay?” you call out. I dismiss your boneheaded question. No, everything is not okay. There is blood all over our son and now all over me and you’re dipping a hot fry in ketchup like it’s nothing and to be honest I hate you a little bit right now as I plunk him on the changing table in the family bathroom and pull his shirt over his head.

I try to ignore the cinderblock walls painted with a janky mural, the tightly wrapped soiled diaper resting on a mountain of crumpled paper towels in the overflowing wastebasket, the plastic dispenser on the counter that some teenager refilled with water instead of soap. I let myself escape to the dark places in my mind that provide the illusion of safety in such moments. I should have let you check on him. I should have known better than to wear white. I should have more than one sitter’s number. I should have joined Tinder instead of Match. I should have gone backpacking after graduation and moved to a shitty apartment in Brooklyn with four roommates and worn that backless yellow sundress without a bra even though it showed a little areola.

I dab my shirt with a wet towel that crumbles in my fingers, smearing the blood around. At least he’s looking better: fresh shirt, face wiped clean, cries subsiding into hiccups. What a good mother I am, I think, willing myself to believe it.

A soft knock. “Someone’s in here!” I shout, startled into third person. Just like at the hospital, when I started referring to myself as Mommy.

“Honey, how can I help?” Somehow, hearing your voice now makes me feel more okay than when you asked me if everything was okay. I hear a tenderness that’s easy to overlook in these moments of our new lives that feel impossible to share with anyone else.

I know what’s waiting on the other side of this door. When I open it, I’ll get exactly what I expect: a pint of beer; a lukewarm burger, reheated from frozen; a hug from you. I grip the metal handle until it grows warm.

COLLEEN ROTHMAN’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, Okay Donkey, and Mutha Magazine, among others. After more than a decade living in the Midwest, she is proud to once again call New Orleans home. Find her on Twitter @colleenrothman.