Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea Read online

  “Fourteen?” I asked. Who hires a babysitter for a fourteen-year-old? I wondered if he was retarded. “Is he retarded?” I asked.

  “No, he’s not retarded,” the woman replied, sounding a little shocked. “He’s just a little hyper, but he’s a good boy. It’s more to have someone else there who can be in charge of my youngest, Kyle.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, as I took a bite out of the apple I was holding and kicked my feet up on the sofa. “Well, I charge ten dollars an hour for two kids.”

  She said that sounded reasonable, and we set a time for the next evening.

  “Who was that?” Sloane asked as I hung up the phone.

  “A client,” I told her. “I have to babysit for a fourteen-year-old tomorrow.”

  “You can’t babysit for a fourteen-year-old,” Sloane told me.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re twelve, that’s why!”

  “They don’t know how old I am,” I said, as I polished off my apple and penciled my new client into my Filofax.

  “Chelsea, you can’t babysit for someone who is two years older than you,” Sloane said.

  “Girls mature faster than boys,” I reminded her. “It’ll be fine.”

  The next night my father dropped me off at Susan’s house. He was impressed with my work ethic and business sense. “You’ve really shown a strong sense of self, Chels. I’m proud of you,” my father told me.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said as I hopped out of the car. “If you need to borrow any cash, I’m sure we can work something out at a moderate interest rate.”

  I walked up the steps and peered through the screen door. “Hello,” I said. Susan came running to the door, carrying her seventy-two-month-old son on her hip.

  “Oh, Chelsea, it’s so lovely to meet you.” She was harried and it didn’t take long to figure out that she was completely unstable. “This is Kyle,” she said in baby talk as she introduced me to the kid she was holding like a baby kangaroo. “Can you say hello to Chelsea?” she asked him as she took the pacifier out of his six-year-old mouth.

  “Hi,” he said shyly, and then nuzzled his head into Susan’s shoulder.

  “Let’s go in and meet James.”

  James was her fourteen-year-old and I half expected him to be in a crib, but instead he was sitting on the living room floor playing Nintendo. I sized him up and figured we were about the same size, although it looked like he had a bit more lean muscle mass than I did, which would give him the advantage if it came down to a tug-of-war.

  “He loves those video games,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Kids,” I said, shaking my head in unison. I wanted Susan to think we were totally in sync, even though it was becoming very obvious that Susan needed to be under psychiatric supervision. I followed her to the kitchen, where she had three pages of telephone numbers listed in case of an emergency. At the very top of the list in bold print was: any sort of emergency: dial 911.

  Then it went on to list every family member still alive, including a few relatives she had in Russia. I tried to picture myself calling overseas to Moscow if and when Kyle hanged himself. I couldn’t believe someone like Susan would allow a complete stranger to babysit her children.

  “I know this is a bit extensive but I just wanted to cover all bases.”

  “Hello, I’m James Sr.,” her husband said meekly as he walked into the kitchen. He looked like a battered wife with his head hung low and his terrible posture. I immediately felt sorry for him.

  Susan and I spent the next forty-five minutes going over the boys’ routines. “Their pajamas are already laid out. Kyle goes down at seven thirty and James can stay up till nine o’clock and watch a show. Both can have some frozen yogurt after dinner but only the sugar-free kind. There is a tub of vanilla-chocolate swirl ice cream in the freezer for James Sr. The children are not allowed to have that.” Then she leaned in and whispered, “James Jr. is a sugar addict.”

  “Does he go to meetings?” I asked her.

  “He can be very moody. We try and stabilize his blood sugar level, and if he’s on his best behavior, he can have one or two spoonfuls of regular ice cream, but anything more than that and he tends to get carried away.”

  I wanted to tell Susan that the reason James Jr. probably got carried away was because he was living in the equivalent of a state penitentiary, and that she was doing far more damage than good to these children by treating them like they were both infants.

  After weeks of childcare over the summer, it became obvious that the best contribution I could make to the world would be to open up my very own day-care/night-care center. Clearly I knew more about child-rearing than most of the parents I had encountered. Sugar addict? Who isn’t a sugar addict when they’re fourteen? I, of course, couldn’t speak for myself at the time, being only twelve.

  Susan was the antithesis of my mother. There was more adult supervision at the Neverland Ranch than there was in my house growing up. When a week before my fourth birthday, my parents told me to plan my own birthday party—I knew I was pretty much on my own.

  My brothers and sisters occasionally stepped in with some guidance, but my parents were exhausted after raising my five older siblings, and I have no doubt that my mother’s pregnancy with me was an accident. Mostly because on several occasions, she told me I was an accident.

  I wanted Susan and her husband to leave already, and wondered if she would ever stop talking. I had dealt with some over-protective parents before, but this was outrageous. Susan was a total basket case, and I didn’t like the idea of being responsible for either one of her children. This was clearly a woman who would fly off the handle if she came home to find one of her kids missing.

  The whole time Susan was talking, James Sr. sat at the kitchen table staring out the window. He probably had no idea his life would end up like this when he first met Susan. She was probably fun and outgoing with no signs of being a complete and utter nightmare. This was not the life anyone intended to carve out for themselves, and I imagined James Sr. hanging himself sometime in the next couple of weeks.

  After explaining in excruciatingly painful detail what to do in case of a tidal wave, she handed Kyle to me and headed for the door. When they finally left, I put Kyle down on his feet, and we walked back into the living room, where James Jr. was playing Nintendo.

  “I want my dinner,” James said, without looking up from the game he was playing.

  “Okay,” I said, and walked back in the kitchen with Kyle, who was shadowing my every move.

  “Actually,” he yelled out, “I’ll take some frozen yogurt first.”

  I didn’t mind giving James the frozen yogurt first, but didn’t really appreciate being ordered around like a servant. “Well, would you like to come into the kitchen and eat it?”

  “No, bring it to me!” he barked.

  I looked down at Kyle, who frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “Do you want frozen yogurt first too?” I asked him. Kyle’s eyes lit up as he nodded his head feverishly. Kyle was cute and I felt bad for him. He had no chance of having a normal life. If I had just been a couple of years older, I could have adopted Kyle and given him a real life, but I knew I had to get through middle school before committing myself to potty training a six-year-old.

  “I’ll get the yogurt for you,” Kyle said in a very soft, sweet voice. I was shocked that in his condition he could even speak, never mind negotiate his way to the freezer.

  “Thank you, Kyle, that’s very thoughtful of you,” I said loudly, eyeing James to let him know that good behavior would be rewarded with positive affirmations. “What a sweet boy you are!”

  I kept a close watch on James until Kyle returned with the bowl and walked over to where his brother was sitting.

  “Put it on the floor,” James demanded.

  “Can you please not talk to him like that?” I asked James in what I thought was a reasonable tone.

  What happened next is hard to describe. Whatever happened to Lou F