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mistake.” I laugh. “It’s not funny!” Zoë insists, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. “And she doesn’t want me to make my Z s the way you showed me. In script. She wants me to print them.”
    I take a deep breath. “Why?”
    “Because she says we’re not supposed to start learning script until the spring. But I can write script already .”
    “Tell you what,” I say, “we’ll keep practicing script here at home.”
    “But I want to do it in school .” Her eyes brim with tears. “And Mrs. Heinie-face won’t let me.”
    Silently, I award her cleverness points for “Heinie-face.”
    Why didn’t we ever think of that one back in my day? It’s so obvious! But back to the business at hand. How dare this woman hold my daughter back? For some reason most of the parents have always adored her, so Mrs. Hennepin will un-doubtedly remain in her second-grade classroom until the day she suffers an embolism at the blackboard. “Okay, then,”
    I tell Zoë, “go ahead, write script in school. And you know what?”
    “What?” she sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
    I give her a dirty look and she picks up her napkin, cleans her hand, and wipes her nose properly. “This is what. I’ll deal with Mrs. Hei—your teacher, if she sends another note.”
    My daughter beams. A gap-toothed smile that melts my heart. She’s proud of herself for getting her way. For being ahead of the class. For feeling very grown-up. “And how was your day?” she asks in perfect imitation of my own singsong de-livery of The Question.
    “Well, I went on a tour of New York with your Aunt MiMi and her friend Gayle.”
    I provide a few more details, omitting the tequila, which is

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    Leslie Carroll
    now no more than a memory, and Zoë scrunches up her face.
    “Why did you do that ?” she says, as though I am a total idiot.
    “You live here.” I explain that Gayle doesn’t live here, she lives far away, and MiMi thought it would be fun if I joined them on the sightseeing tour. I can tell from her expression that Zoë is not quite satisfied with my answer. “Then why didn’t you and MiMi give her the tour? Why did you have to get on a big yellow bus with a stranger giving it?”
    She’s got a point. So I tell her that tomorrow MiMi and I will be taking Gayle to Chinatown on a walking trip with MiMi’s friend Happy Chef. This is a bad move. Practically catastrophic.
    Zoë bursts into spontaneous—and spectacularly loud—sobs, as though she’d left her favorite toy (Baa, a cuddly lamb, now significantly less woolly than he was when my parents gave it to her for her first birthday) on a subway.
    “What’s the matter, honey?” I reach out to stroke her hand, but she dramatically yanks it away, placing it in her lap.
    “I want to go!” More wailing. The words themselves are a slurred mess of tears and fury and betrayal.
    I try gentle pragmatism. “You’ll be in school, sweetie.”
    “No!” Zoë repeats her demand. “And I don’t want to go to school. I hate Mrs. Hennepin. And I already know script!”
    I didn’t realize she’d find such a convenient excuse for her cursive precocity so quickly. I should have known. Mia and had I tried similar tactics whenever possible. Now come the attempts to reason with a six-year-old; that there are more things to learn in second grade besides the ability to make curly letters.
    She’s worked herself up to full-fledged hysteria. “You. Never.
    Take. Me. Anywhere,” she sobs, each word choked with torment.
    “Zoë, you know that’s not true,” I soothe, then launch into a litany of her after-school and weekend activities. I do nothing but take her places. Ivy League pre-med students have a lighter program.

    PLAY DATES
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    “But. I. Want. To. Go. With. You. Tomorrow !” she wails, a tacit concordance that Mommy is right, at least on some level. She hurls a Belgian baby carrot as far as she can toss it. It bounces off the wall opposite the dinette table