Free Playmate by Kit Reed Page B

there and we'd never know."

    "If anything bad could
get past the gate," Dan says. "Which it can't. Security."
    She sighs. "Security."
And notes peripherally that Danny is wearing Denny's shoes. "Danny,
where are your shoes?"
    "Mwenny," he says.
    "Top of the line Ralph
Lauren 4Kidz and you swapped them for K-mart sneakers! Danny, what
were you thinking?"
    "Nmmne." Past the
point of no return on this Saturday, her son wrenches the joystick
off his Nintendo and starts jabbing her.
    "Stop that. And speak
clearly!"
    A round-the-clock mom
would probably max out on a chronic guest whose mother never
invites back. A professional mother would resent this, Is this
unfair or what ? Thing is, Danny is such a handful that half the
time Karin wants to beg Blanca to stay all weekend, but no.
Wouldn't be motherly. Besides, two days, she ought to be able to
handle it and Denny makes it tons easier. Always handy, and he
never makes her say, "Don't you have a home?" or, "Won't your mommy
worry about you?"
    Still, they may be
playing together too much. The shoes. And Danny has picked up the
lisp. She comes home one day to find him in an outfit she never
bought. Green OshKosh overalls, canary yellow shirt. Cute. Fresh,
as they say, as paint, but not what she put on him this morning
before she left for work.
    "Danny, where did you
get these?"
    "Mwenny."
    "Stop it with the
lisping. You can talk, so drop it. Where did you say they came
from?"
    But Danny smiles an
angelic Denny smile and says through fur, "Fwerhnm."
    "Don't make me get a
speech therapist for you." She sighs. "And look what you did to his
clothes! Better let me put these in the machine, If we send them
back dirty, Denny's mom is going to think we're terrible."
    Doesn't think much of
it until she comes home from work Monday and finds him wearing
Denny's clothes again. Green OshKosh overalls, canary yellow shirt.
Wrecked, of course. When she peels them off, Danny begins to
cry.
    "Sweetie, what's the
matter?"
    "I want them. He
promised." Danny's bawling so hard that it's all he can manage.
Never an easy child, he grapples her to the mat over the outfit:
"We're swapping, Mom, we're SWAPPING."
    "All right. Shit.
Fine. But let's do this right." Grimly, she phones Macy's and
orders a dozen canary T-shirts and a dozen pairs of OshKosh
overalls. FedExed, priority. No explaining to Denny's mom. When
Danny wrecks one set, Karin will damn well replace them.
    A failure, that
effort. Even before the clothes come and Danny rips, spots and/or
stains every item, Denny's mother has changed him into engineer
striped OshKoshes with little white polo shirts. No matter what
Karin puts on Danny in the morning, when she comes home at night he
is wearing Denny's outfit.
    It's not as upsetting
as the hair. Bowl haircuts one day, buzz cuts the next. Denny is
first. He arrives on a Sunday morning with that sweet grin and
fresh OshKoshes – blue! her heart sinks – and a buzz cut. "My," she
says, making a mental note to take Danny to the barber – the kid
screams like a demon every time she tries to comb his hair so this
is a Good Thing – "don't you look nice."
    Smiling, he trots past
her into Danny's room. Wow! This is so weird! When they come out at
the end of the day Danny's hair is buzz cut too. Karin sweeps
through Danny's room like a tornado. There's no telling how the
children brought this off. No sign of clippers, not a loose blond
hair anywhere.
    Weird, she thinks, and
is secretly glad that she doesn't have to drag screaming Danny to
the barber. Frankly, she doesn't like the way the barber looks at
them on these visits, as if she's a Nazi hunter with a fresh catch.
So what if he's been bitten twice, it's not like Danny is Hannibal
Lecter.
    So the weekends go on
nicely enough in Cadogan Hills, although Karin is distinctly
disturbed on the day when she goes into Danny's room and finds both
children naked. Nothing dirty, she's sure of it. They're too young
and besides, she can tell by their