Other People’s Kids

She spotted him at the far end of the playground, where the rubber flooring met the grass. He was eyeing the central play structure, a pirate ship overrun by children. His left hand, which gripped his bicep, was ringless. The man looked to Alice like a babysitter. Boredom and curiosity drove her across the playground to meet him.

While she walked, she looked for Silas. He was still sitting alone under the ship’s rope ladder, lazily spinning the Xs and Os on a Tic Tac Toe game. He sniffled, haunted by his ceaseless phantom cold. He was okay. Or okay for Silas, who looked unhappy anytime he wasn’t on the couch watching television—although he sometimes looked distressed then too, worried about the wellbeing of the Paw Patrol.

Alice stopped beside the stranger, facing the playground. He was even younger than she’d thought. 22. Maybe 23. Handsome in a small-town way—grown-out buzzcut, square jaw, no tattoos or piercings.

“Hi,” Alice said.

“Hey,” he said.

“Which one is yours?” This was how she greeted strangers in the dog park whenever she brought her parents’ labradoodle.

“Ernie,” he said, pointing to the slide. A boy, pale and fat-cheeked, was climbing up the slide. He was roaring, stubby teeth exposed, using both hands to force his way up the slick surface of the slide. His shouts were wordless, pure animal cries. At the top, a little girl in glasses and an unseasonal coat watched in horror.

“What a cutie,” Alice said.

“You should see him when he has energy.” His words had a caustic bite, the knowing shrug of a shock comic. “Where’s yours?”

“Silas.” Alice pointed under the jungle gym, where Silas was staring at his Velcro shoes. “I’m the babysitter.”

“Me too.”

Alice extended her hand. “Alice.”

“Rob.” They shook, a quick squeeze.

She waited for him to say something else, to push the conversation forward. He stayed quiet, watching Ernie take a final victorious step to the top of the slide, only to lose his balance and slide back down. Was Rob shy? Or snubbing her?

“It was nice to meet you,” Alice said.

“Yeah.”

Alice walked into the center of the playground, inventing an excuse to leave. She bent down in front of Silas. “Having fun, buddy?”

Silas didn’t look up. “No.”

* * *

Alice brought Silas back to the park the next day and the day after that. No Rob. It wasn’t until Monday that he reappeared, standing in the same corner of the playground, eyes glazed over.

She spotted Ernie first. He was smacking a large stick against the ground, its end wobbling each time it hit the rubber. Rob watched, his eyes moving up and down in rhythm with Ernie’s swings.

Alice had daydreamed of ignoring Rob the next time they saw each other, her eyes drifting away when he tried to make eye contact, a nervous smile on his lips. But when she saw him, she knew she’d say hello. Was it attraction? Boredom? Or was it that, watching Ernie, he looked unhappy too?

“Go have fun, buddy” Alice told Silas, giving him an encouraging push. “If you’re good, we can leave early.” Silas trudged off toward the swings.

Alice didn’t rush toward Rob. For a few minutes, she alternated between watching Silas and playing on her phone, giving Rob time to notice her. Approach. When she finally looked his way, he was on his phone. His tongue poked out of his mouth, like he was concentrating on not bumping against the squealing walls during a game of Operation.

Fine. Alice could do the legwork. She crossed the park, giving closed-mouth smiles to the moms she passed.

“Hey! Good to see you again,” Alice said once she reached Rob.

A moment of blankness, then recognition. “Hey. Alice, right?”

She nodded, feeling a faint encouragement.

“How’s Ernie?” This was all she knew about him: his not-child, terrorizing the park.

“I think he tried to bite me earlier. Are all kids like this?”

Alice searched his expression for evidence of a joke. He only looked confused.

“How’d you get this job?” Alice asked.

“Ernie is my mom’s friend’s niece’s kid.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s something to do,” he said. “It’s money. For now. I’m applying for, like, real jobs.”  Across the park, Ernie stabbed his stick—now snapped into two smaller, jagged pieces—into the sandbox again and again, driving it deeper with each attempt.

“Me too,” Alice said. “I’m in marketing. Normally.”

“That’s dope,” Rob said, monotone.

“You like him?”

“Who?”

“Ernie.”

“He’s five.”

“You’re allowed to have an opinion on a five-year-old.”

“He’s loud,” Rob said. “And when he’s older, I think he’s going to be an asshole. Actually, he’s kind of an asshole now. You like Silas?”

“Silas is sweet. But he’s so morose.” Alice wondered if Rob knew what morose meant, feeling the guilt and pleasure of cruelty in equal measure. “He’s a very easy child to babysit, though.”

“Lucky.” Rob said. He sighed. “This job sucks.”

“Yeah.” Alice felt the prickles of joy that came with complaining about a bad boss—in this case a five-year-old child. “It sucks.”

While they spoke, Alice tried to peek at the child Rob once was. She imagined sports, middling grades, the attention of his peers coming too easily for him to ever question it. And farther back, a child who was uncrying, unsmiling. A boy who was blank, boring and content.

After ten minutes, the conversation never veering from their kids, Alice claimed she needed to take Silas home. Better to end the conversation before he could.

“Bye,” she said.

“Bye.” Then, after a long enough pause that Alice decided she was done with Rob and had started stacking bricks of casual resentment against him, he added: “Ernie and I should be back here tomorrow. Around the same time.”

* * *

Standing in someone else’s kitchen, Alice cooked box mac-and-cheese. This would become her dinner too, although while she ate alongside Silas she’d mourn the nutritious, adult dinner it was replacing. But the nights she abstained from kid dinner, she was always hungry and grumpy by the time she got home and only ever cooked some sodium-filled frozen meal, and ended up wishing she’d just eaten the fucking mac-and-cheese.

She stirred slowly, looking at the cluttered kitchen table, Silas’s drawings mixed in with court documents. The Sullivans’ house was always a mess of toys and strewn clothing, suggesting more children than just mild-mannered Silas. It wasn’t that the Sullivans were lazy or apathetic. They were just busy, so busy—both lawyers, rushing to meetings or Zoom calls, eating every meal on their feet, squeezing in whatever minutes they could to sit with their son. Alice could clean. Help out. She wasn’t doing anything else. She considered this, watching another Alice vacuum the floors and stow the stuffed animals while the real Alice dropped onto the couch holding two bowls of mac-and-cheese.

“What do we say?” Alice asked, handing the bowl to Silas.

“Thank you.”

She didn’t hate being a babysitter. But it wasn’t what she’d imagined for herself at 27. It wouldn’t even have been what she imagined six months earlier when she was fired via Zoom, along with 15% of the advertising agency where she’d worked as an account manager. In her final performance review a week before the firing, her boss told her she was “meeting expectations,” framing it like an indictment.

She still lived in Orange County, one town over from where she’d been raised. That was stagnating enough. But to revert to babysitting, a job she had at fifteen? It was infuriating. Her sense of adulthood had been thwarted. She’d planned to use this job as a stopgap, quick cash while she figured out her next move. But she’d been taking care of Silas for five months now, with no end in sight.

And it wasn’t even a full-time gig. She was only needed Monday through Thursday for five-hour shifts—after daycare until 7PM. She was deleting her savings account, her spending habits unaffected by the shift in income. She should have been applying for jobs, but she felt exhausted whenever she wasn’t working. Every night was spent with television and takeout, every day filled with long, slow walks with no planned endpoint.

Alice never voiced these frustrations. She worried there was something unsavory in her unhappiness. Was it the privilege of it, feeling too good for $25 an hour and free dinner in a nice home? To her friends, her job was a “nice break from the grind, honestly,” or “really wholesome. Being with Silas makes me feel full, you know?” It was only another predetermined step in her manicured, soon-to-be-successful life.

At least, she hadn’t voiced her frustrations. Until today. Rob wore his unhappiness and incompetence so blatantly that she felt safe in his presence, able to let slip her dissatisfaction.

“I don’t like this,” Silas said, staring at the orange lump congealing on his spoon.

“Yes you do, buddy. We eat it every week.”

Silas considered this before taking a cautious bite.

* * *

Every day she was with Silas, Alice went to the park. Every day at the park, she sidled up to Rob.

Silas never wanted to go. “Let’s stay here,” he’d say, gazing at his iPad.

“We’re going to the park. We’re going outside.”  Alice could have pretended, if she wanted, that she was following the impulses of a good babysitter, choosing sunshine over screentime. But what difference did her intentions make?

Alice and Rob always started by checking in on each other’s kids: How’s Ernie? How’s Silas? They’d try to one-up the other with stories of misbehavior and stupidity. Silas cried after purposefully dropping a strand of his dark hair into his mac-and-cheese. Ernie snapped his toothbrush in half. Silas refused to get in the bath, then refused to get out of the bath. Ernie barked back at a dog in an insurance commercial (Rob had been watching Monday Night Football). Did they look like a couple, Alice wondered, talking daycare or dinner plans while their children tired themselves out on the jungle gym?

Around the edges of these conversations, Alice learned about Rob. He was 22. He’d graduated last spring from a local state school. He lived with his parents. He liked sports, drank too much on the weekends, had a sense of humor reliant on put-downs. He seemed, so far, to be without quirk or unique interest, a carbon copy of every blank, beautiful man Alice had pursued in college and beyond.

Recently, on dating apps and through set-ups, Alice had tried to date more ‘substantial’ men, tattooed graphic designers or mousy, introspective engineers. Talking to these strangers, she found the same flaws, the same mix of self-consciousness and unearned ego. They were better listeners, maybe, but were equally self-serving: they only wanted to fuck her. They were just better at hiding it.

Rob was a relapse, the type of square-jawed, emotionally withdrawn man she’d sworn off but still craved. Someone who saw her as A Girl, not as Alice, allowing her to hide any deeper doubts or self-loathing behind this hazy, appealing perception.

Rob, to his credit, only flirted lazily, complimenting her outfits and inviting her back to the park the next day. They never spoke about spending time together outside of babysitting. Alice preferred it that way. A work flirt. A way to add meaning, however frivolous, to her meaningless days.

After a few weeks, they pushed their children together. Ernie and Silas were not a natural fit, but Alice thought the friendships between children often seemed loose, even random. Maybe they’d bond over a favorite TV show or their love of the slide. They could even be good for each other, Silas coming out of his shell and Ernie receding into his own.

Rob led Ernie by the hand to where Alice was waiting in the grass with Silas. Silas watched Ernie approach, sitting crisscross-applesauce, gripping his favorite toy—an action figure that looked like, but was not, a Transformer.

“Silas,” Alice said, “This is Ernie. And Rob.”

Silas stared.

“Say hi.”

“Hi,” Silas mumbled.

“Nice to meet you, Silas,” Rob said in a falsetto, as if only a woman could be kind to a child. “This is Ernie.”

Ernie stepped forward and held out his hand, palm up. Silas, without protest, handed the action figure to Ernie, who shook the toy, made an explosion noise and dropped onto his butt beside Silas.

Alice watched, astonished. “I think they might actually like each other.”

“I don’t think they really give a shit,” Rob said. “Right, Ernie?”

“Yup,” Ernie said. Although she wasn’t sure, Alice thought this might be the first time she’d heard his voice. It was squeaky, precious, the voice of a cartoon mouse. It did not fit the chubby-cheeked, wild-eyed blonde staring at her sallow, sunken Silas.

Rob and Alice stepped back and let them play, the children ignoring each other but seeming more-or-less happy doing so.

These were other people’s kids. Their greatest treasure, their entire heart. But the need for money or a sanity-refreshing date night placed them in the arms of an almost-stranger. Alice cared enough to keep Silas fed and relatively happy, ensuring his schedule of naptimes, bath times and mealtimes remained consistent. But she didn’t care. It wasn’t her kid. It was a kid.

Rob, from Alice’s observations, was worse. He was a body, a physical presence that signified adult supervision. He did not seem interested in playing with or speaking to Ernie, and he caved to any request that would make his own life easier—ice cream to end a temper tantrum, extra TV time in place of a game that required Rob’s attention. Alice wondered how Rob presented himself to Ernie’s parents. Did he create a doting impression, showing his dimples until the door was shut? Or did Ernie’s parents not care, happy with anyone who was willing to watch their son? Although maybe Rob was the perfect babysitter for Ernie, a sea wall to keep the hurricane at bay.

After twenty minutes, it was time to go home. The children stood, Silas in Alice’s hand and Ernie in Rob’s.

“My toy,” Silas said to the grass. Ernie still held Silas’s action figure.

“Hey, Ernie?” Alice said in her kid-voice. “Can Silas please have his toy back?”

“No!” Ernie yelled with glee, displaying spaced-out teeth.

“Come on, Ernie,” Rob said.

“No!” Then Ernie flung the toy. It wasn’t clear if he’d aimed, but the toy spun through the air and collided with Silas’s shin before landing face down in the grass. Alice readied herself for tears, but Silas only bent down and grabbed his toy.

“Good boy,” Rob said, patting Ernie’s head.

* * *

“Silas made a friend at the park today.”

“Did he?” Mrs. Sullivan said, surprised. She looked at Silas, who was sitting on the carpet a few feet away.

“At the park. A boy his age.”

“That’s wonderful. Did you make a friend, Silas?”

No response.

Mrs. Sullivan shook her head, removing her wallet from her purse. “Thank you. As always.” She counted out twenties. “And I hope Silas sees this friend again.” Mrs. Sullivan smiled as she handed over the bills, locking eyes with Alice for a moment before turning and walking into the kitchen. Alice knew she was dismissed, could let herself out.

Mrs. Sullivan’s existence was a constant rush, only giving Silas a quick hug or peck on the cheek before beelining to her first chore of the night. She was kind but distracted, pure efficiency. Mr. Sullivan, who Alice saw less, was even more preoccupied. He treated Alice like a childcare machine, in which bills were to be deposited at the end of each session.

While Alice watched them hurry through their days, she always thought Thank God this isn’t my life. But they had everything she assumed she wanted for her future—career, family, stability. Why did her own goals look so tainted on someone else?

“Thanks,” Alice said to no one, bills in hand. She waved at Silas, who ignored her, then locked the door from the inside and stepped out of the house.

* * *

Thursday at the park, it started to rain. This happened infrequently enough in Orange County that Alice, at first, was paralyzed. Hustle home? Or let Silas play? She wondered if there was a threshold of rain that was appropriate, a level of drizzle that guaranteed there would be no lightning strikes. Could the smooth, colored metal of the play structure turn deadly?

Silas ended her uncertainty, hurrying toward her with his head lowered. “Home,” he said.

Alice turned to Rob. “Want to bring Ernie over to Silas’s house? Rainy day playdate?” The invite was unplanned, a reaction to their park time being cut short. Why not? Silas and Ernie were friends. She’d told Mrs. Sullivan as much.

“Yeah,” Rob said.

They didn’t speak during the walk, each holding their child’s hand. The children hustled, near-stumbling, to keep up with the quick steps of their sitters.

Rob walked like there was no rain. His posture and gait were unaltered, his short hair flat to his forehead. His thin t-shirt was soaked, dark nipples visible beneath. A question Alice had asked herself repeatedly in Rob’s presence arose again: Was he stoic? Or just posturing? A cowboy or the actor portraying one?

They arrived at the Sullivans’ house. Alice let them in with the key that usually hung on a hook beside the door, a key she rehung whenever she and Silas returned.

“Welcome to somebody else’s humble abode,” Alice said.

“Huh?” Rob said.

The front door led directly into the living room, and Silas sat on the rug in front of the couch—his favorite spot. He gripped his toy in both hands. Ernie walked around the living room, eyes roving, like a conquistador who’d landed on an unfamiliar shore.

Alice grabbed Silas’s toy box and placed it in the center of the rug. Ernie walked over and bent down, his butt crack visible while he grabbed a toy, looked at it and dropped it on the carpet. He repeated this toy-by-toy, the contents of the box moving onto the floor.

“Need anything?” Alice asked. It took Rob a moment to realize the question was directed at him.

“I’m fine.”

She moved to the couch. Rob sat beside her, leaving half the couch unused. She let her leg slide over casually, like she was sinking into her seat, until her thigh bumped against Rob’s. The two silently watched Ernie and Silas, their legs pressed together.

Alice felt a familiar anticipation, her physical sensations heightening while her mind seemed to slow, like her body was moving forward but her brain was pulling back. It was excitement, but also something more: nostalgia. Not for the early childhood of Silas and Ernie, but for Alice’s teenage years. She’d babysat throughout most of high school, earning money she frittered away on smoothies and long-forgotten clothing. At that age, babysitting brought the high of responsibly—a life is in your hands—metered by the expectations of youth. Bad behavior and lapses in judgement were more expected. Less glaring. She remembered sitting in someone else’s living room with a boy who should not be there. The feel of her boyfriend’s tongue on her nipples while she arched her back on the Ericksons’ couch, seven-year-old Sofie Erickson asleep in the other room. A willful irresponsibility that felt harmless and, better, blameless. And here the feeling was again, gently leading her away from her disappointments.

She’d regressed in the last six months. Why not make the most of it?

“Want a tour?” Alice asked.

“Sure,” Rob said.

They stood. Ignoring a flicker of guilt, Alice turned on the television and put on Paw Patrol. A failsafe. Silas and Ernie’s heads pivoted, jaws slack, the screen stealing their attention.

“Are you two okay here for a few minutes?” Alice asked, feeling Rob watching her. Silence. Neither Silas nor Ernie looked away from the screen.

Alice led Rob deeper into the house. She gave a tour, for no reason other than the narrative building in her head, the necessary lead-up to the shut-and-locked bedroom door. Rob made a few benign comments but mostly stayed silent. His eyes were on her body, never the rooms they were touring. The kitchen, the little yard, the lone bathroom, Silas’s room—they made a cursory pass through each. Then, finally, the master bedroom. “Here it is.” An unmade bed, a crowded countertop, beige abstract art in expensive frames.

“Nice,” Rob said, shutting the door behind him.

Rob stared at Alice, waiting. She stepped forward and they kissed, her hands at his face and neck.

Alice began unbuttoning her shirt, slow and teasing. Rob disrobed mechanically, dropping his shirt to the floor.

What was Rob thinking? Was this, unbeknownst to her, a meaningful encounter? Maybe the contours of his heart were not mapped on his stony face. Or was this a lark, just a chance at sex and a good story?

Alice didn’t care. He was a prop. And he was beautiful.

They stepped backward, kissing, and flopped onto the Sullivans’ bed. His lips were dry. He placed his hand on her covered left breast and left it there. Alice heard the tug of a zipper, felt his hips wriggling, his shorts sliding down.

Was she really going to fuck this guy? It had been an abstraction until now. A hypothetical. She wanted the thrill, but not, maybe, him.

She kissed with more passion, fingers snaking through his hair. His hand crept under her bra, thumb and forefinger working at her nipple like a radio dial. His breath was getting heavier in her ear.

“The door is unlocked,” she said.

“Mm.”

“I’m going to lock the door.”

Rob rolled off her. He watched her walk to the door, absently stroking himself through his boxers.

Alice could leave. Her clothes were still on. Nothing had happened. This moment, even in its best-case scenario, already felt like a mistake in-the-making.

But what in the last few months hadn’t?

She twisted the lock and began unbuttoning her jeans.

Rob wasn’t worried about his cum. It was dripping down the slope of Alice’s butt, leaving her trapped on her chest. All her earlier excitement had boiled away, replaced by logistics. Reality had reinstated itself. If the cum slid down her hip, it’d stain the Sullivans’ navy-blue sheets. Mrs. Sullivan would be home in… ninety minutes? Not enough time to run them through the wash. If the sheets were still drying when Mrs. Sullivan came home, Alice would have to blame Silas, invent some mess. Although he wasn’t supposed to go in his parents’ room, so this would still make her look bad. But not as bad as the cum stain. What was worse than that?

Rob was lying on his back beside her, sweating lightly on their sheets, oblivious to everything but the satisfied hum in his brain. There was a box of tissues on the nightstand beside him. How did he not realize she needed them?

“Can you hand me a tissue?” She asked.

“Hm?”

“A tissue.”

He rolled over and reached, grunting from the effort. He offered her the tissue lazily, like a gentleman’s kerchief.

She took the tissue. Then, still propped on her elbows, still covered in cum, Alice heard Silas scream from the living room. There was nothing playful in the sound, nor was it an attention-seeking whine. It was a scream of terror or pain, unexpected and immediate.

A second scream followed, as loud as the first.

“Oh my god,” Alice said.

Alice pushed herself to standing, the tissue gripped in her fist. She scraped the tissue down her ass, trying to clean herself, then dropped it to the floor. She didn’t have time to worry about Rob’s eyes dragging over her naked body, or the used tissue, or that she’d probably splattered the bedspread with semen. She needed to leave the bedroom, now. She grabbed her underwear and pulled it on, cotton suctioning to the remaining cum.

Silas was wailing now, an ongoing moan of misery.

She hopped on one foot, her other foot trapped in her pantleg like a child’s fist in a cookie jar. Her franticness was making everything take longer. Too long.

Rob was on his feet, still naked.

“Would you hurry?” Alice said.

“I can’t find my underwear.”

Alice’s shirt went on next, her bra still on the floor. How long had they been in here? How long had the children been alone? Ten minutes? Fifteen?

Silas kept screaming through the door.

She turned the lock, buttoning her shirt with her free hand. If either of the children were right outside the door, they’d see her nipples as she buttoned, maybe catch sight of Rob’s ass as he searched under the bed for his missing undies.

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t wait.

She opened the door and burst into the hallway.

Five steps down the hallway, Alice barefoot, redoing the last loose buttons of her top. Silas cried steadily, but softer now. Defeated. No sound from Ernie. Were the living room shades open? Could people on the street see the children in their disarray? Would a neighbor watch Alice slide around the corner, disheveled and wild-haired?

She stepped into the living room. The children were still seated on the carpet. But there was a dark splotch beside Silas, seeping into the fabric. An accident? No. The stain was darker. Deeper in hue. Blood.

“What happened?” Alice asked, although the answer was clear. The lobe of Silas’s left ear was bleeding. Blood rimmed Ernie’s mouth. Ernie was sucking on his thumb, docile now.

Rob appeared beside her in the hallway, dressed. “What happened?”

“He bit him,” Alice said. “Your kid fucking bit him!” She scooped Silas up, who was more preoccupied with rubbing his eyes than the blood dripping from his ear. She hustled him to the kitchen and sat him on the sink. She wet a paper towel and started dabbing his ear.

Rob followed her and leaned against the doorway. She hated him in that moment, his silence and his bovine face, this stranger in Silas’s house. She glared at him, still scrubbing Silas’s ear.

“They’re kids. They fight. Everything is going to be okay. We’ll be fine.” Rob said, sounding bored. He was not cruel, only uncaring. A boy, ill-equipped for an unwanted job.

“Go help Ernie,” Alice said.

“We don’t need to tell anyone about this,” he said. “Right?”

Alice didn’t respond.

Rob watched her for another moment, then turned back into the living room.

He was right. It would be fine. Her clothing would be retrieved from the bedroom. The living room carpet, already horribly stained, would be cleaned. She would hardly have to lie to the Sullivans: a poorly behaved, possibly feral child had bitten Silas. It easily could have happened at the park, Ernie lashing out before Alice could intervene.

Silas looked up at her, his eyes wide. His expression was not forgiving, as he’d never blamed her, but only loving and thankful, a familiar face caring for him in his time of need. An adult, old enough to be his actual mother.

This would all be forgotten soon, her mistake scrubbed away like the blood on the rug.

She rarely touched Silas outside of holding his hand on walks and the occasional high-five, but now she scooped him off the counter, cradling his head against her chest. A last dribble of blood pressed into the fabric of her shirt. He was heavy and slack in her arms as she rocked him. His cries had already stopped but she kept swaying, her eyes closed.

“It’s okay, baby. Everything is going to be okay.”