Martha Cooney

An old nanny client from New York’s Upper East Side got in touch and asked if I’d spend a few hours with her kid while in Philadelphia the coming weekend. I hadn’t seen Garrett, now eleven, since he was a toddler. I said yes.

 

I met Garrett and his mother in their hotel lobby; she was on her way to spin class and would meet us later. I’d hang with Garrett in the hotel room and then take an Uber Black with him over to a convention at the Sheraton hotel ballroom. That’s why he was in town  – to go to the Philly Pen Show, capital letters. 

 

Garrett was sweet and well-mannered. He had a fifth grader’s on-point sense of humor. I swiveled back and forth in a delicious padded hotel desk chair, doodling on Hilton stationary while I tossed him some questions about his hobby. He collected pens. 

 

“I’m a collector, I’m not an acquirer,” he stressed. While he owned thousands of dollars worth of pens and knew the value of each one, it was a hobby, not for strategic investment. (I Googled the definitions. You’re welcome.) Garrett kept his pens in a cabinet with a humidifier and had insurance on them up to the value of ten thousand K. I gathered that his collection was significantly more valuable than my net worth. An alarmed feeling settled over me. The one I get when talking to old Penn classmates at reunions and a guy I don’t know asks “What’s the inlay on that necklace?” and I say “Huh?” and he spells out “What stone is that?” and I say “It’s fake, it was seven dollars at Charming Charlie” and he says “Oh, it’s costume!” and I blink and he says jovially “My wife loves jewelry, so I’ve gotten very good at identifying gems!” and I panic and look down at my flimsy cardboard plate that’s loaded with cheesesteak eggrolls and realize I can’t use a buffet refill as an excuse to run away. You know, that feeling. 

 

But Garrett laughed at himself. “My friend will come over and I’ll ask if he wants to see my pens and he’s like, I don’t care,” he told me. “No one ever wants to hear me talk about pens.” 

 

Garrett opened a large leather bag and extracted some equipment. “I have to do some pen stuff.” He showed me how the different nibs and inks and filling systems worked, and wrote down notes about upcoming pen shows. “So that’s your calendar?” I asked. “It’s more of a bullet journal,” he said. He told me companies sent him free pens in exchange for writing reviews, and that he got advice on his collection from his dad. I remembered his father as the type who, while I was playing with Garrett, would hang around, sitting on the sofa while strumming a guitar and talking at me about his childhood.  

 

The Uber Black was ready downstairs. Garrett packed up his pen case and slung the strap over his shoulder. His shirt fell into the collar-and-buttons category. My leggings were ninety-five percent polyester, five percent lint, paired with a depressed cardigan that should have been taken off life support in the aughts. Frankly, if you were going by presentation, tenor of conversation, financial savvy, and self-assurance, there was only one adult between us and it wasn’t me. 

 

Garrett was polite and friendly with the driver, but not in the patronizing way some grown men lean toward. He told me he had an excellent Uber passenger rating: “I want to keep five stars.” 

 

We took the escalator up from the Sheraton lobby and went into the convention space. Vendors displayed pens, inks and accessories on tables around the perimeter. Visitors milled around. A seller at the end of the row welcomed Garrett enthusiastically by name and made brief eye contact with me. “They all know me at these things,” Garrett said. “They call me ‘The Boy with the Fancy Pens.’” 

 

As soon as he said it, I felt it in the air. Vendors stood at attention and waved. Attendees looked over at the only child in the room with recognition. Garrett was the boy king of the pen world. 

 

Oh no. My body prickled with fear. I’d done a couple one-offs with celebrities’ children in New York, and even taught one in my preschool class for a year, but had never brought a famous child out into the world solo. What if there were tabloids? What was my line? “We’re just here to look at the pens.” “No comment.” “Me? I’m Garrett’s companion for the day. Please respect our privacy.” Come to think of it, why waste an opportunity? “Please, go ahead! Last name spelled C-O-O-N-E-Y… I’m in the creative industries. You haven’t heard of me? Put down that I’m seeking a new agent right now; get it while it’s hot! Let me give you my number. Where are you going? Sir?”

 

Garrett had already left my side to browse pens. I kept a reasonable distance — close enough that I was on standby, as I was ultimately responsible for him, but far enough to give him independence. He greeted the vendors with the familiarity a regional manager would bring to an office holiday party. “Carolllll. Gonna bring that ruthless spirit to the white elephant again this year?!” “James, my guy! Still the best muttonchops in the division!” When Garrett approached, each seller turned on the charm. What was it like to get sucked up to? I imagined walking into Wal-Mart and a greeter taking my arm. “We have a new fleece pajama bottom with a snowman motif that I think you’ll really love. Look at that waistband. Go get settled and I’ll grab a few sizes. While you wait, can I bring you a two-liter of Dr. Thunder?” 

 

Garrett asked me super politely if I wouldn’t mind carrying his bag. “It’s really heavy for me.” From that point on I was full-on Gary from Veep. I followed Garrett closely with his pens and we whispered between ourselves. He told me in a low voice who we should avoid, including the guys who, not knowing his status in the pen world, talked down to him because he was a kid and told him not to touch the merchandise. 

 

“I better say hello to Francis from Montegrappa,” Garrett said, in the wry tone a school mom uses before going over to the insufferable PTA fundraising chair: If I don’t, I’ll be iced out of the limited-model pen giveaway because Francis from Montegrappa is a real rat and everyone knows it, and we have to appease the beast, don’t we, lol? He went off to a table covered with a silky black cloth. Frickin’ frick. The kid networked better than me. Last time I coattailed it to a ”function” I had six different conversations and never once said my name. 

 

I took the opportunity to check out the wares. There were accessories: inkwells, pen rests, nib units. (The nib is the pointy part of the pen that the ink comes out of. Again, you’re welcome.) The best was the ink table. The names! Boysenberry, salamander, pondweed, Lake Erie. Color names know no bounds; you can come up with anything. Satan’s Gumline. Gas Station Hot Dog. Caesarean Scar. 

 

I read through the program, Nibbage. The weekend offered workshops in Spencerian Script from a Mr. M.G. Ward and a Pen Show Tour to “alleviate the jitters of anyone who would like an introduction to pen show etiquette.” I could see there were a range of clientele here: visual artists who worked in pen-and-ink, antiques-roadshow style hobbyists, wealthy collectors slash acquirers (thank you Garrett), and a Ben Franklin reenactor here and there. 

 

Some of the pens really were works of art. Hand-painted dragonflies, swirly jewel colors, glimmery and with what you know would be a damn satisfying click. Hmm. 

 

Could you see me with a nice pen? Maybe it would be impressive to have a single quality writing instrument that you refilled (Where? At the oil fields? No, no, the Boysenberry ink bottles — of course! Oil isn’t ink. Is it?) instead of cheap disposable plastic ones that reproduce and morph until you’re in front of your boss at a meeting taking notes with an Official Church of Scientology pen.

 

I claimed to be a writer, after all. Didn’t Shakespeare have a special feather? What about Carrie Bradshaw? With a pen like that, I’d become the kind of person who got their clothes dry cleaned. When others saw me take it out to sign a contract, they’d immediately change their opinion of me. “By God, is that a pen with heft? Hold everything. We’re giving you more money!” 

 

“How much is that one?” I asked, pointing to the Pelikan M800 Demonstrator with clear cap and barrel and gold-plated trim. 

 

It was the same vendor I’d made eye contact with earlier when he saw me walk by as Garrett’s governess. “Eight hundred twenty-five” he said flatly. Keep it moving, proletariat. I watched Garrett, two tables down, hand over his credit card to a salesman and shake his hand. 

 

I looked more closely at the prices on the next tables, the way people look at brains in jars at the Mutter Museum of medical oddities. Pens started at a reasonable nineteen dollars and went up to the cost of a new boat. You could stick to a budget with the BENU Euphoria Fountain Pen in Bear-Y Christmas (Limited Edition) at three hundred ninety, or keep it respectable with the Montblanc Ateliers Prives Black Widow Limited Edition of 88 for $36,500. A card at the next table advertised a markdown sale of a special model! $250,000, down from 350. 

 

It was time for a break and a snack. Garrett and I reconvened at one of the tables set out for attendees. I placed his bag on the brick-red linen and offered a choice from what we’d packed: string cheese or protein bar. He took the protein bar. I handed him a chocolate milk box, the kind with the picture of a cow on the front. 

 

A woman my age sitting by herself at the table introduced herself as Winnie. We explained that I was accompanying Garrett to the pen show, not the other way around. She didn’t know who he was and as Garrett talked I could see her slowly realize, as told through her eyebrows, what she was dealing with. Garrett sipped his chocolate milk. The two started talking shop. “I’m not a huge MontBlanc fan,” Winnie said. Garrett agreed. They debated the merits of various Faber-Castell grades. I zoned out for a moment, trying hard to remember the look in Winnie’s eyes so I could describe it later — she glanced at me periodically to make sure I also witnessed that an adult was speaking from a child’s body — and zoned back in to hear Garrett saying “...except when I go into Dempsey & Carroll and they tempt me with a new Visconti!” Winnie shook her head. “Wow,” she said. 

 

Garrett finished his milk and his mom arrived from spin, enthusiastic to celebrate her kid’s hobby for the day. Honestly, out of all the people I’d worked for in New York, she was one of the kinder ones, and from what I observed, she was a great mom. I hugged Garrett goodbye. He really was a nice kid. 

​

After they went into the showroom, I looked around the lobby and blinked. Had I spent the morning traveling to another dimension? What else caused this carsick feeling? It was the same feeling as when I worked on the Upper East Side. Each day you stepped into an alternate universe of toddlers wearing Russian furs and at the end got spit out onto a urine-laced subway platform. 

 

A couple months ago I was in New York and walked Central Park. I arrived at 72nd Street and a bad feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. I’d worked for a heinous family a block away; the stressful memories ruined that corner of the park. I decided to face the haunts and take a look at the neighborhood. 

 

I walked toward Madison Avenue and saw the green awning of my old work building. Maybe I’d go in and stand in the lobby. Exorcise the demons. The doors were blond wood with gold handles. I peeked through the glass. 

 

A mustached, gray-haired doorman popped up on the other side and opened the door. I didn’t think he’d want small talk about how I used to work there, so I started to say, “Sorry, I think I have the wrong building.” We were close enough to identify toothpaste flavor (cinnamon), but he didn’t acknowledge my presence. He moved around me the way you’d step over a used needle and ran over to greet the resident stepping out of a taxi. 

 

I started laughing like an idiot. It was exactly the same as it had been back then – if you ever forgot it, you were put in your damn place. 

 

Also — I lost my favorite pen this week. Like relationships, they come and go, and some departures hurt more than others. It was a Muji pen. They’re made in Japan, but I have no idea where I got it.