Dating Big Bird (21 page)

More time passed before I made it up to the front of the line, but when I asked for the cake, I was told they still needed to box it. Annoyed, I stepped out of the line to wait and was soon joined by my niece and her slightly frazzled father.

“Auntie LaLa. I have to pee.”

“Really?” I gave a cursory look around the bakery for a rest room sign but didn’t see one. “Okay. In just a minute.”

“But Auntie La
La
—I have to pee really bad and a lot and a lot.”

“I know, honey. Daddy and Auntie LaLa are just going to look at the cake and then we’ll find you a bathroom. Okay?”

Before she answered me, the counter girl returned with a pink cardboard box, which she put on the counter and opened for our inspection. Inside was an elaborately frosted sheet cake—pink on white, with the inscription written in the center.

I stared at the cake.

“ ‘Happy Birthday Nicole and Mammo,’ ” I said, reading the ornate trail of pink calligraphy icing.

Who the hell is
Mammo
?

I turned to Paul, whose head, too, was now inside the box.

“Who’s Mammo?” I asked.

“What are you, some kind of ignoramus? You’ve never heard of Mammo, the Celtic fertility goddess?”

For a split second I believed him. “Really?”

“No.” He looked equally confused. “I have no idea.”

“What was it supposed to say?”

“Happy Birthday Mum-Mum. You know, what Nicole calls her.”

He and I got out from under the top flap of the box and blinked at the girl.

“Do you want us to fix it?” she asked. “It’ll be easy to fix—it would just take a few minutes.”

Nicole was tugging at my sleeve and then at Paul’s, but we’d been too distracted by the frosting fiasco to pay attention. Until we heard the faint sound of trickling water. I finally looked away from the cake and saw Nicole standing between us, whimpering.

“Oh, no!” Her leggings were wet, plus I realized that in our rush to leave this morning, we’d forgotten to put on a Pull-Up. “It’s all Auntie LaLa’s fault! I forgot you said you had to pee!” I knelt down on the floor and hugged her while Paul grabbed a handful of napkins from the counter and wiped up the floor. Then I stood up and took her little hand in mine.

“Let’s go,” I said to Paul as he fit the box top into its side panels and put the whole thing under his arm like a small child. “The Pickle needs her Mammo.”

That night, after Lynn and Paul and I had our grilled salmon fillets and our rice and our salads, and after Nicole had had her chicken nuggets, I went into the kitchen and stuck candles into the cake and carried it back out into the dining room. Lynn crouched down next to Nicole, and they both closed their eyes. “Please let me gain only twenty-five pounds this pregnancy,” Lynn said. “Please make my baby-brain go away and return to normal. Please help me find sweatpants that make me look thin and that come in black.” Then they blew the candles out. Nicole sang “Hap Bur-day”—her rendition of the old classic—and after we’d explained the typographical frosting error to Lynn and had a good laugh about it, I found myself focusing on the cake.

Mammo
.

There was something about that word.

I stared at it a bit longer and repeated it to myself a few more times, hoping I could articulate my sudden fascination with it:

Mammo
.

Mammo
.

Mammo
.

It looked and sounded vaguely superhero-ish, as if Mammo could be a comic book character or an animated Saturday-morning cartoon series or a major motion picture starring the next Christopher Reeve.

Mammo!

I looked again, and a vision of a semi-flabby woman in a too-tight blue Lycra body-suit popped into my head.

Then red go-go boots.

Then a flowing cape flapping in the breeze.

Then a big red M on her chest.

Mammo!

Flying from home to preschool to job to supermarket to home again, this wasn’t a bird.

Or a plane.

Or Superwoman.

Or Wonder Woman.

This wasn’t someone without stretch marks or baby-flab or baby-brain.

This was
Mammo
!

Someone slower than a speeding bullet!

Less powerful than a locomotive!

Unable to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

Someone who knew she couldn’t be everywhere and do everything and wear anything other than sweatpants while she was trying and failing!

Someone like Karen who had one kid and one nanny, or someone like Lynn who would have two kids and no nanny—or someone like me who might have one sperm-bank baby and no hud-band or Big Bird. Someone who was strong and proud and fierce and determined and maternalistic and feministic and exhausted and sleep deprived all at once, all the time—someone who hadn’t gotten her figure back yet and, quite frankly, didn’t care!

Up in the sky, it wasn’t a bird! Or a plane!

It was Karen!

It was Lynn!

It was me!

It was Mammo!

I was back in the office that Tuesday morning, having gotten home late the night before, and though I was exhausted from the drive, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off my head.

I had figured out Karen’s gift, finally.

Now all I had to do was explain it to Renee and get her to help me with it.

“Oh, my God,” she said, straightening up a pile of suit sketches that were on her drawing table. “Simon’s going to be so relieved. You should have seen him yesterday—calling Gail and telling on you because you’ve been so
negligent
in your
duties
.” She headed out of the kitchen toward her office, and I followed. “So what did he think when you told him?”

“Told him? I haven’t actually told him. I don’t want him to know what it is yet.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not exactly something that’s store-bought. It’s a little conceptual, so it’s kind of hard to describe.”

She smacked a new pack of Marlboros against the palm of her hand, then tore off the plastic. “What is it?”

“Well, it
isn’t
yet. It’s, you know, it has to be made.”

“
Custom
made?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

She was rapidly losing patience with my evasiveness. “What the fuck is it already? I don’t have all day.”

“Okay.”

I planted both feet on the floor and made my hands into a frame as if I were one of those cheesy Hollywood producers about to pitch a one-word concept movie:

“Mammo!”

“Excuse me?” she said.

I got into position and repeated my karate-chop stance.

“Mammo!”
I said again.

Renee looked at me as if I were a madwoman.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I could see I was going to have to start from scratch.

“You know how all these women who become mothers
are always conflicted and tormented about everything? They love being mothers, and they love being home with their kids, cooking and baking and playing with Play-Doh and watching
Barney
with them, but they also feel kind of guilty about liking it? As if they shouldn’t be such losers and should be back at work and back in shape like they were before they had their babies?”

“Yeah? So?”

“And the ones who do go back to work feel guilty about that, too, because they think they should be home with their kids, cooking and baking and playing with Play-Doh and watching
Barney
with them, instead of sitting at their desks till seven o’clock at night working like maniacs and afraid they’re going to get fired?”

“Like I said the first time: Yeah? So?”

“Ergo
Mammo
!”

Silence.

“Where’d you come up with this brainstorm?”

“In Maine.”

“In Maine, huh? What’s the official state bird up there, the white-tailed asswipe?”

“Is it that bad?” I asked, not really wanting to hear her answer.

“I don’t know yet. Keep talking.”

“Mammo is pride. Conviction. Strength. Self-assurance. Whether you’re married with children, or unmarried with children.”

She crossed her arms and shifted her weight onto her other leg. She was intrigued, even though I could tell she was pretending not to be.

“Mammo isn’t just a mom, she’s”—I lifted my shoulders and stuck my arms out in frustration over being so inarticulate—“she’s
—Mammo
!”

Renee nodded, finally.

“Okay. That’s kind of interesting. Now what does it have to do with Karen’s gift?”

“It
is
the gift. Mammo on a necklace—in silver letters—on a thin cord—like a choker.” I pointed to the bone at the base of my neck, where I envisioned it would rest.”
Mammo
the word, the necklace, the idea—is Mother Power. Ipso facto.”

I paused again for dramatic effect.

“See? Mammo—Mother Power—for Karen. For a woman who, despite herself, embodies that.”

She lit a cigarette and thought about it for a second or two.

“It’s a little high-concept,” she finally said.

“Do you think she’ll get it?”

Renee raised an eyebrow. “She invented high-concept.”

“But what do you think?” I demanded.

“What do
I
think? I think you’re weird.”

She sounded like my mother. “I know you think I’m weird, but what do you think about the idea? About the necklace?”

“I think you want the necklace for yourself because
you
want to be a Mammo.”

I laughed.

“Am I wrong?” she said.

I laughed again. “No. You’re not wrong. You’re never wrong, Renee.”

“Of course I’m not.” She threw her arm over my shoulders and walked me to the door. “Now get away from me so I can start thinking about your stupid necklace, so you can walk around wearing it and pretending you have a kid.”

Renee agreed to design a prototype of the necklace—a rough sketch and specs on material and font style and size
and cord length—so we could take it to a jewelry designer to have it made. Every time she saw me for the rest of the day, she complained about how busy she was and how much more work she had to do than I did, which wasn’t even true. But the next morning she walked by my office with her big black leather portfolio and indicated that I should follow her to her office.

“Hey, Mammo,” she said with her sunglasses still on and barely slowing down as she passed my door, “get in here.”

I jumped up from my desk and ran into her office with my coffee and shut the door.

“It’s very rough,” she said, hovering over me as I looked at the sketch on her desk. For all her bluff and bluster, she was a completely insecure perfectionist who wanted everything she designed to be brilliant on the first try. Which it usually was.

I stepped back from her desk.

“Could you move your hair? I can barely see,” I said, then moved back to take in the drawing she’d laid out on the table. Seeing the word
Mammo
displayed for the first time since the accidental birthday cake inscription gave me a thrill.

Renee lit a cigarette and began to pace around her office, waiting for me to make my pronouncement.

“It’s great!” I said. “It’s amazing! It’s exactly what I’d imagined!”

“Only better.” She was smiling now, and relieved. She walked back to her drawing table and adjusted the lamp above it. “I really like this font,” she said. “It’s a clean, basic, no-nonsense type. Like the word and the person it describes.”

“Good,” I said.

“I used all lowercase letters, like typewriter-type, because I think that also serves to get the point across. It reinforces the idea of Mammo as a professional woman, yet it’s understated.”

“Good,” I said again, staring at how the word looked in its new typeface:

I liked it.

“Now for materials.” She looked at me and squinted at the line of smoke that had just gone straight into her eye. “Since this is for Karen—the woman who has everything and hates everything unless she’s designed it—the materials have to be the best.”

“So not sterling silver.”

She shook her head.

“What about eighteen-karat gold?”

“Her upper lip curled. “I don’t think so.”

“Twenty-four-karat gold?”

Nope.

“White gold?”

Nope.

“What’s left?”

“Platinum.”

“Platinum? Jesus. How much will that cost?”

“A fortune.” She closed her pad and stubbed her cigarette out. “Don’t worry yet. I’ve got a friend who’s a jewelry designer in SoHo, and she has a friend in the jewelry district—and they both love Karen’s clothes. Let’s see if they’d do a trade.”

“Yeah, right. One piece of platinum for five suits.”

“For five hundred suits.”

The following afternoon Renee told me that she’d faxed the
mammo
sketches to her friend downtown, who was going to get started on designing the necklace
right away. Both she and her platinum-pimping associate, she said, would work with us on a trade: service and materials for clothes.

Renee had worked out a rough barter with Annette for Karen Lipps Green Label sample suits and a range of other KLNY merchandise—shoes and sweaters and sunglasses and outerwear, and the rest, she said, I’d have to figure out.