Momzillas (16 page)

Thirty-two

It was Friday afternoon, the end of the workweek, and though I wasn't in a suit and hose like the actual workforce, I still had the TGIF spring in my step because it meant Josh would finally be home. We'd be a family unit, whole and strong. The November breeze rattled the trees and I felt a sense of calm now with a fun chilly fall weekend ahead. Violet and I headed for the subway and bumped smack into Bee and Maggie on the street. For a city of ten million people it's amazing how often you bump into people you know—our neighborhood was more of a designer Petri dish.

“Hi, Hannah, where are you two off to?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, just this playgroup I heard was fun.”

“Is that the PR playgroup?” asked Bee.

“Huh?”

“Oh, there's this playgroup with all the kids of top publicists, there's a PR woman for Celine, one from Vuitton, one from Valentino, Tod's—”

“Um, no, not that one,” I responded, incredulous. “I don't think I could dress for a playdate!”

“Wait,” said Bee, looking down the subway steps we were standing beside. “You're not going down
there
, are you?” she asked.

I followed her disgusted gaze to the station entrance. “Uh…yeah, well, we're going to Brooklyn.”

“Ha! Very funny,” she said, looking at Maggie and smiling. “You're serious…” Bee looked so appalled I thought she was about to speed-dial child welfare. These are women who have private cars and drivers to run to Gristedes—they never take any public transportation, not even the bus, let alone something
underground
. And I was going to an outer borough, to boot.

Maggie looked at Violet with sad eyes, as if I were dragging my precious cargo through a mine-filled desert, where we'd certainly be shot at.

“Bee, Maggie, is that you?” We turned to see Tessa Finch-Saunders, the logo addict.

“Guess what, gals? I'm pregnant again!” She beamed.

“Oh, that's great. Wow, number three?” Maggie said, with a detectable hint of jealousy.

“Yeah, in three years. Can you believe it? I must be craaaazy! My husband literally winks at me and I gotta bun in the oven!”

“Well, you know what they say,” Maggie said. “Three is the new two!”

“True, true.” Tessa nodded. “People always say, why do the so-and-sos just have two kids? They only used to say that about onlys! It's all about three. Well, it's always been my magic number. B-bye! Off to my Temple Emanuel Nursery School interview!” She did a double finger cross on both hands, which were covered in rings.

Tessa sped off in a sea of leopard and the sound of her five-inch Jimmy Choos echoing in her wake.

“Hate her,” Bee said.

“She is so losing that baby weight in five minutes like last time—she's just one of those naturally thin people,” said Maggie.

“Yeah right,” laughed Bee. “She had a little help from Dr. Baker. And she didn't waste any time. The placenta came out and the lipo tube went in!”

“A lot of people are doing that these days. Crazy,” said Maggie.

“She's like out to prove something,” said Bee, leaning in conspiratorially. “I mean, her dad's an FBI agent.”

“That's cool!” I said.

“Not really. He's not like out in the field doing Mafia raids or anything like that,” Bee said. “I heard he busts film counterfeiters. You know those warnings on the beginnings of DVDs? He's the guy who enforces that, supposedly. Anyway, she married this hedge fund guy and has reinvented herself. You should have seen what she wore to the Manhattan Fights Cystic Acne ball last night. It was as if the two most disgusting dresses got married and she was wearing their baby.”

“Oh, Bee, you're too much,” said Maggie, nervously.

I bristled. Bee scared me. Maggie looked at me and there was a flicker in her eyes that somehow related that she, too, was fearful of Bee's verbal stings. What in the world did Bee say about me? Whose hell baby were my un-chic outfits? I looked at my watch and said we actually had to bolt. I could not wait to get to Brooklyn, where there would surely be nice cool artsy moms, away from the evil materialistic bitches in my neighb.

I walked in to find a mom sitting in a full-lotus position with her three-year-old sucking her boob. She was braless, with a few tattoos and a streak of blond hair in her waist-length brown locks.

“Hey, welcome!” she smiled. “This is Titus. I'm Darby.” Funny that her nursing three-year-old had the word
tit
in his name.

“Hi, I'm Hannah, this is Violet.”

“Hey, Hannah.”

Titus unhooked his mouth from his mom's chest and walked over to Violet, took her hand, and led her to Darby. “Want a sip?” he offered. “It's my mommy's milk!”

“Um—that's okay—” I dove in, practically grabbing Violet from the giant heaving lactating boob.

“You sure? It's fine with me,” Darby said.

“Oh, she just ate, but thanks so much,” I said, vom mid-esophagus and rising.

“You breast-feeding?”

Great. I was up against a grade-A Nursing Nazi. “Um, no.”

“Really? How old is she?”

“Two.”

“When did you stop?”

I felt the back of my neck get hot as my cheeks flushed. “Um, two months. It wasn't really for me—”

“Well, sure, it's not for you, it's for your child,” she said, the easy maternal vibe melting away. “The World Health Organization said people should do at least a year. There are antibodies that exist only in breast milk that ward off certain diseases.”

I felt like telling her that this is true. Except what she didn't add was that those diseases only exist
in the Congo
, not the United States. Fuck her for trying to belittle me.

She flared her nostrils and raised a pierced brow, adding, “Also, supposedly it makes them smarter.”

“Well, I was bottle-fed,” I said, shrugging. “And I turned out okay.” And I sure as hell was smarter than her with her effing ankh burned on her arm.

“Hi girls,” I heard Kelly say. “So you two met.”

“Yes,” we both said in unison. Then we were silent.

“Hiiiiii guys!” said a cute young guy with a little tyke. He turned to me and said, “Hello, I'm Rufus. I'm not the manny, I'm an S-A-H-D.”

“Oh, great,” I said, wondering why everyone said that when it was just as many syllables as “stay-at-home dad.”

Two more parents showed up, a musician girl with an on-purpose mullet (hipster 'do du jour, think
Lost in Translation
Scarlett JoHaircut), a guitar on her back, and her kid in a camouflage sling. Another woman had spiky bleached hair and a daughter in a No Sleep Till Brooklyn T-shirt. I noticed that on the Upper East Side, every little girl was in pink. I myself favored chocolate browns and beiges but still loved some girlie pink. But every girl I'd seen in Brooklyn hadn't a stich of rose-colored anything near her body. It was all about mustards and puce and black. I even saw a little girl wearing a sweater with Che Guevara's face silk-screened onto it. I didn't quite get it, but assumed it was an expression along the lines of not just cool rebel baby, but also “down with The Man.” But still, I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about the scene across the river.

We all hung out and chatted, and yes, they were interesting and did different, cool things: the SAHD had his own video editing facility in his loft, where he edited commercials and indie films; the musician had a band, The Saints, who played gigs at Lux and other local venues; and the spiky-hair chick worked at an art gallery in Chelsea but was on maternity leave with her second, a baby boy named Dexter, who was at home. All of them seemed young—maybe late twenties or early thirties. They weren't much older than Bee, but she and her friends—they just dressed like they were forty. I read enough cheesy magazines to be able to spot all their fashion logos and knew they spent a fortune on their clothes—even what they wore to the playground. This group was more relaxed and young and cool seeming. But just when I was starting to feel slightly at home with the more artistic posse, they started talking abut this one nursery school in Brooklyn, St. Ann's, that was really hard to get into. The applications were at a record high this year. Same shit as the mothership!

That's when I realized: You can run but you can't hide, Hannah. Momzillas are everywhere. Some might compete about being thin, or having better-dressed kids, but others compete about being cooler or a better breast-feeder. People would always self-create echelons for themselves to ascend in order to feel better about themselves. It's a competitive world and New Yorkers strive for success. All their ambition doesn't just evaporate when kids come—like the Newtonian law where energy remains constant; that rabid drive doesn't dissolve into lullabies and ABCs, it gets channeled into the kid. All parental hopes and dreams go through a funnel straight to their children, and even if I moved to some rectangular state in the middle, I'd probably find the same thing to be true.
Little Iris learned how to milk a cow first! Roberta can whipstitch faster than any other girl in quilting class! My, my, can Missy bake blue ribbon rhubarb pies at her tender age!

After about an hour, I told Kelly we had to get back and I said good-bye to the parents and kids of Tots 'n' Tonic. The great white hope of a cool posse that I'd feel at home with was dashed on the screeching tracks of the L train, and I wondered if I'd ever find what I was looking for, whatever that was.

Thirty-three

We came home and I collapsed in a chair. Violet plopped right on my lap, newly entrenched in a phase of affectionate hugs and kisses at all times. “Mommy, I love you,” she said, as my heart melted. Maybe all I needed was her.

“Heroes! Heroes!” she begged; she seemed to instinctually know when
Higglytown Heroes
was coming on TV. The show chronicles a town where everyone—from the pizza boy to the grocer to the Park Ranger are, yes,
heroes
. It's a nice idea, except I would like it if it were, say, firefighters and cops and teachers, not deli meat slicers. Also semi-annoying were the lyrics, like “Never fear-o, it looks like a time for a Higglytown Hero!”
Fear-o?
Nice try, guys. C'mon, people, can't we find a real word?

Violet watched with wide eyes. A monkey was eating a banana on the TV.

“Mommy!” she squealed, dying laughing. I mean guffaws. Howls. The kid was doubled over. It was the cutest thing—I loved when she lost herself in laughter that way, no sound on planet Earth was happier. “The monkey's eating a banana!” She cackled so hard she almost fainted. It was a moment of truly seeing how innocent children are. I mean, I don't know any monkeys personally, but all grown-ups just know monkeys like bananas. Somehow, Violet's not knowing reminded me that she is a vessel waiting to be filled with knowledge. Watching her, I loved motherhood so much, and knew any of the hassles I was now experiencing were trivial.

The phone rang, interrupting my reverie. “Hi Hannah, it's Bee,” she said. “How was 718-land? What're you up to?”

“Oh, nothing, just watching TV.”

Silence.

“Gosh, Violet watches a lot of TV. I feel like every time I talk to you she's in front of the boob tube.”

My daughter was not a boob.

“Well, I don't have that much help, you know, so it's a nice thing for her to focus on,” I said defensively. “We also read tons of books.”

“Weston doesn't get to watch TV. I just worry it will make him, you know, slow. I figure they don't call it the idiot box for nothing!”

Death to Bee. Why did she care what Violet watched? I watched more episodes of crappy
Brady Bunch
and
Silver Spoons
and
Smurfs
and
Bugs Bunny
than any human ever and I'm fine! But I didn't say any of that. “Whatever,” was my meek response.

“Anyway,” she said. “I was wondering if you wanted to join Maggie and me and the kids in the park Monday.”

“Oh, umm, sure…” I said, dazed. “Oh! Wait, Monday's not good—we actually have our Carnegie interview.”

“Interesting…Well, best of luck to you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Anything we should know about the interview? Any questions? Any tips?”

“No, just, you know, be yourself, I guess!” she said. “Well, maybe Tuesday, then. I'll call you afterward to see how it went.”

I hung up and turned off the TV. Violet objected at first; maybe she was an addict. But then when we got to her room and went to the bookshelf she delved in and was just as excited to read. When she fell asleep I checked the voice mail and found a message from Tate Hayes.

“Hannah, hello, it's Tate. A friend of mine is working on a show at the Met and said I could come next week and look at some of the pieces on loan in advance. Would you care you join me? We could have lunch and I can show you the museum archives, which is really a treat if you haven't seen them…”

Somehow the warm flickers of his voice, which sounded extra throaty today—did he have a cold?—made me take one hand and rub my arm. I must have had chills. I remembered how in college this often happened when listening to his lectures.

One time sophomore year, I was in Professor Hayes's office and we had been eating greasy Chinese food on his desk and talking for hours. This was around the time he was having slumber parties with Bianca Pratt, my modern art teacher, so it was pre-smooch by about two years. So there we were, not even discussing anything intellectual. It was more along the lines how eating MSG made me have sausage-fingers (à la Leigh's date) the next morning and my rings could not be budged on my normally thinnish digits until four
P.M.
out of total chicken fri-ri bloatfest. I was leaning back in my chair, chomping an eggroll, telling him about my insomnia (final essay, career, life choices, yawn yawn yawn) and how I basically played with my friends 'til all hours procrastinating because I simply
hated
school. He smiled and said that these were such magical times and that one day I'd be nostalgic for them.

“Noooo way,” I said, defiantly. “Trust me, you could not pay me to relive this stress. All those people who say these are the best years of their lives are so pathetic. If that is true, then I'm leaping off the Transamerica Pyramid.”

“You'll see,” he said knowingly. “You never get times like these with everyone around you, every meal across from friends who are on call every night. You have a built-in support system.” He took his feet off the desk and smiled at me, opening an F. T. Marinetti book from his shelf and flipping through the pages, 'til I saw warm recognition in his eyes as he cleared his throat. He looked at me for a second before reading. This was a momentary, key eye-lock.

Chopsticks in one hand, he read:

We stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging Mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like them with the prisoned radiance of electric hearts.

Sitting in my apartment in New York, I snapped out of my reverie, realizing now that he was right. Though I did get stressed out at school and I wasn't going to whitewash those hard moments in gilded hindsight, I was nostalgic. Those times were stressful but always safe. A paper here, a quiz to cram for there, but in the end it was a system, and I worked well in a system. To so many people, school was a great big map of options and they were perpetually lost. But I was great with maps. I knew how to navigate and always get where I needed to be. But, of course, life post-school had no atlas, especially here. So I sometimes longed for the coziness of a calendar's locking grids, or a syllabus's directives, and hoped one day I could figure out what that might be. But when you're a grown-up, those directives have to come from yourself, and though what I wanted to do was still a blur, reconnecting with something that got me psyched up and feeling alive would be a step in the right direction.