How to Party With an Infant (17 page)

I looked down the hall to the black marble foyer, then gathered the bags, feeling like a hobbit embarking on a long journey. I ventured forth. The shopping bags were heavy. They were from Coach, Neiman Marcus, Giggle, Saks, and J. Crew. I felt like a lucky hobo.

As I said, I offered to carry the bags not so much to be helpful but because I needed to be alone. Also, I was dying to know what was in them. My bag was filled with the things I felt I could part with. It took me so long to fill it, so much back and forth. I rescued at least three things just moments before I entered Betts’s home. I saved my platform shoes with cork wedges just in case someone declared them in style again. I rescued E’s stuffed monkey and a pan she could use for pretend cooking. I had no right to judge these women and understood that part of it was jealousy, but there was something else, too, rooted in a disappointment in friendships, my expectations and hopes for them.
What do I value about the friendships I’ve made in the SFMC community?
At that time, I didn’t value a thing. Friendship was like a cold. I was just hunkering down, trying to get through it, hoping for future health.

When I finally got to the kitchen, I put everything down, looking around for nanny cams. The kitchen was dark and elegant, lots of copper and burnished brass. I peeked into a bag, making a face like I was searching for something so if someone came in I could say, “Where is that thing I put in there? I can’t seem to . . . Oh, never mind.” I was an actress in high school, or at least thought of myself as one, and the
skill has come in very handy in my life, especially now as a mother.

In bag number 1 I spied smoked trout, sunless tanning cream, and clothes that were no longer in style—peasant skirts and velour sweat suits. I imagined someone saying, “I’m not wearing this busted-ass skirt. I’m not eating this smoked shit. Fish in a box? That’s nasty.”

But then I saw something that caught my eye: a black belt, something I’ve been looking to buy, a nice black belt that isn’t from Forever 21. I extracted it from the bag as if playing Operation. It wasn’t too thin or too wide. No loosened threads or chafed leather. It had a sturdy silver buckle that could be used as a weapon if needed. I ran my hands down the rouge lining, then spotted the label: Hermès.

I put it around my waist. Hermès—that soft, lofty word had, against my better judgment, made it not just a belt but a perfect belt, a belt that could dress up jeans or transform a dress; a belt that could take me into my golden years. I was trying to get a glimpse of it in the reflection of the oven when a woman came into the kitchen with a bucket of cleaning products. I was too embarrassed to take it off, so I pulled my sweatshirt down over it.

“I can’t seem to find my . . . Oh, never mind,” I said.

The woman ignored me.

“I’m just dropping this stuff off,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

I wanted to tell her that I was different from the women out there, that she didn’t have to call me ma’am. I used to have Mexican friends. Granted one went to Harvard and the others worked for my grandmother, but still. I’m biclass—I can swing both ways.

Then Courtney walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, hi, bon journo, Cecil. Como sta?” She turned to me and asked: “You having second thoughts?”

“What?”

She gestured to the bags. “Giver’s remorse.”

“Oh, no,
I was just making sure I didn’t forget to put this emergency kit in there. It has Band-Aids in it . . .” I tried to trail off. “Little sewing needle.”

Courtney started to go through the Saks bag, the one where I got the belt. She was pulling out clothes, leaving them on the floor. “I meant to take some of this stuff to a consignment shop.” She held up a pair of high heels. “These,” she said and continued to rifle around. “I thought I had this belt in here, too.”

I knew this was the time to take it off. I could act my way out of awkwardness. If Courtney were my friend, it wouldn’t have been awkward at all, but I pulled my sweatshirt down further.

“What the hell?” Courtney said. “Where is it?”

“Weird,” I said.

The window had closed. There’s a point when too much time has gone by to ask someone what his or her name is if you’ve forgotten it. This was the same situation—too much time had gone by for me to take off the belt. I couldn’t have said, “You mean this?” pointing to my waist. I had passed that point and I was trapped. For a moment, I felt panicked and a bit sick, but then I began to feel better. It was like shoplifting, something I used to do sometimes with my friends in college. At grocery stores we’d buy our groceries, but would steal something, too. I don’t know why we’d do this. It made a mundane errand fun, I guess, and we were showing off for each other, and naïvely thinking we were doing something to the system, the big chain stores. With Courtney I had that same feeling of exhilaration and badassedness.
I’m going to steal your goddamn belt.

Courtney made a sound of frustration, then walked toward the hall with her rescued heels.

“Maybe it fell out in my house somewhere,” she mumbled before disappearing into the maze. I was relieved to be alone again—the lie around my waist was becoming loud, like a telltale heart.

I walked out of the kitchen and back down the hall, looking at the details, the art, the cleanliness, all these things I may never have. I felt like a sloppy child, or like my old self, the college girl, needy and hungry for the extraordinary, for something that would set me apart from people who wouldn’t have me anyway. My shoplifting high was gone. Being bad is just a reaction to feeling marooned.

When I got back the women were looking at me as though I had done something wrong. I almost confessed, but then Lana smiled apologetically and I realized they were talking about me.

Courtney quickly gave something to Betts. A check.

“This is just for the charity,” Betts said. “But don’t feel obliged.” She looked at Ellie, who was smiling, all gums. “It’s fine,” Betts said. “We have a lot here.”

Was it really that obvious? Did I look poor? Did it come off of me like a scent? Or maybe it was just that I didn’t know them before this, and they know everyone in the city you’re supposed to know.

I could have written a check—not like the ones they were probably writing, but I could have done something. It was more humiliating to not be included at all.

“I don’t have my checkbook,” I said, and I didn’t. “But . . . next time.”

“Okay,” Betts said lightly. “Next time.”

I picked Ellie up, and waved her little hand for her. “Off to nap. Bye, everyone,” I said in my voice, in Ellie’s voice. We were a united front. Then I walked out of the house with a beautiful baby and a beautiful belt.

What am I going to teach you? I buckled my girl into the car seat. How are we going to move with confidence? How are we going to fit?

I closed her door, looked back at the house, then took the belt off, leaving it on the sidewalk. It had fallen from Lana’s bag, mystery solved. I felt its absence, but it was just a belt, and this was just a big home, and those ladies in there were all just mothers
who probably felt just as alone at times. I left them all behind and never went back.

Do I value the SFMC friendships I have now? Wholeheartedly. Friendships are meant to strengthen you, not deplete you. Now that I’m a parent friendships will most likely be ever-changing as my child grows. Children lead us to our company. For now, there is Georgia, Barrett, Annie, and Henry, my company, and I don’t know what I’d do without them.

Any suggestions to make SFMC playgroups better?

I got a little teary there for a moment. Okay, moving on. Yes, the whole registration process could be much simpler. I remember signing up online, what an arduous process that was. I was pregnant and sweating profusely after having tried, and failed, to come up with a suitable username. After each attempt I was informed that my username either was taken or was missing a key element—a capital letter, a number, more letters, a space. I even tried FuCkU69!H()_, and got: “This username has been taken.” Is the SFMC chat group, which is really just a forum for mothers to harangue, boast, rant, judge, ridicule, malign, and passively aggressively battle, really that top-secret?

Also, for playgroups I’ve learned that you pair people up by zip codes, a.k.a. tax brackets. When I signed up I was still living in a Pac Heights studio. That’s why I got placed with Betts and the funky bunch in the first place.

Perhaps pair people up in a way that moves them out of their bubbles. You never know where friendships could strike.

My friends are the perfect example. They’ve been so supportive this past week, the wedding just a week away. Even though Annie thinks it will just rub salt and the whole spice rack into the wound, she has offered to come over to help me get ready.

“I’m
really good with makeup,” she said the other day. She squinted at me, planning her strategy, then cupped my face and smiled, which completely warmed my heart.

I still haven’t asked Henry if he wants to go—the delay due to the fact that I haven’t seen him since he left for camping, and because it hasn’t really been on my mind. I’ve been working on this book and looking over my old writing from grad school. I’ve been hanging out with the girls—I even went to the Embarcadero Farmers’ Market with just Georgia, friendship striking on a warm day by the bay. We watched our kids play on the pier and ate the most delicious almond cherry scones.

They know if they stamp Cinderella or a talking sponge on a box of cookie cereal we’ll be too tired to argue. Why can’t they put Elmo on kale bags! Only the crap gets the fun.

—Moms at the Discovery Museum watching their kids eating princess fruit chews, which have no fruit in them whatsoever

EAT CAKE

I
t’s a sunny day in San Francisco, which means everyone is out in full force with their Frisbees and pit bulls. It’s like being at a music festival. The Panhandle playground is packed with kids, buzzing with excitement and intermittent cries from some unfortunate child. Parents perk up at the cries, then settle back when they realize it isn’t their child. Some don’t even look up, the sounds of their children’s cries firmly imprinted.

Mele reads a magazine on the bench while Barrett finishes her phone call. She spies Ellie climbing up the play structure stairs and accidentally knocking down a black child. She’d rather not get up to help—if it were a white child she wouldn’t—but she doesn’t want anyone thinking Ellie’s a racist. It’s been on her mind lately, as Ellie will say things every now and then that give Mele pause about the best way to answer. Ellie asked her Indian friend, Amita, in daycare, “Why is your skin like that?” Amita didn’t know what to say. She shrugged. “No one told me why.”

No one seems to have noticed the accident, and the knocked-down child is already standing, contentedly continuing on. It would have been racist to have gotten up, she thinks.

Barrett ends her call and shakes her head. She runs her family like a company. Mele wants to talk to her about the wedding. She values Barrett’s opinion, sort of like Annie deferring to Tabor Boyard.

“Do you think?” Mele asks, then stops when Ellie catapults off the purple slide and screams, “Dora! Dora! Mommy! Mama!”

She scans the playground for a Dora doll, T-shirt, shoes, backpack, book, cereal box, corn syrup pops, whatever the little minx has affixed herself to.

“Dora!” Ellie says again, and Barrett sighs. “Look to the right. The gate.”

Mele looks toward the gate, where the blond in-vitro twins are being strolled into the playground by their nanny. Their short, Mexican nanny with black bobbed hair and blunt bangs: Dora.

“Oh,” Mele says.

“Dora!” Ellie says, pulling on Mele’s white T-shirt.

“No, sweetie,” Mele whispers. It’s happening again. “That’s not Dora. We don’t know her name. It could be Louise or Mary.”

“Or Dora,” Barrett says.

“It really does look like her,” Mele says. If Dora was fifty-five and taking care of two blond girls who kept shouting, “Look what I can do! Look what I can do!” A Dora who had stopped her adventures and explorations and spent her time parked on a playground bench, grinding up flax to sprinkle on tofu haute dogs and other foods said with finger quotes.

Ellie continues to stare, not entirely convinced that this isn’t Dora at her second job. She walks toward the twins and stands in front of them, checking things out.

“What do I do?” Mele says. “The other day she yelled, ‘Albert’s dad!’ when she saw our Asian neighbor in the hall, and she’s starting to say it whenever she sees Asian men. So I say, ‘No, sweetie, that’s not Albert’s
dad. He just looks like . . . And I had to stop myself. I couldn’t say he looked like Albert’s dad. That’s totally racist, right?”

“Right,” Barrett says. “Racist. Oh, you don’t even know.” She shakes her head, and looks like she’s holding back from saying something.

“What?” Mele says with a hungry look.

“I don’t want to be that person who follows ‘I saw a shark’ with ‘Yeah, well, I’ve been bitten by one.’ ”

“But I like shark-bite stories!” Mele doesn’t mind being one-upped or talked down to by Barrett. She has always looked to her for advice, from choosing the right stroller and the right diapers to knowing the best times of the day to go to Costco and Trader Joe’s, and now Barrett could help her to teach Ellie that not all Mexicans are Dora and not all Asians are Albert’s dad, subtly blending in life lessons, hiding them like sweet potatoes in pancakes.

“Some things went down this weekend,” Barrett says.

“What happened?” Mele asks and prepares to be priest and translator. “Can I use it?”

“Sure,” Barrett says. “Make it into a cake.”

BARRETT’S FABULOUS LIFE

B
arrett is watching the Fabulous Life of someone or another, some teen singer who claims she wants to be a mom before she gets too old to enjoy it.

“I want to be able to play with my kids,” the pop star is saying. “I want to go shopping with them. I want two boys and two girls.” The singer giggles, as if she has said something funny.