Live Fast Die Hot (23 page)

“I think you just need some moral support,” Jason said one Sunday after watching me throw my phone across the room. “If you want, I'll go with you to the park and just root from the sidelines. I've been seeing some cute moms up at Bleecker Street.”

Jason's work schedule had recently opened up, giving him free time during the week to hang with Sid and be depressed about his work schedule opening up. Jason was the kind of dad that every mom dreams of. He knew his kid's diaper size, shoe size, what buzzwords got him in and out of the bath. While I spent my mornings writing about how my parents ignored me, Jason focused his attention on Sid. They read books, popped bottles, and like all men, eventually settled in front of the TV. Their eyes as big as saucers, their bodies completely still, I could never tell who was enjoying himself more. When we were alone Jason would give me the abridged version of whatever cartoon they'd seen and what major facts I needed to know:

“Part of the problem is that I work and most of these moms don't,” I announced arrogantly, as we rolled into the park with Sid that afternoon. The truth is that I felt superior for having a life outside of my husband—but also inferior for having a life outside of my son. I was torn between feeling too good and feeling not good enough.

For all the friendship game I talked, I feared relationships as much as Crystal did. Having mom friends meant trusting women. And trusting women meant opening myself up to heartbreak. Women were scary, dangerous, and always one step away from dropping me for a man. (Or at least my mom was. And so would Crystal, as soon as someone texted her back.) I pushed Pause on my wallowing for long enough to wonder whether moms were avoiding me or I was avoiding moms.

I looked around at the weekend crowd, composed of hungover dads playing on their Apple Watches, helicopter moms cautioning their kids about the dangers of Razor scooters, and random singles wondering why they agreed to brunch with their married friends. Despite our differences, we were all a mess, all trying to survive. Though it could be painful, I knew I had to jump in for Sid's sake. I didn't want him to be excluded from sleepovers and playdates because I was too aloof and hard to make plans with. I couldn't be a loner just because it somehow made me feel special. Whether I worked or not, I was exactly like these women in that I was a new mom. And I refused to stay so closed off that the only kind of female validation I was comfortable receiving was the occasional Tinder text reading “Did you fall from heaven because fuck me.” Sucking up my pride and sucking in my stomach, I approached a rattled redhead trying to lift her tantruming toddler off a bike.

“Do you come here often?”

She looked up at me, then rolled her eyes toward her devil daughter. “Sorry, we're missing naptime and about to melt down.”

Jason leaned against a picnic table, watching me and shaking his head.

I walked back over to him for feedback.

“Baby, no. You can't just jump in like that. You seem too eager and weird.”

“Well, what do I do?”

“Think of it like picking someone up at a bar. First, decide which girl you're interested in. Then talk to everybody but her. Make her come to you. Say some biting things that she happens to overhear. Maybe tell a story that you feel she might relate to.” I was suddenly Neil Strauss and Jason was Mystery. I gave him a look, completely weirded out.

“What the fuck, baby? Now I'm just some kind of lounge lizard—” I stopped, seeing an edgy mom with ombré hair. “I should have worn cuter shoes. I'm not peacocking enough!”

“Your shoes are fine.”

“I look like a militant lesbian.”

“You always look like a militant lesbian. You have penis envy and you're afraid of your own sexuality. Now go track down that kid and position Sid next to it.” Jason massaged my neck like I was a boxer about to get in the ring.

Sid looked at me and instantly turned stiff as a board, making it nearly impossible to lift him. It was as if he was aware of my plan and didn't appreciate being used as bait. When I finally got close to Ombré's kid, a pudgy blond Aryan Youth candidate in a “Will work for sugar” T-shirt, Sid was flailing in my arms, crying. After clawing me across the face didn't work, he decided to bite my ear. I reflexively let go of my Kid Dynamite, dropping him on his diaper directly on top of Ombré's kid.

“Bunny! Biting is not allowed!” I shrieked.

“Dylan? You playing nice?”

I turned to see Ombré mom approaching. She was beautiful in a plain French-person way. She wore a gold wedding band, minimal makeup, an oversize sweater, and cropped jeans. On her ankle I noted a Japanese character tattoo, informing me she'd spent 1999 making the same mistakes I had. Sid looked up at Ombré, unimpressed by her heavy roots and clearly judging her for being stuck in 2007. Dylan, who was several weeks younger than Sid and didn't yet possess the vocabulary to say the word “balayage,” stared vacantly at his mother.

“I'm Ulrika. But my friends call me Ricki.”

“I'm Jenny. I don't have any friends.”

Ombré laughed and sat down on a bench beside me. “I hate this park. I always feel like I'm in that Sartre play
No Exit,
” she said.

“I played Inez in
No Exit
in college!” I said excitedly, as if I was telling someone I'd won an Oscar for
The Color Purple.

Ombré swept her calico locks to the side and looked around. “There's no escaping because we are in New York and what the fuck else are we gonna do with our kids? Let them play on the subway? Have you been to the park on Sullivan Street in SoHo? It's way better.”

“No, but my husband probably has.” I pointed at Jason, who was hiding behind a tree like a TV vampire that's impervious to sunlight as long as he's wearing a black leather jacket and sunglasses.

Ombré held up her hand to say hello.

“We should go sometime. What time does he nap?”

“Afternoons.” I looked to Sid to make sure he noticed that I'd answered the question correctly. “I work during the week, but maybe next weekend?”

“Perfect.”

Sid stabbed himself in the mouth with a shovel, officially becoming that belligerent drunk friend who gets you thrown off your Southwest flight to Vegas.

“Give me your number.” Ombré took out her phone and typed in my digits as Jason rushed over to honor Sid's feelings, liked he'd read in one of his child development books.

“I can see that you're frustrated about not being able to fit the shovel in your mouth. I get frustrated when I can't do something, too. Let's calm our bodies and figure this out together.”

“I'll text you.” Ombré winked and walked off.

Jason continued negotiating with a still-convulsing Sid. “Do you want to calm your body now or five minutes from now?”

“Looking forward to it!” I waved.

“So, like, when do you think she'll text?” I sat on the couch next to Crystal, replaying the day's events. “She seemed into me, right, babe?”

“Totally into you, baby,” Jason called out, his body half in the freezer as he sated his sober sweet tooth with spoonfuls of butter-pecan ice cream.

“Wow. Slow down. It's been like three hours. She'll probably text you in a few days.” Crystal sounded more levelheaded than I'd ever heard her.

“But this is different. We were exchanging info. We made a tentative plan to go to that park on Sullivan Street. She should have texted her details right away. Maybe the text didn't go through or she forgot or—”

“Or maybe she's just not that into you,” Crystal offered sadistically, for once not the girl having the meltdown. “I think White Tank Top fingered me in that park,” she added, before slinking back into her cell.

“Just breathe. You'll hear from her,” Jason mumbled through a full mouth of whatever other shit he'd foraged out of the freezer.

Like White Tank Top, Black Dildo, and all the other players who'd come before, Ombré was either going to text or not, and there was nothing I could do to change it. But with each day that passed, I felt more and more hurt. Every time I thought about going to our usual park, I fumed. I'd always used romantic disappointments to my advantage in the past. Even now I'd still sometimes pick a fight with Jason just so I'd be depressed for a week and have an excuse to eat a Benadryl for dinner. So I spent the week combating my feeling of rejection from Ombré by getting my eyebrows waxed, creating an Adele playlist on Spotify, and setting the treadmill to 7.5.

When Sunday finally rolled around, I was ready to move on—partly because Ombré and I didn't have enough history to hold on to and partly because I had a really important meeting on Monday that could potentially lead to me being pasted on a billboard outside Ombré's apartment. Then, like all assholes, the minute I stopped caring she surfaced.

“Hi, Jenny. We still doing the park on Sullivan?” The number wasn't saved in my phone, but I knew exactly who the text was from.

“Ricki?” I wrote, as if it could be any number of other potential mom friends.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Are we meeting or what?”

Sandwiched between two buildings was Sullivan Street Park. It was more urban than the other parks in the area. Used push toys and empty Mum-Mum wrappers littered the blacktop basketball court. Popsicle-stained children scrambled around the worn-down jungle gym.

The second we arrived Sid leaped out of his stroller and fought his way into the madness like a newly engaged girl at a David's Bridal sale. His body tightened with excitement as he grunted his way up the spiral slide.

“Jenny!” Ombré said, appearing behind me looking happy and blissfully unaware of our breakup. “Work was crazy this week. How about you?”