Momfriends (7 page)

“I think we’ll be okay. You’re only going to the kitchen.” I said, trying to keep any small amount of sarcasm out of my voice. Find the flaky artsy tone, I told myself. Condescension was not cool for word of mouth. I was dipping my toes back in to working. “Superduper.”

“Okay, Emily, Mother’s just going to get Jacob his milk in the kitchen. We’ll be right back. Okay.”

“You see Emily necklace?” Emily asked me, ignoring her mother.

“Yes, sweetheart. It’s sooooo pretty.”

“Emily, do you want your milk?” Claudia asked, trying to reestablish contact.

“Noooooooo,” Emily said, starting to get upset.

“It’s okay, honey,” Claudia said. Then to me she added, “You know how they can turn so quickly.”

“I do,” I said. “But Emily is doing great. What a superduper pretty smile.”

Claudia hung out for a minute, hesitating. Jacob was really beginning to have a meltdown.

“Okay, I’ll be in the kitchen,” Claudia said, backing up slowly. I nodded.

Claudia left, keeping the pocket doors to the parlor open. I guess she still thought there was a chance I could kidnap Emily. I kept taking pictures of Emily’s attempts at a cartwheel. It was a good thing Claudia was gone. I had a feeling that these kinds of moves would make her uncomfortable.

I glanced around her spotless apartment. It was the garden floor of a beautiful old brownstone with tons of room. The light in the double parlor was perfect. It was a huge space I would have done completely differently. I was dying to see the rest of it. I would have killed for space like this, so much room for kids and art. I pushed the idea out of my head. David and I were never going to be able to afford a place like this. Not anymore. We seemed to miss the boat on everything when it came to money. We were permanently broke, living hand to mouth. This was my attempt to get out from under this debt.

I kept taking pictures

Claudia mentioned that she owned. She had bought a few years ago when the neighborhood was still, in her words, “sketchy”. I was surprised someone like her took a risk moving to a fringe neighborhood. There was always more to people than I suspected at first. Sometimes I could only find out who people were when I looked through the camera lens at them and snapped. I thought of taking a picture of Claudia as she kept nervously peering into the parlor from the kitchen but decided against it. I didn’t think she would take it lightly. She was wound way up.

Lately, I found myself being envious of the things that other people had. Not their kids, I wouldn’t trade mine for the world. It was things, material things. I never used to care about this. But more and more, as I felt David growing restless, it seemed as if having a little money wouldn’t be so bad. It would mean more freedom.

Someone like Claudia could probably afford a nanny and a housekeeper. We could barely afford a babysitter. Today David’s mother, Hope, was helping out.

Thinking of the kids made my breasts ache. Another hour or so and I would become engorged, but I didn’t think it would be cool to stop and pump at Claudia’s house. I figured I would be done in an hour. I wondered if Naomi missed me and what things Sage was saying to terrify Hope. Luckily, Julissa was in school. She was the real handful. The last time Hope watched her, she told me that Julissa needed to be reined in, that she was going to grow up spoiled if we weren’t careful. I thought of throwing back at her that David wasn’t spoiled, but he had grown up repressed and resentful, but I didn’t want to start a war. I couldn’t wait to hear what advice she was going to give me about Sage.

But it was worth it. This photo shoot was going to cover one eighth of our rent and that was necessary.

“Everything okay in here?” Claudia said coming back in.

“It’s going great, I think Emily is quite photogenic. Aren’t you, sweetheart?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a backyard,” I asked Claudia.

“Yeah, do you want to see it?”

“I was thinking maybe we could do some back there, if you didn’t mind. I bet the light would be great out there.” And also I was having real estate envy. Prospect Park was great for summer visits, but it would be nice to have a little grass of my own and maybe a garden.

“Well, it’s not that nice,” Claudia, said nervously.

“Is there a tree?”

“A few.”

“If you don’t want to go, no worries. I thought it would be a nice change of pace.”

I looked at Claudia. She bit her lip. I had this feeling that it wasn’t the idea of going into the garden that bothered her; it was just that we hadn’t planned it before. She didn’t want to roll with it. It was as if she couldn’t. I imagined she had a job in which she had a lot of control and not a lot of human contact.

“It’s fine, we can stay in here,” I said lightly.

“No, no, I want to get the best pictures. Let me just put some sunscreen on them.”

Twenty minutes later after a thorough application of sunscreen and a small meltdown from Emily, which I distracted by singing my old standby “Five Little Monkeys,” we were outside.

The garden was unkempt but grassy. There was a giant magnolia tree in the back.

“Wow, that’s a beautiful, bloom, huh?” I asked. Claudia shrugged and then nodded. I couldn’t stop myself from snapping a few pictures. I switched from digital to film.

I resumed doing my job, snapping pictures of the twins. And as I did, I heard a baby wailing. It was a newborn cry.

“Baby fwyin,” Emily said.

“Da-dwyin,” Jacob said.

“Yes, a baby is crying. Babies can’t talk the way you two can. You are big, so you can talk. But not babies, they have to cry,” I said, as I snapped some fantastic shots of the two of them in the grass. The baby began to shriek. This went on for at least fifteen minutes. I pressed a hand against my chest. It wasn’t my baby, but my breasts apparently wanted me to wet-nurse the kid. I was probably going to have to figure out a way to pump. I wish I had driven over, but I walked, leaving the car with Hope in case Sage or Naomi had an emergency. I glanced at Claudia. “Sounds like a new baby in the neighborhood.”

“Yeah, I think the woman who rents the garden apartment next door had a baby a few weeks ago. It cries constantly. I always wake up. I’m glad these two are sleeping through it.”

“The poor mom. The beginning is tough. What did she get?”

“Pardon,” Claudia asked.

“Boy or girl?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. I haven’t really seen her. I hear her constantly.”

I wasn’t sure if Claudia wanted me to feel bad for her and her lost beauty sleep, but by the sound of the baby’s cry, the mom was overwhelmed.

“Is it the first kid?”

“Um, yes,” Claudia said definitively. “I mean I don’t really know her, but I am more than sure we would have seen an older kid if they lived there.”

“Did they just move in or something,” I asked. I had gone back to snapping shots, but Claudia was finally on my good side, so I could hear her.

“No, they’ve lived there for a while.”

The baby stopped crying and I kept working. Claudia was hovering around us, but at least she had stopped directing the kids. She interrupted for a minute to fix the headband in Emily’s hair.

“Emily ’ave pretty in ’air,” Emily said.

“Yes, Emily, it’s very pretty in your hair,” I said.

“Jac wan retty. Wan reeeeettttttttyyy!” Jacob whined.

“Jacob, you can’t have a pretty,” Claudia said. “He wants everything his sister has.”

“My three-year-old, Sage, is the same way.”

“Your son?”

“Yeah, if it’s sparkly and pink he loves it.”

“It must drive your husband crazy. My husband, Peter, hates it.” I wish I could have disagreed with her, but it did seem to be driving David crazy. Emily was not having the headband back in her hair. She pulled it out, threw it on the ground and shook her head free.

“No,” she said. Emily was going to be a handful when she grew up. I knew from experience.

“Emily!” Claudia scolded. “Do you want a time-out?”

“You know, don’t worry about it,” I said. “I think we are done.”

“Really?” Claudia said, suspiciously. She was looking angrily at Emily.

“Yeah, I got some great shots.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

We stood there in the backyard for a minute, watching Jacob pull out some grass and Emily attempt more somersaults.

“Emily, watch out for your brother,” Claudia yelled. Then added for my benefit. “Please.”

I started to pack up my stuff. Claudia brought out some iced tea. It was delicious with sprigs of fresh mint. Claudia had grown the mint in her backyard. Yet another reason to have a backyard.

“So where are your kids?” Claudia asked. I felt her consciously trying to make conversation with me. It didn’t come easy.

“Well, the younger two are with their grandma and my five year old is in preschool.”

“Oh, are you local?”

“We live pretty close in Boerum Hill, but she goes to school at Brookese.”

“Really?” Claudia looked more excited than she had all day, but then she did something weird to her face and composed herself.

“Yeah, have you heard of it?”

“Of course, it’s so highly rated.”

“I guess,” I said. Of course I knew that it was, but I tried not to think I was sending my daughter to a school that this yuppie coveted. “It’s a good school. Julissa enjoys it.”

“How do find the curriculum?” she asked.

“Curriculum?”

“You know the course of study at the school,” she said, defining the word for me as if it was beyond my grasp. Something about her expression made me think she realized how annoying that was, but I didn’t give her a chance to apologize.

“I don’t know what the official curriculum is, but Julissa seems to have a lot of fun.”

“How did you get her in?”

“We applied, like everyone else.”

“Was the interview brutal?”

“Um, there’s not an interview.” I thought back. “They have this playgroup that they do before you apply, and I think that helps your chances. I guess they sort of assess them that way.”

“Is your daughter very verbal? Because I don’t think Jacob is and I feel that could hurt Emily’s chances too. Not that I would want to separate them. But I worry -” she stopped herself. “Do they test them on colors? Jacob definitely doesn’t know his. And do you think they’ll check references?”

“References?”

“You know, like, will they call my day care? I mean that seems a bit biased for day care kids. Who can they call for the stay-at-home kids? Their mothers? Well, their mothers or their nannies aren’t going to tell the truth about their character. They would brush things under the rug, don’t you think?”

She had completely me lost me at references. I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say. I wanted to get paid and get out.

I smiled. Claudia looked at me awkwardly.

“Is there a secret you think to getting in?”

“I don’t know. Julissa can be pretty charming. I don’t know if that helped her. ”

“Hmm,” Claudia nodded and looked at her kids. And I regretted saying anything about Julissa, because I saw on Claudia’s face disappointment in her children and it disturbed me. I wanted out.

“So thanks for the iced tea. I should probably go get the kids.”

“Of course. Do I give you half now? Is that how it works?”

“That would be great,” I said.

“A check is okay,” she said, pulling one already signed out of her pocket.

“Perfect,” I said, taking it from her. “Thanks. I should be able to send you a link to the selects in a couple of days.”

“Great,” Claudia said. She hesitated, looking at her hands. “Could I call you if I have any other questions about Brookese.”

“Of course,” I said. What was I getting myself into?

She glanced behind me towards the house with the crying baby. “I feel guilty now. I guess I should have gone over there with a pie or something.”

I think Claudia wanted me to absolve her and I was about to, but we heard the shrill scream of a woman on the edge of a breakdown through the neighbor’s window. “Will you stop fucking looking at me?”

Chapter 5

Ruth is Completely Misunderstood

They have the wrong idea and they won’t go away.

Two women are standing at my door with two children trying to peer behind me into my apartment. I want to call the cops. I suspect they want to call the cops. Do I look an abuser? Sometimes, I may feel like one, but the idea that these women are here to protect a baby, my baby, makes me want to cry. I don’t need this. Not today.

“We just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” says the younger one, the one with high, full breasts I will never ever have again.

“Everything’s fine,” I say. But it isn’t. I can hear Abe starting to wake up in the nursery. I moved the bouncy seat in there because he was refusing to go down in the bassinet. I bounced that baby until he finally nodded off. Now these bitches woke him up with the doorbell.

“That’s the baby?” the older one asks. I recognize her. She’s my neighbor; I have stared out the window at her on a few occasions. I watched her come and go while I was always stuck in the house. She was always rushing. As usual, there was not a hair out of place in her Anna Wintour bob and she craned her neck to see behind me.

“Yeah, that’s the baby,” I say. I am teetering on the edge. So tired. My eyes are heavy. “He was finally asleep until the bell rang. You woke him.”

“We’re sorry,” Full Breasts says, she actually caresses one of her perfect breasts or maybe I am hallucinating. Maybe this whole thing is a hallucination. “It’s just that we heard someone yelling and we were concerned.”

“We also heard the baby crying a lot,” BobCut Neighbor says. Her voice is accusing.

“Well.” I am going to deny it, but somehow I know they won’t go for that. I stand before them in one of Steve’s wifebeaters, which is already stained with milk, and the silky short short bottoms from some Victoria Secret’s pajamas set. These are pulled low because they no longer fit and I wanted to cover up my giant ass before I answered the door. I look down and realize my belly is exposed. I pull the shirt over my flab. I feel naked. I should have been wearing more around the house, but lately I’ve been so hot. Motherhood turned my internal thermostat way up. And plus my breasts are always out. I considered going topless, but the occasional glimpses of my saggy stretched out belly were way too much for me. Now these two women are getting the whole gross show. It’s a sad sight. They might as well cart me away somewhere, preferably somewhere with a bed. Oh, it will be good to lie down. I have been sleeping in the chaise lounge a lot, when I sleep, because Abe is doing this thing where he only sleeps upright, in my arms. My limbs and back are stiff. Oh, sweet sleep, how I miss you.