Momzillas Read online

  We started kissing and the smooch got deeper until that moment when it suddenly turns—that subtle spark of knowing (not to be so teen) that you’re going to go all the way. My attempted Marilyn-coy glance was our lingo that his suit would come off for a quickie. But then Violet’s little chirp rang out from the nursery, which was practically on top of our bedroom, which made getting on top of each other rather difficult.

  We co-sighed that all-too-familiar sigh of bang ya later and went to scoop up Violet for a group hug and vertical cuddle. Then we walked Daddy to the door for an elevator-side kiss and said good-bye for what I hoped would not be fourteen hours. When we came back to the kitchen, I saw the broker’s business card Bee had given me affixed to the fridge with one of Violet’s magnet letters. I picked up the phone and dialed the number as Violet attacked the megabox of colored markers to draw. I was a little nervous since I knew this man’s wife was the director of Carnegie Nursery School, so I almost felt like I was auditioning for him in a weird way.

  “Troy Kincaid.”

  “Hi, um, Troy, hi, this is Hannah Allen calling, Bee’s friend—”

  “Yes! Hello, Hannah. Bee gave me the heads-up,” his deep, gravelly British-accented voice replied. “I already have made a file for you and I have a few listings I think you’ll really like.”

  “Wow, that was fast!”

  “We have one exclusive one block from Bee on Fifth and Seventy-third. Prewar. White-glove. Top-notch.” His Queen’s English posh London accent made it sound extra-fabulous.

  “Cool,” I said, surprised. “How much?”

  “Five three, but they’ll come down.”

  Pin drop.

  “F-F-F-Five…million three hundred thousand?” I stuttered.

  “But it’s not firm.”

  “Um, wow, Troy, listen, you are so sweet to have begun the search for us, and I hope I didn’t waste your time, but…that’s not really our budget. Like, at all,” I apologized. “Do you maybe have any listings that are less? Like…four million less?” I asked, semi-blushing.

  “Four million or less? Sure!”

  “No, no, no,” I said. “Not four million or less. Four million less than five point three million, i.e., something in the one-to-one-and-a-half range.”

  “Oh.”

  Crickets.

  “In Manhattan?” he probed.

  “Yes. I saw in the New York Times a three-bedroom—”

  “No. There’s nothing in that range with three bedrooms.”

  “Really? ’Cause—”

  “Nothing. But I’ll keep an eye out and get back to you. Let me run some searches.”

  His initially charming smoky voice turned very chilly when he understood our apparently chump-change range, which hardly seemed pauperesque to me. But alas, in our new burg what we could afford would buy a view of a brick wall and the square footage of a monk’s cell. I hoped his wife wouldn’t put our budget in Violet’s file when we applied to the elite bastion of academia. For tots. Argh! Josh was doing very well and to me our budget seemed fine—it would have bought us a perfectly nice place in any other city in the union, save for New York, island of gazillionaires. But even though Parker Elliott and all Josh’s friends have great jobs like Josh, they also have wealthy wives who chip in a mill or two, not to mention their own trust funds. I brought about $7,891 to the table—what was in my Wainwright Bank savings account when we left California. I was hardly pitching in for some ten-room layout as I suspected Bee and her pals were. No wonder Lila hoped for a more financially strategic marriage for Josh—in New York, even rich people find it hard to stay afloat in their gilded waters unless they align with other rich people. I definitely was bringing her family’s stock down.

  To block out the dread filling my midsection, I turned on Sesame Street. Today Grover had just returned from the Continent and was sporting a black beret, très chic.

  “Hello, boys and girls!” the beloved furry blue monster said. “I have just crossed the Atlantic Ocean—and the Triborough Bridge—from Paris, France!” He showed a little girl hitting the marché avec Papa, where they scored fresh vegetables before visiting the local boulangerie, adding each delicious, fresh ingredient to a giant basket, or panier. As we watched the idyllic scene of gathering farm-fresh eats for the coming week, I contemplated the perfect setting and wondered if Josh would ever be into moving there. How great would it be to stroll the fleur-filled Tuilèries? I’d walk with Violet by buildings so richly ornate that if you just cut and pasted any old one, it would be the architectural toast of any city in the States. The rigorous écoles were free of charge and Violet would be bilingual! And I could have a killer pain-au-chocolat every morning. Bliss!

  But who was I kidding, we weren’t gonna bail and plop in France. It was fun to fantasize but I knew I couldn’t do the expat thing. Despite the strip-mall-covered, freakish-right-wing land of junk food, I was a true American gal. I’d realized this when I was pregnant with Violet and Josh and I spent two weeks driving cross-country. We saw it all—the rocky red crags in the desert, a town called Zzyzzyx, population 4 (swear), those crop circles, the usual presidents-carved-in-mountains; we even stumbled upon a motorcycle rally in South Dakota with 600,000 Hog-ridin’ badasses, including one whose T-shirt back read “If you can read this, the bitch fell off!” And yet the time in that car, with my husband rubbing my belly and feeding me delicious albeit greasy eats every few hours, had sealed my patriotic fate as a red, white, and blue–blooded citizen. (Although I must confess that when we were abroad, I was embarrassed to be associated with the loudmouthed, Larry Leisure–suit fatty crew that was constantly demanding ketchup.)

  Later, after Elmo bid us farewell from his crayon-covered universe, I got Violet dressed to meet Bee and West for a walk in the park. I hoped that Troy would not update Bee as to our financial constraints. When she referred me, he probably thought he was landing some big fish ready to bite on splashy digs. Too bad we were minnows.

  I pushed Violet up to the entrance to the Seventy-second Street playground and saw Bee talking to a handsome angular man. They waved good-bye and I watched him walk off in the distance. When I approached, Bee seemed surprised.

  “Hannah, hi, you’re early!”

  “Yeah, I’m one of those promptness freaks.” I shrugged, thinking she made it sound like a bad thing, even though she had been early, too. “Josh always wants to kill me when I make us park it at the airport two hours in advance.”

  She smiled but seemed distracted.

  “So how are you?” I asked.

  “Mommy, paci?” asked Violet.

  “Sweetie, you don’t need it right now,” I gently said of the dreaded binky she still was addicted to.

  “Paaaaaaci!” she wailed. Natch, I relented, unzipping the little compartment and handing her the sucky, which she promptly popped in her mouth, looking not unlike baby Maggie on The Simpsons.

  “You know, Hannah,” Bee said, with a serious tone. “It’s really time you take that away.”

  “I know, I know, it’s so bad,” I agreed, semi-miffed that she had called me out on this sensitive topic. “I hope her teeth aren’t fully buck.”

  “It’s not just that,” Bee said looking down at Violet. “It causes huuuge speech delays. She’ll be way behind the other children. Way behind.”

  “Really?” I asked, now a tad defensive. “Because she’s two and she speaks way more than a lot of three-year-olds I’ve seen…”

  “They’ll lap her soon enough if you keep that thing in her mouth,” she said. “Luckily West never needed it. But I’ll give you the number of Maggie’s pacifier consultant.”

  No. Way.

  “There’s a pacifier consultant?” This town had kiddie consultants for everything. Walking, talking, peeing, pooing, now pacifiers.

  “Oh yes. Dr. Poundschlosser referred her. It’s four thousand dollars, but it’s an investment in their independence. You can’t have her with this on interviews. Especially Carnegie. Kiss of death.”
/>
  “I guess,” I said nervously. Maybe she was right, I wouldn’t want to jeopardize Violet’s chances. “Whenever I try and take it away, though, Josh says, ‘Don’t worry, Hannah, she won’t go to college with it!’”

  “Well, she won’t go to a good college at all if she doesn’t start off on the right foot with preschools.”

  Great. Now she was saying Violet would be in some commune for idiots, getting all doped up and sucking pacifiers all day while Weston and the others proceeded to PhDs all because their moms pulled the plug on the plug. With help of a consultant for four grand.

  “Oh my God, guess what?” Bee started, changing the topic. “Maggie’s friend Katie Slaughter of the Slaughter Oil Company just had a baby, like three weeks ago,” she said, her eyes twinkling with breaking news of the billionaire family. I always thought Slaughter was such a weird name, like Hi! I’m Susie Death!

  Bee continued, ablaze with hot goss. “She had a girl. Called Amelia Celeste. Anyway, they hired this baby nurse from Mrs. Brown’s agency, and they send this very nice but clinically obese woman from Germany who ate them out of house and home. Total pig. But they liked her, whatever. So every morning Sabina, the huge baby nurse, would bring the baby in at seven so she could go to sleep and the parents could take over. So yesterday, they wake up and realize it’s eight twenty! So they go in her room—the baby’s still asleep in the bassinet and Sabina is lying facedown dead on the floor. Dead. Dead dead dead.” Bee could hardly control her laughter. “Heart attack! From being so fat!”

  Mortified, I found myself smiling, too, but it was more nervous than amused. This poor woman keeled in the service of their coddled tot, her expiration apparently now sending rippling gales of laughter through the Upper East Side. Suddenly my phone rang. I pulled it out and looked at the incoming number: 415 area code.

  My pulse quickened as I flipped it open. “Hello?” I said, my voice lilting up in a question, though I knew damn well who was calling.

  “Hannah, Tate Hayes.”

  “Hi! How are you?”

  “Fine, I’m heading to a class, but I wanted to see if you wanted to meet a week from Wednesday at the Morgan. To see the prints—maybe around four?”

  “Sure, sounds great—can’t wait.”

  As we agreed to meet, Weston and Violet were holding hands, and even though Bee was cooing to them, I saw her brow crinkle in curiosity.

  “Who was that?” she asked as I closed my flip-phone.

  “Just this old friend,” I said casually. “We’re going to the museum next week.”

  “I’m dying to catch up on all the exhibits,” she said, seeming frazzled by all the stuff on her plate. “Oh! I totally forgot to give you this!” she said, alarmed, fumbling through her Hermès bag to retrieve a huge, square envelope. As Bee handed it to me, my eyes widened in surprise. On the thick paper, in the most over-the-top flamboyant but beautiful calligraphy, was “Violet Allen” swirled in with curly letters and delicate inky flares. “Lara from lunch the other day? It’s her son Maxwell’s birthday and she wanted me to invite you.”

  That was sweet. I was touched, considering that I thought Bee’s friends found me a Shrek-loving Hicksville moron. “It’s for the whole family, so Josh can come,” Bee added.

  I opened the lavish enclosure, which was fancier than most wedding invitations.

  “Whoa!” I said, reading the details of the bash. “The St. Regis Hotel?”

  “The ballroom,” she added. “His first birthday was there, too, amazing,” she gushed. “The theme was Old McDonald and they had a tractor drive in plus all these live animals with handlers and pony rides—”

  “This is in the hotel?” I said, incredulous.

  “Oh yeah, with a sit-down lunch for two hundred. And every child got a barn from F.A.O. with their name handpainted on the red doors to take home.”

  Clearly Bee was impressed. I knew the dumbass pizza party I’d had for Violet in our old apartment with some toys chucked in the center of the carpet would simply not cut it in the Big Apple. “Wow. That’s intense.”

  “I’ll tell Lara that you and Josh will come. No need to RSVP.”

  I looked the response number, which was to a Mrs. Caldwell, clearly the daddy’s executive assistant. “Great, thanks!” I said, my head bursting with cluttered visions of the scene I was to behold that weekend, of how excited I was to meet Leigh for dinner out tonight, and—the most unreal thing, beyond even hotel-ballroom-hosted toddler birthdays—was that the following week I would actually be meeting with Tate Hayes.

  AND A FEW MINUTES LATER…

  Instant Message from: BeeElliott

  BeeElliott: Just got back from park w/ Hannah.

  Maggs10021: How was?

  BeeElliott: Fine. She’s coming to Maxwell’s b-day party. She seems so intimidated by us.

  Maggs10021: It is kind of overwhelming tho—felt bad for her at lunch the other day.

  BeeElliott: Why?

  Maggs10021: Dunno, just she seems not psyched to be here.

  BeeElliott: Well, she married a NYer, I mean hellooo, eventually Josh would move back. Meanwhile get this: her kid is TWO and still uses a pacifier. I need to get the # of your consultant. I didn’t tell her you hired him at 12 months—can you BELIEVE her kid’s a junkie at 26 mos?

  Maggs10021: I gotta find the # will e-mail it to you later…

  Thirteen

  I was playing on the floor in our furnished rental with Violet, wondering if we’d stay there forever, when my cute Barnard sitter, Amber, came in to take over. I told her I wanted to put Violet to bed, so Amber plopped and watched reality TV while I read Violet Rotten Ralph, a formative series from my childhood about a crazy cat that does everything to fuck up his owner’s life (like take one bite out of every cookie at her party or graffiti his face on her dresses) but she loves him anyway.

  After her little eyes closed, I snuck out and threw on my cardigan, knowing how freezing the subways were. On the train platform, a saxophone player was doing a slow rendition of Duran Duran’s “Rio,” which was so odd, but I loved it. I tossed a dollar in his case, boarded the train, and was hurtled downtown in a matter of minutes.

  I found Leigh at the bar drinking a colorful concoction.

  “Whoa, what’s up with the antifreeze cocktail?” I asked.

  “It’s absinthe. It’s coming back after a one-hundred-year hiatus.”

  “Random. But you look very Manet. Drinking away any sorrows?”

  “Kind of. Bad date last night.”

  “A date?! What about Craig?”

  “After I saw you, I thought, What the hell am I doing? Hannah’s right, I deserve better.”

  “Good.”

  “No. Because then I met this quote unquote movie producer at the shoot for this new band we signed, and he asked me out. So I go to his place, which totally looks like the bad guy in Miami Vice would live there—electronics, white leather couches, horrifying. Then, after he basically shoves his tongue down my throat and licks my epiglottis, I push him off and storm out.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Wait. So I go home and Google his ass and it turns out, he’s not even some big movie producer, he’s a scummy trial lawyer who won the biggest Fen-Phen case ever, like two hundred million smacks. So he like funded a movie or two and plays this whole big-time producer role, but he’s a total loser. There is no one out there, Hannah,” she said, crushed. Her dismayed look was one step away from tears, a major rarity for Leigh. “I’m so depressed there is literally not a soul. I am going to die alone.”

  “No, you’re not,” I assured her. “Guys worship you! At my wedding every one of Josh’s groomsmen was like ‘Who is that?’ But you were taken with schmuckfucker Assholicus Maximus.”

  “Ugh, my ex-primate. What was I shooting to waste three years with him? I hemorrhaged precious time.”

  “You are young, Leigh. You have plenty of time.”

  “I don’t for kids. I would love to be with a little pal the way y
ou are with Violet. I mean, when I walk by the playground on Bleecker and Hudson, my ovaries literally start to ache.”

  I thought about how amazing a mom Leigh would be. I have always believed that people run on different numbers of cylinders. Probably most people love their kids to their full capacity, but some run on fewer cylinders emotionally, like three or four. Leigh and I are ten-cylinder girls. After theorizing on the subject together many times, we concluded that the more you were loved, the more you can love. Leigh’s ginormous heart and endless vat of love had her practically bursting at the seams—for a man to pour it on and a child to forever shower with devotion. The lack of a vessel to unload this well of feeling was paralyzing for her and it killed me, especially when I saw Bee and her friends, who, yes, loved their kids but also had full-time round-the-clock nannies so they could shop and lunch and compare their children and work out like maniacs.

  “What’s up with peasant skirts?” Leigh asked, staring down one offender and crossing her legs in her sexy black pencil skirt. “I mean, why do people want to look like peasants? I don’t get it.”

  “It’s funny,” I said. “All these wealthy uptown mommies are wearing them and I thought the same thing.”

  “These trends are so crazy. I look huge in those things but still people run and buy them even if they don’t look good, which they don’t. Most people look heavy in them, I think,” said Leigh.

  “Not these moms,” I sighed, as I popped more salted nuts in my mouth. “They’re all size zero. They all have personal trainers, Pilates studios, and when they drop off their kids at Carnegie Nursery School, they run around the reservoir for three hours until pickup.”

  “Okay, maybe I don’t envy your mom world,” Leigh said. Then her face brightened. “Look! There’s Joshie. Wait—who is that gorgeous guy with him?”

  I turned to see Josh walk in with Parker. Leigh and I got up to hug them all hello. Leigh barely recognized Parker from when she met him at our wedding; it had been more than three years and he looked a lot older now.