Pregnant Mom unbuckles Cooper from the stroller and lets him wobble around, out of earshot. “I just don’t get it. We splurged on that admissions coach. Cooper killed it in the interview, had glowing recommendation letters…”
“What did they say? ‘He enjoys bubbles’?” The moms all turntheir heads at me and I realize I’ve said something terribly wrong. “I mean, because…he’s a baby?”
Thankfully, Mr. Pete begins to play “The More We Get Together,” drowning out the small talk.
Brit unfolds a Pop ’N Go Baby Playmat and we both put our babies on it. Quinn crawls off, Brit frolicking after her; every movement has a lyrical, choreographed grace. Holden can almost sit up, but only if propped against a pillow (and who knows where those have been) or in an activity seat, and Dr. Brooke says sit-up chairs are a hard no. So I sit cross-legged and put him between my legs.
Brit is from Nashville and always dresses Quinn in something with a princess or sequins, and says things like “TGIF” and “You go, girl” with zero irony. I’ve never seen her without one of those forty-ounce quencher cups in bright teal. Yet I’ve grown to really appreciate Brit, to even enjoy her company, now, in this weird little post-baby planet we live on. She loves to pick Holden up and nuzzle his stomach and inhale him, saying that he reminds her so much of her son, whom we’ve never met.
We’d seen each other a few times, Brit with Quinn in her pink bow and me with Holden in his Johnny Cash onesie that I bought on St. Marks, in the Stuy Town playground. I had Holden on my lap when a pigeon shat on the bench. Before I could stop him, Holden had rubbed a tiny hand in it. Brit appeared out of nowhere with a stack of baby wipes as he moved to put his fingers in his mouth.
“They say it’s good luck,” she said, cleaning him off.
After that, we sat and talked. Brit told me that she moved here to be an actress in musical theater. She gave it five years but never made it further than an understudy in an off-Broadway production ofStarlight Express. It wasn’t even a major Andrew Lloyd Webber. She married a guy from Pittsburgh who works in tech and lately she’s beenfocused on building her Etsy business, “mostly dried flowers and embroidery templates.”
Brit told me she had an “easy-peasy” delivery. I felt irritation bubbling up inside. I imagined lunging at pretty, happy Brit.You had sixteen bridesmaids in your wedding party and have never watched porn, I can tell.
Then Brit trailed off, looking out at the row of trees that one week each March explode in pink cherry blossoms and otherwise look like vertical weeds. “It was the opposite with my son…” Brit said. “Wyatt died. I was twenty-four weeks. One in two hundred and fifty chance it happens that late. So that’s why I say I have a son, because he was my son. It would feel wrong to say I only have a daughter, ya know?”
You think one thing about a person, and then you hear the words “intrauterine fetal death” and think another thing entirely. I said I was sorry for her loss and that Quinn is perfect (even if I disagree with the ear-piercing decision). We had nothing in common except that we were all balancing a live grenade on the best of days.
“Mr. Pete is the best,” Brit said, texting me the sign-up information. “But you can just show up. It’s super chill. Quinnloooooovesit. Pete’s gotten her really into music. We just keep T. Swift on Alexa all the time now. Don’t we, Quinny?”
So, on Wednesdays, we go to Mr. Pete.
Marcela, the Salvadoran nanny of sixteen-month-old Noah in Apartment 1641, joins us for class. We’ve never met Noah’s mom, but Marcela is one of us. She has the skin of a twenty-year-old and an enormous bosom on which a delicate gold cross sits. She unwraps homemade pupusas and offers them to all of us. I devour the griddle cake. My mouth is full and warm and happy when Olivia gently reminds me that there is no eating in the community room. God forbid we soil this pristine paradise.
Olivia is from the Bay Area. She went to Stanford and is a corporate lawyer on leave from some fancy firm with two British-sounding last names. She has her hair pulled back in a tight pony and, no matter when I see her, always has an expression like she’s running late. The first time I met Olivia, she told me she has “two under two.” I wondered how the math on that even worked. Olivia explained that it was best to get the childbirth thing done by thirty-two, then go back to work and really gun for partner. But she also wanted to stay home as long as she could because she listened to a very compelling podcast on how to raise “the total child” and it starts with “an early emotional attachment to a primary caregiver.” Her girls, Chloe and Zoe, both look exactly like Olivia, with thick shocks of slick black hair and the makings of fantastic cheekbones.
Olivia squats on a faux-fur rug. She holds Chloe in her lap and lays Zoe down to yawn in a circle with the other babies. She tells us that she’s already been on a run along the East River. “The girls love the fresh air,” Olivia says, as if she’d just come back from a romp in bucolic Chipping Norton, not garbage day in Peter Cooper Village. Nobody enjoys running. She used to be a corporate litigator and now she is a milk dispenser.
I check to make sure myFind Myon my phone is on. Brit is singing “Five Little Monkeys” with the verve of Evita. I pull her in for a selfie so I can tag myself in the awful playroom, so that maybe Daisy sees me here and rescues me.
Mr. Pete, reclining on aFrozenbeanbag chair that is hemorrhaging styrofoam, strums a ukulele. “Can everyone say ‘I’m a little teapot’?”
Yeah, no. Holden is in my lap, crying into one of the giant lollipop drums, presumably wishing this were a Barry Manilow concert.
When the class is over, we all start packing up. I try to Venmo Mr. Pete twenty dollars and get a crying-wallet emoji and “Oops!Add $$$ to continue.” As I tap the debit card option, I hear Olivia ask if he does privates: “I want to get the girls into piano.”
“You have to start them on music early, you know,” she adds, telling us that she played piano at an orchestra camp in Marin County until she was twelve. Holden is now putting a plastic maraca in his mouth. Next stop, Juilliard.
Audrey asks us if we’ve already signed up for the Winter ONE-derland drop-in classes at that new play center in Flatiron. It is July.
“Yes. I heard it isfab,” Brit says.
“Not yet. Should I?” I ask.
“Oh. Yeah, no. It’s probably too late. There’s a wait list,” Olivia says. A pitying grin. “But it’s fine. It’s fine. There will be other activities. I don’t know if they’ll be free or have the fake snow and the ski lessons and that whole thing…”
“You have to get them skiing early,” Audrey says. Is there anything that we should not start them on early?
I glance at Holden, who is almost rolling off the Pop ’N Go Baby Playmat and onto the cold linoleum floor. I place him back on the mat before Brit packs up.
“It’s free?” I ask.
“Yeah. REI and Once Upon a Farm are sponsors,” Olivia says, taking the last chug from her hydration belt and putting the girls in the jogging stroller.
Audrey asks, “What else are you up to today?” And I have never felt more attacked. Well, Audrey, I failed to enroll my four-month-old in a ski class and I’ve hit a dead end trying to find my sex-worker soulmate, whose whereabouts have, apparently, even eluded the top law firm in the city, so I’ll probably wander the streets, searching for free air-conditioning and a mildly sanitary bathroom. How about you? I look at Holden’s T. rex T-shirt. Dinosaurs. “We’re headed uptown,” I say. “He’s got his museum class.” I don’t specifypaleontology at the Museum of Natural History, Early Expressionism at the Met. Keep it vague, make her squirm.
