“I don’t know. I think I was just insecure,” I say. I show Daisy an early edition of Marguerite Duras’sThe Lover, a book we read over and over in college, a book we cemented to memory.
“Fuck that. You seem basic, but you’re actually a locked vault, always writing in those journals,” she says, tucking the novel into her bag.
“We didn’t belong in Texas,” I say.
“That’s why I fucked my way out.”
I am so enraptured by our conversation that I don’t realize she’s walked out of the store without paying.
—
Later, we turn into a park with a swing set and a slide and artful graffiti all over a temporary wooden wall. Daisy sees me struggling with the Omni Breeze Dream Carrier. She takes the baby and the carrier, effortlessly securing him to her chest. “Strap him high, tits up, then tighten. None of this dangling baby-low-around-your-crotch bullshit.” I watch. Holden, happy, secure. She sits on a swing and snaps a selfie with Holden. I push them higher and higher, staring at Daisy and my baby in the sun, smiling.
When the sun is getting low, we walk up the West Side Highway, along the Hudson. A shirtless jogger with incredible abs checks out Daisy. I study the way he looks at her body, her lips. He catches my eye and looks away, jogging faster. Daisy doesn’t notice.
I try to give Holden a bottle. He thrashes, refusing my breast milk. Daisy reaches for him. “He’s not chugging a Miller Lite. Angle him sideways, Em.” She taps the bottle. He latches instantly. I ask Daisy why she’s such a natural. She lifts a shoulder. “Half the girls at the Landing Strip had babies. Dressing room looked like a goddamn day care.”
That’s when I tell her that Roman agreed. We’d love it if she’d be Holden’s caregiver—or at least help out until I can figure out childcare. Truly, she tells me again, it would be her pleasure.
“The world is wild. I can’t tell from one day to the next what I’mgoing to do, who I’m going to meet. But I’m really stoked it brought me to you, Em.” She leans down and gives Holden a kiss on his forehead. “And you, mon amour.”
We agree that it’s fate that I found Daisy when I did. Bashert. Destiny. Not some bullshit Briggs Dorm Roommate Compatibility Quiz.
Daisy says 527 Park has a playroom that no one ever uses and offers a full range of complimentary baby classes that are almost always empty. We can turn one of the rooms in her condo into a nursery, fill it with wooden Montessori toys. “We’re not a Fisher-Price family,” she says, smiling at Holden in the Yoyo. He is really going to town on his bare foot. (“Your eighteen-week-old thinks of her feet as built-in toys and snacks!”) “Yum. Is that delicious, little cutie koala?” Daisy says, using my nickname for him.
You find her on a Wednesday, and by Friday, you are a family.
—
That night, some friends invite me to go out to dinner. They got a last-minute four-top at nine p.m. at this French bistro on the Bowery that became so famous on TikTok that nobody goes there anymore. I can’t really afford it, and I’m a half-asleep pumping machine by nine, but I tell them I’ll try to swing by. We all met when I was interning at BuzzFeed. They sent Uber Eats gift cards when Holden was born, but none of them have kids. They drink martinis without worrying about damaging an infant’s development and think aJuju Beanis something you eat. They talk about hookups and theVulturewriter we all envied who recently got caught plagiarizing a high school student’s Medium posts. Somebody pulls out their phone and flashes a Zillow listing of the brownstone apartment that their parents are helping them buy, saying it’s a bargain because it needs work. Another is planning a trip to Thailand and wants to know if anyone hashotel recommendations in Phuket, but apparently Phuket is over and we should all go to Krabi now. They think I am a drag but still occasionally invite me out. They don’t know about Daisy.
I fall asleep on the sofa with Holden on my chest and half a boob out. Holden cries and I wake up at two a.m. to a string of missed texts. (“You coming?” and “Should we order?” and “Maggie Gyllenhaal at the bar” and “Are you alive??”) I feel bad. I am always flaking, always apologizing, but I can’t really do friendship with them anymore. Maybe I never could.
—
On Saturday, the whole house is up before six. We FaceTime with Grandma Sue and she reads HoldenCurious Georgeand seven different board books about trains that she has kept since Roman was a baby. Gigi is a little stronger and gets on the phone, too.
Roman and I decide to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to take Holden on a glass-enclosed antique carousel in Dumbo overlooking Lower Manhattan. Roman struggles to collapse the Yoyo, looking like he’s trying to drop-kick a rottweiler. I give him a smug look. “You’re not helping,” he says.
“Oh, I’m helping. With my eyes.”
I race to one of the only two chariots that could seat a family, beating out several tween tourists in sequined backpacks and chunky sneakers. Roman finally joins us. He takes Holden and bounces him on a knee as we go around a couple of times. I look at Roman, at both of them. “Don’t go,” I want to scream. This could be us. We could do this every day.
The feeling lasts approximately thirty-seven seconds. Roman hands Holden back, telling me that I’m not properly supporting his neck. “And yet somehow I keep him alive without you all day, every day…”
“Here we go. I’m not supposed to work.”
Holden cracks his eyes. He is just beginning to grab at things and gestures for Roman’s phone. TheJuju Beanmoms say cell phones can transmit E. coli, aside from all the obvious concerns about screen time.
“You realize you’re basically handing him fecal matter?”
“I don’t shit on my phone,” Roman says.
“How do I know what goes on in there? You take long enough.” We both stare out at the skyline until the carousel stops and we get off.
—
By Monday, Roman is back at work, Gigi is back in intensive care, and we are back at Daisy’s place. Half a dozen glass Bonpoint 210-milliliter French baby bottles on the marble island. The Jane Birkin of baby bottles. Not even the Tribeca moms have these bottles. A taupe hammock that looks like it should be at the Whitney dangles from the ceiling by white ropes over a shaggy rug. A powder room transformed into a pink pumping room, patchouli burning.
