—
Daisy had a Thomashilfen Recaro Monza Nova 2 Reha Car Seat that cost more than my first car installed in the Mercedes, so that Viktor could give us a ride home, an unfathomable luxury. Holden and I rolled like rappers. But tonight is one of those rare late-August nights when the air sticks to every part of me. Daisy and I decide to walk. We’d head east and then downtown along the East River. “What do we call it?” Daisy asks.
“Does it need a name?” I feel myself losing brain cells every time I say one of these moronic play-space names. “It’s always the Playful Pineapple. Or Giggles Galaxy. The Little Learners Lodge. Lollipop Tree.”
“I think I danced there one time.”
I laugh. “What about just 527 Park? It sounds exclusive, like this stupid private club that my friend Penelope belongs to.”
“I like it,” Daisy says. “No name. Just an address. Not any address, buttheaddress. It’s elusive, expensive.”
“It’s perfect.”
A big part ofJuju Bean’s business model is that every post is vetted and verified, and the data isn’t shared, so users can be assured that we aren’t trolls or human traffickers or Herbalife salespeople, though the herb people always make it through the cracks. TheJuju Beanmoms lapped up our posts like a Happy Baby teething wafer. Sure, there were skeptics. That was to be expected. Daisy, as much an outsider to this world as I was to sex work, cracked up at the comments. We are almost to Twenty-Third Street. We’d walk-laughed thirty blocks. She does a dramatic reading as I push the stroller. Holden takes in the fresh air and chews on Sophie, the French giraffe.
“ ‘Is this a real estate hoax? You gonna lure me there and hard-sell me a time-share?’ You couldn’t afford the free tote bag, FunBuns223. MomPoochPooBah: ‘How is this free?? My tits call bullshit. Oh, wait, LovinInMyOven claps back: ‘Who cares?! It’s a thousand degrees. Give those sweaty tits a vacation.’ That’s right, ladies—we’ve got your AC right here.” She keeps flicking her thumb. “Citymomma76Hi wants to know if we’re nut-free. Adorable. And here’s one from workingmom_daily: ‘Wow, must be nice to have a weekday off. Some of us work full time.’ Excuse me, Working Mom Daily—we see you, martyr queen.”
Being on theJuju Beanapp with Daisy was like going to some faraway country together. I imagine Japan is disorienting and crushingly lonely when you are by yourself. But the second you get to experience the place with someone you love, you are laughing your ass off. You love it there. You cannot imagine a better place. It is a different planet, PlanetJuju Bean, when I am exploring it with Daisy.
“Wait, MrsMommyMD wrote—‘I’d sell my body to put my baby in a bounce house and take a shit on a Toto toilet in peace.’ ”
I think about this. “And she’s a medical doctor?”
Daisy nods, looking at her bio. “Cardiologist at Weill Cornell.”
“Imagine,” I say. “This woman is a fucking cardiologist and the only warmth in her life is the thought of a heated toilet seat.”
“That’s some haiku right there, Em,” Daisy says.
I start to think about poetry again with Daisy, not quite writing as much as composing in my head. We turn on Twenty-Third Street, past a desperate man half asleep in a bus stop. I look at people differently now. I look at this man and I see somebody’s baby boy. Somebody’s Holden. Daisy leans down, puts a twenty in his hand. We keep walking. The Mercedes is idling behind us, ready to give Daisy a ride back uptown.
I pass men living on the streets…
on the way home to an empty luxury condo.
Chapter Twenty
• • • • •
The next day, fivepeople showed up. Two of them did not have children. One had a fourteen-year-old who was playingFortniteand eating Takis in the billiard room.
“What do we do?” I asked Daisy. But she’d already floated over to two moms, one pushing a Cybex bassinet stroller and the other a Cruz V2, not that Daisy knew the difference. “Welcome. Bienvenue. Shoes off, please. No outside dirt in here. Clean slate.” They looked at each other, then kicked off their scuffed sneakers. “Can we get you anything?”
The one with the bob and severe bangs tentatively accepted a Ghia ginger soda. She took a sip, leaving a tangerine lip stain on the glass. They strolled around the space, taking in the high ceilings, the art, the opulence. We stood back, gave them space.
“Hey, isn’t there supposed to be an interactive play area?”
Daisy and I, shocked and delighted that our bullshit messaging actually worked, both burst out, “It’s downstairs.”
—
The moms started to trickle in after that, several at a time, usually just popping in out of curiosity. Why was the space free? Daisy saidshe was a brand ambassador to Coterie diapers. Or the real estate developers did it as a pop-up, a plug for the postpartum center of the future. Was the bubble bath hypoallergenic? Duh. Who owned the apartment? The LLC of None of Your Fucking Business. But then they’d see the ylang-ylang chamomile essential jojoba belly oil that smelled like someone bottled an orgasm. Or they’d partake of a well-made Aperol spritz on the playground that essentially belonged only to them. A sandbox that would not transmit pinworms. They’d come back the next day, and the day after. By the third or fourth visit, they’d stop asking questions.
We recruited Bianca, the highly competent fifty-something woman who oversaw the building’s cleaning staff, to handle operations. We doubled her salary, and she doesn’t have to scrub the same floor that no one walks on ten times a day. Plus, we’re fun.
At first we encouraged posts on Instagram, using #527Park. But pretty soon, Daisy instructed Bianca to put stickers over everyone’s camera lenses upon entry, like they do at that San Vicente Bungalows place in LA where Kaia Gerber is always eating a chopped salad. Posting, at this stage, would make 527 Park passé, Daisy said. We needed word of mouth, let our platonic ideal of a baby play center take on its own life, become a citywide destination for anyone in the know. We’d started something; we had to see it through to its best incarnation. And personally, I wanted the workout-set moms to see me now. So, on Wednesday, I take Holden to Mr. Pete’s class, not because I ever needed to spend another day in the Stuy Town community room, but because I wanted the other moms to know they didn’t have to either. I had an escape hatch.
Olivia pushes in the double jogging stroller. Her usually tight pony unravels in her face, joining a touch of smudged mascara. When I ask if everything is okay, Olivia says yes so fast that it feels like she’s been practicing in the mirror. “It’s fine. Fine. Why wouldn’t everything befine?” I slowly back away.
