Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

  “I’m not?” Ellie widened her eyes, then waved her hand through the air, her tone turning snippy. “Obviously I know that. But I work as hard as he does for no salary, so I think it’s a nice gesture if he wants to reward me for everything I’ve done by setting aside some money reserved especially for me.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” Amara asked.

  “Okay, let’s not—” Whitney started.

  “Nobody here thinks this is horribly unfeminist and retrograde?” Amara asked, looking around. Meredith shook her head, and Vicki popped out a boob to breastfeed.

  “Every marriage has to decide what’s best for it,” Gwen said.

  “Okay! How about we do music now?” Whitney said.

  Then, when music was over and Claire beelined toward Amara, who was jiggling Charlie in a corner as he twisted and grunted, Gwen intercepted her.

  “Claire, I have an important question to ask you.” Gwen clasped her hands in front of her as if in prayer, her eyes wide with anticipation. Claire half expected her to get down on one knee. “I think it would be so good for the babies to have a fun, educational activity at Reagan’s birthday party. Will you come perform?”

  “Oh!” Whitney said. “Say yes, Claire!”

  “You can meet all the daddies, and we could pay you three hundred dollars,” Gwen added.

  “Yeah, sure! I’m in,” Claire said.

  Gwen clapped her hands. “Oh, good. Christopher will be so pleased,” she said, and then turned to Whitney with some thoughts about the planning of it all.

  Finally, though, Claire reached Amara. “Hey, I’m ready,” she said in a low voice, her hands shaking a little bit at her sides. “To sing you something I wrote.”

  Amara glanced up, Charlie wriggling in her arms. “What?” she asked. Her voice was tight with frustration.

  “Like you said last time we hung out? If you’re free after playgroup today, I could come over again.”

  “I’m not,” Amara said, brusque. “I have to take Charlie to get his shots, and it’s like he already knows it.” She looked at her child. “You’re a real picnic—you know that?” He twisted and clamped his mouth down on her shoulder. “Hey! No biting.”

  “Got it,” Claire said.

  “Oh, my God,” Whitney said, looking down at her phone. “Oh, my God!”

  “What? Is everything okay?” Gwen asked, worry etching itself on her face.

  “Listen to this,” Whitney said, and began to read an e-mail aloud. “‘Hey, Whitney! Moms of Insta here. We wanted to reach out because we’re in the process of making a gorgeous coffee-table book, due to be published this fall. We’re giving some of our favorite InstaMoms a two-page spread each, a combination of some of their own photos and a professional photo shoot we do. We love your pics. Your family is so cute, and your playgroup is great too. We love that you have a dedicated professional musician—so good for the babies’ development! Want to be part of the book?’”

  Ellie and Meredith shrieked and grabbed Whitney’s hands, and they all danced around, their energy suddenly back to normal levels. “Congratulations, Whitney,” Gwen said, while Vicki gave a faraway smile.

  “Guys, if I do it, you’re all doing it too,” Whitney said. “They said they loved the playgroup. I’m asking them if you can all be part of the photo shoot.”

  “Whitney, you are my hero,” Ellie said.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Amara said. “Really.”

  “Too bad, I want to. And they mentioned the music!” Whitney said, turning her blinding smile on Claire. “So, musician, we’re bringing you along too!”

  In the face of Whitney’s generosity, her sparkling eyes, and her certainty that Claire would love to get all dolled up and documented for posterity as someone whose greatest talent involved singing “Wheels on the Bus,” Claire hesitated. If Vagabond, or anyone who knew her story, saw her like that, they’d probably never stop smirking. But why in the world would anyone from her past buy a coffee-table book about Instagram moms? She swallowed, catching Amara’s eye briefly. “Thanks, Whitney,” she said. “That’s really nice of you.”

  She packed up efficiently as Ellie, Meredith, and Whitney went off into a reverie, imagining what the shoot would be like, what kinds of food catering would bring, and, Ellie wondered, if they’d be able to get hair extensions and false eyelashes. As Claire turned to go, Amara came up behind her.

  “Hey, wait,” Amara said. “Are you free tomorrow night? I know where you can sing for me.”

  Chapter 13

  The next night, Amara pulled on a leather jacket she hadn’t worn since the early days of her pregnancy, and looked at herself in the mirror. Not bad. You wouldn’t necessarily know, from seeing her on the street, that she’d popped a baby out of her vagina. No mom jeans and minivans for her. (But even if she kept wearing leather jackets and exuding a certain intimidating cool, she knew that someday, Charlie would be mortified by her mere existence. Or rather, she hoped he would be, even as she dreaded it, because that would mean that he was normal.) She paused, then grabbed a tube of bright red lipstick and carefully applied it. Not bad at all.

  When she came out into the living room, Daniel did a double take. “Wait. Who are you going out with? Do I need to be jealous?” he asked.

  “Don’t be jealous. I’m just going to an orgy,” she said, and he smiled, cracking open a beer and sitting down on the floor next to Charlie. “No, I told you, with Claire from playgroup.”

  “Is she the brownstone woman, the coffee shop savior, or a different one?” he asked, lifting Charlie to standing, his hands on his waist, and then taking his hands away. Charlie remained standing for a second as Daniel and Amara watched, their breath in their throats, and then he plopped back down to the floor, letting out a grunt.

  “A different one,” Amara said. “Oh, Lord, I totally forgot to tell you. Speaking of playgroup, listen to this nonsense. Ellie’s husband gives her a wife bonus. That’s probably the most patriarchal bullshit that a bull ever shat, right?”

  “A wife bonus?” Daniel asked. “Like she’s his employee?” Amara nodded. “Woof. Not to get all high-horsey, but I’m glad we don’t have a marriage where I give you money based on how well you’ve met my needs, or whatever it is.”

  “That’s probably the most romantic thing you’ve ever said,” Amara said. “I’d kiss you if I hadn’t just put on lipstick.” She blew him a kiss instead, and he pretended to catch it in the air. “What sort of adventures are you two going to get up to?”

  “We’re going to drink beer and do some father-son bonding over sports.” Daniel turned on the television, where a basketball game was in progress. “You gonna play this someday, little dude? I bet you’ll be able to jump higher than all those other guys.”

  “Don’t keep the TV on all night, okay?” Amara asked. “It’s not good for him to have too much screen time, especially not before trying to put him to sleep.”

  “I know, I know. Just a little while longer. Things were pretty stressful at work today,” Daniel said, tickling Charlie’s stomach. “Besides, it’s a special occasion. Daddy’s babysitting!”

  “Nope,” Amara said. “Speaking of patriarchal bullshit, never say that again. You can’t babysit your own son. He literally exists because of your sperm. I manage to keep him entertained all day without a screen. You can do it for the hour before bedtime.”

  “Jesus, Mari,” Daniel said. He turned off the TV. He could pout, but they were not going to have one of those partnerships where Amara made Charlie do his homework and Daniel took him to the zoo.

  “Love you, boys,” she said, and ducked out the door.

  She saw Claire from a distance as she approached the bar, that red hair a beacon in the evening light. Claire leaned against the brick wall in her cheap, worn jeans as if she hadn’t a care in the world, although she ruined the illusion somewhat by f
idgeting with the zipper on her guitar case. The nervous movement touched Amara, made her want to stroke Claire’s hair and comfort her. When she’d first fallen in love with Daniel, she’d found herself having to suppress an urge, when talking with other people—longtime friends, coworkers, anyone with whom she felt a closeness—to kiss them. Not that she was suddenly attracted to them (she didn’t really want to kiss anyone but Daniel), but out of a sort of habit, as if her body was so deeply in love that it was incapable of turning off its loving behaviors. Now that same sort of thing kept bubbling up, but with mothering. She shook her head and tapped Claire on the shoulder.

  “Oh, hey!” Claire said.

  “Let’s go in and put your name on the list, shall we?” Amara asked.

  An older coworker had told Amara about this place when she was just starting out in television production, working in an office in the Village. They’d go sometimes to watch the open-mic nights. It was always a fascinating grab bag of performers—bright-eyed kids who’d just moved from Long Island and who could carry a tune well enough but were never going to make it; old-timer folk musicians who didn’t give a shit anymore and would sit up onstage far longer than their allotted slot, singing a million verses of the same song (invariably about the environment or the government or both). Occasionally, though, a musician made you sit up and take notice. She’d seen a couple of performers there who she’d gone on to book when she was handling that sort of thing.

  Claire and Amara got whiskey gingers and sat at a table near the stage, while a young man who consistently sang just under the right pitch played a song about a one-night stand that he couldn’t get out of his mind.

  “Sort of a creepy song, huh?” Amara said. “Sounds like this girl should get a restraining order.”

  “Yeah.” Claire drained her drink and gave a weak smile. “Sorry,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table. “Just having the smallest of panic attacks over here.”

  Perhaps bringing Claire there had been a terrible idea, a spur-of-the-moment inspiration when Charlie had been twisting around so annoyingly in her arms yesterday and Whitney’s announcement about the coffee-table book had made her feel like the only thing anyone would ever see her as again was a mother, when all she had wanted was to go back to her carefree, childless life, and this place had popped into her juice-cleanse-addled head. “Hey,” Amara said. “There’s no way that you can be worse than Mr. ‘I’ll Never Forget the Smell of Your Hair.’”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Nobody here really cares how you are except me,” she said, taking Claire by the shoulders and looking her straight in her hazel eyes as the emcee called Claire’s name. “And even I don’t care that much.” Claire laughed. “So go get ’em.”

  Claire slid in between tables and made her way to the stage, settling herself on the stool. She bumped against the microphone when she leaned forward to greet the crowd and had to catch the stand as it swayed. She gave off the nervous vibe of a girl unused to being onstage all by herself, and at their tables, people seemed to resign themselves to the prospect of another underwhelming performer, half paying attention and half continuing on with their conversations. Amara dug her nails into the palm of her hand as Claire took a deep breath and began to strum and sing.

  Oh, thank the Lord, it wasn’t awful. Actually, Amara thought, as the song went on, it was rather interesting. Clearly a first draft of something, as if Claire were the human figure right behind Fiona Apple in the evolutionary chart. But there was potential. A sort of righteous rage. And she had some creative lyrics in there—a bit about how some “hot shit” person (clearly a member of her old band) was a “piece of hot shit”; some strange religious imagery that she managed to twist in unexpected ways. It wasn’t a song you’d ever hear on the radio, but maybe that was a good thing. Of course her voice was lovely too, and as she relaxed into the song, she radiated more and more of a refreshing openness, as opposed to other musicians, who withdrew into themselves when they played. At their tables, some in the audience kept talking, but others perked up and actually listened. When Claire finished, she gave a sheepish smile to the crowd, then sought out Amara’s eyes and shrugged her shoulders. Amara clapped, loudly, as Claire wended her way back to the table and sank down into her chair.

  “I did it,” Claire said. “It’s over, and I did not die.”

  “I liked it,” Amara said.

  “Thanks. You don’t have to—I swear I’m not fishing for compliments. But you know that thing Ira Glass says about taste? How when you’re starting out doing a creative thing, your taste is so far beyond your abilities, so you know what you’re doing isn’t great but you can’t yet do any better? That’s kind of how I feel right now. I had all those years with Vagabond, but it feels completely different to write and make something all on your own.”

  “I can see that,” Amara said. She leaned forward. “So, tell you what. When you get to a place where your taste radar is going, ‘Hey, I’m pretty damn good at this,’ let me know. A buddy of mine is the bandleader at Staying Up with Nick Tannenbaum, and sometimes he needs people to write these little commercial jingles they do on the show. Could be a good connection. When you’re ready, I’ll introduce you.”

  “Really?” Claire asked. “That would be amazing.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Amara said, and finished her drink. “Well, we did it.”

  A lanky guy came over to their table, focused on Claire. “Hey,” he said to her, “I dug your performance.”

  “Thanks!” Claire said.

  “You used to play with Vagabond, didn’t you?” he asked. “I remember, I saw you guys like a year and a half ago at Bowery Electric. I brag about it all the time to my friends now—you know, ‘I saw them before they were famous, when it was only a twenty-dollar cover and eighty people in the audience!’”

  “Oh,” Claire said, deflating. “Um, yeah. That was me.”

  “Why’d you leave the band?” he asked, a revolting curiosity all over his face.

  “You know,” Claire said. “Wanted to try something new.”

  “You sure picked the wrong time to get out, huh?” he said, laughing.

  Claire’s eyes flickered to Amara, and an understanding passed between them. Together, they turned and stared at the guy, silent, heads cocked to the side as if he were speaking a foreign language until he cleared his throat and scurried away, muttering something about how he had to go meet a friend.

  “Lord, people can be idiots sometimes,” Amara said.

  “Yup,” Claire replied, and they sat in silence for a second.

  “Well,” Amara said, “shall we do some shots?”

  * * *

  —

  “So give me all the playgroup gossip,” Claire said after they’d taken their second shot and chased it with a beer. The open mic had ended, and the place had reverted to regular bar bustle. “Who’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Who’s having an affair? Who hates who?”

  “Well, sometimes I wish Ellie would shut the fuck up,” Amara said.

  Claire laughed so violently and suddenly that beer burst out the side of her mouth. “I could see that,” she said as she wiped it off the table with her napkin.

  “And what else? I’m convinced Vicki is a hard-core pothead.”

  “Okay,” Claire said, slamming her palm down on the table. “I’ve been wondering something. Does she speak?”

  “Occasionally,” Amara said, smiling. “I think she’s just got a lot of beautiful things going on inside her own head. Either that, or her mind is a David Lynch–style horror trip. She’s the richest one of us all, even though you’d never know it. Her father was the CEO of some massive oil company. Honestly, besides Whitney, I don’t know if I would’ve become friends with any of them on my own, but now it’s a bit like we’re all war buddies. Perhaps I wouldn’t be immediate best friends with, say, Meredith if I met her
at a party, but we’ve all been in the trenches of new motherhood together, so we’re bonded for life.” She stopped and took a swig of her beer. “Well, sometimes it’s that, and sometimes we’re fighting one another, all in our own individual armies, to conquer the territory of Best Mother of All. Gwen and Whitney are the favorites to win that war though. I’m just trying not to go the way of Joanna.”

  “Joanna?” Claire asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Oh, Lord,” Amara said, then sighed, bracing herself for the explanation. “She used to be in playgroup with us. And then she had a nervous breakdown in the grocery store, of all places. She just lay down in the aisle, her kid screaming in the cart beside her, and wouldn’t get up even when other customers tried to help her.” Amara swallowed, Joanna’s hopeless face swimming in her mind. “Then her kid, upset and flailing about, knocked some cans off the shelf next to him and cut himself on the edge of one. So he was bleeding—I mean, not that badly, not like he was hemorrhaging, but still, bleeding—and Joanna just kept lying there on the ground, not doing anything.”

  “Holy shit,” Claire said, her mouth open in shock.

  “Yeah. Eventually, the people at the grocery store called the police to bring her home and to make sure the kid was okay, which, thank God, he was.” Amara shook her head. “We’d known that something wasn’t right, that she wasn’t happy, but we’d had no idea it was that bad.”

  “So what happened to her?” Claire asked.

  “Oh, the most predictable thing in the world. Her husband dumped her in a mental hospital for a stint and started dating a twenty-five-year-old who teaches Barre classes. So now she and her baby are living out in Jersey. Not the nice part, either.”

  “Wait,” Claire said. “How have I been hanging out with you all for over two months now, and this is the first I’m hearing about her?”

  “I know,” Amara said. “We never talk about her! Like she’s a bogeyman.”

  “Bloody Mary. If you say her name three times into a bathroom mirror, she’ll come back and murder you all.”