Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

  “Right? Seriously, thank God for the wellness industry. TrueMommy and acupuncture are my baseline, but I’ve just started with these collagen-protein shakes too. The combination is everything.”

  Gwen smiled and lowered her voice. “I believe it. Honestly, though, sometimes I think there’s something stronger in these vitamins than just oil of lemongrass.”

  Angie let out a belly laugh. “Honey, you know what? If there is, sign me up for a double dose.”

  Gwen filed this away, rounding her list up to an even thirty.

  She’d planned and planned and planned. There was always that unexpected element, though, the fly in the ointment. And this particular fly had been, crazily enough, Claire. Claire, who came in sweet and wounded and disheveled and grew on them all slowly like moss. Claire, who had gotten just close enough to all of them that she cared, but who felt none of the shame and worry and urge for secrecy that came from having actually taken the TrueMommy herself and having a child to worry about to boot. Gwen hadn’t realized that the Claire situation was happening until it was too late. Claire had truly surprised her. That was why Gwen had had to blow the whole playgroup up. For once, Christopher had given her exactly what she needed, coming home last night penitent and pathetic, confessing everything from his time in the Windom with Whitney to his run-in with Claire in the bar in a near-religious rush, like Gwen was his priest instead of his wife, begging her to forgive him yet again. All Gwen had to do after that was go to the photo shoot and push people’s buttons accordingly.

  It worried her that Claire might take her playgroup-musician skills elsewhere and insinuate herself with more mothers like the righteous little snake she was. Gwen would have to keep an eye on her, see if she could find something else to present like a glittering jewel—something that would take Claire far away from the world of New York playgroups until Gwen could wind down TrueMommy, get a divorce, and take her children to the Connecticut house for good.

  Chapter 32

  The weekend after the playgroup blowup, Whitney finally went to visit Joanna. She took the train out to Rahway, with a red velvet cake from the bakery by Joanna’s old apartment on her lap. She left Hope at home with Grant, who was still blissfully unaware of everything that had transpired. She didn’t think any of the playgroup women would take it upon themselves to tell him about Christopher, but still she held her breath and tried to decide if she wanted to tell him herself. The weight of everything she’d kept from him hung heavy around her. She’d become a completely different person from the woman he’d danced with at their wedding.

  Joanna and her son lived in a brown brick duplex a ten-minute walk from the train station, with a small yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. Joanna, dressed in blue jeans and an oversized sweater, her straight black hair showing a few strands of gray, let Whitney in warily, accepting the cake with muted thanks rather than the touched surprise Whitney had let herself imagine.

  Joanna put water on for coffee and cleared some clutter off the kitchen table. They sat and made small talk while Joanna’s child napped in his playpen. The duplex had a nice number of windows, but it didn’t get good light, dwarfed by the buildings on either side of it. Joanna had largely left the white walls bare. Still, she’d arranged a few pots of herbs on the windowsill, and Whitney gestured to them with a smile. “I like how you’ve decorated.” If Whitney squinted, it looked like a cozy home, perhaps a little bohemian. Not the sad divorcée’s quarters she and the other mothers had imagined and feared.

  “How’s the playgroup?” Joanna asked.

  “Oh,” Whitney said. “Well, we actually stopped meeting.”

  “Ah,” Joanna said, and made a clicking noise with her mouth as if she’d managed to put a puzzle together. “So that’s why you came to stare at the zoo animal.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You all had a tiff, and now you’re looking for an easy way to feel better about yourself.”

  “I wanted to check up on how you were doing.”

  “Six months after the fact,” Joanna said.

  “I’ve been meaning to come, but you know how it is with a baby—”

  “Or is it that you’re worried your husband might leave you for another woman too, and you want to take some notes?” Joanna asked, relentless, harsh.

  Over the past forty-eight hours, Whitney had largely been in shock at everything that she’d brought upon herself, numb except for a dull sense of dread. But now she put her head down on the cool wooden table, unable to stop the sobs from overcoming her. “I’m sorry,” she choked out.

  Joanna sighed and patted Whitney’s shoulder a little roughly. Then she pushed back from the table and began to bustle around her kitchen. She cut them each a slice of cake and brought the plates over to the table, along with a box of tissues.

  “I guess I just wanted to know,” Whitney said when she’d calmed herself enough to be able to speak again, “if it has gotten better. I mean, are you happier now?”

  Joanna stared at her for a minute. “Am I happier than I was in the literal moment that I curled up on the floor of the canned beans aisle in Fairway? Of course. Am I happier now than I was when I had a beautiful New York City apartment and a doting husband and my whole future bright ahead of me?” She gave a harsh laugh, nearly a bark. “What do you think?” She toyed with a bite of cake on her fork, pursing her lips. “My advice is to hold on to him if you can.”

  Chapter 33

  Fragmented, the moms threw themselves into summertime.

  Amara took Charlie to every outdoor activity for children that she could find, plowing through her exhaustion like it was a cornfield and she was a motherfucking tractor trailer. If there was a craft fair or a kid’s festival anywhere in Manhattan, she and Charlie attended it. He was going to be the most well-rounded, well-cared-for baby in the whole damn city. She went to the zoo with him so much, she even got tired of looking at penguins, a thing that had previously seemed unimaginable. (They were penguins, for fuck’s sake! How could you get tired of looking at penguins unless you were a heartless, screwed-up person?) She bought The Foolproof Guide to a Happy, Healthy Toddler and practically memorized it, the old, familiar anxiety that Charlie wasn’t hitting all his check marks coming right back. A creeping strangeness began to grow between her and Daniel every time her shame and rage and despair from the whole TrueMommy incident overwhelmed her and she wanted to tell him exactly what was wrong, but bit her tongue instead. (Which happened approximately twenty million times a day.) It didn’t help that when she’d told him about the playgroup’s demise thanks to Whitney’s affair with Gwen’s husband, he’d shaken his head and said, “Yikes, it’s scary how you can have no idea what your partner’s doing,” and then, jokingly, looked into her eyes with a solemn stare and said, “Anything you need to tell me?” She met moms on the playground and chatted with them and then never saw them again. Often, they asked for her number and sent her effusive texts asking her to get together. The texts always made Amara think of Claire (these women used so many more exclamation points than Claire would’ve, and they made her laugh so much less), so Amara never responded. She was the playground-mom equivalent of a charming Tinder ghoster, getting the women all excited about their connection and then leaving them sad and confused. She wore herself and Charlie out during the day, because if she was exhausted at night, it meant less time trying to hide things from Daniel.

  * * *

  —

  Whitney deleted her social media and went out of town. She found a three-room cottage on the North Fork of Long Island, setting up shop there with Hope for June and July. Grant came out on the weekends to join them, and they talked about buying a place like it for future summers. “It would have to have more bedrooms,” he said, “for more children,” and she smiled and made a noise that was neither agreement nor dissent. For Whitney, it was a crash course in loneliness. She took Hope for long, aimless walks every day, as seagu
lls arced above them and waves foamed at her feet. As she put one foot in front of the other, Whitney whispered apologies to her daughter for all of her myriad failings. She concentrated on finding Hope one perfect shell, wanting to make her smile and reach her little hands out in awe. So many things gave Hope awe—the grainy feel of sand beneath her toes, the little hermit crabs scuttling about in tide pools—and Whitney felt that she was rediscovering the world through her daughter’s eyes. It was almost magical, even though she didn’t deserve magic. After the first week, in which she tried over and over again to apologize to Gwen without getting any responses to her voice mails and e-mails, she turned off her phone and only looked at it when she and Grant needed to coordinate something. She stopped putting on makeup each morning and bought herself some mom jeans. They were really damn comfortable. After days of not talking to other adults, she longed for and dreaded the weekends in equal measure, craving the noise that Grant would bring, uneasy about actually being around him. She learned anew each facet of her daughter’s face, counted the fine brown hairs on her head. She dreamed of Christopher at night, but also of the playgroup women, seeing their smiles turn to sneers as they learned the truth about her.

  * * *

  —

  Ellie got a babysitter and went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting without telling her husband, and Meredith did too. Ellie liked that you got to stand up and talk about how you were feeling for as long as you wanted, and everyone had to listen respectfully to you. She actually thought that the meeting was kind of fun, and Meredith did too. Ellie went to the gym a lot. Meredith went somewhat less often.

  * * *

  —

  Vicki just kept doing her Vicki thing.

  * * *

  —

  And they might have all continued on like that as their children grew and changed except for the fact that, on a sweltering Saturday morning in early August, Amara and Whitney went to the same children’s music class.

  Chapter 34

  Another day, another free event that Amara could take Charlie to. This time it was a trial music class at a new kids’ space on Madison and Seventy-Seventh, some just-opened franchise that had flooded the neighborhood with flyers announcing their special music event, where the walls were decorated with suns and hearts, where all the employees spoke in such cheery, high-pitched voices that she was surprised dogs all over the neighborhood weren’t howling, and where they were desperately trying to lure parents into signing their kids up for the fall “semester,” as if it were a university for toddlers. Amara pictured them giving Charlie a diploma at the end of it all. Perhaps some apple-cheeked three-year-old would be crowned valedictorian, and all the adults would have to come sit and listen while the tot stood on a stage and babbled about trains.

  The front desk girl pointed Amara down the hall, directing her to follow the crowd and leave Charlie’s stroller outside the door labeled “Theater.” Amara took off her shoes as requested and plunked herself down on an ABC rug while a heavily bearded man tuned his guitar and his assistant, a bright-eyed girl who had clearly moved to New York to do musical theater, went around demanding high fives from all the babies. Charlie did not want to oblige, twisting away from the girl’s eager face, and the girl remained crouched down in front of Amara for far too long, trying to get him to touch her hand, until Amara had to say, “He takes a little while to warm up.”

  “Oh, no! That hurts my feelings!” the girl said, making a fake pouty face, and moved on to the next kid. Amara looked around in vain for someone with whom she could exchange caustic eye rolls.

  The walls here were all painted bright purple, with accents of neon green. Why would anyone do such a thing?

  Finally, the guy finished tuning his guitar, and strummed a power chord. “WHO’S READY TO ROCK OUT??” he bellowed, and the crowd of parents around Amara whoo-ed like they were at a Foo Fighters concert. The assistant girl stuck out her tongue and waggled it—transforming for a moment into a forgotten member of KISS—and then went back to her show tunes smile, clapping her hands as she and the guitar guy began to sing a shitty hello song about sunshine. (Oh the sun is out and it’s shining bright, like the faces you see on your left and right!) Amara swayed half-heartedly.

  Behind her, the door to the classroom opened—a late arrival. Amara turned her head briefly, catching a flash of thick, wavy hair, and two long, muscled legs sticking out of some baggy jeans shorts as the mother coaxed in a toddling baby. It wasn’t until the newcomer had settled down on her own spot on the alphabet rug that Amara really looked at her and realized it was Whitney. Whitney recognized Amara at the same moment, shock coming over her face.

  Well. That was the end of this music class. No great loss. If Amara wanted someone to screech at her about sunshine, she could always call Daniel’s mother down in Florida. She got to her feet and scooped Charlie up, then strode out the door to the hallway, where she’d left her stroller. She struggled to buckle him in, noting with a strange detachment that her hands were shaking.

  As she fastened the final strap, the door opened behind her, and Whitney ran out, Hope in tow. “Amara, wait,” she said. Amara angled Charlie’s stroller away from her and began to push. “Please, Amara, don’t run away!”

  “Oh, I’m not running away,” Amara hurled back. “I’m just going to get Daniel. I thought perhaps you might like to fuck him too?”

  Whitney let out a breath like she’d had the wind knocked out of her, then nodded. “I deserve that,” she said, her voice steady and low. The hallway around them smelled like cleaning fluid. Noises of a happy class echoed from the other side of the theater door. Hope settled herself down on the floor and began to pull at the carpet. “Or worse than that. Please, let me explain.”

  “Is your excuse that you’re one of those people who takes Ambien and then goes out and drives a car while still asleep, except instead of driving a car, you were screwing your friend’s husband and lying about it to all your other friends?”

  “No,” Whitney said, biting her lip.

  “Then it’s probably not good enough.”

  “I know that. I know nothing I say can ever make it better, okay?” Whitney said, sighing. She looked different. Tanner, and a little wilder. Less coiffed. There were some new lines on her face, or maybe it was just that she wasn’t wearing much makeup at all, like she had become the kind of person who casually dabbed her lips with ChapStick instead of searching for the proper, muted shade of lipstick. “I’ve tried to excuse it to myself a million times by saying that it was because Grant and I were not in a good place or that I had so much pent-up excess energy because of the TrueMommy or that I hadn’t felt really desired for so long and Christopher came onto me so strong that I couldn’t resist. Or that because I was little White Trash Whitney trying to belong in this rich, perfect world, it was only inevitable that I’d screw it up in the worst and most predictable way that I could. And all of those things are probably true, but also, none of them matters. The truth is just that sometimes you think you’re a good person, and then little by little, you justify your way into being a bad one.”

  “Rewind a second. White Trash Whitney?” Amara asked.

  “Oh. Yes. My mother was a dental hygienist and my dad bounced between construction jobs and day drinking at our kitchen table, and they were always fighting about money, and for a while, that was my secret shame.” She gave a rueful laugh and scooped a piece of paper that Hope had found on the ground out of her hands right before she put it into her mouth. “Seems pretty tame in comparison to what I’ve got to be ashamed of now.”

  “Wait,” Amara said. “What’s wrong with being a dental hygienist?”

  “I don’t know,” Whitney said. “Nothing! Anyway, I don’t expect you to ever want to see me again, but before you run out of here, I have to tell you how much I’ve always admired you, and how sorry I am.”

  Amara crossed her arms. “Don’t apologize to
me. Apologize to Gwen.”

  “I’ve tried. She won’t return any of my calls. But I do have to apologize to you, because I didn’t just hurt Gwen. I screwed up playgroup. I screwed it up for us all, right when we all needed one another the most.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t forgive you,” Amara said. Whitney looked down at the ground and nodded. “But I guess I know a little bit about screwing up too.”

  They stood in silence for a moment, the air heavy with their regret. “How is Gwen?” Whitney asked.

  “How do you think?” Amara snapped, and then bit her lip. “No, I don’t really know, actually. We text every so often to check in about how we’re handling all the TrueMommy stuff, and it sounds like she and Christopher are working through things, but she hasn’t really wanted to see anyone.” She shook her head. “The best part of my day is the moment I wake up, those couple of seconds before I remember everything that happened. It’s been really fucking hard the last couple of months, carrying it all around and not being able to talk about it with anybody.”

  “I know,” Whitney said, and reached out to grasp Amara’s hand. Amara let her own hand relax into the warmth of Whitney’s palm, and they stayed there like that until another late-arriving mother came barreling down the hallway, dragging a little boy by the hand, saying in a not-at-all-nice tone of voice, “Come on, Jason, come on!”

  Poor tardy Jason disappeared after his mother into the Sunshine Den, and a snippet of song trailed out into the hallway after them. Whitney grimaced at the guitar guy’s hoarse, grasping voice, the assistant’s hollow sunny tone. “Claire was so much better, wasn’t she?”

  Amara felt a twinge, like she’d stumbled across a letter from an old lover. “Yeah, she was perfect for us, in her own strange way.”