by Kiley Reid
Peter believed in her; he always had. And the impact of her work was palpable in the gracious testimonials her new interns organized and photographed for her blog, but Alix was often shocked at the generous trust that organizations placed in her capacity. Alix was asked to speak on panels next to small-business owners on topics like “Hospitality in the Workplace” and “Designing Leaders for Creative Change.” She participated in feminist podcasts that discussed sustainable workplace cultures for women in tech and engineering. And once, Alix spoke at a workshop titled “Making the First Move” as two hundred single women drank champagne out of clear plastic cups inside a lecture hall. Alix loved writing letters and thought she was good at it, but it was consistently the confidence and excitement of the people around her that made the ideology of LetHer Speak bloom.
It was during a morning brunch—as she spoke to a small group of educators about the importance of teaching cursive in schools—that Alix felt such an urgent wave in her gut that she thought to herself, I better not be pregnant. She was, and two weeks later, Peter cried on the corner of University and 13th when she confirmed the news. He immediately asked, “Should we move?” Moving back to Philadelphia, Alix’s hometown, had been a distant plan since they’d met four years prior. She’d wanted a backyard and children to put inside it; she’d wanted them to one day ride their bikes in a familiar cul-de-sac, or a street where no one was selling counterfeit purses or pulling down a large grate as they locked up a bodega. But at the height of her new career, one that she never knew was possible, Alix backed away from Peter. “No no,” she said, “not yet, not yet.”
Briar Louise was born. Alix’s world became a place defined by Pack-’n-Plays, white noise machines, chafed areolas, and grapes cut in half. Her days were suddenly marked with third-person speech (“That’s Mama’s earring.” “Mama’s on the phone.”), referring to ages in months rather than years, putting the term big girl in front of everything to spark domestic excitement (big-girl naps, big-girl spoons, big-girl jeans), and accepting openmouthed, wet kisses from a tiny drooling person who only recently existed outside her body.
By then, Alix had a team consisting of one editorial assistant, two interns, and an “office space” that overflowed into the kitchen in their Upper West Side apartment. Peter wanted to move. His vision of becoming a news anchor in New York City had been hit by reality: he appeared on television five nights a week to a Riverdale audience of no more than eight thousand, doing stories of charity dog marriages, toys being recalled, and Times Square tourists completing obstacle courses for the chance to win Best Buy gift cards. Several seasoned journalists in Philadelphia would be retiring soon, and their salaries matched Peter’s in Riverdale. There were also rumors of their current apartment potentially going co-op. Philadelphia had always been the plan, but Alix Chamberlain was just getting started.
Alix’s revamped blog, detailing the success of other letter-writing promotion-receiving getting-what-they-want women, had six thousand hits a day. She was partnering with a hospital for a weeklong charity with a love-letter-themed fund-raiser. And in long dark gowns and caps, Alix spoke at two all-girls high school graduations to rows of keen, eager faces. In addition to her career, for the first time since college, Alix had a group of girlfriends. Rachel, Jodi, and Tamra were bright, sarcastic women with careers and young children of their own, and having a baby never seemed too scary with a group text of women who were doing it, too.
But then, seemingly all at once, Briar started talking.
Funneled by two massive front teeth, Briar’s voice consumed everything in its path. It was loud and hoarse and never stopped. When Briar slept, it was as if a fire alarm had finally been turned off, and Alix’s head throbbed with what she remembered was peace and quiet. Alix’s girlfriends assured her that their toddlers had done the same thing, that they were just excited to be able to communicate. Still, this seemed extreme. Briar was constantly asking, singing, rambling, humming, explaining that she liked hot dogs, that she once saw a turtle, that she wanted a high five, that she was not tired at all. When Alix picked Briar up from Peter’s mother’s apartment in Midtown, the woman opened the door with a desperate velocity Alix had come to know well. She could always hear her daughter’s voice from the elevator, even before she reached the proper floor. Alix was managing her business, savoring pockets of silence, and pitching book proposals to literary agents, when one day, as she picked up Briar’s rocking chair, she realized she was, once again, pregnant. Peter’s reaction, in the kitchen of their home, was filled with more confusion than joy.
“I thought . . .” He shook his head. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen while you’re breast-feeding.”
Alix pursed her lips with a face that said, So did I. “It’s rare, but it’s not impossible.”
“Alix . . . We can’t do this.” Peter referred to the kitchen table turned receptacle for a current LetHer Speak project including Polaroid pictures and bulky brown craft paper. Sippy cups were drying on paper towels lined against the windowsill, and casserole dishes held extra recycling. That morning, Peter had come downstairs to an intern who hung her head upside down to put her hair into a ponytail. He then made his coffee as she and another intern put on white event polos with LetHer Speak embroidered on the pockets. “We don’t have enough pots to put a second child in,” he said. And two days later, after a letter arrived from the corporation that would be purchasing their apartment complex, Peter announced, “I’m calling a broker in Philadelphia.”
What was she supposed to do, say no? There was a gap in New York housing so large that it would have been insane to suggest buying their place or renting a bigger one. Yes, she now made more money than she ever had, but no, it wasn’t enough to comfortably house two children in their current West Side neighborhood. And sure, she could look into Queens or New Jersey, but then she might as well just move to Philadelphia. Alix did work from home. Philadelphia wasn’t that far away. And more than anything, this was the person Alix had framed herself to be when she met Peter in that bar. “I think I’ve got like three years left in me for this city,” she’d told him. “Every time I sit in someone else’s butt sweat on the train, it goes down by about two weeks.” This was one of the things Peter had liked most about Alix: that she didn’t need to be at every event, that she liked getting out of the city, that she was an excellent driver, and that she wanted her children to trick-or-treat at houses, rather than apartment lobbies and Duane Reade.
So she had to move. Alix and her family would be moving out of New York City. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. Alix had been busy writing a very important letter of her own to the campaign team of Secretary Hillary Clinton, who had just announced her run for the presidency. This was a cause that mattered to her, Hillary’s feminist platform completely matched her brand, and a link to Hillary could keep Alix relevant even when she wasn’t living in the most relevant city in the country. Luckily, Alix’s dear friend Tamra knew a woman who knew one of Secretary Clinton’s campaign advisors. After four drafts and constant switches from Always, Alix to All My Best, Alix, she pressed Send on a volunteer proposal that she hoped would become a paying gig. Weeks went by and she heard nothing back from the campaign advisor or the agents she’d queried.
Abruptly, everything was packed, but Alix hadn’t allowed the tempo of her calendar to decline. She loved all of it: sitting on panels and listening to brilliant women in oversized shift dresses and dramatic lipstick, teens emailing her success stories of entry-level job offers they had accepted. But there was still no word from the Clinton campaign, or the six agents who received her book proposal. In the middle of fund-raisers and brunches, as she shook hands with earnest high schoolers, Alix thought, Is this it? Is this as far as I’ll ever go?
But on the morning of her last talk in New York City—she was speaking on a panel at an event called Small Business Femme—Alix decided, in a quick and incomplete thought, to not use he
r breast pump. She called one of her interns in, the one with the most babysitting experience, and said, “How would you feel about having Briar on your lap during the panel?”
On a stage in a SoHo theater space, Alix positioned herself between two male panel members, a podcast host and a reality TV show father who had quintuplet girls. Seated across from a crowd of three hundred, the panel discussed reproductive care and empowering books for girls as Alix’s breasts—particularly the left one—ached with expansion. Finally, after the audience laughed at a joke made by the host, Briar stirred and opened her eyes.
Briar hummed and asked why Mama was up there and if the intern had any Cheerios and if she could get down. Alix held a finger to her lips toward her daughter in the front row. Her intern motioned to the door and mouthed, You want me to take her out? Alix shook her head. She waited until she was asked another question.
“I think that women are often just asking for a seat at the table,” Alix said. The microphone attached at her collar bounced her voice to the back of the house. “But what’s heard is ‘I want special treatment,’ when that’s not the case. And the fact that . . . Actually?” Alix’s heart raced as she pushed forward. “I’m sorry to interrupt myself and the conversation.” Was she really doing this? Yes, she told herself. Yes she was. “I have a lot more to say on this topic, but my daughter is the very fussy person in the front row because she took a very long nap, and if it’s alright with everyone, I’d like to . . . well, I’m not really asking.” She stood and talked with her hands as she made her way to the front of the stage. “I’m going feed my daughter as I participate because I can definitely do both.”
Whoops and cheers went up from the crowd. Alix bent her knees sideways as she reached for Briar, who was immediately met with awwws as she gripped her mother’s neck. “Will you throw me that shirt?” Alix motioned to her intern for the pastel pink T-shirt that had been given to her in a goodie bag. She threw it over her shoulder and walked backstage.
The host of the show, a giddy graduate student, said, “You go girl!” into her mic. She looked backstage and whispered, “Should I just keep going?” But Alix was right on time. She emerged from backstage, Briar attached firmly to her left breast. The pink T-shirt was slung across her shoulder and blocking Briar’s head from sight. Briar’s shoes hung adorably at Alix’s right arm as she sat back in her seat.
“Okay, now we’re in business. That didn’t take too long, right?” Alix turned back to the host and said, “I’m happy to pick up where I left off.” Alix did pick up where she left off, and when she finished, the swooning host thanked her doubly for her answer and candor. Just as Alix had predicted, the host then asked for her daughter’s name and age. Alix made sure her words were clear. “My client here is Briar Louise. She is two years old and she’s very good at it.” Alix’s smile practically dared the audience to bat an eye at the age of her daughter suctioned to her chest.
The photographers for the event swarmed the foot of the stage. They backed up into the aisle to get a clear shot of Alix, crossing her ankles, breast-feeding her child above a pregnant stomach, and speaking between two suited men. At one point, a photographer whispered, “Can you adjust the shirt so that the logo is showing?” Alix laughed and said yes. She smoothed out the shirt against the side of Briar’s head and let the bottom hang flat. Blocking her daughter’s face were black letters spelling out Small Business Femme.
That day, Alix earned another thousand followers. Small Business Femme posted a picture of the moment on their Instagram account, the caption reading Find You A Woman That Can Do Both. Two baby magazines wanted to interview her about child-led breast-feeding, and the stigmas and benefits that come along with it. Alix paid her interns double to stay an extra hour to answer the emails, calls, and interview requests. A representative from the Clinton campaign phoned her cell. They were so sorry they’d missed her email, but they’d love for her to participate in some events later this year. Two of the agents Alix had queried also returned her emails. Within ten days, Alix sold her book to an editor named Maura at HarperCollins, a woman with children of her own and an alarmingly fast email response time.
The buzz from her center-stage breast-feeding carried her over the Pennsylvania state line, into her new home, and through her third trimester. Before she left the city, Alix took lots of pictures with her assistant and interns at the tiny good-bye party in her packed office, but she never posted them online. She never mentioned her departure from New York on her blog, on her social media accounts, or to the Clinton team. Instead, she’d take the train in when they needed her. She’d pretend like she was there while she wrote her book. She’d come back more when the girls were older.
And then, in Philadelphia, after five short hours of labor, Catherine May was born, and her face immediately took the shape of her mother’s. Alix looked into her teeny, squishy, confused face and thought, You know what? Things will be okay here.
And they were. All of those non–New York things came back to her in small bright moments. She had a car to put groceries into. A ticket to a movie wasn’t fourteen dollars, it was ten. And she lived in a three-story brownstone (seven minutes’ walk from Rittenhouse Square) on a leafy, shaded street. The house had a massive, marble-floored entryway and a charming kitchen on the second floor. The kitchen counter space was ample, and a table for six underneath a chandelier looked out to the street through a curved wall of windows. In the morning, with pancakes and eggs on the stove, Alix and her children could sit at the window seats and look down at people walking their dogs or watch the trash collectors go back and forth. Upon seeing these things and realizing their worth, Alix immediately felt a tiny pang of amusement, but then a painful longing to show them to just about anyone. Her girlfriends. Her LetHer Speak interns. A stranger standing across a filthy platform in a New York City subway.
Before Philadelphia, Alix had never hired a regular babysitter. Peter’s mother was always available, and with three friends who also had small children, there was an implied sharedness when it came to watching one extra toddler while Mom ran to the dentist or mailed a package. Several girls were recommended by Peter’s new colleagues at the station, which led to interviews of Carlys and Caitlyns, camp counselors and resident assistants, on the bar stools in Alix’s new kitchen. They told Alix what fans they were of LetHer Speak, how they wished she’d been around when they applied to college, and that they had no idea she’d moved to Philadelphia. These girls, Alix knew, would never work.
Alix had a knack for acquiring merchandise back in New York, and searching for a babysitter in Philadelphia was no different. Her girlfriends would never do this, but she created a profile on SitterTown.com and began to scroll through photos of caretakers. The whole thing felt very simulated and impersonal, but Alix had found two of her three Manhattan apartments from sketchy ads on Craigslist, and like the steals she lived in during her twenties, Emira Tucker’s profile did not come with a picture. Her description said she was a Temple University graduate, that she knew beginner sign language, and that she could type 125 words per minute. Alix said, “Huh,” and clicked Request Interview. They talked once on the phone before Emira came to the house. And when Alix opened the door and saw Emira for the first time, she found herself once again thinking, Huh.
The other girls had asked Alix how her book was coming along and if she was having another child and if she’d gotten to meet Hillary Clinton yet, but Emira didn’t say much at all. Briar immediately saw this as a challenge and verbally attacked the twenty-five-year-old woman with stories about her new backyard and all the worms she was not allowed to touch and how floaties are only allowed in the pool. When Briar finished speaking, Emira bent down and said, “Okay, miss, what else you got?”
Most importantly, Emira Tucker had never heard of LetHer Speak.
“So it would be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.” This was the sixth time Alix had explained the schedule to a potential sitte
r. “From noon to seven. Sometimes I’d take Catherine with me—she’s a super-easy baby—and sometimes I would just be writing at a coffee shop nearby.”
“Okay.” Emira sat at the kitchen table with Briar and handed her a piece of Play-Doh. “Is it work writing or is it fun writing?”
“I have my own . . .” Alix leaned on the counter separating them. “I’m actually writing a book right now.”
Emira said, “Oh wow.”
Alix felt hollow and impatient as she waited for Emira to ask what her book was about, or who her publisher was, or when the book would officially be out. “It’s more of a compilation of old letters . . .” she said in the silence.
“Oh, okay.” Emira nodded. “Is it like a history book?”
Alix fingered her necklace. “Yes, exactly.” She bent her elbows onto the counter and said, “Emira, when can you start?”
Three times a week, Alix got to sit in the sun for hours—Catherine often slept next to her in the shade—as she read all the things she would have never been caught with in Manhattan. Us Weekly and People magazines. A tell-all from a recent Bachelorette who was known for sleeping with four of her male suitors. On one special Friday, Alix laid out her laptop, her writing schedule, and pages of her book proposal, only to watch three episodes of House Hunters International in the corner of a rooftop restaurant patio. Catherine only fussed when she was hungry, and Alix lifted her to say, “Hi, lovey,” before she slipped her underneath a complimentary nursing shawl. The fantasies of using Emira’s quick typing became quickly laughable, because Alix would have to have things to write down in order for them to materialize. In bed one evening, Peter said, “You just look so much happier here.”
