Every week she shows up with an intricate hairstyle involving hair that is not her own. She seems to think no one knows it is a weave.
“Hey, Nicole, did you hear about the woman who was shot in the head but saved by her weave?” I tease.
“I wouldn’t know about a weave,” she replied with a gold-capped smile. I think that was her reply, anyway. I can’t understand a damn thing she says through her heavy Trinidadvia-Brooklyn accent.
Nicole also has a thing for Baby Phat clothing, and a severe case of body dysmorphic disorder. A dangerous combination because Baby Phat tends toward the hoochie side. Whereas most women who suffer from this affliction think they are three sizes larger than they are, Nicole insists on fitting her size 16 body into size 6—the result being endless repairs of burst seams on my machine. She always blames the low quality of the garments.
“Ah, Laura,” she said one day, “do you like my new jeans?”
“What?”
“Do you like my new jeans?”
“What?”
“My…jeans…they…are…new.”
“Oh. You do know they’re way too small, right? And why do they have a big metallic cat on the ass?”
“No, Laura, these jeans are so loose,” Nicole said, pointing to her backside. “I should have gotten a smaller size.”
“Nicole, look how stressed the seams are in the thighs—they’re going to burst.”
“That’s just because one of my thighs is swollen. It’s temporary.”
“Your thighs are exactly the same.” I get out my measuring tape to prove it to her. “It’s those tight jeans, cutting off your circulation.”
If Alicia is the captain of our family, then Nicole is the enforcer. At six o’clock, she lines up all the boys and makes them eat. At seven o’clock, she lines them up and makes them bathe. At eight o’clock, brush teeth; nine o’clock, bedtime. While Alicia will always give you a snack—sometimes one she’s already eating—Nicole will glower and point you in the direction of the kitchen, where she has prepared six different dishes, some of which resemble cat food and all of which are so inedible that the kids cry, begging for cereal. We always hope that Alicia has found some time during the day to cook.
The enforcer is very protective.
“When I was leaving school today, one of the mothers asked me who picks the boys’ clothes,” Nicole recounted. It is true that besides Pierson, my other boys always look like they just stepped out of a Salvation Army dollar bin.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I just kept walking so I wouldn’t have to answer with my fist.”
While Nicole rules the kids with an iron fist and a gold grille, her personal life is a circus. Her phone rings constantly with calls from family members in crisis. There are always lawsuits and court dates, shootings and evictions, deaths and financial crises. Her entire family went to visit her brother in prison and she came back with a group photo to show the kids.
“This is my brother,” she said, pointing to a large man in the center.
“Why is he wearing an orange jumpsuit?” Larson asks, never one to miss a costume.
“That’s what they make you wear in prison.” She continued: “This is my mother and my sister. And this is my brother’s son, Jayden.”
“Your whole family is in jail? Even the kids?”
THANKS TO MY GIRLS, MY HUSBAND, AND MY OWN CONSIDERABLE contributions, our schedule runs like a many-geared, well-oiled machine. During the week, Peter gets the boys up and fixes them breakfast while I get them dressed. Then he takes the three oldest off to school and either heads to work or comes back home. Larson and Finn hang with me until Alicia arrives. She fixes Larson’s lunch and takes him to school, and I watch Finn while I get dressed. When she gets back, I get to work, whatever that may entail for the day. Alicia will place grocery orders and unpack the boxes, and (we hope) cook, to spare us from Nicole’s cooking. If the weather is nice, she will take Finn to the park. When school ends, everyone begins to pinball around the city. Nicole starts work at three o’clock. She goes straight to school and picks up Truman and Pierson on Mondays and drops off Truman at his reading tutor while she and Pierson shop. These shopping excursions may include a stop at the man on Fourteenth Street who fits you for a grille: Pierson is waiting for his second front tooth to come in to get his. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Nicole picks up Pierson early to take him to his reading tutor and I pick up Truman. I usually forget and arrive late at school to find Truman in the lobby, greeting me with some comment like “What the fuck just happened here?” Zoila comes to clean for a few hours on Mondays and Wednesdays. Meanwhile, Alicia takes Finn to pick up Larson, and either brings him home for an in-house speech session with Craig or takes him to his other speech therapist, Amy. Peik usually has to be tracked down on Mondays and Wednesdays to get him home on time for Sabina, his homework helper. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Nicole brings Truman and Pierson to me, I take them to fencing, and Nicole watches Finn so Alicia can go home. When we get back, Nicole watches Finn and Larson and reads with Pierson, while I help Peik and Truman with their homework. When Peter gets home, he helps them with the math that I can’t do. Nicole puts the three smallest ones to bed, then goes home. This leaves Peter and me to get the big boys to bed on time so we can catch a few hours of sleep before musical beds begins.
The fact that all these children have all these places to be is actually the easy part. Getting there is the hard part. There is no SUV parked in the driveway ten feet from the kitchen door. These children are not conveniently delivered door to door in the safety of their car seats. We perform a balancing act involving taxis, buses, subways, strollers, and Snuglis.
Taxis can be difficult to get, especially if the weather is bad, and as the meter ticks up, your bank account ticks down. Buses tend to have older passengers with little patience for a crying child. Nicole once got into an argument with a patron complaining about Larson that ended in the bus driver pulling over and the man fleeing. Subways present an array of problems. While they are undoubtedly the fastest way to get around Manhattan, they are not handicap friendly, and traveling with a child in a stroller is basically the same as wheeling around an invalid.
Alicia was once in a subway station on her way to pick up Cleo from school; she had four-year-old Peik in a stroller. When they got to the turnstile, she asked Peik to get out of the stroller so she could maneuver it through. He did as he was asked and went through the turnstile just as the next train was pulling up to the platform. The doors opened and he stepped in. The doors closed and the train pulled away. Unfortunately, Alicia watched the entire scene from the turnstile, where she was wedged in by the menacing Maclaren.
Resourcefully, she picked up the nearby emergency phone and had a calm conversation with a dispatcher. The transit people told her to wait at that station; the police would apprehend the little escapee at the next station and bring him back to her. Within a few minutes, Alicia had Peik back, safe and sound. She wasn’t even late to pick up Cleo.
When she returned home, she burst into tears in a delayed panic attack and fearfully recounted the story. She was sure she would be fired.
“What will Peter say?” she blurted between sobs.
“Peter will say he had no idea there were emergency phones in the subway. Peter will say he was glad it happened with you and not me, because you handled it so well. Peter will say you deserve a bonus.”
WE MAY HAVE PLENTY OF HELP DURING THE WEEK, BUT UNTIL RECENTLY Peter and I were full-time parents on the weekends. As much as I hated being stuck in the kitchen preparing three seven-person meals a day, I have to admit that Peter had the more difficult task. The amount of activity required to keep the boys occupied when they don’t have school is immense.
“I need a youth replacement,” Peter said, exhausted on the sofa one Sunday evening after a marathon of boy activities. “I’m old; I can’t do this every weekend.” He was right. Hide-and-seek, bike riding, swimming, skiing, catch—the
man needed some downtime. He worked hard all week and worked even harder on the weekends.
Blake first introduced himself to me in the lobby of my big kids’ school. He had no idea we were looking for a manny.
“Hi, Laura, I’m Blake. I just wanted to tell you what a big fan I am of your work.” I’m never surprised by the variety of people who watch Project Runway. I meet a lot of men who watch it with their daughters or wives, so a man in his thirties didn’t set off any alarms.
“Thanks, Blake. What are you doing here?” I wasn’t sure whether he was a young father or a teacher.
“I’ve worked with a family for many years whose boys go here. They’re grown now, and don’t really need me anymore, but I try to get by at least once a week and spend some time with them.”
“What do you do now?” I asked, suddenly registering the possibility that all my weekend dreams might be about to come true.
“I’m a professional dancer and I teach dance at a school uptown.”
I liked how strong Blake looked, and how calm, and he obviously had quite a bit of experience taking care of boys. I could easily see him keeping my pack well entertained. He got the job without even knowing he was being interviewed. We had found our manny.
“Oh, and I’m gay,” he said, as we shook hands on the deal.
“Perfect,” I replied. “So’s my husband.”
Blake is just as likely to teach the boys how to build a tree-house as how to sing an aria or how to execute a perfect pirouette—a versatility that has earned him the handle Butch Ballerina. He will drive the boys off to Rye Playland on a Saturday, and be right back at it on Sunday morning to set up soccer pitches and kick a damn ball up and down the field with them. He will then come inside, don an apron, and whip up a meal. Most of his recipes rely on some flavor of Campbell’s Cream of Something Soup, from the classic tuna noodle hot dish to the more exotic Broccoli Cheese chicken casserole. Whatever the dish, Blake presents it with a flourish, as though he hadn’t just opened a can of glop and poured it over a dead bird. He is undoubtedly more David than Amy Sedaris, but any meal he cooks is one less meal I have to deal with.
While for most of the weekend his butch side dominates, the ballerina side of Blake sometimes rears its precious head. He often complains about the temperature in the car and can be fussy about his clothes. Often before he leaves for the ski slope with the boys he will run back into the house from the car to change his coat.
“This coat is ugly; I can’t be seen in it,” he’ll whine.
“Really? Because at least that one didn’t make your butt look big,” I tease. Five minutes later, he’ll back for a second change of coat.
Blake’s gayness fascinates my boys. If he mentions that he thinks the new girl serving burgers at the Red Rooster is pretty, they will tell him, “You’re not really gay, you like girls.” They’re always asking him when he “turned gay” and why he “decided to be gay.” But their all-time favorite method of Blake torture is to sing a small clip from a song in the Family Guy episode where the family inherits a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, from Lois’s rich aunt. Petah is singing “This House Is Freakin’ Sweet” which includes the line “One hundred bucks, Blake is gay.” They sing it over and over, laughing hysterically, proud that Seth McFarlane wrote it just for them. Blake always handles these incidents with patience and understanding.
Blake will do practically anything a child will do, and with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you think he’s enjoying it. He takes them to man movies I don’t want to see, builds fire pits in the woods, and makes them bows and arrows out of tree branches. He is a walking Dangerous Book for Boys.
I once came upon him with Pierson and Peik out behind the house. Truman was standing a good distance away.
“Hey, Blake,” I said, “what are you guys doing with my hairspray?”
“Building a potato launcher.”
“We’re trying to hit Truman,” Peik said, holding a length of PVC pipe and a Bic lighter. Pierson had a bowl of potatoes.
“Won’t that hurt?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” Blake said. “We’re using baked potatoes.”
“Well, carry on, girls,” I said, rolling my eyes, and went off in search of some well-paid-for peace and quiet.
LAURA’S GOT A GUNN
“Being on Project Runway was a lot like childbirth. When you are in the middle of it, it’s painful, but when it’s all over, you’re glad you did it.”
ABOUT SIX YEARS AGO, BETWEEN KIDS NUMBER four and five, I stumbled upon a new obsession: reality television. And not just any reality television. On Project Runway, a mixed assortment of completely crazy fashion designers is given little time and less money to craft a runway-worthy garment good enough to get them past the even crazier judges and on to the next week’s challenge. It had me at Auf Wiedersehen. I loved the characters, the obstacles, and the creativity—and no one had to eat live worms.
I am no stranger to the impossible. Work two jobs, go to grad school, and single-handedly rear my daughter in a city where I know not one soul? Sure, no problem. Find a second husband and give him five boys in ten years, rearing them all in a two-bedroom apartment in the middle of Manhattan while continuing my career as an architect? Don’t make me shrug. Create a killer dress from a paper clip and a piece of lint? Freaking cakewalk.
I tried to share my love by telling everyone to watch the show with me, but reality television with its lowbrow reputation was too hard a sell in my house—not to mention the part about people sewing dresses. I did manage to convince my nine-year-old, Truman, to sit by my side as I yelled at the screen—disagreeing with the judges’ comments or questioning a contestant’s design decision—and that was because the show aired past his bedtime. One late night, as I was watching an episode I had already seen at least fourteen times, Truman looked up at me from where he lay.
“That dress should not have been cut on the bias,” he muttered. “Mom, you can do better than that.”
You’re right, I thought. That fabric is not bias friendly. I could do better with my eyes closed. I hadn’t been to fashion school, but I had learned to sew when I was tiny, and my architecture training had honed my sense of design to a razor-sharp edge. I’d been making fantastic, elegant black-tie-event dresses for years; I knew how to drape and make patterns without ever really thinking about it. As I sat on the couch, Truman gently snoring during the runway segment, it occurred to me that I could audition for the next season. What was there to lose? At least if I got cast all my friends and family would have to watch the show with me, even if I didn’t make it very far.
I found the New York City open call on the Bravo website—it was to be held in three days. I couldn’t believe my luck. The interviews would be at Macy’s, only three blocks away, so I wouldn’t have to travel or make any crazy arrangements for the kids. It really was a no-brainer.
I wasn’t sure what they would be looking for, so I decided to bring what I do best, grabbing three sparkling cocktail dresses from the clothing rack in my bedroom. I was flying blind, trying to remember what contestants had shown up with in the past and gleaning what I could from the Internet. I figured my chances were about as slim as those of an African American ever becoming president, but then again, why not me? I can out-gay the gayest young male designer out there, I told myself. The night before the auditions, I ignored the March forecast of “continued cold snap” and selected a shimmery sleeveless cocktail dress lush with hand beading and a neckline that plunges to the navel. When I pulled it on the next morning, I hoped I would stand out from the crowd.
And I do mean crowd. Peter walked with me, and when we showed up at the side entrance of Macy’s the line of people stretched all the way down Thirty-fourth Street and wrapped around the world’s most famous department store.
Peter, my hero, offered to hold my place in line so I could return home and wait in our warm apartment. God, I love that man. He called me hours later saying he was getting close to the front and
it was time to make the switch.
Just as I arrived at Peter’s place in line, a guy with the requisite gear and a clipboard—clearly a producer—came outside for the next ten contestants.
“Seven, eight, nine,” he counted out, and when he said, “Ten,” I felt a hand on my shoulder guiding me through the door. My sense of the surreal started to kick into high gear.
Once inside the waiting room, I took off my coat and smoothed my hair, ignoring the nine people staring at me like I was crazy to wear a beaded dress before noon. Dress like you want it or stay home, I thought as I refreshed my red lipstick. They kept staring. I guess when you spend hours on a city street in the freezing cold a bit of camaraderie develops. I didn’t quite have that frozen-to-near-death-camped-on-the-sidewalk look about me. I had more like a spent-the-night-clubbing-at-the-Ritz-in-my-fancy-black-cocktail-dress look.
When it was my turn, the producers switched on my mic and told me to enter the room with my dresses and portfolio and stand on the X on the floor. I was specifically told not to try to shake anyone’s hand, which I found disappointing as by now I had a major crush on Tim Gunn and very much wanted a chance to touch him. It wasn’t a physical thing at all, really. I had just gained so much respect for his design aesthetic that I needed to make sure he was real. The more I thought about my infatuation, the more sense the no-handshaking rule made.
Once in the room, everything went by in a blur. I was operating on the adrenaline high of my life. Tim thumbed through my book and asked if I had made the dresses myself. I nodded meekly, or maybe I spoke a few words in the affirmative. I was so stunned to be standing there with the cameras rolling that I lost all sense of this being a competition—I really felt as though I had somehow already won just by getting in the door. I half expected to be thanked and sent on my way, and was already concocting the dinner-party small talk this episode of my life would soon be reduced to. It was then that I noticed people off to one side of the room—likely network executives or the big producers of the show—waving their arms at the judges and mouthing “Take the crazy lady in the cocktail dress.” Yes, I thought, you should take the crazy lady in the cocktail dress. Tim seemed less interested in my dramatic potential than in my garments—were they up to snuff? The next thing I knew, they told me I had made it to round two. I’d like to think it was my cleavage that got me the gig, but there’s not really enough of it. It’s much more likely that bedazzling oneself for an eight A.M. audition was exactly the kind of nutty behavior that reality television thrives on. At least for a couple of episodes.
Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday? Page 5
