Momzillas

by Jill Kargman

  A year and a half later, when Josh and I got married, I met Bee for the second time, and she was just as radiant as she’d been on her wedding day, but this time with the added feather in her cap of being that hot and a mom, too. She was thinner than I was with my bridearexia and I hadn’t even borne fruit. The thing was, Parker was the greatest guy ever, a true brother to Josh and always a kindhearted, lovely, fun person to be around. He came to San Francisco every couple months on business and our hilarious laugh-packed dinners together gave me those cackle cramps in my stomach. He was such a gem, always warm and sweet, and a loving dad who promptly whipped out folios of West’s pictures while gushing about how much he missed him. So while I felt incredibly close to her husband, Bee was always a little bit of a mystery to me. It was also awky because I’m really a girls’ girl and not one to bond with the boys; I have never been dicks over chicks. But I always felt it was so much more seamless with Parker. With Bee, convo seemed forced.

  When my daughter was born, an extravagant sterling silver Tiffany baby cup arrived, hand-engraved VIOLET GRACE with a card that said “Welcome to the World—the Elliotts.” I was suddenly so embarrassed by the dumb Baby Gap onesies I had sent Bee for Weston the year before. She must have thought that so…unspecial. It wasn’t that I had, like, class-anxiety or anything, it wasn’t about her having tons of money, it was more about polish. Bee was always so perfect, so put-together, I felt like a frigging slob-ass. I had met all of her Chapin friends, who just seemed so stylish and did everything right, by the book. Bee’s hand-letterpressed stationery made my thermo-graphed cheapola stuff look like I’d made it at Kinko’s.

  Take, for example, Bee’s Christmas card. It was printed on stock so thick you could slash your wrist with it. Mine was flimsy and done with ink-pad stamps, total junior varsity Martha Stewart–style. The photograph of West was a full-on black-and-white professional portrait captured on the gleaming beaches of the Southampton Bathing Corp. Ours? A random snapshot I took of Violet playing with the seagulls by Fisherman’s Wharf—hello cheesy tourist trap. I know I am overanalyzing and sounding all crazy, but it was little symbols like this, a tiny taste posted from her world into mine with a perfectly affixed seasonal stamp, that made me anxious to face my new life. Very anxious.

  Three

  Yet there was one other embodiment-of-chic humanoid that infused my move with spine-tingling stress. No sooner did I hook up our digital answering machine (which almost required an MIT diploma it took so effing long) than we got The Call. I’d gone to change Violet’s diaper; it was a serious Code Brown situation, meaning I couldn’t answer the ringing phone, and came back to the living room with my freshly Pampered tot to see a red “1” on the machine. I pressed play and instantly shivered as the poisonous timbre reverberated through the pad. It was Mrs. Lila Allen Dillingham, aka Josh’s mom.

  I know, I know: most peeps loathe their MiLs; it’s the rule and not the exception. MiLs bug DiLs. They get up in their bidniss. They claim to know what’s best for the kids. The list goes on. But this woman was not just a thorn in my side, she was a full My name is Inigo Montoya–hand-carved spear bisecting my bod. A true Mayflower type, she had married Josh’s warm, sweet dad for love at twenty-one. But for a Greenwich-born Social Register member, love don’t pay the country club bills. Josh’s father, whose twinkling eyes and happy smile lit picture frames in our house, died when Josh was eight, leaving very little money—like my parents, he was a passionate teacher. Lila’s parents, due to their lineage (but dwindling bank account, thanks to three generations of racquetball-playing Roman-numeraled peeps who felt “above” working), had vehemently opposed the marriage because he was Jewish. And though she must have loved him (by all reports, he was the funniest, most adoring man ever), her increasing anger about what her friends had and the pressures of keeping up with her childhood Greenwich friends mounted as her parents’ dollars-in-eyes values seeped in. Josh said she got so crazy through the years, she used to obsessively drive him by Lauder Way after his father passed away, looking at the fancy houses in Greenwich before they moved back to the city, as she said to her young son—mere months after his father’s death—“to find my next husband.” She was this hardhearted patrician blonde, the only one who didn’t sound psyched when we announced our marriage plans.

  I cried to him after we told her because I could just tell by her Tom Cruisey clenched jaw that she was devastated that her only child, her prince, was wasting himself on a middle-class girl like me when I knew she had cadres of society swans fluttering around her that she’d prefer he wed. She had never been anything but ice cold to me (I called her “The Cube” to the Mooshu Mafia, my group of friends in SF who we had Chinese dinner with every Sunday) and always scanned me from head to toe, no doubt giving me the internal outfit-disapproval once-over. I’m sure even Christy Turlington wouldn’t pass her MRI-like inspection, since no mortal maiden could ever be good enough for her “aaaaangel.” And not to be cocky, but with every guy I’ve ever dated, the moms have loved me. I am always super polite, attentive, respectful, and leaping up as if my four-inch heeled boots were Air Jordans to clear the table or help in the kitchen. I am a girls’ girl. I’m open, I watch Lifetime, I smile, I connect. And I fully understand that mother/son he’s-my-baby thing. But this, unfortch, was way different, another beast altogether. Josh’s mom had this strange worship of him that I found a little weirdo, like he was her chance to keep her lineage “on track” at a social level she had flouted by her first marriage; if Josh married someone to the manor born, she could right the wrongs of her past by sealing her grandchildren into the club of the elite. And she obviously didn’t want him to make the same mistake she’d made.

  And she didn’t make the same mistake again herself: her second marriage, well, that was for cold hard ca$hola. Watson Dillingham was a British hundred millionaire slash former champion polo player who bought her a weekend estate on Conyers Farm in Greenwich and a penthouse on Fifth perched over the swaying trees of Central Park, which looked like their own personal backyard. He was nearing eighty—twenty years her senior—and while she lived it up with her credit cards galore, Watson, “Watts,” had two daughters back in England who would surely get the bulk o’ his dough when he went on to that great polo match in the sky. Maybe that was why she had been so desperate for Josh to marry someone wealthy. Maybe she just thought I was beneath him. Maybe she would plague me until I myself went nutso.

  But thank God for my husband. Josh was the greatest. So many choruses of women have mother-in-law issues—obviously, even with my extremely tough-to-take MiL, I am not alone. And the only thing that can make it tolerable is how the husband deals with it. The worst is a Jocasta/Oedipus sitch I’ve heard lore about, where the guy lovingly defends his mom’s behavior or even is “torn.” Josh wasn’t. He always told me he was well aware of his mom’s craziness—he’d grown up with it: the constant quest to be on the right boards, the talking about other families’ fortunes, the nonstop gossip about the so-and-sos’ split or whose child got rejected from Groton or what family company stock was plummeting. “Just don’t let her get to you, she’s insane,” he’d say, calming me down. “Hannah, you’re the woman in my life.” And it was true. At least while we were in our California perch, thousands of miles away from The Cube. Until I heard her throaty voice on the tin speaker and I froze all over again.

  “Joshie! Welcome back, angel darling,” she echoed through the machine’s crap speaker. “I hope you’re coming to Greenwich this weekend for my big birthday dinner. Watts and I are here having a great time. I’m going to pop into town tomorrow or the next day for some appointments. Call us in the morning, my angel.”

  No “Hi, Hannah” or even a mention of her only grandchild, Violet.

  But I knew we had to face the music and go that weekend. It was her sixtieth birthday, after all. I could not have been dreading the sojourn more—every time we visited their country house during our dating days I felt so out of place in the Lil
ly Pulitzer explosion. If Greenwich was Hades, Josh’s mom was the devil presiding over the lava-bubbling pit o’ fire. And it would only get worse in a few weeks when her majesty was back in residence full-time just a few blocks from us. But I would have to take deep breaths and exhale my frustration and be strong. I thought I could do it. Sure! I could do it. Except that whenever we were with her, minutes passed like hours and I felt like I was in lockdown in Attica.

  MEANWHILE, A FEW BLOCKS NORTH…

  Instant Message from: BeeElliott

  BeeElliott: Bonjour—you there?

  Maggs10021: Oui, cherie. How art thou?

  BeeElliott: TERRIBLE.

  Maggs10021: Y?????

  BeeElliott: Went to my dermo today and got totally bitched out for my tan from Lyford.

  Maggs10021: Dr. Phillip? What’d he say?

  BeeElliott: That walking into his office with my skin is like someone walking into an AA mtg. w/ a bottle of Grey Goose.

  Maggs10021: Hilar.

  BeeElliott: So…Maggs, HUGE fave.

  Maggs10021: Sure, s’up?

  BeeElliott: This chick whose hub is friends w/ Park just moved here and I have to intro her around, ugh. Will u come?

  Maggs10021: K, so? What’s her deal?

  BeeElliott: Blah. Lived in SF, grew up in Seattle, I think; nice-ish, but NOK. Dresses like Urban Outfitters threw up on her. Not a MILF like us

  Maggs10021: HA. Gotcha. I’ll totally come, no prob.

  BeeElliott: I know her hub and MiL since fetushood—u met her, Lila Allen Dillingham? She’s chair of the WOG benefit committee.

  Maggs10021: Wipe Out Glaucoma? Oh yes! Just saw her pic in T&C. Watson Dillingham’s wife?

  BeeElliott: Right—saw her at Swifty’s and she practically begged me to intro her DiL to the gang; she’s clearly stressed b/c the chick is v. left coast and NOK…dreading but please help!

  Maggs10021: Of course ma cherie.

  BeeElliott: Love u, thx! Let’s get the boys together this week—I’ll have my nanny call your nanny.

  Four

  There’s something about Dora the Explorer, aside from the forced rhyme, that makes me want to chop her mop-topped oversized head off. Okay, that’s too mean. She is a child after all, albeit a cartoon one. But after hearing her dumb jingles, say, eleventy times, I started to go nuts and suddenly wanted to clobber her à la Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote with frying pans and destructive implements from the diverse Acme product line. I turned off the TV and tried to scavenge what I could from Violet’s suitcases, retrieving a white eyelet dress that looked cute enough, even by New York standards.

  I finished brushing Violet’s hair, put on her best cardigan, pink, lined with a striped brown-and-white grosgrain ribbon, and began my walk to Central Park. The July sun was gleaming through the trees on the Fifth Avenue border of the park and I pushed Violet up the rows of hexagonal stones under a canopy of green. The trees, I mean. The other side of Fifth Avenue also was lined with green canopies: hunter green awnings, each with posh addresses written out in script—Eight Twenty-Five Fifth Avenue.

  “Mommy, Mommy?” my precious daughter said, looking up at me.

  “Yes, love muffin?”

  “Birdie!”

  “Very good! Yes, that kind of birdie is called a pigeon. Can you say pigeon?”

  “Igin!”

  “Good job, Vi! Pigeon,” I said, patting her soft head. “We’re going to see a lot of those here.”

  I thought about how even Josh’s hero Woody Allen called them rats with wings.

  As Violet’s eyes slowly began to close for a nap, I looked at the pedestrian traffic of hordes of nannies coming toward me, pushing strollers, some out of Mary Poppins—huge Silver Cross prams with mosquito netting as if the coddled nugget inside were in the wilds of the Amazon. Some nannies were Filipino, wearing starched, pressed white uniforms, some Hispanic, some African American, all pretty much pushing these infant blondies with hair so platinum it was semi Children of the Corn. I looked at these white-haired kids and their diverse stroller-pushers and wondered what Martians would report to their mothership if they landed their space pods next to Central Park midweek. “Captain, come in, Captain! We have found life! These creatures start out small and light and grow up big and dark!”

  I approached Seventy-second Street, my meeting point with Bee. She had texted me to meet her by the bench near that entrance to the park, and sure enough, there she was, perfectly turned out, in a full pleated skirt, kitten heels, a white blouse, and a Vuitton diaper bag, with her son, Weston, passed out in the stroller.

  Within minutes of greeting Bee, I realized something right away: there was a war brewing. Whispers to the east of a dark, seething force, an echo from the west of an impending clash, a haunting rumble from the depth of the ground beneath our feet that tingles the spine of every soul who roams with inevitable doom.

  I know this sounds straight out of Lord of the Rings, good versus evil. The problem with this bloodthirsty combat is that each side thinks theirs is good, the other, evil. And I’m not talking about Frodo and the gang versus the Orcs and those other beasty people that emerge from that weird flaming vagina thing. I am talking about the epic swordfight, the all-out, gut-churning violent, vitriol-laced battle between the most fiery of enemies: the working moms and the stay-at-home moms.

  Back in California, while I was lucky enough to have just been wrapping up my thesis during Violet’s first year, most of my friends worked and often made comments about the stay-at-homers who were so bored that they turned gossipy and malicious. I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but I’d known a few moms at the playground to get a little too wrapped up in bullshit, but hey, it wasn’t over-the-top or anything. But in New York, everyone was wound tighter and I knew the two sparring factions were not just sides: they were poles.

  Bee and her equally plucky and smiley friend, a very pregnant Maggie (“We were in the same eating club at Princeton!”) Sinclair, said hello to me and then I stood by as they scanned the mommies on the playground and launched their assault, ushering me into their trench, arming me with staunch opinions and harsh tsk-tsks about that other species of moms who journey daily to Hades. I mean, the office.

  “Just look at her, poor Caroline Simmons,” Bee said, shaking her head while looking toward the tire swings, where an attractive woman in a gray suit stood waving to her son, who was being pushed by his heavyset black nanny.

  “Here for the fifteen-minute drive-by,” Maggie said icily, rubbing her swollen belly. “I heard she works, like, literally twelve hours a day. Can you imagine?”

  “It’s just so sad, really,” said Bee. “These women, they farm out the most important thing in life, the raising of their children! They’re gone all day, they come home exhausted, and they miss the precious moments. Tragic, really.” Bee looked around the playground and spied another woman who sparked a thought.

  “Oh, Hannah—see that girl in the pink twinset? Okay, her name is Molly McBride and she used to be really really fat! But then she had her baby and got this weird thyroid thing so now she’s all thin and is wearing skirts like that. I mean, hello, who do you think you are, the third Hilton sister? We’re not twenty-four anymore.”

  “I think she does it to flirt with Scott from Mini Mozarts,” said Maggie. “She has a massive crush on him.”

  “Everyone has a crush on Scott from Mini Mozarts,” added Bee with a hairflip. “Hannah, he’s this hot guitarist who lives downtown but he does these baby music classes up here and has already slept with three moms!” she said excitedly. “He’s banging his way up Park Avenue.”

  “That’s three we know of. There could be loads more,” added Maggie, eyes ablaze. “Oh! Which reminds me.” She pulled out a contraption that said BeBe Sounds and proceeded to place giant headphones on her belly, pressing play on a CD player. “Mozart for Babies,” she said, smiling. “It makes them smarter, studies have shown.”

  “Ugh, there goes Molly in her teeny skirt,” said Bee,
studying the leggy woman exiting the playground. “It’s so weird how thin she’s gotten. I just can’t get the image of her old self out of my head. I mean she had chins, Hannah, chins.”

  “Well, that’s the thing about getting skinny after being huge,” said Maggie. “Everyone who knew you always remembers the old you. You can never shake the fat shadow.”

  I looked down and saw my thighs spreading over the painted green bench. Shit, what did they think of my tree trunks? Okay, I wasn’t a lard ass or anything, I guess one would call me average. But “average” in my new habitat was certainly a size four to my curvier eight.

  “And Molly’s friends with this girl Lulita DeVeer, who has a kid out of wedlock with her, ahem, partner,” sneered Bee. “Like I always say: Carriage before marriage is trashy trashy trashy.”

  Maggie chimed in, “I mean, this isn’t California!” Then she caught herself, as if yours truly were hot off the plane from said state of sin. “No offense…” she added meekly.

  “Look, Caroline Simmons has Tokyo on the phone, there she goes!” Bee observed as the harried woman took a call and waved a frantic good-bye and mimed a blown kiss to her child, who spun around in the tire swing. “She’s leaving already. Back to the grind.”

  I decided not to mention that I was desperate to get back to work. I needed something in my life so as not to OD on unpacking boxes and wondering how to fill the day.

  “So Hannah,” said Maggie, looking me over. “Bee and I thought you might want to join our sessions with Dr. Poundschlosser. He’s a genius in child psychology and we meet with him every week to discuss child development. He’s the one who told me about Mozart on the headphones. He really gives some great insights and will definitely give Violet a jump ahead when it comes to nursery school interviews this fall.”

  “Oh…that’s so nice. Um, yeah sure,” I said looking across the park at a group of friendly-seeming nannies who were all laughing hysterically while bouncing their little charges on their knees.