Momzillas

by Jill Kargman

  I called Leigh to pick a place for dinner that night—hopefully Josh could meet us but naturally he “couldn’t make any promises.” I was starting to feel more and more stood up by my own husband. The phone rang and I thought it would be Josh to wish me luck. It was Lila.

  “Hannah, dear, are your dialing fingers ready?”

  I said yes and was hoping that she would step in to help me call, but she quickly mentioned she had a charity board meeting at the Waldorf for PIMP—People In Manhattan against Pimples, a not-for-profit outfit dedicated to the eradication of acne. She hung up, wishing me luck.

  Soon enough the dialing hour was upon us. I set up Violet in her room with tons of toys and books and I sat beside her pretending to play but really having a nervous breakdown, my fingers shaking as I dialed the first number. Busy signal. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. What was this, the 1970s? I hadn’t heard a busy signal in literally twenty-five years! I kept hitting redial. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again…My pulse quickened even more. Fucking pick up, please!

  Then I decided that maybe instead of hitting redial, actually dialing the numbers each time might make a difference. Nope. Then I decided to switch numbers for a different school. Nada, same shizzle. Panic ensued. Then I wondered: Do I try once for each school in a round robin or just pound away at one school until I get through? I decided the former, just because it seemed like there was more randomness to it that way. I kept dialing. Busy busy busy busy busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. Arghhhhhh! I had heard the expression “tearing one’s hair out” all my life but never knew the meaning until the seven-hundredth busy signal and I swear I started grabbing the roots of my hair, ready to rip it all out, Sinéad-style.

  I was starting to picture the New York Post headline “Mother Drops Dead from Dial-an-App” with a photo of me zipped in a body bag because I passed out from stress. I was literally panting when I heard “Hello, Carnegie Nursery School?”

  “Hello?! Yes, hi! hi! Yay!” Gee, great opener, Hannah. Real cool.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi! Yes, hello, um, this is Hannah Allen calling. Um, I wanted to get an application for my daughter Violet?” Heart racing racing racing.

  “All righty, this is Mrs. Kincaid, director of admissions. I can help you with that. Let me just start a file for Miss Violet.”

  “Okay…” I waited as I heard shuffling papers and a trillion phone lines ringing in the background.

  “Full name?”

  “Violet Grace Allen.”

  “Age as of September of next year?”

  Shit, my math was failing me, shit! “Um…um three years and three and a half months?”

  “Husband’s profession?”

  Huh? To, like, make sure we can cough it up?

  “Hedge fund. I mean…uh, banker?”

  “University you attended?”

  “Berkeley.”

  “Mmm-hmm. And university your husband attended?”

  “Stanford.”

  “All right, Mrs. Allen, we shall send that off this week.”

  Yippee!

  Okay. Next school. Now maybe I’d be on a roll! Maybe now I’ll get ’em all!

  Wrong. Ninety-seven minutes later I finally got through to the London School. A woman in a clipped British accent took the same information and said she would send the application “straightaway.”

  Next I tried the Temple School. After one time dialing the number, I heard…ringing! Yaaaaaaay! Hooray! Angels on high! At this point the sound of a phone’s ring was like Mozart’s trumpets or Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.

  “Good morning. You have reached the Temple School. All requests for applications have been filled and because of a high number of siblings this year we are unable to send out any more applications. We wish you the best of luck in your nursery school process.”

  Click. Dial tone, which was like the sound of glass breaking. Fuck fucking fuck! They were sold out? And that was supposed to be our school with a connection, our “in.” Dammit. I took a deep breath, not having time to waste, and tried Fifth Avenue School, which takes everyone’s names and then draws out four hundred from a hat to receive an application. Why they do this I do not know, considering the calling in itself is a lottery. But hey, why not torture people some more, for fun? Their recording said we’d be notified via mail if we “won” the chance to apply. Night. Mare.

  I then quickly whipped out my school guide to add one more to the pot and dialed the Browne-Madison School, which I’d heard a couple good things about. After only about eleven tries, Missy Baumgarten, the school registrar, answered and created a file for Violet.

  “We will contact you in writing with your interview time,” she said. “Do not call the school. We’ll contact you.” Same deal as Fifth Avenue School as per their Web site—don’t call us, we’ll call you.

  “Okay—” Click.

  Exhausted, demoralized, and convinced my daughter would be mauled in day care, I took Violet out for some air. We walked up a now bustling Madison Avenue, packed with mommies lunching in the still al fresco sidewalk cafés, and others bolting into stores stocked with new fall merch like Jimmy Choo, Barneys, and Hermès.

  I walked by Ralph Lauren’s children’s shop on Madison, which was so glutted with strollers that there was a line to get in. Six pretty Orthodox Jewish women with wigs were carrying seven bags each on their stroller hooks, from Bonpoint, Polo, and Spring Flower. I walked up past Calypso and Flora and Henri—both mobbed—and then farther up to “Grandmother’s Row” on upper Madison—Marie Chantal, Petit Bateau, Magic Windows, and the other Bonpoint (which Bee said has less ’tude). All of them had beautiful dresses in the window for fall already, even though according to the lower left-hand corner of NY1 newschannel it was still 81 degrees out. And while I must admit I did thirst for many of the incredible gorge duds for Violet, I didn’t feel like I needed to wait in line, so we went to the park and I let Violet run rampant while I watched from the bench, finally able to exhale.

  Twenty-nine

  No sooner did I fall fully into relaxtion mode than I heard my name.

  “Earth to Hannah!” It was Bee. “I’ve been calling you!”

  “Oh, hi! You’re back!”

  “Yes, yes I am. We had the best summer. Gosh, it just flew by. Flew!” She looked me over from head to toe in a way I didn’t like. She arched her brow and gave me a weird look.

  “Yeah…” I said, in a wiped-out robomom tone.

  “How are you doing?” she asked, seemingly concerned. “Oh my goodness! Hannah, I totally spaced! How did the calling go this morning?”

  “Um, fine I guess.”

  She went on and on about what a horrifying experience it is and that—again—she did not envy me. Then Lara, Maggie, and Hallie strolled up in their rainbow fleet of Bugaboos. Bee announced that I had been dialing (thanks!) and they let out a collective, perfumed groan in harmony.

  “Get ready for hell,” Hallie warned. “It’s such a heinous process.”

  “I just bumped into that Eurotrash bitch Chloe de la Vega,” Lara sneered. “All I said was ‘how are you’ and she said she’s great because she’s sending Monique to Fifth Avenue and they only had forty-two spots from two thousand apps and forty were siblings! Can you believe they only took two outside families last year?”

  “I heard Carnegie took one new family. It was all loaded with siblings and huge donors to the community center that is the umbrella for the school. And the London School took zero!”

  Great. Now my chances were even smaller.

  “That Chloe woman is trash trash trash,” pronounced Hallie. “Her implants are so obvious!”

  “And her jewelry?” added Maggie. “Tackissimi. There are just diamonds all over her. Does she think this is Dubai?”

  “You know,” said Bee conspiratorially. “Maybe she wowed some old
lady admissions hag with her accent and bling, but that kid will not get into one kindergarten. They want classy, understated parents, not Riviera whores.”

  Great, after one hurdle, clearly here’s another. I knew Bee and her posse had a couple years until they started trying to get their kids into school again, but it already clearly haunted them.

  “So, Hannah,” Maggie asked. “What did you do this summer?”

  Before I could answer, she exchanged glances with Bee, probably feeling sad for me that I was in Manhattan the whole time while they skipped in slow motion under a setting sun on a sparkling beach.

  “Oh, we just hung out, you know.”

  “I heard Josh was away a lot,” Bee added. “That sucks. I mean, you have no help!”

  I loved how moms here seemed to count other people’s nanny hours. “Well, Amber has more and more free time now that she’s a senior at Barnard,” I said.

  Bee smiled at me. “Lucky you.”

  Thirty

  The next week brought Violet’s first day of Milford Prescott Music School, aka Mini Juilliard. Lila had called to wish us luck, thrilled I was getting Violet “on track” at the right pre-preschool. I was also getting points because “we” had gotten applications to some of the “right” schools, which I’d filled out in record time and mailed back promptly.

  When we arrived at the beautiful town house the school was located in, I suddenly got intimidated, beholding the stunning building that would house two-year-olds banging drums. How JV my hippie barefoot Music Together class in California suddenly seemed. The walls were lined with benefactors plaques with names of big donors, including several that were synonymous with Fortune 500 companies. I scanned the names, standing in the school’s echoey hall under the twenty-foot ceiling in the lobby. Then we were greeted by women in suits who handed out packets and little cards that were required should someone other than the parent pick up the child from class, to prevent kidnappings. The thought gave me chills but then I saw one child enter with a bodyguard and a nanny, while another, in a full mini crested blazer, had a mom and a nanny on hand. The mother promptly whipped out her trendy phone.

  “Tyrone, please go get the car washed at that place on First Avenue. Then pull around to pick us up in forty-five and we’ll drop Ming and Gates and then go down to my lunch at the Four Seasons and you have to go to the dog groomer to pick up Ducasse and Jean-Georges. And then we have to be at Central Barkers by four sharp.”

  I smiled when I heard Central Barkers.

  “We cannot be late!” the woman warned. “All the It society dogs will be there—Dodo Trump, Bonnie and Clyde Kravis, Truffle Soros, Chelsea Lauder Zinterhoffer, Van Fanjul—everyone who’s anyone with fur will be on hand!”

  My obvious eavesdropping and dropped jaw were noticed by a cool-looking girl next to me. “It” dogs?

  “I know, crazy, right?” she whispered as the instructions to pick up custom dog outfits at Z spot were given to the driver. “You can’t invent this shit.”

  “We just moved here, so stuff like that is a little…surprising to me, I guess.”

  “Don’t worry, not everyone in this school’s like that,” she said. I looked at her little girl, who was playing sweetly with her knitted blanket.

  “Your daughter is so cute,” I said.

  “Oh, this isn’t my daughter. I’m Kelly, I’m actually Morgan’s tutor,” she said, patting the girl’s hair. “I have a degree in early childhood from Columbia.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s cool.”

  “Yeah, her parents travel a lot, like two months at a time in Europe. They, like, started airport malls or something.”

  I hugged Violet, incapable of even fathoming leaving her for two days let alone two months. I kind of made a face because I didn’t want to bash in front of the cute child and Kelly picked up on it.

  “I know…intense,” she said, looking around the room of moms in the Momzilla uniform. “This neighborhood is very intense in general. I live in Williamsburg when I’m not living with Morgan. You should come check out the mom group I go to there on the weekends. It’s much much mellower. I bring Morgan with me with their driver and it’s just a nice break from the whole scene.”

  “What is it, like a playgroup?” I asked.

  “Kind of. It’s called Tots ’n’ Tonic. It’s in this really cool lounge that’s a club at night but is very mellow during the day. Cool group of parents, a lot of artists and writers.”

  Ooooh, I liked the sound of that! “Sounds right up my alley, I’d love to come,” I said.

  “Great, I’ll give you my number—”

  Just then the double doors of Violet’s amazing classroom (which was so beautiful and huge it could have been a ballroom) opened. Not one, not two, but four teachers walked out to welcome us and invite us in. We sang songs in a circle and I was amazed by the piano player, who was straight out of New York Philharmonic and so incredibly gifted I felt like I was getting a free concert. Well, not exactly free—we’d hemorrhaged piles of money, which worked out to like seventy-five smacks a class, so it was hardly gratis (Josh had done the math). But incredible nonetheless considering I was expecting acoustic guitar and swaying. This was far from noodling to “Kumbaya”: I’m talking airtight harmonies, drums, triangles, recorders, xylophones, and glockenspiels.

  I was so impressed with the class, and the only sucky part was a mom-clique of blondes who were yakking the whole time. I could see the teachers’ growing annoyance but their hands seemed to be tied—these women were probably some of the big donors posted on the plaques in the lobby.

  I heard one woman, who I think I’d spied in the playground waving to Bee and Maggie, say, “So how are you?” to another decked-out mom.

  “Couldn’t be worse,” she said, exasperated. I felt bad, wondering what had happened. Maybe a death in the family? “The contractor in Bridgehampton ran off to Puerto Vallarta. So now we have to fly in these craftsmen from Portofino to finish tiling the kitchen—it’s all handpainted and so we can’t risk some schlocky job. Prescott has to fly out there tomorrow on the seaplane to check up on things. It’s a total disaster zone. I mean, forget Thanksgiving there. We’ll have to fly down to Palm Beach with my in-laws.” Gee, boo-hoo. Gagosaurus.

  Next, one teacher pulled out a box of little stuffed animals and we all sang “Old McDonald.”

  “And on that farm he had a…”

  The children all sat silently.

  “Lion!” Violet said, smiling. I beamed with pride.

  “No, silly,” said Bridgehampton Bitch. “There aren’t lions on farms!”

  To say I wanted to vault, lioness-like, onto her gazelle self to make me some carcass is not an exaggeration. I wanted to kill her for raining on Violet’s parade. (And by the way, her dolt of a kid didn’t say shit. Better an animal name than a string of drool!) Fuck her. As if a two-year-old would know every natural habitat of the zoological spectrum. But I didn’t say anything. I was too stunned and too annoyed.

  “That’s okay! On our farm, we have a lion!” said the teacher, giving me a wink.

  Thank you thank you thank you. But still, Violet looked a little less proud.

  After class I strolled Violet home and she passed out pretty quickly. I think the group enviros are too exciting for her—since I have no real mom friends, she gets all revved up by the company and then crashes. So as we wandered by the Whitney, I decided to go in and stroll through the galleries with my sleeping muffin. On the third floor, I saw a tour pass by and trailed a few steps behind, eavesdropping. Again, drinking in the drops of facts and descriptions made me feel full and brain sated.

  When we left I started thinking that there must be some women like me out there. But how could I meet them? Maybe this Brooklyn posse would be the answer.

  Thirty-one

  That night I called Josh around nine to see when he would be coming home. Naturally, he couldn’t budge from his desk until at least an hour later. Great. Meanwhile I was so hungry I thought I’d p
ass out. It took every fiber of willpower to not snarf the mac ’n’ cheese when I made Violet’s dinner at six thirty. I didn’t want to get sucked into MTD (Mom’s two dinners), a four-meal-a-day pattern that results in not only mom jeans but also the feeling that you can’t fully enjoy dinner with your husband because you secretly chowed an entire fistful of chicken fingers.

  As I flipped through menus to order in, I tried Leigh on the off chance she was free.

  “Shithead lawyer schmuck just canceled on me! And I got a fifty-five-dollar Jean Louis David gloss and blowout at lunch just for this date. Fuck this. I’m totally coming over.”

  I ordered piles of Chinese food, and both the eats and Leigh arrived at the same time, thirty minutes later.

  “Ugh, I’m ready to join Match.com,” she lamented. “Last week I showed up for a date, and the guy was Danny DeVito’s doppelgänger. Twin. Not Schwarzenegger twin, I mean identical. Clone. Porker. I mean mega, Hannah. Barrel-shaped. His fingers were Polish sausages. Kielbasas. I kid you not.”

  “Leigh, do not worry. I know you’re gonna meet someone!”

  “Oh really. What, you have a direct line to God or something? You don’t have a crystal ball! I could be a shriveled hag.”

  “Let me be your crystal ball,” I said, staring her down. “I know to the core of my being that you will find someone amazing.”

  “I just want my older self to come back to younger me, Back to the Future–style, and say, Honey, don’t worry! You’ll be married with three kids one day, so have fun! Then I’d breathe easy and take advantage of the fun parts of being free and single. Wait, what are those again?”

  She told me she was trapped swimming against the tide of nubile assistants dumped in New York by graduations each spring. They took the summer off but had now landed in the Big Apple, scooping up all the one-bedrooms and all the single men our age. She refused to go on husband safari, because full-out hunts jeopardize your natural character, but then on the flipside, if you don’t make an effort to meet people you might never get a chance.