Momzillas

by Jill Kargman

  “Hi, Hannah,” she said looking me over. “So, how’re preschool interviews?”

  Naturally it was her first question, before, say, How are you?

  “Oh, fine,” I said. “You know.”

  “How many letters do you have for each school? Like Carnegie, how many letters?” I had gathered people generally got recommendations from current parents. Naturally, since I didn’t have friends close enough to ask (plus I’d already asked Maggie for our co-op board) my file contained exactly zero.

  “Um, not many…” I said, meaning none.

  “So is Carnegie your first choice? The second I saw it, I knew Julia Charlotte had to go there. Are you going to write a first-choice letter?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Lara approached, hearing the convo. “Ooooh, Hannah,” she interjected, holding a glass of chardonnay. “You must must must write a first-choice letter to Carnegie, it will totally up your chances.”

  “But…I don’t know if it is my first choice. I loved the other schools, too—especially Browne-Madison. It seemed very Violet—warm, nurturing, even more than Carnegie. I mean, the building’s not as grand but it’s still cute.”

  “Browne-Madison?” Hallie said with disbelief. “Hannah, they may be all artsy and loosey-goosey and whatever, but their kindergarten placement is really B.”

  “Well, you simply cannot send your child to Browne-Madison over Carnegie,” Lara said. “It’s, like, against the law, that’s like turning down Harvard for Hamilton.”

  I was quiet.

  “Seriously, Hannah,” Hallie said. “First-choice letters are key. You have to let Mrs. Kincaid know without a doubt that you will matriculate should she offer you a place.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said, not listening and just looking for Maggie, who I seriously needed to sit down with.

  “Browne-Madison is a total level down,” said Lara. “Don’t you want Violet at a top-notch school so she can sail into the continuing school of your choice?”

  “I guess.”

  “So Hal,” Lara said abruptly, looking at Hallie. “Are you so excited for Christmas vacation? Where are you guys going again, Cap Juluca?”

  “You know, we did that last year, so we decided on Mill Reef this year,” Hallie said, squeezing her lemon wedge into her Perrier. “Ugh, I have been so stressed out over this trip! I was late because I’ve been FedExing color samples and fabric swatches to JetSet Baby all morning.”

  “Oh, aren’t they the best?” Lara exclaimed. “We live for JetSet Baby—that company is truly a godsend. Hannah, you must use them when you travel next.”

  “What do they do?” I wondered.

  “It’s brilliant,” Hallie pronounced. “It’s a service that helps you with child adjustment when you travel. Dr. Poundschlosser recommended them. It’s a truly gifted team of designers who come to your house and take a hundred photographs of your child’s nusery. Then they repaint your hotel room the color of your child’s room at home and make slipcovers for all the furniture in your fabrics, so your child feels at home and isn’t alarmed.”

  In a word: Ew.

  I was stunned. They would die if they saw Violet’s unpainted makeshift “nursery,” which was basically a crib in a room. “How much does that cost?” I thought, immediately feeling tacky for asking—reminded of that expression that if you have to even ask, you can’t afford it. But hey, I simply had to know what these women shelled out for “child adjustment” on a ten-day vaycay.

  “It’s not bad,” shrugged Lara. “Ten thousand, give or take, depending on your fabrics.”

  My face belied my disgust. I didn’t even have to say yikes, but I did.

  “Well, I’m sorry—but they do sleep better because of it,” Hallie said defensively, possibly understanding how insane this was. Or not. “One simply cannot put a price tag on sleep.”

  “Oh, I know it!” added Lara. “When my son was little, we paid the baby nurse extra to walk with him in the Baby Björn on the treadmill in our gym so that he’d fall asleep! Money well spent, I say.”

  As I pictured some poor exhausted Malaysian woman hoofing it in her white uniform on their treadmill, I spied Maggie coming over. Thank goodness.

  “There you are!” said Maggie, walking over in a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress. Save for a little bump, she looked so thin it was hardly as if she’d just borne fruit forty-eight hours before.

  “You looking amazing, Maggie. Wow,” I said. “I hope I look like that when I’ve had two kids.”

  “Doesn’t she look stickish? You’ll definitely be KMBC, Kate Moss by Christmas,” said Lara, waving to a new party entrant. She and Hallie ran off to hug the woman who entered and Maggie smiled at me, seeming to sense I was relieved to see her. “Congratulations,” I said, hugging her.

  “How’re you doing?” she asked me.

  “Um, okay, I guess,” I shrugged. “Aside from the fact that Hallie and Lara just ambushed me about preschools. We are so getting shut out. We have no letters! They made it sound as if I needed recommendations from the entire Verizon white pages!”

  “Please, they are freaks,” Maggie whispered, shaking her head. “Tune them out. Plus, maybe these preschools care about social connections now. But the kindergartens won’t. And if they try their mob strategy, it will fail; I always think the thicker the file, the thicker the kid.”

  I smiled, but then the chill that had been plaguing me set in once again. “Where’s Bee?” I asked, looking around the room.

  “Hannah,” she said, looking both ways spylike. “Let’s camp out in my room for a sec.”

  “Yes! I really need to talk to you—”

  I got the nervous energy bolt through my body as I followed her past the crowd, which included pearl-stud-wearing blondes and a Malaysian baby nurse holding tiny Talbott, into her bedroom, which was a lavish pale-blue-and-beige confection of toile fabrics, soft carpets, and a dreamyland princess canopy bed.

  “I’ve been dying to call you but I know you just had a baby and are swamped,” I said, heart racing. “But I have to talk to you. Something happened.”

  “What?”

  I relayed my manicure story, and, while horrified, Maggie didn’t seem surprised. That was because she’d heard it all already.

  “Listen, Hannah,” she said, putting a hand on my knee as I wiped errant tears I’d vowed not to cry. “I know. I know everything. Bee is a mean, mean girl. I guess I’ve known it all along and secretly hated her, but I was always too scared of her to do anything about it.”

  “Can you imagine being so psycho and evil?” I said, still in shock.

  “It’s not you. It’s her. She’s a miserable person,” said Maggie. “She’s always been perfect and wants to be the only one with the good life, but it’s all a lie. Hannah, she’s the one who’s cheating.”

  What?

  “She’s been sleeping with Troy Kincaid for over nine months.”

  “She has?” I was stunned; a JetSet Baby fabric swatch could have knocked me to the floor. Incredulous. In shock. So, the flawless Ralph Lauren family wasn’t so picture perfect. “Poor Park! Oh my God! Maggie, I walked in on Troy quote ‘showing her my apartment’: God how dumb am I?” I was reeling. They fucking did it on my floor, those jerks.

  I was literally about to keel over.

  “Wait, it gets worse,” she said quietly.

  “What could be worse than being a compulsive liar who screwed someone else’s husband?” I asked.

  “She tried to screw yours as well.”

  Beat. Times ten. She what? Josh?

  “It was before you were technically married, though,” Maggie said. “When he was home once for some meeting and you were out west, she was hammered and totally made a pass at Josh. I actually thought she had harbored a crush on him from grade school or something,” she continued. “But he fully shut her down. I think that’s why she kind of had it out for you from the moment you got here.”

  “Bee had it out for me from day one?” M
y heart was pounding through my chest as I began to crumble to pieces. “She deserves an Oscar for that performance. Showing me the ropes, what bullshit.” The toile-covered room swirled as I felt faint.

  “Hannah, there’s something I have to show you,” said Maggie, who got up and opened a beautiful regency desk, taking a key from one drawer to unlock another stealthily. It was very Dangerous Liaisons, though I had no idea how much so until what followed. She handed me a stack of papers, which I immediately recognized as a computer chat between Maggie and Bee.

  “I think it comes from my having been a lawyer,” she said, watching me leaf through the pages. “I save everything.”

  There it was, the slow-cooking blossoming of the rumor that I was banging Tate Hayes. That bitch Bee planted the seeds of my so-called infidelity, watered it over time on her instant messages, and harvested it just when her own cheating had reached a fever pitch. I was a patsy. I didn’t know whether to bawl or be pissed, but it was a little of both. I looked at Maggie and hugged her as I started to tear up.

  “Thank you for showing me this,” I said soberly. “Maggie, I need you to know, I never ever would cheat on my husband. He is my life,” I said. Maggie hugged me and said she knew that, and the more she got to know me, the less she believed Bee’s lies.

  “I know,” she said, handing me a tissue and patting my shoulder. “It’s just she is bored, so bored, and so she dreams up this gossip—I can’t tell you how many rumors she’s started, to deflect from her own marriage or maybe even just because she felt like it, for no reason. I don’t know, to fill the silences at the playground. She’s the worst friend. And wife! This is the proverbial captain of the cheerleaders who always got so much attention, but she still craves more. Just having poor Parker’s love got boring so she courted others. Pathetic. And poor Weston, she pretends to be this SuperMom constantly pontificating about what’s the right sleep method or eating regimen or playgroup, but she never even sees him! He’s raised by his team of nannies, and yet she goes around criticizing other mothers and making statements about child rearing. God only knows what she’s said about me all these years,” Maggie wondered. But it didn’t matter now; Bee’s reign over her frenemies was at an end. Maggie hadn’t even called her to tell her about the birth.

  “What about Hallie and Lara, do they know?”

  “Not yet. I’ve realized, though, that they are Bee-worshippers. I hate being around them, too. They always compete and talk about the same damn shit.”

  I paused, smiling. “You mean Julia Charlotte’s Mensa exam?”

  Maggie burst out laughing. “Yes! I mean, gag!”

  “You always seemed so much nicer than those girls,” I said to Maggie, loving that the floodgates were open and that I now had a mom-ally. “I never understood why you were so tight with them.”

  “Inertia,” she replied, shrugging. “I was too busy to go and make new friends, and I’m usually nonconfrontational and just didn’t want to pull the plug. Then they’d really talk about me and have a field day. But now I don’t care.” She shrugged again. “Because you did your own thing, I knew I could too. I have my husband and my family, and now I have a new friend…” She gave me a hug and I was so happy she’d seen the light about her posse. But also about herself—that she was stronger than she thought and could move on without the clique.

  AND THE FINAL EXCHANGE…

  Instant Message from: BeeElliott

  BeeElliott: Maggie, you there? I left two messages! Helloooo? My Buddy List says you’re online. HELLO???

  Maggs10021: Stay away from me, Bee. You lied about Hannah and so many others. You terrorize every mother to make them feel bad about themselves but really you’re the sad one who doesn’t even know her kid. And now you’re out of my life. GOOD-BYE.

  BeeElliott: WHAT?! WTF??

  *Maggs10021 is no longer signed on*

  Fifty-two

  Josh was coming home that night and we hadn’t spoken in two days; I had left messages on his cell but I knew he was probably hunting and was unreachable. He had left me a message when he landed, which was our longtime pact, but his voice sounded wounded and distant. He couldn’t possibly come home fast enough, and I was shaking so much I thought my ass would register on the Richter scale. After I read with Violet, I prepared a beautiful dinner of butternut squash soup with fresh chives and crème fraîche and a roasted root vegetable lasagna with a vodka sauce on top. Hardly a four-star plate served with a silver dome on top, but my Food Network watching was definitely paying off. I needed to set the table and decided to ransack our boxes until I found our wedding china. After cracking open about six boxes I almost gave up, until I saw one box that said, conveniently, “Wedding China.” I knew I was more organized than I’d thought! I unbubble-wrapped two place settings and carefully set the table, lighting candles and surveying the scene. It was truly the first effort I’d made to really make it like our old home; using our wedding china just ’cause, for no reason, not for guests, just us. I went online and found his flight had just touched down so I calculated forty minutes ’til he was home, since he never checked luggage.

  As I looked around the living room, awaiting his arrival, I decided that very moment to shake the Etch-a-Sketch of my life and erase the messy mistakes I’d made. I wanted a clean slate, to turn the white knobs in totally different directions this time.

  I thought about the havoc Bee’s concocted drama wreaked, but in a way I was grateful, because it halted my time with Tate in its tracks and forced me to see what he really was—a male Bee who couldn’t be happy with one person. Granted, he wasn’t evil, although he obviously had no problem cheating on his wife, which to me meant a nonstop ticket to Hades. But it really stemmed from a desire to always be coveted, perhaps like the art he so salivated for. Bee, queen of the perfect Christmas-card picture, was like Tate is his breathless passion for the image. Controlled projections of perfection, or whatever it is the artist chooses for you to see. I thought about how Tate’s love of images surpassed even his love of the real thing; perhaps for him true passion is only reserved for what is preserved in oils—not the actual starry sky, but van Gogh’s heightened, saturated, swirling comet-filled crazy version of it. It’s like he wouldn’t be moved by a bunch of real wildflowers in a vase, only some painted collection of bursting hothouse buds. Funnily enough, as I reflected on this breakthrough of mine, I remembered how he had pointed out in a class once a still life that contained an assortment of different flowers that never actually bloom in reality at the same time of year. It was a surreal, contrived arrangement, just like his relationship with women. Trapped in a fantasy, and frozen, he might be wonderful—a flicker across a classroom here, a trip to a museum there—but he didn’t love reality, only the hyperbolic, exaggerated, painted fantasy.

  Way back when we shared this romantic moment that was arrested and frozen in time, this kiss that never went anywhere. Like a still life. And I suppose he preferred it that way.

  But I need the real thing. The fruit instead of the painted fruit. The painted fruit never gets rotten, maybe that’s why he likes it. There are no crags and bumps. With Josh and me, there were fights about radio stations or the toilet seat being left up, but we were bound together closer than Tate or Bee could ever be with anyone.

  Because life, as we know, is not still. It’s ever evolving, and a perfect moon in the sky doesn’t have to be a faithful simulacrum in art to be perfect. What makes it so amazing is the fact that it’s fleeting and tomorrow that big bloated moon will wane, and it’s almost painful because it’s too good. And it’ll be gonzo with no rewind button, or pause button as the Old Masters tried to offer us on panel. Too bad for them. Because both Bee and Tate, always striving for that perfect image, that drama, will never be entrenched in reality and therefore will never, ever be truly happy.

  Fifty-three

  When my Josh walked in, I ran to him, tears streaming down my face. He matched my emotion in a hug so tight I knew he realized I would never be
tray him. I took him by the hand and led him to the feast I’d prepared. I didn’t even need to whip out Maggie’s printouts—exhibit 1A of the Hannah v. Bee meltdown in addition to my Trevi Nail eavesdrop of the century; he already knew all about it.

  Parker had spoken with Bee from their trip and she had thought she’d hung up the phone with him, when in fact it was still on, leaving her husband to hear her phone sex with Troy on her landline. Stunned, he broke down to Josh, admitting he always suspected her of cheating. As Bee was suddenly proved a liar, Parker revisited all of her statements through the prism of her constant deception. He told Josh that he never actually believed it was true about me. Bee had either spread that lie to eclipse her own skankiness or just because she was truly mean.

  “I knew deep down it couldn’t be true,” Josh said, hugging me. “But Bee, she told these lies to Parker that she saw you kissing, and just the thought of it made me so sick and angry—”

  “I can’t believe you went through that,” I said, still dewy-eyed. “Sweetie, you are my life. And honestly I would freak if you ever were friends with some woman and strolled museums. You were right to be creeped, although I would never lay a hand on him. You’re the only one for me.”

  We hugged and went to watch sleeping Violet before a delicious dinner. And the dessert? Fresh baked brownies served with two Nine Inch Nails tickets for New Year’s Eve sitting on top.

  “Second row? No way!”

  “Way.” I beamed.

  “How? How did you get these? I had my assistant calling every scalper in town! They are impossible.”

  “I went on Craigslist,” I explained, telling Josh about the odyssey, which was very amusing, to say the least.

  Because the ticket broker company was a corrupt cartel and evil to fans everywhere, the concert sold out in thirty-seven seconds, which would be nearly impossible except for the fact that scalpers had staffs of engineers to write code that bought up chunks of tickets the second the online purchase service was activated. So they were all snapped up and essentially no one on the floor actually paid face value, it was all markup. One dude scored a pair, only to then discover he was being sent to Chicago over New Year’s and had to unload them via Craigslist, which I had scoured, naturally, along with countless other people. I e-mailed the guy and he e-mailed me back, “I have to leave the office soon. Whoever gets here first with the cash gets the tickets.”