Momzillas (3 page)

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-tsk
s 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.

“That over there?” said Bee, following my glance to their group of benches. “That's Little Trinidad. The nanny hangout. The mothers usually sit on this side.”

“Oh,” I said quietly, not quite knowing what to make of this. “They look like they're having fun.”

“Oh, oh,” said Maggie suddenly. “Six o'clock, look who's coming.”

Bee turned around. “Yup, somebody cue the
Jaws
music.”

I turned to see a petite woman decked out with seven different visible logos. It was like the alphabet had exploded onto her five-foot-two frame, which was covered with a sea of LV's, H's, double C's, and D&G's.

“Hiiiiiii, gals!” she said, her huge Gucci frames covering her tiny head. “So six weeks and counting to the speed dial! I am freaking out! Lester's guys at the office are trying to write a code this summer that will break through the phone lines! I am praying!” As she clasped her ring-covered hands in exaggerated prayer to the heavens above, the glint of her bling almost blinded me. “If we don't get into Carnegie, oh my gawd, I'll just die.
Die!
”

“They say if you don't get your kid into Carnegie Nursery School, well, there goes Princeton,” smiled Bee tauntingly.

Huh? What speed dial?

“Keep your fingers crossed for me and little Stella Scarlett, 'k?” she said, leaving in a blaze of gold, gems, and zippers.

“Whoa,” I said, amusedly watching her head to the swings in stilettos. “Who is that?”

“Gagsville,” said Bee.

“The worst,” added Maggie.

“Tessa Finch-Saunders. She is such a spoiled brat. I heard she just bought her husband a Jasper Johns oil for his thirty-fifth birthday,” whispered Bee conspiratorially. “He's in private equity. Loaded. She runs around throwing her money everywhere, so tacky. Very nouveau.”

I nodded. I was intrigued by her, but more than that, I wanted to know what she was talking about with this Carnegie place. “So, um, what's this nursery school?”

“Carnegie. The best. On Ninetieth Street. It's a feeder to all the best kindergartens,” said Bee. “Everyone goes there, I mean, the class lists could be a page torn out of
Forbes
!”

“Uh-huh…” I felt my palms begin to sweat. “And what was that, like, speed-dial thing?”

“They have thousands of interested families. Literally thousands,” explained Bee. “But there are only forty spaces. So they only print five hundred applications and they open the phone lines at eight
A.M.
the day after Labor Day for requests and you just have to just hope you get one. You have to get all your family to help you dial.”

“Oh. Does West go there?”

“Yes,” said Bee, proudly. “And Maggie's son, Ford. It's the best in the city. Someone donated a million smacks to get their kid in! It's harder to get into than Yale Law, but once you're in, you can write your ticket. But the first hurdle is getting though the phone line to get an application.”

“Gosh, I didn't realize I needed to win a radio contest to be able to even apply,” I said, shaken.

“Yeah, it's kind of nuts. I'm glad that's all behind me, since siblings are almost always let in,” sighed Maggie. “I don't envy you beginning the process. It sucks.”

Gulp.

“Tessa Finch-Saunders won't have a problem, though,” said Bee, watching her far across the playground by the swings. “She sent her daughter to all the right classes. They always ask what Mommy and Me's the child took. Plus, I'm sure she'll send in her application along with a scroll of blueprints for a new wing.”

“Like what classes?” I asked, fearing my hippie, barefoot Music Together in Berkeley wasn't the rigorous academic syllabus the advanced New York two-year-old required.

“Well, there's a few really important prerequisites for this age: music, art, gym, languages. Maybe you should sign Violet up for a summer course?”

“Okay, I mean…what did you guys do?”

“Well, I did Lucky Me, I'm Under Three. But…there's a three-year waiting list.”

Great. “How is it a three-year list if you presumably go when you're under three? By the time you get in, you're over the hill!” I said, jokingly. Neither of them laughed.

“You call and put your name down the second you know you're pregnant,” said Bee, dead serious.

“I called before I even told my husband I was pregnant,” recalled Maggie. “I peed on that stick, thong around my ankles, and the second that the line turned blue, I was dialing them.”

“So…that's out then.” I smiled, imagining Violet going through metal detectors to get to her public kindergarten because I wasn't in on the fetal pre-pre-preregistration. “I guess my daughter will be home-schooled, serial-killer-style.” Then I thought about Maggie wearing a thong. Were they taking over women's undies? I hated thongs. They felt like ass-floss.

“Well, there's a summer program at the Language Institute. You can sign up for that,” suggested Maggie. “It's really key to learn a foreign language at this age because they develop an ear for the accent.”

“Oh, and what about Milford Prescott Music School? They have a summer program, I think,” mused Bee.

“We call it Juilliard 'cause they take everything so seriously. I mean, the kids are one and they're already learning the difference between violin and cello sounds. But it is the best pre-preschool.” Maggie paused and looked at me. “Are you okay, Hannah?”

My pale complexion had once again betrayed my inner emotional quakes. As stress seized my body, my cheeks flushed without fail, rendering me a blank screen on which all my worries could flicker across for the world to see in Technicolor. “I'm fine. I just…maybe I need to go, I'm still sort of, you know, jet-lagged and woozy.”