Momzillas (6 page)

Eight

I showed up at Bee's apartment at noon to find a spread out of an editorial in a shelter mag—full lavish patterned drapes, overstuffed velvet couches, gorgeous gleaming white carpets—definitely a pad that little Violet would destroy in a nanosecond. She was used to humbler surroundings.

“Wow,” I said, wide-eyed. “Your apartment is beautiful, Bee.”

“Oh, thanks. We just had it redone last year by Huniford and Sills,” she said.

“Oh, my decorator is Crate and Barrel!” I added with a smile. She didn't smile back.

“Hi, Hannah,” said Maggie coming out of the kitchen, drinking a liter of Evian. “Shall we?”

“Hello, Weston!” I said patting his head. He stuck his tongue out at me and ran off.

I hugged Violet good-bye and felt a pang of guilt leaving her with strangers, but she seemed eager to bolt off into Weston's bedroom.

At lunch, Bee and Maggie introduced me to two other women whom I hadn't known were joining us: Hallie, a Julianne Moore–esque dark redhead, and Lara, a human skeleton with a diamond ring so big, Sasha Cohen could do a triple axel on it and still have room to skate into a double sow-cow.

Lara wore small, thin frameless glasses on her nose and put a hand through her shiny mane of platinum blond hair. “Uh, I'm frizzing so badly. I just went to Fekkai and now you wouldn't even know it,” she complained.

“No, you look amazing,” said Bee, sipping her iced tea with fresh mint. “TDF.” It took me ten seconds to realize that meant
to die for
.

“My hair is in two zip codes!” I added, pointing at the wavy frizzfest atop my noggin. No one countered.

“Hannah's mother-in-law is Lila Allen Dillingham,” Bee said to her pals.

“Oh, she is so chic,” raved Hallie. “I pray I look like her at that age, she's stunning.”

I didn't feel like telling her if she wanted to shell it out for Dr. Dan, she could.

“Yeah, she's so out of the pages of
Vogue
,” I said. “I feel like I'm totally bringing down the family's style quotient!” No one said anything to the contrary. The ladies perused the menu, all opting for salads, dressing on the side. No wonder they weighed the same as their kids.

After we ordered lunch, I sat quietly, barely contributing to the convo about schools, clubs, and people I had never heard of. After about fifteen minutes, I gleaned the lay of the social land as they gossiped about all things mommy—recent births, names that were tacky, who'd lost the weight, who “had a long way to go.” While Bee was the definitely the ringleader, Lara, who had a son, Maxwell, was quite opinionated herself (“It's so strange to not at least try and skip the epidural”—she'd even had the words
natural childbirth
engraved on the lower left corner of her kid's Cartier birth announcement). I wondered what she'd thought of her friend Bee's elective C-section at eight and a half months. I remembered how a few years back Bee, always the trend arbiter, was a huge proponent of the Too Posh to Push movement, telling me in a whisper that if I got sliced open that Josh would thank me for it. After that moment, I was somehow always haunted by her implication that now my post-birth vag was not unlike the Holland Tunnel.

Then there was Hallie, the crispy bobbed redhead, who almost immediately rubbed me the wrong way. Hallie had a two-year-old daughter, Julia Charlotte. Not Julia.
Julia Charlotte
. Like Sarah Jessica, one of those middle name junkies, and not just when they're in trouble, like,
“Violet Grace, you stop that right now!”
I'm talking
“Julia Charlotte could be in Baby Gap ads”
and
“Julia Charlotte is completely bilingual”
and
“Julia Charlotte is sooo brilliant it's frightening.”
I also got the vibe that Julia Charlotte's mom, Hallie, was extreeeeemely competitive.

Within seconds of establishing that we both had daughters, she began her battery of statistics questions. What percentile was Violet's height? What percentile was Violet's weight? What percentile was Violet's
head circumference
? I rattled off the answers I knew as best I could (I really didn't keep track; my California doctor was not so obsessed with charts and graphs and rankings), and then came the doozy. Hallie asked me, dead seriously, what Violet's Apgar scores were. I had to stop and place what the hell those even were when I remembered reading about the quick post-birth tests in
The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy
, my bible when I was knocked up.

“Gosh, I can't remember,” I said, honestly. “I know they took Violet away to demucus her and put her under that French fry–warmer thing,” I recalled. “Then they brought her back and said she was perfectly healthy.”

“Did she get a perfect score, though? 'Cause Julia Charlotte got all tens. They only give out nines. Ever. But Julia Charlotte got tens. All tens. It's so funny, with almost everything she's off the charts!”

A feeble “Oh, cool” was all I could muster.

Then Lara started talking about how “gifted” her son, Maxwell, was. “Oh you guys, Maxwell is so genius it is
scary
. Literally, he says things sometimes and I am scared. His Mandarin teacher said he's a quicker study than the Asians! He is
scary
smart. Better than the Asian kids!”

Deep down I guess all mothers think their kid is the smartest and the greatest, but I still would never say stuff like that. I also would not send a toddler to Chinese class, unless maybe we were moving to Hong Kong. I of course thought about all the cute clever things Violet had said which seemed, naturally, even cuter and smarter than Lara's brags about Maxwell memorizing the ROYGBIV color spectrum at twelve months or doing times tables at twenty-six months. In Chinese. And what the hell was this “twenty-six months” thing. Couldn't she just say
two
? I mean, can I please do without the math? Even basic division is a hassle for me at this point. No months for me. Two. Two-and-a-half. Three.

“So, ladies, Thatcher and I saw the best film this weekend,” started Hallie. “It's called
Memoirs of a Nobody
—have you heard of it?”

“Oh, yes! I'm dying to see that,” said Bee, surprising me. “I read a piece about it in the
Wall Street Journal
. It sounds very powerful.”

“Oh yeah!” exclaimed Maggie. “Is that the one from Sun-dance that was all made on an iMac for like forty dollars?”

“Yes, that's the one,” Hallie said. “I cried for two days, it is so disturbing.”

I hadn't heard of it. In fact, I felt so out of it, I wasn't even up on the latest splashy blockbuster, let alone an indie documentary. I guess these gals really kept up with their reading. I was so low-energy lately, the only thing I even cracked was fashion mags and cheesy celeb-packed weekly tabloids. I'm sure my lunch companions would be horrified that while I knew little about the current documentary scene, I did know plenty about Britney and K-Fed's marriage, who was suddenly obese, and what trendy baby names were sweeping H'wood.

“Oh, I heard the film is devastating, just gut-wrenching. But highly provocative,” said Maggie.

“It's funny,” I said, venturing to join the conversation. “So many people recommend these movies that they love, but get so upset after. I'm such an emotional freak, I never go because I don't want to get down,” I said.

Silence.

“What do you mean?” asked Lara, as if I'd just said I eat maggots for snacks.

The sudden heat of their four gazes made me shift anxiously in my seat. “Well, it's just whenever people say something's disturbing, I kind of think, okay that's not for me.” I shrugged, nervously. “I guess I'm just never in the mood to cry for two days is all.”

“How sad!” said Hallie, astonished, looking at Bee as if wondering how on earth she could have dragged such a loser to their lunch. “I mean—Hannah, is it?”

I nodded.

“Don't you want to be stimulated and challenged and therefore be a better mother to your child by having a brain that's not mush?”

My heart was racing. Okay, my brain was mush, I'll admit it. But I wasn't retarded or anything.

“I guess since I had Violet I just don't like upsetting, tragic things or violence,” I replied, defending myself. “Maybe because, I don't know, maybe having Violet made me feel more vulnerable or something.”

“Fine,” Lara said, lifting her Perrier. “Suit yourself. If you want to ‘feel good' and sit around watching
Shrek
for the rest of your life, be my guest.”

Ouch.

“I don't know, I guess I see your point,” I said, feeling wounded by her belittling comment.

“Oh good, food's here,” said Maggie, changing the topic. “I'm starving.”

Nine

When I told Josh about my day, he seemed interested—particularly by some of the funny choice quotables—but thoroughly exhausted. His new job was sapping the life from him, but I knew he was so happy to finally be home that he didn't mind. The problem was…I minded. I missed him so much. So despite my visceral loathing of Greenwich and feeling stranded at Lila's house, I was just happy to all be a family again.

But Saturday morning when we woke up, while it was so nice to have Violet jump on our bed and watch Josh do “flying baby” with her (his feet on her tummy as she's lifted up in the air, giggling), I couldn't distract myself from the pit in my tummy. I felt like if I had a soundtrack at that very moment, it would be the noise you hear when Ms. Pac-Man dies: a slow withering followed by a putt-putt as the poor yellow circle-with-hairbow expires. We got into our rickety Volvo and hit the road for Connecticut, one of my least favorite states in the union. It's so fucking
Ice Storm
. On our way, we pulled over to Pick a Bagel and scored some carbolas for the drive—I always stocked up because the Dillinghams were so überwaspy the fridge was empty save for some Miracle Whip and white wine bottles, swear. I patted Josh's head; he looked so cute but I knew he was still so tired. We blared K-Rock and as we finally got on the FDR and shifted gears after interminable traffic on Ninety-sixth, I turned up the volume to eleven,
Spinal Tap
–style, and chair-danced to Nine Inch Nails. I got Joshie to smile as I got wilder, shaking my head and spaz air-drumming like Animal from
The Muppet Show
. I looked in the bag, deciding which bagel to devour first, and cracked open my apple juice. Ahhhh, elixir of the gods, this stuff. Like liquid honey.

I fed Josh bites of bagel as he drove, and we cruised pretty quickly, my staticky beloved hard rock station flickering on the Merritt Parkway. I knew we were officially in Creepsville, Suburbia, when strains of Thom Yorke's melted croon waned. That was always when the mental piranha set in, nibbling away at my freedom—I knew we were almost there when my music was gone. We wove through the swirling roads leading up to his family's house. I actually preferred going in the winter—at least then the empty black trees had a wistful graphic punch off the white sky, like a film still from a Tim Burton movie, crisp and bold and proud, not even wanting back their clichéd and gauche green leaves that covered us in wilted verdant canopies now.

We pulled in the grand driveway and parked as my heart raced. We unpacked the trunk and sprung Violet from her baby seat and knocked via the enormous lion's-head knocker on the giant double portal. A cute Latin-looking woman opened the door, in full black-and-white maid's outfit. Mrs. Dillingham fired the “help” (as she called them) so frequently that Josh and I could never remember their names—it was a revolving door of pressed, starched uniforms.

“Hello,” Lila said, descending the large white marble staircase. “Josh, my aaaangel, come here.” She approached him and hugged him, barely acknowledging me. “And Violet, love, you wore one of your new dresses! How divine you look!”

“Hi, Mrs. Dillingham!” Funnily enough I never knew what to call her—she never really told
me
to call her Lila, just Violet. So I usually just said hi or hello; it was like that Mulva episode of
Seinfeld
.

“You know, Hannah,” she said, looking perturbed. “I should give you a bill for five dollars. We rented that film last night that you had recommended about that Cuban poet. I found it horrendous. Just awful! I can't think of a more depressing movie.”

“Oh…sorry.” I didn't know what else to say. “I mean, it was sad but brilliantly done, I thought.” Gulp. I kept going, “And not to be all film studenty, I mean I know it sounds pretentious, but it was shot so beautifully. I felt like every frame could be frozen and hung on my wall.”

“Not a wall in my house,” she sneered. “Come on, let's go up and get you settled,” she said, looking only at Josh, who looked at me and winked, knowing I wanted to clobber her bony bod.

After unpacking, Lila asked if we wanted to accompany her to the “shopping center” to help with errands. Since I grew up in a city, I had this obsession with malls, which Mrs. Dillingham exclusively called “shopping centers.” I bet she'd spell it
centres
. God forbid she utter the lowly M-word. But I was thrilled to leave the grounds—even after only an hour that panic had set in like I was Diane Keaton trapped in the Corleone compound in
Godfather II
.

When we got to the ma—sorry,
shopping center
—I trolled the stores, blissing out with all the fun people-watching and food court frenzy. Do I go for the gigantor cinnamon pretzel or the fries in a cone? I am also a fan of food on sticks, and there were many options. The whole cavernous space was a pulsing throng of tube socks and napkins and the kind of heavy grease that smells intoxicating when you're starving and gag-o-rific when you're full. You know when they distill vinegar to this really intense mega-potent paste? Well, malls are like a balsamic reduction of America itself, an encapsulated 3D slice of life, from old people who want to enjoy the air-conditioning, walking around in those swish-swish suits, to “rowdy yutes” making mischief and chasing skirts in their swish-swish suits. Violet was overjoyed when I gave her a piping-hot Mrs. Fields cookie, which she devoured in record pace, with evidence of said snack in the form of chocolate all over her face. I was just about to go get a napkin to wipe it off, when Lila turned the corner to behold the mess.

“Oh my, Hannah, really, must she feast on sweets at this hour?”

“Well, she was hungry and there's so much stuff here I didn't want to deprive her,” I said in my defense.

“Eating between meals is a bad habit to start now—”

“Mom, chill out,” Josh said as he approached us toting his mom's new hair dryer and pharmacy bags. “It's fine!” He looked at me sympathetically with a smile. But his being on my side didn't make her comments less aggravating.

We piled back in the car since we had to shower and get dressed for Lila's birthday dinner. And I was actually psyched because in my duffel I had the blowtorch that would melt her frozen chest cavity, my secret daughter-in-law trump card that she'd never expect, a shiny elegant Tiffany sterling silver frame, hand engraved with her initials. And in it was the cutest picture of Josh holding Violet. No Hannah, just like she'd want. And the cherry on top was that Violet was in a Ralph Lauren pin-tuck blouse Lila had given her. It was, I must say, the perfect present. It was insanely expensive but I thought this was kind of an investment in, you know, not being treated like crap. Well worth the splurge. She would have to soften a little now!

I went into my room to get myself put together in pretty Greenwich mode, i.e., transform my being entirely. Full metamorphosis, bigger than Jeff Goldblum's in
The Fly
. It was funny being in the same room as Josh now—when we initially visited we had separate bedrooms and I was so scared of his mom that I literally wouldn't let him sneak over since I didn't want her to have any Hannah's-a-Whore ammo against me. I packed perfectly preppy clothes, and even chucked in a new (gasp) headband. I felt like a traitor. Since most of my stuff is black, charcoal gray, or chocolate brown, my mom says I dress like a Sicilian widow. She's kinda right but because I have boobs and butt, darkness is slimming, and so me. I put on my new burgundy dress (steppin' out with that color!).

“You look pweety, Mommy! I like your pawty dwess!” exclaimed Violet, who I'd preened to perfection. The poor thing was so used to seeing me in my black jeans and little tees, my casual dress probably seemed like Cinderella's ball gown to her.

When we came downstairs, Lila had a very different reaction than her granddaughter. “Oh,” she said, her made-up face like an 8½-by-11-inch blank sheet of Kinko's paper. “Is that what you're wearing?”

Pause as I checked my reflection. Was there a gaping hole? A torn seam? Wrinkles? Period stains? Exposed ass-crackage?

“Um, yeah, I was going to…Why?”

“I don't know, I just…Forget it.”

“No, what?”

“To be honest, I think perhaps you should try…one of my suits? This is a bit…Well, it's fine, it's fine. Really.”

Crestfallen. “Oh, okay, well…What should I do? I only have this one other dress but—”

Josh came downstairs buttoning his cuff and asked what was going on.

“I was just going to run up and change—” I said. I gulped down hurt and annoyed feelings and went upstairs. When I returned in my backup outfit, Lila, who was in her usual full floral-pastel-pashmina mode, looked me over slowly. “Hmmm. Black as usual,” she observed. I hope she dies a fiery death. I hope a crane falls off a construction site and kills her. I'm going to hell. Okay, Hannah, stop wishing death upon your MiL.

I looked down as she tousled Josh's hair and gently removed a thread from his lapel. She really hates other women, I thought. Just having another womb in the room after all these years freaks her out. She was one of those women who only can relate to men, seeing all other women as some kind of competition. I have always known women like this, and they have always scared me. Who the fuck is this beeyotch to judge my outfits anyway? She may have worn only designer duds, but I thought they were asexual and hideous. The color palette made me want to chunder. I may have dressed like a widow, but black was better than tertiary-color-wheel hues. Teal. Salmon. Coral. Magenta. Diarrhea.

Mr. Dillingham honked outside and we all piled into the car. Despite my husband's protestations, I offered to sit in the gimp seat in the station wagon's ass while Josh sat next to Violet's car seat in the back. But armed with my stellar gift, the frown would subside and I'd be let in; I'd be the Little Mermaid singing
Paaaart of your woooorld
…the second she opened the small trademark blue box. As we started driving, Lila did her usual spiel of which restaurants she had booked that evening. What never ceased to absolutely astound me was that she would regularly book three places and then select one at the last minute, depending on everyone's mood. How psycho and selfish is that? Sometimes she wouldn't even call the other two places to cancel! I'm talking new echelons of solipsism. No one matters but her and, of course, her
aaaangel
.

“Do we want the Bank in New Canaan, or Mediterraneo in Greenwich? I also booked Sakura—”

“Oh, I love that Sakura place,” said Josh.

“Well, whatever you like, darling.”

“What do you want, Han?” asked my hubby.

“Oh, um…whatever your mom wants, I mean it is her birthday.”

“No, no,
you
choose, Hannah,” she replied from the front of the car. “You're by far the most passionate about food.”

I hope the cable in her next elevator ride snaps and she plummets to her death. Did I just say that aloud? No, okay, I'm fine.

“Well, I don't know, they're all great,” I offered. Silence. “Maybe, um, yeah, Sakura is fun, I love that cook-on-the-table stuff.”

“It's called
hibachi
,” Lila said, as if she'd been born and reared in Kyoto. “Fine, if that's what you want.”

“Well, I don't care at all, I just thought Josh—”

“If it's what Hannah's up for, that's great. But it is full of salt, you know. I'm not that hungry anyway,” said Lila, shrugging.

The passive aggressiveness of this lady was enough to make me want to clobber her. The few times I actually expressed an opinion or desire—case in point, Sakura—her sickening passive-aggressive routine was enough to make me clam up for the next three decades.

“No, no, Mom—Watts, let's head to Greenwich, I know Mom loves Mediterraneo,” said Josh, looking at me in the rear with a smile and eye roll.

“Okay, if that's what you want, dear.” Lila always got what she wanted. She'd pretend she was accommodating others but would slowly manipulate it back to what she desired. Passive-aggressive.

We got to the place, which is so average and, plus, she barely ate anyway, anti-food, anti-life,
Night of the Living Dead
zombie that she is. I always equate passion at a table with passion in the sack. No doubt Lila was a total frigid fish. Natch Lila barely nibbled a spear of her white asparagus with vinaigrette on the side. Violet ate her appetizer and then, as toddlers do, got a little shifty in her seat and Lila looked at me as if to say
Take her for a little breather
. Josh offered to get up, but I thought I'd let him be with his mom and Watts for a minute, and plus, I was psyched for a moment away from the table. Violet and I strolled down the block on Greenwich Avenue and then returned to the packed restaurant. The décor was pale peach and pink and I felt like I was dining in a giant tampon box. I twirled my un–al dente cappellini with a fork into a spoon, Italiano-style, which got a curious look from The Cube, and after our pasta course, she started cracking open the presents. Finally: my moment of redemption.

She unwrapped gifts, I might add, with zero gusto (another link to action in the bedroom). With me, it was Freddy Krueger–style shredded wrapping paper, bursting ribbons, ginormous eyes, excited grins, and gushing thank-yous. Lila opened every package like it might have a syringe hiding in it, or a Jokey Smurf homemade bomb. Watts got her some Van Cleef diamond earrings and a weekend at Cliveden. Josh had bought her a Hermès scarf from all of us, and then I was so excited for her to get to mine, which already garnered a widened eye and a raised plucked brow upon viewage of the signature blue bag. As she untied the classic Tiffany bow and opened the box, my heart was beating so fast, I was like a pre–Jenny Craig Kirstie Alley after a flight of stairs. She looked at the frame; Watts and Josh, who hadn't seen it before, both oohed and aahhed. Violet giggled.