WITH NOTHING BETTER TO do the next morning than worry about Peter’s new working arrangement with the vampish Tiffany Glass, I threw myself into the task of reorganizing my closet, dragging every skirt, dress, and pair of paisley hip huggers I’d ever owned off their hangers and hurling them into piles of “definites,” “maybes,” and “what was I thinking?” Then, when I still couldn’t bear to part with anything, I wrapped all the clothes I knew I’d never wear this season in tissue paper.
“Ew, that looks like a coffin,” Paige said, when she saw the cedar-lined box where I was storing my sartorial treasures.
“You’re right, but you never know when fashion is going to rise from the dead.”
“Lame, Mom. Can I have some money to go shopping after school with Heather to buy some stuff that I might actually wear?”
“Daddy just got a job last night and already you want to go shopping?”
“With my birthday money, from last year. I still have some left over.”
I fanned out a white shirt with wide puffy sleeves. “One day you’re going to be thrilled that I saved this poet’s blouse.”
My daughter looked at me pityingly and I reached for my purse.
“Okay, but you have to pay me back from your savings account,” I said, handing Paige three twenty-dollar bills. “Let’s see what your kids have to say in twenty years about those toeless boots you’re all so crazy about.”
“That I’m cool. C-o-o-l.” Paige laughed as she thanked me and headed off to school while I went back to my thankless sorting. By the time I was fingering a stash of fashion mistakes with the tags I’d never even cut off and the slinky size-4 Badgley Mischka gown that I’d never be able to wear again (at least not sitting down), I was grateful to get a call inviting me out to lunch. Even if it was from Naomi.
“Can you and Sienna meet me at noon?” she asked and I readily agreed. It’s always easier to see my mother with my best friend in tow. And afterward, I could tell Sienna that I was putting a kibosh on that harebrained idea to start a call-girl operation.
THREE HOURS LATER, sitting in a Japanese restaurant, Naomi reaches for a white ceramic cup to take a sip of sake. “I’m considering having my pelvis tightened. What do you think?”
I squirm in my seat and pull a second napkin off the table to cover the first one already in my lap. I may be Jewish but I believe in the Immaculate Conception—I refuse to imagine my mother is actually having sex. But Sienna’s intrigued. She props her chin onto her hands and leans in to get the scoop.
“Laser or radio frequency?” asks Sienna, who’s clearly on top of the latest breakthroughs in pelvis maintenance.
“Electrostimulation to improve the muscle tone,” Naomi says, as I try—unsuccessfully—not to imagine a volt of current running through my mother’s vagina.
“You do know about the exercises?” Sienna asks.
“Of course, I’m thinking about hiring a personal trainer.” Naomi giggles.
“Ladies,” I say, tapping a chopstick against a water glass and trying to get their attention. “I already have my hair straightened, my eyebrows threaded, and I’d let Dr. B inject me with unborn virgin male whale sperm if I thought it would make me look fifteen days younger. But you have to draw the line somewhere. Couldn’t you just settle for a nice, old-fashioned bikini wax?”
Naomi’s eyes narrow. She spears a piece of sashimi and points it in my direction. “Youthful-looking genitals make a woman feel more confident.”
“Mom, if you were any more confident you’d drive Ann Coulter into therapy. Is this because you’re sleeping with Dr. Barasch?”
Naomi pushes a piece of yellowtail around her plate and wrinkles her nose. “Well that, and we’re having a Miss Subways reunion. I haven’t seen any of the girls in twenty years, and if you must know, it’s rather intimidating.”
For one brief, shining moment nearly half a century ago, Naomi had her picture—with her big brown eyes and her short dark hair pinned and permed into brush-curls—tacked up in every subway car in New York. The picture that held out the promise of a spectacular life and instead led to spectacular disappointment. When I was a kid, I used to wonder what it would have been like to have an average-looking mother, one who hadn’t expected her looks to propel her into fame and fortune. One who didn’t see me as a poor reflection. But whoever that woman is, she isn’t my mom. In Naomi’s ledger book the Miss Subways contest was the biggest thing that ever happened to her, and I can imagine why the reunion would make her anxious. Though not why she’d need her pelvis toned to prepare for it.
“Mom, I know you girls were always competitive, but I can’t imagine there’s going to be a crotch runoff.”
“That’s true,” Naomi concedes, pushing the plate away and pouring herself another cup of sake. “I just can’t think of what else there is to fix.”
The woman puts on a good face and I would almost believe her. If not for the crack in her voice.
“You’re beautiful,” Sienna says, patting Naomi’s hand.
“I know,” she says. “It’s just that I haven’t done all of the things that I meant to. Some of the girls went on to big modeling careers. One of them became a famous lawyer. Another, she even makes jewelry for Johnny Cash.”
“Did, Mom, she did make jewelry for Johnny Cash,” I say, as if somehow that softens the blow.
“Does, did, the point is, what do I have to show for the years? Winning the contest meant something. I rode the subway every day just to see the expressions on people’s faces. One fellow was so excited when he realized I was the girl on the poster that he fell forward and bumped his head.” Naomi sighs, as if the herky-jerky movement of the train had nothing to do with the accident. And as if the ability to cause injury is the measure of exceptional beauty. “Sienna’s lucky, she has a career. Or at least she did have a career. Tell me, dear, do you think you’ll ever work again?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Sienna says.
I shake my head to caution Sienna not to say another word. Even if she sticks to the cover story about the temp agency, my mother will be all over me with unwanted advice. And besides, now it’s just not true. I can’t wait to hear Sienna’s sigh of relief when I tell her we’re ditching the project. Though right now, the sighs are coming from Naomi—and they’re directed toward the dishy waiter.
“Thank you, thank you very, very much. You’re very kind,” Naomi says to the waiter as if he were giving her a blood transfusion and not merely clearing the table. That’s my mother, feeling down one minute, pulling herself up the next.
“You’re very welcome. And may I say, ma’am, how flattering that red suit is?”
And may I say how smart the waiter is? He’s just earned himself a 30 percent tip.
Naomi stands up and smiles flirtatiously. “I’m heading off to my Bikram yoga class, it’s 105 degrees in there and ooh, it leaves you soooo flexible.” The waiter winks and as Naomi heads toward the door, he pours us two cups of tea.
“Your friend’s a pistol,” he says, mistaking my mother, as people so often do, for my contemporary.
“That she is, a pistol. Just make sure you’re not on the other side of her trigger finger.”
Sienna laughs. “My mother won’t even discuss dental floss.”
“Pleeze. Can we just get through the rest of the conversation without talking any more about my mother’s privates?”
“Privates? Is that what you call them?”
“Yes. And I still say ‘number one’ and ‘number two,’ in case you’re interested.”
“Very,” says Sienna. “You’re going to make a very provocative madam. More like the proprietor of a Chinese restaurant. ‘Get a thirty-seven for the guy in the black suit.’ ‘Fifty-two for the man with the tan.’ ‘Bald fellow wants a forty-nine.’ ”
“Sixty-nine.” I laugh. “I think it’s the sixty-nine that’s so popular.” I blow on the edge of my cup of tea and take a sip. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.…”
“I know, me too. Look at this,” Sienna says, reaching into her bag to show me what she’s reading on her Kindle.
“Fanny Hill?” I’m surprised to see that Sienna, whose passion is current events, is reading a bawdy piece of historical fiction that was written almost 250 years ago.
“Fanny Hill,” Sienna says, taking back the Kindle and running her finger down the screen. “The story of a poor country girl who takes a succession of lovers to survive … and ‘has a rollicking good time!’ I’m doing my homework, just like you. Last night I stayed up watching Pretty Woman. And I put Mighty Aphrodite, Irma la Douce, Klute, Belle de Jour and Never on Sunday into my Netflix queue. Who knew there were so many movies about working girls?”
“Well, not Working Girl, I mean, Working Girl’s not about a working girl, it’s about Melanie Griffith pretending to be her boss so she can climb up the corporate ladder. But Melanie Griffith did play a working girl in Milk Money. Which was weird. But not as weird as A Stranger Among Us, when she played a cop who goes undercover as a Hasidic Jew.”
“Melanie Griffith as a Hasidic Jew?” Sienna hoots, stopped in her tracks by my encyclopedic knowledge of movie trivia. “Next you’re going to tell me that she had her boobs done halfway through the filming of The Bonfire of the Vanities …”
“… and if you compare the first to the last half of the film it looks like someone attacked ol’ Melanie’s chest with an inflatable tire pump!”
Sienna laughs. “We go back a long way. I’m glad you convinced me to do this, we’re going to have so much fun! Why don’t you come over tonight and we’ll have a minimarathon? Popcorn’s on me.”
I take a gulp of water and play with a napkin, mindlessly folding it into the same pyramid as the linen at the Global Warming banquet. Some night, that banquet—hard to remember that there was a time, not that long ago, when my biggest worry was the shape of a piece of fabric. Still, I didn’t expect Sienna to be so gung-ho about the new venture. And now I feel guilty about backing out.
“Good news,” I say, avoiding eye contact. “We’re not going to have to start the business after all. Peter’s got a job.”
Sienna’s whole body visibly stiffens as she takes a moment to digest my news. Then she rubs her hands together, pressing her palms in front of her face like a nun who’s about to pray—or a prosecutor on Law & Order, ready to move in for the kill. “I see,” she says somberly. “Peter’s got a job so you don’t need to work anymore. Or you think you don’t need to work anymore. Well, bully for you.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean,” I mumble, flustered. “It was a crazy idea. You’re such a sweetheart to have gone along with it just for me. But now, well, I can go back to looking after the girls and I know you’re going to find a job of your own. Really soon.”
“That’s very supportive. In fact half the newsrooms in New York have been decimated, so no, I don’t think I’ll be getting a job anytime in the near future. Maybe not ever.”
“What about your severance?” I say guiltily, thinking how I blithely let Sienna pay for our Botox.
“If you mean that golden parachute I was supposed to get when the station fired me, it never opened. Didn’t get a cent. I only told you that because I knew you wouldn’t go see Dr. B. any other way and I thought you needed a pick-me-up. That’s what friends do, support each other.”
“I do support you,” I say sheepishly. “I just don’t see now how we can go ahead with the business.”
“Because Peter’s working?”
“Yes, he’s part of a new start-up. He won’t make much at first but he says there’s real potential. And I think he needs to feel like the head of the family again. He’s been an absolute beast since he lost his job.”
Sienna taps her finger on the table impatiently. “Didn’t you hear what Naomi was saying about missed opportunities? Don’t you ever feel like you need something of your own? When you talked about starting the business you were as excited as I’ve heard you in years.”
“Oh, I was just being crazy,” I say, downplaying the rush of adrenaline I’d felt, now willing to take a backseat to my husband’s plans. “Besides, Peter’s starting something new, too. It would be like we were in competition.”
“Not if you don’t tell him.”
“But I promised, Peter and I promised we weren’t going to keep any more secrets,” I say, thinking about how I accepted a Pop-Tart instead of a proper apology, but that I gave my word. “Besides, I couldn’t start this company now even if I wanted to. My first responsibility is to take care of my family. The girls need me,” I try to explain. “Do you remember when Woody Allen was suing for custody of his son and the judge asked him to name the boy’s teachers?”
“He couldn’t come up with even one name.”
“And neither could Peter.” “There must be one with an ‘A,’ right?” he’d said with a laugh when I tested him.
“So you’ll leave him a list,” Sienna says. “You’ll leave lots of lists. Girl Scout’s honor, we’ll work out your schedule so you’re home every day when the twins come back from school.”
On the days they come back after school, I think. Between Paige’s soccer practice and endless after-school dates and Molly’s commitment to the school paper and saving the world, sometimes I barely catch sight of them before they go to bed. “They’re getting so big now, they have lives all their own.” I sigh. “The whole point is to raise happy, independent children, but then one day you turn around and you have happy, independent children—children who want to go to the new Kate Hudson movie with their friends instead of you.”
“Say the word and we can start watching movies tonight. Even Kate Hudson movies—though not the Matthew McConaughey ones, okay? I like a bare chest as much as the next woman, but does that man not own even one shirt?”
I shift in my seat and line up the chopsticks so they’re perfectly parallel. “Okay,” I say slowly, trying to convince myself that I’m making the right choice. “I’ll do it.”
“You will?” Sienna flings her arms around me so enthusiastically that she nearly knocks over my teacup. “What changed your mind?”
“The girls are aging me out of a job. In a few years they’ll be going away to college,” I say, stabbing a chopstick at the tablecloth to emphasize my point. Sienna puts her hand over mine to get me to stop before I poke a hole though the linen. “And?” she asks, knowing me well enough to realize that there’s something else on my mind.
“Oh, nothing, it’s just silly,” I say. “When you said that about the Girl Scouts I thought about their motto, ‘Be prepared.’ For just the tiniest moment I thought about what would happen if Peter up and left me, too. I mean he never would …”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Sienna says staunchly.
“But what if he did?” I bite my lip, sorry to have said such a terrible thing out loud. “Anyway, as much as I’ve loved being an M&M it doesn’t seem like a viable job option in today’s economy.”
Sienna looks at me encouragingly. “And …”
“Let’s go for it!” I say, lightly slapping my hand on the table. “Any thoughts about what to name the company?” Before I have a chance to change my mind, Sienna fishes out her BlackBerry, logs on to her electronic Memo Pad, and starts typing in ideas. I doodle with a pen on the back of our lunch check.
“Bill said he liked older women. How about the Cougar Club?” she asks.
“No, we don’t want to give anyone even a hint of what we’re up to,” I say cautiously.
“SPTN?” she says, combining our initials into what sounds like a new sports franchise. “Tru, Truce, SeeTru, SeeThrough, Newman-Post?”
“Or ‘Post-Newman.’ ” I laugh, waving my hand through the air like a banner. “The next generation of great salad dressings.”
We bounce ideas back and forth for several minutes, until Sienna comes up with the solution.
“I’ve got it!” she says, “The Veronica Agency! And you and Bill and I will be the only ones who know that it’s named after our late great sixteenth-century sister, Veronica Franco, the inimitable poet and courtesan.”
“The Veronica Agency. That’s great!” I agree enthusiastically—throwing caution to the wind when it comes to tempting the fates. Not to mention the risky undertaking of going into the world’s oldest profession.
NOW THAT WE’RE really going into business I have a million things to do. My closet organization might be going to go to hell, I think merrily, as I walk up Madison Avenue with a buoyancy I haven’t felt in weeks. Although I’m still careful to look down at the pavement. Can you imagine Naomi ending up with a broken back because my high heels slipped on a crack?
I stride past a bistro where a few jeans-and-suede-clad M&Ms are lingering after long lunches and the collegiate grouping of luxury shops that are each recognizable by a single name—Giorgio, Donna, Oscar, and Hermès—though these days, the stores are appreciably less crowded and I notice too that the line for the hotdog vendor on the corner of Sixty-fourth Street is unusually long. Once the business gets going, I’ll be back, I think, stopping to see what’s new at Missoni, and as I catch my reflection in the window, I reach for my cellphone. I’ve been telling myself that my dark roots are hip, like Sarah Jessica Parker’s in the third season of Sex and the City. But my stripey mane reminds me more of a raccoon with a bad dye job than the spunky star. I’m just speed-dialing Angela Cosmai to see if the city’s most fabulous colorist can possibly squeeze me in, when I spot Molly walking toward me. And she’s not alone.
My older, wiser, studious daughter, the daughter I count on to be reasonable, reliable, and uncomplicated, is walking down the street, holding hands with a young man—a young man with chiseled good looks framed by spiky blond hair, wearing khakis and a navy blue blazer and looking as if he just stepped out of an episode of Gossip Girl. Molly’s ditched her owlish black glasses and pulled out her elastic band to let her dark locks cascade over her shoulders. As Molly tilts her head toward the teenage Adonis, a goofy smile spreads over her face. What is it about the first, ethereal stages of romance that could turn even Condoleezza Rice into a grinning idiot? I call out a cheery “Hello!”
Molly looks furtively at me, shakes her head almost imperceptivity, and continues walking.
“Who was that?” I hear the young man ask as they brush past me and I recognize the emblem on the boy’s blazer, identifying him as a student at Molly’s school.
“Don’t know, just some woman,” says Molly, looking over her shoulder, raising her palm in a signal that tells me not to say another word. I watch as the boy takes Molly’s backpack and loops his muscular arm through hers. Molly laughs and buries her head in his shoulder. “Thanks for the cheeseburger,” I hear her say as they slip around the corner. “I’m having the most fun ever, Brandon.”
LATER THAT NIGHT Paige is in her bedroom working on a history term paper when I hear Molly’s key turn in the door. I’ve been waiting for her to get home all evening, and she comes into the kitchen full of excitement and excuses.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I know it was dumb not to say hi, I was just so embarrassed to, you know, introduce my date to my mother,” she says, grinning as she slides her backpack off her shoulder—the very same backpack that just a few hours ago had been held by the golden-haired Brandon. The very same Brandon—I now know from checking the school directory the minute I got home—whom her sister has a crush on.
I don’t know if Molly knows that Paige likes this boy or if Paige knows that Molly had a date with him, and I have to figure out a way to make each of them aware of what’s going on without hurting their feelings or turning it into an Olympic-sized competition. Not so easy when you’re dealing with twins who’ve been scrutinized and sized-up against each other since the day they were born.
We’ve always told the girls, “Celebrate your uniqueness!” But how could you not make comparisons? When Paige started walking at ten months, it was nearly impossible not to push Molly to try to follow in her footsteps. Molly was only a year old when she started speaking in full sentences, which made us worry about why Paige was still babbling. And while Molly has the budding-but-undeveloped poise and beauty of Anne Hathaway in the opening scenes of The Princess Diaries or The Devil Wears Prada, Paige was born as sleek and confident as a blond version of the actress in act two.
Molly’s always been shier and more hesitant in social situations, more likely to watch from the sidelines than her outgoing twin. So despite my resolve to be as neutral as Switzerland, I’m secretly rooting for her. As long as this Brandon Marsh isn’t playing my two girls against each other.
“A date, huh?” I ask as nonchalantly as possible, rinsing off some plates and stacking them in the dishwasher.
“Mom, you never do this right,” Molly says affectionately, coming over to make sure that the bowls and salad plates are on the top of the machine and that the larger plates are properly spaced and facing each other on the bottom.
“So this boy …”
“Oh Mom, we had so much fun! We went for chocolate shakes and cheeseburgers at Jackson Hole and when the bill came I offered to split it but he said, ‘Here, let me get that,’ so I did, even though I said, ‘Okay, but next time I’ll pay,’ and then we walked through the park and he carried my backpack and I know I should have introduced you. I’m sorry, it was just so weird to run into you and I wanted to seem cool, though next time I promise I’ll say hello. And oh yeah—” she laughs as she interrupts sorting through the silverware look up and flash a radiant smile “—his name is Brandon Marsh.”
“That’s sounds great, honey, hmm, Brandon Marsh,” I repeat carefully, as if I’m trying to place a vaguely familiar name. “Isn’t that the boy who’s in Paige’s science class?”
A small shadow crosses Molly’s face and she turns her back toward me to plunge a group of forks into the wire dishwasher basket, tines down. Some might argue that placed in that direction the forks could nest, running the risk of their not coming out clean, but in our family, we’re more concerned about nobody getting stabbed to death when they’re unloaded.
“So what if Brandon is in Paige’s science class?” Molly asks. “For once a boy likes me!”
“A boy likes you, what boy like you?” asks Paige, sauntering into the kitchen with one earplug dangling out of her iPod, obviously having heard only the last part of Molly’s declaration.
Molly and I lock eyes.
“Brandon Marsh likes me and we went on a date today and had cheeseburgers,” Molly says with a brazenness I haven’t heard in her voice before. Whether from inexperience or exuberance or a desperate attempt to mark dibs on this Marsh man, she puts Paige, who needs no provocation, on the offensive.
“Big deal,” Paige says, toying with the twist top on a package of English muffins. She opens the cellophane wrapping, fingers all of the muffins in the package so that no one else will want to eat them, and then reties the bag and puts it back in the bread basket. “So Brandon bought you a cheeseburger. Woo, woo, headline, let’s call the New York Times. Brandon buys sodas and French fries and salads and anything else they want for girls seven days a week. He’s a serial snack dater,” she says dismissively. “But Brandon and I have something deeper and more meaningful. He studies with me. We have an intellectual connection.”
At the thought of Brandon and Paige entering the Intel science contest—or even leaning on each other to get a C-plus—Molly lets out a whoop.
“I see,” she says, barely able to suppress a giggle. I would have thought Molly would shrink from competing with her sister, not to mention the news—news to me anyway—that this Brandon is a player. But far from it, she’s holding her ground. “You’re just jealous that a boy likes me and not you,” she says, pitching the last knife into the dishwasher with just a little too much verve.
“Jealous? Of you? I don’t think so. By the way, if you’re interested I heard about a new dandruff shampoo,” Paige says, walking by her twin and brushing some imaginary flakes off Molly’s sweater.
Molly swats away her sister’s hand and makes a show of sniffing. “And I heard about a new deodorant.”
“Girls, stop it, I won’t have you two fighting over some ridiculous boy.”
“He’s not ridiculous,” Molly snaps.
“And we’re not fighting. Fighting would mean that there’s a match of wills, a worthy opponent. You two think I’m the family idiot, but I pay more attention in my classes than you give me credit for. No, Molly and I aren’t fighting,” Paige says airily, plugging her iPod back into her ears as she makes an exit. “When it comes to who’ll be Brandon’s girlfriend there’s no contest.”