Avis shrieks, and Camille rolls down the rear window to give her daughter a blast of cold air. Nick is fifty miles to the south, elevated in his pseudo loft on Spring Street, living some approximation of a 1980s fantasy with his black-haired, thin-lipped dominatrix. This is how Camille pictures the woman, anyway, the older coworker whose name, Victoria, she’d found infesting his call history. The fact that this Victoria is allegedly pregnant, thanks to some medical miracle, does not change the picture.
On the way back from the babysitter’s house, Avis falls asleep in her seat, and Camille carries her to bed. Asleep, she is a dreamy thing. Her eyelashes form a golden mesh, and her face is innocent, forgetful of the dramas and torments of the day. Camille puts her face close, inhales the sweet breath. These little moments are hers alone now. Let Nick try to find them with his new child.
The next morning, the sake has receded like the tide and left her brain dry and seaweed strewn. She goes out in big sunglasses, a shearling coat, and boots over jeans. The sun throbs in the sky as she leads Avis to the entrance of Bright Beginnings. The two self-appointed “class mothers” are there, flanking the door, smiling with their horse teeth. One of them thrusts a flyer at her.
“Hope you’ll contribute!”
Her hand trembles as she takes the sheet. A bake sale. All families are invited to contribute a healthful, nut-free treat. Gluten-free and vegan especially encouraged! She would like to throw the flyer into the recycling bin. In these first few weeks, she has received flyers discouraging plastic utensils at school, prohibiting tree nuts in the building, requesting awareness of branded clothing in the classroom.
“Twinkies okay?” Camille smiles broadly at the mothers, despite the pain of it, and herds her daughter through the door. Avis’s hair is still matted from sleep, gathered in two stubby pigtails like horns on top of her head. Still, she is the prettiest girl in the classroom. The other children are cropped and bobbed, uniformed in drab organic clothing. Avis regards them coolly through glass-blue eyes, her father’s best feature. She is long lashed and bubblegum pink in her ruffled skirt and sequined Mary Janes.
It delights Camille to dress her daughter this way, in the frothiest clothing she can find, if only to scandalize the other mothers. You would think the Disney princesses were succubi by the way these women talk. I just don’t understand why so many parents buy into the marketing, they say. They’re basically grooming their girls to become appearance-obsessed little consumers. These are the kind of primitive feminists, she is certain, who began referring to themselves as “women” at age eighteen, who sat with straight faces through college demonstrations of dental dams. She has no use for women like these, who would keep musty, second-wave feminism on life support. The rest of the world has moved on. It has thanked the poor, neutered mothers and grandmothers for the dreary work they did, and put on stilettos again with free-ranging pride.
So when Camille comes across such women standing together, their faces grave as crusaders, she finds herself pausing, despite herself, pretending to look for something in her bag. Always, she tells herself to back away, but feels her face heat. It is a public service to shut them down.
Excuse me, she’ll say. But I can’t help overhearing, and I have to ask, do you really have a problem with little girls playing dress-up?
The mothers will glare in their oatmeal bouclé-knit sweaters. After a moment, the most emboldened, ugliest mother will collect herself and reply, We don’t mean that they shouldn’t play dress-up. We just think it’s important to put some thought into what we offer our daughters. You know, rather than just accepting whatever’s marketed to them?
Mmm, right. The personal is political. Camille nods. But you know this stuff is marketed to little girls for a reason. Because they love it.
She knows they talk about her. That’s what happens to independent-minded people in this place, to anyone who isn’t brainwashed by beady-eyed mommy culture. They resent her, she knows, for preserving her preparent self, for dressing like a woman, for not surrendering to the dowdy, practical fashions that make the rest of them look like they’ve always just come from the gym, or bed.
Her only female friend in town is Madeleine Gaines, who’d risen from the city like a benevolent spirit. Her husband had been a colleague of Nick’s at Clarkson-Ross, and they had all gotten together once for tapas in Union Square. When Camille first saw Madeleine in town, shuffling through the grocery aisles in a fabulous retro block-print maternity dress, she called and jogged up to her in a rush of bonhomie. She’d invited her over that very afternoon, and their roles were set from there: Camille was the outrageous, demonstrative one; Madeleine the good listener.
Perhaps she calls too often. Madeleine would be too polite to ever say so. But, today, she doesn’t care; she’s just happy to have a confidante she can tell about her date. Her old city friends would be too loyal, or hostile, to Nick’s memory—like Mark and Harris, whose shared distaste for her ex still unaccountably rankles her. It is liberating to detach from them all, to begin a fresh history here.
They sit on beanbags in Camille’s bedroom, like college roommates, sipping Cape Codders from margarita glasses.