This drink of alcohol is warm inside of me. I can feel my self-consciousness unknotting itself. I feel . . . comfortable?
“Amy.” I hear my voice before I even know what I’m saying. “I think what you did in there was really . . . cool.”
Amy has the kind of smile you know comes straight from her soul. I wonder if she has an Instagram. I should follow her.
“Thanks, Kiki. I think you’re really cool. How have we not met sooner?”
I’m smiling at her like a doofus, trying to come up with a funny way to say that we should make up for lost friendship time by “grabbing a coffee” soon, when my brain focuses back in on the conversation that Amy and Carla are having.
“I just have too much going on to give a shit about anybody’s lice but my own kids’,” Amy says, taking a really big sip of her own drink.
“Your kids have lice?” I don’t mean to, but I jump back. I have four kids, I can’t be combing through four heads for tiny bugs and their larvae! We did that last year, and I still find myself keeping my distance if they so much as scratch their heads once.
“No!” says Amy, laughing. “I mean, who knows, don’t kids always have lice?” Amy takes another big sip from her drink. “I mean, I don’t have time for anything right now. I barely have time to brush my teeth at night.”
I run my tongue over my teeth. Did I brush them today? I honestly can’t remember.
“My kids haven’t been to the dentist in a year and a half, and I don’t even have a job.” This Manhattan is really something. Also, it’s gone.
“You have a job,” Carla says. “You spend all day with your fucking kids. I would rather wax a thousand nutsacks a day than do that. No offense.”
“None taken! At least it’s just three of them home now. Although I don’t know how long that will last because Bernard’s teacher said that the two of them don’t seem to be making a connection and it might be time for the two of them to explore other options and I don’t know what she means by that but also she doesn’t reply to my emails.”
“Smart,” says Carla.
The silence that follows isn’t awkward at all. Which is strange because everything is awkward for me. So, maybe the silence is awkward, but I just don’t know it?
Amy is the first one to talk.
“This is really nice, guys. I can’t remember the last time I just . . . went out?”
“I can’t, either,” replies Carla. “It’s like my life is a revolving door of work, sleep, and other boring shit.”
It occurs to me that the warm feeling I have from my shoulders to my waist, this little vest of happiness I’m wearing, might be that I’m drunk? Kent says that drunkenness is a sign of a low intellect.
“I think I’m drunk!” I announce, and the two of them laugh. I think they think I’m joking, but I have been drunk fewer than three times in my life. I took DARE very seriously as a child.
“So, Amy, you said that you have a lot going on right now, Amy?” Kent has a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People, and one of the steps is to remember to say people’s names a lot, and to ask them questions about themselves.
Amy waves me off. “Oh, forget it. We all do. I’m just . . . so tired. It’s work. It’s my marriage. It’s . . . it’s so hard to be a good mom. I feel like every day that passes, I’m just closer to the end of a rapidly fraying rope. It’s like I’m juggling five bowling balls while riding a pogo stick balanced on top of a ball and if I mess anything up, the entire world is going to end and my kids are going to grow up and write memoirs about me.”
Carla is nodding, but I can’t even speak. Did I just hear what I thought I heard? That being a good mom is hard for a woman who looks like she could be on the cast of a popular late-nineties sitcom?
“Oh my God, I know,” moans Carla. “There are so many rules.”
“Yes!” I scream. “The rules! And they always change! Like, children need boundaries . . . but don’t say no to them.”
“Or,” Amy adds, “screen time will make them stupid . . . but no screen time will mean they’re behind their peer group and destined to fail at life.”
“Yes!” This feeling of validation is almost better than being drunk. “And . . . let your child decide how much to eat, but if he doesn’t eat fourteen different vegetables a day, he’s going to be malnourished and probably die.”
“Good moms don’t work full-time,” Amy points out.
“Good moms volunteer to be the class mom,” I reply.
“Good moms have clean cars and clean kids and don’t forget to take their kids to the dentist for two years.” Amy smiles.
“Good moms remember to pick your kid up from baseball! Good moms don’t let their kids have fast food for two meals a day! Good moms don’t sleep with the janitor at your kid’s school!” Carla shouts.
I hope she doesn’t mean Rusty.
“You know what being a good mom got me so far? TMJ, migraines, and carpal tunnel from building my kids’ blue-ribbon winning dioramas . . .” Amy leans over the bar to grab a bottle of alcohol and pours some in each of our glasses. “So, fuck it, ladies. Let’s be bad moms.”
Amy raises her glass, and we all clink our glasses together. My first toast!
“To being bad moms!” Amy declares, and we all take a drink.
I’m still gagging from the taste of whatever I just ingested when my phone buzzes.
KENT: If you haven’t left the grocery store yet, Bernard and I want pork tenderloin for dinner tomorrow.
“Fudge!”
Amy is pouring another round of whatever hellfire she selected, but she pauses to ask what’s the matter.
“I have to go to the supermarket.” I sigh.
Amy and Carla share a look, then pour their drinks down their throats. Neither of them look like they want to vomit.
“Fuck it,” says Carla, slamming her glass on the bar, “let’s go get some fucking groceries.”
15
Amy
Look, I’ve worked retail. I know that there’s nothing worse than someone waltzing in the front door ten minutes before you close. But sometimes it’s 9:50 PM on a weeknight and your new best friend needs to get some essentials for her family and you could use a couple bags of chips for the house anyway, and yeah, you’re kinda buzzed, so you stroll into the supermarket just before close and avoid eye contact with the manager.
“Oh my GOD, this place is depressing,” Carla says in a voice that is the exact opposite of avoiding eye contact with the manager. “Do you come here every month?”
Kiki has dutifully wiped her cart with antibacterial wipes and is navigating through the aisles in the most efficient display of grocery shopping I have ever seen, while Carla and I eat extra-cheesy chips right out of the bag. Kiki and I spent the whole car ride comparing mom notes: how Pinterest should be labeled as a terrorist organization for convincing every mom we know that birthday parties need to be themed and decorated as if the party is going to be photographed by Vogue, how crappy it feels when stay-at-home moms tell me that they can’t imagine being away from their kids every day, and how shitty it feels for Kiki when working moms treat her like she’s an idiot just because she spends her days with her kids. Carla mostly just told us we both needed to take a chill pill and offered us some weed cookies from her purse (pass).