Gwendolyn and I had no idea what a smash cake was, but we figured out later that it was apparently a small version of a birthday cake that you had made just so your baby could smash it into a pulp while your photographer took pictures. Gwendolyn didn’t have a smash cake. She didn’t have a hand-lettered birthday banner or a photo backdrop for the parents to pose their children for professional photos. She’d assumed that a first birthday party—which the baby would never remember—was, you know, just for fun.
“And what’s the entertainment today?” one of the other mothers asked, and before Gwendolyn could totally lose it, I ran to the basement to rifle through Gwendolyn’s storage closet. Five minutes later, I was back in the living room in one of Gwendolyn’s old ball gowns, in full character as a Disney princess. The babies had, of course, not noticed, but the mothers were impressed, and cell phone photos were taken and uploaded to Facebook. Gwendolyn spent the entire next day scrolling and counting the likes and comments, which she read out loud to me. The moms called it a “throwback party” and apparently thought Gwendolyn now the coolest mom ever.
That Facebook attention was good for her self-esteem, but Pinterest was even better. I’d never heard of it, but Gwendolyn’s husband had mentioned that there was this website that had just been blocked by IT at his work because his younger female employees were spending up to three hours a day on a website that was just . . . pictures? It pissed him off, but it also smelled like an opportunity, and he’d been an early investor. He never talked to Gwendolyn about business, but he did talk around her about business, and while he slurped down his dinner one night, standing at the kitchen counter, she overheard him shouting into his Bluetooth headset.
“It’s crazy!” he said. “The referral traffic from this site is absolutely insane. It’s where women go to create their dream lives. And once an image is on Pinterest, it’s everywhere. This is the democratization of taste-making.” He’d smacked his lips. “Anyone can be important now.”
That night, Gwendolyn had signed up for an account. She’d stayed up until three AM, scrolling and pinning images to digital boards. Her husband was right, this was exactly like creating your dream life. Gwendolyn created boards for everything from the garden to the living room and filled them with beautiful images. It was addictive. And she wasn’t alone. Sitting alone in the glow of her laptop, she watched her list of followers climb. A few dozen at first, and then a few hundred. By morning, she had ten thousand people following GwendolynJamesStyle.
At first it was a hobby. Then it was a habit. And then it was like a sickness that took over our life, and their house. Gwendolyn spent hours “curating” perfect boards of the ideal home, the ideal dinner menu. But the ideal Gwendolyn didn’t just want to be sitting on her MacBook compiling inspirational photos posted by other women. She wanted to be the inspirational woman. She wanted to be making the perfect photos, the perfect homemade bread. She wanted dads to want her, and other moms to want to be her.
The problem, of course, was that she had no talent. Like, none. I mean, anyone can throw a pack of pizza rolls in the oven and call it dinner, but not everyone knows how to make kale look like more than just a pile of leaves. But I do. I learned it from my mother, who learned it from her mother. When you grow up poor, you learn how to make something out of nothing. That’s why I could spend an hour every morning making dinosaurs out of fruit for Blair and Gandhi, or look into the fridge that Gwendolyn thought was “so empty” and pull together a decent meal for our dinner.
I’m not stupid. I knew that everything I did and wrote and made ended up on Gwendolyn’s blog. I didn’t care that Gwendolyn got all the attention, either. It was actually cute how nervous Gwendolyn was the first time a stranger had pointed her out in public. We’d been pushing Blair and Gandhi on the swings at the park when a mom who’d been staring at us from over by the slides walked over.
“I follow you!” she announced. “I’m, like, obsessed with you! Those fruit dinosaurs are incredible . . . so creative!” My ears had burned, but Gwendolyn had pretended as if nothing had happened. The moment passed, and a sort of understanding formed. G was the face, and I was the brains. That Friday, G handed me an envelope of cash. It was three times my weekly salary. And every week, the same envelope would appear. It was a good arrangement, until Gwendolyn turned into an asshole.
“Whatcha working on over there?”
I recognize the woman sitting on the couch next to me in the mother’s lounge. She works at the spa, and I sometimes see her napping in here. Now, though, she’s peering over at my laptop, which I’ve been staring at for the past three hours while Gwendolyn got acupuncture and a massage and then left without me so I could “buckle down” on writing her next eCourse. I don’t even care about meditation, or motherhood!
“Oh, just . . . you know . . .” I trail off, shutting the laptop and rolling out my neck.
It’s not like I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to rat G out, but when this spa lady asks me about my work, I can’t stop talking. It’s been a while since anyone asked about me. Since anyone has been interested in me. Even Gwendolyn, who used to tell me I was like the little sister she never had (she does, by the way, have a little sister), only talks to me when she needs me to make content or run her errands or get her a glass of lukewarm water with a pinch of Himalayan sea salt and a squeeze of lemon. I’ve been pretending to be Gwendolyn for so long that I forgot I even exist. But this Carla lady is nice, and she gave me a cold washcloth soaked in cucumber water to put over my eyes while I take a break from the screen. I lay down on the couch and breathe in the essential oils Carla is spritzing around me.
“Let me get this straight,” she says after I’ve finally stopped talking. “Gwendolyn had been a regular mom, and other moms made her feel bad, so then she took your skills and used them to make other moms feel bad?”
I nod. That’s pretty much it.
“One last question, and don’t fucking lie to me, either. Did she put that pot in Jane Mitchell’s locker?”
“Of course not!” I sit up, and the washcloth falls from my face. “Gwendolyn would never do something like that. She made me do it.”
38
Carla
Kiki’s Bad Day Banana Bread is good, I’ll give her that. But banana bread isn’t going to put a bitch like Gwendolyn in her place. Actually, I take that back: a gluten-filled, dairy-filled slice of banana bread would probably destroy Gwendolyn.
I was hoping to kick in the front door at Amy’s house for dramatic effect, but Kiki opened it before I had the chance. The house was a goddamn mess, but Amy and Kiki had been sitting in a clean kitchen having a Lifetime Movie moment together. I kid you not, they were each drinking a mug of herbal tea. I have never seen someone do that in real life. It was disturbing. Didn’t these bitches know we had somewhere to be?
“Did you hear?” Amy asks, looking like a dog just waiting to be kicked again.
“Yeah, Amy. I heard. Everyone heard. Your life sucks. But I know for a fact that it was Gwendolyn who had those drugs planted in Jane’s locker.”
Amy hesitates. She’s clearly not as shocked by this as I am.