Such a Fun Age(41)
Alix and Emira hadn’t been the same since Briar’s fish died three weeks ago. On a Monday, Emira turned down the offer to take extra cookies home so that Alix wouldn’t eat them. And on a Friday evening, when Alix offered her a glass of wine, Emira had said, “I’m actually okay, but thank you.” This shift in their relationship haunted Alix in everyday places where she never would have imagined she’d ruminate about her sitter. In a bookstore, Alix found herself pondering what time Emira went to bed. While breast-feeding Catherine, she wondered if Emira had seen the movie Pretty Woman, and if she found it contentious. On the escalator inside Anthropologie, Alix imagined what Emira had said to Zara about her, and if Zara was the type to blindly agree or push back.
Alix also found herself reorganizing her lifestyle around Emira, despite the fact that she didn’t have an explicit reason to. If Alix went shopping, she took the tags off clothes and other items immediately so Emira couldn’t see how much she’d spent, even though Emira wasn’t the type to show interest or ask. Alix no longer felt comfortable leaving out certain books or magazines, because she feared Emira eyeing her Marie Kondo book and subsequently thinking, Wow, how privileged are you that you need to buy a hardcover book that tells you how to get rid of all your other expensive shit. Sometimes, Alix found herself pretending—in front of Emira—that she was about to eat leftovers for dinner. In reality, she’d be thinking to herself, Just order the sushi. Just text Peter and ask him what he wants. What point are you trying to prove by eating leftovers? But still, she’d wait till Emira closed the door behind her to go to her computer, ask Peter if he wanted the usual, and place her order via Seamless.
In the beginning, Alix would search Emira’s name on the Internet and Instagram, to see if she’d finally gotten an account (she’d convinced herself that this was a safety precaution concerning her children), but now Alix had taken to looking at her own Instagram account while imagining she was Emira and viewing it with fresh eyes. She’d slowly scroll through her own feed, and guess which pictures Emira would click on. Emira never hinted that she felt this way, because why would she, but Alix often felt that Emira saw her as a textbook rich white person, much in the same way that Alix saw many of the annoying Upper East Side moms that she and her girlfriends had always tried to avoid. But if Emira would only take a deeper look, if she gave Alix a chance, Alix knew that she would begin to think otherwise.
Alix fantasized about Emira discovering things about her that shaped what Alix saw as the truest version of herself. Like the fact that one of Alix’s closest friends was also black. That Alix’s new and favorite shoes were from Payless, and only cost eighteen dollars. That Alix had read everything that Toni Morrison had ever written. And that out of her group of friends, Alix and Peter actually had the smallest salaries, and that Tamra was the one who always flew first class. Alix often and unsuccessfully tried to drop these bits of information, but tomorrow, if things went Alix’s way, Emira could see all this in person.
Rachel, Jodi, and Tamra would be taking the train to Philadelphia on Thanksgiving morning. Rachel was thankful to not spend the holiday alone (Hudson would be with his father); Tamra would be coming with her daughters, Imani and Cleo (her husband was traveling for work in Tokyo), and Jodi’s entire family would be present (her husband, Walter; her four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Prudence; and her one-year-old son, Payne). It was Thanksgiving that made Alix realize that her three best girlfriends hadn’t yet met Catherine, who was almost seven months old. Had it been that long? Catherine, who looked more like Alix every day, and was so easily toteable and darling and unconcerned with crawling that she made Briar seem borderline manic. Her girlfriends had joked about Alix showing them a traditional Murphy Thanksgiving complete with very suburban décor, fluffy turtlenecks in warm fall colors, DIY Pinterest projects and table toppers, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on repeat. But this joke had turned into an ironic theme that Alix couldn’t wait to execute.
Alix hired two caterers to pour drinks, hang coats, serve food, and remove plates. She filled the first floor of her home with pumpkins, gourds, wheat stalks, and acorns; a turkey pi?ata was waiting to be hung above the massive rented dining table set up in the stretch of the tiled foyer. With red twine, above a small table that held four different types of pies, Alix hung slips of brown craft paper where guests could write down what they were thankful for. She was delighted to consider the upcoming day, being around her three favorite women with a cheesy Thanksgiving scheme and tons of red wine, but just the idea of Emira being there too made her blush into her scarf.
Holding her last grocery store lot (bread, pink salt, butter, cookie dough, club soda), Alix said, “Hey!” and set the reusable bags on top of the counter. Catherine was drooling on a blanket while sitting in a Bumbo at the center of the room. Emira held Briar’s hips as she stood at the window seat and pointed out onto the street.
Briar said, “Mama? The window is biting my fingers.”
Emira turned and said, “I can’t believe you went out in this mess.”
Thank God for the weather, Alix thought. Most of her conversations with Emira in the last few days were fueled by weather management—if Briar should wear gloves, if an art class was snowed out, or if Emira needed to borrow an umbrella for her travels home. Alix rolled her eyes at her own actions. “It was insane, and kind of apocalyptic. I shouldn’t have made you come out today.”