Such a Fun Age(9)

The host of the show, a giddy graduate student, said, “You go girl!” into her mic. She looked backstage and whispered, “Should I just keep going?” But Alix was right on time. She emerged from backstage, Briar attached firmly to her left breast. The pink T-shirt was slung across her shoulder and blocking Briar’s head from sight. Briar’s shoes hung adorably at Alix’s right arm as she sat back in her seat.

“Okay, now we’re in business. That didn’t take too long, right?” Alix turned back to the host and said, “I’m happy to pick up where I left off.” Alix did pick up where she left off, and when she finished, the swooning host thanked her doubly for her answer and candor. Just as Alix had predicted, the host then asked for her daughter’s name and age. Alix made sure her words were clear. “My client here is Briar Louise. She is two years old and she’s very good at it.” Alix’s smile practically dared the audience to bat an eye at the age of her daughter suctioned to her chest.

The photographers for the event swarmed the foot of the stage. They backed up into the aisle to get a clear shot of Alix, crossing her ankles, breast-feeding her child above a pregnant stomach, and speaking between two suited men. At one point, a photographer whispered, “Can you adjust the shirt so that the logo is showing?” Alix laughed and said yes. She smoothed out the shirt against the side of Briar’s head and let the bottom hang flat. Blocking her daughter’s face were black letters spelling out Small Business Femme.

That day, Alix earned another thousand followers. Small Business Femme posted a picture of the moment on their Instagram account, the caption reading Find You A Woman That Can Do Both. Two baby magazines wanted to interview her about child-led breast-feeding, and the stigmas and benefits that come along with it. Alix paid her interns double to stay an extra hour to answer the emails, calls, and interview requests. A representative from the Clinton campaign phoned her cell. They were so sorry they’d missed her email, but they’d love for her to participate in some events later this year. Two of the agents Alix had queried also returned her emails. Within ten days, Alix sold her book to an editor named Maura at HarperCollins, a woman with children of her own and an alarmingly fast email response time.

The buzz from her center-stage breast-feeding carried her over the Pennsylvania state line, into her new home, and through her third trimester. Before she left the city, Alix took lots of pictures with her assistant and interns at the tiny good-bye party in her packed office, but she never posted them online. She never mentioned her departure from New York on her blog, on her social media accounts, or to the Clinton team. Instead, she’d take the train in when they needed her. She’d pretend like she was there while she wrote her book. She’d come back more when the girls were older.

And then, in Philadelphia, after five short hours of labor, Catherine May was born, and her face immediately took the shape of her mother’s. Alix looked into her teeny, squishy, confused face and thought, You know what? Things will be okay here.

And they were. All of those non–New York things came back to her in small bright moments. She had a car to put groceries into. A ticket to a movie wasn’t fourteen dollars, it was ten. And she lived in a three-story brownstone (seven minutes’ walk from Rittenhouse Square) on a leafy, shaded street. The house had a massive, marble-floored entryway and a charming kitchen on the second floor. The kitchen counter space was ample, and a table for six underneath a chandelier looked out to the street through a curved wall of windows. In the morning, with pancakes and eggs on the stove, Alix and her children could sit at the window seats and look down at people walking their dogs or watch the trash collectors go back and forth. Upon seeing these things and realizing their worth, Alix immediately felt a tiny pang of amusement, but then a painful longing to show them to just about anyone. Her girlfriends. Her LetHer Speak interns. A stranger standing across a filthy platform in a New York City subway.

Before Philadelphia, Alix had never hired a regular babysitter. Peter’s mother was always available, and with three friends who also had small children, there was an implied sharedness when it came to watching one extra toddler while Mom ran to the dentist or mailed a package. Several girls were recommended by Peter’s new colleagues at the station, which led to interviews of Carlys and Caitlyns, camp counselors and resident assistants, on the bar stools in Alix’s new kitchen. They told Alix what fans they were of LetHer Speak, how they wished she’d been around when they applied to college, and that they had no idea she’d moved to Philadelphia. These girls, Alix knew, would never work.

Alix had a knack for acquiring merchandise back in New York, and searching for a babysitter in Philadelphia was no different. Her girlfriends would never do this, but she created a profile on SitterTown.com and began to scroll through photos of caretakers. The whole thing felt very simulated and impersonal, but Alix had found two of her three Manhattan apartments from sketchy ads on Craigslist, and like the steals she lived in during her twenties, Emira Tucker’s profile did not come with a picture. Her description said she was a Temple University graduate, that she knew beginner sign language, and that she could type 125 words per minute. Alix said, “Huh,” and clicked Request Interview. They talked once on the phone before Emira came to the house. And when Alix opened the door and saw Emira for the first time, she found herself once again thinking, Huh.

The other girls had asked Alix how her book was coming along and if she was having another child and if she’d gotten to meet Hillary Clinton yet, but Emira didn’t say much at all. Briar immediately saw this as a challenge and verbally attacked the twenty-five-year-old woman with stories about her new backyard and all the worms she was not allowed to touch and how floaties are only allowed in the pool. When Briar finished speaking, Emira bent down and said, “Okay, miss, what else you got?”