People LIke Her(46)
By the time we get to the studio she’s been waiting around for us outside for over an hour so we can all make an entrance together. She doesn’t ask me why we’re late. I have to prod her to say hello to Coco, and when she does Coco’s little face lights up at Granny’s attention. For a split second, I see my four-year-old self in my daughter’s shoes and my heart cracks a bit for both of us.
The first thing that confronts us as we walk inside is a three-foot-tall roll of toilet paper. Virginia spots it, pretends to do a double take. “Oh God, darling, did you really sign us all up for this shit?” She guffaws at her own joke. The PR looks unamused.
Today’s set has been dressed to look like an enormous bathroom, with the aforementioned vastly oversized rolls, a selection of potties, and some giant toilets styled up as thrones that we’ll sit on to do our interviews. We’ve just got to trot out the usual clichés: hardest job in the world; nothing more precious than a mama; she’s always been my best friend; she told me I could do anything . . . while the assembled under-tens roll around in the four-ply like golden retriever puppies. At least that’s what the director thinks will happen. I suspect he doesn’t have any children himself.
With the exception of Bear, who is being fussed over by the makeup artist, all twelve kids on set are currently running around wrapped, mummy-style, in toilet paper, jacked up on pains au chocolat pilfered from the breakfast buffet. It is utter, earsplitting chaos. We parents are doing our best to ignore them as we mill around said breakfast buffet, recording theatrical hellos for Instastories over the avocado toast.
“Sara, you glittering marvel, I am so psyched I get to hang out with my sister from another mister all day!” Bella exclaims, filming herself going in for an enthusiastic air kiss.
I make my way over to the coffee machine to fill a #yaydays-branded mug—Irene never misses an opportunity to plug the merch. Sara heads that way too, leaving her mother stranded in conversation with Suzy Wao, whose giant earrings keep swinging perilously close to her bifocals. She gets her phone out, and I raise my mug in a cheers, throwing my head back in laughter. Sara posts it immediately with the caption: It’s a miracle: Mama drinks a cup of coffee while it’s still hot!
There is an art to this. I’m not saying it’s one of the high arts, but it is an art.
When it’s our turn to take our places on the thrones, I scoop up Bear and call Coco to come sit on Mama’s lap.
She doesn’t want to.
One of the assistants goes over and tries to jolly her along, points over at me and Bear, the thrones.
Coco turns her back on us, folds her arms, crouches down.
Aware I’m being watched, I keep a patient smile on my face, hand Bear to my mother, and walk across.
“Pickle,” I say.
Coco doesn’t respond. Understanding how many pairs of eyes are now on us, how many people are listening in, I crouch down so my face is level with my daughter’s. Her bottom lip is trembling.
“What’s the matter, pickle?”
She whispers something so quietly I can’t hear it.
“I can’t hear you, Coco. What are you saying?”
“Mummy, I don’t want to. I feel shy.”
“What’s she saying, darling?” shouts my mother, who’s managed to hand Bear off again to one of the makeup artists. “Tell her everybody is waiting.”
“Just give us a minute, Mum,” I shout back, as brightly as I can muster.
“Do you not remember?” I ask Coco. “We talked about how fun this was going to be. Sitting on the throne. Telling funny stories about me and Granny. You remember, we even practiced the stories.”
Ages ago, when Mamabare was born, one of the first things Dan and I agreed upon was that when our daughter got old enough to say no, when she didn’t want to do this anymore, that was when we’d stop. I remember we discussed it one date night, shook on it, swore. No ifs, no buts, I promised him.
The thing is, though, when you have a child, you quickly realize you’re continually having to make them do things they don’t want to do. Wear a nappy. Wear a coat. Get into the bath. Get out of the bath. Take their medicine. Drink their milk. Brush their teeth. Go to bed. If you never did anything your child did not want to do, you’d never leave the house. You’d just sit in front of the TV eating chocolate in a princess dress all day.
And there would not be a great deal of shareable content in that.
I can certainly remember having to do a load of things I didn’t want to do when I was little: Sit through long dinners without fidgeting. Answer promptly and clearly when anyone asked me a question. Go and say hello to all the guests at my parents’ parties—a room full of men with thick voices and women with horrible laughs, a layer of cigarette smoke hanging at head height, someone with acrid breath always insisting on kissing me stickily on the forehead. I can remember begging not to have to go away on holiday to the same place every year, to spend two weeks in a house in Provence where I’d lie in bed listening to my parents bicker in the next room, waiting for the door to slam and the plates to smash. I can remember having to go away to boarding school at seven. I can remember coming back from my first term and finding Mum had given my guinea pig away because it was too much trouble to look after.
Did it do me any harm? Well, probably. No doubt, if you really got into it (as Dr. Fairs is always trying to), you could connect my fear of being alone in a house in the dark with that time my mum locked me in my room because I kept coming downstairs while she was entertaining, and you could almost definitely link my desire to make a public success of myself to both my parents’ stinginess with praise and my utter, chest-swelling delight on the rare occasions I got so much as an approving nod from either. People love to find a neat psychological explanation for everything, don’t they?