Placebo effect, Amara thought. Also, what kind of a stupid, guilt-inducing name was “TrueMommy”? She was already a true fucking mommy all right, according to the men at her former office, who had stared at her like she was from a whole new species when she returned from maternity leave; to her single female friends, who wrote gushing comments on pictures of Charlie online but never asked her to hang out in person anymore; and to the homeless guy on her corner, who hooted, “Hot mama!” whenever she walked by.
And in general, the whole wellness craze was a load of crap. According to the wellness ideology (as far as Amara could tell), people—but mostly women—had the potential to be so much healthier and happier (and thinner) if only they shunned processed sugars and most of Western medicine and got back to all-natural basics, which, not coincidentally, cost a lot of money. If you mastered wellness, you could be efficient and centered and smoking hot, for you! All you had to do was drink fancy juice, take a lot of yoga classes, and put a five-hundred-dollar jade egg up your vagina, and then you could start having the orgasms your body was meant to have! You’d never disappoint your partner by turning down sex ever again, because you’d be so empowered and energetic that you’d want it all the time!
Perhaps there was a crumb of truth to the trend, but Lord, did people go overboard, and these TrueMommy pills were the perfect example. The trial month came in a beautiful suede box that looked like it belonged on a shelf at Barneys. Inside, the vitamins were separated into four packets, one for each week, all labeled with their own particular focus and cutesy name, like “Week Two: Good Day Sunshine” (extra Saint-John’s-wort to boost a new mother’s mood!) and “Week Four: Energizer Honey” (loaded with B12, for mamas who were ready to tackle their tough schedules with renewed vigor). She’d started taking the vitamins at first only because of the heavy discount and because it seemed like a way to bond with the other women. Back at the beginning of the trial month, her husband, Daniel, had noticed Amara popping the amber vitamins as they got ready in the morning, and they’d had a good laugh over the whole industry.
“Just please promise me,” Daniel said, rolling his eyes and grinning at her, “that you’ll never end up throwing away tons of money on vitamins you’re going to pee out anyway.”
“Darling. Do I look like Gwyneth Paltrow?” Amara had asked, and he had squinted at her in mock-seriousness and said, “Hmm, not quite.”
But now, the other mothers were smiling at Dr. Clark. “My hair is finally looking full again,” Ellie said, “so I’m a big fan.”
“I’ve had less of an urge to cram Oreos into my mouth every night,” Whitney said, laughing. “Although maybe that’s not the vitamins’ doing.”
Gwen pulled out a Moleskine journal. “I had a few questions,” she said, flipping to a long list written in her tidy handwriting. “I showed my doctor the ingredients list, of course, but I wanted to double-check some things with you, because obviously you can never be too careful about what you’re putting into your body when you’ve got children to think about.”
Oh, Lord. Gwen might not have known much about Shakespeare, but she was the only one of them to have an older child, so when it came to the practicalities of motherhood, she fancied herself a regular Einstein, quick to “helpfully” let the other mothers know when they were doing it wrong. She began peppering Dr. Clark with a list of questions about whether they’d conducted any clinical trials (“Yes,” Dr. Clark said. “Nine out of ten moms have reported feeling at least moderately more well rested and energetic, but I’m happy to e-mail you the full data if you’d like.”), why the supplements were priced so much higher than the others on the market (“We’re not about the big mass-market crank out,” Dr. Clark said with the patience of a saint. “We send small-batch, individualized packets every month because we want to address each woman’s own personal needs. So, if you’ve been, say, feeling particularly tired, or are having a postpartum acne breakout, you just fill out the form to tell us so, and we curate the amount of Saint-John’s-wort or peppermint or what have you in your particular capsules. Obviously, though, if we’ve got our fantastic doctors working on customized vitamins all the time, we’ve got to pay them!”), and more. Would Gwen shut up already so they could get this over with and Amara could go home?
Amara could sense Whitney, next to her, trying to catch her attention, hoping to exchange loving eye rolls like they always did when Gwen started going on the type A train, but after what had happened in Whitney’s office, Amara couldn’t look Whitney in the eye right now. Charlie was still crying, so Amara stood up and began to walk him back and forth across the room.
How were all these other babies so well-behaved? It was almost enough to make Amara miss Joanna the Lost Playgroup Mom, the one they didn’t talk about anymore. Joanna’s son had been the most difficult of all. Whenever he’d gone off on a screaming tear, Joanna had looked at him with hopelessness in her eyes, and Amara had thought with a guilty relief that at least Charlie wasn’t that bad. Joanna lived in Jersey now, but sometimes her grim presence still lingered in their playgroup circle, as if she were haunting them all, reminding them of what they could become.
“We’re keeping TrueMommy exclusive for now,” Dr. Clark was saying, “because we’re going back and forth with the FDA to see if they’ll give us full approval, which they normally don’t do for supplements. But in the meantime, we wanted to reach out personally to mothers who we thought could be really aspirational brand ambassadors for when we go big, which is how we found you all.”
That was about all Amara’s patience could take. “‘Brand ambassadors’?” she said in a withering tone as Charlie’s tears soaked through her blouse. “All right, I have a question. Is this a pyramid scheme?”
Dr. Clark looked at her, a brief hint of annoyance flitting across her face before she replaced it with a smile. “No, no! I just meant that we’re waiting on doing a full ad campaign until we hear back from the FDA. Once we do, we’re hoping to use real moms in our curated rollout of the website and social media—maybe even on TV too.”
“So you’re saying we’ll be Instagram famous?” Ellie asked.
Dr. Clark laughed. “Well, no promises.”
“Okay, but for the record,” said Meredith, “I want it noted that I’m very okay with my pending celebrity.” She and Ellie launched into another of their extended mind-meld cackles.
“So what do you all think?” Dr. Clark asked. “If you want to sign up as a playgroup, we can just deliver all the supplements to Whitney each month and cut out the individual shipping costs!”
Meredith and Ellie were in immediately while Vicki gave a slow, faraway nod.
“I don’t know,” Amara said, shaking her head. She shouldn’t. The fact that she and Daniel were having to get by on one salary instead of the expected two was already causing serious issues. Just please promise me that you’ll never end up throwing away tons of money on vitamins you’re going to pee out anyway. The price tag on the TrueMommy supplements was absolutely mental. If Daniel saw the cost, he’d be livid.