“I suppose I have been more well rested,” Gwen said. “Even though Reagan is still finicky at night, I feel like I’m getting close to eight hours of sleep.”
It was so tempting, though, to believe in a miracle vitamin—something that could make her feel normal again so that she could be a good mother to her beautiful, impossible baby, who had come out of her howling like a wolf and had barely stopped howling in the year since then. Something that would give her the energy she needed to be patient with him. And that reliable old placebo effect had been helping to make things seem a little more manageable over the last month, today notwithstanding. If what had happened in Whitney’s office was any indication, Amara needed all the help she could get.
“I’m in too,” Whitney said with a smile, giving a little shimmy of her shoulders and throwing her hands up in the air. “Why not?”
“We’re going to become crunchy, all-natural moms, aren’t we?” Amara said. “Pretty soon we’ll be staunch anti-vaxxers.”
“Well, the thing about vaccines is I just don’t know if I should trust them,” Whitney said. Amara stared at her, and Whitney laughed. “Kidding!”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Gwen said.
“I’m pretty sure you can take Saint-John’s-wort and still believe in science,” Whitney said, waving her hand through the air. “So what do you think, Amara?”
She shouldn’t.
The other women all turned to look at her and her twisting, splotchy baby. The pity in their eyes was what did her in. It was the same charitable look previously reserved for Joanna.
“Oh, fine. Whatever,” Amara said. “I’m in too.”
Chapter 3
After they’d all said goodbye to Dr. Clark, it was time to take some pictures for Whitney’s Instagram.
Whitney hadn’t meant to join the legions of InstaMoms. But during those first few months, she’d been alone with Hope so often, and the minutes had stretched like one of those scarves a magician pulled from his mouth—on and on and on, endless. (And yet somehow, whenever she actually needed more time for, say, sleeping or leaving the apartment for an appointment, the minutes flew.) At first, she’d taken the pictures to show Grant when he got home from work to keep him updated on what he’d missed out on. She’d nestle against him as he loosened his tie and hold her phone up toward him, scrolling through: Hope’s scrunchy face when she’d just woken up from a nap, looking like a scowling WWE wrestler; Hope learning how to smile, so cute it made Whitney’s insides melty. Grant would say, “She’s a beauty like her mom,” and then ask if she wanted a Barolo or a grenache with dinner.
Then it had been fun to rearrange the setting a little bit, to make sure that Hope was doing tummy time right by a vase of fresh flowers, or to take the photo with a stack of her favorite books in the foreground. Whitney could use up half an hour finding the right light. The photos came out so well that it seemed a shame not to put them on her Instagram. Grant’s sisters would want to see. By that point, she’d stopped showing Grant the pictures. Sometimes, she had a vague sense that he thought of her and Hope as trapped in amber while he was at work and that he didn’t particularly care to see her evidence to the contrary.
And then that time she’d bought those gorgeous matching Mommy-Infant sundresses from Petit Bateau, she had to document that too, setting up a timer out on the balcony, the trees in Central Park drenched in brilliant hues behind them, captioning the photo, “My baby bestie and I aren’t ready to say goodbye to summer!” Initially, she was surprised when people started following and tagging. She was also a tiny bit creeped out. But it felt nice to be seen again. It took off from there.
Mostly, it was a pleasant little hobby. She didn’t have a huge following—she wasn’t about to start going to those seminars on how to “grow your audience,” but she used to work in PR, so she had a few tricks up her sleeve. And it was exciting when some matrix somewhere branded her an “influencer,” and people started sending her things in exchange for a mention. She’d never fully gotten rid of that grasping part of herself that tingled for free stuff.
The Instagram made her happy for another reason too: Hope was so small and unspoiled, and Whitney had been given the awe-inspiring power to shape her. What if she accidentally molded this darling creature into someone less than she had the potential to be? What if Hope grew up less happy, less confident than she could’ve been with a different mother? Every time Whitney posted a picture of her child’s face wrinkled with delight and read the comments about how cute Hope was, she felt that Hope would grow up to be smart and well-adjusted and kind, made up of only the best parts of her parents. According to her social media, Whitney was doing motherhood right.
Because there were endless ways to do motherhood wrong. One could be too indulgent or too withholding. One could work too much or stay home too long. One could be far too lackadaisical or far too anxious. Whitney knew the latter very well. At a doctor’s appointment a few months ago, she’d expressed what she thought was a perfectly normal amount of anxiety to her ob-gyn, and then he’d tried to press a Xanax prescription on her, as if she were a cliché, some bored suburban mom who couldn’t get through the day without a chemical aid. Whitney didn’t need Xanax! Not that she would judge someone who did need it, someone who was actually suffering from postpartum depression. Someone like Joanna.
Oh, Joanna. Whitney had meant to go visit her at some point, maybe bring her a cake from the neighborhood bakery that Joanna had liked so much. Maybe if a doctor had prescribed Joanna Xanax, she would still be sitting in their circle with her wounded, troublesome boy, and no one would have had to get the police involved.
Whitney batted away thoughts of Joanna and handed the camera to Gwen, who had become the playgroup’s go-to photo taker, since she didn’t want pictures of her and Reagan posted on a public forum. She’d told them all a horrible story about a cousin of hers who had posted a few snaps of her kids in the bath together on Facebook—all very innocent. A few weeks later, the cousin was contacted by the FBI because those same darling pictures had shown up on a child porn site. They’d all shuddered, and Whitney hadn’t taken a photo for her account that day. In retrospect, though, it was a little annoying, this tendency of Gwen’s to ruin harmless fun with that holier-than-thou attitude. In truth, Whitney had spent a lot of time lately trying to quit thinking uncharitable thoughts about Gwen. It was absurdly difficult. Since Gwen’s Christmas party, Whitney had entertained multiple daydreams in which Gwen had a psychotic break, severed all ties with loved ones, and moved to a hovel in Lithuania.
Whitney shook her head, lifted up Hope, and popped onto the couch next to Amara. The other mothers played with their babies on the floor in front of them, as Gwen took a few uninspired photos.
Amara was trying to calm a fussing Charlie. She’d been pretty cranky herself during Dr. Clark’s visit. Whitney didn’t blame her for being skeptical. Packaging “wellness” was a white-hot consumer trend, and even for a former publicist like Whitney, it was sometimes hard to separate out the valuable products from the ones expressly designed to prey on the vulnerabilities of young women—or young moms. Perhaps TrueMommy was nothing but a glorified Tupperware party, the latest thing housewives did to pass the time. And Dr. Clark’s promise to feature them in an ad campaign was probably a baited hook designed to get them to sign up for more vitamins. But the science seemed convincing enough—even skeptical Gwen had admitted it!—and Whitney was certain she had experienced a much-needed, all-natural burst of energy since she started taking the bespoke vitamins, in their exquisite suede box. Besides, it was fun—something she and her friends could do together rather than something about which she had to feel ashamed. Take that, Xanax!