But on the morning of her last talk in New York City—she was speaking on a panel at an event called Small Business Femme—Alix decided, in a quick and incomplete thought, to not use her breast pump. She called one of her interns in, the one with the most babysitting experience, and said, “How would you feel about having Briar on your lap during the panel?”
On a stage in a SoHo theater space, Alix positioned herself between two male panel members, a podcast host and a reality TV show father who had quintuplet girls. Seated across from a crowd of three hundred, the panel discussed reproductive care and empowering books for girls as Alix’s breasts—particularly the left one—ached with expansion. Finally, after the audience laughed at a joke made by the host, Briar stirred and opened her eyes.
Briar hummed and asked why Mama was up there and if the intern had any Cheerios and if she could get down. Alix held a finger to her lips toward her daughter in the front row. Her intern motioned to the door and mouthed, You want me to take her out? Alix shook her head. She waited until she was asked another question.
“I think that women are often just asking for a seat at the table,” Alix said. The microphone attached at her collar bounced her voice to the back of the house. “But what’s heard is ‘I want special treatment,’ when that’s not the case. And the fact that . . . Actually?” Alix’s heart raced as she pushed forward. “I’m sorry to interrupt myself and the conversation.” Was she really doing this? Yes, she told herself. Yes she was. “I have a lot more to say on this topic, but my daughter is the very fussy person in the front row because she took a very long nap, and if it’s alright with everyone, I’d like to . . . well, I’m not really asking.” She stood and talked with her hands as she made her way to the front of the stage. “I’m going feed my daughter as I participate because I can definitely do both.”
Whoops and cheers went up from the crowd. Alix bent her knees sideways as she reached for Briar, who was immediately met with awwws as she gripped her mother’s neck. “Will you throw me that shirt?” Alix motioned to her intern for the pastel pink T-shirt that had been given to her in a goodie bag. She threw it over her shoulder and walked backstage.
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.