ELICIT COZINESS

Carrie and Mr. Big go to a charity event in an old theater, and they have a beautiful evening. Carrie has her hair done. It seems like she's having to have her hair done all the time now, and when she says to the stylist, "I can't afford to do this," he says, "You can't afford not to."

At dinner, Mr. Big swoops down on the table with his cigar and moves their place cards so they're sitting next to each

other, saying, "I don't care." They hold hands the whole evening, and one of the columnists comes up and says, "Inseparable as always."

They have a good week after that, and then something tweaks in Carrie's brain. Maybe it's because they went to dinner at one of his friends' houses, and there were people there with kids. Carrie rode tiny plastic cars in the street with the kids, and one of the kids kept falling off her car. The parents came out and yelled at their kids to go back in the house. It didn't seem fair, because none of the kids got hurt.

She decides she has to torture Mr. Big again. "Do you think we're close?" she asks just before they're going to sleep.

"Sometimes," Mr. Big says.

"Sometimes isn't enough for me," she says. She continues to bug him until he begs her to let him go to sleep. But when she wakes up early the next morning, the bug is still there.

"Why are you doing this?" Mr. Big asks. "Why can't you think about the good things, like the way we were last week?"

He walks by the bed. "Oooh, look at that sad httle face," he says, which makes her want to kill him.

"I'll talk to you about this later, I promise," Mr. Big says.

"I don't know if there's going to be any 'later, " Carrie says.

Lisa was at a crowded party for a prominent pubhcist (we'll call her Sandy) in a town house in the East 50s. Lisa's husband, a handsome man who is in some kind of business, was in tow. In between sips of a pink margarita, she explained. "When I finally decided to look for someone, I thought about every place I'd ever met a man. It wasn't at Bowery Bar, it was at parties at people's houses. So I really spread the net. I went to every party at anyone's apartment.

"When you meet a guy, my rule is for the first few dates, no big parties. It's suicide. Do not be dressed up. Do not be on. Do not be working it, working the room. Men want to

feel comfort. You must elicit coziness. Talk about the person they are, because most men's self-image is them at fourteen."

Back at her office, Trudie nodded at a large photo on her desk of a curly-haired man leaning against a dune on a beach. "My husband is such a find. He really understands me. When you find the right person, it's so easy. People who have a lot of fights and drama— well, something is wrong. My husband doesn't give me any argument. We never really fight about anything. He is so giving to me 99 percent of the time, on the few occasions when he wants his way, I'll give in."

And then suddenly everything is, weirdly, fine.

Mr. Big calls. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, you know, that thing I do sometimes," Carrie says. "Writing a story."

"About what?"

"Remember how we said that someday we'd move to Colorado

19. Manhattan Psycho Moms Go Gaga for Goo-Goos

Mr. Big calls, only a httle pissed off, from China. He'd sent his luggage via an express delivery service and now it's lost, and he's sitting in his hotel room with only a pair of jeans and a shirt and no clean underwear. "If this happened five years ago, someone would have been fired," he says. "But I've changed. It's the new me. If they can't deal with me in dirty jeans, fuck 'em."

"Guess what?" Carrie says. "Your friend Derrick called. He said Laura is trying to get pregnant and he doesn't want her to, so every night he pretends to come but doesn't, and then he goes into the bathroom and jerks off. And every night she's watching 'You and Your Baby' videos."

"What a wuss," says Mr. Big.

"And he says he can't do it because he's not far enough along in his career to afford a kid."

"And how about you?" Mr. Big asks, in his singsong way.

"Oh, I'm fine," Carrie says darkly. "I think I might be pregnant."

"A baby. We're going to have a baby," says Mr. Big.

Carrie isn't sure what to think.

You see, things happen to people when they have kids in New York. Some parents remain normal. But others, decidedly, do not. They go a little bit crazy. Take all that energy and aggression, those hangups and unresolved issues that go into one's career, and imagine applying them to a child. When it comes to kids, people who were once garden-variety New York City neurotics can become, well, just plain crazy.

That was evidenced immediately when Carrie went to brunch at the SoHo loft of her friends Packard and Amanda Deale. Packard and Amanda (normal) are the parents of Chester, who was marching around the loft banging an umbrella on the floor. One mother (not so normal) couldn't help but point out that he was "parallel-playing and not sharing, but it's okay, because he's only one, and no one expects him to share his toys—yet."

Like most couples who suddenly have children, the Deales have mysteriously taken on a whole new group of friends who also have kids. How does this happen? Did Packard and Amanda meet them at some early-admission nursery school gathering? Or were they always friends who, having kids, kept Amanda and Packard on the back burner until they caught up? The newfound friends include Jodi, who insisted that everyone give her only white baby clothes, because she believes that dye in clothing will cause an allergic reaction on her baby's skin; Suzanne, who won't let her nannies wear perfume because she doesn't want to come home and find her baby smelling of someone else's (cheap) cologne; and Maryanne, who kept firing babysitters, secretly on purpose, until she finally just had to quit her job to take care of the kid.

That kind of behavior is not limited to mothers. After all, isn't there something just a wee bit nutsy about fathers and sons who dress in identical Patagonia jackets with matching Rollerblade helmets? Or the father who, kissing his son repeatedly on the head in between holding his little mitts in his hand and dancing around the child's stroller (if it is possible

for a two year old to look embarrassed, the kid does), explains, "All you have to do is have one of these and then take three or four years off."

Of course, being crazy about your kid and being just plain crazy are two shghtly different things. Taken to extremes, there is only one word for a certain kind of New York parenting: psycho. You don't know who it will strike or what form it will take, but, said Packard, "It's not about love or caring; it's about obsession."

"ALEXANDRA!"

Carrie was sitting on the couch in the loft talking to a woman who appeared fairly ordinary. Becca had straight blond hair and the sort of long, thin nose that makes you think it could suck martinis out of a glass on its own. She'd just moved into a new apartment in the East 70s and was explaining the pros and cons of hiring a decorator—"One friend couldn't get this decorator to stop buying things, it was awful" — when suddenly she was interrupted by a five— year-old girl in a frilly dress and a black ribbon in her hair. "Mommy, I want the tit," demanded the child.

"Alexandra!" (Why is practically every kid named Alexander or Alexandra these days?) Becca said in a stage whisper. "Not now. Go and watch videos."

"But he's having titty milk," said the child, pointing to a woman

who was nursing a baby in the corner.

"He's a baby. A httle bitty baby," said Becca. "You can have juice."

"I don't want juice," Alexandra said. She actually had her hands on her hips.

Becca rolled her eyes. She stood and hauled the httle girl onto her lap. The girl immediately started fussing with her mother's blouse.

"Are you still. . breast feeding?" Carrie asked, as pohtely as possible.

"Sometimes," Becca said. "My husband wanted to have another child right away, and I didn't. It's so much work having a kid in New York. Isn't it, you little monster?" She gazed down at her child, who was now sucking her thumb, staring up at Mother, waiting for the unbuttoning. The child turned to Carrie, fixing her with an evil eye. "Titty milk. Titty milk," she said.

"Come on, Alexandra, I'll take you to the bathroom," said Becca. "We keep meaning to stop this now, don't we?"

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 930