Why, where are you? It’s early out there.
8:24 a.m. (Callie)
At my front door. Went for a run yesterday and now I can’t move.
8:25 a.m. (Quinn)
Why’d you do that?
I contemplate responding to Quinn that she was the one who suggested the best revenge is showing up to Alice’s wedding not giving a shit that Thomas is there. What Quinn doesn’t realize is that in order for me to act like I don’t give a shit, I need to shed the equivalent of two large bags of garden fertilizer. Does walking to my living room count toward the ten thousand steps per day the PDF hanging on my fridge is browbeating me to do every time I reach for a snack? Maybe I should download an app to track that.
“Come on, I can’t have a serious conversation with that blue goo under your eyes.” Quinn points to my patches over FaceTime.
“Okay, but I’m warning you, what’s underneath is scarier.”
“Oh, please, look at these.” Quinn pulls her phone up to her forehead and sighs in defeat against time. I think she’s trying to show me a wrinkle, but she’s failing miserably, compliments of her Japanese and Moroccan heritage or a steady diet of Botox she hasn’t yet copped to.
“While Alice is changing, I have something I want to read you,” Quinn tells me. As she fishes around in her purse, her phone shakes all over the place, treating me to glimpses of the cream velvet, tufted love seat Quinn’s seated on, her mint-green linen skirt, and what I think is a bag of roasted almonds. I guess Quinn got the up-your-protein-in-middle-age memo before I did.
“Here it is!” Found in the depths of her hobo bag, in a eureka moment, Quinn waves a crumpled piece of paper at me. “You gotta listen to this; it’s so good.”
“Today, I’m writing specifically to my mom readers out there. And for those of you who aren’t moms, this is for you to help manage your mom friends and family who, we all know, at times can be annoying as hell, given their penchant to focus solely on their children in lieu of everything else in their lives.
“Here is the hard truth on mothering: God (or whatever higher power you pray to when shit gets real in your universe) did not intend for you to have your eyes on your kids at every soccer practice and game, at every ear-splintering music lesson and recital, nor have youoohingandaahingover every papier-mâché dragon. And you certainly are not required to master new math or chaperone every puppet-show field trip. Your brain and your body were built for more.”
“Who wrote that?” I interrupt Quinn. “I could have used that advice when John and Andrew were playing lacrosse.” I watched my monster boys mow over way too many opposing players, hoping I wasn’t going to have to apologize to other mothers for my sons breaking their kids in half. It was both nerve-racking and monotonous.
“It gets better, let me finish ...”
“Read that last sentence again. You got it? Because I am here to tell you that you truly are meant for more than catering to everyone else but yourself. Your brain is the strongest muscle in your body. Use it. Don’t let it atrophy along with your will to live because you have signed yourself up to bring orange slices and Capri-Suns to another flag football game or dance competition.
“I know what’s coming next. You love being a mom. (Yep, so do I.) Your kids need you. (So do mine.) You are going to tell me that you steal away moments to hop on the elliptical trainer. (Nope, I don’t do that.) Or maybe you get a spray tan to blend in your stretch marks so your husband wants to have sex with you before he leaves for his conference and when he comes home. (Good for you, though once a work trip is enough for me.) But my big question is, the real question is, what are you doing for your brain? How are you staying interested in yourself and interesting to your partner for longer than, I don’t know, it takes him to come?
“Have you heard the adage, ‘Show me a supermodel and I’ll show you a man tired of fucking her?’ That’s because contrary to popular belief, TMZ, and Hugh Hefner, men do like something between the ears as well as between the legs of their women.
“Right now (and I meannow,before anyone asks one more thing of you), go lock yourself in the bathroom and read these three news articles I have curated for you. Your husband can find his own car keys, and the kids won’t die in your absence; it takes more than twenty-four hours to starve. And while you may not have a cocktail party tonight to talk about these hot topics with other grown-ups (and by hot topics I mean geopolitics, not genetically modified snack foods), you can sound damn smart in the checkout line at the grocery store, as well as at your own dinner table.
“Strengthen your brain withMilk—Callie Kingman”
“Do you remember writing that, Callie?”
I shake my head. Quinn doesn’t have to point out to me that I became the absolute worst offender against my own words. We both know I am.
“You are full of spot-on advice and are excellent at culling through all the information garbage out there. You have a knack for finding the best current articles women should read.”
“I don’t even recognize the woman who wrote that.” I had gone from writing a minimum of twenty-five-plus hours a week to not having written more than a to-do list since I shut downMilkall those years ago. Now that I have time to read, I find myself sticking to fiction rather than having to extricate my attention from theTimes,Post, andJournalthe way I used to when I was a news junkie. Dr. Kwan called me out during my checkup for not exercising my body, and here Quinn is, doing the same thing when it comes to my brain. I’m getting it from both ends.
“I recognize her. I’m looking at her. You are the best writer I know, Callie—always have been. God, you used to tear Charles’s and my papers to shreds. We hated you for it, but you turned our C-level efforts into A grades with your skills.”
It’s true—at Princeton I could polish any written work from a five-paragraph essay to a full-blown research paper into prose gold.
“That was back when we all thought what we had to say or create or whatever would mold the social fabric of our time. We all werechoking on our own sense of self-importance, no one more so than me.” I still cringe over my first job interview at CNN. It was on my twenty-third birthday, a week after I had graduated from Columbia School of Journalism. I was asked why I thought I would be a good fit as a low-level assistant producer who would barely be making over minimum wage. With all the confidence I shouldn’t have had, I espoused the myriad ways I thought CNN could improve and how I would systematically, and single-handedly, carry out those changes from my desk chair. Ah, the brazenness of youth.
“As long as I’ve known you, you have been a voracious reader of everything: books, newspapers, magazine articles, our Pop-Tarts boxes. You’ve always had something to say, Callie. You’ve just lost the gumption to say it.” I snicker at the wordgumption, having not heard it in forever. It was a common Southern colloquialism that my college boyfriend, Porter, wielded often in our senior-year seminar on fabled Southern writers such as Faulkner, Du Bois, and Williams. The only actual Southerner around the oval Harkness table, Porter considered himself the resident expert in our heated discussions.
“I haven’t completely lost it. Tell Alice that dress she’s trying on will show sweat stains on the dance floor, and the intricate bodice leans more slutty sequins than classy glass beading. But really, we both know she will look beautiful in every dress; it’s only a matter of degree.”
I point at Alice. Over Quinn’s shoulder is everything that is good about the future. At almost six feet, and most of those inches, legs, Alice towers over her mother. Other than her freckles and dewy skin, there is not much of Quinn in Alice’s face, but there is no doubt she is Charles’s daughter, with her dark skin and wide-set eyes. And like her father, Alice is a master of numbers and a coding marvel. When we talk, I comprehend zero about what she does for work in AI, but I am endlessly proud of her accomplishments.
