Allison Pearson - I Don't Know How She Does It

So, no, Paula is not ideal. But what is ideal? Mummy staying at home and laying down her life for small feet to walk over. Would you do that? Could I do that? You don’t know me very well if you think I could do that.

I GET OUT of the bath, apply some aqueous cream to scaly pink patches on hands, back of knees and ears, wrap myself in a robe and go into the study to check messages before bed.

To: Kate Reddy

From: Jack Abelhammer

Katharine, I don’t remember mentioning drink, but disorderly sounds great. Bed for a week could be a problem: may need to reschedule the diary. Perhaps we should make it an oyster bar?

love Jack

Love? From major client? Oh, God, Kate. Now see what you’ve gone and done.

Cut Ben’s nails, Xmas thank-you letters? also letter bollocking council about failure to remove Christmas tree, humiliate ghastly Guy in front of Rod to show who’s boss, learn to send txt messages, Ben birthday — find Teletubbies cake, present — dancing Tinky Winky or improving wooden toy? Dancing Tinky Winky and improving wooden toy. Emily shoes/schools/teach her to read, call Mum, call Jill Cooper-Clark, must return sister’s call — why Julie sounding so pissed off with me; only person in London not seen brill new film — Magic Tiger, Puffing Dragon? Half term when/what? Invite friends for Sunday lunch. Buy pine nuts and basil to make own pesto, cookery crash course (Leith’s or similar). Summer holiday brochures. Get Jesus an exercise ball. Quote for stair carpet? Lightbulbs, tulips, lip salve, Botox?

7:03 A.M.I am hiding in the downstairs loo with my suitcase to avoid Ben. He is next door in the kitchen, where Richard is giving him breakfast. I am desperate to go in, but tell myself it’s not fair to snatch a few selfish minutes of his company and then leave an inconsolable baby. (The book says children get over Separation Anxiety by two years, but no age limit given for mothers.) Better he doesn’t see me at all. Squatting in here on the laundry basket, I have time to study the room and notice swags of gray fluff drifting down the window, like witch’s curtains. (Our cleaner, Juanita, suffers from vertigo, and quite understandably cannot clean above waist height.) Also the mermaid mosaic splashback was left half-tiled by our builder when we refused to give him any more cash, so is all tits and no tail. In the Bible, Jehovah sent floods and plagues of locusts to punish mankind for their vanity; at the end of the twentieth century, he saves time and sends round a plasterer and a couple of brickies.

Through the closed door I can make out muffled brum-brums, followed by Ben’s gluey Sid James cackle. Rich must be pretending that spoonfuls of Shreddies are advancing cars to get him to open his mouth. A honk from outside announces the arrival of Pegasus.

Am slipping out of my own house like a thief when there is an accusatory “Woo-hoo” from the Volvo parked across the street: Angela Brunt, ringleader of the local Muffia. Face like a Ford Anglia, with protuberant headlamp peepers set in a triangular skull, Angela is heroically plain. It’s barely seven o’clock; what’s she doing out? Probably just back from taking Davina to Pre-Dawn Japanese. Give Angela thirty seconds and she’ll ask me if I’ve got Emily into a school yet.

“Hello, Kate, long time no see. Have you got Emily into a school yet?”

Five seconds! Yes, and Angela has beaten her own world record for Educational Paranoia. Tempted to tell her we’re considering the local state primary. With any luck will induce massive on-the-spot coronary. “I think St. Stephen’s is still a possibility, Angela.”

“Really?” The headlamps do a startled circuit of their sockets. “But how are you going to get her in anywhere decent at eleven? Did you read the inspectors’ latest report on St. Stephen’s?”

“No, I—”

“And you do realize state school pupils are two point four years behind the independent sector after eighteen months, rising to three point two by age nine?”

“Gosh, that does sound bad. Well, Richard and I are going to look round Piper Place, but it sounds a bit pressurized. What I really want is for Emily to — you know — be happy while she’s still so little.”

Angela shies at the word happy like a horse at a rattlesnake. “Well, I know they’ve all got anorexia in the sixth form at Piper Place,” she says brightly, “but they do offer a terrific well-rounded education.”

Great. My daughter will become the world’s first well-rounded anorexic. Admitted to Oxford weighing seventy-five pounds, she will rise from her hospital bed and take a dazzling first in Philosophy. She will then do a job for six years, become a mother, give up work because it’s all too much and spend her mornings in Coffee Republic decoding the entrance requirements for St. Paul’s over skinny lattes with the fluent Japanese-speaking housewife, Davina Brunt. Jesus, what is the matter with these women?

“Sorry, Angela, gotta run. Plane to catch.”

Still struggling to pull the minicab door to on its gouty hinges when Angela fires her parting shot. “Look, Kate, if you’re serious about getting Emily into Piper Place I can give you this psychologist’s number. Everyone’s using him. He’ll coach her to draw the right sort of picture at the interview.”

I take a deep grateful breath of the sweet ganja-rich air in the back of Winston’s cab. It takes me back to mellower days, a time before children, when being irresponsible was almost a duty.

“And what does the right sort of picture look like, Angela?”

The Brunt woman laughs. “Oh, you know, imaginative but not too imaginative.”

GOD, HOW I DESPISE myself after conversations with Angela Brunt. I can feel Angela’s maternal ambition getting into me like a flu bug. You try to fight it, you try to stick with your hunch that your child will do perfectly OK without being force-fed facts like some poor little foie-gras gosling. But one day your immune system’s a bit low and bam! Angela’s in there with her league tables and her average reading scores and her psychologist’s phone number. You know what’s really pathetic? In the end, I’ll probably put Emily down for Anorexia High: fear of what insanely competitive schooling will do to my child is outweighed only by fear of holding her back, of her somehow falling behind and its being my fault. And the race starts earlier every year; there’s actually a kindergarten in our borough with a wall devoted to the Impressionists. The mothers have reluctantly come round to the idea that money can’t buy you love, but they think that money can buy you Monet, and that’s good enough for them.

Exhausted working mothers helplessly enrolling their girls in academies of stress. It’s not the only way, but maybe it’s the only way we understand anymore. Stress. Success. They even rhyme.

9:28 A.M.“What’s that lady’s problem?”

“What?”

Winston is studying me in the rearview mirror. His eyes, so brown they’re almost black, are flecked with laughter.

“Angela? Oh, I don’t know. Urban angst, frustrated woman living vicariously through her kids, insufficient oral sex. The usual.”

Winston’s laugh fills the cab. Deep and grainy, it reverberates in my solar plexus and, just for a moment, calms me.

Traffic on the way to the airport is so heavy I have plenty of time to dwell on the forthcoming ordeal of meeting Abelhammer. When I talked to Rod Task last night he said, “Jack seems pretty excited about meeting you, Katie.”

“That’ll be because of Greenspan’s half percent interest-rate cut,” I improvised. Could hardly tell my boss that I have sent my client e-mail promising disorderly conduct and week in bed, not to mention love and kisses.