Interstitial #4
the farm. She had nearly a million and a half followers. In April she caught the big kahuna. New York Magazine was going to write an article featuring five tradwives, and Natalie was one. In late May they sent a reporter and a photographer.
The reporter was a sardonic twentysomething with a Brooklyn address, baggy jeans, and vintage brown boots she didn’t want
to get dirty. (Natalie offered her muck boots.) The photographer took pictures at milking time, pictures of the baby-blue
stove, pictures of Evangeline and Scarlett doing schoolwork at the farmhouse table.
The reporter wanted to see Natalie’s closet, which was not as strange a request as it might seem because Natalie often posted
photos of her closet. It was full of flowered material and linens, and, yes, gingham. (She’d bought the gingham as a lark
but it turned out she actually looked pretty good in it: #goodingingham.)
“When did you decide to become a tradwife?” the reporter asked her, when they sat at the farmhouse table with cups of tea and Natalie’s famous peanut butter cookies.
“I didn’t decide to be,” Natalie corrected. “It’s a hashtag, yes, but this is who I am. It’s my most authentic self.” She
smiled a soft, feminine smile, like a woman in a vintage Summer’s Eve commercial she had once seen on YouTube. She spread
her arms wide to include the whole of the valley, and the mountains beyond.
Then Austin came in from the barn. Natalie hadn’t planned on Austin being part of the interview; the photographer had gotten
a photo of him and Natalie and the kids. He’d played his part. But Austin loved those peanut butter cookies. He sat down.
“What do you think of all of this?” the reporter asked Austin. “This tradwife empire.”
Natalie saw Austin look uncertain, the half-bitten cookie in his hand. Austin has many, many positive qualities, but “polished”
isn’t one of them. Austin said, “I like . . .” He paused, and Natalie’s palms started to sweat. Truth be told, Austin doesn’t love the social media empire. He accepts it because it’s important to Natalie, and because he loves his family, and because
it provides income that feeds his true love: the farm. “I like all the things that Natalie does for me,” he said, smiling
his big, goofy, sunny smile. “I love these cookies.”
Natalie tried to kick him under the table; his leg was too far away. “All of the things I do for the family, you mean,” corrected
Natalie.
“Sure,” said Austin affably. “Same thing. I love being together in our lives. I love the family we’ve created. We’re still
creating. If I could have Natalie barefoot and pregnant forever, I would.” He winked.
“He’s kidding, obviously,” said Natalie. She sent Austin a murderous glance. She knew this was an example of Austin’s offbeat sense of humor, but how was anybody else going to know that if the reporter didn’t understand it? Then she saw the gleam in the reporter’s eyes. The damage was done.
“You have a degree in women’s studies from Wesleyan University, is that right?” asked the reporter. She had changed out of
the muck boots in the mudroom and was back in her Brooklyn boots. She tapped the heel of one against the toe of the other.
“I have a double major in psychology and Gender and Sexuality, with a minor in data analysis,” said Natalie, sitting up straight.
It felt good to say that again, because sometimes she forgot. “I worked for a wearable-tech start-up in Boston before we moved
here.”
“Interesting! Why’d you leave that job?”
What Austin probably meant to say was We decided together to make a big life change. But what he actually said was “She left for me.” That part was in the article too.
“Oh my god, Natalie,” says Jordan now. “Barefoot and pregnant? Why would he say something like that?”
“He didn’t mean it in a bad way.”
“Is there a good way to mean it?”
“He was joking,” says Natalie. “It was part of a bigger thought, but the reporter only took what she wanted. You know Austin! He’s a goofball.
He didn’t mean anything by it. He was just supposed to look good in the photos. He went off script.”
“I’ll say,” says Jordan. “Wow. They made it the caption.”
“And the pull quote,” says Natalie miserably.
“There are thousands of comments on this article.” Jordan clicks on one. She cringes. Another. She shudders. On and on they
go, and on and on and on. “You could spend days inside the comments section.”
“But you’ve seen worse, right?” Natalie is desperate now, desperate for her sister to make her feel better. “You’ve seen some
really bad stuff, and you’ve fixed it.”
“I’ve seen some things,” says Jordan, her expression unreadable.
“You have to help me, Jordan. I can’t have this happen.”
“You can’t have what, exactly, happen?”
“This.” She gestures toward the phone. “Any of it.” Jordan is still looking through the comments. “I can’t have the wave of public
opinion turn against me. I can’t lose all of my sponsorships. Please, help me.”
Instead of saying what Natalie wants her to say, which is of course I’ll help you, Jordan asks, “What did Austin say?”
Natalie crosses her arms. “We haven’t had a chance to talk it through. But I’m sure he’d say I’m overreacting.”
Jordan blows out a puff of air that, if it were 2004, the year of Jordan’s Bad Bangs, would have raised said bangs and settled
them back down. “I think you need to figure out what he was doing, Natalie. I think that’s your first step, before you figure
out how to handle it.”
“I told you! He was joking. He made a bad joke.”
“I don’t know, Nat,” she says. “This seems bigger than a joke. This seems like—I mean, is this really what he thinks, maybe?
And that’s the real issue?”
Natalie’s ire rises as swiftly as a river with a broken dam. “Oh my god, Jordan. Are you serious right now?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s not what he thinks.”
“If you say so.”
“So you’ll help me, right?”
Jordan says, “I don’t think I can.”
For what is probably the one time in the history of the universe, the second half of the ride to Logan is smooth as whipped butter, and Mae and Leo are at the arrivals pickup area well ahead of time.
She chooses a spot that she hopes is out of view of airport security (those guys are famously scary), unloads Leo from the car, and takes him through his warm-up exercises.
Leo does beautifully, considering this is a new and potentially stressful environment with all manner of people coming in
and out of the doors. A wheelchair, a woman on crutches, small, shrieking children, rumbling luggage carts. Through all of
this, Leo keeps his attention on Mae. He’s amazing! Should she record? Hal should see this. There’s nowhere to prop her phone
that makes sense but she does her best to hold it in one hand and capture the highlights. Good boy, Leo.
But.
After that.
It’s while she’s trying to manage the phone and the treat pouch and the leash that she takes her eye off the environment.
(“Never, ever take your eyes off the environment.” —Hal Miller.) This means that Leo sees a small white fluffball about thirty
feet away before Mae does, and by the time Mae clocks it Leo is deep into his reaction. Like, really deep.
He stiffens. He looks like he wants to murder Fluffball. He lunges, pulling so hard on the leash that it takes every ounce
of Mae’s strength to hold him back; there is a split second when she thinks he might actually pull her over. People are staring.
Children are backing away.
“Sheeee-it,” says a bystander.
Fluffball’s owner is a man a little younger than Calvin. He scoops up Fluffball and backs away, yelling, “You shouldn’t have
a dog like that out in public!”
Mae’s face is flaming. Her heart is beating so fast she feels like she just hiked Gregory Canyon to the Amphitheater, one
of Boulder’s hardest hikes. She starts to say I’m just— but the man yells, “Security!” so loud that her voice is drowned out.
Mae blocks Leo’s sight line with her body and gets him back into the car as swiftly as possible. He’s over the threshold now; all she can do is remove him from the situation and allow him to calm down.
Mae gets in the back seat with Leo, locks the doors, and puts up the windows except for a three-inch gap. Leo’s paws are scrabbling
at the windows. He barks and whines until the other dog is completely out of his sight. His tongue is long, and his breathing
is frantic. It takes a long time for it to become un-frantic. She waits, and when Leo’s breathing starts to slow she strokes
him along his side until his tongue returns to his mouth, until his heartbeat slows. Finally, hers does too.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” she whispers. “That was my fault. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m the worst.” She feels terrible. She should
never have trusted herself to take on a board-and-train. She’s not ready. She’s twenty-nine years old, and she’s not ready
for anything. She has nothing to show for the seven years between college and now. No home, no money, no real job, no prospects.
No partner. No mom.
She breathes in and out, but when she exhales what comes out is not a breath but a shuddering sob. Suddenly she’s ugly crying,
and she can’t stop. Mae is wearing a tank top, so she doesn’t even have a sleeve with which to stem the flow of tears. She
rummages on the floor, and under the driver’s seat she finds a napkin from In-N-Out Burger. It’s hard to tell if the napkin
is actively dirty or merely crumpled, but it will have to do.
She blows her nose exuberantly. Theresa used to tell Mae she could summon the angels from the gates of heaven with how loudly
she blew her nose, and remembering this almost makes her cry harder. It was a funny expression for somebody who never went
to church.