Chapter Twenty-One
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Daisy, looking Topanga chic, burns palo santo. Bianca passes around an iPad with a simple nondisclosure agreement to the dozen or so moms gathered for a sound-bowl healing session in the sunken living room. Brit hesitates to sign. “What is that?”
Daisy snaps her head. “Desert sage. It cleanses negativity and promotes healing.” She walks over and embraces Brit, who is thrown by the intimacy.
Daisy is so physical with all of us, and I don’t mean to imply that it’s sexual.
Daisy has always been a toucher, a hugger.
She embraces each new mom who arrives, taking their hands and leading them into the space to show them around.
She strokes the smalls of their backs, French braids their hair as they sit back on the sofa, rubs their temples with sea buckthorn oil as they sit in lotus pose.
That morning, Daisy straddled a barstool in a white cotton sundress while eating a nectarine.
She cut a slice and put it in my mouth. She stroked her hands through her long hair and smiled watching me eat it, then used her thumb to dab some juice from the corner of my mouth.
Daisy is the type of girl who gets vitality from touch.
And yes, looking back, I guess it was a type of seduction.
I welcome the handful of new arrivals and then take Holden downstairs, where Brit and I unpack baby items in adjacent cubbies labeled “Holden” and “Quinn” in animal letters.
To my delight, my baby has actual playmates—a couple of toddlers, a six-month-old, a one-year-old, and a couple of babies of indeterminate age who are wearing Simba costumes, prepping for a Lion King matinee.
I’d consulted Dr. Brooke’s Juju Bean vertical that morning—“Your little explorer is eagerly taking in everything she sees—and trying to make sense of the world!” I lay Holden on his back on a quilted blanket monogrammed with Holden.
When had Daisy done that? He is like the OG infant at the play center.
You want a Sophie giraffe? You gotta go through him.
We may have overestimated the turnout, recruiting five of the management company’s cadre of fully vetted, on-call, bilingual, CPR-certified childcare providers to stay with the babies while parents are upstairs.
Tony D’Nario’s design team had added an entire section on Nordic folklore, driving home the Scandinavian pedagogy theme.
I pull a vegan beanbag next to Holden and lie down with him, showing him a book called The Enchanted Forest that has a sort of Alice in Wonderland meets a Sigur Rós show in Reykjavík aesthetic.
Huldra, a seductress who lives in a forest, was said to lure men with her long cow’s tail, which she hides under her skirt.
“ ‘If she gets married and has a family, her tail falls off and she becomes human…’ That’s weird.
Should we find another one?” He gives what I interpret as a little nod.
I crawl back over to the bookshelves and choose a board book about a girl named Silly Sally who goes to town, “walking backwards, upside down.” And that is how I feel, in the sunny play space.
Upside down. On the other side of the days we used to spend alone, the two of us, wandering the city, strays on the wrong side of every door.
Holden’s eyes are getting heavy—Alice sinking into the wonderland of a midmorning nap.
I place him in an Ubabub Pod and press a button to lower the shades.
A planetarium of stars appears on the ceiling, the light hum of Mozart, a significant improvement on the power saws next door.
One of the caregivers enters, stealth in house slippers.
“You go on upstairs,” she says, softly touching my shoulder.
She tells me I can watch everything on the baby monitor she’s connected to my BabySense Smart Monitor app, which is much more state-of-the-art and accurate than the Owlet.
It’s the first time in his little life that I’ve felt like it was okay—maybe even better for him?
—to be more than a few feet away from Holden.
The first-time warnings about electrical outlets and honey and mold spores don’t flash through my mind.
I feel confident they have the number for Poison Control. “He’ll be fine,” she says.
—
I get on the elevator to head back upstairs.
Another mom, who’s just dropped her toddler off for ballet in the ball pit, gets on with me.
I feel her eyes looking up at the security camera tucked in the corner, staring down at us.
She has smudged glasses and a blazer pulled tight over a crumpled blouse with a coffee stain.
She puts AirPods in and at first I think she is talking on the phone when she asks, “So, what is this place?” She pops out an AirPod. “Hello? That was a question.”
“Oh. Hey. Yeah. It’s a Park Avenue interactive wellness and play center.” Stick to the literature and then pivot—“How old is your baby?”
“Thirty-one months.”
I grin, wanting to reply, “You can just say he’s two and a half, sweetie.”
She asks again, “But, like, what is it? Do you actually know?”
I recite the mission. “Well, I think it’s just a place for your baby to have fun and learn in an experimental play environment, and we can do self-care, you know, recharge and relax. It’s what they do in Scandinavia.”
“Have you been?”
“I come here every day.”
“No, Scandinavia.”
“Oh. No. But we read Nordic fairy tales.”
“My partner is Finnish. They don’t have anything like this.”
“Huh.” Why is this elevator so slow? I remember it being a glass-enclosed bottle rocket. The silence is suffocating. I stare at the numbers. Twenty-fifth floor…twenty-sixth floor…“Well, I love it here. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without this space. Daisy saved me.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s nice.” She guesses it’s nice?
It’s not a Hallmark card or an edible arrangement.
It’s one of the most expensive condos in the city.
It has a Roy Lichtenstein and a La Marzocco espresso maker.
It’s more than nice, lady. I feel myself getting defensive. After all Daisy has done for you…
“I heard a story on NPR about how these buildings are all owned by Qataris and Venezuelan drug lords and they’re just used to launder money.”
“That’s kind of racist of NPR, don’t you think?”
“Are you calling Ayesha Rascoe racist?”
How long is this elevator ride? “Maybe don’t overthink it? Just enjoy it?” But I can tell she is the type of mother who thinks a lot about everything. She never lost her mind, never had entire conversations with a Munchkin 59S Mini Sterilizer. The elevator doors finally open.
“And who is this Daisy person?”
I am losing my patience. She can piss at a Panera Bread in Times Square for all I care. I get off the elevator and look at her, holding the door open with my foot. “Daisy is our fairy fucking godmother, lady…Enjoy! Be sure to tell your friends!”
Three weeks later, the place is packed.