It Sells Itself

Scott and I tried to buy a car last weekend, the Acura MDX, which got the highest safety rating in Consumer Reports and has room for three car seats, bless it. We wanted this car bad. And we were well prepared to go head-to-head with the dealer. We looked up the inventory price. I trolled car fanatic chat rooms to get a sense of the going rate for a base model and researched car dealer lingo so I could translate what the salesman was saying when he "talked to his manager." Scott and I practiced our good cop/bad cop routine, with me in the role of bad cop.

As we walked into the show room, I got an excited little flutter in my stomach. When I was a kid, my parents would take us to a used car lot on Memorial Day and tell us it was an amusement park. We totally bought it because there really was a carnival atmosphere: There were giant blow-up clowns waving their empty windsock arms on the roof of the dealership, free popcorn and balloons for the kids, plastic flags in red, white and blue, and men sweating through their polyester three-piece suits as they demonstrated the incredible features of the 1979 Datsun 510 station wagon, replete with wood panels and a carpeted trunk with fresh vacuum lines running across it.

I still love the smell of fresh paint on a tire. And there I was, in a show room on Memorial Day, ready to make a deal and drive that car home today, ladies and gentlemen.

But something was off. There was a noticeable absence of confetti. There weren't even any giant SALE signs painted in fluorescent bubble letters on the dealership windows. And inside, it was as quiet as a museum. We had to ask to see a salesman and when one finally approached us, he did so reticently, as if he thought maybe we were armed.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Don*." (*Not his real name. His real name was Darnell.)

"Hello," Scott said brightly, already playing good cop. "I'm Scott and this is Elise."

"Ffft." I said, dropping a pretend cigarette on the floor and putting it out with my toe.

"Can I help you?" Don asked.

"We'd like to buy an SUV," Scott said.

"Well, we'd like to look at an SUV," I interjected, elbowing Scott in the ribs. "Let's not make this too easy," I muttered under my breath.

"Did you want a new car? Or a used car? We have several 2007s." Don made a lackluster sweep of the showroom with one arm, then dropped his hand to his leg as if he were suddenly very tired.

"Let's look at the 2010s," Scott said. Don pointed to a gleaming black SUV several yards away. "There you go," he said. "Over there."

"Did you want us to know anything about the car?" Scott asked. "Could we look inside?"

Don opened the back door and stood silently next to us.

"How's the trunk space?" I asked.

Don opened the back door.

"Do the seats fold down?" I asked. Don folded down one seat.

"Not a lot of room back here," I frowned.

Don shook his head. "You're right," he said. "You could fit a few suitcases, but you might struggle to fit a stroller too."

"Ummm," said Scott. Clearly, he was having trouble remembering his lines.

"Maybe we should take another look at the Infinity," I prodded. This was part of the act we'd rehearsed just that morning over bagels.

Don's face brightened. "I used to sell Infinities," he said, and whistled. "They're beautiful cars. If you were going to travel any kind of distance, you might be more comfortable in an Infinity."

"Well, maybe we can test drive the Acura?" Scott asked helpfully.

"Is it a problem that we had a few drinks at lunch?" I asked Don, hoping to snap him out of his malaise. Scott struggled to keep a straight face.

"I won't tell if you don't," Don said, shrugging his shoulders. Then he pressed a button on his walkie talkie and asked that the car to be brought to the curb.

He led us to the test drive vehicle, a reddish-brown model. "What do you think of the color?" Don asked.

"I think it looks like someone had a perforated bowel and..." Scott put his hand over my mouth.

"I don't like it either," said Don.

While Scott and I took turns driving and arguing over the radio station, Don sat silently in the back seat. "Handles great!" Scott enthused. "Bad blind spot," I replied. Don said nothing.

When we returned to the show room, Scott bounded out of the car, took Don's hand and said: "Let's make a deal!"

Don led us to a table in the window. He named a price and I showed him an add from an Acura dealer in Brooklyn. "I'm sure we'll match that," said Don.

Don then looked over his shoulder and pushed a document toward me, pointing to the inventory price on a schedule. "You can probably get the car for this," he said.

"We checked the inventory price," I said triumphantly. "I was $800 less than this."

"Well, we recently had an increase in the transfer fees," Don explained. He pulled out a memo stamped "Confidential" to dealers from Acura, advising of an $800 increase in transfer fees.

"Let me leave you two alone to think about it," Don said.

"Let's try to get $1,000 off the inventory price," Scott said.

"I truly think he is already offering us the car at almost no profit to the dealership," I responded. "This guy isn't playing hardball. In fact, I think he wants us to leave."

When Don returned, Scott smiled and seemed to search around his mouth for his tongue. I leaned forward, removed my sunglasses and said dramatically, "We'll take the car today if you can take another thousand off the price."

"Hell, no," Don said. "They won't do that."

"Why don't you ask your manager?" Scott said affably.

Don left and came back a few minutes later. "We can take another $200 off. But that's it."

"We'll have to think about it," Scott said.

Don stood and offered his hand.

"Wait!" I said. "It's May 31st. Aren't you worried about losing your spiff if you don't hit your mark?" I didn't want to leave without showing off the fruits of my research. A spiff is an end-of-month bonus if a car salesman hits his mark or quota.

Don looked at me sadly and shook his head. He didn't even see us out the door.

"Way to go," I said to Scott through gritted teeth. "You had to try to get below invoice. Now Don thinks we're grinders."

"Shut your clam," Scott said. "I know how this works. Don will call us tomorrow and we'll get our car at our price."

I called Scott at his office the next afternoon. "Did Don call? I asked.

"No," said Scott. "But he probably starts his shift at 4."

"I can't believe it," I said. "We are such losers. We were practically begging Don to sell us a car. And now we've blown it. I really wanted that car!" I felt a big whine coming on.

"If he doesn't call tomorrow, we'll go back and offer him another $500," Scott soothed.

"Okay," I said.

"But I'm going to demand that they detail the car first and bring the paperwork to my office by messenger."

"Okay, tough guy," I answered. "And if they won't messenger over the paperwork?"

"If I have to go in there, I'm going to make sure I get a free cup of coffee."

Laundry Fairy, C'est Moi

Scott has been talking about his socks.

First it was: "I'm low on socks."

Then: "Every pair of socks I pull on has a hole in the toe."

And, in a more frantic pitch: "I am running out of socks!"

I have a color-coded rating system modeled after the Homeland Security Threat Level color scheme to help me determine my response level to Scott. This helps me maintain my busy inner life calculating how many pilates classes it takes to counteract the impact of a large serving of Sedutto's Birthday Cake Ice Cream while still maintaining critical communications. Blue means no response is necessary, for things like "what's this thing on the bottom of my foot?" or "we really need to put together a household budget." Yellow requires an elevated response, for things like "does this match?" or "where should we order dinner from?" Orange requires my immediate but brief attention -- things such as "what do you want for your birthday?" or "is the baby too young for Ambesol?" Red should be only used in the extreme case when I absolutely can't miss a word, questions like "will you marry me?" or "is that cab driver texting with the kids in the car?"

Socks are always blue, or so I had thought. Because, truly, why is he bothering me with this? And yet, he persisted, finally bellowing: "I need socks!" with the same urgency as another man might say "He's got a gun!"

"Then get some," I answered calmly. Scott looked at me as if I had just suggested he gather moon rocks. That's when it dawned on me. Scott doesn't know where socks come from.

He had never procured a pair of socks on his own. His mother, Roberta, still brought him socks for special occasions, socks with tiny dreidels on them for Hanukkah or bedecked with little candy canes in a nod to my insistence we celebrate Christmas. Scott still has socks from college with the days of the week on them in faded marker written by his mother.

Then he had his ex-wife, who spun casseroles into socks, or performed whatever alchemy it was that filled the sock drawer.

And now here he was, looking to me to fill the void and go sock-picking.

I looked at him with new eyes. This law firm partner who runs a global litigation department soon won't be able to put on his shoes in the morning absent my intervention. And despite the fact that I had just given up my own fairly lucrative career in the law to stay at home and raise Henry, I had to wonder: How does it feel to be that vulnerable?

You may be asking yourself why Scott doesn't just google "socks" and buy some over the Internet like his three-year-old son would. It's because Scott has never performed a single transaction on the web. He once tried to order movie tickets on line and couldn't follow the prompts unassisted. He can convert zlotys to dollars in his head, but he can't fill out an address screen. He will sprout wings before he has an Amazon password.

Scott is the opposite of an idiot savant. He is brilliant in all ways, except when it comes to the pedestrian things in life, like loading the dishwasher, purchasing socks or googling driving directions. But I have come to realize that these deficits are critical to our relationship, especially as I recreate myself from General Counsel to Domestic Diva. It helps keep us in balance, the yin/yang of our relationship depends upon it. We need each other. I need him to support us financially and rub my feet and he needs me for everything else.

This extends to the children. At eight, Emma is so precocious that if we didn't have a Wii, I think she might seek emancipation and lease herself a studio apartment. I am here to remind her that because she's not allowed to touch the stove or cross the street without holding an adult's hand, she probably wouldn't fare all that well on her own. Quinny is ridiculously handsome. Unlike his father, he knows his way around a computer and I once caught him googling "agent." But as I told him, until he's 100 percent potty-trained, Gap Kids is not going to want him modeling their pants, no matter how cute he looks in them.

And in this way, like Sisyphus, I find meaning in my loading and unloading the dishwasher, meal after meal, day after day, night after night.

Last week, we were going away for the weekend. After I had held the baby football style and rushed like a wide receiver across the length of our apartment gathering snacks and googling driving directions, I found Scott and the children sitting on our bed in their underwear.

"What are you doing?" I asked. "Why aren't you packing?"

"We're waiting for the laundry fairy," Emma said sweetly.

And you know what? They really were.

Rough Justice

Henry has a brother and sister - the progeny of Scott's first marriage - whom he loves with all of his strawberry-sized infant heart. When Scott told Henry that his beloved Emma and Quinny had strep throat, Henry worked his lower lip a few times, then burst into a wail.

"This is incredible!" said Scott, gazing at Henry as if he were a lab specimen. (And truth be told, he kinda was at the beginning. But that's a story for another day.)

"Of course he's upset!" I cried, running to Henry's aid. "There was this article in the Times Magazine about babies - they have real empathy. Quick, you have to make him feel better. Tickle him. Tell him they are going to be fine. He's so sad! Tickee, tickee, tickee!!" I shouted, making Henry cry harder.

"Emma and Quinny are going to be just fine," Scott said calmly, chucking Henry under the chin. Soon, Henry was reassured and back to his happy cooing while Scott did a nose dive into the article, telling me what I had just read for myself: Not only are children less than a year old empathetic, but they have a rudimentary sense of right and wrong. So much so, in fact, that one little baby in an experiment not only punished a mean puppet by taking away his ball, but also whacked him upside the head.

None of this was news to me. Three out of the four of children in my family have a stubborn streak of justice that persists despite all evidence that life just isn't fair. The fourth child is what scientists call an "outlier" for reasons I explain below.

As the eldest of the four, things went fairly smoothly for me until my first brother Christopher arrived on the scene eighteen months after my birth. I never felt particularly competitive with him for my parents' affection, probably because they were in their early twenties and too preoccupied with grad school and playing coed volleyball to pay either one of us much attention.

But then my brother was diagnosed with a rare, stupid disease and had to be in the hospital all the time. That was our first clue that life might not share our fundamental notion of justice.

Our second clue came after Justin was born. Justin was so skinny as a toddler that my mother had to feed him milkshakes for breakfast. While Justin was enjoying a thick, creamy milkshake every morning, Christopher and I were trying to survive on powdered milk and government cheese. When we protested, my mother just said, "Life's not fair. The sooner you learn it, the better."

But our sense of justice persisted, even in the face of our parents' totally unfair treatment. For example, until age 11, I was fine with the fact that all my clothes came from one of two places, the hospital consignment shop where my grandmother volunteered or Sears. After all, my BFF Shawn also wore Toughskins and the occasional plaid leisure suit to school. But then Shawn's father got a gig working construction in Saudi Arabia and suddenly there was money for Calvin Klein jeans. Shawn became an instant celebrity and my first frenemy.

I pleaded with my mother for designer jeans. "Designer jeans are an oxymoron," she said. And, more crushingly: "I am not going to spend $36 on a pair of jeans."

"It's not fair!" I cried. "I am the only girl in the whole sixth grade with knee patches sewn inside her jeans!" My father's response was to write "Jordache" on a piece of duct tape and slap it over my back pocket.

Despite the fact that I had to earn my first pair of Jordache with 36 hours of babysitting, I still clung to the idea that life should be fair. I even became a lawyer. And despite the fact that he spent his childhood outwitting a rare disease and getting blasted with mega doses of chemotherapy and steroids, Christopher also became a lawyer, convinced that justice is out there somewhere.

Then there's Justin, whose very name means "righteous" or "just one." Things slid sharply downhill for Justin after he gained the appropriate amount of milkshake weight. Matthew, the baby, was born, and Justin fell from star-baby to lower-middle-child status.

I called Justin "Justin Martyr" after his forebear (a second century moralist who was ultimately beheaded by the Romans) because Justin never stopped his campaign for "Justice for Justin." Justin always had to sit in the very back of the station wagon over the spare tire, he never got second helpings, and he was the only one of us who had to wear glasses in elementary school. Yet he never succumbed to the idea that life wasn't fair. When things got to be too much for him, he would just pack a jelly and cheese sandwich and a spare pair of underpants in a brown sack and run away to the public library. Once there, he would beg the pretty librarian to adopt him. She would return him to our family and the cycle would continue.

Justin's sense of righteousness persists to this day. Like 99% of the world, he works in an office and like 98% of those people, he would rather be at home. But unlike everyone else, Justin actually did something about it. He complained. So now he gets to work from home when he feels like it. And when he didn't like an overbearing manager sitting next to him, he kvetched until the company relocated the manager to another cubicle farm. Now he won't work weekends because his super-hot girlfriend just moved in with him. With these accommodations, work now seems more fair to Justin.

The rest of us just shake our heads and say, "He must be one hell of a programmer."

Now Matthew, the outlier: Whether Matthew was born with an innate sense of fairness has never been tested because Matthew literally has never had a bad day. Despite the fact - or maybe because - he was the only one of us not breast-fed, Matthew has never been sick. From the time he was born, he was not permitted to cry. One little hiccup from his Cupid's bow lips and the three of us were running to his crib, elbowing one another out of the way to be the first to pick him up.

Today, Matthew is six feet tall, a natural athlete with bright green eyes and blond hair. Taking a break from graduate work in linguistics, he works nine months of the year as a teacher in a cushy private school and spends his summers in Europe. Matthew will send around emails that say things like: "Geez, guys, instead of working this quarter, they want me to go to surf camp in Malibu with a few of the seniors." Matthew is engaged to Anna, a ridiculously beautiful Spanish woman who has a Ph.D. and a family vineyard in the south of Spain. "If we ever get tired of academia," Matthew has said, "maybe we'll just make wine."

I hope that little Henry was born under the same lucky star as his Uncle Matt. Certainly, his brother and sister spoil him with affection, almost knocking each other out to get closest to him. And in his wide-eyed, innocent way, he just seems to expect it.

Another Day, Another Baldwin

You apparently can't swing a baby in this town without hitting a Baldwin brother.

On Saturday night, Scott and I took my parents, who were visiting from Western Maryland, to a French bistro we like in our neighborhood. It being Mother's Day Eve, we brought Henry along and he was snoozing and drooling adorably in the handy little car seat cum stroller we use just for restaurants.

"There are famous people here," said my father, scanning the white table clothes and tuxedoed waiters. "I just don't know who they are."

He was correct on both counts. Alec Baldwin was sitting a few feet from us. My parents were oblivious, never having seen an episode of "30 Rock." This is because (1) the only television they watch are sports and DVDs of "24" and (2) they spend an inordinate amount of time horseback riding and attending turkey fries.

But I was excited - my second Baldwin in a week! The only question was whether he, like his brother Stephen only a few days earlier, would compliment me on my beautiful son. While Alec paid his check, I played it cool, pushing the sleeping Henry with my foot into Alec's path to the door. And sure enough, he stopped and bent over to peer into Henry's stroller where Henry was now grunting and farting the way he always does when trying to regain consciousness. Alec beamed at me. "Congratulations!" he said.

"Two for four!" I shouted back at him, pumping my fist in the air. I was collecting Baldwin compliments they way I used to collect KISS trading cards. I just needed Billie and Daniel and then my collection would be complete.

My parents didn't understand what all the hoopla was about. It is virtually impossible to impress my parents because they are clueless about the important things in life, like celebrities and good restaurants. It is equally impossible to embarrass them.

This is mainly because my father suffers from an affliction that has baffled the experts, but which one intrepid specialist called a "phonemic hole." Simply put, my father lacks the skill most toddlers have to blend sounds into words that make sense. My mother, after more than forty years of marriage, has learned to love him unconditionally and my brothers and I have teased him mercilessly about it. He is a beloved psychologist in my hometown and folks there know about Doctor Jack and his funny way of talking. But to the uninitiated, he comes off like a lunatic.

Thus, "phonemic hole" in my father's mouth becomes "pepperoni roll." Ask him his favorite movie and he'll tell you it's "The Shimshaw Resurrection" -- or "The Shawshank Redemption" to you and me. When he asked the 7-11 clerk if they sold Cardinal Rickenbacker, I was there to translate "Orville Redenbacher" for him.

To understand my father when he speaks requires context and lots of it. Thus, when he called me from the car on the way home from his visit absolutely apoplectic because he left his "story teller machine" at my house, I knew that he meant the CD player he stored in a fanny pack along with several books-on-CD. He was understandably upset because the storyteller machine doubles as a tune-out-my-mother machine and he truly couldn't face life without it. Scott dutifully assured him that he would return it pronto by Non-State Quick Service.

As a result of his illness, my father can't remember anyone's name. Scott's mother's name is Roberta. My father really likes Roberta. Nonetheless, after I offered him a thousand dollars if he could come up with Scott's mother's name, he could only sputter "Rurrr, rurrrr, rurrrrr," like a Model T being cranked. My brothers and I once offered to pool all of our savings and write him a nice fat check if only he could come up with the name of the evil mastermind behind the 9-11 plot. "Osman, Oscar, Ombudsman," my father said, turning purple with effort.

This is mean sport, but especially so because my father subsists on a $5 per day allowance my mother lets him have from his earnings, as if he were a wet brain instead of a Ph.D. with a thriving practice. But he puts up with it because she makes his favorite meals for dinner and reminds him to button the top of his pants.

And I think they really, truly are happy.

Apocalypse Now

My baby turned three months old today. At each month milestone, I have fervently thanked God that my son has survived - never mind that the infant mortality rate in the United States is about 6 per thousand, or less than one percent. If it weren't for my fear of caning, I would relocate Henry to Singapore, where the rate is 2 per thousand.

To say that I am paranoid about Henry's safety is like saying Hitler had a burr in his behind. I quit my job in part because I knew that no one could take care of Henry better that I could - or would - but also because I believe, truly believe, that I am the only person on Earth vigilant enough to keep Henry alive. For example, would your average nanny obsess about the Toyota accelerator issue to the extent that if a Toyota Camry taxi were idling at the crosswalk - and yes, there are plenty of Toyota cabs out there - she would wait until the light changed again before crossing the street with Henry? Would a baby nurse have patrolled the toilets in our apartment during the first few weeks of Henry's existence to ensure that the lids were all down - lest he drown if his father or grandmother accidentally dropped him in the potty? And how was I the only one who could see the airborne carpet fibers floating over the couch, threatening Henry's nascent airways?

I know that somewhere in New York, there is a man who wakes up every morning certain that today is the day his nose will fall off. My anxiety lies somewhere between that guy and the mothers who travel in cabs with their infants without car seats.

I hate that my vivid imagination has been pressed into the service of imagining horrible accidents, terrorist plots and natural disasters. To my magical way of thinking, I believe that if I can imagine a horror, I can prevent it. And I am frustrated that no one else seems to share my level of anxiety and concomitant level of care.

The morning after a car bomb failed to detonate in Times Square, Henry's father Scott and I were going to walk with Henry to the Toys R Us at 44th and Broadway. I hadn't yet seen the papers. Before we left, Scott said casually, "There was a car bomb thingee in Times Square last night. It didn't explode and they don't think it was terrorism."

I lunged for The Post and read that Toys R Us had been evacuated sixteen hours earlier. "Are you insane?" I asked. "And of course this is terrorism. Only a terrorist would drive a smoldering SUV laden with explosives into Times Square and park it in front of The Lion King! Aaargh!"

Later that night, after a visit to FAO Schwartz, Scott tried to put a new crib sheet on the crib mattress. Crib sheets are of course incredibly tight fitting so that they don't come untucked and become a smother hazard. Scott became frustrated with trying to tuck the crib sheet over the mattress and tore the sheet, then left it barely hanging on the edge of one corner of the mattress.

"I am moving to Singapore!" I threatened, not for the first time. This was, after all, the same man who bought a sleep positioner for Henry's crib. Didn't he know that sleep positioners were discouraged by Consumer Reports and the American Academy of Pediatrics? What next, a loaded gun for little Henry to use as a teething ring?

My college roommate used to tell a story about her mother, Glenda, who called her elementary school principal in hysterics because she was pretty sure she forgot to take the rind off the bologna before making her 10-year-old daughter's sandwich. When I worry about how I will raise Henry in New York City without him ever crossing the street or using a public restroom, I think about Glenda. I know I can't be the first mother to wonder whether it would be safe to use a bungee cord to secure a crib sheet, nor will I be the last to cut my child's jelly beans into thirds.

Day One

I had never thought about adding my own wispy vapors of thought to the blogosphere. Blogging was fine, it was just something that other people did, like shopping at Sam's Club or following Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. In fact, until recently, I had never even read a blog. Then my friend Cheryl sent me one she had written about me after I gave birth to Henry. A blog about ME sparked my interest. And it was good. Cheryl is a former sportswriter -- she was a woman in the locker room long before such women (and their stalkers) became ubiquitous -- and now she is a mother of three who keeps a blog to stay sane and help other mothers do the same.

My sister-in-law is a blogger. My best friend now blogs for money. During my maternity leave, I started bumping into lots of mommy bloggers and soon saw that these smart, sassy women were a force to be reckoned with. They are quoted in the Wall Street Journal, they are courted by marketers, they are taste-makers and soothsayers. I realized what mothers around the world knew long before me: If you have a cool blog with decent audience, you get awesome free products and tickets to Oprah events.

So after I decided to leave my job as the lawyer for a media company to focus more time on my family, my next thought was to write a blog about it. I clicked on something that said "start a blog" and got a blank template, like a vacant apartment that I apparently can decorate with gadgets (what are they?) and photos of my family, just like my real apartment.

So, to begin: Today was my first day at home with Henry. Although like any mother of an infant with a lick of sense, we didn't stay home. We walked six miles round trip to have lunch with my friend Theresa at Union Square Cafe. (After three months of maternity leave, I still haven't figured out how to collapse my stroller and take public transportation.) Theresa has managed to raise two boys while making partner at a law firm. In the course of two hours, she spoke authoritatively about insurance law, child birth and real estate - she's like a living, breathing Sunday edition of the Times, but funny.

This being New York, at the end of our lunch, Stephen Baldwin stopped by our table to compliment Henry. I wanted to ask him what he thought about the website that some fellow born-again Christians created to allegedly raise money for him since his faith has hurt his Hollywood prospects - was he embarrassed by it? In fact, can anyone who baptized Spencer Pratt on "I'm A Celebrity, Get me Out of Here" get embarrassed? But it didn't seem the time nor the place. Luckily, the Baldwin brothers are everywhere, so I should get another chance. And I must say, although his hair was a little long for my taste and he was a bit chunky, there is something so compelling about that Baldwin face.

And so I passed my first day as a SAHM walking the length of Manhattan for some good conversation and a hamachi sandwich, trying to get used to being the woman on the sidewalk pushing a stroller -- the one the suits see with a cartoon bubble over her head that reads "Latte, latte, latte."

It is getting late. Henry is asleep in the crook of his father's arm, their heads bent at the same 30-degree angle. I have fed my baby well and kept him safe. It was a good day.