Chapter 30

Claire had expected the photo shoot for the coffee-table book to be legit, but the reality blew her away. On Thursday morning, she showed up at a gray building in SoHo. A freight elevator carried her to a loft with enormous windows, which showed jaw-dropping views of the river on one side and the water towers and rooftops of Manhattan on the other. The walls that weren’t covered in windows were exposed brick, painted white. In the middle of the room, a photographer in slouchy pants consulted with Whitney and a statuesque, authoritative-seeming woman who had to be the brains behind the coffee-table book. In a corner, a wardrobe assistant rifled through a clothing rack full of trendy pieces that even Claire, who knew practically nothing about clothes, felt sure were designer. In the background, a playlist of today’s pop hits boomed from a Bluetooth speaker.

An assistant greeted her like she was someone important, offering her a choice of organic tea, cold brew coffee with almond milk, or fresh squeezed orange juice. (She took the coffee, black.) “If you need to drop your baby off while you get your hair and makeup done,” the assistant said, “we’ve got some child wranglers over there.”

Claire thanked her and made a beeline for the free food. A table in the corner held a collection of trendy branded snacks, most involving chia seeds, dried fruit, and various iterations of kale. Amara stood there, her hair and makeup already done, slumping with exhaustion, scowling down at a quinoa, flaxseed, and almond bar. “God forbid they have bagels or muffins,” she said when she saw Claire.

“God forbid,” Claire said.

“Look, I wanted to apologize again for the other afternoon,” Amara said, looking around and lowering her voice. “It wasn’t very kind of me to call you a child or compare you to a nine-eleven truther or any of those things.”

“It’s okay,” Claire said, shifting uncomfortably.

“I care about you,” Amara said, “and I really appreciate how supportive and helpful you’ve been during this shit storm. I know your emotions were running high, and so were mine, but I’d really like to try to forget about . . . everything, and just get back to normal.”

“I’d like that too,” Claire said, and Amara smiled with relief.

The same assistant from before reappeared to usher Claire over to a makeup chair, where a woman in a black smock stared at her face and then consulted a row of brushes and bottles. Another woman stood behind Claire and combed her fingers through Claire’s hair. A thrum of excitement ran down Claire’s arms. She used to imagine that when Vagabond made it big, she’d go to photo shoots like this all the time, that she’d get so familiar with sitting in a makeup chair and having people stare at her like she was their canvas that it would bore her. Well, maybe Marcus and Marlena and the rest of that gang were sick to death of it by now, but as the makeup woman opened a palette box filled with more colors than in a box of Crayola crayons, and then leaned in close, her soft breath in Claire’s face, Claire felt like she was being turned into a work of art.

In the makeup chair next to her, a high-stakes drama in miniature unfolded, as Meredith begged her makeup artist to try something else to better cover up the outbreak of angry pimples on her chin, and the makeup artist responded that she was doing the best that she possibly could. Claire just closed her eyes and surrendered to the tug on her hair in a straightener, the intimacy of another woman brushing cool liquid foundation onto her cheeks.

When Claire’s hair and makeup were finished, the assistant whisked her over to the clothing rack, where a stylist looked her up and down, her eyes sweeping over Claire’s black cotton T-shirt and old jeans, the corners of her mouth turning down in disapproval. As a wardrobe assistant whirled around, pulling tiny, fluffy accessories for the babies—a headband with a (real?) mink puff on it, a lacy shrug—Claire’s stylist rifled through the rack, pushing aside twill and ruffles, faux-fur jackets and silk dresses, to pull out a pair of indigo skinny jeans that resembled the pair Claire was already wearing, just a million times nicer and more expensive. While the stylist turned back to look for a shirt, Ellie emerged from behind a curtain marking off a changing area, struggling to zip up a pink dress, grunting in frustration as she looked down at her bloated stomach.

The stylist handed Claire a seafoam green silk top that was far more adventurous than anything Claire would’ve ever chosen on her own. Then the woman turned to attend to Ellie’s emergency. “We can safety-pin it in the back,” she said, looking over the pink dress. “We do that all the time for people with more natural bodies.”

Claire cocked an eyebrow at the blouse in her hand, doubting that she could pull it off. But when she tugged it over her head and looked at herself in the full-length mirror, she was almost unrecognizable, sleek and glamorous, her flyaways gone, her eyes larger and more luminous than ever before. The particular green of the blouse set off her skin so that it became a glowing ivory. Wearing this blouse (not a shirt!), she belonged with the playgroup women, not as their employee but as their equal. Stick a baby in her arms, and she could have passed for a rich mom, no problem. It was an odd sensation, as if she weren’t looking into a regular mirror at all but into a mirror that showed you a possible version of your future self.

“You look very nice, Claire,” Gwen said from the side. Gwen, on the other hand, still wore her regular clothes instead of something from the fancy rack, with her hair and makeup done the way she always did them, if maybe a little less impeccably than before they’d all stopped taking their TrueMommy.

“Thanks,” Claire said. The memory of Christopher’s leg brushing against hers under the bar rippled through her, making her flush.

Whitney made her way over to the wardrobe area, her Empire-waisted flower-print dress swirling as she walked. Amara, Meredith, and Vicki trailed behind her. “Ooh, looking beautiful, Claire!” Whitney said, and then turned to the rest of the women, gearing herself up as if she were about to deliver the Bill Pullman speech from Independence Day. “I’m so glad that we’re here together today, despite everything. They’re almost ready to get started. And I know we all may be . . . not feeling our best.”

“Understatement of the century,” Amara said.

“But I think this is a really good opportunity for us all to just have some fun with our friends and our babies. And, hey,” she said, smiling, “worse comes to worst, they can always photoshop the crap out of us.”

“Okay, mommies,” the statuesque woman in charge of it all called out. “Do your final touch-ups, and then we’ll bring the babies in and get going. Thank you for being an inspiration!”

Amara rolled her eyes. “Yes, we are real Oprah Winfreys over here,” she said, as the other women adjusted their hair in the full-length mirror.

Meredith noticed Gwen standing off to the side. “Oh, Gwen,” she said. “Don’t you want to join in?”