Queen of Babble in the Big City Read Free

you two are compatible in the ways that really count.”
    “Like what?” I ask.
    “Oh, you know,” Sarah says vaguely. “If you both like watching TV in the morning, or whatever. Because if one person wants to watch Live with Regis and Kelly in the morning, and the other person needs absolute silence in order to face the day, there can be fights.”
    Wow. I remember how mad Sarah used to get if any of us turned on the TV in the morning. Also, I had no idea Sarah’s husband, Chuck, was a Regis and Kelly fan. No wonder she needed that Kahlúa in her coffee.
    “Besides,” Sarah says, running a finger along the side of what’s left of Maggie’s horse-shaped birthday cake, then sucking off the vanilla icing, “he hasn’t asked you, right? To move in with him?”
    “No,” I say. “He knows Shari and I are getting a place.”
    “I just don’t understand,” Mom says, coming up to the picnic table with a new pitcher of lemonade for the kids, “why you have to move to New York City at all. Why can’t you stay in Ann Arbor, and open a bridal gown refurbishment boutique here?”
    “Because,” I say, explaining for what has to be the thirtieth time alone since I got back from France a few days before. “If I really want to make a go of this, I need to do it in a place where I can have the broadest customer base possible.”
    “Well, I think it’s just silly,” Mom says, plunking down onto the picnic bench beside me. “The competition for affordable apartments and things like appointments to get cable installed in Manhattan are cutthroat. I know. Suzanne Pennebaker’s oldest daughter—you remember her, Sarah, she was in your class. What was her name? Oh, right, Kathy—went to New York to try her hand at acting, and she was back in three months, it was so hard just to find a place to live. What do you think opening your own business is going to be like?”
    I refrain from pointing out to Mom that Kathy Pennebaker also has a narcissistic personality disorder (at least according to Shari, based on the many, many boyfriends Kathy stole from girls we knew around Ann Arbor, then dumped as soon as the thrill of the chase was over). That kind of thing might not have made her too popular in a place like New York, where I understand heterosexual males are in somewhat short supply, and the womenfolk not opposed to using violence to make sure their man stays that way.
    Instead, I say, “I’m going to start out small. I’m going to get a jobin a vintage clothes shop, or something, and get to know my way around the New York City vintage clothing scene, save my money…and then open my own shop, maybe on the Lower East Side, where rents are cheap.”
    Well, cheaper.
    Mom says, “What money? You aren’t going to have any money left, once you’ve paid your eleven hundred dollars a month just for your apartment.”
    I say, “My rent isn’t going to be that much, because I’ll be splitting it with Shari.”
    “A studio—that is an apartment with no bedroom, just a single open space—costs two grand a month in Manhattan,” Mom goes on. “You have to share it with multiple roommates. That’s what Suzanne Pennebaker says.”
    Sarah nods. She knows about Kathy’s boyfriend-stealing habit, too, which would have made getting along with roommates, at least of the female variety, difficult. “That’s what they said on The View, too.”
    But I don’t care what anyone in my family says. I am going to find a way to open my own shop somehow. Even if I have to live in Brooklyn. I hear it’s very avant-garde there. All the really artistic people live there or in Queens, on account of being priced out of Manhattan by all the investment bankers.
    “Remind me,” Rose says, as she comes back to the picnic table, “never to let Angelo be in charge of the birthday-party planning again.”
    We look over and see that her husband is back on his feet, but limping painfully toward Mom and Dad’s back deck.
    “Never mind me,” he