Didn't I Feed You Yesterday__ A Mother's Guide to Sanity in Stilettos - Laura Bennett [25]
On day two of the Every Woman challenge, we all went to Tavern on the Green as a special treat for the mothers and sisters before they would be completely humiliated on the runway the next day. My mother and I were standing on the brunch buffet line as Michael Kors approached with his mother.
“Mom,” he said, “this is Laura and she has five children!” Being an only child, Michael is fascinated by my brood and always introduces me this way.
“Well, I’m actually working on number six,” I said, patting my belly. It just slipped out. I had no problem telling a complete stranger I was pregnant, or springing it on the entire production team in such an offhand way, but I had completely forgotten that my mother was standing next to me and that I hadn’t yet taken the time to tell her. She stared at me, mouth agape, and took a few seconds to regain her composure.
“What?” she finally managed to croak out. “Oh, Laura. You are not serious!”
By her shock and awe you would have thought I was an unwed teenager under her parents’ roof. I’m not sure whether she was horrified about me having yet another baby or about the way she found out, but it made great television. It was just about then, I later learned, that the producers started referring to me as the “story line.”
MY PERSONAL LEAST FAVORITE PART OF THE SHOW WAS FLYING TO Paris. Under any other circumstances, I would have been thrilled to have a first-class ticket to Paris. Everyone else was so excited, I’m sure I looked like an ingrate, but it just felt wrong not to tell my husband I was leaving the country. And, let’s face it, flying over the ocean is no treat when you’re forty-two and pregnant. I think I left my ankles someplace over Iceland. Once we were in the City of Lights, it wasn’t like we could pop open the champagne and enjoy a sidewalk café, two of the best parts of any trip to France. In fact, we spent the entire time indoors, in an unair-conditioned space, during an intense heat wave. Poor Angela, who was by far the most excited to go to Paris, was eliminated practically as soon as she exited customs and had to turn back around.
Our challenge was to make a haute couture outfit, which was then featured on a canal boat on the Seine, the only time we were let out of our dank cave. My dress looked great on the boat, but the starched frill collar apparently soaked up the humid air off the river; by the time it got across the ocean and onto the elimination runway in New York, I was shocked to find myself at the bottom of the group. My dress had been well received in Paris, and it didn’t occur to me that the damage done during transport was that significant. Thank God Vincent made an awful upholstery fabric dress that sent him packing; it would have been embarrassing to be sent home with that still up there on the runway.
A couple of challenges later, I made it into the final four, and we were all let out of our prisons for two months to toil on our collections. Thrilled to be out of the company of my captors, I headed straight for Peter’s office. I wanted to see him the most. The entire time I was sequestered, people would ask, “Don’t you miss your kids?” “Sure, but I miss my husband more” was always my answer. I mean, I knew him first, and he is the person with whom I share the events of my day, the one who helps me solve the problems that overwhelm me. He is the only person who will tell me if my butt looks big. I need him. He had no idea we were being released, so he was considerably surprised to see me waddle into his office. He walked my bloated and exhausted body home and on the way revealed to me that though he didn’t know everything, he did know quite a bit of what I had been through. He had found a connection. Manhattan is an island after all. Your brother-in-law’s housekeeper’s sister may be a ticket agent at Delta, or the lady who owns your dry cleaner’s ex-husband is the security guard at Parsons. I’m not sure exactly