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“Elaborate.”

“On the one hand, I was very proud of Bethany and how hard she’s worked to turn this strangely anachronistic concept into a hip, profitable business. It was really doing well until, you know, the global economy collapsed. I mean, in an age when eight-year-old girls could go to a spa and get a Teeny-Weeny Tweeny Bikini Wax, who knew there’d be a market for girls happy to hang out and have tea parties and get mani-pedis with their moms? Or their grandmothers? But now, well, such luxuries are considered gauche. Which is a shame because working outside the home gave Bethany a sense of purpose and self-confidence that, quite frankly, shocked the hell out of me.”

“How so?”

“I’ll be the first to admit that I always saw my sister as being … well…”

“Shallow?”

“Yeah, shallow. No depth. Talking about the weather could strain the limits of her intellectual terrain. Or so I thought. Because it turns out my sister is perhaps one of the most complicated people I know.”

“Go on.”

“In her adult life, there’s always been a certain duality to her personality. She could be at once completely reasonable and—though this isn’t PC to say, I’m going to say it anyway—like, retarded.”

“Jessica …”

“Hey, I would have apologized before I said that, but I didn’t want to give up a dollar. But seriously, Marcus, I’ve sometimes wondered if there’s an insidious mini– monster virus snacking on her brain cells. Remember the ten-thousand-square-foot biodegradable dot commune? Or when she wanted to hire strippers to sell a product called Donut Ho’s?”

“I see your point.”

“But walking out on G-Money took balls. I was so proud of her. So many of her friends stay in unhappy marriages because they’re so afraid their lives will fall apart. Bethany really saw it as an opportunity to rebuild. And I’ve always admired how she’s raised Marin, now more than ever. Like when she and G-Money were still together, she got a lot of shit from the MILFs—remember the Only the Best MILFs?—for not having another kid.”

“I thought lots of families in the city have only one.”

“Oh no, not in Bethany’s circle, where four is the new two. Or, as I like to put it, four is the new stretch Hummer. It used to be that the poorest families had the most children so they could be put to work on the farm or whatever. But now mass procreation is the must-do. It’s, like, the ultimate marker of economic success and prosperity. ‘Even in a worldwide recession, we can afford private school for four kids! Can you?’”

“That’s messed up.”

“You have no idea. Bethany made it pretty clear that she’s done with one. Marin satisfies all her maternal urges, which has made her a pariah among the MILFs. Like, they cannot understand why she wanted to bother with this business of hers when she got the brown-stone and wife and child support in the settlement to still keep up with everything OTB.”

“Only the Best.”

“Right. Only now in these uncertain financial times, OTB is less ostentatious and more sanctimonious. When the MILFs aren’t bragging about their kids—’Darwin is the only child in his preschool who can request paper, not plastic in six languages’—they’re bitching about them—‘Curie’s orphan obsession has gotten totally out of hand; we have to sponsor yet another starving child from Appalachia’—in a way that’s even more smug and annoying than the in-your-face praise. They don’t seem all that interested in doing or talking about anything else.”

“And Bethany?”

“To my surprise, she’s totally over it. You know what she said to me? That every opening of a Be You Tea Shoppe was like having another kid. And I knew what she meant. That she’s grateful to be a mother and wouldn’t trade Marin for anything else in the world, but was eager—is still eager—to do something else with her life.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I just wish she had chosen an industry that didn’t promote a superficial value system that serves to only undermine her own daughter’s sense of well-being.”

“Don’t most little girls pretend to be grown-ups? Didn’t you