Nursery Crimes by Ayelet Waldman Page A

moments with me while I model those outfits. It’s hard enough for me to look like a grown-up, since I’m only five feet tall. With my width fast approaching the same dimensions as my height and my face assuming the proportions of the moon, the last thing I needed was a frill on the collar of a pastel blue ruffled smock.
    I’d stocked my closet with black leggings and oversized shirts in neutral colors. Each day I resolutely tried to find a new and interesting combination. Raiding Peter’s wardrobe helped alleviate the monotony, but that was becoming less of an option as I slowly but surely inched up toward and, horrifyingly, past his weight. I was outgrowing his clothes as fast as I had outgrown my own.
    Tonight I was determined to look decent. Peter and I were going to a movie premiere. We didn’t often get invited to these Hollywood events. We’re not exactly A-list material. However, the producer who’d optioned Peter’s latest script had just released a new film, a typical shoot-’em-up action movie starring a taciturn, kickboxing Swede who made Steven Seagal look like a candidate for the Royal Shakespeare Company. While the movie was bound to be both jarringly loud and earth-shakinglydull, I was looking forward to the premiere hoopla. It had been quite some time since I’d hobnobbed with Hollywood’s elite.
    I dragged on a pair of my ubiquitous black leggings, hauled them up over my belly, and confronted my closet yet again. A flash of sequins caught my eye. There, in the back of my closet, lurked a seemingly ill-advised purchase, a sequined shirt of clingy spandex in a deep, shining green. I’d bought it years ago when I went through a brief club-hopping phase. I used to wear it tucked into that leather skirt. I pulled the shirt over my head and snapped it down over my bulging belly.
    There are, I believe, two ways to dress when pregnant. One possible avenue hides the belly under loose, smocklike tunics. It is the more obvious choice. The second celebrates the size of the belly, calling attention to its contents. Green sequins drawn tight enough to see the outlines of my navel fall squarely into the latter category. It was a risk, but I have to say it worked.
    I made up my eyes elaborately and chose a dark red lipstick. I jammed my puffy feet into open-toed platform sandals and waddled into the bathroom.
    “So? Whaddya think?” I asked in my best Jewish-princess-from-Long Island voice.
    Ruby was sitting in the tub, her hair full of shampoo and pulled into triceratops horns at the top of her head. Peter sat on the floor next to her, attacking her with a three-inch, blue
T. Rex
figurine. They turned to look at me.
    “Wow, Mama, you look so fancy!” Ruby said, smiling.
    “Wow, Mama, you look so sexy!” Peter said, leering.
    My two loves, each with trashier taste than the other.
    “Do I look good enough for Hollywood?”
    “You look good enough to eat,” Peter said, grabbing a fistful of my rear end and squeezing.

    A NDREA , Ruby’s anorexic baby-sitter, showed up on time for once. As usual she had brought a Tupperware container full of carrot sticks and celery stalks. I’d long ago gotten over asking her to help herself to the food in our kitchen. For a while I’d even provided her with her favorite veggies, but to no avail. She always brought and ate her own. It was as if she thought our carrots had soaked up extra calories by virtue of their presence in our fat-polluted fridge. Like the bacon was secretly rubbing itself on them when the door was closed.
    Eating disorders aside, Andrea was a great sitter, responsible and creative. Ruby loved her. They were playing a round of Candyland as we left, and Ruby didn’t even look up to say good-bye.
    Peter parked the car as close as he could to the movie theater, but it was almost a ten-minute walk before we arrived at the edges of the bleachers that had been set up for the Swede’s adoring fans. By that time I was limping in my platform shoes and