How to Be a Grown-up Read Online Free

birthday and would always be the youngest in her class, and then—poof—back to her glamorous life of shaking down the rich and famous for cash.
    “Okay, guys, go kiss Daddy good-bye and we’ll meet by the door.” Despite his promise of a family drop-off, he was still sleeping it off.
    I grabbed my purse from the front hall bench and checked my reflection. This had been an aging week. In my opinion, aging happens in bursts, like how presidents go gray overnight. I’d been treading water for about eighteen months, but suddenly the lines around my mouth were deeper. This is when Jessica would say, Because you smiled so much with the kids all summer . She was an optimist.
    I did a quick spin to check my profile. While I, like pretty much all other New York moms, had kept my figure through a steady program of stroller pushing and subway-stair navigating, I knew if I lifted my blouse, the ravages of two pregnancies were memorialized around my belly button. Some days I’d like to grab my thirty-year-old self and scream, Do not eat a single salad, do not waste a second worrying about your butt or your imaginary cellulite! You are firm! Your nipples face upward, and your vagina is like a vise! Go forth and be naked in confidence!
    I sighed and put my bag on my shoulder.
    “Daddy, Daddy, look, I have pwincess undies!” From the hall I could hear Blake laughing.
    “Let’s not let everybody at school know about how cool your undies are—not on the first day.”
    “Okay.”
    He chatted effortlessly with the kids for a few minutes, reassuring Maya and pumping up Wynn, while I stared at the pinstripe wallpaper we had hung together when Wynn was still in his bouncer. I was about to call out to keep them moving when Wynn asked, “You want to say good-bye to Mom?”
    “Already did, buddy. You guys get going.” Huh.
    “Okay, it’s eight o’clock,” I shouted. “Everyone grab your backpacks!”

    We could never tell anyone at school that we had trouble with the bus—or waited for the train—because technically we were supposed to live within walking distance.
    While the area around Columbus Circle had been populated with oligarchs, none of them were sending their kids to the Hell’s Kitchen public schools, which remained sketchy at best. So I held onto and sublet the lease to my old studio to secure them spots in the coveted zone for PS 87. A major no-no. But with private school tuition hovering around the $40,000 a year mark, so worth the risk.
    And if I ever told my parents those numbers, they would have driven down and forcibly taken me home to Oneonta—where my brother and his wife were happily sprawled in 3,000 square feet, a decent school was a given, and having a car wasn’t more work than having a dog.
    Wynn, who’d been very quiet on the walk, suddenly clutched my hand. “This is my last first day.”
    “Here, yes, but I promise you have so many firsts coming up in your life, buddy.”
    “But I like it here. I don’t want to leave.” We were about to run the middle school admissions gauntlet, which was supposedly more confusing and stressful than applying to college. “But you’re a fifth-grade senior! You’re gonna rule the school!”
    Wynn spotted his best friend, and they ran in together, leaving me to focus on getting Maya situated. I kissed the top of her lovely head and then had to extricate myself. Not from Maya, who was already ambitiously building a Hello Kitty out of blocks, but from the other mothers.
    The mom scene at PS 87 was sharply divided into two factions—and I knew what they said about each other because I’d been on both sides. When Wynn was born, I tried to keep working, but the challenge of being freelance was that jobs would come up at the last minute, or change dates, or be in Miami and just when Blake would say, “No sweat, I’ve got you covered,” he’d get an audition and we’d fight over which was more important: my paltry day rate or the chance of Blake booking a