Primates of Park Avenue

by Martin,Wednesday

  While I never left Manhattan and did not need to learn a new language, the experiences Malinowski wrote about in his Diary—of exasperation and cultural dislocation—are nevertheless utterly familiar to me. I longed to belong and sometimes intensely resented the people around me who seemed so indifferent, sometimes even contemptuous, of anyone who was not one of them; I felt spurned when my overtures of friendship went unreciprocated and unacknowledged; I experienced a version of culture shock from such novel, unfamiliar surroundings and cultural practices, and from being ignored and on the outside; and I sometimes fought back a petty desire to send up those I sought to understand. Not infrequently, even knowing that the hazing I experienced was not precisely personal, I felt downright hostile about it (“My feeling [about my informants is sometimes] ‘Exterminate the brutes,’ ” Malinowski wrote in a moment of rage). I understood many of these “fieldwork feelings,” every day.

  But the tribe of mommies I had studied and lived among for years ended up surprising me. I cannot recall ever feeling more intensely hazed than I did in the initial months and years of my fieldwork, it is true. But nor had I ever felt more cared for and tended to, more truly befriended, than I did after I lost my unborn daughter, Daphne. The previously implacably Other-seeming other mothers who reached out to me—the ones who had seemed haughty and even heartless, the ones by whom I had felt myself stared down, snickered at, pointedly ignored, and turned into a playdate pariah, the ones who had, themselves, lost or had sisters or friends who had lost—did so with a sense of purpose and dedication and generosity that took me by surprise. Eventually, I think, they forgot what had brought them to me and motivated them to be tender and generous, rather than callous and indifferent and occasionally even nasty, in the first place. And then, they simply continued to be kind. “How did we become friends again? I’m so glad we did . . . I guess it was school?” a shiny-haired friend in Chanel sunglasses reminisced as we lingered on Madison in the sun after coffee one morning. I did not tell her what had brought her to me because we were friends now, and the kernel of the friendship was deep and it seemed a shame to disturb it. I let it be.

  Sometimes, I still meet women with young children on the Upper East Side who are friends of a friend, or on a committee or board with someone I know—a tenuous connection—and they strike me, upon first or second or even third impression, as standoffish or unfriendly. I am no Pollyanna about my species, but now, as I take in the indifference of another mother, or her distraction or harshness, or a dismissive or competitive comment, I have a sense, born of experience, that under dire circumstances I would likely see a better, deeper part of her, and she would see the same in me.

  Primatologist Frans de Waal is at the forefront of the emerging field of animal empathy, which deals not only with primates but also with canines, elephants, and even rodents. All of these mammals, but perhaps especially primates, he explains, “are sensitive to each other’s emotions and react to those in need.” The claim seems modest enough, one de Waal and Jane Goodall and Robert Sapolsky have been making, based on the evidence from their fieldwork, for many years. There are literally thousands of documented cases, de Wall points out, of chimps consoling conspecifics who are upset by hugging and kissing them. Apes “will voluntarily open a door to offer a companion access to food, even if they lose part of it in the process.” Capuchin monkeys will seek rewards for others, coming to prefer, when offered two different tokens, the “pro-social” one, which rewards both the capuchin itself, and its companion. Science is slow to accept anything that smacks of anthropomorphism—projecting our own human traits onto animals—because it seems soft and sentimental and inaccurate.

  Yet it is impossible to ignore the preponderance of evidence suggesting that animals care for one another, often at a cost to themselves. The frozen heart of science is melting when it comes to accepting a “less blood-soaked” version of our evolutionary history (de Waal’s characterization), one that emphasizes how we were shaped by cooperation and compassion as well as violent conflict and indifference. In part this hypothesis about the cooperative origins of humanness stem from watching what nonhuman primates do every day. Yes, chimps can be violently aggressive and are attuned to power in ways that would no doubt elicit the admiration of the most cutthroat Manhattan hedge fund manager. Certain nonhuman primates are virtually Machiavellian, de Waal, observes—he even studied Machiavelli early in his career to better understand the ways the chimps he has observed “schmooze and scheme” and don’t bat an eyelash at killing a rival. Yet they also live in tight communities and may show remarkable care for others, as when a female named Daisy who loved wood shavings hoarded hers—in order to bestow the entire cache upon a sick male named Amos, so he could make the nest where he rested more comfortable. Extrapolating how he might feel from her own feelings—“Love those wood shavings, they’re so comfy!”—she took a personal hit (no wood shavings for her that day or night) in order to ameliorate Amos’s discomfort. This act of altruism was based not on—or not merely on—a calculation of what she stood to gain in return. It was instead motored by a deep sense of empathy. She was, de Waal observed, essentially plumping the pillows of the hospital bed of someone she cared for, knowing it would feel good.

  Why care?

  De Waal suggests that “for mammals, maternal care is the prototypical form of altruism, and template for all the rest.” Gestating a fetus, giving your body (and, as many a human mother can attest, your mind) to something developing within you; then delivering it, lactating in order to nurse it (or otherwise provisioning it), and making it the center of your universe not for hours or days or even weeks but for years—these everyday acts of motherhood blur in fundamental and profound ways the line between self and other, between self-interest and literally exhaustingly comprehensive compassion, empathy, and care for someone else.

  Sarah Hrdy suggests that the origins of empathy, the deep mutual understanding that leads us to do for others as we know we would like others to do for us, even at tremendous cost, lie in not only maternal care, but in cooperative breeding, the “it takes a village” practice and philosophy, mostly just quoted by Hillary Rodham Clinton in the industrialized West, but amply evident still in other cultures, where, as it is said in several West African countries and tongues, “A child has many parents.”

  Hrdy and anthropologist Kristen Hawkes and more recently Katie Hinde have shown that, in de Waal’s words, “the human team spirit started with collective care for [our] young, not just mothers but adults all around.” These adults included men but were mostly, Hawkes and Hinde showed us, other women—kin and the kindly disposed who simply helped out when it was necessary, and who were helped out in turn when they needed it. Science suggests that being a cooperative breeder isn’t just doing good—it also feels good. For de Waal, rhesus monkeys eloquently make the case that maternal care and communal care feel good for those who do it. Every spring, when the rhesus monkeys have babies, juvenile females go nuts trying to lend a hand—and get their hands on them. They stay close by, attentively and tirelessly grooming the mothers of the beguiling infants until mom agrees that the sitter can have a moment with her baby. These sitters snatch the babies with all-consuming zeal, de Waal reports, “turning them upside down to inspect the genitals, licking their faces, grooming them from all sides, and eventually dozing off with the babies firmly clutched in their arms.” This nodding off with the baby happens like clockwork and without exception, “giving the impression that the babysitters are in a trance, or perhaps ecstatic.” Clutching the babies close releases oxytocin in the sitters’ brains and blood, lulling them into a delicious sleep. They invariably rouse after a few minutes in order to return the babies to their mothers.

  Such observations of our nonhuman primate relatives, as well as extensive neuroimaging experiments, have led anthropologist James Rilling to conclude that “we have emotional biases toward cooperation that can only be overcome with effortful cognitive con
trol.” In other words, caring is our first impulse; only our minds stand in the way of doing so every time.

  Our two sons were eventually accepted at schools on the Upper West Side, and with my work and my husband’s, going back and forth from the East Side every day during rush hour seemed like too much to contemplate. We moved across town. Mommies on the West Side are thought to be more casual and friendly and relaxed than East Side mommies, and I have generally found that to be the case. Nobody makes too big a deal about playdates; the kids just sort of tumble over to a nearby playground when school is over. I am rarely charged here; I never feel underdressed. And I live closer to Candace and Lily now.

  Sometimes, though, I miss the immaculateness of the Upper East Side, the sense of safety, its burnished, formal, sedateness. When I want to see my East Side girlfriends, or have an East Side experience—lunch at Sant Ambroeus or a browse at Charlotte Olympia or window-shopping along Madison—it’s relatively quick and easy to pop across the park. Many of my East Side girlfriends have children who attend school on the Upper West Side now, so sometimes we meet on my side of the world, too. Like so many other uptown dwellers, I cross over. But those two places—Upper East and Upper West—do feel very distinct to me still, as they do to most other New Yorkers. I can love and appreciate and embrace the difference, now that I’m no longer in the trenches on the East Side, trying to decode it all and fit in somehow.

  I had to retire my Birkin. In Paris for a vacation, I consulted a doctor in the Sixth about a persistent numbness in my arm. The neurologists I had consulted in New York ruled out the serious things, but had no solution to offer, no root cause to suggest. I was unable to type, which was inconvenient, to say the very least, for a writer. I spent several days of our trip massaging my right forearm and fretting. The chic Parisian doctor sat behind her desk and like a chic Parisian, she took in not just my story of a writer being unable to write but also my outfit, my bag, every part of my outward appearance. Then she spoke in an emphatically French way. She blamed my heavy bag, pronouncing, “It’s zee Birkahn, or zee writing. You shoooze.”

  Lily had twin daughters a year and a half ago, and she named me their godmother. I see the girls almost every Thursday and have taken it as my mission to dote upon and indulge them. They are energetic and curious and beautiful, Lily’s girls, and they are endlessly entertaining. Lily is more a mommy than anyone else I know, better at it and calmer about it than I ever was with only one baby at a time. Sometimes we talk about Flora, and she tells me that it does not get easier, or better, but that often she is happy, and I tell her that I think I understand.

  My sons are big boys now. They can do all the things we so want our children to do in the West—read and write and do math, mostly. I urge them to make their beds, to get off their iPads, to write thank-you notes, to look grown-ups in the eye and speak politely. And then I get lazy about it and let them be. In the summer, we go out to the beach and I watch them swim in the pool and go on the tire swing. I see them come together with other groups of kids, kids they know and don’t know, on the beach and in the neighborhood, as I make chitchat with the mothers and fathers I know and the ones I don’t, taking in the fact that, even in a place as precious and curated as privileged the Upper East Side and its satellite, the East End, childhood can be rambunctious and unplanned and easy, and motherhood can be relatively simple. It can feel good.

  A few times a year my husband and I travel without our boys—to Europe, mostly, and other places his business takes him—and while we are there, I pine for my children. I marvel at how different childhood and motherhood are from continent to continent, town to town, place to place. And how strange and interesting and touching the practices of the tiny tribe on a tiny corner of a tiny island I once studied seem from a distance. I think of the words of Charles Darwin, not the Darwin whose work has been oversimplified and deployed to justify ruthless self-interest and to rationalize the notion of “the selfish gene,” but of Darwin the father, the one who lost three children and mourned them so deeply that he was nearly incapacitated, and who joyfully helped his wife raise seven more to adulthood, and who balanced the work he loved with parenthood, and taught us so much: “The social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.”

  Yes, I was feeling upbeat and compassionate and generous and sympathetic, not to mention good about myself as a mother and a writer, when we found ourselves at a family-friendly party on the immense, immaculate lawn of someone’s immense, immaculate home in the Hamptons not long ago. I had sold a book and delivered the manuscript. There was interest in Hollywood. In the small and gossipy circles I still spent time in, this was news, and people wanted to talk. Much of the talk was good-willed and supportive, the parents of kids my sons knew, people I had come to know through motherhood, expressing the hope that things would work out, that the book would be a success, along with a lot of joking inquiries about whether I would be naming names. As we chatted about that and other things, too, like where our kids were going to school now and how they liked it, my older son came over. He looked flushed and told me under his breath, “Mom, I don’t feel so good.” I turned to touch his forehead—he had a raging fever. “Go sit under that shady tree where nobody else is sitting with this water bottle, and I’ll be right there to take us home, sweetie,” I told him, scanning the party for my husband and our younger son.

  That’s when she materialized before me—the Queen of the Queen Bees, the meanest of the Mean Girl moms. I had done well dodging her for many months, ducking into the stairwell whenever I saw her in the hallway at school, turning to real friends when I saw her at an event, and generally just praying she would pass. Now I made a little gasping noise in spite of myself, hoping she was on her way somewhere else. She didn’t usually bother with me—why bother with someone you don’t notice? Even viewed through the gauzy lens of cooperative breeding and caring, even when I made excuses for her in my mind—she had an eating disorder; her husband apparently cheated on her; it didn’t feel good to be her, even in all her this-season Chanel—she was, to me, beyond hard to take. The recent stories of her nastiness were legion. She told women, in front of their friends, that they were ugly, that they were stupid, that there was something wrong with their children. I thought her a crass bully, and even worse, an empress with no clothes, the Chanel notwithstanding. Because she was so rich and powerful, the people who rolled their eyes behind her back were too petrified to actually confront her about her nasty antics. School administrators looked the other way because she made big contributions. Everyone else took her put-downs meekly and sat at her table at events, hoping for a scrap of I didn’t know what. Business? Money? A ruffle or ribbon of her haute couture?

  “Hi,” she said, sort of looking through me. My mind hopped and skipped. My head bobbled.

  “Oh, sorry, my son is—” I began, rattled, looking wildly from side to side for an escape route. She couldn’t have cared less that I was talking and broke in as if I had no right to respond to her salutation.

  “I heard about your story or book or . . . whatever. What’s it called?” She scanned the lawn for better prospects. I felt my older son touch my elbow.

  I told her the name of the book and turned toward him to reassure him that yes, we were going, right now.

  “That’s a good title,” she said flatly, her gaze alighting indifferently on my son for an instant.

  “Oh thanks, we have to . . .”

  “I guess your publisher gave it to you.” It wasn’t a question. It was an assertion. You can’t possibly have a good title in you, let alone a good book. Etc. I straightened up and turned to face her. She smirked.

  “No, it’s my title,” I said, no doubt stiffly, staring her in the face now. My son coughed. She said, with a sarcastic smile, “Sure it is.” For one second I imagined doing what I had heard a woman who li
ved downtown had done when Queen Bee insulted her little son. She had, the story goes, put her hand on Queen Bee’s shoulders and intoned solemnly, “Nobody. Likes. You.” And then just walked away. She was like Paul Bunyan, this Woman Who Dared, whose legend lived on in song and gossip.

  Now, before I could decide what to say or do, my reverie was broken by my son. As if in slow motion, obediently, after years of training, he was extending his hand toward Alpha Mean Mom, not knowing any better. I imagined myself, again in slow-mo, like an action hero in a movie, jumping across the distance between them, dramatically intercepting his hand and shouting “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” To save another mother from a dreaded beginning-of-school-year cold or fever. To look after her, as those who had shown compassion toward me had done, because she obviously needed it. I saw myself lying on the ground, my dress smeared with dirt and grass stains from my kind and heroic act. Mean Mom looked at me with surprise and gratitude.

  And then it was a normal day on a bright lawn, and I did nothing as she took my son’s hand—limply, with no interest in him. I pulled him away without saying goodbye to her, and gave our hasty thanks to our hosts as I departed, having found my husband and younger son. And I noted with a satisfied smile, as I turned around for one last look at the party, that Queen Bee, who was also leaving, was wiping her eyes and her nose with the very hand she had used to accept my feverishly sick son’s greeting.