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are like sixty years old!”
    “Um, babe?”
    “What?”
    “Catherine Zeta-Jones. Married to Michael Douglas.”
    “Oh. Right. Still . . .”
    “It’s unfair,” Peter said. “But that’s Hollywood. Just be grateful you’re not in the business.”
    “Poor Alicia. It doesn’t look like she was in the business anymore, either.”

Four
    “I want a hard-boiled egg. And a Tab,” Ruby said.
    “And what?” I was pouring breakfast cereal into bowls, tying Isaac’s shoes, and carefully padding Ruby’s class project, a diorama of her grandfather on skis (long story), with wadded paper towels so that it wouldn’t get crushed in transit to school. All at the same time.
    “A Tab.”
    “A tab of what?” I asked, wondering if it was really possible that LSD had made it to the first grade set.
    “A Tab of soda.”
    “Ruby!” I said, more sharply than I should have. “Speak English.”
    “I am!” she yowled in righteous indignation. “I do not want cereal! Cereal is yucky! I want a Tab soda and a hard-boiled egg!”
    I dropped Isaac’s foot, carefully set the shoebox diorama down on the counter, and turned to my daughter, doing mybest not to yell. “A
diet soda?
” I said through gritted teeth.
    “Yes. Milk is sugary. And sugar makes you fat. And cereal is just stretch, and stretch makes you fat, too. I want an egg, and Tab.”
    “First of all, it’s starch, not stretch, and second of all, how do you even know what Tab is?”
    “It’s the best diet soda. Better than
Diet Coke.
Madison says so. Madison’s mommy lets
her
have it. She buys it at a special store. A store for skinny women.” She paused and looked at me critically. “I don’t think you’ve ever been there.”
    I counted silently to ten, poured milk into the two cereal bowls, and set them in front of my children. Isaac picked up his spoon and began eating. Ruby scowled down at the little yellow balls bobbing in the milk.
    “Eat,” I said.
    She rolled her eyes at me.
    “Now.”
    “Whatever,” she said, and lifted her spoon to her lips.
    I sat down at the table next to her. “Honey, what’s going on with you? Why are you thinking so much about diet stuff? Is it because of Madison? Did she say something to you?”
    Ruby didn’t answer.
    “Honey?”
    She picked up her bowl, drank her milk and cereal down in a few huge swallows, and clambered down out of her chair. As she walked to the sink to deposit her bowl and spoon, I looked at her sturdy legs, her bubble butt (something she inherited from her mother), and her waist, still untapered.
    “Rubes, come here,” I said.
    She came over to me, leaned against my legs, and put herhead on my belly. “Hi, baby,” she said, sounding a little glum.
    “Tell me what’s going on, Ruby?”
    She sighed and, without lifting her head of my stomach, said, “Madison, Chinasa, and Hannah are on diets. And I want to be on a diet, too.”
    “Why, sweetie? Why would you want to go on a diet? You’re gorgeous. Your body is perfect! You’re strong and powerful. You’re not fat at all!”
    “I know,” she said.
    I lifted her face in my palms and forced her to look at me. “Well if you know that, why do you want to be on a diet?”
    “Because
everybody
is on a diet. All the girls in first grade. Everybody wants to be like Madison’s mom. She’s really skinny. She can wear Madison’s pants!”
    “No way!”
    “Yeah, she can!”
    It’s a measure of how sick
I
am that for a brief moment I felt admiration for a thirty-something-year-old woman who could fit into her six-year-old’s clothes. Then I came to my senses. “I don’t believe that. And if it’s true, then it’s just sick. Honey, normal women can’t wear their little girl’s clothes. Normal women just aren’t that small.”
    “Madison’s mom isn’t
normal
,” Ruby said, with disgust at the very idea. “Madison’s mom is a
model!
”
    “Well, that explains it. Models are insane. All of them. They have a grave mental