Mommy's Night Out

Ingrid and I take turns now having nights out. I get, like, one or two a month. If there's something I really want to do. Just a random night of drinks out isn't worth not seeing Clyde for a whole night. And because we're in Brooklyn, if I go out with friends in Manhattan, I can't see Clyde before bedtime and then come back into the city. Not practical. But there was something I really wanted to do.

My friend Andrew, who just got a new job at Teen Vogue, is freelancing at Vogue. He invited me to the premiere of Atonement, the Keira Knightley movie based on the Ian McEwan novel. I was excited at this prospect, as I just read the novel in anticipation of the movie, and my magazine did a little piece on the movie. At the last minute though, we got shut out of the screening and so we went for drinks beforehand at a fabulous East Village newish bar (everything is new to me at this point, as I never go out anymore) called Death and Company. We had beautiful, bespoke cocktails with ingredients I couldn't pronounce, like Punt e Mes vermouth, and Cyrnan, an artichoke liqueur, and beautiful Beefeater gin.

Then we went to the afterparty for the movie, at Balthazar. I was excited, as Balthazar is so old-school. I met some of Andrew's colleagues, other assistants at Vogue. It reminded me of how glad I am that I don't work there anymore. One of them was amazing--her job for the night was to guard a $40K necklace and to try to get a celebrity to be photographed wearing it. How this is a Vogue person's job, and not a jewelry company's PR's job, I am not sure. Others were not so lovely--the kind of people who are scanning around your head while speaking to you, looking to see who might be better in the room to talk with.

That's when I met Mamie Gummer. Mamie is Andrew's new "friend," whom he met at a Vogue event, and she is also Meryl Streep's daughter. She and Meryl played the same character at different ages, in the movie Evening. She is gorgeous. Andrew introduced us. We were chatting about the book, and about Northwestern, which she also attended, and graduated in 2005 (nothing like that to make you feel ancient). Then Andrew excused himself to go to the bathroom, and as soon as he left, Mamie, in mid-sentence with me, turned her back to me and literally leapt into the lap of one of the three men she had arrived with. As if I weren't in the room.

Didn't Meryl teach her any manners?

Maybe I was just too excited to meet her, and got a little starstruck...