Miranda's Sudsy Escape
by Sharon Kurtzman

An amazing idea sprouted in Miranda’s mind when she happened onto the website. BulkApothecary.com was the domain, a how-to site rich with information and ingredients for making bath salts, bath oils, bath detox concoctions, and a myriad of luxurious add-ins.

Could it be as easy as the site claimed?

Damn it, yes!

Eyes lifted to the waiting room clock, young charges occupied in the ballet studio as the opportunity of a lifetime unfurled before her: She would create an empire by bottling and packaging bath items—products that the hoity-toity mothers to whose spawn nannies like her tended, would consume because they consumed everything.

Flowers starred as the main ingredient—roses, lilacs, gardenias, bluebells, honeysuckles—infinite possibilities. Ground petals listed as the bedrock for two-thirds of the recipes she scanned.

How hard could petal grinding be?

Idiots could do it, and Miranda was no idiot. Just the opposite, her smarts proven with a 4.5 GPA and full-ride to Dartmouth for earning a Master’s in Biology. Kickstarter could help fund her sudsy venture, the company eventually paying for her to finish that degree. Lousy scholarship office had run dry of money in the middle of her program. Mom and Dad had said, sorry, but had offered no assistance, at least nothing green.

Nanny Wanted, read the ad in Upper Eastside Mom Magazine, a thin glossy tree-killer about rich mothers, their idle pursuits, their ideal lives and ads featuring all manner of worshipped toys and gadgets.

Options were few for Miranda back then. Places to rent came with four-digit price tags. Quelling the niggling voice inside, she slapped together a resume, one that highlighted her babysitting years and a counselor-in-training summer spent at an all-girls camp in Maine. Reese Winslow, the wife of a hedge fund manager, set up an interview immediately and though Miranda should have seen that as a red flag, she didn’t. Sophie and Serendipity Winslow were five-year-old twins, demanding little terrors cut from the same fiery bolt as their mother.

Thoughts of the twins sparked an offshoot idea: a line of children’s bath products. Upper East Side mothers would gobble that up, too. Vivid images of a bursting bank account cha-cha’d through her thoughts accompanied by dreams of magazine write-ups in Forbes and Fortune, interviews on chat shows, swanky board meetings and an even swankier life.  

Windows to a wonderful world.

X-rated bath products were another possibility, Fifty Shades of Everything having washed away erotic taboos for the pampered one percent.

You can do it, was Bulk Apothecary’s catch phrase.

Zipping through the product offerings, Miranda quickly added ingredient after ingredient to her virtual basket, but kept an eye trained on the studio clock, praying she would complete her order before the pink-tutu clad banshees came screaming out of class.