When Darley emerged from the shower, the children were sitting on a bench, fully clothed, staring at the naked old women newly released from aerobics class. The women chatted about their instructor, about a classmate who was hosting family from New Jersey, about someone whose husband was ill and whom they would visit with cake and flowers. As they chatted, they folded their damp tops into plastic bags, they stretched shower caps over their fluffy white hair, then bent low to place their sneakers under the benches, exposing naked buttocks. Darley averted her eyes, mildly horrified. Sure, she had given birth to two babies and her body looked nothing like it had six years ago, but when she saw these wrinkled women, their breasts low on their chests, their thighs marbled with cellulite, varicose veins and puckered scars tattooing their skin, she couldn’t imagine ever possibly looking so ancient. Or being willing to appear naked in public if she did.
“Don’t stare,” Darley whispered, and her children snapped their eyes to her, as though woken from a trance.
“Are they almost a hundred?” Poppy asked loudly.
“Shhhh.” Darley died a thousand deaths inside. “I don’t know. Why don’t you guys watch Netflix on my phone while I get our stuff.” Having children was possibly the most mortifying experience of her life.
* * *
There were hours to go until dinner, so Darley fetched the children’s scooters from under the gym stairwell and herded them to the playground on Pierrepoint. She found an empty bench and retreated into her phone, while Poppy and Hatcher set about exploring the grossest corners of the park, the pile of damp sticks by the door of the public restroom, the discarded plastic baggies in the drain by the water fountain, the half-broken ginkgo fruits at the base of the tree, releasing their stinky smell. She would have to give them a second bath when they got home, but it was worth it to spin the hands of the clock, to arrive at another Sunday night, an entire week of school and freedom before her.
She was torturing herself by reading her class alumni notes when she noticed her sister-in-law sitting on a bench on the other side of the iron fence. “Sasha!” she called, waving her over. Sasha startled and then gathered up her papers and let herself into the playground. She was wearing what looked like men’s jeans and a black T-shirt, and while Darley knew that outfit would make her look like a Johnny Cash impersonator, somehow on Sasha it all worked. She had shiny auburn hair cut to her ears, pale freckled skin, pretty pink lips, and a petite, slim build that would have made her a great squash player. Darley couldn’t help it. Years of living with her mother and sister had turned her into the kind of person who evaluated a woman’s build based on her ideal athletic endeavors. It was insane, really.
“Oh, hi!” Sasha laughed. “I didn’t even see you guys arrive.”
“We were just thrown out of the Eastern Athletic swimming pool for pretending to drown.” Darley cringed.
“You should probably stop pretending to drown. Sets a bad example for the kids.”
“It’s just swimming is so hard when I’ve been day drinking.” Darley snickered and patted the bench next to her for Sasha to sit. Sasha seemed a little surprised, but Darley was desperate for adult conversation so she smiled her most welcoming smile. They looked out across the playground, where Poppy and Hatcher were crouching over the drain by the water fountain, taking turns dipping long sticks through the slots and pulling up dank piles of scummy leaves.
“What were you up to?”
“Oh, I was messing around with my sketchbook.” Sasha gestured at a spiral-bound pad.
“Can I see?”
Sasha handed the notebook over and Darley leafed through it. The drawings were mostly portraits of people. She flipped past an old man playing a trumpet on a park bench, a couple cuddling on a stoop, a lady smoking out a window. She turned the page and saw her brother, his feet slung over a chair as he read a book. It was uncanny how well she had captured the funny thing he did with his mouth when he read, the way he seemed to hold a book as though he were about to drop it. How strange to see a person she loved so dearly through the eyes of someone else.
“These are incredible, Sasha. You went to Cooper Union, right?”
“Yep. And now I spend my days arguing with clients over which photo of a pillowcase will look sexier in their Christmas catalog. I’m really putting my degree to use.”
“I got my MBA so that I could broker corporate acquisitions, and instead I spend my days arguing with children about whether chicken nuggets and chicken fingers represent two different food groups,” Darley said. She felt the way she always did whenever she mentioned business school: proud she had gone, embarrassed she had done nothing since then. She wasn’t sure why she was volunteering this to her sister-in-law, of all people.
“I mean, they kind of do,” Sasha said. “Nuggets are for school lunches and chicken fingers are for eating at the sports bar when you realize you’re drunk and it’s only halftime.”
“Mmm, yes, the five food groups: drunk, sober, hungover, school lunch, and bar food.”
“I feel like you’re missing the Monday food group.”
“What is that?”
“The heathy one where you make everyone eat rice and broccoli and salad because you feel so gross from eating pizza and donuts all weekend.”
“Oh, right, the Monday food group. That’s the saddest food group, full of baby carrots and regret.” Darley looked out across the playground, laughing quietly. “This girl I know posts her daily caloric intake on Instagram alongside pictures of slimy chickpeas and plain chicken breasts.”
“That’s so embarrassing,” Sasha said, horrified.
“I know! I literally had to screenshot it and send it to all my friends and ask if she had meant to make her posts public! We contemplated an intervention!”
“But you didn’t intervene?”
“No, we decided it was kinder to just keep texting screenshots behind her back.”
“Oh, right, right. Totally agree.” Sasha nodded seriously. Her phone dinged and she looked down. “Oh, God, yikes.”
“What?”
“My mom texted that there is a bat in the basement and my dad is trying to go catch it. The dog is freaking out.”
“Can’t bats have rabies?”
“I’m texting her back. ‘MOM. DO NOT LET DAD IN THE BASEMENT. CALL SOMEONE.’？”
A moment later Sasha’s phone dinged again and she groaned. Her mother had texted a picture of someone wearing a hockey goalie’s face mask and gloves, holding a fishing net.
“Is that your dad?”
“It’s my brother, thank God.”
Suddenly a raindrop landed on Darley’s arm. Poppy and Hatcher ran over, dragging their slimy sticks behind them.
“Mom! It’s raining!”
“Okay, put your helmets on,” Darley sighed. Now they’d have to battle out the rest of the day confined to the apartment. The afternoon stretched before her as long as a cross-country car trip, or a jury-duty summons.
“Hey, come over to Pineapple!” Sasha offered.
“You guys want to go to the limestone?” Darley asked the kids, forgetting for a moment that they could say something socially horrendous like “No, Sasha’s house smells weird,” or “Only if they have better snacks than we do,” but instead they surprised her, jumping up and down and beaming at Sasha. Her kids did love looking through her old stuff.