Clara turns red. With rage, or embarrassment, or both, Sonia is unsure. She runs after her son, grabbing him from beneath the jungle gym with her buffed-up, marathon-running body and drags him by his shirt collar to the bench. “YOU APOLOGIZE TO TOM RIGHT NOW. YOU HEAR ME? NEVER, EVER, DO I WANT TO HEAR THAT YOU’VE SPIT ON ANOTHER KID. TOM IS YOUR FRIEND, SAM, AND YOU’RE LUCKY TO HAVE HIM WITH THE WAY YOU BEHAVE. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” She pulls his little face up to hers, her hand grasping his chin roughly.
“I’m sorry, Tom, I’m sorry!” Sam weeps and holds on to his neck, from where the collar of his shirt scraped him. His chin is red where his mother roughed him up. He runs back under the jungle gym and cries, face in hands.
“Clara, don’t worry about it,” Sonia says, a little freaked out. But, also, this outburst, this complete failure to behave reasonably, is what Sonia loves about Clara. She kind of sucks, she really does. She loves her children, but she loses her shit all the time. Often, she’s so damn vulnerable, so not superior and smug like many of the parents Sonia knows. Not that Sonia enjoys watching Clara’s children suffer when she freaks out, no. The suffering pains her. But against her better self, she appreciates watching Clara fuck up. The mystery that is Clara, the flawlessly preppy clothes, the house on the right block in the best part of Cobble Hill, a thin gold wedding band her only adornment. All that outward modesty, togetherness, rightness, calmness, all of it seems so desperate. God knows what is hiding beneath it. It’s always been Sonia’s theory, from experience, that the most normal looking people are completely bonkers. Sonia wipes the top of Tom’s head with a wet wipe from her stroller bag and gives Mike, who stands there confused and intrigued, a kiss on the head and pats them both on the behind. “We have thirty minutes more of playtime, then we need to run errands.”
Clara breathes out heavily. “I just don’t know what to do, Sonia. I’m so sorry about Sam spitting on Tom, I am. He loves Tom. Tom is one of his only friends. He is always so happy to see him. You saw him run up to Tom when you guys got here.”
“Don’t worry about it, Clara. My kids aren’t perfect. No kids are perfect. They all do weird shit sometimes.”
“But I am really worried about Sam. I am. He’s so angry lately and I can’t help but think it’s because Bill’s not around enough. On the one hand, he’s fine, he doesn’t miss his father. And when his father is around, he doesn’t really care. Because they don’t know each other, or rely on each other. But it’s as if Sam knows something is missing, even though he doesn’t know what. And it makes him angry. And I just wonder if I were a little more patient with Sam, if he wouldn’t be so angry.”
“Hey, Clara.” Sonia gets up. “You want to corral the kids and go get an ice cream? Sometimes it’s good to just walk down the street a bit, get out of the park.”
Clara looks up, looks distracted. The mothers go through the ordeal of getting the children, which isn’t so difficult when ice cream is involved. They exit, carefully closing the park door behind them, and head down to Court Street.
Clara continues on as they maneuver their strollers through busy sidewalks. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the money Bill makes,” she says. “And, I’ll be honest with you, he makes a lot of money. And that is very important to me. We get the great ski vacations. I shop a lot and I love to shop. Soon, we’ll buy a house in Connecticut. I really, really want that house in Greenwich. Not sort of or kind of, no—” and here Clara throws her arms up, “I really, really want that house. And if it weren’t for Bill working like he does, that house wouldn’t be a possibility. It’s just sometimes I feel no different than some ghetto, single mother raising her kids. Yes, I can afford help. But the help, the immigrant women I hire, are from the ghetto, essentially. And like I said, I love Nadine. I got a real good one this time. She’s a good, caring woman, and that’s not always the case, you know. And yet I feed the kids noodles five nights a week, they watch TV nonstop, our house is full of cheap plastic toys they ignore, and they don’t know their own father. So what is the difference between me and some single mother from the housing projects? Tell me? Sam watches Pokémon just like them. And he eats the same shit they eat. And they hang out with burnt-out women day and night. Tell me, am I different? I love that he makes a lot of money. But he’s not around, you know?”
“Maybe you need a vacation, Clara. Some time to yourself. Next time Bill comes back, go away for a weekend alone.”
Clara looks shocked. “I’d never leave my kids overnight. I just couldn’t do that.”
And here is where Sonia wants to yell at her, to shake her muscled shoulders and say, “But you’re being mean to your kids! You are around them too much and you’re being mean to them and that’s not OK! Leaving them to gain your sanity might be the best thing for them!”
But instead she says, “Clara, I’m pregnant. And I don’t know what to do.”
4
When Sonia arrives, Clara sets the table for two and moves back to the stove where she’s cooking rice. The top of the pan pops around nicely, steam barely escaping, the smell of salt and grain and butter rising, a comforting smell for Sonia’s still delicate nature. For the kids, Clara made a big vat of macaroni and cheese. Paper plates and plastic cups sit on a lower table, a kid’s table, in the living room in front of the TV. Sonia watches her as she then gets out a chopping board and dices ginger, sweet onion, and oranges and strawberries.
“I’m making a chutney for the red snapper,” she explains to Sonia and Sonia thinks, oh no, not fish, but says nothing.
Clara’s kids are upstairs in the bath. She left the door open, so she can hear what’s going on. Sam makes boat noises. She can’t hear Willa.
She screams in the direction of the bathroom, “WILLA? ARE YOU OK? DARLING? ANSWER ME!”
There’s no answer. Again she screams, “SAM? SAM? IS YOUR SISTER OK UP THERE?”
The boat noises stop. Sam says, “Willa’s fine, mommy. She’s just sitting here. She’s got her finger up her nose.”
“YOU SCREAM DOWN TO ME HERE IF WILLA GOES UNDER WATER OR SOMETHING. YOU HEAR ME, SAM?”
“OK!”
Sonia asks, “Do you want me to go check on them?”
“Oh no, I’m sure they’re fine.” Clara gives her the once over that Clara sometimes gives her, examining her quickly, but very closely. This makes Sonia uncomfortable, but it’s always a brief thing, and then Clara is back to being Clara — loud, self-absorbed even when talking about other people or her children. But she’s got a heart. Sonia knows this, appreciates this. Because not everyone has a heart. And it wasn’t as if Sonia didn’t notice things about Clara.
ONCE, WHEN THE TWO were coming back from a movie in a cab — they’d managed to get their husbands to watch the kids on a Sunday night so they could go see Girl, Interrupted—Sonia felt so much taller than Clara. She felt like Clara was a little girl, really. And then, as soon as they got out of the cab, they were the same height again. This strange confusion of bodies, the same size but for the opposite reason, as Clara is all legs. Clara, resembling an ostrich, or really, some kind of fast African plains animal. Something that’s built to run. And Clara is built to run. She ran marathons while Sonia got winded chasing her sons. Clara had played field hockey in high school while Sonia was smoking weed and having sex. Sonia’s endorphin highs came from drugs and getting laid while Clara’s came from running for as long as she could, as fast as possible. The altered state, the endorphins, the just breathing, just moving, of running marathons. The idea of it, the sheer mindlessness of it boggled Sonia. Clara runs every marathon she can get to, even now, with the two kids. When Nadine comes to watch the kids, she goes running. And she long ago gave up the idea of a career, despite her master’s degree in health administration. Sonia wishes she could be so content. She even thinks maybe Clara will rub off on her.