by Laura Hankin
Whitney scooped up a little pink-clad baby from the floor.
“This one’s mine,” she said, jiggling her in front of Claire. “Meet Hope.” Whitney’s baby wore golden slippers and what Claire hoped was a fake-fur shrug over her dress. God, even these babies were glamorous. How many hours of her life had Whitney spent jamming Hope’s pudgy body into beautiful clothing that she’d soon outgrow?
“Hey, Hope,” Claire said as Hope stared at the ceiling and popped her fist into her mouth. Whitney kissed the top of Hope’s head before putting her back down.
To Claire, babies were like seeds. Interesting for what they might grow into but, for the moment, just dry, dull kernels. If she had to stare at a seed all day, she’d go insane. Claire would be a mother now too, for sure, if she had stayed in her hometown, where Sex Ed had consisted only of the warning that girls would be as useless as chewed gum if they “gave their precious gift” to anyone before marriage. Almost all the girls she’d gone to high school with had children. They posted pictures of their mini-mes heading off to preschool, and Claire felt separated from them by so much more than mere distance. She was pretty sure she didn’t want children at all. The idea of a tiny person’s life depending on her was enough to make her queasy. She already knew herself to be a killing machine. To date, through a lethal combination of neglect and fear, she’d murdered her childhood goldfish (RIP, Princess Leia), six houseplants, various romantic relationships, and her career.
The two standing mothers turned toward Claire. “I’m Gwen,” said the one who was full of baby-taming advice. She was blond with eyes like freshly washed blueberries. She pointed to the smaller of the two babies by the table. “And that’s Reagan!”
“Oh, cool, like from Shakespeare?” Claire asked.
“Pardon?” Gwen tilted her head to one side, dimples puckering her cheeks. Her voice was ever-so-slightly nasal but not in an unpleasant way.
“You know,” Claire said, “how Regan’s the name of one of the sisters in King Lear?”
“The evil one,” said the mom who liked a good heroin joke. She had a faint British accent, and her skin was dark ebony against her lavender blouse. Another blouse! All the women were wearing blouses, and all those blouses had probably cost more than Claire’s rent. Maybe she could just give her landlord, a perpetually frowning old Ukrainian man, one of Whitney’s extra blouses this month and he’d leave her be.
Gwen’s eyes widened, expanding like Violet Beauregarde in the chocolate factory. “Oh! No,” she said. “Not after Shakespeare, after Ronald.”
Claire tried to smile as if she thought Reagan was a great name for a baby and not a cruel joke (God, how she hoped Reagan grew up to be an Occupy Wall Street–esque progressive), but the snarky mother wasn’t buying it.
She gave Claire a knowing look as she extended her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Amara.” A cry rose from the bigger baby, and Amara let out a sigh. “That wailing lump would be Charlie.” She turned to go get him, but then looked back at Claire, a hint of mischief coming into her eyes. “And I know what you’re wondering: Yes, as in Manson.”
“Obviously,” Claire said, her strained smile breaking wide-open into a real one. Oh, she liked Amara.
“Those two on the couch are Meredith and Ellie,” Whitney said as the women in question waved. “They’re busy arranging their babies’ marriage to each other.”
“My last name is Masters, and Meredith’s is Funk,” Ellie announced to Claire. She was compact, pixielike, pale.
“So if they hyphenate,” Meredith said, “they can be the Funk-Masters!” She smiled a goofy, unrestrained grin, as if she were about to bite into something. She reminded Claire of a giraffe, with long limbs slightly akimbo.
“Hah. Cute,” Claire said. Ellie and Meredith smiled at each other, and then immediately recommenced their chatting.
Whitney laughed and rolled her eyes at Claire. “It’s a whole thing,” she said, then indicated the woman on the play mat. “And last but not least, that’s Vicki.”
Vicki merely nodded, before lifting a baby up to her chest, uncovering a swollen boob, and starting to breastfeed, her eyes drifting to the ceiling. If any of these mothers had hired a doula and done a home birth in a bathtub, Vicki was the one.
“So that’s our playgroup!” Whitney said. “We’re excited to see if we’re a good fit with you.”
“Thank you so much for joining us on such short notice,” Gwen said. “We had a bit of an emergency with our previous musician.”
“That makes it sound like he died or we ate him alive,” Amara said. Her baby was still crying. “Don’t terrify the girl. Or, at least, not until after she entertains our babies.” She sighed again, picked up a piece of strawberry from a low table, and put it in her baby’s mouth.
“Oh, man,” Claire said. “Was everything okay?”
“Yes,” Whitney said, and the women all shifted, meeting eyes, holding some juicy collective secret. “It was just . . . So Ellie’s sister had her bachelorette party, and—what do you know?—our musician moonlighted as a stripper. We’re not prudes or anything—you should live your life how you want—but it turned out that once Ellie had told us all about him thrusting in a thong and a firefighter helmet, it was a little awkward sitting through ‘Wheels on the Bus.’”
“He did have a great butt, though,” Ellie said. Meredith laughed and swatted her on the arm.
“Okay!” Whitney said. “Now that we’ve totally overwhelmed you, we’re going to sit quietly in a circle and listen to you sing. Do you need anything? What can I get you? Food? Water? Wine?” She winked at Claire and pulled a funny face. “We’re not like other playgroups—we’re a cool playgroup.”
“Oh, no, thanks,” Claire said. “I’m okay to get started.”
As the mothers gathered their babies onto their laps and looked at her expectantly, she slung her guitar off her back and pulled it out of its case. She’d bought the cheapest one they had at a used-guitar store in the East Village about a year ago, when she and the guys had been home on a break from touring around. She had been Vagabond’s secondary vocalist/occasional tambourine shaker/token female eye candy, but she’d started itching for more, so during the breaks in rehearsals or in between shows, when Chuck the bass player and Diego the drummer had gone outside to smoke, she’d asked Marcus, the lead singer/songwriter/guitar player/benevolent dictator, to teach her how to play. He had shown her the basic chords and progressions from songs by the musicians he had grown up loving: Bowie, the Stones, the later and weirder Beatles. Every one she mastered felt like a revelation, a new puzzle piece in the grand jigsaw that was “good” music. (All the guys in Vagabond had picked their instruments right in elementary school while she’d been playing the flute and—she cringed to remember it—the handbell. Then in high school, they’d all formed cool garage bands while she’d been the star musician of her megachurch.) She’d imagined eventually playing this guitar onstage, jamming out rapturously with the guys as their fans swayed and screamed.
She looked at the babies around her. Not exactly the audience she’d pictured. Her fingers felt stiff on the guitar strings, so she clenched them and unclenched them, then made a C chord and strummed. “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,” she sang, and the women smiled and oohed in recognition, then grasped their babies’ little fists and swung them together, singing along.
Wow, these women were enthusiastic. And they certainly loved their kids. As far as Claire could tell, they had all stopped working to stay home with them. They were willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for some live music to strengthen their children’s developing neural pathways (or whatever science said music did for young brains), happy to participate in a sort of ritualized infantalization in the hopes that they were giving their children a good time. Claire widened her eyes and sang, “If you’re happy and you know it, tickle your tummies!” and all the women dutifu
lly tickled their babies, laughing.
Okay, maybe this wasn’t so bad. A bunch of rich women day drinking and gossiping—it was like she’d gotten her own private spin-off of Real Housewives to watch, minus the rage and bloodthirst. But more than that, oh, it felt good to sing again. Since Vagabond had kicked her out, Claire hadn’t even wanted to sing in the shower. Only now was she realizing how much she had missed it, how it was like she had been walking around with only one shoe on and wondering why she felt so off. Claire let herself forget about the banality of the lyrics, allowing the mere act of making music to carry her away. It was a particular skill she’d honed as a teenager at the megachurch that had dominated her town. The first couple of years after she was invited to sing at Sunday services with her worship group, ecstatically performing songs with titles like “His Grace” that she’d written with her friend Lynae, Claire had felt holy onstage. The congregation would cheer and sing along with so much energy and adoration that it drowned out everything else, including the doubts she had at other times. So what if she couldn’t wrap her head around a big man in the sky? That had to be a failure of imagination on her part. She liked believing that Pastor Brian knew what was true—especially since he was the one who kept telling her that she had what it took to make it in Nashville.
But then Thea had come out of the closet, and everyone had been so awful to her, and Claire had begun to wonder how a religion that was ostensibly about love and forgiveness could advocate icing out the best person she knew.
After she’d confessed her doubts to Lynae when they were walking home from practice, Lynae, that bitch, had stood up in prayer circle the next night and said, her cow face pious in the basement light, “Let us pray for Claire, who harbors doubts in her heart. Let us pray that she will once again see the light of Christ.”
So Pastor Brian had asked Claire to meet with him at the coffee shop off the church lobby, and they’d talked about her doubts. He’d offered explanations and platitudes, and none of it had made any sense to her. And then he’d said, “Claire, if you don’t believe, it doesn’t seem right for you to be singing in the worship group.”
She couldn’t lose her music, so she’d spent the rest of high school pretending to be devout, and furtively messaging with Thea on AIM at night, and waiting for the day she too could get out of there. She lived for the moments every Sunday when she could get up onstage and sing and feel like at least part of what she was doing was authentic. Sometimes, she’d picture this guy from her high school when she was supposed to be singing about Jesus. She’d write song lyrics to him, telling everyone else that the song was about Him. (If God did, in fact, exist, she was going to hell for sure for pretending that lyrics like You gave your body / you gave your heart / for me, for me, for me / And I’ve been touched by you were about Jesus, and not lustful fantasies about the asshole to whom she’d eventually lost her virginity in a janitor’s closet at the mall.)
Nope. She wasn’t going back there. She had to keep this playgroup job until she could get some kind of clarity on next steps, even if she felt pathetic doing it. Nearing the end of the playgroup’s allotted music time, she gave her all to “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” as if the spider’s struggles to climb a waterspout were an Odyssean quest. Then she glanced at Amara, who had finally managed to make her child settle down, at least for a few minutes. Unlike the other mothers, who were twisting their fingers in a climbing-spider motion, Amara’s hand was clenched in her lap. Her face was unfocused and suddenly drawn. Under the force of Claire’s gaze, Amara snapped back to attention. But in the second before Amara recovered herself, something unguarded in her eyes flashed out a clear message: Amara couldn’t believe she’d ended up here either.
“And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again,” Claire sang, letting the final chord ring out. “Okay, and looks like that’s our time!”
The sweet, kept women all burst into applause.
“Claire,” Whitney said, “you have such a lovely voice! Thank you. That was so much fun.”
“Do you take requests?” Ellie asked. “Can you do ‘Idaho Eyes’?”
“Yes, Ellie!” said Meredith. “I love that song.”
“Right?” Ellie said.
“Um,” Claire said, making sure to keep her face neutral, even as that familiar pit opened up in her stomach. “I don’t think I know that one.”
“Really?” Ellie said.
“I thought we were supposed to be the lame old ladies!” Meredith said as Ellie giggled.
Whitney got up and started refilling everyone’s wineglasses. Vicki lay down on the rug, holding her baby above her and humming softly to him, as if the two of them existed in a bubble. Gwen lifted up little Reagan-as-in-Ronald, smelling her diaper and then making a relieved face at the apparent lack of stink in it.
“You have to look it up!” Ellie said. “What’s the band, Meredith?”
“Vagabond!”
“Yeah, Vagabond. They’re really fun, but also with some substance to them, you know?”
“All right, let’s not overdo it. They’re fine,” said Amara. She got to her feet and looked at Claire. “You sing beautifully.”
“Thanks,” Claire said, blood rushing to her face.
“Someone watch Charlie for a moment while I go to the bathroom?” Amara asked.
“I’ll do it,” Gwen said, and Amara disappeared down a hallway.
“They’re better than fine,” Meredith said to Ellie, loyally.
“Amara is a bit of a music snob,” said Whitney, emptying the remainder of the wine bottle into her glass, “because she used to work for one of those late-night entertainment shows with a lot of musicians.”
Claire perked up, suddenly cold-blooded, sensing opportunity. As far as demeaning money jobs went, this one was seeming better and better by the minute.
“Well, I had a lot of fun with you all,” she said. “Thanks for having me! I’d love to come back. Before I go, could I use your bathroom?”
Whitney pointed her down the hallway, instructing her to use the second door on the right. The hall was lined with glossy family photos of Whitney, Hope, and Whitney’s husband, who, to Claire’s total lack of surprise, resembled a Ken doll come to life. God, even Whitney’s hallway was gorgeous—clean and white, woven rugs placed at appropriate intervals on the hardwood floor. Not a single square inch had been neglected. A flawless apartment for a flawless family.
She walked toward the second door on the right, silently running through possible conversation starters with Amara in her head, imagining a witty exchange in the hall leading to a fast-blossoming mentorship, leading to a few choice introductions to the tastemakers of late night, leading to a thriving music career, leading to all the members of Vagabond (washed-up, Marcus’s lustrous hair starting to thin) watching her on TV and ruing the day they’d kicked her out.
But the second door on the right was open, and no one was inside. Claire looked into the bathroom (gleaming, marble) in confusion for a moment. Then she heard a low, muffled sound coming from the slightly ajar door to her left.
(Curiosity killed the cat, her mother used to say when a young Claire asked questions about the Sunday School teachings that didn’t make sense to her. Her father had burned her dog-eared copy of Harriet the Spy in their fireplace one night, saying the heroine wasn’t a good role model.)
Claire turned toward the door on the left and peered in. It was a small light gray room that had maybe been a pantry or a storage closet in another life; it was now outfitted with a desk, some shelves holding wicker baskets with looping cursive labels on them, and more succulents in one place than Claire had ever seen outside of a plant store. Whitney didn’t seem to have a job, but apparently she was so rich that she could have a home office anyway, probably for keeping track of her social calendar or for crafting.
And now Amara stood at Whitney’s desk, her arm stretched into a drawer a
nd biting her lower lip so hard it had turned milk white, breathing quickly through her nose and rooting through the drawer’s contents in a sort of frenzy. All her cool, wry self-possession was gone, replaced by guilty desperation.
Well, Claire thought, overcome by an all-out-of-proportion unease: She’d found the Winona Ryder of the group. She stepped back silently, ready to get the hell out of there and pretend she’d never witnessed . . . whatever that unsettling thing was, and promptly hit the door handle with her elbow like a fucking moron. At the unexpected noise, Amara whipped her head up and froze, her eyes locking onto Claire’s. They stared at each other for a moment, neither of them moving. Then Amara’s nostrils flared.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked, her voice like an arrow.
“I’m so sorry,” Claire said. She slammed the door shut and ran back into the living room, where Whitney stood in the center of the circle of mothers, all nodding their heads.
“Back so soon!” Whitney said.
“Yeah, I just wanted to wash my hands,” Claire said.
“Oh, and she’s hygienic,” Gwen said. “That’s important!”
Whitney smiled at Claire. “We talked it over, and we would love for you to be our new playgroup musician. Tuesdays and Thursdays, sing to our babies, bring us tidings of the outside world. What do you say?”
“Yeah, great. For sure,” Claire said as Amara reappeared in the doorway of the living room, frowning.
