“I . . . ,” Gwen said. “Well, sure. That could be fun.”

“There you go!” Grant said as if he had just thrown a life raft into the water.

“Ooh,” Meredith and Ellie said in unison, reaching out to grab hold.

“Field trip!” Whitney said, but in her lap, her fingernails kept digging.

So the process of packing and buckling began. Claire had never realized that it was all so complicated, that two blocks could feel like two miles, that there were a million new accessories with which one began to travel in order to keep a tiny human contented and alive. She zipped her guitar back into its case as the women stuffed their babies into coats with varying degrees of ease. (Reagan lay there good-naturedly. Charlie twisted and wriggled while Amara tried to cocoon him.) As Grant disappeared back into his office, Whitney followed him in.

Meredith and Ellie made eyes at each other and scooted their baby prep over nearer to the office door, pretending to be fascinated by zippers. Whitney’s voice was too soft to travel, but some of Grant’s words floated into the living room easily enough, a snatch of Is this really such a big deal? here, a snippet of Just a playgroup there.

Back in Claire’s hometown, the church drummed it into the girls at Sunday school that they were special, meant to be cherished, but that ultimately, husbands were the boss. Apparently you could get a degree from Harvard and a fancy New York apartment, and still, some things would stay the same.

After a couple of minutes, Whitney came marching back out, spots of pink burning high on her cheeks. “Well,” she said, “shall we?”

They all gathered in the foyer. Meredith and Ellie were nearest the door, but they weren’t turning the handle. “Oh,” Meredith said, “I think we’re forgetting the goody bags.”

Whitney stared at her for a moment, then smiled. “Of course! Be right back.” When she reappeared, she handed each of the mothers a little cream-colored bag made from thick, buttery card stock and tied with wide black ribbon handles. Claire inwardly rolled her eyes.

Then the great caravan procession made its way out into the world. Only some of the women could fit in the elevator at a time with their strollers, so they went in shifts: Meredith, Ellie, and Vicki going down first to wait in the lobby, Gwen and Whitney next. As Amara wheeled her stroller forward to join them, her baby threw his sippy cup out onto the floor. “Go ahead,” she said to Claire, bending down to pick it up. “I’ll get the next one.” Amara’s fingers were just closing around the cup when Charlie hurled a Ziploc bag of rice cereal out the other side of the stroller. When it hit the floor, it exploded, bits of cereal pinging everywhere like confetti. “Oh, fantastic,” Amara said.

Some reflex stopped Claire short as the elevator doors closed on Gwen and Whitney. She reached down to gather the pieces of puffed rice from the floor.

“You don’t have to—” Amara said.

“It’s fine,” Claire said.

They swept the pieces off the tile and into their palms in silence. Amara moved quickly, spurts of breath coming out her nose. Then she brushed the cereal into a pocket of her diaper bag, holding it open for Claire and pushing the elevator button with her other elbow.

“Thank you,” Amara said.

“No problem.”

The elevator arrived, its doors sliding open in one smooth, nearly noiseless motion. As they began their descent, their reflections in all the mirrored panels made the elevator seem full for being so quiet. Then, staring straight ahead, Amara spoke.

“So that was weird, right? I’m not insane?”

Claire glanced at her. “Yeah,” she said. “Really weird.”

“Like we’d all time-traveled back to the nineteen fifties. I’ve never felt less like a feminist in my life.”

Claire bit her lip. “How many men does it take to screw up a playgroup?”

Amara gave a rueful laugh. “One, apparently.”

* * *

—

Gwen lived in a brownstone. Not an apartment in a brownstone. Not a brownstone where someone else lived in the basement. Gwen lived in the whole thing.

Some of the women had been there once before for Gwen’s Christmas party, but Meredith and Ellie had already bought double-date tickets to Hamilton before Gwen’s invitations went out. To them, Gwen’s place was entirely new, and they cooed over all four stories of it.

“This is so beautiful,” Meredith said.

“We should have playgroup here more often!” Ellie said.

“Oh, really? Thank you,” Gwen said with the blushing alertness of an understudy thrust into the spotlight. “Now, let me see what I can rustle up for snacks. And we are a shoeless household.”

Where Whitney’s apartment was sleek and modern, all clean white lines, Gwen’s was classic and old-fashioned, with dark patterned wallpaper, Oriental rugs, and a chandelier hanging from the living room ceiling. A gleaming piano sat against one wall, and there was even a real fireplace with a basket of wood next to it. Signs of an older child marked the house—a scooter tilting against a wall in the entryway, a pair of gossamer pink fairy wings discarded on the cushioned window seat. Claire longed for everyone else to disappear so that she could pour herself a glass of whiskey (this would be the kind of house with an excellent liquor collection—she just knew it), climb onto that window seat, and stay there, listening to the sounds of traffic and passersby and staring out at the street as the sun dipped low in the sky. Did Gwen ever do that? Probably not. Gwen didn’t seem like the kind of woman who wanted to just sit and think for hours. Window seats were wasted on the wrong people.

“John keeps trying to convince me that we should move to a brownstone,” Ellie was saying. “I need a doorman. But if any place was going to change my mind . . .”

Whitney stood in the center of the room, and though she smiled and looked around with everyone else, her arms were folded across her chest like a teenager on the sidelines of a dance. The hostess becomes the hosted, an old-time narrator voice intoned in Claire’s head, and for a brief moment, she looked for Amara, wanting to say it to her, before shaking herself out of the impulse.

“Look at these family photos!” Ellie squealed, peering at the mantle as Vicki, bouncing her baby against her chest, went wandering out of sight.

“Oh, my God, Gwen, you were a little angel,” Meredith said as Gwen reentered the room with a heaping plate of glistening cherries and a bottle of wine.

Claire bent forward to look at the photo Meredith was pointing at—Gwen, probably around age five, with a head full of golden curls and a smile splitting her chubby face wide open. She stood on a lawn with two glamorous adults—her parents, no doubt—and a boy a couple of years older than her, with similarly fair features, his eyes wide as if he’d been startled by the camera flash.