“Oh, a boy mom!” Kenya beamed. “Just like me. My son, Noah, is a junior in high school.”
“Boy mom?” Tori asked. “What’s that?”
“That’s when a woman makes having a son her entire personality,” Caren said.
“Oh stop!” Kenya slapped at Caren’s arm playfully. “It’s just a way of recognizing that special bond between a boy and his mom. Other boy moms just get it.”
“Oh.” It sounded kind of like a cult to Tori, but she made a note to ask Cyrus aboutboy momslater.
“It’s a special love. I mean, girls are wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but with a boy… Boys are just different.” Kenya grasped both hands to her chest. “My baby just has my whole heart.”
Tori glanced at Shawn to see how he was reacting to his wife’s declaration of love for their son, but it was hard to read his expression behind his mirrored sunglasses. Tori felt like he was staring at her, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Whatever.” Caren rolled her eyes. “Is he going to be at Wee Children Preschool? Both our kids went there. A boyanda girl.”
“Our kids are older now,” Miguel said, smiling. “Daughter in high school, son in college.”
“You know what they say, the days are long…” Caren’s voice trailed off.
“But the years are short,” Tori finished.
“You’ve heard that one before, huh?” Miguel asked.
“Just a few times.”
Kenya and Caren laughed, and Tori felt her shoulders soften. She peered past them at two moms closer to her age who were tending to toddlers at the edge of the crowd. She had seen them around, but they had never made eye contact or said hello, even when she was standing close to them at the playground, her Leo mere feet from their children. Maybe she would have better luck with this slightly older crowd. She certainly would like to become a part of this group—multiracial, wealthy, educated, confident. It was everything she dreamed lifenear a big city would offer, radically different from the small town in the Tidewater area of Virginia where she had grown up.
“If you need a babysitter, let me know. My daughter, Rachel, is very good with kids,” Caren said.
“That’s kind of you,” Tori said. “But I have a nanny.”
“Legal, I hope,” Kenya said. “Shawn over here wouldn’t let me hire anyone illegal. Not with his job. Do you remember Zoë Baird?”
Tori blinked twice. Was this a test? “No worries there. My nanny is legal.” Tori had known the moment the girl walked into her house that she would be perfect. Round-faced with pink cheeks, wearing her dark auburn hair in two long braids wrapped around her head in cottagecore style.
Tori took a few sips of her drink. Parts of her life were less than perfect—her controlling ex, her anxiety, her debt from overspending in order to cope with that anxiety, the panic that swelled within her at three in the morning that she was going to blow this whole motherhood thing. But one thing that didn’t cause her any grief was her nanny.
No, hiring Autumn had been the smartest move she could make.
“So, is your husband lurking around here somewhere?” Kenya asked.
Tori guffawed before she could stop herself. “Sorry. I certainly hope he’s notlurkingaround.” Kenya’s flawlessly contoured face froze in a mask of confusion. Shawn’s slice of a mouth turned down at the corners. She lookedquickly at Caren and Miguel. Neither would meet her eye. “What I mean is,” Tori continued, “I’m not married. We’re divorced.”
“Oh! Of course.” Kenya took a big gulp of her drink and then added in a low voice, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Tori hated it when people said that. As if divorce were a terminal illness or a natural disaster that must be survived.
“Well, oh my gosh, you’ll have to excuse us.” Kenya grabbed Caren’s arm. “We have to go say hi to a friend of ours who, like,nevercomes to these things. Yumi! Oh, Yumi!”
“Nice to meet you,” Caren called as she was pulled away. Shawn and Miguel drifted off as well, leaving Tori alone by the table. She stood there, unsure of what to do now.Stupid, stupid, stupid, the little monsters in her head shouted. The urge to pull out her phone and ask Cyrus to tell her she was lovable was almost overwhelming. There were ways of slipping uncomfortable truths into the conversation, but she had to blurt it out and make a joke about “lurking.” She hadn’t read the room; she was never good at reading the room. It’s one of the reasons she became a therapist, to try and understand how people communicated. What they really thought. Now she had alienated her potential new friends.
“So, what’s good?” She looked up to see her landlord, a middle-aged man in a short-sleeved linen shirt and sunglasses, smiling at her. Even though he lived in the house behind her, they’d had very little interactionsince she moved in, although she often spotted him jogging, red-faced, through the neighborhood early in the morning as she left for work.
“Oh, I’m not sure,” she said, feeling flustered by her interaction with the two couples. “I mean, I like this one.” She gestured to the Bangs pitcher. “Kind of Kool-Aid with a kick?”
“Kool-Aid?”
“Fruit punch?” She smiled at his slight French accent, and she wanted to ask him about it, but she wasn’t sure if she was allowed. She wasn’t sure of her social standing with him. Being his renter made her feel below him, lesser, but on the other hand, she was a resident of the same neighborhood, so did that make them equals?
