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21 | Under Where? KAITLIN

At pick-up, I’m running the clothing drive outside the gates. Other schools in the district are doing jacket and coat drives, but most people don’t know that refugees and unhoused people need underthings above all else. So we’re doing it right, collecting tags-on underwear and socks.

The truth is, I thought it might make me feel good to do something for people less fortunate, but I am still a storm cloud. If anything, I’m tamping down extra irritation as it prickles under my skin. I feel assaulted by Lisa’s garlic breath. I am flooded with venom for parents who walk by without contributing. And I am furious that I’ve dedicated so much time to this damn school that I’m down to the dregs of my own underwear drawer, deeply behind on laundry. The only options left this morning—a painfully irrelevant fishnet La Perla G-string and two stretched-to-the-limit Hanky Panky thongs from 2004—were clearly mocking me.

During a lull, I scroll to social. I have lost three followers in the last three days. And I’m becoming obsessed with finding out who—and why. Lisa swears it’s because they’re all bots anyway. But I’m not so sure.

That’s when I notice Celeste’s husband, lingering nearby, waiting for their son to emerge. He’s a giant man in an army jacket and way too much facial hair, if you ask me. But no one does. If it was up to me, every man in a ten-mile radius would be stripped of his “Brooklyn beard.” When I think about what must get stuck in them… ugh.

He’s otherwise attractive enough, I think. It’s hard to tell. But I assume Celeste chose him not because of his looks but because of his remarkably sunny disposition, which seems weirdly absent today.

Today, he does not say hello to me. When he drops by a package of Fruit of the Loom tube socks, he catches my eye and looks away.

Did I do something? Snub him in some way? Did he hear something bad about me? Did he hear what I did? ?

Did he see me adjusting my last-resort panties in a literal bunch beneath my jeans?

Usually, there is no cheerier parent. You can’t help but smile back when he flashes you his teeth (or what I assume are his teeth behind his “chin pubes”). Like me, he remembers people’s names.

I try to imagine him and Celeste meeting and falling for each other. Was it in college, when a kind of softness and lack of ambition was still passable? When “chill” had value? Was it in their early twenties, when a motorcycle alone might have been enough to do the trick? He looks like the type who rode a motorcycle. Was it at work, when he once had authority, which he surrendered—to her chagrin? Joy? Ambivalence?—when her career took a stratospheric turn? Had they always known he’d be the stay-at-home dad? Certainly, she was never going to be a stay-at-home mom. I’ve heard her ask for a reminder about drop-off and pick-up times twice since school started just this semester! It’s been four years! She should know by now.

Lisa hands me a few more pairs of wool socks to add to the cold-weather box, the same brand my husband wears. What did I like about him when I met him? What did I expect? Can I remember?

Certainly, he was good-looking. He always has been though, of course, he’s gotten better with age while I have begun to shrivel in the image of my great-aunt Leslie. Soon, I will double as the crypt-keeper. Or, conversely, I’ll join the ranks of the injected, adopting raised eyebrows and swollen cheekbones until my age is indeterminant, somewhere between thirty and seventy-five.

My husband had a cool job when I met him. I know I liked that. I got to go as his date to elaborate events that spawned Getty Images reels, their logo obfuscating the pictures, denying entry like a red-carpet rope.

Early on, I think we both liked how we appeared to the world as a unit, me as a native New Yorker and him an up-and-coming out-of-towner. In those days, we still thought people were looking. And we were good at climbing. We liked the mixology cocktails and the late nights, the career momentum and Hamptons weekends with friends who inherited their way into higher tax brackets and vanity clothing lines. We liked the B-list celebrities, who treated us as insiders. I wore navy-blue shift dresses and neutral sandals, my legs bare and Pilates-toned. Unlike at those sceney high school parties, I felt like I made sense in this world, posh and polished. A little uptight. Maybe that was the first time—the only time?—I almost felt like enough. I almost felt in control.

If I hadn’t gotten pregnant, would we have ended up married? Or would we have just been a twentysomething chapter? A romantic lesson learned? I always tell myself we were headed down that committed path, regardless, but, in my worst moments, I do wonder.

Because then he lost interest. Not in me, but in being seen. Had he grown up or grown complacent?

He stopped caring about the pretty picture we created, leaving me with crumpled Us Weekly magazines on my lap at corner manicure spots when we had sitters, while he headed to play poker or see baseball games (and not in a box) with regular friends. Average friends. Run-of-the-mill friends, who invited us to basic Super Bowl parties and family-friendly game nights instead of to movie premieres. We moved to a barely fashionable neighborhood in an outer borough.

Soon, the babysitters seemed like too much trouble to book. The twinkly events became obligations, where he’d make an appearance alone and head home by 9:00 p.m. The good life lost its shine.

Was that it? Had I become less shiny too? How come I didn’t get a vote?

Is that what happened with Sasha and Cliff? Had she lost her luster in his eyes? Or was it the other way around?

The kids come filing out now. Celeste’s husband plasters a smile on for Henry, but his face still has a grayish cast that I recognize from the mirror. He waves goodbye to the teacher and walks up the sidewalk with his son and both of Sasha’s kids too.

My daughter, Ruby, loves Henry. She keeps begging me to make plans with his family. But it never feels like the right time to ask. Why does organizing a playdate make rage bubble up inside me? Do the children even like her or is Ruby trying to hang with the cool kids? Are these the new velvet ropes?