Page 6

6 | Back in the Day KAITLIN

It’s ten minutes after pick-up and most everyone has left. My daughter, Ruby, is still inside at after-school toy-making class. But, since I work from home in research marketing and am not currently super busy (read: am mostly hate-scrolling through other people’s photos of family vacations in Hawaii), I have volunteered at the last minute to work the bake-sale booth until 5:00 p.m. Some second-grade dad canceled because he got the “stomach flu” (probably code for Nets tickets).

I glance up and around. Again . Sasha was nowhere to be found today. Which makes standing outside school alone extra boring.

See, the Sasha I see at school pick-up every day in a sea of other parents doesn’t look much like the one I used to know. And I find it fascinating.

When we first met, we were children—about to start eighth grade. She was sitting on a stoop on Eighty-Sixth Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue. I remember because I had just moved from the Upper East Side to the Upper West after my parents’ divorce and I still felt out of place. Eighty-Sixth was one of the only streets I knew and not in a good way. That past summer in the Hamptons, the daughter of a Park Avenue family friend had proclaimed in no hushed tones that where Eighty-Sixth Street intersected Broadway “might as well be Harlem.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but I sensed it was not supposed to be good. I also sensed that it was vaguely offensive—to my family and to Harlem, for that matter. Nevertheless, I lay awake on more than one night worrying about it.

That girl was an idiot. I saw that in no time. But I also observed, with some discomfort, that this neighborhood didn’t mind showing you its stitches and scars. It juxtaposed upscale prewar buildings—historical landmarks with glamorous deco detailing and doormen who loitered under grand awnings—with neighborhood staples like William’s Chicken, where they gave you crunchy pickles and fried drumsticks to gnaw on while you waited if you managed to look cute and young enough. The buildings and sidewalks were so often scaffolded and repaved that they existed in a state of constant reinvention, edits enacted gradually to avoid upsetting the ghosts of carved initials past.

You wouldn’t have thought that the Upper East Side and Upper West would feel so different, being just across Central Park from each other. They were both populated by prep schools and museums and beloved mom-and-pop businesses of another era. And yet there was an energy that felt diametrically opposed—one straight-backed and proper, while the other slouched in casual defiance, a hunched middle finger to the etiquette that I understood. There was a proud clutter to this new neighborhood, a brisk warmth, an eclecticism, no apologies.

That first evening when we met, Sasha and I were both newbies, dragged along out of obligation by other kids, in my case a cousin. Two square pegs, milling on the outside of a closed circle of teens whose drama didn’t yet include us. But, unlike me, she looked like she belonged. Her bleached platinum-blond bob was tucked back behind her elfin ears—with multiple piercings already—to reveal matching fairy features. Short floral baby doll dress, shit-kicker platform sandals. A less-vanilla white girl than I. Pale skin, a smattering of freckles, small nose with the most subtle ski jump, green cat eyes accentuated with liquid black liner I was not yet skilled enough to apply myself.

But, for those first few months, we glommed on to each other, the way you do when you’re new to a place. Meeting up on corners we were still memorizing, baking chocolate chip oatmeal cookies during sleepovers at each other’s houses, gossiping about kids who didn’t know we existed.

Until, one day, they did. Well, not us . Her. And, as soon as she came alive for them, she began to fade for me. We’d been tight for only a few months, and we didn’t go to the same school, but it felt like getting dumped. Hard.

And, Lord, I envied her sparkle.

These days, Sasha is someone else entirely. For one thing, this is deep Brooklyn, not Manhattan. (What would that Park Avenue girl say about this place with its patchwork of dilapidated and gentrified row houses?) For another, it’s been decades, decades.

Yesterday, at school pick-up, I noticed Sasha hadn’t changed out of her workout clothes for whatever exercise she’s using to stave off perimenopausal pounds. But, of course, she still looked annoyingly incredible. Even the dark circles under her eyes gave her a cool edge. ( Did the concealer pen run out, Sasha? Add that to the to-do list! )

Grown-up Sasha has less swagger as she walks—no, r uns !—to grab her kids just in time, her pink-tinted sunglasses always threatening to topple from her head. And, when she nodded to me yesterday, I noticed she ran a hand along her hair, and, obviously self-conscious about its untamed state, threw it in a ponytail. But she is still magnetic, despite the waning collagen and waxing stressors of adulthood.

Thinking about it now, I run a hand over my own hair. I need to get my roots done. Add that to my to-do list.

Sometimes, I think she avoids me because I knew her when.

Yesterday, I watched her—purely for anthropological reasons, naturally—hurry away from school and toward her apartment. She waved at the few other parents she knows, some of the dads watching her for a beat too long. She ushered her kids across the street. Asked them about their days. Listened distractedly as they reported on art projects, recess kickball and friend dramas. Sighed as they confessed to leaving half their lunches uneaten—the healthy halves. She ran her hand over her hair one more time as she faded into the distance, pulled out the hairband and shook it free, scrunching up her perfect nose as she caught her reflection in a car window. Never pleased.

Does she look as bad as she thinks she does? Is she as boring as she feels? Sasha. Are you okay?

It doesn’t really matter. She looks worse than she used to. And “used to” has become a part of her lexicon, as it has all of ours as we’ve aged.

God. How did we get here?

The truth is she looks just fine for her age. Even annoyingly chic, I think, as I frown down at my frumpy sweater. But “for her age” must be added at the end of every sentence when describing a woman over forty. She’s successful for her age . She looks good for her age . She’s in good shape for her age . She’s got good style for her age . At least, she used to .

But Sasha is MIA this afternoon. Although her daughter, Nettie, stands outside beside her third-grade teacher in front of the gate, looking mortified. Her arms are crossed over her chest, her lips pursed tight, as she is marched back inside to the office where forsaken children wait for their late parents.

If Sasha has not arrived in ten minutes, there will be a call to her cell phone. If she does not pick up that call, there will be a call to her backup emergency contact.

It will not be her ex-husband, Cliff, because he lives in LA.

Cliff didn’t leave her suddenly. Or maybe he did. But it didn’t appear that way from the outside. I’m not on the inside despite our history. I thought perhaps since our children ended up enrolled at the same school and live in the same neighborhood, we’d finally become real friends again, but Sasha prefers two-person huddles with her buddy Celeste—when Celeste actually shows up.

So I can only speak to what the rest of us observed about her marriage, which was not very much. After all, we barely saw Cliff before the separation either, except as a blurry figure materializing, rushed and disruptive, at the back of the classroom or auditorium at the tail end of some curriculum night. (Of course, that’s true of a good percentage of the dads.) He was good-looking in a quirky way with jet-black hair, pale skin and a resting snark face. Like Reggie from Archie .

He looked up to no good.

At the one Monster’s Ball Halloween festival I believe he attended, he hung at the edges against the schoolyard’s green chain-link fence, sullen and glued to his phone. Some of the other parents got wind that he was a screenwriter and thought that seemed cool, so he drew some focus. I saw Lisa corner him that night, going on and on as she does. He barely tolerated her, his eyes darting impatiently over her shoulder again and again until he made some excuse to walk away. She is extra, but there’s no reason to be unkind.

Once, when the kids were really young, he got tipsy at our eighties-night auction and fundraiser, laughing too loudly about how disinterested he was in the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon tickets we had on offer. (I also think Jimmy Fallon has the personality of a flaccid penis, but I wouldn’t shout about it at the top of my lungs.)

So, when he didn’t show up for drop-off or pick-up at school, we didn’t notice. He never showed up anyway. We just saw him less and less until he never made an appearance at all. It was as if, instead of leaving, he had effervesced his way out of our neighborhood like dust particles floating into nothingness. And who knew where they landed? Who cared?

Except we all did. Because at some point during that time, he sold one of his moronic superhero screenplays to a giant studio. His participles realigned in a state of quantum entanglement on our TV and movie screens. Suddenly, we saw him—or at least his name—on billboards, in scrolling credits and everywhere else.

Unless you were his kids. Then you barely saw him at all.

Then came the scene the world saw: Cliff at an awards show with his hand inside the dress of a seat filler. No one there knew or cared who he was. He was probably just someone’s plus-one at that point. But the indiscretion was caught on camera during one of those televised commercial breaks at the Golden Globes. One minute, you were watching drunken celebrities stumble around in their natural element; the next you saw Cliff, hand cupping someone’s tit in graphic relief. The clip went viral, of course, and the term Golden Globes took on new meaning, inspiring a hashtag and pernicious punch lines. (Okay, fine . My mom friends and I may have giggled over the puns some.) Eventually, the fervor died down.

But maybe Sasha died a little inside too.

In fact, if Cliff’s disappearance was observable, it was by watching Sasha instead. As he vaporized into something lighter than air, she darkened and solidified. For a while, her highlights got touched up less often and, at drop-off and pick-up, she appeared with less and less makeup, her clothing more wrinkled as she sprinted away at warp speed. It was hard not to sense her back ache as her shoulders hunched during that time. She found her posture again; but she remained at arm’s length.

When she shows up at school now, forty-five minutes after pick-up, I am still outside. There are only a few chocolate cupcakes left with pink and purple icing, dusted with broken sprinkles.

I am contemplating the pastel of it all and considering eating one myself, so I almost miss Sasha as she races past and up the stairs to the school’s entrance, harried, flyaways framing her face. She doesn’t notice me. Or, if she does, she doesn’t show it.

Are you feeling frazzled, Sasha? Do you feel at fault? Give yourself a break. We can all only do the best we can.