Thirteen.

After drop-off there was a PTA meeting at the elementary school, so Frances was heading back there once she was done at the preschool. Preschool drop-off took time, though, what with book reading, multiple hugs, and a surreptitious glance at today’s snack.

Frances was now old enough to resist what she referred to as The Tyranny of Snack. It started innocently enough, when your first child started preschool. For the first week or so the school would offer the kids goldfish crackers, fruit, whatever, and put together a roster of parents who would bring in a snack in the future. Then a hunting horn sounded and all hell broke loose, but in a very progressive, mutually respectful way, of course.

First blood would be drawn by those parents who baked. Frances had had the misfortune of Ava being in a preschool class with a world-famous chef, who would send in tiny tartlets, each one folded like origami, filled with fresh figs and mascarpone. For three-year-olds, who took one bite and declared them “yucky.” Others sent in baby chia muffins, or curated granola bars, baked from scratch and containing at least four grams of omega-3s per serving. One time Frances reached out to snag a homemade cheese straw and realized it was literally the best cheese straw in the history of the world. There were two little boys using them as light sabers, crumbs flying everywhere, and it was all Frances could do not to confiscate them.

Then there would be a murmuring about gluten intolerance, and baked goods would give way to fresh fruit, washed and presented artistically. Sometimes there would be a confit of some sort to dip things in, other times the fruit would be cut into shapes. Generally, it was a no-no to just buy a fruit platter at the grocery store and dump it on the table. The fruit had to be decanted into artisanal bowls of indeterminate national origin. “We’re teaching the children to appreciate presentation,” one mother had explained to Frances. “We’re raising their aesthetic bar.” Seeing as that mother’s child had another kid in a headlock around the corner and was forcing sand down his pants, Frances wasn’t sure aesthetics was going to be his primary challenge, but she let it go. She also simply stopped signing up for snack once Milo started school, and now that Lally was there she just went to Costco and bought Cheez-Its in bulk instead. If it was a banner day she would find the ones with letters on them, and consider herself ahead of the game.

Anyway, elementary school was a different arena. In that one, fights were held at PTA meetings. Frances kissed Lally goodbye and drove to the school. There she donned her full-body armor, grabbed her pepper spray, and headed into the auditorium.

Hunting for a familiar face and somewhere to sit, she spotted Lili Girvan. Tiptoeing around the other parents she sat next to her and hissed, “What did I miss?”

“Not much,” replied Lili. “So far there’s just been the naked human sacrifice and the lamb-shearing contest.”

“Oh, thank God,” said Frances.

Miss Delgado stood at the front, clutching a sheaf of papers. She was the assistant head, and nominally in charge of the T part of the PTA. The P section was represented by Erica Feinberg, a dermatologist and professional viper, who’d served time for lasering off someone’s entire head, on purpose. That wasn’t true, but she was a bitch. She’d started out as secretary, then treasurer, and now had attained the highest office possible in a medium-size public charter school: president of the PTA. It was heady stuff, apparently, because Erica’s eyes were gleaming.

Lili leaned closer. “Could Erica’s pupils be any wider?” She paused. “Do you think she did cocaine this morning?”

“Before school?”

Lili shrugged as Miss Delgado began to speak.

“Thank you all for coming, we certainly appreciate your time. We’ll try and move through the agenda as quickly as possible. I know you all have places to be.”

“Although,” put in Erica, “I know we all consider this our most important job.”

“Not me,” said a voice from the front, and everyone laughed. Natalie Clements was the mother of a sixth grader, and she’d been at every PTA meeting Frances had ever attended. She was a comedy writer on a TV show and couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Some people came to PTA meetings just to enjoy Natalie. Erica hated her, which was a huge point in Natalie’s favor.

Miss Delgado, who regularly faced hundreds of children with nary a hint of mortal fear, kept moving on.

“Our first item is next semester’s after-school enrichment offerings. We have a couple of new options, in addition to the standard arts and crafts, yoga, and drumming circle.” She looked again at a piece of paper, as if to check the words hadn’t changed. “First off, we are adding knitting and crochet, because we discovered Miss Mariachi can knit and crochet and I caught her at a weak moment.” Another laugh came from the crowd, who were clearly overcaffeinated. “The other new offering is gardening, which has been generously funded by an anonymous donor, including the building of brand-new raised beds and a new gardening teacher.” There was a small round of applause, and Miss Delgado could be seen blushing. Apparently, the new gardening teacher was handsome. Frances turned to Lili.

“Is that your Dutch guy?”

Lili shook her head. “He may have had something to do with the anonymous donation, and it’s possible my kids guilted him into it, but the teacher is a young guy who just graduated from college.

“Why is Miss Delgado blushing?”

“He’s young, attractive, single, and multilingual. Entirely blushworthy.”

Miss Delgado cleared her throat. “We also have a couple of suggestions from Erica, based on feedback she’s received from other parents.” There was a pause. “Apparently.”

The room grew watchful. It was extremely rare for Miss Delgado to throw shade. Something Was Afoot.

Erica stepped forward and smiled a cosmetically enhanced smile that nonetheless managed to look natural, which is why she made the big bucks. “Esther Avilar has offered to teach Reiki after school this year, which would be great.” Someone raised a hand, but Erica anticipated. “Reiki is a healing modality dealing with the redirection of life energy.” The hand went back up. “A healing modality is just a method of treatment.” And up it went again. “And life energy is precisely what it sounds like.”

This time the hand waved and Erica snapped out, “Yes, Elliott?”

Elliott Schaefer had twin boys in the fourth grade. They had plenty of life energy. “Doesn’t Reiki involve the laying on of hands?”

Erica shook her head. “No, it involves the hovering of hands just above the body, to rearrange the chi.”

“Well, putting the chi to one side, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. My kids aren’t ready to master hovering.”

“So, don’t sign them up. You are your child’s best advocate, remember.”

Elliott started to add more, but Erica called on someone else. The mother of a girl named Araminta asked, “What about personal boundaries and space issues?”

The mother of a boy named Ronin: “Would these classes be in gender-specific groups?” And then, adding quickly, “Organized by the gender the child identifies with, of course, not with their gender at birth.” A chorus of “of courses” could be heard rippling across the room. This crowd was nothing if not intersectionally aware.

Erica coughed. “We’re just opening up discussion at this point, and these are all good points for further evaluation. Another suggestion is cooking, but obviously not with actual heat or anything. Children would be encouraged to use fresh vegetables to make delicious dishes.”

“A salad-tossing class?” Natalie asked incredulously. “What could possibly go wrong?”

“Finally,” Erica was not to be deterred, “junior cotillion.”

And there it was. The hand grenade they’d been waiting for. Miss Delgado had her eyes down, admiring her bright, white Keds. Frances flicked a glance at Lili, who had closed her eyes to appreciate the moment. You might think cotillion, which is basically a class where kids learn to be overly polite, to use the right fork, and where boys learn to open doors for girls, is a trivial offering, but you would be wrong. It is a fulcrum of dispute between two parenting paradigms, at least in Los Angeles.

One approach holds that kids need to be taught good manners, that they are an Important Life Skill. The other believes children shouldn’t be forced into the societal norms of the hegemony, and should be encouraged to express themselves authentically. The vast majority of parents, of course, have no real opinion either way, try not to use the word hegemony at all, and are just stumbling through the day trying not to get banana smeared on themselves. Frances had noticed that both opinionated camps had fierce devotees who were primed and ready to sound off about them. She looked around. About two-thirds of the room were slowly slipping down in their seats, getting comfortable; while the other third, the true believers, were sitting up and sharpening their shivs.

Later that evening Frances told Michael about it.

“Elodie Keene opened the fight by standing up and saying cotillion reinforced the patriarchy.”

Michael was pulling off his shoes. “A nice opener. Simple, to the point.”

Frances nodded. “I thought so. Erica came back that she didn’t need to enroll her kid if she didn’t want to, and Elodie responded that she wouldn’t enroll her in a chapter of the KKK, either, but it didn’t mean she’d accept one on campus.”

Her husband’s shoe dropped at the same time as his jaw. “She did not.”

“Oh, she did. Jessica Artessian—I know, she has too many s’s in her name, we’ve covered this before—stood up and said learning good manners was not in the same league as burning crosses, which is true, generally speaking.”

“Yes, but she still has too many . . .”

“Which produced the response from David Millar that cotillion belonged in the same drawer of history as burning crosses, and then it all got out of hand.”

“Brilliant. Why don’t I come to these things?”

“Because we rock, paper, scissored for it and I lost.”

Lally wandered in, deeply aggrieved. “I have my finger stuck in an aardvark.”

“If I had a dime . . .” said Michael, as he reached out for his daughter. “I see the problem.” There was a Littlest Pet Shop head on Lally’s pinkie. “Where is its body?”

“In the dog.”

“OK.” He wiggled the toy, and eventually managed to squeeze it hard enough that the neck hole got bigger and she was able to pull her finger out. He handed it to her, she said, “Thanks,” and ran off to do it again.

“Those are the skills they should teach in the prenatal class, along with diapering.”

Frances laughed. “Finger removal?”

“That sounds dark. Finger release?”

“That sounds dirty. Finger extraction?”

“OK. They also need to teach Toddler Hiding Techniques. It took me a while to realize if my keys were missing that I needed to check doll purses first.”

“Yeah. And in the oven.”

“The toilet.”

“The back of the diaper they’re currently wearing.”

“Exactly. So how did the meeting end up?”

“Stalemate. A show of hands revealed parents were split three ways.”

“Three?”

“Ten for, ten against, and the rest no opinion.”

“See, this is the problem with parents today. No commitment.”

He sat down in his favorite chair and opened his laptop. Yes, it was the start of another evening that was just like every other evening at the Bloom house. “You managed not to sign up for anything, right?”

“Well . . .”

He closed his laptop—success—and frowned at her. “Frank, you made me promise to prevent you from signing up for anything. Last year the Walk-A-Thon nearly killed you.”

“I know, I know. I walked out of the elementary meeting completely unscathed. However, I did agree to go to a meeting about the High School Spring Fling.”

Michael made a disgusted noise and opened his computer. “You’re beyond help.”

She gazed at him. “Are you seeing someone else?”

He closed his computer. “This is about Anne?”

She didn’t say anything. On the one hand they had such a low-sex marriage that she could understand if he was having an affair, or getting blow jobs from hookers, or whatever, but on the other hand she was certain her heart would stop beating without him. “We don’t . . . you don’t want to have sex with me anymore.” She swallowed. “It wouldn’t be impossible for you to be sleeping with someone else. You are human.”

He put his computer to one side and stood to walk over to her. For a split second she was genuinely terrified. Oh God, he was seeing someone and he’s about to confirm it, and it’s all going to come crashing down just like it did when Alex died, just as suddenly and irrevocably as a giant Acme safe through the roof. Michael sat next to her on the bed.

“Frank. I love you very, very much. I’m not having sex with anyone, including you. Sometimes I worry that you’re seeing someone else. We used to have a lot of sex, remember?”

She smiled at him, holding his hand. “I remember.”

“But then we had kids, and dogs, and started working longer hours and using our free time to sleep instead of fool around, and here we are. I’m happy, Frances. No sex on the planet is worth losing our life together.”

“Not even a blow job from Angelina Jolie?”

He frowned at her. “We agreed Angelina was the only exception.”

She nodded. “For both of us, if I remember rightly.”

He looked relieved. “OK then.”

Frances looked into his gray-green eyes, his long lashes, his face that had softened and widened with age, his hair that was largely no longer there. “She called the other day, you know.”

“Again?”

“She sounded upset.”

He shrugged, leaning forward and kissing her on the lips, firmly. “I’ve tried to let her down gently, but she takes these things so seriously.”

“Actresses.”

“Right?” He stood up. “We’re OK, Frances, don’t worry. Just because Anne can’t keep her pants on doesn’t mean anything to us, OK?”

Frances nodded. But as he opened his laptop and went back to work, she wondered.