asked.
“You bet, a loaded gun around the kids,” she said. “Guess what—I want them to learn to shoot, too. Nobody at my house is going to wait around to be a goddamned victim. Someone messes with us, they’re dead.”
The other women exchanged meaningful glances, silently agreeing that Susan had lost it. But she’d gotten them out of their funk. Now they were debating issues of self-defense, the benefits of Mace versus stun guns, karate versus tai chi. I stood and went to the window, needing another break.
Molly stood beside the pit, by the uneven parallel bars. She stepped up and, with Coach Gene’s help, lifted herself to the lower bar. My heart stopped. I watched her little body swing, gather momentum, and somehow fly itself up to the high bar, defying gravity. Molly fearlessly held her position, her back arched and toes pointed, then leaned forward and spun back down to the lower bar. She flipped and flew back and forth between the bars, until finally she swung into her dismount, a cannonball from the high bar into the pit. When my heart began to beat again, I stifled the urge to burst into applause.
It was true; familiar activities, routine, and structure were therapeutic. They soothed us, kept us in the here and now. There we were, the gymnastics moms, the same as every week. Even with the disappearance of Tamara, we were following our routine, sticking together. A bunch of women, a mini-community bound by little besides the age of our children and hectic schedules that, by chance, had led us to sign our kids up for the same class. But now, aroused by Susan’s spirit, we were organizing ourselves to take action—any action—against the paralysis of grief and fear.
“We’ll need a buddy system,” Gretchen suggested. “Nannies go nowhere if they don’t go in pairs.”
“And cell phones—programmed with emergency numbers.”
“And we should hire that self-defense teacher, that guy who teaches women to poke out attackers’ eyes—”
“Yeah, and knee ‘em in the balls—”
“Mom?” Molly’s head poked through the doorway. She looked puzzled.
The conversation stopped dead. “Hi, honey.”
She was glowing from exertion, damp with sweat. “Mom, did you see me? Were you watching?”
I crossed the room to hug her, wondering what she’d heard, and my chin quivered unexpectedly. “Yes, I did, Molly—I watched. I saw you, and you were amazing.”
She beamed proudly, escaping the hug to run to the water fountain. The other children swarmed in, finding their mothers, pulling on their coats. Plans for moms organizing against crime were, at least for the time being, abruptly suspended.
EIGHT
AT FIFTH STREET DELI, EMILY AND MOLLY IMMEDIATELY GOT busy with the puzzles and games on the kids’ place mats. Susan and I sat looking nowhere, saying nothing. I told myself to relax; still, a sooty finger beckoned from behind the salt shaker, Tamara’s eyes peered over the cold-cuts counter, and old Charlie’s cryptic warnings echoed under the buzz of conversation. Stop it, I ordered myself. Focus on the here and now. The familiar and routine. But even as I scolded myself, I fantasized about running out of the place, just grabbing Molly’s hand and fleeing with Susan and the girls down the street back to our house where we could bolt the door and be safe. I even planned our escape route. I’d grab my purse and pull Molly out of the booth, lead Susan past the chair in the aisle, dodge that guy in the herringbone coat, veer past the cash register, and then—
What was happening to me? Couldn’t I just sit quietly and have a meal with my friend? Couldn’t I take even a brief break from the craziness around me? I should be able to; I was a therapist, a mental health professional, trained to deal with emotional problems.
But the fact was that I wasn’t dealing. I was tense, tired, and stressed. And Susan looked like I felt. Maybe even worse. She sat across the table, at once wired and haggard.
“Mom, can you find any forks in this picture?” Molly pointed to a puzzle on her place mat. Arthur the Squirrel couldn’t eat his dinner without dishes and utensils, and they were all hidden in the drawing.
“I found it,” Emily bragged. She pointed to a tiny fork hidden in a tree branch. Molly leaned across the table to see, and the girls chattered, weaving a nonstop conversation.
Susan and I, though, were quiet. Susan’s mood pendulum seemed to have swung. After her impassioned rabble-rousing at gymnastics, she’d suddenly deflated. Her black