Stuart checked the time on his phone, unnecessarily. Mandy would be right where he left her—in bed, either sleeping or watching TV.

“Mandy’s pretty busy today. Doctors’ appointments and stuff.” He removed his battered canvas wallet from his back pocket. “But yes, let’s do it. Conditioner, check Ted, whatever it takes. I just want to get rid of them.” He pulled out two twenties and handed them to her. “Here. Thank you. Buy a whole bunch.”

“You don’t have to—” Peaches began, but took the money anyway. That was the first rule of working at a public school in a neighborhood like Cobble Hill: always take the money. The parents had plenty because they were educating their kids for free.

“Wait here,” she told Stuart. “I’ll be right back.”

This was how it started:

One weekday back in early July, after Stuart and Teddy had left for Little Mushrooms summer day camp, Mandy flipped aimlessly through the TV channels, just like she always did. She watched the end of a show in Spanish about some jungle in Colombia where the snakes were so slithery and disgusting, she couldn’t look away. Then she watched a show about strange addictions, featuring an elderly woman who was addicted to watching cheesy, sad movies about anorexics—Kate’s Secret, The Best Little Girl in the World, My Skinny Sister—which Mandy was pretty sure was going to get her addicted to anorexia movies. Then she watched Worst Cooks in America, Celebrity Edition, a show she always wished someone would nominate her for. When the show ended, she clicked off the TV and floundered around on the perpetually unmade bed, unsure of what to do with herself.

She hadn’t always been this way. The obvious turning point had been when she’d gotten pregnant and had Teddy. She’d let herself go, which was such a cliché. In Cobble Hill, though, she was the anomaly, not the norm. Most of the moms in the neighborhood were super fit and looked good in skinny jeans even though they were fifty years old. It just made her hate them, which she knew was uncool. Still, she hated them.

That day in July, as she lay on her back in Stuart’s old yellow Blind Mice T-shirt and the same pair of black underwear she’d been wearing for two days straight, she tried to think of something good. Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream was good. Entenmann’s pecan ring was good. Something good about herself though. She turned over onto her stomach, her large chest flattening and oozing into her armpits and against her clavicle. There, that was something good about her. She had great tits. White teeth. Shiny hair. And she was only thirty-five. But somehow that didn’t make her feel any better.