The breakfast/get dressed/brush teeth rituals all went smoothly. Sometimes it’s just easier with one parent. I made pancakes in the shapes of animals and, according to Teddy, did “better than Daddy.” While the boys watched a few minutes of TV, I called Claudia to see if she wanted to meet for coffee, but she and Debbie Beebe were off to Pilates.

At drop-off, stay-at-home-dad Wendell Carson was talking with a mother whose back was to me. I always wanted to laugh when I saw Wendell. Not because of Tim’s nickname for him—the Weasel—which was perfect, by the way. No, it’s because lately, Tim had taken to imitating Wendell, and he had him down pat: his pursed lips, his fey gestures, and his annoying tendency to poke you repeatedly in the arm while talking with you.

That morning Wendell was gesticulating wildly, having cornered, I soon realized, none other than Anna Brody. I eavesdropped while he described a “fffabulous” play space in Chelsea where he had taken his son, Jasper. As expected, Wendell poked Anna in the arm twice for emphasis, and as he started in for a third poke, she moved slightly aside so that his finger stabbed the air. I must have laughed out loud, because Wendell turned to look at me. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just thought of something my husband said.”

“Oh, by the way, tell him to call me. We’re starting a men’s group. And we need men.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said as Wendell hurried off.

Anna said, “How lucky.” (Meaning, I thought, his leaving.)

“Yes,” I said, turning toward Anna. “Hey, are you doing anything now?”

As we climbed the stairs, I worried that this was a terrible idea. I started to apologize for what she was about to see, but for some reason, I stopped myself. I’m unable to explain why. Maybe I was testing her.

After following me into our apartment, Anna looked around but said nothing for the longest time. When she finally spoke, it was something about the advantages of a small home. I believe the word she used was intimate. She mentioned how, in her house, it seemed all she did was look for one of Sophie’s lost socks or the house keys. “Same thing with us,” I said, proving the thesis of a book from some years back that argued men by nature compete and women seek consensus. Anna moaned about the upkeep of a house (as if she genuinely did the up-keeping). I nodded as if I knew how she felt. In an attempt at humor, I demonstrated how, if one cleared off the table in the living room, it became a dining room. I demonstrated how, by moving the movable bookshelf in the wall unit (which Tim had designed and built), it allowed that same room to become a home office.

I hoped she would laugh.

She didn’t. She said almost too sincerely, “What a great place.”

I wondered whether to believe her.