God, these women were glamorous. Claire had always thought that for the first couple of years after having a baby, you looked like a swamp monster, with spit-up smeared in unlikely places and under-eye circles so deep spelunkers could get lost in them. And yet here these women were, on a random Tuesday afternoon, ready to star in a yogurt commercial. They were so thin too, no signs of baby bellies remaining, even though none of these kids could have been much older than a year, if that. It was like the babies had lived within them for a while—raucous, all-consuming tenants—and then once they’d moved out, the bodies had been fully renovated (fresh-painted walls, resanded floors, new appliances) to hide any sign of wear and tear. Claire was the one who had almost been a rock star, and yet, comparing herself to these women, she felt unkempt and mundane.

Whitney scooped up a little pink-clad baby from the floor.

“This one’s mine,” she said, jiggling her in front of Claire. “Meet Hope.” Whitney’s baby wore golden slippers and what Claire hoped was a fake-fur shrug over her dress. God, even these babies were glamorous. How many hours of her life had Whitney spent jamming Hope’s pudgy body into beautiful clothing that she’d soon outgrow?

“Hey, Hope,” Claire said as Hope stared at the ceiling and popped her fist into her mouth. Whitney kissed the top of Hope’s head before putting her back down.

To Claire, babies were like seeds. Interesting for what they might grow into but, for the moment, just dry, dull kernels. If she had to stare at a seed all day, she’d go insane. Claire would be a mother now too, for sure, if she had stayed in her hometown, where Sex Ed had consisted only of the warning that girls would be as useless as chewed gum if they “gave their precious gift” to anyone before marriage. Almost all the girls she’d gone to high school with had children. They posted pictures of their mini-mes heading off to preschool, and Claire felt separated from them by so much more than mere distance. She was pretty sure she didn’t want children at all. The idea of a tiny person’s life depending on her was enough to make her queasy. She already knew herself to be a killing machine. To date, through a lethal combination of neglect and fear, she’d murdered her childhood goldfish (RIP, Princess Leia), six houseplants, various romantic relationships, and her career.

The two standing mothers turned toward Claire. “I’m Gwen,” said the one who was full of baby-taming advice. She was blond with eyes like freshly washed blueberries. She pointed to the smaller of the two babies by the table. “And that’s Reagan!”

“Oh, cool, like from Shakespeare?” Claire asked.

“Pardon?” Gwen tilted her head to one side, dimples puckering her cheeks. Her voice was ever-so-slightly nasal but not in an unpleasant way.

“You know,” Claire said, “how Regan’s the name of one of the sisters in King Lear?”

“The evil one,” said the mom who liked a good heroin joke. She had a faint British accent, and her skin was dark ebony against her lavender blouse. Another blouse! All the women were wearing blouses, and all those blouses had probably cost more than Claire’s rent. Maybe she could just give her landlord, a perpetually frowning old Ukrainian man, one of Whitney’s extra blouses this month and he’d leave her be.

Gwen’s eyes widened, expanding like Violet Beauregarde in the chocolate factory. “Oh! No,” she said. “Not after Shakespeare, after Ronald.”

Claire tried to smile as if she thought Reagan was a great name for a baby and not a cruel joke (God, how she hoped Reagan grew up to be an Occupy Wall Street–esque progressive), but the snarky mother wasn’t buying it.

She gave Claire a knowing look as she extended her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Amara.” A cry rose from the bigger baby, and Amara let out a sigh. “That wailing lump would be Charlie.” She turned to go get him, but then looked back at Claire, a hint of mischief coming into her eyes. “And I know what you’re wondering: Yes, as in Manson.”

“Obviously,” Claire said, her strained smile breaking wide-open into a real one. Oh, she liked Amara.

“Those two on the couch are Meredith and Ellie,” Whitney said as the women in question waved. “They’re busy arranging their babies’ marriage to each other.”

“My last name is Masters, and Meredith’s is Funk,” Ellie announced to Claire. She was compact, pixielike, pale.

“So if they hyphenate,” Meredith said, “they can be the Funk-Masters!” She smiled a goofy, unrestrained grin, as if she were about to bite into something. She reminded Claire of a giraffe, with long limbs slightly akimbo.

“Hah. Cute,” Claire said. Ellie and Meredith smiled at each other, and then immediately recommenced their chatting.

Whitney laughed and rolled her eyes at Claire. “It’s a whole thing,” she said, then indicated the woman on the play mat. “And last but not least, that’s Vicki.”

Vicki merely nodded, before lifting a baby up to her chest, uncovering a swollen boob, and starting to breastfeed, her eyes drifting to the ceiling. If any of these mothers had hired a doula and done a home birth in a bathtub, Vicki was the one.

“So that’s our playgroup!” Whitney said. “We’re excited to see if we’re a good fit with you.”

“Thank you so much for joining us on such short notice,” Gwen said. “We had a bit of an emergency with our previous musician.”

“That makes it sound like he died or we ate him alive,” Amara said. Her baby was still crying. “Don’t terrify the girl. Or, at least, not until after she entertains our babies.” She sighed again, picked up a piece of strawberry from a low table, and put it in her baby’s mouth.

“Oh, man,” Claire said. “Was everything okay?”

“Yes,” Whitney said, and the women all shifted, meeting eyes, holding some juicy collective secret. “It was just . . . So Ellie’s sister had her bachelorette party, and—what do you know?—our musician moonlighted as a stripper. We’re not prudes or anything—you should live your life how you want—but it turned out that once Ellie had told us all about him thrusting in a thong and a firefighter helmet, it was a little awkward sitting through ‘Wheels on the Bus.’”

“He did have a great butt, though,” Ellie said. Meredith laughed and swatted her on the arm.

“Okay!” Whitney said. “Now that we’ve totally overwhelmed you, we’re going to sit quietly in a circle and listen to you sing. Do you need anything? What can I get you? Food? Water? Wine?” She winked at Claire and pulled a funny face. “We’re not like other playgroups—we’re a cool playgroup.”

“Oh, no, thanks,” Claire said. “I’m okay to get started.”

As the mothers gathered their babies onto their laps and looked at her expectantly, she slung her guitar off her back and pulled it out of its case. She’d bought the cheapest one they had at a used-guitar store in the East Village about a year ago, when she and the guys had been home on a break from touring around. She had been Vagabond’s secondary vocalist/occasional tambourine shaker/token female eye candy, but she’d started itching for more, so during the breaks in rehearsals or in between shows, when Chuck the bass player and Diego the drummer had gone outside to smoke, she’d asked Marcus, the lead singer/songwriter/guitar player/benevolent dictator, to teach her how to play. He had shown her the basic chords and progressions from songs by the musicians he had grown up loving: Bowie, the Stones, the later and weirder Beatles. Every one she mastered felt like a revelation, a new puzzle piece in the grand jigsaw that was “good” music. (All the guys in Vagabond had picked their instruments right in elementary school while she’d been playing the flute and—she cringed to remember it—the handbell. Then in high school, they’d all formed cool garage bands while she’d been the star musician of her megachurch.) She’d imagined eventually playing this guitar onstage, jamming out rapturously with the guys as their fans swayed and screamed.