Chapter 22
The 185-acre expanse of green known as Atlanta’s Piedmont Park is a great place for 20-somethings to bask in the city’s year-round sunshine, play ironic games of kickball, display and photograph twee picnics on blankets made from sorority T-shirts, and terrorize small dogs, children, and regular-sized runners by riding e-scooters at unsafe speeds along the park’s paved paths.
Piedmont Park is also a great place for a 40-year-old mother of two to get drunk at noon on a Saturday, as it turns out.
Willa was there with Jem, Jen, Jamie, and Ashley (#teamfitfams #fitfamsforce) to play some cornhole, kick the soccer ball around, and slam cans of White Claw. Tara, in town from New York for about 24 hours, was expected to join them shortly.
“I wonder why she’s here,” Jen said, sitting back in her camp chair and opening a Black Cherry. She tilted her face toward the sun, unafraid of the aging effects of UV rays.
Willa, adequately sunscreened, sipped a Raspberry and marveled at how much it tasted like cough syrup, chemicals, and maybe cyanide? Hard seltzer was not to be savored. She slugged it back, then crushed the can in her hand.
Jem, drunk, made a face that was a little bit hard to read — was that a coquettish smile? Or indigestion?
“What?” Ashley said, lying on a blanket, her chin propped in her hands, her perfect black hair spilling over her perfect tan shoulders.
“Out with it, Jem,” Jamie said, though she didn’t seem genuinely curious about the matter as she picked at an invisible split end on her ponytail.
“She’s probably here to see me,” Jem said, then broke into girlish giggles.
“Oh, that,” Jamie said. “Yeah, we knew you two were sleeping together.”
“That is not news,” Ashley said.
Jem puffed out her lower lip and pulled her knees into her chest on the blanket. “How come you guys never said anything to me about it?”
“I’ve slept with her too,” Jen said, bored.
Jem looked genuinely pained, then put on a labored smile. “Oh, no, I knew that. It’s just a casual thing. Whatever.”
“There she is,” Willa said, pointing across the park.
She could see Tara in the distance, with peacock-blue hair, her silver aviators glinting in the sun, her tight lower abs showing between a loose, cropped tank and dangerously low-rise track pants. She was surrounded by warm light and the song “Dreamweaver” was playing.
Or maybe it wasn’t. Willa was drunk. Anyway.
“Hey, team,” Tara said, fist-bumping each coach, getting to Jem last but not giving her any special attention. Jem looked at her phone, trying to play it cool.
“Claw me,” Tara said, and Jamie tossed her a can of Mango, which she drained immediately. She grabbed another from the cooler, then sat on the blanket, close to Ashley.
Well, if she’s having another, Willa thought, I suppose I should too. The only flavor left was Grapefruit. She paused for a moment, remembering that her psychiatrist and pharmacist warned her against drinking or eating grapefruit because it could reduce the efficacy of one of her meds. Eh, there’s probably not any real grapefruit in here, she thought to herself, and took a big swig.
“So, what’s the latest in Atlanta?” Tara asked. “Spill the tea.”
Jamie launched into a story about coaching a famous actress from the new CW dramedy about teenage superheroes addicted to opioids. “She was sooo nice,” Jamie said, “and sooo thin.”
“I had a really weird situation the other day,” Ashley said. “This client came in and brought a friend, who ended up standing next to the machine the whole time, holding the client’s arm and sort of spotting her for all the moves. Like, the client would need to turn around, and instead of using her abs to do it, she’d let her friend kind of push her. I would’ve kicked the friend out, but I was just so thrown by the whole thing, and I didn’t want it to hurt the flow of the class.”
“Was the client named Franny?” Tara asked.
Ashley blinked. “Yes! How did you know?”
“She’s disabled,” Tara said. “You didn’t notice that she had one hand?”
Ashley blanched. “I … oh my God … I had no idea.”
“Yeah, she emailed corporate to let us know she’d have a helper with her.” Tara shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It happens.”
Willa hoped she didn’t look as surprised as she felt. This kind of thing just “happens?” What if Jamie had said something insensitive? Why hadn’t corporate given her a heads-up?
Ashley kept her eyes on her can of White Claw. Willa could tell she was trying not to cry, and wanted to reach out and squeeze her shoulder but was afraid she might topple over if she stood up from her soccer-mom chair right now.
Willa’s phone buzzed. It was Pete. “You coming home soon?”
She checked the time: 5 p.m. She’d been at the park, drinking, for about five hours.
Feeling a twinge of frustration, she texted back: “I thought we’d talked about me being gone for the day, since you went away for the weekend a few weeks ago?”
Three dots on the screen. She grabbed another drink. The phone buzzed again.
“Charlie was asking,” Pete wrote.
Guilt seeped into Willa’s chest. “I told him I’d be with friends until after dinner time.”
“Let’s put all this stuff in one of your cars and walk up to a bar,” Tara said.
Willa texted again. “Tara is here, and she wants the team to spend a little bit more time together. Is that OK?”
Three dots, for what felt like long while.
Then: “OK. We’ll see you when we see you.”