Frances was back at AYSO again, having thrown scissors against Michael’s rock. They used rock, paper, scissors to settle everything, and it had reached the point where they would throw the same thing for about six turns, then one of them would throw scissors and the other would throw rock. She wondered if when they were eighty it would take them thirty identical throws to get to a decision, which was another question for that Jeopardy! category, if Alex Trebek ever called. Occasionally she would play “crazy” rock, paper, scissors with Lally or Milo, where they would throw nutball things like shark (one hand making biting movements), spider (obvious), flames (upside-down spider), or rabbit (again, if you need a diagram this isn’t the game for you). She’d tried this against Michael one time and he’d vetoed it instantly.
“How can you say for certain that shark would beat scissors?” he had asked, incredulously.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Frances said. “Could it be that sharks are one of the world’s most efficient killing machines, with super tough skin and teeth that constantly replace themselves, and scissors—even if they’re incredibly, surgically sharp—are still just scissors? PLUS you would need to be very close to the shark to deploy them, and then it would just eat you. Particularly if you had just stabbed it with a pair of scissors, which it would probably consider unfriendly.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” he’d said. “But if we start going outside the norms of rock, paper, scissors I think we’d be playing a dangerous game.”
“Rather than a childhood game?”
“Yes. Who knows where it could lead. You could throw karate chop and I could throw finger guns and all of a sudden it’s a Tarantino movie.”
Suddenly Frances got hit in the head with a soccer ball, which jolted her out of her pleasant replaying of Idiotic Conversations with My Husband, a channel she watched a lot in her head.
“Sorry!” A small boy ran up to her and retrieved the ball. “Sorry, Frances!”
She looked down. It was Lucas. She smiled. “No problem, sweetheart, I wasn’t using my head for anything right then anyway.” He ran off. Frances waved at Bill, who was standing on the goal line of Lucas’s game, and then looked over to see if either of her own kids was injured. She wasn’t asking for a broken leg or anything, a badly skinned knee would cut this shit short.
“Hey, Frances, anyone injured yet?” It was Lilian, clutching an enormous cup of coffee.
“Hey there, no, sadly, all hale and hearty and running around this morning.” Frances looked around. “Did you bring Mr. Edam?”
Lilian nodded, pointing one finger from her coffee-gripping hand. “He’s over there, watching Clare. Her team are the Pink Dolphins. He’s holding a Pink Dolphin. That’s how you’ll pick him out.”
Frances spotted him. “He’s very tall.”
Lilian nodded. “Yup.”
“And quite broad in the shoulders.”
Lilian sighed. “Yup.”
“And handsome and all that stuff. I can see why you’re ambivalent.”
Lilian clicked her tongue. “But look at him waving a stuffed dolphin! Isn’t that questionable behavior in a grown man?”
Frances shrugged. “I think it’s cute. I think he’s cute. I think Clare likes him, judging by the way she’s clutching him around the knees.”
Lilian smiled. “Yes, the kids like him a lot. Annabel wasn’t sure at first, but now it’s like he was her idea all along. I don’t know why I’m reluctant about him, he’s really nice.”
Frances shrugged again. “Because you’re as nuts as the rest of us? Because why let yourself be happy when you can get in your own way and question it? Because you feel guilty for being happy when there is so much misery and suffering in the world?”
“Sure,” said Lilian, after taking a thoughtful swig of coffee. “All of the above. Plus, he’s amazing in bed, and who needs that?”
“Never mind,” consoled Frances. “That will fade. I promise.”
Lilian looked at her. “Sex life not what it used to be?”
Frances shook her head. “Actually, much as it used to be, if you only go back a decade or so. My mother once memorably told me if you put a coin in a jar every time you had sex the first couple of years of a relationship, and then, once you’d been married a year started taking one out every time you had sex, you’d never empty the jar.”
Lilian frowned. “I’m not good enough at math to understand that.”
“Me neither, when she told me. I thought she was wrong, and told her so. She laughed, and I think now I understand why. You don’t have very much sex after you’ve been married twenty years. Or at least, we don’t.” She coughed. “How on earth did we get onto this?”
“My hunky Dutch guy.”
“Oh yeah. Well, anyway, get it while you can. Enjoy.”
“I have two little kids. There’s not all that much time for chandelier swinging.”
“Get a room.”
Lilian suddenly looked animated. “Oooh, like Anne Porter? Is that all true?”
Clare came running over, with the dolphin in her hand. “Mom, can you hold this for me?”
“Wasn’t Edward holding it?”
“I was.” The tall Dutch guy had shown up behind Clare. Frances looked him over surreptitiously. Jeez Louise. He noticed her and smiled, holding out his hand. “Hello, I am Edward.”
“Hi there.” Frances shook his hand, enjoying Lilian’s obvious discomfort. She was dying to say, “Hey, Lilian says you’re great in bed,” but decided to save it for when there wasn’t a child present. She looked at Lilian, who clearly saw the internal debate she was having. “Are you having dolphin problems?”
He cleared his throat. “The game is over, and Clare wanted to go to the playground. Is that OK?”
Lilian nodded. “Sure, knock yourselves out. Annabel’s game will be over in another fifteen minutes or so. I’ll hold Pinky and meet you down there.”
“It’s not Pinky,” said Clare.
Lilian looked at the dolphin. “It’s not? Who’s this then?”
“That’s Dolphy.” Edward kept a straight face. “Pinky used to be her
