James had the telephone tucked under his chin.

Ana, on the other end of the line, spun around slowly in her office chair, picturing the house where James stood. She knew that the housekeeper had left two hours ago and that by the time she got home, one basket of folded laundry and shiny floors would be the only signs of her efforts. It was constant, the garbage bags and diaper bins full, then empty, then full. What went into the body came out of the body, into Finn’s pants, onto towels and cloths. The small, environmentally friendly washing machine for two, tucked behind a door in the corner of the kitchen, was suddenly ridiculous, barely able to contain all the secretions he generated. Then they migrated to James, handprints on his T-shirts and stained-cheek imprints on his sweaters.

“I have to go to the lawyer’s,” said James, crunching Cheerios under his stocking feet. Finn was picking up the ones that didn’t get crunched and stacking them, placing the occasional Cheerio in his mouth. “You need to take Finn in the afternoon—”

“James, I’m working. I need to get my hours up this week. I took the afternoon off last week. Can’t he go to daycare?”

“It’s not his day. You can’t just drop them when you want. It’s not a kennel.”

“Can we get a babysitter? I can’t miss any more work—”

“It’s one afternoon. Tell them you have another doctor’s—”

“I’ve missed drinks twice—”

“Jesus, really? Drinks?”

“It’s marketing. It’s part of the job.”

James pictured Ana in that chair in front of her computer, spinning and spinning.

“You have to be back here by two.”

Ana paused. “I have another call.”

In the afternoon, James waited for her, circling near the living room window, checking his watch. Finn babbled and hummed, pulling books off shelves and flipping through them, then chucking each opened book over his shoulder.

At 1:45 in her office, Ana tried to look like she was going to be returning later. She put her jacket over her arm in a casual way, as if she might be picking up a coffee. On the elevator, she thought of the women who had come back from maternity leaves and requested flexible schedules, part-time. It was a vocabulary Ana didn’t exercise, though theoretically, she sided with that litigator who had brought up on-site child care (but thought the gym they ultimately put in was better). That litigator was long gone now.

When Ana’s cab pulled up, James was waiting at the door. He shot her an angry look: “I’m going to be late,” he said.

Ana shut the door, removed her coat. Then she noticed Finn, leaning against the credenza, looking up at her.

“Oh, hi,” said Ana.

“Park?” he asked.

“Sure. That sounds fine. Let me just check my e-mail.”

Finn said again: “Park?” His request seemed utterly democratic, as if it would go out to anyone he met. Ana nodded.

She clicked her BlackBerry as they walked.

What Ana noticed first at the playground was that the parents outnumbered the children. She had brought along an ethics committee report on soybean seeds, picturing herself getting a little reading in while Finn played. If Emcor had patented these seeds, which were living things, what did it mean for other kinds of seeds? “Higher life-forms”—she had been investigating this phrase for days. There were issues of cloning and sperm banks. Could people be manufactured and trademarked, too? Ana was sure that one day the law would kick a hole in the government’s feeble protections. She was sure that if she assembled the information correctly, Emcor could do whatever it liked.

It immediately became clear, as Ana and Finn opened the park’s iron gate and set forth, that reading did not happen here. The mothers shadowed their children, digging bigger ditches in the sand next to the children’s smaller ditches, boosting them onto the slides, scooping them up from the bottom of the slides. Where the kids went, the mothers were already there, their invisible sensors beeping, rushing ahead to intervene.

The first blow of winter was upon them, and a few kids had on hats. One Chinese girl wore a scarf, winter boots, gloves. Ana looked at Finn, who walked a little ahead of her. He wore a fleece jacket, sneakers. Ana wondered if he was cold, but what if? What could she do about it? She decided not to ask him.

“Want to go swing,” said Finn in his caveman dialect. Ana nodded, feeling a knot of anxiety as they approached the swings. They were all filled, but a mother was extracting a child—a baby, really; a baby on a swing! thought Ana—from one little bucket seat. Ana walked toward it quickly, with Finn in tow. She was lifting him up, always surprised by his weight, when a frizzy-haired woman appeared beside her.

“Excuse me, we were waiting for that,” she said. “There’s a line, actually.” She punctuated this sentence with a smile as insincere as a mime’s. Ana looked around, and sure enough, there were two other mothers lined up a few feet away, gazing into the distance, pretending not to notice the confrontation.

“Sorry, I really didn’t know,” said Ana, lifting out Finn. He started to scream. “Swing! Swing!” She held him in space, and his running shoes kicked at Ana’s thighs. “My turn! My turn!” Snot. Tears.

“Finn, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” said Ana, trying to put him on the ground. He threw his arms around her neck and his legs around her torso, refusing to let go, his wet face gumming to her neck.

Where Finn had tried to sit, the other kid swung cheerfully, pushed by her blank-faced mother.

Ana found a bench, sitting them down, lightly patting Finn’s heaving back as he whimpered.

A woman next to her lit up a cigarette. She was a little heavier than the other moms, and older, with a battered quality in the ridges of her face. There was no makeup on her eyes, but they were bright.

“I know Finn,” she said. “He goes to daycare with Etta.” She gestured at the Chinese girl in the hat, digging in the sand with her mittens.

Finn heard this, peeked out from Ana’s chest, his breathing slowing.

“Where Etta?” He spied the girl sitting in the sandbox and slid off, ambling toward her. Because Etta’s mother was sitting, Ana decided it would be okay to sit, too, wiping Finn’s wet marks from her neck with a Kleenex.

“How’s he doing?” asked the woman. Ana appreciated the directness of the question.

“He’s good, I think,” said Ana.

A father appeared, bracketed on either side by toddler boys. The littler one licked sand from his palm like sugar.

“You’re not allowed to smoke here,” he said. “And is that your dog?” A dog tied to the fence near the gate offered a bark for emphasis. The woman squinted up at him.

“First of all, I’m hardly blowing smoke in your kid’s face, and secondly, the dog’s tied up,” she said with that same matter-of-fact voice. “Call the fucking parks board if you have a problem.”

The man paled. “You’re very rude,” he said.

“Your kid’s eating sand.” She took a long, dramatic drag on her cigarette and blew the smoke straight out in front of her like a finger.

The man gathered his children, and they tottered away. Etta’s mother butted the cigarette with her foot, then picked it up and peeled off the paper. She sprinkled the last tobacco into the garden behind her, and placed the filter and paper in her pocket. “And how are you doing? Are you his aunt?” she asked.

“No, no, we’re just … friends of Sarah’s,” said Ana.

“Kids of your own?”

“No,” said Ana, wondering when this question would stop making her feel as if someone had just torn off the shower curtain while she was midscrub.

“Well, then, you’re probably really enjoying the park,” said Etta’s mother, with a grim smile.

“It definitely feels like a scene,” said Ana.

“Don’t talk to anyone about vaccinations or breastfeeding.”