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mother named Polly said, suspiciously. She had a look of pure outrage on her face.
    â€œHer sister, but she was deported right after the accident.”
    â€œBut where are they now?” I asked, wondering if she had left them in the stroller parking area while she happily sang “Shake, shake, shake, your sillies out.” She was there with her own child, but where were the nanny’s kids?
    â€œMy mother’s watching them,” she said. “Just be careful who you choose is all I’m saying.”
    â€œWell, I had a cleaning lady who vacuumed my father’s ashes out of his urn,” another mother said, changing the subject. “She said, ʽIt was so dirty in there, but don’t worry, I cleaned it.’ ”
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    Afterward, Gerde asked me if I would like to go to lunch, and I felt euphoric again. I had been stuffing Duncan into his stroller, trying in a slightly hysterical way to put on his tiny blue suede shoe, and thinking up a plan to give him some kind of food.
    Gerde kept going on and on about the nanny.
    â€œCan you imagine something so entirely ridiculous? Changing another child’s dirty diaper? Dealing with another child’s shit? It is entirely disgusting. I think you should think entirely long and hard before you decide to have another nanny at all.”
    I could tell she was entirely disapproving of having a nanny at all.
    We looked down at our menus.
    â€œI will have the Manchego and honey panini, ja , and you will have the tuna and salted capers and we will share?”
    â€œOkay,” I said, because every fourteen-dollar thing listed sounded equally awful especially without a Diet Coke, which I felt too self-conscious to order because Gerde was entirely against Diet Coke. “Wait, Manchego and honey?”
    â€œIt sounds delicious!” Gerde said, with childish enthusiasm, or maybe it was touristy enthusiasm, everything tasting so exotic when you were far from home. “They make the bread right here in those ovens.”
    If I were German I wouldn’t go around saying the word “ovens” in front of Jewish people. I suddenly remembered that one of the great things about going back to work after my maternity leave had been not spending so much time with Gerde. I had forgotten how entirely (her favorite word) bossy she was. It was always slightly terrifying being with her. I never felt more Jewish against her yellow-blond Aryan backdrop.
    â€œRolph and I just take Minerva everywhere with us. Except sometimes at night.”
    â€œAnd what do you do then?” I asked.
    â€œWell, this is not very American but we leave her safe in her crib and go across the sidewalk to the Indian restaurant and then we take turns checking on her.”
    â€œThat’s illegal,” I said.
    â€œReally?” she asked, pretending not to know, her voice going up several octaves.
    I actually had no idea if it was illegal or not, but it sounded like it should be. Drinking Diet Coke and hiring a nanny was amoral but leaving your baby to die in a fire was fine.
    We gossiped about Dara and the other mothers for a while and then Gerde had to go “start dinner,” which I never understood, since dinner, in New York, was everywhere. “Nice meeting you,” Gerde said. She always ended our time together like that. She meant “nice seeing you,” but I never corrected her because I liked her mistakes. Then we pointed our strollers in opposite directions and rolled off.
    I called my mother, who had gone on a date the night before. “I didn’t like him,” she said. She always sounded furious after a date, as if the man, simply by virtue of not being good enough for her, had actually committed a crime against her.
    My mother had divorced my father the year she turned fortynine, after twenty-four years of marriage, and hadn’t had luck since then, even though, no matter her age over the years, she always looked a lot