Some Possible Solutions Read Online Free PDF Page B

preparing for a face-off. They surrounded the most desirable bench, the pigeons viciously iridescent, the swans viciously white, ready for some kind of reckoning.
    She spun the stroller around, away from the battlefield. The Queen began to fuss. Only a witch would dare stroll her infant in such indecent heat.
    â€œYou’re my best friend,” she said to soothe The Queen, but it just sounded plaintive.
    *   *   *
    Mimosa drove home slowly. She wished The Queen could be up front in the passenger seat beside her. She narrated the sights they passed: that’s a church, that’s a school, that’s a gas station. Soon the backseat was swathed in the hush of The Queen’s sleep. They said it was good to talk to your baby, but sometimes it was hard to know what to say, even when your baby was The Queen.
    If Mimosa had been alone, truly alone, as she had so often been as of five weeks ago, she would have turned on the radio. But now the hush enveloped the car as Mimosa pulled up to a stop sign.
    There were four cars at the four-way stop, three in addition to Mimosa’s.
    First the car to Mimosa’s left passed through the intersection, driven by a woman with a dark bob, a tired face, a car seat in the back. Next the car to Mimosa’s right passed through the intersection, driven by a woman with a dark bob, a tired face, a car seat in the back. Then the car across from Mimosa passed through the intersection, driven by a woman with a dark bob, a tired face, a car seat in the back. Now it was Mimosa’s turn. She was horrified, paralyzed.
    Yet it was her turn, and so she drove.
    *   *   *
    Early evening, and Sam was driving. A deep blue summer night, birdsong paired with silence. Stopped at a red light, they watched a woman push a stroller across the gleaming crosswalk.
    â€œThis town,” Mimosa said bitterly as the light turned green.
    â€œWhat?” Sam said.
    There was a row of dark trees, the kind of trees that ought to be Christmas trees. They looked strange here, in the heart of the summer, standing upright against the heat.
    â€œFilled with doppelgängers of me,” Mimosa said. As she said it, she could see them—furrowing their brows the same way over the list of ingredients on a jar of tomato sauce, struggling the same way to wipe the shit out of the rolls of fat on their babies’ thighs.
    Sam gave half a laugh. Mimosa glanced back to check on The Queen. The backseat was dim, but she sensed that the baby was awake.
    â€œYeah,” Sam said in that flat way of his. “That’s why I love you. ’Cause you’re just like everyone else.”
    She craned her neck further, caught a glimpse of her accomplice’s dark alert eye.
    Mimosa had been very organized, before all this. She’d had plans to start a small business. Somewhere on her computer there were spreadsheets.
    â€œJust because they, what, have the same stroller we have?” Sam said as he pulled into their driveway.
    He got out and opened the door to the backseat and unlatched The Queen. The Queen spat up on him, just as so many babies all over town were spitting up on their fathers.
    *   *   *
    It was eerie, more than eerie, it was nauseating, to see them standing at the gas station, their hair wilting in the heat just like hers, their bodies at the same stage of post-birth flab.
    *   *   *
    There was a doppelgänger in the produce section. Perched in the woman’s shopping cart, a sleeping infant in a handy detachable car seat identical to the handy detachable car seat of The Queen. Mimosa hid behind the bananas and watched. The woman held a real lemon in one hand and a lemon-shaped container of lemon juice in the other. She dropped the lemon into her cart, put the container back on the shelf, and began to walk away. Then she turned around to swap the lemon for the container. Then, she changed her mind again, put the