Excerpt from A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Oh, Rina, your stockings," Carrie said, gripping Alice's hand. I waved her off and peered at Alice. The child had emerged from the fray still fully sighted, but as I looked at her blue eyes I noticed the sky behind her had darkened by several shades—gone the color of concrete.

Before I could panic, the baby panicked for me. A huge drop of water hit his fat cheek, surprising him. He started to howl and wiggle out of his folded blankets, like an animal under attack. As I hung on to him, I heard sharp little dings. Hail was bouncing at my feet. I clutched the baby to my breast and grabbed Gerrit's hand. "Carrie!" I screamed, though she was only two feet away.

"What should we do?" she said, looking from me to our bags open on the bench, food and toys strewn everywhere. "Go inside the museum?"

"With my monsters? We'll end up in prison. Let's try to get a taxi."

We threw our things into bags and purses while the toddlers cackled with glee and the baby wailed. As we rushed to Fifth Avenue, one of Peter's blankets fell to the ground. Carrie turned back for it, as I could barely hold my children, and I yelled at her to leave it.

"There will be no taxis left!" I shouted.

At the corner of Eighty-fourth, we shot our arms up, but we were among dozens doing the same.

"Watch it, kid!" a man barked as he tried to get to the curb. I looked down. Gerrit was stepping on the back of his shoes, perhaps accidentally, most likely not.

"I'm terribly sorry," I apologized as my purse slid down my arm. Some of its contents spilled out, a glass jar shattering. He stepped over the shards and whistled for a cab. As I kicked the glass off my feet, he muttered obscenities, then darted into the road and threw himself into a taxi, nearly upending an elderly woman.

"I'll cross the street!" Carrie shouted as she flung herself across Fifth Avenue, Alice's hand in an iron grip. "Whoever hails a cab first, the other runs across and climbs in!"

For ten minutes we tried, without success. I almost dropped the baby, and in my efforts to keep him off the pavement, flipped him horizontally and tucked him under my arm like a salami. A living, breathing, angry salami. Across the street, Carrie finally appeared as desperate as I felt.

"Subway!" she shouted.

We rushed to Lexington, then nearly rolled down the steps of the 86th Street station, barely able to squeeze through the turnstiles as the crowd surged toward the arriving train. Right before the car's double doors opened, Gerrit squirmed free. I stuck out my leg to keep him from sprinting away, and in one swift motion, Carrie yanked him onto the train. With all three children wailing, food dripping in our expensive handbags, my stocking torn, our lipstick smeared, and our hair ruined, the subway doors shut in front of us.

"I love being a mother," I whispered as the train groaned to a start.

CHAPTER 2

During my childhood and through my twenties I had taken the subway constantly, loving it even in the sweltering summer. Subways were a microcosm of humanity, and the New York slice of it was the most intriguing in the world, I was sure. But since I'd had children, I almost never burrowed underground anymore. "Leave that to the rats," Tom had said jokingly when I was rearranging my bronze subway tokens in my purse a few days after we'd returned from the hospital with Gerrit. He had taken them from me and placed them in his doctor's bag with the intention of giving them to the drunks who wandered into his hospital, Lenox Hill.

I looked around the subway car as I clutched Peter to my chest, trying to muffle his sobs. Carrie was shushing Alice and Gerrit with little success. I grabbed Gerrit's coat collar and pulled him to my side, trying to ignore the judgmental stares, focusing on the conversations around me instead of my inconsolable sons. Rants about the weather dominated.

Excerpted from A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe. Copyright © 2021 by Karin Tanabe. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.