If Tara's real life were more like a scene in the Level 1 Improv class she secretly enrolled in, it might look like this: an [astronaut and a lumberjack] are in a [coffee shop] having an argument that involves a [pineapple]. Someone always suggests a fucking pineapple, the instructor complained. But, despite the fun banter between the two women on the other side of the glass partition, she is not in an improv scene. [Tara and her teenaged son, Jonah] are in a [Planned Parenthood waiting room] having an argument that involves [comprehensive sex ed].

"That's not how it is," Jonah says. "It's more scientific, like about anatomy and pregnancy. Dad wanted me to go."

"Of course your father let you go. He was the one who insisted on public school, and now look at you. He should be the one here with you instead of me."

"I wish he was."

A digital chime on the door rings as two people, an apparent couple, walk in and select the seats farthest from Tara and Jonah. One of them scans through the pamphlets stored by the door, and Tara doesn't read the title of the one that's selected, though she desperately wants to. After filling out Jonah's new patient intake forms, Tara opens one of the resident communal magazines to a two-page spread about a tryst in Barbados between two celebrities she doesn't know. She instinctively licks a finger to gain purchase on the slick pages and then walks to the wall-mounted bottle of hand sanitizer and rubs one pump of it into her hands. A small cut she got while yanking weeds that'd invaded the planter box on their apartment's patio smarts as it's sanitized.

Yes, and

Tara didn't have anything like sex ed when she was growing up. When it came to bodies, she didn't have any kind of 'ed' at all. She'd been wrong about the number of orifices she had until at 22, an untreated UTI while she was still living on her family's homestead landed her in urgent care and a kind PA explained the basics.

Her mother, who'd homeschooled her and her five siblings, had done one lesson on puberty (or taught the same lesson twice—once to her and her younger sister and once to her brothers) that was composed largely of mixed metaphors. The body is in the chrysalis phase, and it will soon transform like a budding daisy.

When she first got her period, Tara thought she was dying.

Yes, and

The nurse comes in and moves around the room with such efficient grace in her purple scrubs that she might be mistaken for a dancer. One of the other older women in Tara's improv class named Liz shared that she used to be a professional dancer "in another life." Her posture is stick straight, which Tara interprets as a flagrant attempt to show off her permanently erect nipples.

"Getting cold out there, huh?" the nurse asks as she slides her fingers into latex gloves with impossible ease.

"Yes. They're predicting an enormous snowpack this year, but you know they'll still go and say we're in the worst drought ever with global warming," Tara says.

Jonah and the young nurse share an us-versus-her glance.

"But what do I know?"

"It says here that you've been sexually active since—" the nurse flips to the second sheet in the packet. "Yesterday?"

Jonah looks from his mother to the nurse. From the nurse to his mother. From his mother to the nurse.

"Yes, that's correct," Tara says.

The nurse trains her eyes on Jonah, gives an encouraging nod.

"We can actually meet privately, if you'd like, Jonah," the nurse says.

"No, you can't. He's a minor," Tara says. She grabs hold of his hand. "Did you lie to me, Jonah? You said it was just that one time with that girl in your math class." Tara studies her son's profile, a sharper replica of his father's. He adjusts on the examination table, and the tissue paper crinkles.

"Regardless of age, we can see you privately," the nurse says. Jonah shakes his head.

"A month," he says. Tara lets go of his hand. She inspects the cut on her finger.

"For a full battery of STI testing, we just need a small blood sample. You'll feel a poke, but it won't hurt too badly, and we'll be done in a jiff." The nurse ties a tourniquet on Jonah's arm and searches for a promising vein.

"I'll actually wait outside," Tara says. A flash of fear passes over Jonah's face, and Tara is afraid herself when she realizes that seeing the expression feels good.

After they check out at the front desk, Tara holds pressure on the gauze-covered puncture too hard and too long so that the gauze fuses to the wound as the blood dries.

Yes, and

The focus of lasts week's class was on character. Character is more than funny voices and imaginary props, the instructor said. Start with the character's walk, their physicality, and the rest will come. Out on the homestead, Tara wears ill-fitting canvas overalls that she sewed herself. But here, she wears yoga pants that show the contours of her body, the outline of her underwear.

As Tara ascended the two stairs to the small plywood stage, she imagined herself as straight-spined Liz, the way each of her steps looks choreographed. Tara's eyes connected with her scene partner, and he signaled that he would initiate.

"I haven't seen you since high school, Doris," he said.

She pantomimed pulling a cigarette from its pack and lighting it. She blew a puff of imaginary smoke and took a drink from an imaginary tumbler.

"A lot has changed about me since then."

.