El was thinking about her brother’s love life while she exercised. She should have been focusing on the warm-up portion of the program that was playing in front of her. If she was thinking at all, it should have been about what she’d wear to the office after she finished working out and showering. But the four young women on the show, stretching in front of her in matching lycra-infused outfits, reminded her that both Cindy and Terry had their cars broken into recently. Each had found gems of tempered glass arrayed on the back seats where their gym bags used to be, and Patrick reported that they were not as upset about losing their iPods as they were about their shoes.

“You women,” he’d said to El across his desk, “you care more about shoes than anything else.”

“Not fair!” she contested. “You’re generalizing about women from two individuals. C’mon,” she continued: “Am I that attached to shoes? Is Mom?”

Patrick backed off immediately, but that didn’t mean he gave up his conclusion. El and Patrick worked together, so she heard him repeat himself as often as if they were married. He thought his shoe comment was witty, and he usually retained his witticisms and practiced them when he could.

El kept thinking about Cindy and Terry while she squatted and lunged. On the surface, Patrick’s estranged wife and married girlfriend were dissimilar. Cindy was five feet tall and still bore the remnants of all the weight she had shed since she moved out. Terry was a foot taller and had never been fat. Neither was known for smarts or particularly well-educated, but Cindy was five years older than Patrick and Terry was sixteen years younger; the decades between the two women’s birthdates resulted in different favorite music and movies.

And yet…

Both had been raised by hardworking parents who aspired to join the middle class. Neither had finished college or had babies. Each nursed a chronic health condition and enlisted Patrick in her care. “There’s a reason he chose them,” El thought as she assumed push-up position, “or maybe it’s really that they chose him.” Patrick was a big guy, gentle and helpful and always motivated to make those around him happy. It was easy to obtain his love, and once he offered it, he seldom took it back. He was eight years younger than El and she’d paid more attention to his toddlerhood than to that of her own kids; she remembered how much his antics had cheered their sad mother, and she understood his tendency to dance as fast as he could.

El caught herself judging her brother again. “Shit,” she self-lectured. “Stop it.” She tried her latest strategy; she turned the glass on herself. “What about my husbands? Was there a significant difference between them?” She rose to her hands and knees and flexed her lower back. She had taped the exercise shows twenty years ago, and now she did spine stretches instead of fast-forwarding through the vintage UHF ads. She counted deep breaths while in the universal play position. She resumed her catalog when the boxing sequence started.