The Social Affair — Someone Should Check on the Author

I practice saying their father made a mistake until it stops sounding like something he might have survived.

An accident. A mistake. A terrible thing.

None of them are big enough. That’s probably why I keep choosing them.

James and Avery are waiting for me. They know their father is dead. They know enough about how it happened to want the part I haven’t told them.

I have spent years knowing what my children need before they ask. Snacks. Rides. Permission. Someone to be angry at when the person who deserves it isn’t available.

This should come naturally.

I check my face one last time, then turn away from the mirror.

✦

Avery stands when I come in.

She looks at my face, then down at my hands. I can see her working out where she can touch me without hurting me. My daughter used to launch herself across entire rooms, certain I would catch her.

I open my arms.

She comes carefully. That nearly does it. I have held myself together through so much, and it’s the care she takes that makes me want to fall apart.

James stays where he is. He has his hands clasped between his knees. He watches his sister settle beside me, watches me put an arm around her, then looks away.

“Come here,” I tell him.

He shakes his head.

For a moment I’m angry. I need him close. I need to be able to touch both of them while I do this.

Then I remember he has lost his father.

I let him keep the chair.

✦

“Your dad loved you.”

Avery nods against my shoulder. James stares at the floor.

“That’s the first thing I need you to understand. Whatever you hear. Whatever people say.”

“Did he love you?” Avery asks.

I feel her cheek move against my blouse.

It’s such an ordinary question. She has seen the flowers. The bracelets. All those photographs of me being loved.

“Yes.”

James looks up.

I know what he needs me to mean. I can give him that much.

“He did.”

“Then why?”

I look at my daughter. Her eyes are wide and wet. She is fourteen, and she still thinks a thing can have one explanation that makes everything else fall into place.

I used to think that too.

“He made a mistake,” I say.

Neither of them moves.

“He had an affair.”

There. I have given them something true. Something ugly enough that the rest of it might seem honest by association.

I wait while they take it in.

✦

Avery asks how it started.

I tell them about the coffee shop. How their father and I went in together. How we met Izzy there.

I don’t tell them what I noticed, or what I looked up afterward. The charges against her. The possibility of handing my husband someone else to occupy himself with.

I tell them she was following us. That she knew things about our family.

“She was here,” Avery says.

I nod.

“With me.”

I pull her closer. “I know.”

“You let her come here.”

James lifts his head.

“I know,” I say again.

I could tell her I didn’t understand the whole situation. That’s true. I could tell her I’m sorry. That’s true as well. I hadn’t meant for any of this to touch her.

Instead, I look down at my hands until she says it for me.

“You didn’t know.”

I close my eyes.

Her palm settles over mine. She is comforting me. My daughter, whose father is dead, is working very hard to keep me from crying.

I want to tell her she doesn’t have to.

I also want her to keep doing it.

✦

“Did he want to leave?” James asks.

I look at him. He is so young, sitting there trying to sound as though he can survive an honest answer.

There are answers I don’t have. Whether Grant would ever have left us. Whether he would have made me disappear from their lives instead. Whether he had already begun deciding what story they would hear afterward.

“No matter what happened between us,” I say, “you were his children.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

He says it quietly. My stomach tightens before I can stop it.

I look at his hands. Large hands now. His father’s hands. I hate myself for noticing.

“James.”

Avery says his name before I do.

He glances at her, then at me. Whatever he sees in my face changes his.

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

But I breathe more easily when he stops asking.

✦

Avery starts crying properly. Her breath catches, releases, catches again. I rub her back. I can do this part. I know how to hold a crying child.

“Did she say anything?”

I keep rubbing.

“At the end, I mean. Did she say why?”

I remember Izzy’s face. The gun. My husband’s hand in my hair. I remember what it felt like to realize he would never hurt me again.

That is the part I cannot give them.

They are still waiting to hear how their father died. I am sitting here remembering how good it felt to be allowed to live.

“Enough,” James says.

Avery goes still beneath my hand.

He is looking at her. “Can’t you see you’re hurting her?”

I should stop him. She hasn’t done anything wrong. She has questions about her dead father, and I am the person she should be able to ask.

I open my mouth.

My son turns to me, and there is such love in his face. Fierce, useful love. He has found something he can do about this. Someone he can protect.

I could take that away from him.

“Your sister is upset,” I say instead.

He nods. He understands this as forgiveness.

Avery wipes her face and apologizes to me.

I kiss her forehead. Tell her it’s all right. James comes over at last, and I reach for his hand.

For a moment, both of them watch me to see what we’re allowed to feel next.

I squeeze his fingers.

“That’s better,” I tell them.