Richard stared at her.
“Don’t start crying, please,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Lally, you and Lucas can go inside, OK?”
“Is Lucas going to play?”
“Yes, honey, for a little bit until his dad gets home.”
“Can we watch TV?”
“Yes, sweetie.” Once the door closed behind the kids she turned back to Richard. “Look, I realize you don’t know me at all, but . . .”
“You’re the one who walked in on us the other morning.” His voice was deep and sexy, but to Frances it just sounded sad. “It all started to fall apart after that.”
Frances was firm. “Yes, that was me, but I’ll be blunt, it was never together in the first place. You just nearly destroyed Anne’s life, and whether you agree she deserves it for having an affair in the first place, I would hope you agree that her kids don’t deserve to see their lives unravel in real time, before they’ve even had an after-school snack.”
“I didn’t realize they would be around,” said Richard.
“School gets out at three.”
“Art school doesn’t. I’m sorry.”
Frances shrugged. “Go home. She doesn’t want to see you anymore.”
Richard turned and walked away, the set of his shoulders as depressed as anything Frances had ever seen. She kept watching until his car turned the far corner, and then she sighed. What a fucking shit show. And now she was part of it.
• • •
Inside the house everything was as usual. There might be a storm brewing down the street, but here the leaves weren’t even rustling. Frances sighed and walked into the kitchen, realizing when she saw Ava that she’d been smug too soon.
“Who were you talking to outside?”
“What?”
“Just now. I wanted to ask you a question, so I stuck my head out of the door and you were talking to some guy.”
“Some guy who needed directions.” She paused. “What was the question?”
“Are you cheating on dad?”
“Was that the question?” Frances looked at her daughter. Her tone was cool, but her mother could see a telltale stiffness in her shoulders. Ava was freaked out.
“No, the question was about tea, but then I saw that guy and your face looked weird, not like someone giving directions.”
Frances turned away from Ava, and walked over to the cupboard above the kettle where she kept the tea. “Which tea were you looking for?”
“Why aren’t you answering me?”
Frances opened the cupboard and scanned the many boxes and tins of tea. Maybe one of them would have the answer printed on it. “Because it’s a ridiculous question. Of course, I’m not cheating on your dad. If you must know, that guy was a friend of Anne’s, and he and I were just chatting for a moment.” Silence. Frances put the kettle on and went to the refrigerator to see if someone had crept into the house earlier and made dinner. Sadly not. Over her shoulder she said, “You’re making too much of it.” She leaned on the fridge door and suddenly spotted two pounds of ground beef hiding behind a wilting head of lettuce. Nice try, she thought, it might have been a good spot before your little green friend gave up the ghost and got smaller. She reached in. “Spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, OK?”
“Is Anne sleeping with that guy?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Frances sighed. “Ava, it’s an adult thing that’s complicated and private, so, if I can quote something you say to me all the time: Stick to your own lane.”
“Adult things are complicated? What do you think my life is, paint by numbers?”
OK, good, thought Frances, her daughter’s teenage narcissism had dragged the topic back around to herself, so maybe we can move away from talking about Anne. She waited for what felt like inevitable follow-up questions, but when she looked up Ava had already left the room.
• • •
Lucas ended up staying for dinner because Bill got stuck in a meeting. As Frances watched him eat his spaghetti, chattering away to Lally about God only knew what, she marveled at the mystery of other people’s children. It didn’t matter how many children you had of your own, other people’s children seemed alien. Well, to Frances anyway. Lucas was bigger than Lally, and moved differently. He was a boy, but she’d raised a boy. It wasn’t that. He was just unfamiliar, and that made him appealing. He seemed nicer than her kids, better tempered, easier to deal with. Even though she knew this was completely untrue, she enjoyed the illusion.
The way children behaved with adults who weren’t their parents was interesting. They were more polite, more accommodating, less inclined to bridle at the smallest thing. She knew this was true because other parents would tell her how well behaved her own children were. At home they would balk and kick up a fuss if a green vegetable even approached the table, whereas other moms would open the door to Frances after playdates and say things like, “Wow, Lally is such a good eater! She packed away the broccoli like a champ! I wish I could get TiddleyWink to eat vegetables like that!” or “It’s always such a pleasure when Ava babysits, Frances, she’s just so interesting to talk to. So chatty!” It was one of the paradoxes of parenting that the children you wished you had were actually the versions of your own children that other parents saw. The secretly much nicer versions. Thank God parents talked to each other, Frances thought, or we’d all be circling the drain wishing our kids were like everyone else’s.
However, Lucas was, even his own parents would admit, a nice kid. Four was a difficult age, or had been for all of Frances’s kids, but it seemed to suit him. He was ready to argue the toss over everything, like every four-year-old, but somehow it just came across like good-humored independence. As she knelt down and wiped the spaghetti sauce off his face, Frances could see Julie
