I wondered then if he knew about the affair. If he was somehow angry at me for helping her cover it up, for letting it continue. It upset me to think about someone else knowing the secret. It felt like everyone was pulling her cold journal from that absurd box of waffles—James, Carlow, Robert, even the housekeeper Pilar, and God knows who else.

I was on the cusp of blurting something out—some kind of defense or argument—every muscle in my body was tight and rigid despite the billows of heat, ready, but I didn’t know what to say. The words wouldn’t come. He started coughing again anyway, a long endless stream of hacking that prevented any response.

“I don’t have the authority to do anything about your employment,” he said, finally, meekly, when the coughing stopped. “I’m not a threat to you. And I know you’re not asking for my advice. I just think you should go back to the city and find some nice hardworking family to help out.”

“You’re right,” I said, turning to the door, not believing for a moment that he wasn’t a threat to me. But before I walked out I said, “I’m not asking for your advice.”

30

AFTER MY PARENTS’ DIVORCE, THE FIRST THING THAT CHANGED at Mom’s house was that she stopped eating very much. She drank glass after glass of white wine with dinner, which had become small cuts of light fish and a pile of carrots instead of the cheap cheese and sausage and boiled broccoli we used to eat. She made me cut up the carrots—telling me I needed to get used to using sharp knives, to get used to doing things for myself.

One night she asked me, “Have you ever heard of an anglerfish?”

I shook my head.

“They’re a type of fish that have a lure coming out of their head, like a fishing lure, to attract prey. They can eat things that are almost as big as them. There’s a species that live in the bottom of the ocean and when they mate, the male fish, which is smaller, attaches itself to the female like a parasite and they fuse blood vessels. The male then gets smaller and smaller, losing his organs, including his brain, until all that’s left is some sperm, which fertilizes the female’s eggs.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said, poking the white flesh of the fish on my plate.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “Imagine a whole society of nothing but female fish, able to self-perpetuate.”

“But the guys are there,” I said. “They’re just parasites.”

“Not unlike human men,” she replied, picking up her fork again and pointing it at me. “There’s a lesson here.”