M was going to leave on a trip, he’d be gone for two weeks. There was a big conference and then some meetings. Some of the other wives were going to a mountain house, he told me, a real chalet-type thing. He wanted me to go. There was a sandy beach on a lake, he said. A boat for E to play in, other children, green meadows and flowers in window boxes, cows with cowbells. Real Swiss stuff, he said. You could get some help maybe, he said, with the kids. Two weeks is a long time to be on your own. It might be good to have some company, you all could help each other out.

But we were fine here, I told him. Besides, I told him, there wasn’t such a thing as holidays for mothers, or holidays from mothering for that matter. So why pretend we could go somewhere to get a break. I didn’t want to go and mother with the other mothers at the lake. We’d choke each other. We’d be like seals piling our ungainly motherbodies one on top of the other. No, thank you, I didn’t need any bit of that. Mothering is a hard job, it needs a lot of space to breathe. Really, I didn’t want to travel, I only wanted to sleep.

The morning M left I got up with him and walked him to the door. He wheeled his Samsonite between us, a garment bag slung over his arm with miles and miles of beautiful suits zipped up inside it. He checked his phone and told me the date he’d be back, I circled it on the little calendar the rental company had given us. Love Geneva in July, it said, and there was a big red heart drawn over a picture of the shining lake. Swans, mountains. M was going to be gone until the end of it, until the end of the month.

Kiss E and B for me, he said. Be good. I don’t know about the hours, he said, when I’ll be able to call, it’s going to be really busy. It’s OK, I said. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine. You’ll do great. But when I said that, You’ll do great, I suddenly felt a kind of confusion. Wrongfooted is the way I felt, as if I’d tripped, vastly. Because of course how was I to know anything about what he was doing and how he would do it. He fumbled with his wallet, his keys, leaned over to kiss me. Sometimes everything was the same and sometimes things were different. When he kissed me for example. Just leave the door open, he’d said, at the party that we’d thrown together, just leave it, when I’d cooked salmon that was pink inside like kisses and we’d opened so many bottles of wine.

He tried to reach around me, to pull me in closer, but business cards scattered out of his pocket like sudden snow. They were so beautiful, the cards. They really were. The printed letters were like vertebrae, each one delicate, embossed, polished to a high shine. I bent to pick them up but the taxi was already outside. I have cards too! I wanted to shout, joking-not-joking, I have cards too, my pockets are stuffed with them. They say unconditional love and they are ready upon demand. They are ready for anyone to ask to see them. The door was already closed behind him though, he was already gone. I stacked up his cards neatly and put them by the door. When he came back, he would find them there.