Ohforgoodnesssake, my mother said, when she asked about one thing or another thing. The hand-caned chairs we’d had in the living room say, or my grandmother’s creamer and sugar dish. Basically all of it was gone. How could we have kept it? We were disposing of things, cleaning up after ourselves. Don’t you want to keep this? my mother asked me, walking around the house, our beautiful emptying, empty house. Or this? I wasn’t listening to her though, I was already elsewhere, already on the plane, already in the new place.

M had been worried about taking the job. It was, after all, a difficult one. Many people would be working for him, depending on him, waiting to hear what he had to say. I’m not sure, he’d said, holding the contract. I remember him saying it. I remember him looking at the line that was waiting for his signature, how the terms and conditions swirled over the beautiful white paper like smoke.

I’d told him he should, that he could. I’ll have to work longer, more hours, he said. I’ll have to travel. I’ll see you less. I’ll see E and B less. Everything will be fine, I said, you work, and I’ll take care of everything else. Everything will be so wonderful, you’ll see. You can do this, I said, you should.

M had signed the contract, of course, and we were flown over and the moment we stumbled out of the airport he was snapped up because he was needed urgently already at work. I saw for one second before he got into the car that he was nervous. It was his face. I saw also that he was going to have to be someone else here, and from now on. Maybe neither one of us had seen that before then. A car had been waiting for him and he was sped away without us. There was another car for me and the kids and the bags. The driver was quite friendly and I hesitated the whole way about the tip and missed the places he was telling me about while I tried desperately to calculate appropriate amounts.

I always loved to travel but foreign countries have a way of making me doubt my instincts. In the end I didn’t have any money, my wallet was in M’s jacket pocket, so I had to smile terribly at the driver and sink lower and lower into the ground as he unloaded each one of our too heavy bags. He waited for a moment by his car, but I only smiled harder at him. I wanted him to understand that I was a good person. He left.

The hotel was a really nice one with views of the lake and the Jet d’Eau from the windows of our suite. Once we’d been helped into our room I found a cartoon on the TV for E and ordered a pot of coffee to be sent up even though it was the equivalent of thirty US dollars. I told the lady at reception to charge it to the room. It came on a silver tray complete with a pitcher of steamed milk and a warm cup. I sat on the toilet seat in the white marble bathroom and drank the whole thing while B dozed in front of the TV and E asked, What are they saying, what are they saying, what are they saying. Why are they saying those funny words, she asked. Why are they speaking that way?