“Or everything can go back to normal. I’m sure your family would like that.” He doesn’t look at me while he’s talking, but at Patrick, as if he’s studying my husband’s reaction.

As if anything about our lives in the past year has been normal. Then I get it—Carl Corbin actually believes what he preaches. At first, I’d thought he’d spun the Pure Movement, that his motives for resurrecting the Victorian cult of domesticity and keeping women out of the public sphere were purely misogynistic. In a way, I wish that were true; it’s less creepy than the alternative.

Steven was the first to explain it to me, on a Sunday morning two years ago.

“It’s sort of traditional, Mom. Like in olden times.”

“Olden times? Like what? Greece? Sumer? Babylonia?”

He poured himself a second bowl of cereal, mixed in two bananas, and topped it with half-and-half. By the time Sam and Leo reached fifteen, I’d have to buy futures in Cheerios. “Well, yeah. It was there with the Greeks, the idea of public spheres and private spheres, but it goes back further. Think hunter-gatherer communities. Biologically, we’re suited to different things.”

“We?” I said.

“Men and women, Mom.” He stopped crunching and flexed his right arm. “See this? You could go to the gym every day for a year and you still won’t have muscle like I do.” He must have seen the look of pure disbelief on my face, because he reversed course. “I don’t mean you’re weak. Just different.”

Christ.

I pointed to my temple. “See this, kiddo? Ten more years of school and you might have one like it. Or you might not. And it has absolutely shit to do with gender.” My voice was rising.

“Calm down, Mom.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down.”

“You’re getting kind of hysterical. I’m only saying that it makes biological sense to have women do some stuff and men do other stuff. Like, for instance, you’re a really great teacher, but you probably wouldn’t last more than an hour if you—I dunno—had a job digging ditches.”

That was it. “I’m a scientist, Steven, not a kindergarten teacher. And I’m not hysterical.”

Well, I sort of was.

I poured my second cup of coffee with shaking hands.