That night the seed of understanding about my mother and West was planted deep in my gut. It would take time to bloom. I’d need more evidence than two adults dancing together. I’d been to a wedding before and knew that sometimes adults danced without it meaning anything other than mutual enjoyment of the song. I denied to myself, as children do, that my mother had been doing anything wrong.

Seeing June and Ezra dancing in the same place to the same song made their coming together suddenly feel ominous. Was it just the incestuous nature of it—like mother, like daughter; like father, like son?

Oddly, I felt relief when Ezra pulled away, stopping the kiss, and relaxed even more when he told her he should go. I knew June wouldn’t let that happen easily. I could feel her surprise when he didn’t give in and actually did leave. I could feel her loneliness and disappointment as she walked back up the path to the cottage and got herself to bed.

June has always been like a deflated balloon, looking to men to inflate her. To make her float high above the real world, her real problems, the real her. She uses up everything they have to give and then moves on to a new source of air.

She started doing it as soon as hormones kicked in and she saw boys as boys. June was the girl who climbed out of her bedroom window to meet boys after dark. The girl who got caught in the school chapel with a boy from another private school during a co-ed dance, both of them half-naked. They threatened to kick her out of the private school we both went to, but my mother spoke to the principal and it magically turned into a two-day suspension, off the record, rather than an expulsion.

Her explanation to me after I found out about her extramarital affairs was that once the girls went to school, she felt like an empty shell with no purpose, useless and inconsequential. As though she might fade away over time and nobody would notice. That’s where the men came in. They all noticed her, made her feel important, substantial, and as soon as they didn’t, she moved on to another one who would.

While she was dancing with Ezra, something dawned on me: June is not so unlike my mother. She too seeks out and devours men’s adoration like some necessary sustenance. My mother couldn’t interact with a man without infusing it all with subtle—and sometimes not-so-subtle—sexuality, just as June does. Maybe it’s just one of the side effects of being beautiful—the beauty is in the forefront of all you do, whether you want it to be or not. Or maybe it’s learned behavior.