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what she asked him about, which was difficult since it was her job to ask questions—precise, difficult questions, tough questions on the verge of indiscretion.
    Once she had noticed that his lips were cracked. “How can you kiss with those?” she had teased. “Lips like sandpaper! Don’t you kiss anyone?”
    That had been too much. “Mother, please! That’s none of your business!” he had said gruffly.
    And then he took off, jumping into Max’s second car and heading into town, leaving Franza just standing there. Why is your love life none of my business, she thought stubbornly, when you were a result of mine?
    She knew that Ben was at loose ends. Since getting his high-school diploma last year on the second try—which they had all been delighted about—he had been drifting, trying this and that, but not settling on anything. It wasn’t helping Franza’s guilty conscience.
    She had been living with it ever since Ben was born. She was never sure she had been there enough for him or given him everything he needed. She had gone back to work right after he was born, doing the balancing act between job and family, putting him in day care every chance she had. She hired au pairs from all over Europe, one of whom—a young woman from Sweden—felt responsible not only for Ben’s welfare but also for Max’s.
    That had been the first breach of trust, a humiliation Franza couldn’t get over for a long time. Max, of course, insisted it meant nothing to him, just a flirtation, a warm body in the cold of winter. Franza was never there, always preoccupied with her corpses, if not in person then in her mind.
    During their crisis she had thought about divorce, starting over again, but somehow everything had stayed the same, except there were no more au pairs, and Ben suddenly insisted on being called Ben, not Benny or Benjamin . Ben. From that day on he was grown-up .
    Franza often wondered if Ben had noticed anything at the outset or if he knew about the little Swedish girl who now would be about as old as Ben was at that time and who couldn’t talk with her father in her own language because he couldn’t even speak it.
    That Franza even knew about the girl was due to a ridiculously mundane incident. She had picked up Max’s suit jackets from the cleaner’s one day, and the woman behind the counter smiled and handed her the clothing along with a photo of a little girl, a toddler, with Max’s eyes beaming at the camera.
    “This must be your little one,” the woman had said, as she continued to smile. “Adorable. My granddaughter is the same age. It was in one of the pockets, and I thought you’d miss it, so I kept it for you.”
    Franza had stared alternately at the photo and the woman behind the counter, whose smile slowly turned into confusion. Finally Franza put the picture into her bag, said “Yes, thank you,” and paid. Then she ran outside, jumped into the car, and drove around aimlessly for two hours.
    That’s how it had happened.
    She hadn’t confronted him. She had gone home, put the photo down in front of him, and retreated into her study with a cup of coffee.
    It had taken an hour before he could bring himself to face her. They sat opposite each other, looking at each other, not saying a word. He brushed a strand of hair from her face, and she took hold of his hand and pressed it against her lips.
    It was a farewell, they both knew it, and at first it had seemed easy. The pain came later, in the night, toward morning. She moved into her study and didn’t sleep with him for a long time. Once a year he went to Sweden for a week, and she took a lover from time to time.
    “Oh, I just remembered,” Max called from the other side of the garden. “He called this morning.”
    Franza turned around. “Who?”
    He looked up briefly from turning the chicken on the grill. “Ben, of course. Who else are we talking about?”
    “And?” Franza asked, walking back to the patio.
    “Oh, I don’t know, we only