Read Online Best Intentions by Emily Listfield - Free Book Online Page A

growth pattern at the nape, an exact scalloped replica of Sam’s. When she was a baby, I used to trace it with my fingertips, kiss its peaks and valleys. Now, except when she is sick and feeling particularly vulnerable, she shudders away with a single, “Gross.”
    I push aside a crumb left from breakfast. The apartment is always slightly tattered around the edges, so different from the spotless home my own mother kept, my brother and I sprawled out on the kitchen table with our textbooks and our loose-leafs under her too-scrupulous eye. She had never gone to college, which deeply embarrassed her. Her family couldn’t afford it, and she had worked as a receptionist from the age of sixteen. If she pushed us a little too hard at times, it is understandable, especially from this distance.
    A half-hour passes, forty minutes.
    I peel the polish off my left index finger. I stare at the second hand of my watch as it jerks forward, pauses, jerks forward once more. I think of changing into sweatpants but don’t. Surely whoever Sam is meeting will not be wearing sweatpants. I picture long, glossy legs, impossibly high heels…
    6:30.
    6:40.
    This is what you do when you think your husband may be having an affair: You become a keeper of minutes.
    â€œSame place?” she asked.
    I finish my glass of wine, pour another and wander aimlessly about the apartment. I look in on Phoebe, entranced by a computergame that seems to involve some form of pirate ship. Last week I found her playing the same game with a girl from Sweden and gave her yet another lecture on not entering into dialogues with cyber-strangers. “How do you know she’s not really a thirty-seven-year-old man in Peoria?” I asked. Phoebe stared back with a deep reservoir of superiority. “You act like someone can jump through the computer and kidnap me.”
    â€œThey can,” I replied.
    Behind the closed door of her bedroom, I can hear Claire on the phone with her best friend, Lily. I stand outside, trying to make out what she is saying, but it is just a low murmur of girlishness, a muted language I cannot decipher. I knock gently—a formality—and walk in. Claire covers the mouthpiece with her hand and looks up at me.
    â€œFinish up and start your homework,” I say.
    â€œIt will only take me fifteen minutes.”
    â€œFine, but you still need to do it. And I’d like to see it when you’re done.”
    â€œMo-om, you’re not going to start that, are you? You never check homework.”
    There is some truth to this, but in spite of that—or maybe because of it—a righteous indignation wells up. “That’s not so.”
    Claire rolls her eyes.
    I can’t remember my mother ever checking my homework, or even asking what it was. She trusted the teachers to do their job, as she was doing hers. Frankly, I think there’s something to be said for that, though I’m loath to admit it publicly. At last year’s science fair on electricity, it was evident that there had been engineers hired, architects employed, lighting experts paid off on the sly. One girl had built a minutely detailed replica of Yankee Stadium with a home-run sign that lit up every time the toy batter took a perfect swing at the push of a button. I mean, don’t those parents ever get tired, don’t they ever just feel like hiding in their bedrooms watching reruns of Law & Order while their kids do their homework? Of course, I don’t have the courage of my convictions. Instead, I am deeply erratic; I don’t check the girls’ homework for weeks and then a sudden waveof guilt will envelop me. Convinced that I am a selfish, lazy parent doing my children irrevocable harm, I demand to see every essay and math problem, though I stopped understanding the answers once they got past fourth grade. Not surprisingly, Phoebe and Claire barely tolerate this onslaught of maternal oversight, knowing it will