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were to gather for what I called a requiem supper.
    â€˜There, after tea and sandwiches, sherry and Nabisco shortbreads, the flamboyant lady told me that your father had come to her apartment for his Friday nights in the City. With her red-lipped smile, she implied that he had often, urn, well, shared her bed—I cannot remember exactly how she suggested this. She made it clear to me that theirs was a most discreet affair, continuing when Edmund stopped in the City at the end of his furloughs on his way back to Fort Dix. It was a very warm friendship, she said, close enough for her to wonder, now that he had passed on, about the contents of his will. Before he left for France, he had suggested to her, she said, that she would not be forgotten.’
    Having told this much of the story, to her amazement, Emma realized she had gone far beyond the bounds of propriety. The funeral must have unloosed her tongue, she thought. Never before had she said a word of this to anyone. How could she have told her innocent children the brutal truth about their father? She felt ashamed, and then, after a moment, a new thought relieved her: it was possible they would have understood very little of what she had said.
    â€˜Was she, Moth?’ asked Caleb.
    â€˜Was she what?’
    â€˜Was she included in father’s will.’
    â€˜No. Not a penny.’
    Having said so much, Emma felt she could not retreat. She decided to finish, as writers of fables always do, with a moral they might understand.
    â€˜But it was a lesson for me. Your father always appeared to be so … so devoted. He seemed to be … an honest man. From what that lady told me, I learned that none of this was so. I learned never to believe in appearances. Nothing is ever what it seems. The surface is always deceiving.’
    Caleb and Kate pressed her hands in theirs, kissed her, and told her how sorry they were to learn of the faithlessness of their father. They said nothing about their own feelings, but they were quite sure of them. On the spot they had become disbelievers in their father’s myth and absolute supporters of their brave mother. Their games of fictional romances had prepared them for such codas of disappointment and deception, an education their mother was not aware of when she felt she might have foolishly, prematurely disillusioned them.
    As the train began to move at last, the three sat very close together on one seat, creating their customary tableau of familial affection. The train made its slow way through the heavy snow that obscured all the windows. The children pondered the cost of replacing the heroic saga of their father’s life with the radically revised account. Caleb did not hesitate. He had begun to translate what he had heard into material for a new game:
    â€˜Friday nights I will go to visit Kate, the lady in Chelsea who is wearing a black dress and roses on her hat. Although I am married, I will take off my derby and satin-collared overcoat, all my city clothes, and will come into bed with her …’ Caleb smiled delightedly at his mother, relishing the prospect of a new fiction between him and Kate.
    That night, in Kate’s bedroom, the children discussed the lesson Moth said she had learned.
    â€˜Do you suppose she loved him … after that?’ Kate asked.
    â€˜I couldn’t tell, from what she said. I guess she didn’t.’
    Kate thought about the curious revelation. Then, with a daughter’s characteristically rapid assimilation of her mother’s wisdom, she said slyly:
    â€˜ Seems . But you never can be sure. It may only be appearances. She may be deceiving us.’
    In these various ways, the four children lost their early, happy visions of their fathers.

2
    Camp
    One is not born a woman, one becomes one .
    â€”S IMONE DE B EAUVOIR
    I N J UNE OF 1930, Rose Hellman began sewing name tapes on Roslyn’s camp uniforms. Max had told his wife he wanted the summer for