Equal Affections by David Leavitt

said, ‘Sort of,’ ” April added, still laughing.
    â€œUnless of course the question was so good we couldn’t resist saying yes,” Joey said.
    â€œSo you see,” April said—and finally, now, she was calming down—“those were your stories. You made up your own stories.”
    Everyone had a good laugh then. “Imagine,” Louise said, grim-faced but smiling. “Well, I don’t know what Dr. Freud would have to say about my story.”
    Of course, it was never played again. The game was in that category of phenomena that by their very natures can happen only once.
    But the stories, oddly enough, lived on in Danny’s memory, as vivid as dreams. He remembered the way the boat rocked in the noisy harbor, how April’s hands pushed, and how the dark water seemed to swallow him. He remembered as if he were there—a mute witness, a child alongside the cart: the panic in the aisles of the supermarket, the women raising their hands to their noses. The bottles and boxes and pieces of fruit fly from Louise’s overturned cart, rolling along the floor. And in the midst of it all, Louise herself, as she saw herself: befouled, degraded, humiliated beyond measure.
    This was, Danny knew, what she was always afraid of happening, what she was convinced would happen if even for a second she let down her guard. “Her precious guard,” April called it. Now that was a title for a song.

Chapter 8
    I t seemed sometimes to Danny that the family could not get together for a birthday or holiday without April being compelled to air a grievance, vent an irritation, or ask an indelicate question. Psychological stillness seemed to her by necessity a sign of stagnation; it was as if she felt periodically obliged to stir up the dust of the time they had all lived together in the same house, a time which each year they seemed to have less of a grasp on, which each year seemed more and more a part of their history.
    Here they are, then, a few nights before Christmas 1982, having just finished a dinner of lasagne and a cake April has made. (She reverts to old habits when she is home, dispenses with her celebrity, bakes from mixes, in Bundt pans, recipes from Betty Crocker Bake-Off cookbooks.) “Mom, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” she says in a tone the solemnity of which everyone has come to associate with trouble.
    Louise puts down her cake fork and looks at Nat.
    â€œI know there have been a lot of secrets in this family,” April says, “things you assumed we didn’t know. But there are things I’ve learned recently—I’d prefer not to say how.”
    â€œWhat?” Louise says, still looking at Nat.
    â€œI know,” April says, “that you were married to someone else before Daddy.”
    Louise throws down her fork; it jangles, reverberates against thetable. “Oh, Christ,” she says. “Did your father tell you that? Nat, did you tell her?”
    He looks away. He doesn’t say anything.
    â€œOr was it Eleanor?” she says.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter who,” April says. “What’s important is it’s been told, and I’m glad to know. I want to know.”
    â€œIt wasn’t Eleanor,” Nat says.
    Louise turns away from Nat. She turns away from April. “I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of it,” she says. “It was nothing. It just embarrasses me, that’s all. It’s like a big messy BM you had once. It’s not something you like to talk about.”
    Everyone is quiet. Louise’s eyes move from one face to the next. “All right,” she says. “It’s true. There, that’s done. Now I don’t want to talk about it ever again. Understand?”
    April opens her mouth to question further.
    â€œSentence. Paragraph,” Louise says.
    She gets up from the table, gets up to do the dishes. Stretches