Free Best Intentions by Emily Listfield

into the kitchen. He reaches over to kiss them both hello and the three of them sit down at the table, waiting to be fed. For a moment I forget about the morning, about Merdale, grateful for the simplicity of their expectations.
    â€œOkay,” Sam says once we all have bowls of chili before us, “let’s hear about the first day of school. What’s the lowdown on your teachers?”
    Claire, fully immersed in the “everyone” stage of reportage, begins: Everyone hates the math teacher, everyone says that the art teacher is a lunatic, everyone thinks the Spanish teacher she has gotten is nice but doesn’t explain things well while the other one is a total bitch (I shake my head in warning, which she pointedly ignores) but you learn a lot. I am somewhat reassured that “learning a lot” is the coin of the realm at Weston. It is what I appreciate most about the school. The flip side is that half the kids have SAT tutors by the age of seven.
    â€œWho exactly is everyone?” Sam asks.
    â€œEveryone,” Claire reiterates, frustrated.
    â€œDon’t you think you should wait and judge for yourself?”
    â€œDa-ad.” I take perverse pleasure in the fact that he, too, can be subjected to the stretched-out syllables indicative of teen displeasure, though admittedly it’s not as frequent. Often, I catch the girls trying out their budding female personae with him, rounding off the harder edges they sometimes jostle me with. He is, already, The Other. All I can do is sit in the shadows, watching as he accrues their gifts unbidden, almost unnoticed, leaving me both pleased—this is how it should be, after all—and slightly envious.
    Sam shrugs it off, reaches over, ruffles Claire’s hair and smiles. “Suffice it to say the reporting bug does not run in the family.” He turns to Phoebe. “And you, my little ink-stained wretch?” He picksup her hand, covered in indecipherable hieroglyphics scrawled in ballpoint pen. “I suppose this is your homework assignment for the night?”
    One of the great by-products of having children is how they can take you outside of yourself, yank you into their world, sometimes against your will, almost always to your benefit. Tonight, though, there is a running monologue, a split screen in my head as I listen to Phoebe describe—what? Something about doing three-dimensional art the first half of the year before they switch to graphics, or is it the other way around?
    â€œSo,” I say when she is done. “I have some news, too.” I glance over at Sam, who nods imperceptibly. “My company was sold to a bigger firm today.”
    Both girls look at me, waiting for an analysis, a reassurance I can’t give them. The only thing that disturbs children more than a crack in the structure of their own lives is even the hint of one in yours. Despite all of their poking and prodding, their testing of limits, they have a stake in their parents’ invulnerability.
    â€œWill you have a new boss?” Phoebe asks. She has always been extremely interested in the hierarchy of our jobs—memorizing the names of our bosses and bosses’ bosses. Perhaps it gives her satisfaction to know that outside the home we do not have the final word, but I think, too, that she likes the order of it, it calms her in some way, the idea that life has a clearly delineated structure.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œI don’t know yet.”
    â€œI think it’s going to be a good thing, Mom,” Claire says. “It’s like going to a bigger school. There will be more options.”
    I smile at her, thankful for this keyhole into the kindness and empathy that resides beneath the layer of cool. It is the best of Claire.
    After dinner, the girls withdraw to their rooms, their computers, their evening showers and nightly spats and Sam and I withdraw into the minutiae of domesticity—cleaning up