And the thing that broke my heart, doing it, was how eagerly Michael accepted the performance, how badly he wanted it to be true.

Every time I let my hand tremble, or repeated a question, or seemed to lose the thread of a conversation, I watched something in my son relax, watched him welcome the evidence of my decline the way another son might grieve it.

He was not saddened by his mother’s apparent failing.

He was gratified by it.

And I learned, in those weeks of pretending to fall apart, that my son had come to need me to be less than I was, because a competent mother was an obstacle and only a diminished one was an opportunity.

That is a thing no parent should ever have to learn about a child.