It’s only destroyed the moment the woman stops sweeping up the ashes.”

I have carried that sentence with me ever since, because it names a trick that had been played on me, and on my mother before me, and on women in general for a very long time.

The trick is this: a man can have an affair, father a secret child, plot to steal his wife’s inheritance and turn her son against her — and none of that is called destroying the family.

All of that is called a private matter, a rough patch, men being men, something to be handled quietly.