“Am I?” I said.

“It was a joke,” he said, spreading his hands, all easy reasonableness now.

“Your mother likes to stay busy.

It gives her a sense of purpose, keeps her active.

You know how she is.

She insists on helping around the house.” And there it was, the whole machinery of it laid bare in three sentences.

He was not going to deny that he had called her the maid.

He was going to reframe it, right in front of me, into an act of kindness, into something my mother chose, something that was good for her.