… I am thankful I do not have any idea whether my parents engaged in key parties. I do know each had affairs, including with people in the same apartment building.

“We both like your mother so very much, don’t we, honey?” the mother of my friend from the floor below spat at her husband.

“Leave it alone,” said the husband, as his wife squirted a splat of ketchup on the pasta she was serving me. Her kids started eating as if ketchup on pasta were normal, which I realized in this family it was. I found this disgusting and also emblematic of the scene playing out in front of four kids under age 9, we were plastic people to be dispatched with as little care as possible while the grown-ups seethed in a code they in fact wanted you to understand; You, little missy, the mother seemed to be saying to me, you will pay for your mother’s miscreancy.