My mother comes to stay with us once a week because for the last eight months she’s been having an affair with Eddie Royce, our city councilman. Wednesdays she drives to Mandeville from Lumberton in time to have an early dinner with my husband Howard and me. Howard’s reserved, or tries to be, because he’s fond of my father and not comfortable harboring my mother under these circumstances. She’s all charm with him, flirty and interested in what he’s doing, and when she’s like this she’s hard to resist. She’s lost ten pounds, and tonight at dinner she asks Howard if he notices, and when he says, yes, she explains that’s why she’s picking at her food, not because it isn’t delicious. “There is…