I didn’t have to conjure up the phrase happy family fantasy; I lived it. My birth family taught me well. We looked good. We looked good all the time. We looked especially good on Sunday morning marching in a straight line to “our” pew at the front of the church: two perfectly dressed girls in white gloves and straw hats, two young men in navy jackets and striped silk ties and one astonishing baby with glowing blonde curls and sky-blue eyes. We looked good but we were just the footmen in this parade. Mother was perfect. No woman had more stylish suits, shoes, or handbags, but the pièce de résistance was always her hat. Father completed our procession in a felt fedora and camel hair overcoat, carrying a gilt-edged leather missal and miraculously soft gray doeskin gloves. We looked good. Most parents are content with this public performance but we had to be perfect all the time. When no one was watching my parents still dressed for dinner and set the table with silver. We children knew we had to get perfect grades and flawless conduct marks. We looked good all the time.

The illusion worked. Nuns complimented Mom and Dad on our perfect Catholic family. The monsignor went out of his way to speak with us after Mass. Neighbors smiled benevolently. The newspaper wrote warm articles about my father and his company. My high school boyfriends said I was lucky to have such a nice father. They weren’t quite so sure about my mother, but his charm more than made up for any discomfort with her.

The truth, however, was something else. Dinner at our house wasn’t like dinner anywhere else. While other families avoided inflammatory topics, my parents decreed politics and religion the only subjects worthy of discussion. While other families shared their day, we dissected the evils of communism and the demise of the Catholic Church. Even our food was different. Other families ate meat loaf and mashed potatoes; we had whole-grain bread from Pennsylvania, organic vegetables from Connecticut, and artesian water from Arkansas. With equal vigor mother ensured that white sugar never touched our lips and liberal ideas never entered our minds.

Cocktails started the moment Dad walked in the door. Several drinks were consumed before dinner and several nightcaps after. Wine was served with dinner and desert was often ice cream draped in liqueur. Dinner conversation was a catch-22. Fueled by alcohol and teenage defiance, the political debate invariably intensified. Voices got louder. Statements got more confrontational. We five children had to make a decision: Parrot the family line or step out of bounds and face the consequences. Sitting out wasn’t an option.

This was a game we could not win. If we continued to argue (perhaps to discover how far we could go or how good an argument we could make), one of us would invariably step on a land mine. Mother would start to cry tears of frustration over our refusal to acquiesce to her superior wisdom and voluminous research. The contest ended when Dad exploded, “Take it back! Right now! NOW, DAMN YOU, NOW, or you’ll wish you’d never been born!” On a good day his attack stayed verbal. On a bad day, one of us wished he’d never been born.

Our happy family fantasy peaked at Christmas. Mom went all out to create a pastiche of the perfect Catholic family celebrating the perfect Catholic Christmas. She studied cookbooks for weeks, planning menus for every meal, even breakfast. Anyone can make pancakes; my mother made braised lamb kidneys in champagne sauce on toast points. For lunch, when leftover turkey sandwiches in the kitchen would have hit the spot, a two-course meal was served in the dining room. Dinner was undoubtedly delectable, but how much food can children eat in one day? But if we didn’t devour dinner, while displaying excellent manners and participating in intense conversation, Mom’s feelings would be hurt. Even if we ate sufficiently to honor her efforts and kept our elbows off the table, it still might not be enough. Sooner or later one of us would commit the sin of not agreeing with her. At first, in the glow of Christmas tidings, she would attempt to rectify the error by quoting her experts and citing mounds of research. If the offender did not immediately recant, she would become distraught. Perhaps she had not taught us to think properly, trained us sufficiently to obey, or fully informed us of our duty to honor our parents. Perhaps she had allowed us to go to the wrong schools or—horrors!—become influenced by liberal teachers (all very serious mistakes which she would rectify very soon). For the moment however, she would dissolve into tears of rejection and exhaustion. Dad would play his ugly part, and thus would end the happy family fantasy for that Christmas.

The most destructive aspect of our secret family life wasn’t the mental invasion (lots of children have to spout beliefs on command), or the un-American diet (growing up organic didn’t hurt any of us), or even the violence; it was the blanket of silence that descended at night. No matter what transpired that day, no one ever said a word. No one acknowledged anything undesirable had happened. No one said, “I’m sorry.” The next morning it was as if nothing had happened. The incident and hundreds like it were never mentioned again.

As an adult, I did not set out consciously to replicate this happy family fantasy. I left the staid Midwest for radical California. I lived on a sailboat. I found apolitical friends. I married a man my mother would never have chosen. So I was surprised to discover that I had managed to do it: I had created my very own happy family fantasy. Want proof? The administrator of the school our son attended for six years said we were the one couple in the entire school she believed would never divorce. We must have looked good. We must have looked good all the time.

My eye-opening revelation was that the fantasy doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s. It has only to be a fantasy—an illusion—to do the damage.

I didn’t relinquish my happy family fantasy easily. After twenty-two years building and protecting my mirage it took a bomb to get my attention. It was the standard issue bomb: an affair. The universe made sure I couldn’t miss it. My husband called his secretary’s name in his sleep, stopped coming home for dinner, was rarely in his office, and when he was home snuck onto my computer to send her furtive e-mails.

I could easily have stopped there, accuse him of having an affair, file for divorce, and blame him for the breakup. But a wise marriage counselor invited me to see this as a part of my journey—not someone else’s sin. He introduced me to The Hero Within by Carol Pearson and a whole new world opened in front of my eyes. Suddenly the affair wasn’t a bomb; it was a gift—the gift of sight.

As my vision slowly cleared, I began to suspect there was more I wasn’t seeing, more I wasn’t acknowledging. I suspected there were more affairs, more lies, more illusions. I asked a dear friend, someone who knew us both very well, “Has my husband been having affairs all along?” He looked at me. He looked away. I watched the debate go on behind his eyes. Finally he sighed, “You are beginning to see what you have been unwilling to see.”

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