It takes planning and organization when you finally decide to embark on a full campaign of lying to your kids. I already have practice with the easy stuff, a kind of improv skill so that my explanation for any failed appointment or errand or outing comes quickly to the mind and tongue. I’ve been doing that for about three years now, providing answers that elicit at most one follow-up query from them, but generally now, with expertise and experience, just leaves them silent because what I say sounds so much like the unavoidable truth that it sometimes even brings them to a near apology for asking me about it, and, in the most skilled renderings, a hug, a kiss, and another hug that I don’t even feel any more.

That was phase one. Why didn’t I pick her up after gymnastics? Why can’t I help him with French? How come the trip to the Game Palace got cancelled just an hour before we were all about to leave the house, and they were already dressed? I can do those with panache now, even enjoying the machination of my insides without it showing, like a comedian who’s able not to laugh at his own best insult jokes.

I read in a sociology book recently which I didn’t read that in all cultures the family is the core unit that together in aggregrate makes up the whole of any society, so Sadee is going to be implicated in this as well. It may sound counterintuitive to say that she is the easy one but the fact is that the unlucky and inattentive girl has built up a trust in me, and in those situations, way beyond my fake-job-fair trips, where she’s gotten quizzical for a moment, I’ve always been able to forestall the question she thinks she is about to ask by hugging her or throwing her playfully onto the bed or just staring her down equally playfully, until she just shook her head and chuckled at her own doubt and then went about her business.

“Daddy, we’re ready,” I hear from Lolly downstairs, and this time we are actually going to go to the Game Palace. This is how the plan works. It’s like, it’s like—well, theoretically speaking of course, if a man were cheating on his wife three or four evenings a week, he couldn’t always offer her the cliché of working late. She would have the lived experience of him regularly making it home for dinner, and with the very occasional time-sensitive project at work that delayed him sometimes, but week after week of no-shows would eventually get her thinking when she started to do the math of this many weeks multiplied by this many days per week. That man, that theoretical man, needs to see his lover for their trysts about twice or three times a week, and the fourth time when his dinner is going cold at home he should be at some specialty baked-goods shop picking up a dozen of such variety that all the palates will be distracted and mollified.

“I’ll be down in two minutes, honey,” I shout back down to Sadee, and can hear a flurry of running around and excited talking after as they realize that this is really happening.

I come down the stairs with a topper, some chocolate I picked up and paid way too much for, and they both get that right now as their dessert after their healthy breakfast, and Sadee glares at me when I tell them to open the wrappers, sure, why not, this is a day for play.

I enjoy the Game Palace in spite of myself, kids running around and parents trying to corral them or prevent them from being touched by some weirdo. Lights and sounds all around, too, and frenetic activity in every corner. It reminds me of Reno, Nevada, that time I was fakely there for another job fair but ended up at a casino first and then a strip club to finish off the night, after a hard day of lolling in bed and enjoying room service.

Part of me, a decent part, is happy to see that Grady and Lolly don’t fall into typical gender compartments as they choose their games. Sadee is a fiend in the race car, easily making some pretty impossible turns at some pretty impossible speeds. After she’s made the rounds of the room and come back to this favourite car, she moves up on the ranking screen as the player with the second-most points ever.

“Wow,” Sadee says.

“This calls for a celebration,” I say, not quite sure what that means.

Grady has been liking the ones that involve dancing and stomping on lights to some generic music that for a moment makes me wonder, Who composes this stuff? It works though, and he’s exhausted like a puppy at the end of a swim day at the cottage, and I’m pleased that he too reaches second-highest. Equality among the genders, finally, but only when they switch roles.