THE NEWYORKER, MARCH 2, 2020 29
were clothes from his self-described
fat period, from the time he slimmed
down, and from the years since my
mother died, when he’s been out-and-
out skinny: none of them thrown away
or donated to Goodwill, and all of them
now reeking of mildew.
I nicked a vibrant red button-down
shirt from the fifties, noticing later that
it had a sizable hole in the back. Then
I claimed the camel-colored, moth-
eaten beret I’d bought him on a school
trip to Madrid in 1975.
“It suits you,” Hugh observed.
“It matches your skin and makes you
look bald,” Amy said.
We were all in the dining room,
going through boxes with more boxes
in them, when I glanced over at the
window and saw a doe step out of the
woods and approach some of the trash
on the lawn near the carport, head low-
ered, as if she’d followed the scent of
fifty-year-old house paint hardened in
rusted-through cans. “Look,” we whis-
pered, afraid our voices from inside the
house might frighten her off. “Isn’t she
beautiful!” We couldn’t remember there
being deer in the woods when we were
young. Perhaps our dogs had scared
them off.
“Oh,” Lisa said, her voice as soft as
our father’s. “I hope she doesn’t step on
a rusty nail.”
G
retchen served Greek food for
lunch, and afterward we drove to
Springmoor. It was a Saturday after-
noon in late February, cold and raining.
Our father was in his reclining chair
covered with a blanket when we arrived,
not asleep but not exactly awake, either.
It was this new state he occasionally
drifted into: neither here nor there. After
killing the overhead lights, we seated
ourselves around his room and contin-
ued the conversation we’d been having
in the car.
“I asked Marshall to write Dad’s
obituary, but he doesn’t feel up to it,”
Gretchen said, referring to her boy-
friend of nearly thirty years.
The rest of us glanced over at our
father.
“He can’t hear us,” Gretchen said.
She looked at me. “So will you write it?”
I’ve been writing about my father for
ages, but when it comes to the details
of his life, the year he graduated from
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