"Dad, everyone's saying my real mother's a carrot."

"Well she's not a carrot. That's impossible."

"Lettuce?"

"Megan! Of course she's not lettuce—nor any other vegetable. Your mother is not a vegetable, Megan."

"Then why does everybody call her a carrot?"

"Because kids are cruel, Megan. They say stupid untrue things and have no idea what they're really saying."

"Did / used to be a carrot?"

We came to a stop sign at Hadden Drive. "Megan, stop …"

Megan opened the door and dashed out into the trees beside the golf course. Shit. I left the car running at the stop sign, door wide open, and chased after her. Fortunately, I knew my way through the surrounding trees as well as any child, having spent so much time there myself when young. "Megan, come back."

"Kleek. Kleek. Kleek."

What was this strange noise she was making? I followed the sound over a series of logs, over a dewy patch of psilocybin mushrooms, then into a glade where as teenagers we'd spent many a Friday and Saturday night. Megan was sitting fetal beside an old rotted log that had probably been felled back in the 1920s.

"Kleek. Kleek. Kleek."

"Megan, there you are." I stopped to catch my breath and looked around at the dry cool dent in the forest floor, untouched by undergrowth as the shade canopy above was too dense. Between the yearly layers of pine, fir, and cedar sheddings lay bits of uncountable cigarettes packs, weather-yellowed pornography, candy wrappers, condoms, dead flashlight batteries, and clusters of stolen Mercedes hood ornaments.

"Kleek."

"Megan, what's that sound you're making?""Kleek."

Two could play at this game. I said, "Kleeg Kleeg."

Megan rolled her eyes. "Daddy, you're not doing it right."

"Kleeg. Kleeg."

"Daddy, that's not what carrots sound like. They sound like this: Kleek. Kleek. Kleek."

"How silly of me. I forgot."

There was a quiet moment and I thought of the summer Jared and I borrowed a golf cart from an elderly twosome and drove it through the woods, bailing out just before it ran over a small cliff. We never got caught.

"Megan, for God's sake, stop the carrot stuff. You know it's not true."

"Where's my real mom?" She was getting teary.

"Okay, Megan. I'll tell you, okay?"

"Okay." Her posture slackened and she relaxed visibly.

I caught my breath. "Your mom was eighteen when she became sick. She has the same birthday as you."

"Really?"

"Really."

I told Megan about her mother—everything—and afterward we walked out of the forest and back to the car, still running, still waiting to drive us away.

Of course, Megan wanted to see Karen—the sooner the better. We went that night. My mother and the staff at Inglewood spruced Karen up as best they could. Once inside Inglewood, I greeted the staff as I'd done hundreds of times before, and all the while my stomach felt lightweight and bilious. We slowly marched down the echoing hallway into Karen's room, where a small radio played Blondie's "Heart of Glass," then a song by the Smiths. Her bed had a blue chenille spread. "It's okay, Megan," I said. "There's no need to be afraid. We all love you."

Karen, even dolled up by Mom, was a heartbreaking sight. They tried to make Karen as natural as possible with foundation plus a dab of blush, with a trim of her hair, all crowned with an Alice-band. Shewore a lavender cardigan. Not having seen Karen dolled up since 1979, I felt a pang of intense loneliness. For Megan, the initial shock of seeing her mother seemed to wear off quickly. She gave no initial reaction. I stood still while Megan approached Karen's bedside. She placed her hand on her mother's forehead and with her other hand stroked Karen's hair and touched her hollow cheeks. She smudged her fingers on Karen's eyelids. "She's wearing makeup," Megan said. "Sleeping people don't wear makeup." She moistened her fingers to try to wipe clean Karen's cheeks and forehead, erasing Mom's makeover effort. Having accomplished this, she jumped up onto the bed and lay down beside Karen. Karen was inside a sleep cycle, her mouth rasping. Megan looked closely at her face. "How long has she been like this?"

"Since December 15, 1979."

"Who visits her?"

"George does," I said, "every day. And I come here once a week on Sunday."

"Hmm."

Megan looked at her mother. "She doesn't scare me, you know."

"Well, she shouldn't."

Megan ran her fingers over Karen's face again, then said to me, "Can I come with you on Sunday from now on, Dad?"

"Deal."

"Do I look more like you or Mom?"

"Your mother," I said with relief.

Megan looked at Karen's face right up close, as though trying to locate the watermark on a forged banknote. She gave out a puff of air indicating satisfaction, and then lay down beside her and rested. I went outside for fresh air, flummoxed by Megan's casual acceptance. I thought of how life ought to have been as opposed to what it became. After that day, Megan drove with me to Inglewood Lodge on Sundays.

In the 1980s, Hamilton and I would party often. One morning in particular I was awakened by Hamilton tweezing unmetabolized coke from my nostrils. Life was big.

I recovered somewhat from the 1987 stock crash and continued treadmilling within the city's financial district selling low-tide stocks. This was around the time where I started to drink. My compatriots were machine-bronzed fiftysomethings decorated with gold nugget rings and pin-curly hairdos lying into telephone headsets at 5:00 A.M. Lord—the scammy little push-me-pull-you's we enacted over the phones from within our bleak putty-colored office cubicles.

A minor scandal about a spurious core sample knocked me out of the Stock Exchange. With my savings, I bought a Kleenex-box house in North Van where I lived alone, seeing Megan only rarely—baaad father. I took that first house, spackled, sanded, and painted it, then flipped it for a twenty-five-thousand-dollar profit. This became a pattern: I'd buy the worst house on a good block, work and drink like a demon on weekends to whip it into shape, then flip it for a reasonable profit. My behavior wasn't greed, it was … it was me doing anything but speaking honestly with myself—countless silent moments hastily varnished with vodka and thoughts of renovations. I was visiting Karen twice, thrice a week. At Inglewood, I drank vodka and orange juice from a carton.

10 ONE DAY YOU WILL SPEAK WITH YOURSELF

After some years I realized I'd landed myself a major drinking problem—a device for coping with life's endlessly long days. I truly wondered if I was in some kind of coma myself, shambling through life with an IV drip filled with Scotch. My twenties were vanishing and the only good thing I had going for me was a daughter who I hardly ever saw. For her sake I bucked up a bit in the early 19905 and began to sell residential properties with a modicum of success—my years of renovating claptraps left me with a good instinct for the true value of a house.

I also began doing things I couldn't have imagined doing while sober: I'd often lose my car when I went out at night—forget where I parked it, then call all the towing firms the next day to see if they had it. I woke up one morning to see I'd peed onto the wall. For the most part, I maintained a good front while inner deterioration grew. My breath stank permanently like wine left inside a stemmed glass overnight.

And time ticked on.

Pam sent me a card from Athens:

DINNER WITH DAVID BOWIE. GLAMORAMA. DRANK ABSINTHE FOR THE FIRST TIME, P.

Linus, one day in 1990, without telling anybody, left the city. He drove to Lethbridge in Alberta, parked his VW Bug on the side of a ridge, the Continental Divide, donned his knapsack, and went walking through the stubble and chaff on the fields, across the prairies, flushing out the partridge and pheasants, slouching eastward, then south as winter approached, never again to return to his VW. He spent the next few years gadabouting the southern United States, growing his beard, doing spare jobs for food, and sending a postcard from here or there in his microscopic print: