"Why'd you call him Nisco."

"I don't know. He was always that: Not Big Bad Wolf, just Nisco. The only thing that really frightened me when I was young."

"Annette put it there, didn't she? No one else in the world knew about him."

"Yes, she probably did. That's why she's not around. Left her calling card, but I don't know what she's trying to tell you. What're you going to do with it?"

I thought of that petrified little boy jerking awake in the middle of many nights, heart banging, panting – escaping, but only just. The sound of him behind me running, running so fast, rubbing his knife and fork together, ssslick-ssslick-ssslick, inches away, screaming, "I'm going to EAT you!" Laughing that terrifying, stupid cartoon laugh. No Devil from Hell can scare us more than childhood demons, cartoon wolves or not. Our soft spots are so much larger then. We have no armor.

"Huh! You want to keep it?"

"No! Can I throw it out here?"

"It's not necessary." She put her hand on the windshield over the passenger's side. The Nisco faded and slowly began to disappear. Then, at the last moment, when it was mostly shimmer and dark blur, there was a loud BLAP., and the inside of the windshield splattered with blood.

I didn't hear from either of them for three days. I tried to go about my life in as normal a fashion as possible, but that was absurd. God and Death and Sanity had all walked into my house and sat down at the table. They wanted to talk; they had plans for me. Was I supposed to pretend it wasn't them, and listen as if theirs were only another business proposition!

How would I handle Annette? What other tests would I have to face if I were able to resolve the conflict with her? What happened to you after you 'passed'? Did angels come down and take you on a tour of the heavens? Were there angels? I had to remember to ask Beenie: Do Angels exist?

Can you imagine having someone in your life who could answer that question conclusively?

I remained nervous and alert. I taught well, really singing out the questions and answers in my classes, keeping the students up on their toes. One girl stopped me in the hall and asked why I was in such a good mood. I laughed like a hyena. Good mood? Oh my dear, if only you knew.

Norah called one night to say she had broken up with the cartoonist and was going out with an airline pilot now. My daughter's fickleness and vague promiscuity had been a real thorn in my side for years, and we'd had more than one squabble about it and about her whole life-style. But this time, we talked seriously and illuminatingly about why she'd decided to make the change. At the end of the conversation, there was a comfortable silence, then she said, 'Thank you, Dad."

"For what?"

"Taking me seriously."

"Darling I've taken you seriously since you were a girl."

"No, you've often treated me like I was a student you thought was going to be great, but ended up disappointing you."

"Norah!"

"It's true, Dad, but listen to me. Hear what I'm saying. This conversation was special; it was really different. It's the first time in I-can't-remember when that I felt you were listening and were actually interested. You don't have to approve of me, Dad. I'm not asking for that anymore. I want only for you to love me and hear about my life."

When we'd hung up, I went to find Roberta, who had been listening in on another extension. "Was what she said true? Have I been such a lousy father all these years?"

"Not lousy, Scott, but tough and often removed. You were very hard on the girls for years. We've talked about this before: Gerald was born when Norah was twelve, remember. I'm sure that's what she was referring to."

Our three children – Norah, Freya, and Gerald. Norah illustrates medical textbooks and lives in Los Angeles. Freya is married with two children and lives in Chicago. Gerald is severely retarded and is institutionalized. We tried for years to keep him home with us, but if you know about care for the severely retarded, you know it is virtually impossible to live any kind of normal life around someone with this handicap. They are black holes of need for help and love. No matter what you give them, it is never enough or correct. You can ask for nothing in return, because they have nothing. Sure, you pray for them to show some sign of recognition or normal behavior. lust once. Just a flash of what in your greatest hopes might happen some magical day: they smile when you kiss them rather than scream as if they've been wounded. Or pick up a spoon and dip it in the soup instead of hitting themselves in the face with it or gouging at their eyes. Unknowingly, they take everything you have. When you are exhausted and resentful, guilt taps you on the shoulder and knocks you down another way. It is a terrible lesson and burden. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.

When Gerald was seven, Freya walked out of the kitchen one morning to answer the telephone, and her brother put his hand down on a lit kitchen burner. At the hospital, even Roberta, who had fought hardest to keep him home, agreed we could no longer care for him properly. After he recovered, we found a perfect school, and he has lived there since. He is both our sword of Damocles and our permanent reminder of how wonderful life can be if you are lucky.

"We all adjusted to him differently, Scott. I tried too hard to see him normal and gave him too much of the love I should have given the girls. You did what you could, but it was a terrible disappointment, and it ate you up. When it got too much, you retreated from all of us into your work. It makes sense. It's both of our personalities perfectly. I wanted everyone to be happy; you wanted everyone to be exceptional. Neither of us had a chance of succeeding so we both made big mistakes. But you know, we couldn't have been so bad, because the girls still love us. It's clear in whatever they do."

Yes, we'd had this discussion before, but having it again right after Norah's comment hit me a K.O. punch to the heart. Had I really been so bad and negligent? Worse, had I known that all along, but spent years hiding it from myself? I knew life was a progressively more sophisticated game of hide-and-seek with ourselves, but could we really be unaware of something this momentous?

Further, if it were true, why would I rate to replace Beenie Rushforth as one of the thirty-six? A man who treated his family with such arrogance and disrespect? In her inimitable way, she'd told me that 'it took all kinds,' but could such an appalling egoist be one of them?

So much at once. My life jumped, bounced, and floated like one of those astronauts walking in space. It had suddenly become almost weightless, because its own personal gravity had ceased to be. I tried repeatedly to call Beenie, but there was never an answer. Finally I realized she wanted me to think things over, and would answer my questions only when she came again to clean our house. How ridiculous yet correct that profession was for her. The ultimate cleaner. The ultimate bringer of order.

Needless to say, I galloped back and forth over the emotional gamut, waiting for her next visit. I canceled my class for that day, and bribed Roberta out of the house with a gift of lunch and an afternoon movie with her best friend. Ten minutes after she left, the empty and quiet house made me so nervous that I got out the vacuum cleaner and did the floor in the kitchen before the bell rang.

I opened the door, and there was Annette Tangwalder.

"Beenie couldn't come, so she sent me. I'm supposed to clean your house." She brushed by me into the hall, throwing this last line over her shoulder. "Wow, I never thought I would be in this house. Vacuum cleaner's all ready for me, eh? O.K."

I closed the door and looked at her. "Why didn't she come?"