The day after Thanksgiving, Larry and I were at a table on the deck going over my fourth step: Made a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves. Winter had evidently forgotten about L.A. because it was a warm and clear day, so unlike the gray, rainy city I had left two days earlier. I sipped coffee while Larry pored over my inventory as if it were one of his movie star client’s contracts.

Larry’s voice broke into my reverie. “Where’s your father on this list?”

“What?”

“Your dad. Where’s his name?”

Larry leaned forward across the wrought-iron table, one long finger tapping the yellow legal pad where I had written my inventory. Out of his bespoke suits, he preferred Bermuda shorts and Brooks Brothers polo shirts which exposed his long, pale and rather hairless limbs and conferred on him a stork-like appearance.

“My father? I thought I was writing about people I’ve wronged.”

“No. The inventory is about the people, places and things you resent or fear. Your baggage. We’ll get to the people you wronged in step nine. Anyway, what makes you think you didn’t wrong your father?”

I glared at him. “Are you kidding, Larry? You know my story. The guy tormented me for being gay even before I knew it myself. When I was twelve, he sent me to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder.”

“Yes,” Larry said gently. “I know your story and as long as that’s the story you keep telling yourself, you’ll never get past hating him.” He looked at me thoughtfully. “He wasn’t the father you wanted, Henry, but have you considered that you weren’t the son he wanted, either?”

“That was obvious,” I snapped. “But how is that my fault?”

“We’re not talking about fault here, we’re talking about perspective. It’s easier to stay a child and nurse your wrongs than to grow up and let go of them because you can’t let go of them until you’re able to see the other side. His side, Henry. You were his only son. Can you try to understand his disappointment from his perspective? You’re a criminal defense lawyer. You defend people who’ve done much worse to their victims than your father did to you. How do you do that?”

“What they did, they did to someone else, not me.”

“Oh, come off it. You couldn’t represent your clients if you didn’t feel at least a little empathy for them. If you can put yourself in the shoes of a murderer, you can put yourself in your father’s.”

I refused to grant the point, valid though it was.

“What does any of this have to do with drinking? You’re the one who told me I can’t my blame my drinking on other people.”