On our dad’s part, the signal involved much crinkling of papers and long, deep sighs (I perfected my own sigh listening to his), perhaps even an artificial propensity to make noise by banging into furniture. On Mom’s part it was more direct, because to get to the living room she had to pass Dad’s office. A quick slap of the palm against his door on the way to common ground usually got his attention.

What always surprised me is how quickly the other parent would halt in his or her own labors and come out to the living room. Sometimes it was just to listen to the other vent, sometimes to offer practical suggestions.

Only once, to my knowledge, did one or the other cross a boundary. Our dad one day decided to try his hand at sculpture, but not just any sculpture. He wanted to use wire and canvas, to combine sculpture and painting, in a sense. I could see from the expression on Mom’s face what she thought of this idea, but she loaned him the supplies and for a week he worked on his own New Art. You could hear him bumping into things in his office, cursing sometimes, coming out to beg more supplies from Mom. Duncan and I both expected great things. (Or, at least, something—or, as Janice put it at the time, some thing.)

Finally, Dad had finished, and we all gathered in the living room for the unveiling. The sculpture stood on a table near the couch, covered by a bedsheet. Mom stood to the side, arms crossed, while Dad explained the concept.

“I wanted to reveal the true shape of everyday things. This is the first of a series of studies that combine painting and sculpture into a new hybrid,” he said.

With those words, he pulled the sheet away, to reveal … a canvas mushroom, wires under the canvas giving it a shape.

“A mushroom. Made of canvas,” Mom said.

“Well,” Dad said, “I haven’t painted it yet.”

Mom went back into her studio.

I went back to reading.

Only Duncan had the decency to walk up to our dad and tell him how much he liked it.

Dad never crossed the line into the arts again.

I don’t think I was fated to be granted the kind of connection our parents often had, and I don’t know if I learned enough from our parents’ example. The dynamic changed too much after Dad’s death, and our careers took us too far apart to allow it, but I imagine this connection, this understanding, is something that Mary and Duncan shared before they grew apart. (All too briefly, I’m afraid. Some months it was there, some months it wasn’t. You need to know a person for a long time to develop that kind of trust. We didn’t have enough time.)

“Nativism,” Duncan said to me once, “is like a prolonged case of mass suicide.”