“I’m glad you’re telling me,” Barney said.

His father abruptly turned a hard, cruel face to him and looked directly at his eyes. “Are you?” he said. “Are you glad?”

Barney stared back at him, abashed. “I don’t know.”

“Good,” Daddy said, with relief. “You can drop that psychotherapy horseshit. What you always wanted was to have Anna to yourself. Put your goddamned face against her tits.”

Barney set his shoes on the deck, then took a cigarette out of his pocket. He had never, in his lifetime, heard his father say words like “tits.” Daddy had never once discussed sex with him—not in any way at all. From the time he was five his father had hardly spoken to him. He lit a cigarette. This conversation was overdue. The pain in his stomach had changed to rawness. His hands had stopped shaking. “Daddy,” he said levelly, “you didn’t know how to keep her. I wanted her for myself.”

“What do you mean I didn’t know how?” Daddy said. “She never loved anybody.”

“Maybe her father,” Barney said.

Daddy looked at him a minute. “Maybe you aren’t so stupid after all.”

“I don’t think she really wanted me either. I think she just liked teasing me. She never could let anything alone.”

Daddy was more relaxed now. “I’ll take one of your smokes,” he said.

“Sure.” Barney offered him the pack. There was an ease now in his stomach.

When Daddy lit up his whole body seemed to relax. It was wonderful to see—something Barney had waited to see for a long, long time.

“That goddamned woman could not make a sandwich without turning it into soap opera. She could not stop chattering and pissing and moaning. We would make love on Sunday mornings when you were at church with those crazy evangelists and she would have to get out of bed and put in her suppositories. Then when I got hard she had to get up and pull down the shades or take the phone off the hook. She said I was too animal for her spirit. I would tell her I loved her soul. It was all bullshit. Just bullshit.”

“Were you scared?” Barney was watching him. He began to shimmer again. Now he looked to be twenty years old, was wearing a white sweater and navy blue pants.

“I never knew what I felt when we were in bed,” Daddy said. “She kept everything so goddamned confused…”

“I know.”

“The hell you know.” Daddy stood up, springy on his young legs, looked around the terrace. “Get me a drink, you dumb son of a bitch,” he said. “Get me a glass of gin.”

“You stopped drinking when I was eleven. You wouldn’t even eat Aunt Sallie’s fruitcake, because of the little shot of whiskey she used.”

“And I didn’t cry about it, either. Get me that gin. It won’t hurt now. I’m dead. God damn it to hell, I’m dead.”

When Barney gave him the gin, he asked, “Are you in Limbo?”