It was out of character, but in the moment, I thought it was just a nice thing. I had everything I needed for a meatloaf, but that would keep. I could just sit and watch the news, read the paper. And I planned that the next time the phone rang, I would grab it fast and give whoever an earful. But it didn’t ring again, and it took longer than it should have for him to get the food. He said there was traffic, and a miscommunication about the order of the person in front of him, but I have never eaten an egg roll since when I don’t remember the overly cheerful, exuberant tone of your father’s voice, and the way he avoided eye contact, so focused he was on the food on his plate, saying how he really had to watch out for those hot red peppers, and then later carefully cracking the thin cookie to extract his fortune, something stupid and common (“There is a bend in the road” or “Seek and ye shall find,” something like that), but I pretended I saw great and deep meaning there. Then I said, “But of course, now I understand,” and I looked at him until he had to look away.

How odd the way an obsession that has blinded and trapped you can suddenly lift like a heavy fog. It dissipates, dissolves. When in the thick of it, you can’t imagine that it could happen, that the helpless panic you feel will shift back into something safe and solid, but it can. It was an afternoon several years later when it hit me just that way (perhaps because I was seated there on that olive sofa and your father in his chair, just as we had been that day in October), and the phone rang, but we let it go to the machine and listened as we were told that the coat I had taken to the cleaners was ready for pickup. It was winter, and we couldn’t fill the bird feeders fast enough, a bright-red cardinal and a host of chickadees constantly outside the window. We resisted turning on the lights and instead built a fire and let the blue dusk fill the room. We could hear the popping of the wood and the cars passing as people made their way home.

“It’s all good, isn’t it?” your father asked, and I knew exactly what he meant. I said, “Absolutely.” I said, “It’s all very good.” And fearing the phone would once again disrupt our silence, I went and unplugged it from the wall. I said that I would never want to go back. Though I do wonder if we aren’t tested from time to time, my vision now so much clearer than it might have been.