I’d gone home to my dad’s apartment every few weeks. We’d drink good scotch and watch Law and Order: SVU marathons without speaking, tucking into artisanal pizza or Thai food. I’d use chopsticks and he’d use a fork. He’d congratulate me on new responsibilities I was given at work, the grit with which I negotiated my raise. Sometimes, when he fell asleep, I would open his laptop and confirm doctor appointments for him, make sure his prescriptions didn’t run out. I’d go out to the twenty-four-hour grocery store and stock his fridge with smoked salmon, hummus, grapes, Laughing Cow cheese.

Maybe this earnest concern about his welfare was a silent apology, an acceptance, if not a full understanding of why my dad had craved my presence as a child. He wanted me close, always. His work allowed for this arrangement; he was there after school, in the evenings, on the weekends. When he couldn’t be, when he had lectures or cocktail parties or even a late afternoon meeting with his agent, I always came along, my small fist in his large one. He gave me books, paper, crayons, a briefcase full of gadgets and toys to keep me entertained, propping me in the corner of a restaurant, an office, even the sprawling estate of the producer who turned his books into films, never more than a few yards away.

He stopped staying out past eight. He stopped traveling. He stopped having a social life of any kind. By the time I was nine, his socializing had dwindled down to a couple of lifelong buddies who didn’t mind coming over to the apartment, who would gladly sit alongside him as he read me a bedtime story, wait patiently as I awoke from a bad dream, moaned about tiny puppies metamorphosing into scary ducks, Frankensteined creatures out to get me. Needless to say, he never dated. His eyes were always on me, a thin line of exhaustion and anxiety permanently scored between his brows.