In the elevator I discovered myself in a mirror. I am in my mid-fifties, almost handsome, gray-haired, bespectacled. I have the bearing of what? A successful man of the city. Or just one more putz? I am a Jew, an “Eastern intellectual”—the kind of man the conservatives hate. Unlike my numerous uncles, I am neither overweight nor short. Like them, I wear the mask of one who is both focused and bemused, benign and angry. A wry smile and a furrowed brow lend an enigmatic quality. Here I am, as the world sees me, as I see me. No matter what I do, I can’t get past myself.

There’s nothing like the relief of reentering a vacant apartment after a date. It was as if I’d been holding my breath for hours and could finally exhale. All the disturbances had been cleared away, life was calm once more. The storm had passed, the rain had fallen and the sun was peeking out. I washed down a tab of Ambien with a mouthful of Fiji water and hit the sack.

I must have been asleep for twenty minutes when the phone rang. For a moment I had no idea where I was, or even who I was. Total disorientation. My companion’s scent garnished the sheets. The early morning gloom of my bedroom was deep and soporific. I swam back to wakefulness and reached for the phone thinking that the call must be from the young lady. She’d probably left something behind. Wanted to come by in the morning to pick it up. That old trick.

Ready for a fight, I picked up the phone. But the voice on the other end was unexpectedly male. As the shadows congealed into solid reality, I caught on that my father was speaking. I tripped through a list of potential emergencies including a car accident, a brain aneurysm, even death. That he could call me after dying of a heart attack did not at that moment seem illogical. I groped for a light switch and the room exploded, yoking a band of pain around my skull. Only at that point did I realize I’d spent most of the previous evening drunk.

My father was neither dead nor ill, not in any trouble at all. He was calling because his aged aunt Sadie (my great-aunt) had died. She had resisted to the end. He described a gruesome final few hours, in which she had to struggle for every breath. Things had resolved as they do. Ninety-six years old and Sadie was at peace at last.