Then I said, “And what do they mean?”

I felt my father shift in his seat. The air in the room grew cold. Pin-drop silence. Here was my chance to speak truthfully. But somehow, when I opened my mouth, a piece of confetti lodged in my throat. People thought I was choking up when, in truth, I was just trying not to choke.

“Coach is my father. I am—his—son. What else—is there—to . . . ?”

Something about how I was trying to spit out the fleck of confetti gave the impression of my struggling with great emotion. The guests broke into applause, and Coach ascended the small platform, slapping me on the back so hard I still feel the sting. As the Cayton College jazz band played the fight song, more confetti continued to fall, and Coach shouted over the music and the cheering, “Thanks, son. I couldn’t have said it better myself!”

On the small plane from Toledo to Chicago, I smiled as the flight attendant used the microphone/intercom to go over safety procedures. There were only a handful of passengers, but the flight attendant was behaving as if we were on a 747 headed to Milan. As she dutifully pointed out the emergency exits, I noticed her carefully coiffed hair, her excessive makeup, how hard she was trying, and I couldn’t help but think about how hard I’d been trying to not be my father. I would do anything to not be my father, especially now.

As the flight attendant pushed past with the beverage cart, I surprised myself by asking for a Bloody Mary. She was handing me the miniature bottle of Absolut when the pilot asked all passengers to be seated and belt themselves in, as a bumpy approach was expected. We were, it turned out, already on the way down.

As the plane jerkily made its descent, yet another inappropriate Anna Brody thought came to me. So I gripped the armrests and tried to beat back that thought by repeating to myself: I am not my father, I am not my father, I am not my father . . .

Late that night, after my return home, Kate ran me a bath, and I climbed in. She sat on the toilet seat with the lid down as I told her everything. And she heard my every word.

Before she went off to bed, she kindly quoted what a wise woman (Kate) had once written to me on a birthday card: “Growing older—contrary to what everyone tells us—is one of the nicest parts of being alive. Growing older, and not becoming our parents, but rather, slightly better versions.”

As she left me alone in the tub, she called back, “So tell me, Mr. Welch, can we safely conclude that we’re both already that?”

KATE

MY FIRST MORNING BACK, BRUNO GREETED ME WITH THE NEWS THAT HIS TRIP TO St. Louis had been an unqualified success.

“So it went well?”

Bruno coughed his recurring tubercular-like cough and held up his hands in victory. He’d gone to visit Louis Underfer to achieve one simple goal: finding out how much money we have to give away in the near future.