My mother received a major grant and some degree of notoriety in the art world for her exhibition of the destroyed Fatties, each skeletal rebar sculpture presented in front of a blown-up photograph of the figure in its previous form. The Fatties, I realized only at the end, were perfect in every way. Beautiful, enormous women. I hadn’t seen it before. The power in weight, in taking up space. Beth, the sole survivor, stood in the middle of the room in all her flabby glory. My mother invited me to the opening, and I went. It was nice. She complimented my dress. She squeezed my hand. She still filled the room, but then, there, she was meant to. She introduced me to everyone, and everyone told us how alike we looked. How lovely we were. How lucky.

The truth is, I always loved her the hardest. I just didn’t know, for a long time, what love felt like. Children may worship the parent that isn’t there, but they usually wind up loving the one that is. Love may be uglier than worship, but at least it has bones, fingernails, skin. At least it can reach back to touch you. At least it braids your hair, even if it tears at your scalp in the process. At least it can forgive you, no matter what you’ve done.

I didn’t find my father for a long time. When I did, he was living with a woman named Clarissa in a one-bedroom apartment in Modesto, California. Yes, that old slog. The stucco exterior of the building had been painted a soft seafoam green, but inside all the hallways were pink as lungs. When he opened the door and saw me standing there, he put a hand over his mouth. The blueness above the hand was thin and faded. The hand was thin and faded too. Elsewhere, he’d grown slightly fat. He’d let his hair grow out, but it didn’t look the way it had in the pictures from his youth. He was exactly the man I remembered. I wrapped my arms around him anyway, while he whispered something too quiet for me to hear, even with my head so close. I let Clarissa pour me a beer. She had light brown hair that was a little frizzy.

My father said: It wasn’t you I was trying to leave.

My father said: Didn’t you get the letter I left you?

My father said: After a while it seemed too late.

My father said: Your hands are like the Buddha’s.