Other objects on the altar were weirder. There was the thumb-operated bell from Jack’s Sportcrest, speckled with rust. There was the bike radio that played its last song in 1969, a weird-looking contraption sporting a crooked antenna. There were other things that had a brotherly significance only to Dad: a broken wristwatch, a wooden Indian figure, a little chunk of fool’s gold. Most unsettling, however, was the object right in the center of the altar: a framed milk carton picture of Jack, a black-and-white replica of his eighth-grade photo.

Dad noticed me in the glass reflection.

He forced a smile.

“Hi, son.”

“Hey, Dad.”

“Just…tidying up.”

He held no cleaning liquid, no towels.

“Sure, Dad.”

“You want to eat?”

“Yeah, whatever. Okay.”

“All right.” He pushed that fake smile to its breaking point. “Let’s do breakfast.”

Doing breakfast meant cold cereal and milk. There was a time when we ate actual cooked food in the morning, back before Mom had her fill of Dad’s insecurities and walked out. Dad was doing the best he could, I told myself. We crunched and slurped across the table from each other, faces to our bowls. On occasion he threw glances about the room to ensure that the house’s steel shutters were locked tight. I sighed and poured myself some more milk. It came from a jug. Dad never bought cartons.

He kept checking his watch until I was guilted into tossing the rest of my cereal down the garbage disposal. As he tapped his foot by the front door, I hurried into my room, threw on my jacket and backpack, and punched the key code into the shutters to lock them. Only when I was at his side did Dad begin to unlock the front door.

It was a ritual I knew by heart. The door had ten locks, each one more impressive than the last. As he shifted bolts and turned keys and slid chains, I whispered along to the same lonely percussion solo I had been hearing for fifteen years: click, rattle, zing, rattle, clack-clack-clack, thunk, crunch, whisk, rattle-rattle, thud.

“Jimmy. Jimmy!”

I blinked and looked at him. He stood in the doorway, looking vulnerable in that ill-fitting shirt, a hand clutched to his stomach where his ulcer was acting up right on schedule. I wanted to feel bad for him, but he was motioning at me with impatient gestures.

“Get off the porch or the pressure sensors will go off. Now, now, now.”

I shrugged an apology and made my way past him onto the lawn. I heard the electronic noises of the alarm system being armed, followed by the computerized female voice: “Home zones all clear.” Dad exhaled, as if this outcome had been in doubt, and secured the external physical locks before leaping off the sensored porch. He landed beside me, the patches of hair above each ear damp with perspiration.

The poor old guy was winded; he was in no shape to fight the personal demons that had grown to dragon size in his mind. His chest beat up and down, drawing my attention to the vinyl calculator sleeve inserted into his front pocket and stamped with the logo of San Bernardino Electronics. Legend had it that Dad invented the Excalibur Calculator Pocket worn by science nerds the world over, but Dad denied it. My theory is that his bosses screwed him out of the credit. That’s what happens to guys like Jim Sturges Sr. It made me feel like crap.