The date on the letter was some months previous. I imagine my father writing it, a martini on the desk beside him, the TV blaring (He hated the silences of our empty house. But he had no one to
keep him company except for our old cocker spaniel, Molly, who’s gone now, too.) Perhaps he was ashamed to tell me, perhaps he thought I would think him weak, his manhood somehow compromised.
It took him almost four months to mail the letter. I wanted to tell him he shouldn’t have worried. As far as I was concerned, he was my father, I have no other. I didn’t get the chance
to tell him this. Two weeks later I got the call that said that there’d been a car accident, my father hadn’t survived.
MY MOTHER’S Chinese Professor, John Chu, was married and had a newborn son. His wife was from Taiwan. He’
