My dad took me out for lunch to Applebee’s, and he said, apologetically, “I’m sorry I took Claude. Do you miss him?” He had Russian dressing on his beard, newly grown out, for most of the lunch. It was annoying. The beard was annoying; the lunch was annoying.
“No,” I said. I couldn’t look up from my French onion soup. “He’s yours anyway.”
So my father got Claude, and my mother got Steven and me. It worked out for everyone. We saw my father most weekends. We’d stay at his new apartment that smelled like mildew, no matter how much incense he lit.
I hated incense, and so did my mother. It made me sneeze. I think it made my father feel independent and exotic to light all the incense he wanted, in his new pad, as he called it. As soon as I walked into the apartment, I said accusingly, “Have
