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her people-pleaser voice and taking hold of my arm. “Slow down. We don’t want to be rushing you to no emergency room, not on Thanksgiving Day.”
    Just then Deirdre came out of the ladies’ room and stopped in her tracks. She was trying to figure out what was going on between Aunt Bet and me. But when Aunt Bet let go of my arm, Deirdre focused her gaze beyond us and saw what was happening over at the booth. She saw Dad, large as life.
    â€œCome on,” I said to her. “We’re going. Mom said we’re outta here.”
    Mom was making a beeline toward the front door of the restaurant. Deirdre and I decided to fall in behind her, though I had made the decision for both of us by grabbing hold of her sleeve and pulling her along with me. We’d almost made it to the exit when Mom came to an unexpected halt. She just stopped like a woman in a dream who suddenly realizes she’s forgotten her clothes but is too afraid to look down and find out that she really is naked. Because Deirdre and I were literally right on her heels, there was a pileup.
    â€œOur coats,” Mom said, realizing that we were about to leave without essential outerwear. It was November, after all. The next thing I knew, Mom was headed back to the booth, where Leonard and my father were sitting.
    â€œUh-oh,” I said to the back of Mom’s pumpkin-colored pantsuit as I tried to get my shoe back on. “Mom? We ought to be leaving here. We ought to be leaving this minute.”
    But Mom was already standing beside the booth and glaring down at Leonard and my father as if they were felons. It’s a good thing she didn’t have a gun handy.
    â€œHey, look who’s here,” Leonard said to her as he pointed to my father. “How about that? Something, right?”
    I looked Leonard hard in the face and tried to control his brain with my thoughts, but he was very dense when family matters were involved, so it didn’t work. He merely straightened in his seat and said, “It’s him. It’s your father,” as though there had been some confusion about the identity of my own flesh and blood.
    I always thought of my father as a handsome man. I once admitted to my best girl friend, Electra, how I thought he looked like a more golden version of George Clooney. She laughed out loud and then caught herself when she realized that I was being serious. “I guess, sort of,” she conceded, and then added, “but not really.” In any case, there was a resemblance—at least to me. He had pale, freckled skin and coarse, ginger-colored hair. His features were all sharp and to the point, his lips were thick and cushy, and the fine yellow hairs on his forearms glistened. Whereas I had inherited all the darker traits of our mother’s southern Italian clan, Deirdre had inherited the good looks, bright tones, and green eyes from our dad.
    That afternoon, he looked older than I remembered, and tired. He was sitting with his fists on the table, wearing a pale-green plaid short-sleeved shirt and looking over at us as if we were insane. We just stood there. He didn’t say a word. Nothing. His mouth tried to smile, but his eyes were sorrowful, and they began to fill with tears. I looked away. I couldn’t stand it. Deirdre was staring up at the fish netting as though she had just located some lost thing up there. She looked hopeless and utterly alone in the middle of the crowded restaurant. We all were.
    Meanwhile, Aunt Bet was flitting around the room from one table to the next chatting up the customers. She had her eye on us; she knew enough about the situation between my mom and dad to know that this could be trouble, but she was playing it down and pretending not to notice our unscheduled stop at what was now my father’s table. It was obvious that something was wrong.
    â€œEverything’s fine,” I heard her say to three old women with sweaters draped over their