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they would do for the
     rest of their lives. I sat in the car watching it all, Fuzzy firmly in my grip. My brothers hated me for a week. I didn’t
     care. Dad had rescued me because he had delighted in me. Just like God the Father Almighty.
    I loved movies because of Dad. My sister and I loved to watch TV with Dad:
Sherlock Holmes,
Laurel and Hardy.
Dad’s favorite films became ours:
Mister Roberts,
The Pride of the Yankees,
The Blue Angel.
I learned to imitate James Cagney and Marlene Dietrich. It made Dad laugh and kept him from turning the channel to shows
     that made him mad.
    But after the For Sale sign came down, after my brothers got into high school and started resenting him, Dad changed. He became
     angry a lot. And it wasn’t like God’s righteous anger; it was capricious. He got mad at the Russians and the Democrats and
     Ted Kennedy. He came home, threw his briefcase on the floor, and turned on the TV. He didn’t watch
Sherlock Holmes
or
The Pride of the Yankees.
He watched live sports instead. And live sports made him angry.
    “GhadddDAMMIT!” Dad spat out curses, raspy and hot. “Throw the long bomb, you GHADDAMN IDIOTS!” It felt like getting battery
     acid thrown in my face every time he said it.
    His curses got more frequent, more acrid, to the point that every time he cursed, I felt a shock in my gut. I was bound to
     Dad: all the love and attention I’d craved from him had created a lifeline between him and me. And now that line was carrying
     an electrical shock. Every expletive went straight from his mouth to my guts.
    “GhaddDAMMMIT!”—
BZZZT.
“Dammit!”
BZZZTT,
it jolted me. I hated it.
    I prayed every time he watched TV. “Lord, I know you’re holy and you hate evil. But please help my dad. Please make Dad’s
     favorite team win so he won’t curse you, so he’ll love you. Please just make them win. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
    It didn’t work. Dad didn’t have a favorite team; he just wanted to curse the one that was losing. One afternoon it got so
     bad that I leaped up and shut off the TV.
    “Stop it!” I screamed.
    “What?!” my father replied, his face white with shock. But he knew.
    “You keep taking the name of the Lord in vain!”
    “I do not…”
    “You do too, Bob!” my mom fired back from the kitchen.
    I ran to my room, crying. “Lord! Why can’t Dad love you? Why can’t Dad be angry the way you are, when it’s for a good reason?
     Why can’t you two get along?”
    After that, Dad watched fewer movies and more programs about plummeting stocks and how bad the government was. He even watched
     old newsreels from World War II, footage of bombings and Nazis and bodies being bulldozed into mass graves. At night the sound
     of it echoed down the hall, under our door. I hated it. I started to hate Dad.
    I started having a recurring dream that our house was a cesspool, filled with urine and feces. In the dream, I crawled along
     in a clear plastic tunnel, trying to get outside to safety. But when I rounded the corner into the TV room I woke up terrified
     and couldn’t go back to sleep. Sometimes I tried to stay in the dream so I could make it outside, but I always filled with
     dread when I reached the TV room: the source of the anger and battery acid and excrement.
    Everything about Dad that once resembled God the Father—his compassion, his heroism, his delight in me—disappeared. Dad’s
     anger consumed everything. I knew God the Father’s anger was different. But what if my anger was like Dad’s—consuming and
     evil? After all, I had beat up Kirsten. I didn’t want to be like Dad anymore. I had started to pull away from Dad and even
     resent him, the way my brothers did.
    As I hit puberty, my peers shifted from family to friends, my heroes became rock stars, and my interests turned from my father’s
     to my own. Dad took it personally. He understood the imperative of saving a stuffed animal; he didn’t understand the imperative
     of letting a child