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know. You think it’s extortion. You think I’m using you. But, buddy, you’ve got to be fighting all the time. All the time, fighting. Because why, David?”
    I mocked him mildly: “Because ‘Opportunity Could Be Right in Front of You.’ ” Sign in his boss’s office apparently, oft quoted.
    â€œExactly right. And I’ve got to be sharp these days, believe you me. Mr. Perdhomme is up my ass every second with a hot glowing poker, David. You should see the scars. I’ve got to be on my toes! No, not good enough. I have to be on my goddamned toenails !”
    â€œEspecially in these times,” I said unhappily, since that was going to be the next line.
    And those were bad times indeed. Kate’s tuition at Yale was an issue, I’d come to understand. We hadn’t had beef for dinner in weeks. Only a couple of months before, Dad had lost a briefcase with negotiable bonds inside, also his entire collection of illegal gold coins, also his raw diamonds, his vaunted Yangtze River pearls, all his paranoid investments, stuff he could physically touch, keep in sight, keep protected from man and market: gone.
    Th at briefcase!
    He’d been bringing it to the office vault for safekeeping, he said, one of his occasional paroxysms of insecurity, and managed to leave it on the train, just another in a long series of self-imposed disasters. All the humor drained from his face as he remembered it now: “My fucking pearls! How could I be so stupid?”
    I didn’t want him crying. I said what I’d said a dozen times before: “It could have happened to anyone.”
    But he did cry, first just a little, his lip quivering, and then he was sobbing. He pulled over on a patch of grass, all there was for a shoulder on the Merritt Parkway, folded himself into the steering wheel, really broken.
    â€œDad?” I said.
    â€œNever be a loser like me, David. Please, please, please. Don’t say no to Princeton, David.”
    â€œOh, Pop.” I patted his back. “You’re no loser.” And because I knew I had to be plain, I added, “And as for Princeton, we’ll see.”
    I was too big for the car (too big for a lot of things, come to think of it), sat there cramped and uncomfortable patting at his back, no further gesture I could make, just waiting him out. It had never been close to this bad, and, painful truth, for the first time he did seem like a loser to me. Finally he spoke, blubbering: “Mr. Perdhomme’s got my ass in the fire, son. He’s a bad oyster. If I come up a suicide, don’t believe it!”
    â€œOh, come on, Dad. Mr. Perdhomme? Suicide?” Like my mom, I wasn’t one for his histrionics.
    He knew it, too, tried to be funny: “Unless it’s by martini. Th en you’ll know it was real. Th at’s my weapon of choice, David. If I’m dead of olives, you know I was depressed.” Th en coldly serious, another big sob: “Anything else, go after that little prick Perdhomme. You hear me? Make that little prick pay!”
    â€œI’ll make him pay,” I said gently. Humor thy father. Pat, pat, pat his back.
    T H E NEXT DAY I called Coach Keshevsky, told him yes.
    My future as a winner secure, at least in Dad’s view, I awaited the start of the Staples High school year, doing good deeds (mucking kennels at the ASPCA, litter at the cemetery, repairs at the Historical Society), my hair long enough for a baby ponytail, of which I was secretly vain. My father had no friends left, but every waiter and gas attendant, every neighbor too slow to avoid him, everyone he met, anyone who would listen, heard the news about Princeton. My mother had a different style. She seeded the story with a certain few friends, and the whole thing—my early acceptance, the unbelievable scholarship money, probable position on the varsity team as early as sophomore year, no need for a haircut—traveled in the