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write his memoirs. He had written many books about other people, and was famous for doing so. In high school I’d read his biography of Faulkner; in college, his history of southern race relations. Among other things, he had once won the Pulitzer Prize.
    At first I actually tried to do the job I had been hired for, getting out my little tape recorder and doggedly asking Oliver questions he was usually in no mood to answer. “Tell me about your parents,” I said, and he said, “She was a cold woman. And he was a philanderer. The end.” He tried to turn the conversation to me, wanting to know what I thought of Oxford or what my social life was like. He said that he could tell I was wicked, like his old-maid aunt had been. It was true that when I did go out, which was seldom, I went to the City Grocery and sat at the bar drinking bourbon. And then there was the graduate student I had met there. But I couldn’t tell him about that, and so I beat back his questions with my own. My persistence made him irritable. He began to seem bored and frustrated with me, but I didn’t know how else to interact with him. I was miserable because I lived and worked with him, and I admired him, and so he was like a father and an employer and a respected professor—all of them impossible to please.
    After three months of this, he said, “That’s enough.”
    “Okay.” I clicked off the tape recorder. “Enough for today.”
    “No,” he said, with a sweeping gesture. “Enough for forever. I’ve been humoring Ruth, but I’m not interested in my own life. Please note my all-consuming interest in the lives of others.”
    “So I’m fired.” I felt at once ashamed of my failure, and relieved. “At least I can stop trying to figure out what you want.”
    He laughed. “Of course you’re not fired.” He leaned forward in his chair. “As for what I want . . .” He directed me to the window of his den, which looked out on the driveway, where a burgundy Crown Vic peeked out from under a blue tarp.
    Oliver hadn’t been behind the wheel in almost a year—Ruth had forbidden him to drive after he blew out a tire hopping a curb in a McDonald’s parking lot—but that day, he got the car up to eighty-five on the interstate. He looked happier than I had ever seen him, and so I said nothing, even though I was certain he was going to kill us. When the cop pulled us over I was rather glad, but when I looked at Oliver his face was pale and his hands were trembling on the steering wheel, and I remembered that whatever else he was, he was a frail old man, and under my protection. I leaned over him to roll down the window, and when the officer appeared, I said, “I’m so sorry, officer, Grandpa isn’t supposed to be driving.”
    “Why is he, then?”
    “I ran over a dog,” I said, and as I said it my eyes filled with tears. “It just ran right out in the road. We stopped, but it was dead. I was shaking so much that I had to let Grandpa drive.” On cue, a tear rolled down my cheek. I’ve always been a good liar because I have the ability to believe that whatever I’m saying is true.
    The cop let us go with a warning after I assured him that I would take the wheel. He got in his patrol car and watched us in the rearview mirror as we made the switch. Oliver was delighted with me. “Attagirl,” he said once he had eased into the passenger seat. He banged on the dashboard with the flat of his hand. “Getting Grandpa out of trouble. What a performance. In the old days I would’ve thought of that.”
    I wiped my eyes, which continued to tear even after the need had passed. “All this time,” I said, “you just wanted to have a little fun.”
    “My dear,” he said. “Of course.”
    I busied myself with adjusting the seat, which Oliver had pulled up so close to the wheel that I was bent in half. It was clear he hadn’t thought me much fun before. My entire life I had been accused of being remote and stern, sometimes mysterious. Many