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home wrecker.”
    The boxes gave her life structure, but they were harsh and damning. I’m sure her rigidity was responsible for her death.
    I’ve often wondered how she would have described me. Not the boy me, because back then I had been her “helpful Jay.” Rather, the forty-eight-year-old me with the thirty-four-year-old Thai wife in Bangkok and a life uncommon behind me. Where would I have fit in on her personal periodic table? My guess is I’d have been her “nasty, whoring, no-good nephew.”
    A small part of me used to wonder if I had spent more time with her, would any of her system of universal order have rubbed off on me?
    I’m glad I never found out.
    •    •    •
    My life was already screwed up before I ever got on that plane and moved to the Philippines. I’d spent my career in the Navy basically keeping my head down and not getting into trouble. I never really considered myself a military man, but every time I had to either reenlist or get out, I opted for reenlistment. The truth was, I didn’t really know what else to do. And after a while I was more than halfway to my twenty years and a guaranteed lifetime pension. Getting out at that point seemed stupid. So I traveled the world on large gray ships, and pondered what I’d do when I retired.
    About two years before I hit my twenty, while I was stationed in San Diego, I met a girl. Maureen was only twenty-six years old and I was nearly ten years her senior. But she seemed to love me, and I was tired of being alone. The only thing that made me hesitate asking her to marry me was that she had a six-year-old daughter named Lily. I finally decided she was cool enough, so I popped the question to her mother.
    It’s funny how things turned out sometimes. We were married for three years. Three miserable, horrible years. Neither of us was more to blame than the other. We were just wrong for each other. And yet when it came time to call it off, the one thing that stopped me was Lily. The girl who had made me pause before proposing to her mother had become an important part of my life. I loved her like she was my own. I still love her.
    Lily used to make up these wild stories that maybe I was her real father, but I just couldn’t remember because I had amnesia. I’d play along, and tell her I would go see a doctor, and get an X-ray of my head to be sure. She’d laugh, but there was always a little bit of hope in her eyes.
    That last year Maureen got a night job. I guess she thought that if we didn’t see each other as much, maybe everything would be okay. By then, I was no longer in the service, and was only working part-time at a machine shop while taking a few classes at the community college. So evenings became my time with Lily. I helped with her homework, taught her how to play the opening to “Stairway to Heaven” on the guitar, and talked to her about anything she wanted to discuss. Sometimes when it was only the two of us, Lily would even call me Dad. 
    It was those evenings I really wanted to hold on to. They made me put off thinking about Maureen’s question of whether our marriage was worth the effort. When she got tired of waiting for me to do something, it was Maureen, after pulling Lily out of my arms, who left me.
    Over the next six months, Maureen would let me take Lily out for lunch or a movie about once a week. But then my soon-to-be ex-wife met someone else, and my visitation rights were terminated.
    Abruptly. With no warning. No goodbye.
    For several weeks after that, on my off days, I would sit in my car in front of Lily’s school in the morning and watch as Maureen dropped her off. Then one day Lily stopped on the steps before entering the school, turned, looked across the street to where I was parked and waved. Caught off guard, I could only hold up my hand and wave back.
    That was the last time I saw her. After that I thought it was too dangerous to take the chance. One more time and Maureen might have caught me. She