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financial promises? And she liked it a little rough sometimes. Didn’t she? Or maybe I did … Anyhow, she didn’t make a sound during it. I don’t know if she was trying not to wake our daughter or if she just didn’t want to give me the satisfaction. But she bit her lip so hard it bled.” I swallow another shot. “We never talked about it after.”
    The bartender is looking at me like I am scum and I can’t tell whether he is repulsed more by my story or the fact that I have lured the Catholic school teacher into wanton drunkenness. But I don’t care because I am undergoing a single-malt baptism. I also do not care that its effects will not remain—that when I wake, I will be a sinner once more.
    “That’s pretty bad,” Matt says, “but if it makes you feel any better, I’ve heard worse. Billings is a shithole. Men put their wives in the hospital every day. Twice on Christmas.” Somehow, the fact that I haven’t fallen quite as far as the wife-beaters of Montana doesn’t bring me much solace.
    New York, 1994 . I am standing unsteadily in front of the activities board reading the menu of options: Horticulture Club, Creative Writing, Collage, Current Events, Pet Therapy. The social worker assigned to me has encouraged me to participate in Group. On some wards Group is mandatory. Blessedly, here Group is optional. For some reason, none of these choices seems to appeal.
    If, for example, there were a group like the table of patients I eavesdropped on last night during dinner—the ones who were comparing the graphic details of their suicide attempts—the single-edged razor blades, the cocktails of tequila, benzos, and Dilaudid—that would be a group I could get behind. But nothing like that is featured on the board today. And I don’t feel like scrapbooking. So instead I walk into my just-for-now private room and close the door behind me, appreciating the just-for-now silence.
    When I walk into the bathroom, I am again confronted by the warning signs over the sink. The tap water in the hospital is contaminated with Legionella. Years ago, a dozen patients died from it. So now we are instructed to shower with our mouths closed, and all drinking and toothbrushing is done with bottled water.
    We are not allowed to have dental floss or shoelaces and we must be supervised while shaving. But giving us unrestricted access to a deadly virus, that’s okay.
    Really, you wouldn’t need much of a will to find a way out, would you?

THIRD
     
    “Try to relax, hon,” Florence whispers. “There’s nothing to be a afraid of.” Florence, the ECT nurse, is short, fat, and maternal. She wears her glasses on a beaded chain around her neck and smooths my hair. As if I were a child .
    “Pick a happy memory,” she whispers. “Something that makes you feel safe.”
    Happy? Safe? I am drawing a blank. Florence, who has worked here since 1972 and has seen everything, sees the confusion in my eyes. “Or maybe just a really good day. Something nice that made you feel good about yourself.”
    They are all about building self-esteem here. And I know it hasn’t been all bad. So I close my eyes and try to dredge up a piece of history. I do not expect miracles—am in fact prepared for failure. But the biggest surprise is how quickly real happiness rises to the surface .

 
     
    Big Sur, 1982 . I didn’t become a real father until the year Ellen and I split up. The kind who knows that his daughter likes her peanut butter creamy, not chunky. The kind who knows that you never leave the house without Bunny, but Bear always stays home to babysit Piglet and Raggedy Ann. Unless you’re going on a vacation, in which case they all have to come. So they did. I remember all of it.
    Dancing across my eyelids: Faint blue veins on pale skin. Black sky breaks open, dumping yellow stars. Counting. Wishing. The soft flannel of her good-night.
    I borrowed the giant luxury motor home from Leland Costa, a brilliant director infamous as much for