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everything again a dozen times, and ended up pounding his forehead with his fists. The next morning, my mother quietly went to the bank and withdrew twenty-five dollars from his account. They later agreed that banks were becoming more and more dismissive of their clients’ needs.
    What goes through his mind when he’s told that washing dishes is too dangerous for him?
    My mother smiles every time someone opens a gift and lets out a cry of joy. Calmly, I try to explain to her that she must give up her struggle to keep Dad alive as long as possible, but she keeps looking away, trying to see the gifts that are evoking such happiness. Actually, I don’t say it in so many words. I don’t actually say he’s going to die anyway so we might as well let him die in peace, which is a ridiculous phrase, a falsely charitable cliché. I don’t talk about death, I don’t even use the word. I talk about pleasure. Westerners hardly ever speak of death, even when they’re standing in the middle of a cemetery, and even less when it’s the death of a close relative. I mention bacon and cheese, sausages and calf’s liver. Surely once in a while it wouldn’t hurt him. Another present is opened and she smiles automatically. The child shrieks with joy. All the wine bottles are empty. I get up, go into the kitchen for another bottle, and see my father standing in the doorway with exactly the same ecstatic smile on his face as is on the face of the ten-year-old who received the electronic robot he’s been begging for for months. He has put the checked shirt on over the thick green sweater he was wearing. He’s proud of himself. Beaming. Delighted with his little triumph and with the surprise he is going to give us.
    “Dad, why are you out of bed? You should go back and lie down.”
    “Dad, why did you put your shirt on over that sweater? It looks terrible. It would go better with your jacket…”
    “Come and sit down, Dad. You look tired.”
    Another child cries out. Heads turn towards the sound. My father goes back into his room. In the kitchen, I try to decide between the bottle of wine and my father, who I know is disappointed. I read a label, but it tells me nothing. I’m thirsty. I’m pretty sure my father is crying. I’m sixty years old, and I’m afraid to see my father cry. He walks silently towards his bed. Did Duplessis ever cry, or Stalin? I won’t go into his room, even though I know I should. I don’t want to see this man cry, this man I do not love and whose fall from grace is so upsetting to me.
    I pour myself a large glass of wine. Lise, one of the Medicals, says jokingly that I must want to die, too, like Dad, who won’t listen to reason. I drink too much, smoke too much, indulge myself with pork and foie gras and all the excesses of the palate, as well as of the night.
    “At least I’ll have a good death,” I say. “I’ll die happy.”
    “Asshole.”

MY FATHER’S DEAT HIS THE IDEAL MATHEMATICAL SOLUTION TO THE EQUATION WE ARE SO GENEROUSLY AND AWKWARDLY TRYING to solve. It would balance out the fundamental inequality governing the relationships around the table. He is the unknown factor that complicates all our algebraic calculations. How do we restore the equitable relationship between my father, who is expanding, and my mother, who is shrinking as she lives my father’s death? How can we ensure they both live equally happily? Can we invent a sort of game in which no one loses? Our father dies, we cry for a while—not for long, though, because we’ve all been expecting his death, even hoping for it, invoking it, albeit timidly, in some far-off‚ future. Then we move on to the next equation. Our mother. The Medicals can devote themselves to her long survival, and the Buddhists can lead her towards a joyful end. When there is only one variable in the equation, two apparently contradictory approaches are more easily reconciled.
    And so the conclusion is reached. It’s both simple and obvious. For