At my sister’s wedding reception, my mother demanded I sign over the penthouse my grandmother left me—and when I refused, she slapped me in front of half of Boston. She thought that would finish me. Then my grandmother walked in with a lawyer.

My father moved first into a hotel, then into a small apartment in Cambridge that I suspect he selected because it required no aesthetic courage. Weeks later he asked if I would have lunch with him. I made him wait three weeks before agreeing, not to hurt him, but because chronology itself needed to become instructional. Delay, I had learned, is sometimes the only language passive men respect. When we finally met, he looked older, softer around the mouth, less certain that charm could still blur consequences. He apologized badly. It was still more than he had managed on the wedding night.