They say he can’t be cured. When I visited him, he talked about mushrooms that transmitted secret codes, clouds prophesying the next war, a conspiring troop of faucets. You hugged me and said, Sorry your dad is living in such terror. But is it terror? Every molecule of his world vibrates with meaning. When I wake up in the pit of night, I look at your shoulder, the slope of your neck, and—please don’t laugh at me—I see a message. I don’t know what it says, but I’m telling you, sometimes it’s the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind.
