I find a journal entry about an impulsive trip to visit high-school friend Meryl in Chico—how the Bomb broke down after dark, just outside of a tiny town called Winters, and I wound up spending the night in the trailer of the clerk who worked the night shift at the neighboring 7-11.

“Adam. Towhead. We speed down 680 toward Danville. He presses his mouth against the back of his seat and contemplates abstractedly the junk piled in the back of my car.

“I press his nub of a nose with a fingertip. ‘I just pressed your talk button. Now you have to tell me something.’

“Helen said she didn’t believe my grief was real,” I tell Annee, “that real grief is quiet. Another time she told me that everything I was saying sounded rehearsed.

“When feelings weren’t allowed in your family,” Annee observes, “they’re liable to come out defended.”

After ten months of therapy with Helen, things hadn’t improved.

On one occasion she said that she didn’t believe my grief was real because authentic grief was quiet. (Not true, as anyone can testify who’s heard someone react to being told that a loved one has unexpectedly died.)

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. Dr. Johnson

“Last night I had a chill dream about celebrating my birthday with the Hartwicks, a family I never felt approved of me. I was supposed to appear on the balcony of a…