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along the edge of the table, along with a record player, in a pebbly plastic carrying case with a bright orange handle, so my dad could listen to his comedy albums: Bil Cosby, George Carlin, Richard Pry-or, Steve Martin, Bob Newhart, and Monty Python, while he built puppets, intricate marionettes with articulated joints and hinged jaws and painted faces.
    Jon and I were the recipients of the bulk of his handiwork. My brother had a complete set of Viking puppets (they rowed a carved wooden boat), and a dozen wooden soldiers in miniature red felt coats, and a Superman that actual y seemed to fly, suspended from fishing line above his bed. I had Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather, plus Aurora herself, from Sleeping Beauty, and a pair of puppets that looked like my parents (the mother’s hair was fluff that I’d gotten from pul ing apart and combing cotton bal s, and the father wore a miniature cardigan, just like Mr. Rogers). For my birthday, my father like Mr. Rogers). For my birthday, my father was already working on a miniature me, with hair made from golden-brown thread, and a tiny copy of Anne of Green Gables glued to its hands. In addition to making puppets for Jon and me, my father made them for my mother’s nieces and nephews, and dozens more that he’d pack into cardboard boxes and take to shelters in Chicago every December. “You could sel them,” I’d suggested once, and he’d thought about it, then shaken his head. “They’re not fancy enough for people to pay for,” he’d told me. Maybe they weren’t fancy, but I thought they were wonderful.
    While my mother wrote on the sunporch, my father would straighten up around the house—“policing the area,” he cal ed it. He’d change the station wagon’s oil, fix a leaky faucet or a squeaky hinge. He’d clean out the refrigerator, scrubbing the shelves, spraying them with Windex and wiping them down with paper towels before putting them al back. He would sweep and mop the garage floor, sift through our closets to pile up the clothes we’d outgrown, and pick up groceries twice a week. In the afternoons he’d return to the basement. The gooseneck lamp he’d picked up from someone’s curb on trash day would be angled so that it shone a bright circle of light on whatever he was working on—cutting out a puppet-sized coat or a dress, or painting a pair of shoes on a puppet’s wooden feet. One of his albums would be playing, and sometimes there’d be an open can of beer on the table.
    “Hey, Pal,” he’d say, handing me the broom so that I could sweep wood shavings into a fragrant pile before he headed upstairs to join the family.
    In the summer, Jon spent his afternoons at the swimming pool. In the winter, he’d go ice-skating in Kresse Park, dropping his backpack in the closet and dashing out of the house minutes after he’d entered it, with his skates laced together and slung over his shoulder. Jon played soccer in the fal and T-bal and, later, basebal in the spring. I wasn’t on any teams—the combination of being shy and uncoordinated had proved fatal deterrents early on.
    My ankles wobbled when I skated, and when I swam, I stayed in the shal ow end, where my feet could touch the bottom, one hand hovering by the pool’s ledge, ready to grab on for support. Most afternoons I’d stay in my dad’s workshop, sitting on the couch doing my homework, then sketching and painting while my father sawed and sanded and laughed along with Monty Python. “That, sir,” we’d say together,
    “is an ex-parrot!” There was a half-sized refrigerator down where he kept his beer and grape soda for me and sometimes a candy bar that we’d share. On top of the fridge was a plug-in kettle where he’d heat water for instant coffee or hot chocolate in the winter.
    I knew, from the other families on Crescent Drive and the kids at school, that nobody else’s father stayed home while their mother worked. Most of the dads took the 7:44 train into Chicago. My school