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is?”
    I looked at the watch…quarter to one. “Yes.”
    â€œDo you know what that means?”
    â€œYeah, but Kathy was—”
    â€œDO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS?”
    Even at nine I could take only so much confrontation before locking down. I have forever hated feeling small and helpless. I gritted my teeth and said, “Yes.”
    â€œYou will stand here and open and close this door, quietly , ten times.”
    â€œBut Kathy—”
    â€œDid you hear me, young man?”
    I stood ramrod straight, Larry, and the tension in my neck and jaw drew tighter than a bowstring. Airy dotsdanced before my eyes as I opened and closed that door so painstakingly its hinges didn’t squeak once. With each repetition, the latch clicked into place with silent precision.
    Nine times.
    On the tenth, I swung the door wide as the mouth of a crocodile in your toilet at the moment you squat, and slammed it so hard four windowpanes cracked from top to bottom.
    Dad stared in disbelief.
    I stared back in true belief.
    â€œI’ll check with Mr. Jarms down at the hardware store,” he said. “You’ll receive the bill for those within two days.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œNow open and close it gently twenty times.” Dad’s mouth barely moved as he spoke, and his intensity hung over me like wet fog.
    I said, “No.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI’ll beat your butt till your nose bleeds.”
    I turned around and offered it up.
    Dad and I had reached our first clear impasse. The one thing he wouldn’t do was hit me, and the one thing I wouldn’t do was open and close that door one more time without ripping it off its hinges. Looking back, I’m stillastonished at the flood of humiliation and hatred washing through me as I stood facing him, the field mouse before the hawk. I still don’t understand it completely, Lar, but one step backward was the abyss, and I made my nine-year-old stand.
    A bill from Jarms’s Hardware lay on my pillow when I arrived home from school the next afternoon—thirty-eight dollars and seventeen cents, installed—and my allowance dried up like a creek bed in Death Valley until it was paid in full.
    And my isolation began. Dad sat the family down at the dinner table that evening and announced that as long as I wasn’t willing to respect the rules in his house, he felt no obligation to me other than the provision of basic food and shelter. Until I was willing to open and close that door gently twenty times, I would come home directly from school each day, extracurricular activities being a thing of the past. Mom was to serve my meals in my bedroom, one helping from each of the three basic food groups and no more; desserts went the way of extracurricular activities. She was forbidden (a word she loudly eliminated from the family vocabulary the night of the divorce bash) to wash or iron my clothes; I would do that at a designated time each week. My homework was to be done in my room, and I would not be invited to family activities, including watchingTV, a privilege reserved for “contributing” members.
    I disappeared. For almost seven months I ceased to exist. Dad persuaded Kathy that if I refused to respond to discipline, my life would amount to garbage; that she could help me by respecting his embargo absolutely. This shit was for my own good. He forbade conversation with me other than what was utterly necessary.
    Mom secretly urged me to apologize and perform the ritual openings and closings of the magic door, but I wasn’t sorry and would happily eat a bowl of live bumblebees before I’d give that son of a bitch the satisfaction of bringing me to my knees. So she watched helplessly as I fell into a monotonous after-school grind: nap, eat, nap, homework, read, sleep.
    Through each of the first twenty-four days of December, I glanced sideways at the Christmas tree as I passed through