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amiss. He’d probably sprained an ankle, or the feline equivalent (my veterinary knowledge was scanty), but at least he didn’t seem uncomfortable. He luxuriated in the warmth and companionship offered, and stretched out on his back to have his stomach rubbed. This cat really knew how to live!
    At midnight, we went out on the roof terrace together. I held Bubbles to my chest so he wouldn’t get lost out there in the dark, and we watched the faraway fireworks that seemed to mark his arrival.

NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2011
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    For hygienic reasons, I set up a bed for Bubbles on the window seat he liked so much in the living room, and left him there when I went to bed, but he soon nosed his way into my room. The door slowly opened a crack and then he peered in, looking comically astonished at first to find me lying there. Then with great self-satisfaction he joined me on the bed. He filled almost as much surface area as Gertrude ever had, but was a lot more fun to have around. He slept more soundly too! When we got up in the morning, he moved to a sunny spot on the window seat, while I went out to get cat food. He wolfed it down while I drank my coffee. I hadn’t felt this heroic since childhood!
    Childhood is a largely dishonorable business and I remember very little of it (this is what Bee is for). My early years were notable for one vaguely heroic act on my part (among a lot of unheroic ones), an act so mythologized, sentimentalized, eulogized, and fetishized by my family that it eventually had to be catheterized to restore some sense of scale. Now it seems nothing compared to the heroism of an ant. Imagine being born an ant and having to uncurl yourself in some musty, dusty, rustly nest, realizing there’s no time to lose, your life of running around starts now, and a whole realm of unexplained duty awaits you.
    I uncurled myself in the twin towns of Virtue and Chewing Gum, incorporating just about all the dualism a body can stand. Chewing Gum came first, established in 1880 by a gum manufacturer lured there by the mighty Chevron River, which suited his methods for dispersing the toxic by-products of the gum-making process. The gum was so good, a Bible town grew up right alongside: half the town chewed, the other half chewed your ear off.
    My infancy was cozy, cozy to the point of being oppressive. I was a sitting duck in that high chair, with Bee stealing my food and poking me in the eye all the time with her Barbie dolls (even the tits on those things are sharp!). Mom cleaning all around me—back and forth with the vacuum cleaner, the mop, the dusting, the polishing, the folding, the ironing, the instant wash-a-rama of every plate and spoon we touched, the militaristic straightening of the eagle ornaments that hung on every wall, as if the nation depended on the surveillance work of these bas-relief birds. A million naps undertaken listening to Mom talk to some doofus on the phone while I pondered dust motes. (Phones and vacuum cleaners still fill me with melancholy, even in their dormant states.)
    But my mother loved me! I know everybody thinks he was a cute baby, but I have it in writing —a letter my mom wrote to my teacher once, when I was in some kind of trouble at school (as was my custom):
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    Harrison was such a delightful
    baby. He would totter over to you,
    arms outstretched, always smiling.
    He was the sort of child someone
    might try to steal! And better than
    a puppy at cheering you up. He was
    so trusting, he had no idea there was
    anything sad or bad in the world.
    Give him a wooden spoon and a
    cardboard box and he’d be happy
    as a clam banging on that box all day.
    He also liked making piles of stuff. . .
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    I gave you the facts, man—I was once a cheerful dimpled baby who pleased his mother.
    This cozy setup of ours was punctuated by the precise arrivals and departures of my father, the great unknowing, unknowable American dad. Out he’d go every morning, with