The last time I'd seen my father he behaved like one of those wolf-boys, those kids suckled and reared in the wild by animals, and I was never sure, during the ten confusing minutes I stood on the lawn outside the house, whether or not he recognized me. The security chain on the back door remained slotted. Inside, through the crack, he asked me when I was going to relinquish my disease, which made me think either he was speaking rhetorically or confusing me with my brother Miles, who is schizophrenic and lives in a halfway. Then he seemed to have a moment of lucidity and called me a loser for dropping out of college. He had trouble breathing and rasped and swore like someone twitched by demons on a downtown corner. All the flowers, in the hanging baskets, in the clay pots, in the whiskey barrel, were dead and hissing dryly in the wind, so it was true, apparently, that he had watered the garden with gasoline. He gasped, he yelled, he mixed the latinate with potty talk, calling my sister…