When Reg was released from the hospital, he moved into a new apartment in a new building owned by his boss's brother-in-law. He went back to work, but no one spoke to him much - there were condolences and expressions of gladness that Jason had been exonerated, but his coworkers knew he'd been abandoned by his family, that he lived alone, and that this was all, somehow, connected to his pride and his vanity.

Vanity.

When Reg was courting his wife-to-be, he thought he should spiff himself up a bit, so, being frugal but optimistic, he went to Value Village, a former grocery store now filled with mildewed socks and blouses and plastic kitchenware. He found a pair of mint condition - unworn! - black shoes in his size for a dollar forty-nine. Whooee! He was so proud of those shoes, and he wore them out of the store, into the rain where he was to meet his gal, just getting off her shift at Nuffy's Donuts. He walked into the donut shop, where even ugly yellow fluorescent tubes couldn't diminish her complexion. She was putting a jacket over her work uniform. She looked down and said, "What the jeez happened to your feet?" His feet had turned into bundles of soggy paper. The shoes he'd purchased were mortuary shoes, designed only for open coffins, never to be worn by the living. Cheapness and vanity.

Your mother.

She's technically alive, but she isn't really here, she is far gone in her alcoholic dementia, her liver on its final boozy gasp. I take the blame - I liked her drunk, because she was a quiet and amiable drunk. When she was drunk, her eyes lost that accusatory look. When she was drunk, she gave the impression she'd ride life unchanged right through to the end, that her life was spiritually adequate, that she wore a crown of stars. This drunken look absolved me of all the guilt I felt regarding the slow-motion demolition of the once pretty girl who always saved two Boston creme donuts for me, and who unashamedly loved color TV, and who (and this is the hard part) seemed spiritual in a way that didn't make me want to preach to her. She could have married any man she wanted, but she chose Reg Klaasen. . . . Why? Because she thought I was spiritual, too. I don't know when it dawned on her that I wasn't, that I was merely someone whose vocabulary was slightly old-fashioned, and whose ideas were stolen almost entirely from dead people. I suppose that would be when she started drinking, just after you were born and she had a hysterectomy. It must have been devastating to her, to realize she'd hitched herself to a religious fraud. And I led her on - that's my own disgrace. And now her life's basically over. I visit her twice a month at the facility near Mount Seymour Parkway. The first time I went there I was unsure whether I should go. I was convinced she'd throw an IV-tree at me, or go into hysterics like Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer, but instead she smiled and said she had some donuts tucked away for me, and then she kept on saying it, with no OFF switch, and that was the worst rebuke of all.

Kent.

When Kent died, I found that physically leaving earth was a desirable notion. I was at work when I learned of his death, out by the front reception area trying to unjam a roll of fax paper. I was irritated and I'd told the receptionist to put me on speakerphone, and that's where I was when Barb's mother told me. I fell to my knees and I saw a wash of light, and then I saw a fleet of dazzling metal spaceships, like bullets aimed at the sun, and I wanted to walk toward them and get inside one, and leave everything behind. And then the everyday world returned. I'd had that vision, the only vision I've ever had, but it told me nothing and offered no comfort. So, what good was that? And what was left in my life? At the funeral you shunned me, as did your mother. I can't say I blame you. My family in the Valley? They're junkyard dogs now, what's left of them. And then last year you vanished, and all that remains are the twins - the spitting image of you, I might add. And there's Barb, grudgingly, and (I'm not stupid) only at the behest of Heather. Heather is a fine woman, a woman you're so lucky to have had enter your life: a heart as big as the Hoover Dam, and a soul as clear as ice cubes.

I sound maudlin here. I don't want that. I'm not striving for effect, and I'm not drunk. But to spit things out in a list like this is humbling. Lists only spell out the things that can be taken away from us by moths and rust and thieves. If something is valuable, don't put it in a list. Don't even say the words.

Ruth.

There. And she's gone, too. She was the trumpet that returned me from the dead. I know you must have seen her photo that day when you came to fetch things at my apartment - you never missed a trick of mine. So you know what she looked like, large but not fat - you'd never describe her as plump - with hair the color of rich soil and - Cripes, listen to me discuss this woman like a 4-H Club sow.

By the time you saw her photo we'd been dating - what a silly word - for years. We met at an insurance seminar downtown, where she gave a short speech on insuring the elderly, and I liked her because she had a sense of humor in the face of that day's technical blathering. I also learned from her that I have a hint of a sense of humor myself. Yes, I can already see your face puckering with disbelief. So be it.

I lost Ruth for two reasons, the first of which was the seed of the second: I didn't want to take her to Kent's funeral; why, I don't know. I could plead crazed grief, but even still. She said I was ashamed because I was still married to your mother, and that I had a schoolboy's shame that people would stare at us and imagine the two of us making love out of wedlock. How pathetic. And she was right. Ruth was always right. But she was a deep believer, too, and willing to endure my crotchety trespasses.

When you went missing, I fell apart, although I doubt you'll believe that. Two sons gone - how is a man supposed to feel? Ruth was a help at first, but then she learned I was still going to visit your mother twice a month, and she told me it was time I divorced your mother and married her. I ought to have hired a skywriting jet to say YES. But no. I said that marriage was until death - this from a man who went for a decade not communicating with his wife. Such a hypocrite.

We were in the Keg at the foot of Lonsdale when she told me her stance, and I told her of my counter-decision. For the first time since I'd known her, she froze me out. For Kent's funeral she'd showed me forgiveness, but that night in the restaurant? She went crazy with a calm face, justifiably so. We'd shared so much, and to have our bank of memories turned against me? Ruth had no idea that even though I was sitting there with zucchini sticks and dipping sauce in front of me, blinking my eyes, in my mind I was already dead, and I was standing at the gates of heaven, the way I'd always imagined the first part of death to be like, being shown a film clip version of my life - a naïve vision, but one common to men of my age. Even after all I'd been through, I'd still assumed I'd sail through those gates; such presumption is itself a sin. But as Ruth listed smaller reasons for leaving me, I knew I was further away from the gates than I'd ever dreamed. I had always believed I'd been leading an upstanding life, immune to all forms of interrogation, but among other things, Ruth told me I thought like an infant, that I was confusing what I thought was right with what God thought was right, and that I was harder to please than God, and who exactly did I think I was? And then she told me that she was leaving, and that once she was out the door I would never be loved by anybody ever again, and that I'd brought all of this upon myself.

Have you ever known what it's like to be loved by nobody? Maybe you have, but no, that's not possible, because your mother never failed you. Me? I didn't know what to do - I was shattered, and in a moment of weakness I phoned your Heather. I arrogantly assumed that because her family all lived far away, she must feel equally unloved from her side - and in this I was correct, but she said I didn't have to feel guilty for calling her for that reason.