He reads—“New… Naïve… Art”—and snorts. “The hell?” Whenever my father inhabits his Andy Warhol mode, he detests the museum’s humble collections. There had been a Degas exhibit here last year and a Rembrandt one before that, but the local sculpture filling the spaces left by these normally un-gettable exhibits draws only sucks and blows. “It means artists who work outside the lines,” I answer. “Amateur hour with clay.” He strokes a phallic-looking vase. “Hope the divorcée who made this didn’t quit her day job.” “What makes you think a woman sculpted it?” He points to the placard below the clay stalk. “Says here first name’s Leslie.” “Could just as easily be a man. Leslie Nielsen?” “Doesn’t count.” Andy is my father’s favorite dead artist to play. He sounds like a sewer-mouthed Socrates sizing up everything that ever frustrated him: bills, bosses, women, daughters who didn’t know what they were until they weren’t anymore. “Can’t you just appreciate the time it took this person to create that?” I cannot bring my father to museums anymore without …

One bright spring afternoon, my mother convinced my stubborn father to see the doctor. The insomnia, which had blighted much of his adolescence, had returned with a vengeance, and the sleep-deprivation was starting to give him throbbing headaches. Occasionally, the pain was so severe that he would retire to his bedroom and lie there in the absolute darkness. Something had to be done. Chaperoned by my mother, he returned from the appointment as the daylight was starting to fade. “It’s not good news,” he said, slumping down in his armchair. “I’ll just sit down for a moment.’ But, once he was down, we couldn’t lift him back up and we had to summon Dicken from next-door to help lug him upstairs, like hoisting a six-foot-tall bag of cement. After that, his legs were too weak, so in bed he stayed. Well-wishers came to the house in a relentless stream, bringing Tupperware filled with hearty, homecooked meals. But, despite their generous starchy offerings, my father’s strength declined, and his work-hardened hands lay atop the bedsheets, turning …

The angel sat on my left shoulder. The devil sat on my right. Both whispered and cooed and prodded and cajoled. Voices like harps and kettle drums appealed to my finer and baser instincts. Calls to action and pleas to turn aside. Would I take the easy path or the turbulent stream? Two roads diverged in my kitchen before I’d even had my first cup of coffee. Or herbal tea. I couldn’t take the constant bickering between the two of them or the demands and suggestions they were making of me. Finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I tilted my head to the left until I was eye to eye with the angel. She stood barely four inches tall and appeared just as anyone would expect her to, as if she’d stepped out of some religious painting, a living piece of bondieuserie. I asked her, “Isn’t that my sinister side?” The devil on my right cursed out loud. The angel shrank back and grew quiet. First, her face turned red with embarrassment. Then …