When I was eleven years old, in April 1961, my father arrived at school one day to take me into the woods. It was half-day, Wednesday. I usually walked home for lunch but that day he was waiting beside the Fairlane, in the suit he wore to work, the only man among the group of older, nervous mothers who insisted on coming and walking their children home from school.

On the drive — unannounced, with a mysterious destination — he tapped the wheel and hummed an odd little song that let me know he was nervous. I tried to follow the song, but couldn’t. My father was a small, secretive man, quiet, well-dressed. He was known in the family into which he had married, a large and clamorous Italian family (as he was Italian, himself), as one who habitually stood back from the passionate center of action. You can see even now, in the home movies that survive from those years (he never took them, my Uncle John did), how he stands aside from the others on the beach, hardly noticeable sometimes, smaller and more compact and less expansive than the other, heavier, laughing men. What those movies don’t tell you, though, is how he spoke, and the power he wielded because of the way he spoke. “Should we dig for clams?” someone on the beach would shout, trying to draw one last drop from the day. “No,” he’d say, and point. “The tide’s coming in.” The others would stand back
then, nod. How foolish they’d been.

That day, he’d brought sandwiches for us to eat, meatball; they were on the seat between us. By the time we were into the woods the submarine rolls had gone soggy, and the bag had a wet stain on the bottom. We had to park at the bottom o...