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I’m convinced that the events of the past two days are the result of some diabolic relationship karma. Maybe , I think, I hurt a past boyfriend more than I realized or more than he’d ever let on . My eyes sting. I stand, swallowing and staring at the pay phone’s numbers. Eventually, I take the receiver off of its metal perch and force a coin into the slot. With a bruised heart and an apology in my teeth, I listen to it ring.
    I don’t call the Lark, as some might guess, but rather my boyfriend before him. Had this man (still a friend) picked up I would have told him how sorry I was if I’d ever belittled him. Or frightened him. Or made him feel inconsequential. If I’d hurt him. If I’d complicated his life. If I hadn’t provided a decent explanation or given him a satisfying good-bye.
    Denied an outlet, guilt weighs heavily on my shoulders. An overindulged child, it pulls my hair and cups my ears with its hands. It goads me on with its little heels.
    Across the terminal, I imagine Anger watching us behind a copy of the Halifax Herald . I don’t have to make eye contact with him. I’m well acquainted with his tics—his high whimper, the way he scratches his ear with his nails and licks his warm chops with flourish.

TWO
    Anger Ignored
    The weather today is an increasing trend toward denial.
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—CHUCK PALAHNIUK, Diary: A Novel

2
    A curious thing happens in the dying light outside Logan Airport, where my father picks me up. I spot his car first (a dried-bloodred sedan). Then his dog (a nippy, black shelter mutt, whining in the open passenger window). Finally, I see Papa Zailckas himself, rounding the car and moving toward me with washed-out worry on his face. He’s a teddy bear of a man with round cheeks, button-nosed features, and a deep summer tan. He’s wearing the uniform of his forced retirement (Henley shirt, aged loafers, carpenter jeans) and cultivating some new agriculture on his face, something approximating a goatee. I know in a cerebral way that I’m both happy and grateful to see him, yet when he leans forward to hug me, my skin creeps. I feel myself hardening over, giving in to irrational annoyance.
    This is an odd reaction indeed. Particularly because I’ve grown close to my father in recent years. In some ways he’s assumed the role of a mother and sister to me. My own mother works eighteen-hour shifts as a “visual merchandiser,” designing department store displays, and my newly married twenty-two-year-old sister lives on her husband’s marine base, where she is either largely out of touch or out of cell phone range. In the absence of female company, my father’s become the person with whom I trade recipes and CDs. When I visit, we go to yoga classes together. We must make a laughable picture. Sitting side by side on matching nonslip mats, our brown eyes slitted, our hands upturned on our knees, our Lithuanian cheeks distended as we hum om and exotic words like namaste .
    I’m not sure what makes me bristle. Maybe the past few days have left me resenting not only the Lark but also men in general. Or maybe I feel like my dear dad is too glad to have me home to distract him from his empty nest, regardless of the circumstances. There’s the old man ignoring the gloom in my face. He’s going on about how much fun we’re going to have doing yoga on the deck and driving out to the Cape on the weekends and trying his new recipe for summer peach salad.
    There’s also a chance that I feel embarrassed for confiding so much in him. After my fight with the Lark there was a sprawling exchange of instant messages in which I’d first asked my dad if he had room for me at home while my New York subletters finished out their lease. I saved a small snippet of this typed conversation, because, even in the midst of a depressive episode, I found the whole thing vaguely amusing:
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    RZailckas: I can’t believe