They shouted at each other for fifteen minutes. It was different from the fights they’d had before—this was unrestrained somehow, hateful. I’d never seen anyone yell at my father like that, and I was astonished by, then afraid of, the change it wrought in his features.

Asked fifteen years later, Dwain did not recall being there. But he is there, vividly, in my memory.

The course was on Shakespeare, and I’d chosen it because I’d heard of Shakespeare and thought that was a good sign. But now I was here I realized I knew nothing about him. It was a word I'd heard, that was all.