Can you tell me a little about your background?

There is a house in Louisiana where my family goes to die. It’s hideous. Pea-soup green with a gravel driveway that’s always covered in a thick layer of mud. The whole block smells like swamp water. They built it too close to the river, but it hasn’t ever flooded–not by local standards. Six inches of water here and again, but never a flood. You could go there, if you wanted. Everyone is invited.

My grandmother owned it before she died of a stroke. Years later, the wood was soft and crumbling in the humid swamp air. They replaced every board and shingle, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t die there. Uncle Alan died in the back bedroom. Everybody says it was lung cancer, but he really just suffocated to death. The cancer didn’t kill him, it just cut off his airway.

Last week, my father died in the living room. A priest came to read him his last rites, and my mother sat next to them as his milky blue eyes stared straight ahead, wide as the ocean. The priest turned to her afterwards and asked her if she had anything to confess. She said no.

Tell me about a time when you failed.

When I was young and still perfect, dad taught me how to fish. We stared at the water in silence, eating ham sandwiches and watching the sunrise. It was the joy of doing nothing while knowing that very soon, there would be something. A snapshot that pulsed like a hummingbird heart.

When the something finally came, my vision tunneled. Wound tight in anticipation, I couldn’t see what would come next. My hand moved without any thought, reeling in the line. When there was suddenly a dying animal in front of me, I began to cry wet, heaving sobs.

“What did you expect?” Dad asked. “It’s got blood and bones like me and you. It isn’t a toy.”

I didn’t know how to tell him that I hadn’t expected anything at all. I was watching the ripples in the dirty lake water. I was listening to the click of the fishing line. I was feeling his warm hand on my shoulder.

What is your greatest weakness?

When I was young and still perfect, dad peeled the pith from my oranges. He gave me only the best parts, no bitter white. I became used to this sort of treatment.

Tell me about a time you had to manage several tasks at once.

They held dad’s funeral at a church in Livingston Parish– a huge marble castle overseeing the village of marshland and fishing cabins. I had never been inside a Catholic church before. It was January by then, but a nativity display was still set up near the pulpit. Garish statues of saints and martyrs surrounded the pews, cast in cement.

It was the type of church that was built to carry sound without the need for a microphone. A swallow or a shuffle could be heard throughout the entire room. I decided as soon as we entered that I would not cry.

The priest was the youngest person in the room. He spoke soothing nonsense for most of the sermon, as strange-smelling smoke filled the room. Ritual-speak that meant something to other Catholics and nothing to anyone else. He didn’t know that my father used to peel oranges for me, but his frown told me that he may have known about the drinking. It wasn’t like a protestant wedding– there wasn’t the assumption that dad was a good man who belonged in heaven. Just the pleading to maybe let him in anyways.

When he started speaking about death, I thought of the science fiction aisle at the bookstore. I recited the authors in alphabetical order.

Ab Hugh, Adams, Asaro, Aldiss. Death is not an ending. It is an- Anderson, Anthony, Asimov, Aspirin. The bonds formed in life are- Ballard, Biggle, Bradbury, Bradley.

I only made it to G before the sermon was over. Mom requested a half-service. We ate carrot cake and gumbo in the reception hall. I talked to dad’s attorney about L. Rob Hubbard. His books weren’t really worth all of the trouble they caused, we agreed.

Tell me about a time when you were challenged.

I was sixteen the first time Dad died. It was in the back of an ambulance after delayed complications from a surgery. They zapped him back to life with those electric air hockey pucks you see in cartoons.

A few days later, we were laughing and eating chinese food over his hospital bed, but I never stopped thinking about it. Preparing for the day he died again, for real and forever.

He couldn't make it up the stairs during his recovery, so he slept on the recliner in our living room for a week. The night after we brought him home, I escaped the pink-is-for-girls walls of my childhood bedroom through the window so I wouldn't wake him. The warm, sticky nighttime enveloped me, and the sterile whir of the air conditioner gave way to cicadasong. Somewhere, a dog was barking. There was a joint behind my ear, a flashlight in my hand, and a syrupy wine cooler sweating in my backpack.

The town I grew up in didn’t have streetlights or sidewalks, and the roads curved sharp. I walked on the wrong side of the street so I could see any oncoming headlights, and I carried my sneakers by their laces, my socks tucked inside of them. Headlights never came. The street was smooth and warm, the asphalt glimmering underfoot. My image of god was becoming tangled, but he still provided these small, strange gifts.

I smoked the joint along the way, but by the time I reached the lake, I still didn’t feel anything. The sky was much closer than usual.

I sat down on the beach, set down my shoes, and rolled my sweats up to my knees. The water was lukewarm, and the sand at the bottom of the lake was thick and slimy underfoot. I reached down and pulled up a handful of it, rubbing it between my fingers to see if there were any rocks or shells, but it was only a smooth, fine grit.

Behind me, five deer stood motionless, fifty feet down the beach. Their black babydoll eyes were all looking in my direction, reflecting the light from the docks. I shone my flashlight at them, and the smallest one jolted like it had been shot. If I never moved or looked away, they might have stayed right where they were forever, until the sun came up and went back down and my skin grew soft and we all starved to death. But my blurry image of god was still merciful. They leaped back into the woods and across the parking lot, and I was alone again.