Help, Help, Help

There is a moment—sometime in distant 1982—a moment we all remember—when, standing near the desk of a Saturday-morning group called The Explorers for talented, chess-playing children like my elder brother and their miscellaneous, tag-along siblings like myself—there is a moment—a moment which now makes my hair stand up on the back of my neck, but which, for years afterwards, was just a fascinating Sunday-dinner anecdote—a moment when my father, at this point still working, still raven-haired, still physically able to smile, forgot my baby sister's name—like a paper shred gusted away—and with a laugh and perhaps somewhere a vertiginous panic, had to grab my sleeve and ask what it was. The name he was looking for was his daughter's: Helen. I didn't understand quickly enough, didn't help.