Turn toward the basement door, through which I must pass to inspect the furnace, though the basement is the last place I wish to go. The basement is where I lost the last of my childhood—and left a part of it. He kept it all those years, the finger he chopped off with a butcher knife, floating in a jar of formaldehyde. You kept it? Well, I didn’t want to just throw it out with the trash. He did it to save my life. Another unintentional cruelty.
