He came out of surgery gray, half dead. What was meant to heal him was, for me, the start of his dying. That man, that immortal, my father, a fairly standard midcentury model, Updikean in his defects and indulgences, besotted by the American dream and completely unkillable, with at least a dozen second acts already behind him, was gone. In place of the unique article was an imitation. He had not undergone some lifesaving surgery but an experimental whole-body transplant into somebody half his size. He writhed around, looked bothered by the light. He appeared to have an allergy to his own skin.
