Last night Sir was drunk and abrasive, a golden brazing bull, ravaging the sofas, chairs, and kitchen table in one, loud yawp. Tomorrow, at precisely six a.m., like clockwork, he will scream at Marvolo about nothing and everything (“Stop leaving the fucking quilts bunched like that!— “Well, Sir, you know—” “Oh don’t you have a go at me!), until he settles at six twenty-six into the plush armchair in his dead father’s office. We will come downstairs, and he will smile at us joyously. Sir will say nothing about that previous night and instead will want to know everything about our lives. There will be sixteen pans in the sink, two fires burning; one of which we cannot even feel; and all the lights will be on, turned to the brightest (“You know how he gets.”) Like clockwork, Sir will tease my twin brother, and I will go outside to sit under the dying tree. “It’s love, you know,” Sir will tell him,and my brother will say, “No, it’s not. I don’t love.” (“Whatever you want to call it, that’s what it is, nephew—love.”) He will say nothing to Sir about being captured in time for fifty years, that he is still thawing, that he has only learned to regret, and to be loyal. When I return from the tree, Sir will ask me what I saw out in the frost. “Nothing,” I say, “the usual.” And he will laugh handsomely. “Yes, the usual,” he says. “The fields, the roads. I saw a fox, I think, for a minute or two.” Sir smiles like I have told him a secret. He leans back in the armchair, shirt half-unbuttoned, beautiful hair curled around his lean shoulders, and he will pet my hair. My twin brother (your soul, something tells you) will join us too. I will curl in his lap. Sir will laugh, looking at my brother and I, and tell us: “It is the usual that matters. That is all that stays with us, you see? And isn’t it the loveliest thing you ever did see, boys?” Like clockwork, by evening time, Sir will have gone quiet again. He will drink tea instead of whiskey; one lamp on in the hall, all his bedroom lights, two in the kitchen, and one in the sitting room; sixteen pans are still in the sink (Marvolo sits by the piano, and he does not play it.) I will pretend to read. My twin brother will wrap around me this night. We will think Sir will not pick up the tumbler, but he does, and by ten thirty-four he is drunk again. I will pretend to turn a page. I have not washed the sixteen pans. My brother and I will turn Sir in for bed as he blabbers with grief. “Tell me something true,” he asks, one last question before bed. I never know what to say. Yesterday, I said the stars were out. Tomorrow I will say, “I had a dream of water, and a great big sea.” He nods, and Sir has a heart of copper clockwork. He is loud when he is happy, and loud when he is angry; he is methodical, and he is scared of the dark; he is chirpy, and he grieves like nobody I know; he is loving, and he tells my brother that he loves too. My soul shakes his head, I do not love, I have never loved; I cannot know to love. I hear my alarm ring. It is Sir shouting. It is six a.m. I know nothing. I have absolutely no idea about anything. I shake my head and laugh. I shake my head and laugh. I have not washed even one pan. Sixteen lay dead. I am happy.