I am sitting on the porch of my father’s house in Connecticut, in stifling heat, thunder rumbling in the distance, with a pile of papers on my lap. The topmost paper is my kindergarten report card from 1968, carefully filled out in my teacher Miss Sherman’s tidy hand. “Timmy is easily upset,” she writes. “If he has trouble with a zipper he cries quietly rather than seeking help.”
I look up at my sister, who is sitting in the chair opposite. “I didn’t realise there was so much of it,” I say.
