“There is nothing more mysterious than a marriage.” That’s what my father told me when I called him and my mother to say I’d gotten married. Nothing in my marriage to Rose has proved him wrong. When I finally took her east two years later to meet them, he was strange with her. Not strange like he was with everyone else, not his standard detachment, something else. I don’t think he liked her, but I think he may have been impressed by her. Her directness. “Good to meet you, Ambassador Haas.” He’d shook his head. “Please don’t feel you need to use my title. Mr. Haas will suffice. And she’d nodded back. “I think, sir, that we’ll both be more comfortable if I stick with Ambassador Haas.” And she was right. I think he’d have been more comfortable if my sister and I had called him Ambassador Haas instead of Father. He’d have preferred that from everyone but my mother. To her he was always Peachy. A reference to something that happened long before I was born. She called him Peachy everywhere except at what she referred to as “occasions.” Ambassador Haas to everyone else, Peachy to my mother. Is it any wonder he killed himself after she died?

Stay focused.