Life Expectancy

out-of-town muscle from the Colorado Guild of Bread and Pastry Professionals. These guys put on weight, too, but being experienced bakers and lacking our family's thoroughbred metabolism, they were wise enough to wear only pants with expandable waistlines.
        At the end of the month, the Guild men had done as much as they could, and our gallant colleagues went home.
        Dad and Mom moved back into their house with Weena.
        We'd begun to think that Konrad Beezo might be dead. With his abiding rage against the world, his paranoia, his arrogance, and his propensity for homicidal action, he should have gotten himself killed decades ago.
        If not dead, he might be residing these days in a cozy insane asylum.
        Perhaps he had assumed one too many false identities and now lived in a delirium of split personalities, believing himself to be Clappy and Cheeso and Slappy and Burpo and Nutsy and Bongo, all at once.
        Although I feared that calamity would befall us as soon as we became convinced that Beezo was gone forever, we could not remain in a state of high anxiety for the rest of our existence. Even mere wariness eventually became an unsustainable burden.
        We had to get on with life.
        By July 14, 2001, when Andy celebrated his first birthday, we felt that we had safely crossed a divide between a world haunted by Beezo and a world free of him.
        Life was good and getting better. Three and a half years old, Annie had long ago been potty trained. Lucy, over two years old, had just graduated from a potty to a potty seat on the grown-up toilet, and was enthusiastic about it. Andy knew the purpose of a potty but thoroughly disdained it… until gradually he began to recognize the pride that Lucy took in her ascension to a real throne.
        Annie and Lucy shared a room across the hall from us. Annie liked yellow, Lucy pink; so we had painted the room half and half, with a dividing line down the middle.
        Already something of a tomboy, Annie sneeringly called Lucy's half of the room girly. Not yet having mastered sarcasm, Lucy judged her sister's half stupid lemon.
        Both girls believed that a monster lived in their closet.
        According to Lucy, this beast had a lot of hair and big teeth. She said it ate children and then vomited them up. Lucy was afraid of being eaten but more afraid of being vomit.
        At only twenty-eight months, she had a preference for neatness and order that other toddlers not only didn't exhibit but didn't understand. Everything in her side of the room had its proper place.
        When I made her bed, she followed after me, smoothing the wrinkles out of the spread.
        We figured that Lucy would be either a brilliant mathematician or a world-famous architect, or the subject of intense interest to psychologists studying obsessive-compulsive disorder.
        To the extent that Lucy thrived on order, Annie luxuriated in disorder.
        When I made her bed, she followed after me, "smunching" it to give it a more relaxed look.
        According to Annie, the monster in the closet had scales, lots of tiny teeth, red eyes, and claws that it painted blue. Her monster, like Lucy's, ate children-not in a gulp, as did Lucy's terror, but slowly, savoring them nibble by nibble.
        Although we assured the girls that no monsters lived in the closet, any parent knows that such assurances are not particularly effective.
        Lorrie designed a fancy sign on her computer, printed it in red and black, and taped it to the inside of the closet door: monsters, pay attention! you are not allowed into this bedroom! if you came in through a crack in the closet floor, you must leave at once the same way! we do not allow your type in this house!
        This comforted them for a while. Irrational fears, however, are the most persistent kind.
        Not just in children, either. In a world where rogue states ruled by madmen are seeking nuclear weapons, look at how many people fear a tad too much fat in their diets and one part per ten million of pesticide in their apple juice to a greater degree than they fear suitcase bombs.
        To further reassure the girls, we stood Captain Fluffy, a teddy bear in a military-style cap, on a chair beside the closet door. The captain served as a sentry on whom they could depend to protect them.
        "He's just a dumb bear," Annie said.
        "Yeah. Dumb," Lucy