My father was a mediocre portrait painter. He could play the guitar but he only did that when we took vacations. He also made sculptures on vacations. They were made of Legos, and they were impressive to him and annoying to me because possession was nine-tenths, and all I had were the empty boxes and creased instruction inserts. When it rained and we were in seaside houses, he engineered animals with yellow plastic noses and complicated, angular tails. I was impressed but sour, my mother was reading on the porch.

My father worked on commissions from wealthy people who had lived in small towns for long lives and intended to die and endow buildings on campuses and government properties. Often the buildings existed already, so in an effort to stake a claim, the wealthy people had their portraits painted then hung prominently in their new namesakes. My father's signature is in the cobweb-shadows of many buildings. All of the portraits he painted resembled Jimmy Stewart. The women, too. No one seemed to mind, at least there were no complaints. Jimmy Stewart had a kind, complex face, like a billionaire who lives eighty-seven years, waiting until his death to endow a building.

My father was not very good, but he was very busy. He never painted my portrait because when I was young, he said, I would not sit still, and when I was old, he said, I didn't care. Once he drew a caricature of me on a piece of newsprint. My head was four times the size of my body and slightly dented at the chin, a little like Cary Grant without the acrobatic upbringing. I meant to keep it my whole life but I don't know where it is now. That's fine. I don't mind that he never painted my portrait. I don't know where I would put it and I don't know what I would say about it if anyone asked.

My father died younger than I thought he would and I went through our photo albums to find pictures of him to display at the wake. I cried on the plastic sheeting and then I cried on the best-looking photo. The salt ruined it. In his studio I found a half-finished portrait of an elderly University provost. The head and shoulders had been outlined and it looked as though it would have turned out to look the way Jimmy Stewart looked when he started making Westerns. I took the portrait to the wake and told people it was my father's only self-portrait. My mother hid her amusement behind a pastel-colored bereavement brochure provided by the funeral home.

After the wake she and I split a bottle of wine on the front porch and told angry, hilarious stories about my father. She told me to wait while she went to the attic. It was June and too hot to be outside. She came back with a small canvas bearing her portrait. She looked beautiful and rounded in the right places. Not at all like any recognizable film hero.

"It's a good picture," I said.

"I never look at it," she said.

She propped the picture up against a chair and we watched it watching us. It was a beautiful picture that didn't change anything, and we stayed on the porch until the wine was finished.