Tom Junod

Yeah, especially when I know...

as a teenager that the room where my mom repairs to, you know, just to get away from it, is where my father, like, keeps his stuff.

It's in that room.

And to anybody who doesn't know the book, you know, there's a point in the book where I open my father's briefcase and find, like, hard evidence of his secret life.

And that briefcase is sitting at the bottom of the closet in the same room where my mom has passed out on the bed.

That's right.

And you don't know what you're supposed to do either.

Do you tell her?

She's suffering, and she's suffering because of this unseen thing.

Right.

Do you make her see it?

What's the right thing to do there?

I mean, I've thought of that a lot, and especially as in writing this book, because, I mean, when you write a book like this, you ask yourself whether you're doing the right thing.

In this book, I mean, I try to see my dad as a human being.

I try not to do a tell-all.

I try not to come in with a grudge.

And I don't know how you look at it, but to me, the book is about loving a guy who might be and probably is a bad man.

Yeah.

Well, so I was like,

where the this guy came in and never used exactly that kind of formulation but where i did make a decision along the way was like okay i am going to tell this story i've never told this story i've forbidden myself from telling the story and now i'm going to tell this story and