"You didn't expect him to ask our permission to be gay, did you?" she said. "You're not thinking of disowning him, I hope."

Leave it to Ellie to think outside of the box. But, then, in her entire life she had never really been inside the box.

"What kind of homosexual is he, by the way?" I asked. "Flamin'? Swish? Leather? Milquetoasty?  I can't imagine him as any of these basic types. There was never anything the least effeminate about our father. Or did I miss something? Was I asleep at the wheel all the years we grew up with him? Did you ever sense he was gay?"

"I didn't have a notion. As for the kind of homosexual Dad is, he defies all categories by being absolutely his old self," Ellie said. "He looks and acts and is the old Dad, except now, in his late sixties, he happens to be sleeping with a man thirty or so years younger than himself."

"What do you suppose they do?"

"I've long ago ceased much to care what people do in bed," Ellie said, "unless it's my bed. Still, it's amusing to think of our dignified papa as amorous, let alone with a man."

"Why doesn't it amuse me?"

"Maybe," Ellie said, "that is a question you need to ask yourself."