To make a mask that fit like a second skin, they required a mold of my father’s ruined face. I sat in a green vinyl chair and watched them work while he breathed through a rubber tube. This was after midnight in an office above a bowling alley.

The woman spooned thick white gook from a glass bowl onto his cheeks and forehead. She wore a nurse’s uniform. Her pink eyeglasses hung on a chain. She plopped the stuff on and the man helped spread it flat with a wide stick. Both of them wore white rubber gloves and paper surgical masks.  (read on…)