"How are you?" I ask.

      "I'm improving."

      "Every week you're improving. If this goes on much longer, you're going to achieve perfection."

      "No. I'm too deeply flawed for that."

      Last Sunday she called me with an idea. She would tell me all the stories she knows about her father, my grandfather, Thomas Sparks Cline, who was a priest in the

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Episcopal Church. He led a fascinating life, she says. Based on her account and my grandfather's letters, I would write his biography.

      "I'll have to think about it, Nancy," I said.

      "What that means is no. I know you too well. 'Think about it' means 'no.'"

      "Well, these are your stories. I think you should write them down."

      All week long I've been feeling guilty about it. She says that she might not make it to her ninety-fifth birthday. For all I know, this could be her last request. We have a long tradition of guilt in our family, going back to the Garden of Eden and extending downward through our righteous abandonment of the Church of Rome and thence by way of Dutch Puritanism to this continent and present time. My ancestors, along with everybody else's, came over on the Mayflower.

      "There's something I've been meaning to ask you, Nancy. Remember the time you stole the piano keys from the church when you were a girl? I've never really understood what made you do it."

      "I'm so glad you asked, because I'm the only one alive who knows what really happened."

      She recalls a terribly hot day in Mount Airy, Philadelphia, where my grandfather had a church. The children--Nancy, my mother Lois, and my uncle Phillip--used to go into the basement of the parish house on hot days because it was the only cool place to go: "We'd lie on the pool tables and watch the big flies climb the windows."

      There was a piano in the basement for choir rehearsal. On one particularly hot afternoon, Nancy sat down at the piano and struck one of the keys. It slid right off the piano! It was so hot that the glue holding the ivory veneer had melted. She hit another key, and the same thing happened.

      "It was mesmerizing," she said. "Before I had a chance to consider the consequences, all the keys were loose, and I realized that I'd committed a terrible crime. So I took them outside and buried them in the rectory garden. Never told a soul. The choir boys were blamed for it, and I let them take the rap. Later on I confessed, but I experienced terrible guilt about it, and the funny thing is, I've never really gotten over it. To this day, I still feel a little guilty."

      "You know, Nancy, we've really got to get over this guilt trip. It's been going on much too long. I forgive you for burying the piano keys. God forgives you. I absolve you of this and all your other sins, even the ones you haven't committed yet."

      "On whose authority do you absolve me?"

      "On my own authority. As your nephew. Someone who loves you."

      "You know, not even Father was perfect."

      "No?"

      "No. One time when he was a boy, he took the baby's shoe and made a slingshot out of it."

      "I'm glad you told me that. Maybe there's hope for the rest of us. But you know, since we're into confession, there's something else that's been troubling me."

      "Oh, what's that?

      "Last week. When I told you I didn't really want to write your father's biography? I've been feeling guilty about it all week."

      "You have? Good."