That whole afternoon, I listened. There was no drama, no tears or panic. In my four-year-old mind, my father was doing me a favor. It would hurt, chopping off my fat, purple finger, but it would be better than the weeks of letting it rot.

I knelt beside the chopping block, where I'd seen so many chickens meet a similar fate, and put out my hand. If anything, I was wildly grateful for my father's help, and resolved never to blame other people for stupid things I'd done.

My father swung the ax, and of course he missed. We went inside, and he used soap and water to remove the washer.

It's a story I'd almost forgotten. Almost forgotten, because I'd never told it to anyone, never re-remembered it by saying it aloud for anyone's reaction. Because I knew other people wouldn't understand the lesson. All they'd see is my father's actions and label it cruelty. God forbid telling my mother-she'd explode with righteous rage. Like my father's earliest memories of the shooting, that day with the ax is my oldest memory, and for thirty-six years it has been my secret. And my father's. And now these silly women, Bonnie and Molly, are telling it to me and all my drunken friends.

No way was I going to give them the satisfaction. While Ina sobbed, I drank more wine. I smiled and shrugged, saying it was all very interesting prattle, nevertheless it was nonsense. A few minutes later, one of the women fell to the floor, ill, and asked for help getting to her car. The party broke up, and Ina and I stayed behind to finish the wine and get blotto.

It was disappointing, really, that stupid party. Watching my friends take this nonsense so seriously. "The lady" never did appear, but Patrick will still call me to complain about his silly ghost problems. Brenda will still shudder and go pale before she announces her goofy premonitions. As far as Bonnie and Molly go, they were very lucky. It was a trick of some kind. Now everyone around me will stay just slightly deluded.

I can't explain Bonnie and Molly's little magic trick, but there's so much in the world I can't explain.

The night my father was killed, hundreds of miles away, my mother had a dream. She said my father knocked at her door, begging her to hide him. In her dream, he'd been shot in the side-later, the coroner would confirm this-and was trying to escape from a man with a gun. Instead of hiding him, my mother told him he'd brought nothing but shame and pain to his children, and she shut the door in his face.

That same night one of my sisters dreamt she was walking through the desert where we grew up. She was walking beside our father, telling him she was sorry they'd grown apart and not spoken recently. In her dream he stopped her and said the past didn't matter anymore. Our father told her he was very happy and she should be also.

That night he died, I didn't have any dream. No one came to me in my sleep to say goodbye.

A week later, the police called me to say they had a dead body and asked if I would come help identify it.

Oh, I'd love to believe in an invisible world. It would undermine all the suffering and pressure of the physical world. But it would also negate the value of the money I have in the bank, my decent house and all my hard work. All our problems and all our blessings could be readily dismissed because they'd be no more real than plot events in a book or movie. An invisible, eternal world would render this world an illusion.

Really, the spirit world is like pedophilia or necrophilia. I have no experience with it, so I am completely unable to take it seriously. It will always seem like a joke.

There are no ghosts.

But if there are, my dad should damn well tell me himself.

"One time," Juliette Lewis says, "I wanted to get to know someone better by writing down questions to him…" She says, "These questions are more telling about me than anything I could write in a diary."

Juliette says this on an antique sofa in a rented house in the Hollywood Hills, a very white and vertical, a very Getty Museum house-stark modern but full of her antique furniture-a house she's renting with her husband, Steve Berra, until they can move into their new home near Studio City. She's holding a handwritten list she's just found, and reads:

"Did you ever stab someone or cut them intentionally with a sharp object?"

She reads: "Do you like asparagus?"

She reads: "Do you have a middle name?"

She drinks chai. She doesn't watch television. She loves playing cards, King's Corner or Kings Around the Corner. She uses that fancy new toilet paper, Cottonelle, which feels like you're using a cashmere sweater. In the basement is Steve's severed head-a very realistic replica left over from a skateboard video and made by the same team that made Juliette's pregnant stomach for the movie The Way of the Gun.

From the list, Juliette reads: "Do cats frustrate you as pets, or do you admire their independence?"

Over the past twenty-four hours, she's talked about her family, her father (Geoffrey Lewis), her career, the Scientology thing, getting married, and writing songs. The songs are important because after years of being scripted, these are her words now.

Juliette's mother, Glenis Batley, says, "Okay, this is the great story."

This over breakfast in Los Angeles. Glenis drinks lots of coffee and has lots of red hair and is still the lovely woman who once modeled for an old photograph Juliette has framed at home.

Glenis says, "I got pregnant, and I was on this incredible diet that was absolutely pure, but I didn't really want anyone around. I noticed the contractions were five minutes apart so I called, and I got this one doctor that I didn't want, and he said that he'd be there right away. He said, 'Whatever you do, don't push. So I went and I sort of reclined, and along comes the next contraction, and I get this irresistible urge to push, and I think, 'One little push won't hurt. So she's born. And she's very noisy. Anyway, I'm holding this infant, and I nearly drop her, and now she's really sure that I don't know what I'm doing, so she's crying. And it's the first light of morning, and the doves are cooing, and up to then I hadn't known what her name was… Juliette!"

She says, "I decided to spell it the French way because the tragedy sucks."

From her list, Juliette reads: "Did you ever break a guy's nose?"

She reads: "Would you say you won more fights than you've lost?"

In her kitchen, grinding coffee beans, Juliette says, "When I was growing up, what influenced me were all these musicals. Like Fame. That was my dream. If I could have a school where they just sing and dance. So, Fame and Flashdance and Grease. Did you ever see the movie Hair? I was sobbing. That's a musical that kills me."

She says, "I was going to be a singer first. Before being an actress, I was going to sing. And I always thought I'd maybe act on the side. I always thought of musicals. Singing and dancing. I want to sing still, so I wrote songs with a friend who's a musician. The biggest fun thing is it's my words.

"The only break that I got was that my dad had me meet this small agency. Say hello. The big problem for actors starting out is getting the agent. Agents want you to have a SAG card, but you can't get your SAG card unless you have an agent putting you up for work. It's a catch-22. So my dad got me into an agent's office, but I still had to audition. I did a reading, and they had to see something in me.

"If you met me when I was younger, I was really quiet. I did a TV show once and people were asking my agent, 'Is she okay? She seems really down. It was just your typical teenage crap. Just because I don't smile at everyone and ask them how they're doing, I have to be sad?"