HEN I WAS VERY YOUNG I ONCE SAW A VARIETY ACT on TV. A man put a bunch of plates on the end of a series of supple rods, and kept them up in the air by whipping the rods around to spin the plates. And if he slowed down or turned his back, even for a moment, one of the plates would wobble and then crash to the ground, followed by all the others in series.

That’s a terrific metaphor for life, isn’t it? We’re all trying to keep our plates spinning in the air, and once you get them up there you can’t take your eyes off them and you have to keep chugging along without rest. Except that in life, somebody keeps adding more plates, hiding the rods, and changing the law of gravity when you’re not looking. And so every time you think you have all your plates spinning nicely, suddenly you hear a hideous clattering crash behind you and a whole row of plates you didn’t even know you had begins to hit the ground.

Here I had stupidly assumed that the tragic death of Manny Borque had given me one less plate to worry about, since I could now proceed to cater the wedding as it should be done, with $65 worth of cold cuts and a cooler full of soda. I could concentrate on the very real and important problem of putting me back together again. And so thinking all was quiet on the home front, I turned my back for just a moment and was rewarded with a spectacular crash behind me.

The metaphorical plate in question shattered when I came into Rita’s house after work. It was so quiet that I assumed no one was home, but a quick glance inside showed something far more disturbing. Cody and Astor sat motionless on the couch, and Rita was standing behind them with a look on her face that could easily turn fresh milk into yogurt.

“Dexter,” she said, and the tromp of doom was in her voice, “we need to talk.”

“Of course,” I said, and as I reeled from her expression, even the mere thought of a lighthearted response shriveled into dust and blew away in the icy air.

“These children,” Rita said. Apparently that was the entire thought, because she just glared and said no more.

But of course, I knew which children she meant, so I nodded encouragingly. “Yes,” I said.

“Ooh,” she said.

Well, if it was taking Rita this long to form a complete sentence, it was easy to see why the house had been so quiet when I walked in. Clearly the lost art of conversation was going to need a little boost from Diplomatic Dexter if we were ever going to get more than seven words out in time for dinner. So I plunged straight in with my well-known courage. “Rita,” I said, “is there some kind of problem?”

“Ooh,” she said again, which was not encouraging.

Well really, there’s only so much you can do with monosyllables, even if you are a gifted conversationalist like me. Since there was clearly no help coming from Rita, I looked at Cody and Astor, who had not moved since I came in. “All right,” I said. “Can you two tell me what’s wrong with your mother?”

They exchanged one of their famous looks, and then turned back to me. “We didn’t mean to,” Astor said. “It was an accident.”

It wasn’t much, but at least it was a complete sentence. “I’m very glad to hear it,” I said. “What was an accident?”

“We got caught,” Cody said, and Astor poked him with an elbow.

“We didn’t mean to,” she repeated with emphasis, and Cody turned to look at her before he remembered what they had agreed on; she glared at him and he blinked once before slowly nodding his head at me.

“Accident,” he said.

It was nice to see that the party line was firmly in place behind a united front, but I was still no closer to knowing what we were talking about, and we had been talking about it, more or less, for several minutes—time being a large factor, since the dinner hour was approaching and Dexter does require regular feeding.

“That’s all they’ll say about it,” Rita said. “And it is nowhere near enough. I don’t see how you could possibly tie up the Villegas’ cat by accident.”

“It didn’t die,” Astor said in the tiniest voice I had ever heard her use.

“And what were the hedge clippers for?” Rita demanded.

“We didn’t use them,” Astor said.

“But you were going to, weren’t you?” Rita said.

Two small heads swiveled to face me, and a moment later, Rita’s did, too.

I am sure it was completely unintentional, but a picture was beginning to emerge of what had happened, and it was not a peaceful still life. Clearly the youngsters had been attempting an independent study without me. And even worse, I could tell that somehow it had become my problem; the children expected me to bail them out, and Rita was clearly prepared to lock and load and open fire on me. Of course it was unfair; all I had done so far was come home from work. But as I have noticed on more than one occasion, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on.

Which is what I attempted to do, however futile I suspected it would be. “I’m sure there’s a very good explanation,” I said, and Astor brightened immediately and began to nod vigorously.

“It was an accident,” she insisted happily.

“Nobody ties up a cat, tapes it to a workbench, and stands over it with hedge clippers by accident!” Rita said.

To be honest, things were getting a little complicated. On the one hand, I was very pleased to get such a clear picture at last of what the problem was. But on the other hand, we seemed to have strayed into an area that could be somewhat awkward to explain, and I could not help feeling that Rita might be a little bit better off if she remained ignorant of these matters.

I thought I had been clear with Astor and Cody that they were not to fly solo until I had explained their wings to them. But they had obviously chosen not to understand and, even though they were suffering some very gratifying consequences for their action, it was still up to me to get them out of it. Unless they could be made to understand that they absolutely must not repeat this—and must not stray from the Harry Path as I put their feet upon it—I was happy to let them twist in the wind indefinitely.

“Do you know that what you did is wrong?” I asked them. They nodded in unison.

“Do you know why it is wrong?” I said.

Astor looked very uncertain, glanced at Cody, and then blurted out, “Because we got caught!”

“There now, you see?” said Rita, and a hysterical edge was creeping into her voice.

“Astor,” I said, looking at her very carefully and not really winking, “this is not the time to be funny.”

“I’m glad somebody thinks this is funny,” Rita said. “But I don’t happen to think so.”

“Rita,” I said, with all the soothing calm I could muster, and then, using the smooth cunning I had developed in my years as an apparently human adult, I added, “I think this might be one of those times that Reverend Gilles was talking about, where I need to mentor.”

“Dexter, these two have just—I don’t have any idea—and you—!” she said, and even though she was close to tears, I was happy to see that at least her old speech patterns were returning. Just as happily, a scene from an old movie popped into my head in the nick of time, and I knew exactly what a real human being was supposed to do.

I walked over to Rita and, with my very best serious face, I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Rita,” I said, and I was very proud of how grave and manly my voice sounded, “you are too close to this, and you’re letting your emotions cloud your judgment. These two need some firm perspective, and I can give it to them. After all,” I said as the line came to me, and I was pleased to see that I hadn’t lost a step, “I have to be their father now.”

I should have guessed that this would be the remark that pushed Rita off the dock and into the lake of tears; and it was, because immediately after I said it, her lips began to tremble, her face lost all its anger, and a rivulet began to stream down each cheek.

“All right,” she sobbed, “please, I—just talk to them.” She snuffled loudly and hurried from the room.

I let Rita have her dramatic exit and gave it a moment to sink in before I walked back around to the front of the couch and stared down at my two miscreants. “Well,” I said. “What happened to We understand, We promise, We’ll wait?”

“You’re taking too long,” said Astor. “We haven’t done anything except the once, and besides, you’re not always right and we think we shouldn’t have to wait anymore.”

“I’m ready,” Cody said.

“Really,” I said. “Then I guess your mother is the greatest detective in the world, because you’re ready and she caught you anyway.”

“Dex-terrrr,” Astor whined.

“No, Astor, you quit talking and just listen to me for a minute.” I stared at her with my most serious face, and for a moment I thought she was going to say something else but then a miracle took place right there in our living room. Astor changed her mind and closed her mouth.

“All right,” I said. “I have said from the very beginning that you have to do it my way. You don’t have to believe I’m always right,” and Astor made a sound, but didn’t say anything. “But you have to do what I say. Or I will not help you, and you will end up in jail. There is no other way. Okay?”

It is quite possible that they didn’t know what to do with this new tone of voice and new role. I was no longer Playtime Dexter, but something very different, Dexter of Dark Discipline, which they had never seen before. They looked at each other uncertainly so I pushed a little more.

“You got caught,” I said. “What happens when you get caught?”

“Time out?” Cody said uncertainly.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And if you’re thirty years old?”

For possibly the first time in her life, Astor had no answer, and Cody had already used up his two-word quota for the time being. They looked at each other, and then they looked at their feet.

“My sister, Sergeant Deborah, and I spend all day catching people who do this kind of stuff,” I said. “And when we catch them, they go to prison.” I smiled at Astor. “Time out for grown-ups. But a lot worse. You sit in a little room the size of your bathroom, locked in, all day and all night. You pee in a hole in the floor. You eat moldy garbage, and there are rats and lots of cockroaches.”

“We know what prison is, Dexter,” she said.

“Really? Then why are you in such a hurry to get there?” I said. “And do you know what Old Sparky is?”

Astor looked at her feet again; Cody hadn’t looked up yet.

“Old Sparky is the electric chair. If they catch you, they strap you into Old Sparky, put some wires on your head, and fry you up like bacon. Does that sound like fun?”

They shook their heads, no.

“So the very first lesson is not to get caught,” I said. “Remember the piranhas?” They nodded. “They look ferocious, so people know they’re dangerous.”

“But Dexter, we don’t look ferocious,” Astor said.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “And you don’t want to. We are supposed to be people, not piranhas. But the idea is the same, to look like something you are not. Because when something bad happens, that’s who everyone will look for first—the ferocious people. You need to look like sweet, lovable, normal children.”

“Can I wear makeup?” Astor asked.

“When you’re older,” I said.

“You say that about everything!” she said.

“And I mean it about everything,” I said. “You got caught this time because you went off on your own and didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t know what you were doing because you didn’t listen to me.”

I decided the torture had gone on long enough and I sat down on the couch in between them. “No more doing anything without me, okay? And when you promise this time, you better mean it.”

They both looked slowly up at me and then nodded. “We promise,” Astor said softly, and Cody, even softer, echoed, “Promise.”

“Well then,” I said. I took their hands and we shook solemnly.

“Good,” I said. “Now let’s go apologize to your mom.” They both jumped up, radiating relief that the hideous ordeal was over, and I followed them out of the room, closer to feeling self-satisfied than I could remember feeling before.

Maybe there was something to this whole fatherhood thing after all.