Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science (13 page)

While I am standing there shaking, unable to decide on a course of action, the phone rings.

I answer it and hear my mother’s voice.

“Your father is very upset,” she says evenly. I can’t read much in her tone.

“I’m not doing this to upset him, Mom. I just think I should go to an eye doctor.”

“Well, when you’re old enough to be making this decision, you can go to all the doctors you like,” she says, turning indignant, “but for the time being, I think we deserve some support and respect from you.”

I am stunned. For years, my parents have said that faith is a personal choice. Now, I’m trying to choose my path, and they’re setting up roadblocks.

“So, what do I do in the meantime, go blind?” I ask, instantly regretting the
go blind
part. But my mother doesn’t react to it.

“Do you realize that people depend on your father? Do you realize that he has some very serious cases right now? The last thing he needs is to have you calling him and getting him upset. He has phone calls at all hours of the day and night from patients who count on him!”

This is more information than I’ve ever gotten about my father’s practice. The last time I was home, I heard, more than once, his end of a phone conversation with a patient.

“Elise, Elise,
Elise!
” I would hear my father plead, and then, exasperated, he’d say, “You are giving in to mortal mind! Mrs. Eddy says …”

“If you’d stop thinking about yourself for once,” my mother goes on, “and show a little consideration for your father—”

“Mom, it’s about a stupid, lousy pair of glasses,” I say. I am both emboldened and fatigued by my mother’s imposition of guilt, but while I say it’s about stupid glasses, I know it’s about who I am, and who I am not. It’s a battle for my well-being. We’re talking about my eyes right now, but we might just as well be talking, theoretically, about my appendix.

If my teacher thinks I need glasses, who are my parents to say I don’t?

“Fine,” she says. “Pay for them out of your allowance.”

“Fine,” I reply, and we exchange terse good-byes.

Two days later, I sign out from the dorm and walk apprehensively several blocks from campus to an ophthalmologist’s office that I have found in the yellow pages. I’m worried, for starters, that I won’t know the proper way to
be
in a doctor’s office. I’m nervous too that I might not have enough cash to pay for the appointment. And what if the doctor hurts me? The only other time I remember
going to a doctor’s office was when we were living in London, and we were legally required to obtain smallpox vaccinations before our trip to Egypt. There was no exemption for Christian Scientists. After watching the needle slide into my arm, and feeling the sting, burn, and charley-horse ache, the next thing I knew I was flat-out on my back on the cold linoleum floor, the doctor on one side of me, taking my pulse, and my father on the other side of me, eyes closed, deep in prayer. I had no idea where I was, but I had a fuzzy sense of déjà vu.

If I faint again, I will be three for three, if you count the incident at Uncle Jack’s when I was twelve.

Most of all, though, I’m afraid that, in the end, the doctor will say there is nothing wrong with my eyes, and I will have to report back home sheepishly that the whole episode was a waste. My father will have been right, and I will have been wrong.

After a quick and pain-free examination, the kind doctor removes his own glasses, folds them, and stuffs them into his shirt pocket. “Well, my dear, you are astigmatic in both eyes.”

My heart is in my throat; I’m clearly agitated. The diagnosis sounds life-threatening to me. But the doctor pats my shoulder comfortingly and laughs warmly at my nerves.

“It’s nothing serious,” he tells me, shaking his head. “Your corneas are a little bit warped, is all. You’ll need glasses.”

The diagnosis is a relief: my blurry vision and headaches are real. And, fortunately, I have enough cash to pay him. He sends me on my way with a scribbled slip of paper: my first prescription.

A few weeks later, I ride the train home for a long weekend. Normally this is a beautiful, soothing trip south along the Hudson River. But I am nervous about seeing my father. We have not spoken since he hung up on me, and I worry that he will redouble his criticism of my position on eyeglasses. Or maybe he won’t even meet me.

But he is waiting for me under the clock at Grand Central, and I feel relieved. My father’s hug doesn’t feel quite as robust as usual. Together we head over to Penn Station, where we board
New Jersey Transit to ride out to Princeton Junction. The subject of eyeglasses doesn’t come up, but it is dangling there, between us.

Sherman and Mom meet us at Princeton Junction, and we all go to the Great Wall in Princeton for dinner. Sherman looks at me across the table in utter disbelief: Can it be that Lucia has done something … wrong? … controversial? Perfect Lucia? I’ve always been something of a rule-following goody-goody in his eyes. I can tell he knows about the whole battle—he probably overheard the phone call that Sunday evening—but he says nothing. The four of us eat our food in relative silence.

Later that night, Mom and Dad have turned in and Sherman and I are watching TV. “So,” he asks, “did you get glasses?”

“No,” I say, “but I have a prescription.”

“Man, was Dad on a tirade after your call. You sure it was worth it?”

The next day, Mom and I go shopping at the mall. We look at shoes. She buys me a sweater. Over donuts, we talk about school. As we’re heading back to the parking lot, my mother stops in front of the display window at an optician’s shop.

“Do you need a pair?” she asks.

I nod. I have the prescription in my wallet. I follow her into the store, and together we look at several frames. One pair, tortoiseshell, are the nicest ones I try, and more expensive than I can afford. Even if I were to set aside my entire allowance each week, I would have to save up for a long time to buy them.

“They look good on you,” Mom says, pulling a credit card from her purse.

Afterward we find the car in the parking lot. My mother puts the key in the ignition but doesn’t start the car. She turns to me.

“Christian Science works,” she says.

I look out the passenger window. I don’t really care if it works. It’s not for me.

“And your father is very good at what he does.”

I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. I don’t know exactly
why I’m so angry, so skeptical. The truth is, in my three years at Claremont, nobody ever really got sick or injured, aside from a brief bout of flu, or a cold. That’s an amazing record for any school. But I feel like Christian Science is being crammed down my throat.

“Christian Science has proven itself to your father and me over and over again. That is
why
we are devoting our lives to it. But your faith has never been tested, Lucia, at least not until now. You could have turned to the Bible and
Science and Health
and seen for yourself the efficacy of C.S.”

I remain silent.

“If only you’d given it a chance. Well,” she adds lightly, “all in good time. You’ll come around.”

I’m not sure what to make of my Eyeglasses Rebellion, but I decide, out of respect for my dad, not to wear my glasses at home. I am the victor, I suppose, but my father and I are adversaries now, and his goal is to win both the contest and me back to his side, while Mom is the cheerleader who tends to favor the underdog.

O
n December 24, 1985
, we gather in Hopewell for what we assume will be our traditional holiday celebration. I am a year out of college, a graduate of Brown University, working in Manhattan at Condé Nast, in the New York office of German
Vogue
. Sherman is a senior at Columbia. Olivia is a newlywed; she and her husband got married in March, so this will be our first Christmas as a family of six. Olivia and Terry met shortly after she moved to Minneapolis, post-college. We all took an immediate liking to him. A Native American who grew up on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Terry is soft-spoken, bright, and a quick wit. They now live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Terry is pursuing a master’s degree at Harvard and Olivia is a social worker.

Sherman and I meet at Penn Station and take the train to Princeton Junction. To our slightly bemused pleasure, our father is waiting for us. Normally it is our mother who meets trains. Dad sports a puffy down parka over a tweed jacket, bow tie, gray flannels, and loafers; he could pass for a tenured Princeton professor. True to his breeding, he grabs my duffel bag. It is filled with the gifts I have bought for everyone, for the first time with my own money. Sherman’s duffel bag is stuffed with dirty clothes. During the twenty-minute drive home, we talk about his final exams and my job. Nothing about my father’s behavior, aside from his meeting us at the train, seems out of the ordinary.

As we turn in to my parents’ drive and approach the old farmhouse, slowing down for the ruts in the gravel road, I can almost smell the
season’s fragrances: the sweet, redolent spice of the cookies my mother has no doubt been baking all week, the piney Christmas tree, the smoke of the wood-burning stove. But I sense right away that something is amiss. There are no colorful lights on the spruce trees flanking the front door. Entering the kitchen, I notice piles of unopened mail on the counters. An undefined queasiness settles over and around me, as though all of the oxygen has left the house and I am breathing fundamentally altered air. There is no waft of seasonal aromas, no Ray Conniff Singers crooning their carols through the stereo speakers.

Sherman and I put our bags down and follow Dad into the Bird Room. It is Mom’s masterpiece: an octagonal addition to the two-hundred-year-old house, with exposed wooden beams that meet at a central apex, lots of windows, and hand-painted bird wallpaper from France. Olivia, Terry, and Mom are all sitting at one end of the dining room table.

Olivia and Terry get up to greet us. My sister’s embrace doesn’t feel quite right. I glance over at Mom.

“Merry Christmas, dear,” she says, without standing.

She never calls me “dear.”

Our arrival has interrupted something. I look again at Mom, who is always beautifully put together. I recall how people used to say that my parents looked like Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach. Now, she is dressed in a bathrobe and slippers, even though it is five-thirty in the evening. Gray roots betray her blonded hair, and she is wearing a thick daub of makeup. I think back to my teen years. “If I can see it, it’s too much,” she used to say. Under the blush, I can see that my mother’s skin is ashen.

What is going on here?

My eyes slowly stray to one corner of the Bird Room, where the Christmas tree stands, half-naked. The top portion of the tree is draped in a strand of colored lights. The remaining lights lie in a tangled mess on the floor. Without missing a beat, my father too cheerfully returns to the task of hanging the lights. Sherman, Olivia, and I exchange confused glances and guardedly join him
in the ritual, adorning the Fraser fir with a boxload of ornaments from Christmases past. Sitting on a chair, Mom observes. We do the work in near silence—it
feels
like work.

Perhaps a half hour later, our mother excuses herself. “I’m just going upstairs to read a bit,” she attempts to say casually, as though tonight is an average evening, not Christmas Eve. But her voice cracks, and she clears her throat. Dad follows right behind her.

Olivia, Terry, Sherman, and I are left staring at the doorway.

“What do you think is wrong?” I ask in a lowered voice.

“She’s been upstairs practically all afternoon,” Olivia says.

“She looks awful,” Sherman says.

Perhaps because Terry is still new to the family, he keeps quiet.

“What are we going to do?” Olivia asks.

Later that night
, I can’t sleep. I lie in my bed on my right side, facing the empty twin bed where my sister used to sleep. Now she is downstairs on the pullout sofa with Terry. I remember the month before, when we were at Aunt Nan and Uncle Dave’s home in Connecticut for Thanksgiving. Mom had been under the weather then too. Sherman, Mom, Dad, and I had driven out from the city together, with a stopover as usual at the Christian Science church in Pleasantville for its Thanksgiving service. Mom stood up to give a testimony, which was standard, but her words, come to think of it, were not.

“Sometimes,” she said, grasping the pew in front of her, “healings are instantaneous. And other times, they are slower to come to fruition. I am so grateful for the healing power of Divine Science.”

My gut tightens, and a feeling of panic grips me. I realize this illness may well have been going on for a while. I think back even further, to September, when I signed the lease on my first apartment, a one-bedroom in a five-story walk-up on the corner of Third Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street. I was so excited about my first place, and I knew how enthusiastically my mother would help me furnish it. When Olivia got her first apartment after college, Mom flew out to
Minneapolis to spend a weekend helping her get settled. I felt certain that Mom and I would buy everything: new linens, plates and pots and pans, flatware and candles, place mats and a doormat, a reading lamp, even a plant or two. She would find a few choice castoffs from Hopewell that would tie everything together, just like she had for Olivia. When I was in boarding school, we would make a shopping trip to the mall twice a year. She affectionately called them our Spoiled Brat Days, and they always included lunch and a movie. I figured Moving-In Weekend would be the enhanced version of our SBD.

But we never made a trip to Conran’s or Macy’s or even Woolworth’s. She did find some mismatched towels and sheets from the linen closet in Hopewell and told me her best friend, Connie, was giving me an old sofa bed and a step stool from her basement. On Moving Day, my mother arrived at my new apartment with Harry and Debbie, the handyman and his wife who help my parents in Hopewell. They pulled up to my building in Harry’s pickup. Harry and Debbie and I heaved the sofa up the three flights of stairs, and I wondered, halfway up, if it was even worth it. Mom waited in the double-parked truck until we were done with the lifting, and then came in briefly so I could show her the place. Looking back, I realize she probably climbed the stairs with effort and disguised the pain. At the time I had interpreted her behavior as only a puzzling sign of disinterest. I grew moody; she had done so much for Olivia …