Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science (21 page)

We will have to say something soon.

But I can’t confront Dad face-to-face. So Sunday evening, after returning to my apartment, I light myself a cigarette and pick up the phone to call my father on his business line, which rings only in his study. He answers right away.

“Hi, Dad. I just got home. Do you have a minute?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. “What is it?” In those four words I can hear, instantly, that he is on the defensive. I sit down and nervously flick the ashes from my cigarette.

“I’m worried about what will happen to Mom if you teach your class next month.”

There is silence from the other end of the phone.

“Lucia,” he says, in a low, even voice. “This is not your concern.”

“Well, actually, it is.” I have said this too quickly, so I attempt to be conciliatory. “I’m not trying to stir up trouble. Really, I’m not. I just think maybe it would be best for Mom if you postponed your class.”

“How dare you tell me what I should and shouldn’t do!” my dad yells.

I pull the phone back from my ear and remember his rage when I told him I wanted to see an eye doctor. I’m afraid that Mom will hear his end of the conversation, even though I was careful to call him on his office phone to avoid this possibility.

“Young lady,” my father goes on scornfully, “why should I listen to this … this … impudence? Don’t you think I’ve given the matter some thought?”

I am thankful, at least, that I had the foresight to wait until I was safely in New York before taking on this conversation.

My father pauses, and then his voice softens. “Your mother happens to be making good progress.”

How many times have I heard this now?

“If she goes back to Tenacre, she’ll continue to make progress. She’ll be under the best of care there. In fact, they’re probably better equipped to care for her than
I
am anyway. And for your information,” he adds almost parenthetically, but I can hear the bitterness returning, “I’ve already discussed the matter with her practitioner, and she has given her full support.”

“Dad,” I say, trying to sound reasonable, “Mom will be alone there for two whole weeks! How do you know she’ll be okay? What if she takes a turn for the worse while you’re gone?”

“I’ll be checking in with her regularly, and I’ll be home over the weekend. Maybe even midweek. It’s only an hour away. I have every confidence in Tenacre.”

When I think of my own confidence in Tenacre, my reaction comes out as a grunt, which doesn’t go unnoticed.

“That’s just the kind of negativity we
don’t
need around here!” my father snaps.

“Dad,” I say as gently as I can, wondering how—if—I will ever get through to him, “Dad, I’m sorry. Mom is not getting better. She just isn’t.”

“Yes she is!” My father’s voice is pleading now. He truly believes she is improving or will improve, and he is incredulous, and indignant, that I don’t share his conviction. “And if she could count on even a little support from you kids, she’d probably be better already!”

“So this is
our
fault?” My voice cracks.

“Your attitude is exactly what your mother and I have to guard against,” my father says. I am so angry I want to hang up.

“… you haven’t once gone to church since she’s been sick. I bet you haven’t once read the Lesson.”

I hold the phone away from my ear again until he is finished.

“I won’t be emotionally blackmailed,” I say calmly, rubbing out my cigarette.

“Emotional blackmail,” my father says with an audible sneer. “This isn’t blackmail. I’m talking about love. If you
really
loved your mother—”

I close my eyes.

“—if you
really
cared—”

“Dad,” I say, “this is wrong. You are abandoning Mom when she needs you most. And if anything happens to her while you’re away teaching your class, I swear I’ll never forgive you. Never.”

My father hangs up the telephone, and it occurs to me, before I have even finished speaking, that it is he—and Mom—who feels abandoned: by Olivia, Sherman, and me. A few minutes later he calls back, and we have the same conversation all over again, and again he hangs up on me. It is not a new pattern. I recall other fights, and they always proceed the same way. I yell, or he yells; I yell back. Eventually, he slams down the phone, and minutes later the phone rings again and he’s back. There is a soft, whispered “I’m … sorry … Lucia … but …,” and then the whole thing starts all over.

On this particular night, we more or less call it a draw. Or more accurately, I concede, exhausted. Conversations and fights never end in our family without the mutual reassurance of “I love you,” but this time, I don’t say it after my father does.

The next morning, Monday, Sherman calls me at work. I had expected he would call me Sunday night after I had it out with Dad, since he was at the house. But at midnight I stopped waiting for the phone to ring. I learned in the morning that he had been afraid Dad would catch him if he called.

What must it be like for Sherman living in Hopewell this summer?

He tells me that he and Mom were sitting in the living room, watching
Murder, She Wrote
, when I called. They heard the whole thing, or Dad’s end of it. At one point, Mom turned to Sherman and
said, “That was Lucia, wasn’t it? She doesn’t think I’m getting better, does she?”

I feel sick to my stomach.

Tuesday morning
, June 17, Mom is rushed back to Tenacre. As Dad explains to me on the phone, “She has taken a turn for the worse.”

In the evenings, when I come home to find a blinking red light on my answering machine, I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It used to be that a blinking red light meant the possibility of plans for the evening: dinner with friends, a party at Area or Limelight, an occasional date. Now, it feels like a bad omen.

One night I see the blinking red light before I’m even inside my apartment, still struggling with the key that always gets stuck in the dead-bolt lock. I walk across the room and stoop down to my answering machine. I hit the Play button.

“Hi, Lucia. It’s Aunt Nan.”

The pit in my gut expands and fills with angst.

“I’ll try to call you again this evening. Or, if you like, you can call me in Greenwich. Bye.”

Aunt Nan and I are not that close. She has never called me. I know her mostly from Thanksgivings in Greenwich, which are always big gatherings. I wonder if Mary has told her about our brunch back in January.

What should I do? If I call Aunt Nan, I will have to lie to her in order to honor Mom’s wishes. If I call Dad, and tell him that I think Aunt Nan suspects something, he may discover that I betrayed Mom’s trust months ago.

Panicky, I call Olivia in Cambridge.

“What if she knows?” I ask. “What if she asks me point-blank?”

“Maybe she should know,” Olivia says. I find her response less than helpful.

“But what should I do?”

“Maybe you should tell her,” Olivia says. “Maybe you need to do it for yourself.”

Thanks
, Liv.

“Look,” she says, “if Aunt Nan suspects anything at all, she’s probably going to call Dad, not you. And if she does ask you, maybe you should be straight with her, because it means that she already knows.”

“Well then, why don’t
you
tell her!”

I want to slam the phone down, or throw it against the wall—like Dad might do. It is so easy for Olivia to be analytical and dispassionate: she didn’t get the phone call. Or maybe—probably—it isn’t. She and Sherman are grasping at the same hopeless options I am. In our daily conversations about the “progress” reports we’re given, there is little discussion of how we are being affected.

It’s possible, I guess, that Aunt Nan or Uncle Dave would know what to do, would act. But there’s no reason to believe that telling Aunt Nan will get Mom to a doctor. It’s just as likely—if not more likely—that Mom and Dad will retreat further into their faith, further from us, and we’ll find ourselves at a worse place than we are right now. Mom could take another bad turn and point the accusing finger at me. She could shut me out for good.

I can’t call Aunt Nan.

Half an hour later, the phone rings four or five times while I debate picking it up; in the end, I do. It is Aunt Nan.

“Oh, hi!” I say. My heart is pounding fiercely. “I just got your message. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you,” she says.

There is a long silence.

“How are your parents?” she asks.

A wave of anxiety sweeps over me.

“All right. They’ve been doing some work on the house.”

“Oh?”

“So they haven’t come into the city much.”

I shove aside a pile of clean laundry and sit down on the sofa to light a cigarette.

“Were you home for your mom’s fiftieth?” Aunt Nan asks.

“Yes,” I lie. “We had a small party, just Dad, Sherman, Mom, and me. There was a cake. A few presents,” I say. “You know they don’t make a big deal of birthdays.”

“Uh-huh,” she says. There is another pause.

I think of my mother’s ruby-and-pearl ring, and my chest tightens.

“I sent a card to your mom,” Aunt Nan says, “and then I called her and left a message. I said that I’d love to take her out for lunch sometime in the city. When she called me back, she said she wouldn’t be coming in for a while.”

“I guess she’s been busy,” I say.

I can’t keep doing this.

“Well, I just thought I’d touch base with you.” My aunt’s voice is strained. “If you ever feel like coming to Vermont, give us a call.”

“Thanks, I will.”

I rub out the ember of my cigarette.

“Aunt Nan?”

“Yes?”

“Mom is …”

I close my eyes.
Just say it
.

“Mom’s not okay. She’s sick. Very sick. She’s been sick since … since before Christmas.”

I tell her about Tenacre, about the day after the space shuttle blew up, how she was a
guest
there until a month ago, and how she’s gone back there again.

I feel a huge burden lift.

“I knew something wasn’t right. That’s why I called.” Aunt Nan’s voice is higher now. “I love your mother a great deal.”

My aunt is crying. She asks me about the symptoms, and I offer what little I know.

“She isn’t eating much,” I tell her. “She’s very thin. It seems to be abdominal.”

“Is she continent?”

“I … don’t think so,” I say reluctantly.

I hate telling her this. I shut my eyes and try to forget the opened package of Depends that I found hidden behind the toilet paper in the master bathroom cabinet in Hopewell. I can no longer hold back my own tears.

“Is she bedridden?”

“She can walk a little. But not up or down stairs without help from Dad. She’s extremely pale. And weak. When I was at home with her, right after her birthday, we had lunch in the screened porch behind the house, Mom, Dad, and I. It was horrible. She was lying on the glider, picking at food from a plate I had set next to her on a little coffee table. Every time she took a bite, she said how great it tasted, how she was so hungry. But it was just an act. She hardly ate a thing.”

I can’t stop talking.

“Aunt Nan, she was lying down because she
couldn’t
sit up, but she wanted me to think she was just enjoying the glider. And then she got really negative.”

“What do you mean?” Aunt Nan says.

“She told me to push the table closer so she could reach it. It was only about two inches away from her, but I moved it closer. And she got really impatient and said, ‘No,
Lucia
,’ like she was really fed up with me, ‘
push it right here
. Right here!’ So I did. I was trying to do exactly what she wanted, and Dad just watched and pretended it was totally normal. Her hand trembled when she lifted the fork. I asked if I could help her eat, and she just got annoyed, you know, like
never mind
, and pushed the plate away. Aunt Nan?”

“Yes?”

“Mary and I had brunch in January, and—”

“I know, Lucia. That’s why I called. Mary was home last weekend, and I told her I thought your mother was angry with me, because she’d been so short with me on the phone on her birthday. All of a sudden, Mary burst into tears. Then she said she couldn’t talk about it. But I pushed. I forced it.”

We are silent for a moment.

“Your parents have put you in a very difficult position. I wish I could tell you what to do,” she says.

“Aunt Nan, I’m scared.”

I am terrified, and overcome with regret.

“Lucia, I—” Aunt Nan hesitates. “I’d really like to speak to your father. Would it be all right with you if I called him?”

“Yes,” I say.

The relief I feel at having told one of my father’s siblings is immediately supplanted by the sheer terror of wondering if I’ll ever see my mother again.

Within a few
days of my conversation with Aunt Nan, Mimi calls me at work to remind me about a party on Thursday night.

“How’s your family?” she asks.

“Good.”

“How’s Aunt Jo’s health?”

Did she really say that?

“Fine,” I say. My reply comes out as more of a question, and I wonder if I sound like I’m on the defensive.

“Because I haven’t seen her in so long.”

What do I do? How should I answer?

I give her my canned response, about my parents working on the house and being busy. I keep the conversation brief, and I hang up as soon as I can.

I leave a message on Dad’s answering machine that I need to speak with him right away.

Mimi’s inquiry could be a good thing, I reason. If I tell Dad that Mimi suspects something—that maybe she’s already spoken with Aunt Mary—perhaps he will realize it is long past time to tell Mom’s family.

Dad calls me late in the afternoon, just as I am leaving the office. I tell him about my conversation with Mimi.

“I think she knows, Dad.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” He sounds distant, unfazed.

“I’m supposed to see her on Thursday night,” I say. “She’s going to ask me about Mom again, I just know it.”

“Oh, I really don’t think she will. You may be overreacting. And as far as your aunt Mary is concerned,” he goes on, suddenly more focused, “I doubt she’s a bit concerned. She didn’t even send your mother a card for her fiftieth birthday.”