Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science (14 page)

Mom stayed just long enough to use the bathroom.

She must have been sick that day.

It is after midnight. The house feels eerily quiet, filled with illness and secrecy. I’m afraid to breathe, as though doing so might upset a precarious equilibrium, so with my head on my pillow, I close my eyes and take shallow, cautious breaths. My head is dizzy, swirling with questions and thoughts.

How long has she been sick?

She’s not sick.

What are her symptoms?

Symptoms are error.

She’s so pale. Frail.

She is not sick. She can’t be sick. Jesus says, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

What if she doesn’t get better?

She is made in God’s image and likeness. She is not material, but spiritual.

What should we do?

If it were serious, she’d be at Tenacre.

Be still and know that I am God
.

O, God.

What if she goes to Tenacre?

I am startled by the voice in my head. It has been years since I’ve set foot in a church, except for the obligatory Thanksgiving and Easter services when I’m with my parents. I haven’t read the Daily Lesson, or prayed since—when?—Claremont. I don’t even know where my King James Bible and
Science and Health
are, maybe in an unpacked moving box. Four times a year, with a wink of encouragement, Dad gives me the new Christian Science quarterly. Later, I discreetly drop it into the garbage. Yet here I am reciting Mary Baker Eddy and her favorite Bible quotes.

I am twenty-three years old, and for as long as I can remember, our family has never faced anything like this, except that one time in Egypt. Curiously, it was also Christmas Eve.

I tap lightly on the wall behind my headboard. Three taps echo back. Sherman is awake. I get out of bed and tiptoe to his room. Together we head downstairs, pausing when the floorboards squeak.

“What are we going to do?” I ask.

Sherman and I sit in silence for several minutes. Then he pulls his guitar out of its case. Muting the sound by slightly pressing his fingers on the frets, he strums the same four chords, over and over again.

Christmas morning
, Sherman somehow sleeps until almost eleven, and Mom and Dad stay upstairs even longer, which is
alarming. Our parents are early birds, always. Olivia, Terry, and I stand in the kitchen for hours and drink too much coffee, waiting for Mom, Dad, and Sherman to emerge. Olivia and I speak in hushed voices while Terry listens.

“Maybe it’s menopause?” I say. It is possible—but unlikely—that my sister at twenty-six knows more about menopause than I, who know nothing.

“I doubt it,” Olivia says. “I don’t think menopause makes you feel that ill for so long. I think you get—sort of, you know, fleeting hot flashes.”

“Could it be the flu?” I offer, incredulous at my own hopefulness.

Olivia shakes her head but doesn’t suggest any other possibilities.

We hear footsteps on the stairs. Our father pokes his head into the kitchen. I can tell he is exhausted. The dark circles around his eyes look like bruises. His smile is incongruous.

“Merry Christmas, everyone! You guys need anything? Toast?” he says, trying to be gracious. “English muffins?”

He sounds nervous, awkward, like he is accommodating first-time houseguests, not his own kids.

I look at Olivia and Terry, and we all shake our heads no. He retreats upstairs.

Olivia’s eyebrows go up.

Eventually Sherman appears, looking for coffee and food, lured by the smell of the bacon in the oven. His tousled, sandy hair and days-old stubble belong to the heedless college kid he was until last night. He sits down at the kitchen table and stares into his coffee mug.

We make breakfast. As I am pouring the orange juice, I hear footsteps again on the stairs. Dad is helping Mom one deliberate step at a time, and there are muffled words of encouragement. Our parents appear with broad grins, but Mom’s gaze is vague. She is wearing her Christmas sweater paired with a denim skirt, an odd choice—probably the first thing my father stumbled on in her closet. I can see her obvious makeup again.

With everyone assembled, Christmas morning starts around
noon. By the hearth in the living room, we open our stocking presents, which are sparse and not gift-wrapped, but we pretend not to notice. The tension is palpable. What is this charade? Do Mom and Dad really think we’re convinced that everything is okay? And why are we going along with it?

We make our way into the Bird Room.

“Look at this!” Dad exclaims, eyeing the food with forced enthusiasm.

We all take seats.

“Here’s to Terry and Liv,” I say, looking for something to celebrate. I raise my orange juice glass, and everyone follows suit.

My toast feels fake.

Dad reaches out both of his hands, offering his left to me, his right to Olivia, the opening gesture of our meal’s blessing. We all hold hands.

Heads are bowed. I look around without moving. This should be a happy occasion, the newly married couple spending their first Christmas with the bride’s family. Olivia bites her lower lip, and her long hair falls in front of her, a curtain closing on her face. Terry’s hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and he sits stiffly, his posture leaning him slightly toward his wife. Sherman is stone-faced. Mom’s hands are limply offered in grace. Normally we all squeeze hard when we hold hands, sending hugs in the form of firm grips around the table. Not today.

Dad enunciates every syllable of the grace while the rest of us mumble.

I was looking forward to handing out my presents. In the past, Mom has always given me a modest Christmas fund to make my purchases, but this year I wanted to do it on my own, and generously, despite exhausting a whole week’s pay. But there is no joy in it now.

This Christmas, my parents’ gifts reek of pretending: expensive tennis racquets, down comforters, microwave ovens. Each time one of us opens a present, Mom’s eyes well up. I am overcome with the feeling that we are being given these things to assure Mom that we
have them. I start to cry, confused by my parents’ disproportionate generosity and the underlying sadness.

Apparently, my mother’s tears are tolerable; mine are not. My father glares at me from across the room, so I excuse myself to the bathroom, where I splash my face with water, trying to compose myself. As I open the door to leave the bathroom, I face my father in the narrow hallway. I reach for his embrace.

“What’s the matter with
you
?” he whispers through gritted teeth.

I pull back.

“What’s the matter with
me
?” I shoot back. “What’s going on here?”

“Nothing!” my father hisses. “Nothing’s going on here.”

“What’s wrong with Mom?” I persist.

My father looks at the floor and pauses.

“Your mother has a little problem she’s working out,” he says, too lightly.

“Thanks for telling us!” I reply.

“Your mother’s situation is none of your business, young lady.”

“Did you think we wouldn’t notice?” My chin trembles slightly.

“In Science we don’t draw attention to error,” he says, speaking gently now. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “You know that.”

“How long has she been … like this?” I ask.

“I’m not going to discuss this with you. But”—he pauses, deciding to give me something to hold on to—“it’s recent. And already, she’s made a lot of progress.”

This little acknowledgment from my father offers some relief, some hope.

“The best thing you can do for your mother right now is to show your love and support.”

We return to the Bird Room. I try to smile. Mom confesses that they have one more gift for each of us. Dad pulls three envelopes from his blazer pocket. In each is a check for four hundred dollars, twice as much as they have ever given us for Christmas.

On the first
Sunday in January, just ten days after Christmas, I am sitting at a table for two at the Mad Hatter, a restaurant on the Upper East Side, waiting for my cousin Mary. She is a senior at Barnard, the youngest of my aunt Nan’s six children. We have chosen the Upper East Side as a midway point, and the Mad Hatter for its bargain brunch. We have scheduled and canceled and rescheduled this brunch for months, ever since I started working in the city, and when the date came up again, and I considered whether to postpone once more, I decided not to. Now I question that decision. It would have been far easier to say I have a deadline at work than to sit across from Mary and pretend everything is fine.

Mary arrives wearing a knitted hat and a heavy wool coat, with a long bohemian scarf wrapped around her neck. She removes the hat and scarf and shakes out the glossy, dark head of hair so prevalent in Dad’s family. We order the complimentary mimosas.

“How was your Christmas?” she asks.

“Good.”

“And how’s Condé Nast?”

“Good,” I say again, but I am picturing Mom in her bathrobe on Christmas Eve.

We sit for a minute in silence, examining the menu. My heart is racing.

“Mary,” I suddenly blurt, “Christmas wasn’t good. Mom’s not okay. She’s sick.”

I have betrayed my mother. I fidget with the stem of the champagne flute and glance away. Why did I do that? It was so easy to unburden myself, but, quickly, the ramifications of my hastiness are all too clear. If Mary tells her mother (and why wouldn’t she?), Aunt Nan might call Dad.

“Listen, Mary,” I say and pause, “don’t say anything to your mom. Please.”

Mary looks puzzled. “But if your mom is really sick …”

“Maybe she isn’t,” I try to counter.

“But what if she is? Is she? She won’t go to a doctor?”

I shake my head. My cousin’s family is Episcopalian. She knows that we are Christian Scientists, and that Christian Scientists don’t go to doctors, don’t smoke, don’t drink. I take a sip of my mimosa.

“Christian Scientists don’t discuss illness,” I say. “They believe that, if they discuss it, they acknowledge it. And acknowledging illness gives it power. Mary, I’m not a Christian Scientist, but I guess I believe I should respect my mother’s wishes.”

I guess I believe I should.

The following week
, my great-aunt dies. Lucia Chase was a prominent figure in the ballet world. My father calls me at work to tell me he’s attending the funeral.

“I’d like you to come too,” he says.

I have never gone to a funeral, and I’m not eager to go to one now. I didn’t actually know Lucia Chase, so I’m not sure about the propriety of attending. I’d feel like an impostor. And Mary might be there with her parents. If Mom doesn’t go to the funeral—and how can she?—her absence will be noticed by Aunt Nan. Mary may feel compelled to tell her about our brunch, about what I said.

“Come on, Loosh,” my father says. “I’d like you to meet some of your Ewing relatives. And you never know who might be there.”

I remain silent. I am confused about my father’s motives, and angry. How can he go to a funeral, or be excited about who’s who for that matter, with Mom so sick? And why does he care if I go? Does he just want me to go as a stand-in? The whole thing seems hypocritical. Christian Scientists strive to deny sin, disease, and death, and yet my father is going to attend a funeral
now
? Wouldn’t the mere act of attending a funeral—acknowledging death in the
face of Mom’s situation—be tantamount to leaving a newborn in a snowdrift (to borrow my father’s analogy)? How can going to a funeral support the healing process? I think now I’m afraid to go.

“Mom is coming too,” he adds.

Mom must be doing better.

“Okay,” I say, relieved. We hang up. I call Sherman and Olivia to update them.

I arrive at
my parents’ apartment, a pied-à-terre on Seventy-seventh Street, at 10:00
A.M.
, so we can head to the funeral together. The notion that Mom is feeling better is quickly dispelled: she looks terrible. Her dress—a fitted floral print with a black background—hangs on her. Her cheeks are nearly skeletal, and her face looks alarmingly ashen. Still, my mother seems happy to be back in the city, even if it’s to attend a funeral. When she hugs me, I want so much for the embrace to feel good, but it doesn’t. I can’t help it; I pull back reflexively, shocked by the degree of her infirmity.

The service is held at a church only six blocks away, but my father hails a cab. Entering the church foyer, the three of us sign a guest book. Mom’s handwriting is shaky. We are ushered to our seats in the fourth pew, left of the center aisle, in an area reserved for family. Mom sits on the aisle; Dad is next to her; I sit to his left.

I have not prepared myself for the reality of my first funeral. The church interior is beautiful, with Gothic-arched ceilings and rich wooden pews, but it feels dark, cold, and cavernous. The organ music and candlelight, fittingly somber, are, for me, macabre. All of these people have congregated for Lucia Chase’s funeral, but I feel that I am face-to-face with my own mother’s mortality. For the moment, among the throng of mourners, I realize that only my father, mother, and I know that Mom is sick. I wonder if that will change once the service is over. Surely someone will notice the difference in her appearance.

Four men who I assume are my relatives, wearing dark suits, roll the casket down the center aisle toward the church’s apse and
stop right beside our pew. The coffin holds my great-aunt’s body, a body that will decay and decompose, the minister reminds us, “to nothing but ashes and dust.” The coffin is shut, and it remains right there, two feet beyond my mother, who wears a dress three sizes too large for her frame. I see her clutch the side of the pew for support.

The minister speaks of my great-aunt’s abiding devotion to her beloved cause, and of her profound sense of family. He talks of her “unspeakable sadness—the loss of her son at sea,” and I can’t contain my tears, not for this woman and her life’s trials and extraordinary accomplishments but because the horror of my own mother’s situation is no longer abstract or, as a Christian Scientist would say, “an opportunity for spiritual growth.” My father ignores me. My mother doesn’t notice, focused as she must be on making it through the service.