Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science (30 page)

Mom is surprised
when she sees Aunt Mary entering her room. “Why, Mary! What on earth are you doing here?” she asks, as though her sister has flown in from Mars and not Minneapolis.

Aunt Mary looks at me, chuckling and caught off guard by the odd question, and says, “Why, I’m here to see you, of course!”

My mother’s eyes tear up. The reason for Aunt Mary’s visit is suddenly clear to her. “I’m so sorry for all of this,” Mom says.

Aunt Mary reaches for her hand and gives it a squeeze. “It’s all right, Jo. We just want you back on your feet, feeling like yourself again.”

“How’s Mother?” Mom asks, although not cautiously; it sounds more like a chatty question, and I wonder if she is even aware of the turmoil her illness and actions have caused. She hasn’t expressed any regret to me. Even though her apology to Aunt Mary hints at an awareness, I am overcome by the impression, not for the first time, that I am in the presence of a child, someone who doesn’t comprehend the excruciating reality we all face.

“She’s just fine,” Aunt Mary says. “Would you like her to come see you?”

“No,” Mom says firmly, shaking her head. “No.”

Aunt Mary and I exchange glances. Grandma and Aunt Kay will be arriving tomorrow, so this doesn’t bode well. But I am relieved that Aunt Mary is witnessing firsthand Mom’s behavior. She needs to know that Mom has wanted privacy from the outset. I have trouble understanding how Mom could
not
want Grandma to come, because I have always longed for my mother’s presence when I’ve been under the weather or faced some problem. Once again, I am reminded of the fact that Grandma, at least in her capacity as a former nurse, has no place in my mother’s belief system.

When two orderlies come in to change Mom’s bedding, Aunt Mary and I go to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. As we sit facing each other in a booth, stirring our bitter coffee with wooden sticks, I say, “She looks pretty bad, doesn’t she?” But in truth I’m relieved that she looks so much better.

“I guess I had prepared myself for worse,” she says. There is a long silence.

The fact that we are talking at all is promising. I was expecting Aunt Mary to be angry, but so far, she seems to be listening with an aim to withhold judgment.

“How did this happen?” she asks, shaking her head, downcast. Aunt Mary chews on her lip the same way Mom does when she’s deep in thought.

How? I have told her
when
, but I can’t explain
how
or
why
. Beneath the chronology of Mom’s gradual decline lies a tangle of questions.

Maybe it’s because we’re here, in a hospital now, but I am struck, all of a sudden, by how truly surprising it is that my parents, and especially my mother, chose the path of Christian Science. Not one of Mom’s siblings—not Aunt Mary, Uncle Jack, or Aunt Kay—remained Lutheran once they married (and why is that?). But of the four, Mom’s departure was the most radical. She could have become an Episcopalian like Aunt Mary. Mom’s conversion to Christian Science had to have been more than a rejection of her parents’ mainstream religion and an act of matrimonial loyalty. It must have been a reaction to her father being a doctor. But why?

I don’t understand this either: such a dramatic rebellion against the authority of her parents would seem to require a strength of will at odds with what can only be seen as profound acquiescence to another authority in the face of undeniable illness. How are these two reconciled?

Aunt Mary fidgets with her cup, swirling around the one remaining, undrinkable sip of coffee. Does she blame me?

“We talked to you on Christmas Day,” she says eventually. There is no tone of accusation or reproach in her voice. I remember how we dispersed to the various telephones in the house to make the holiday phone calls so we could all talk at once.

“What did it feel like to deceive us?” she asks. I can’t tell if her question is an accusation or an inquiry.

Like I was a hostage, reciting lines handed to me on a sheet of paper, I think, but I’m not sure how to answer. Looking down, closing my eyes, I shake my head. The regret is unbearable.

On our way back up to Mom’s room, we find Olivia, Aunt Lucia, and Aunt Nan sitting in the waiting area. Aunt Nan is knitting. Aunt Lucia has
The New York Times
in her lap, opened to the crossword puzzle, but clearly her mind is elsewhere; she is gazing into space. Olivia smokes.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi, Loosh,” Olivia replies, putting out her cigarette. Aunt Nan and Aunt Lucia stand up to greet both of us. Olivia also gets up and
hugs Aunt Mary with eyes closed, seeming to relish the comfort just as I did. When she breaks the embrace, I think Olivia is looking into Aunt Mary’s eyes for some acceptance, or forgiveness. When she speaks, I realize I have misinterpreted my sister’s thoughts completely.

“This has been hell,” Olivia declares with a boldness that catches me off guard. My sister’s appearance mirrors her words. Her cotton dress is rumpled, her pale face obviously hasn’t seen or felt the summer’s sunshine, and her dark eyebrows are pinched together by two creases of tension.

“We don’t need Uncle Jack’s—bullshit—right now.”

I look around to see if anyone else is in the waiting room, but we are alone, the five of us.

Aunt Mary looks at me, confused and no doubt startled.

“Maybe it was a pipe dream to think he’d help us, but Lucia called him the other day because we basically haven’t a goddamned clue about hospitals and doctors and medicine.”

Aunt Nan resumes her knitting, and Aunt Lucia stares at the crossword puzzle.

“You know what he did on Saturday? On Saturday, Uncle Jack called through to the nurses’ station, where Lucia was with Mom, and he put Grandma on.”

Olivia must not realize that Aunt Mary was there with Grandma and Uncle Jack during the phone call. Maybe I didn’t tell her.

“Grandma was sobbing hysterically. Do you know what that was like for Lucia? Why should she bear the brunt of this? And can you guess what Mom was thinking as she watched Lucia on the phone from across the ICU? She thought Lucia was talking to the doctor!

“Then this morning,” Olivia goes on, “Uncle Jack called to tell us, among other things, that Mom’s tumor is malignant, and there is a mass on her lungs, and that we are all criminals!”

Aunt Mary folds her arms and looks at the floor.

“But guess what? After he hung up, Mom’s doctor called. Her lungs are clear. And he doesn’t know if the tumor in her bowel is malignant. What the … 
fuck.
”

There is charged silence. I am stuck between my sister and my aunt. Olivia is venting my exact feelings regarding Uncle Jack, but because of our talk in the cafeteria, I don’t know if Aunt Mary is really in his camp.

“Olivia,” Aunt Mary eventually says, her eyes still on the floor. “Uncle Jack is your mom’s brother.”

“She’s
our
mom,” Olivia says, holding her ground.

“Surely you can understand what a terrible shock this has been.”

“I just got off the phone with Sherman,” Olivia says. “You know where he is? Newark train station. He was on his way to the city to have dinner with some friends. He totally panicked on the train. He called me in hysterics, inconsolable; he couldn’t figure out what he was doing, where he was going, or why. Have you or Uncle Jack—have any of you—thought for even a moment what
he’s
been going through? Jesus Christ! He’s been living here, in Hopewell, all summer! It’s sinking in that he may lose his mother.”

Olivia’s chin begins to quiver. “What do you say to him? What … do … you … say?” She holds her breath and wipes her eyes.

“Liv, is he okay?” I ask.

Olivia nods. “He got back on the train. I told him he should go. That he needs a break.”

Olivia turns to our aunt again. “I know it’s unfair,” she says, “but we can’t wait for you, or Uncle Jack, or anyone else to catch up.”

Aunt Mary’s arms unfold and fall to her sides, and she looks up, first at me, then at Olivia. “I can’t speak for my brother. I don’t know why he does things the way he does.” Aunt Mary pauses, choosing her words carefully. “But he and your father have always been at odds, and … if he’s got a problem with anyone, it’s with your father … not you. Anyway, I’m here. He’s not. I’m here to see Jo, and I’m here for you kids. Lucia and I have had a chance to talk this afternoon.”

Aunt Mary looks down again, shaking her head.

“You’re right,” she says chewing her lip. “I may never understand
why this has happened. But I love you, and I love your mother, and I want to help.”

Grasping Olivia and me each by an arm, Aunt Mary draws us toward her into a huddle.

“Come on,” she says, “we’re family.”

She holds Olivia and me, trembling, in her embrace. All the pain of the last eight months starts flooding in.

My God. How will I ever live with this?

I want my aunt to hold me and never let go.

The three of
us walk down the hall to Mom’s room. Peering through the window that separates her room from the hallway, I see that a nurse and two interns are tending to her. Fortunately, the intern who confronted me the other day is not one of them.

Mom’s room has a window overlooking a tree-lined street, which today lets in sunlight. There are vases of flowers on the windowsill and on every available surface. Over the past few days, floral arrangements and get-well cards have arrived from old friends and relatives on both sides of the family, in addition to those brought by Olivia, Sherman, and me. There is even a beautiful arrangement from Connie. For Mom’s sake, I am relieved to see that someone in the church has sent something.

“How does she look to you?” Olivia asks Aunt Mary.

“I said to Lucia that I had prepared myself for the worst. But I don’t know. She looks so … so … resuscitated. Her face has such a glow about it. And there’s something about her hair that’s so lovely, really,” Aunt Mary says.

Over the months Mom’s hair has been something to avoid looking at, so matted and flat and colorless, like pale steel wool. It does look better now, somehow, despite the gray. Maybe the nurses here are better with a comb and brush than the staff is at Tenacre.

“But she does look resuscitated,” Aunt Mary repeats, now whispering,
since the door is open and the nurse and doctors are leaving, “like she was dead.”

Dad arrives while
Olivia, Aunt Mary, and I are sitting with Mom. I haven’t seen him since yesterday. He stayed with Mom overnight, and I passed him in the car on my way to the airport. To my surprise and relief (given how yesterday afternoon Mom wasn’t even speaking to him), Mom eventually asked Dad last night to stay with her again, to pray with her. I feel myself softening over the hypocrisy of them reading the Lesson and using Christian Science in the hospital. At least for now. What I care about most is that further confrontations and turmoil be averted. I hope—especially—that Mom’s anger at Dad won’t surface in Aunt Mary’s presence. If it is true that Dad kept Mom from going to the hospital sooner, then the facts will have to come out, and we’ll have to deal with it. Somehow. But if, as Aunt Nan and Aunt Lucia suggest, Mom has lashed out at Dad because she feels that she can trust him most (which is also a possibility), then the last thing we need is Mom laying blame on him. I don’t know who or what to believe anymore. There are so many angles and layers to all of this, it’s dizzying. Right now I am terrified, and angry, that Mom might have just dropped a bomb about our father (or is it only a scare?) and then she’ll die, leaving us amid the devastation. Part of me feels pity for my father.

How did this all happen? There must be reasons why Dad was open to Christian Science—just as there were reasons for Mom’s vulnerability—although I’ve never, until recently, given much thought to any of this. Aunt Mary said that Uncle Jack and Dad have “always been at odds,” but I wonder if she might have spoken even more broadly, that Dad, on some level, has always been at odds in general: out of place in his family, out of sync with his world.

On the surface, I know Dad was part of a prominent Minnesota family. I’ve heard it my whole life. But beneath the surface, maybe
he was more
apart
. He was only a baby when his parents divorced, and then Ammie quickly married Grandpa, who was always Grandpa to me, never Step-Grandpa. But what was he to Dad? And what must it have been like for Dad to have his own father half a continent away and be raised by Ammie and Grandpa—whom he called Uncle, Unc for short—and who in quick succession had two boys of their own? I remember Dad’s testimony about how he was healed of a lifelong stutter thanks to Christian Science. What must it have been like to grow up with a crippling speech impediment? And what caused it?

Aunt Mary, seeing Dad through the window to the hallway, gets up to greet him. I wonder how they will handle the reunion. It occurs to me that maybe Dad avoided being at the hospital for Aunt Mary’s arrival. The two hug, but I can’t read much from it. Anything less than a hug would be cold. For Aunt Mary, the embrace must feel difficult if not forced, and, for Dad, it is probably sincere; his conditioned response of denial is so basic to his Christian Science thinking:
Man cannot be sick; Man is the perfect likeness of God
includes
Man cannot have conflicts; Aunt Mary cannot be upset with me
. The two speak for a minute, but their conversation is inaudible through the glass. Then they return to Mom’s bedside.

I am suddenly filled with apprehension. Everything orbits around my mother. She wields the controls that will maintain our precarious balance, or completely throw it off. Will she turn on Dad in front of Aunt Mary, telling her that Dad kept her from going to a hospital? Or will she dismiss Aunt Mary, as she dismissed us so many times, to read the Lesson?

Mom initiates polite conversation, asking Aunt Mary one question about Minnesota, then Dad another about Hopewell. She wants Olivia to describe her new home in Tucson, which surprises me, and must be a comfort to Olivia. I didn’t think their move from Massachusetts to Arizona the month before had even registered with Mom. Every several minutes, Mom closes her eyes and drifts off. We sit there silently, communicating assurances to one another
with our eyes, examining our fingernails, leafing through tattered magazines, until once again she joins us. Eventually, Mom asks to be propped up in the bed.