Sweet Lamb of Heaven (7 page)

I'm often teary when I first see them again—my mother a little bit grayer but still solid and known, my father a meek shade diminished almost to nothing.

IN MY PARENTS
' house, where I grew up, it's hard to convince myself to stay alert for watchers in the shadows. Their neighborhood's staid, the houses upright and boxy and spacious, the trees sheltering. It's well-mapped terrain for me and its textures make for a sense that nothing surprising can happen here.

So I'd relaxed my guard by the time Ned called.

Lena was playing with my brother in the backyard, where a rusty swing set and jungle gym remain from our childhood. Solly's good with children, though he has none of his own—he's younger than I am and prefers the bachelor life, long work hours punctuated by trips to Atlantic City to play poker and weekends drinking and watching sports with college friends—and Lena's smitten with him.

I sat on a stool beside the kitchen island, cutting pie dough, and watched out the window as he lifted her up to the monkey bars. My mother was unhurried in her preparations and the house was quiet, though the next day people I barely knew would come teeming in—old colleagues of my father's, a group from the homeless shelter my mother invites every year, a couple of church friends. When the outdated rotary phone on the kitchen wall rang, she answered it with a voice that faltered at first, though it was perfectly pleasant.

She mouthed
Ned
to me across the room and I slid off the stool, helpless.

“It's so good of you to remember us,” she said politely. “Are you having a nice Thanksgiving?”

I went out of the kitchen and lifted the receiver of the hallway phone.

“. . . missing my two girls, of course,” I heard Ned say.

I recognized his angle instantly: loving husband, abandoned callously.

“You know, Lindsay . . . it's pretty tough to be alone. It's tough, over the holidays.”

Ned's automaton nature is well hidden from guileless observers. My mother has never fathomed my leaving him, which was alien to her and which I can't hope to explain fully—especially as I've chosen not to mention, for example, his many affairs or the fact that he pressured me to end the pregnancy. That would upset her too much. I've said only vaguely that there were infractions and that Ned and I don't love each other. But that's an obstacle whose scale, she seems to feel, falls short of the requirements for divorce.

My mother's loyal and chooses to respect my wishes—most recently not to let Ned learn that Lena and I were coming. But she dislikes subterfuge of any kind, which goes against both her instincts and her ethical code; she can't shake off her early positive impressions of Ned, probably shaped by his good looks and the refined manners he affects in certain company (initially acquired from books on etiquette so he could pass among the rich as one of their own; then honed by practical experience). I believe she's always thought of Ned as
that nice, handsome boy
.

And of course my father is now effectively neutral.

My brother, on the other hand, has never trusted Ned; when I first introduced them he said to me privately, “Well, he's sure as shit white! That is some Crest toothpaste, bright-white shit you got yourself there!” He said it in a joking fashion, grinning at me affectionately and cuffing my arm to take the sting off. I knew what he meant: Ned's whiteness, unlike Solly's or mine, has a fifties Boy Scout aspect. It seems to extend deeper than his skin, which is as unblemished as his straight and beautifully formed teeth. And as the months and years passed Solly never warmed to Ned—for which I was eventually glad.

“I can imagine,” said my mother weakly.

“I miss them. I really do. I fully understand, Lindsay, you don't like to get into a difficult position, an intermediary position, and I respect that and I would never ask it of you. I just—I miss them”—here a quaver came into his voice—“and I thought I'd feel a little better if I touched base with you. It's a family time. That's all.”

“It is, yes,” said my mother carefully, after a pause. “Well, Ned. I'm so sorry to hear you're feeling lonely.”

“I've got to admit,” said Ned, sighing, “part of me just can't believe she doesn't mean to come back. Part of me still holds out hope. I've recommitted myself to the church, Lindsay, and to my faith. And marriage—as a sacrament . . .”

“Yes,” said my mother hastily. “Of course. I'm glad for your faith, Ned.”

“Faith is what pulls you through,” said Ned, “when nothing else will, just . . . nothing. I've had to face that, Lindsay. So in that way, this has been
strengthening
for me. For my
relationship
with
God
. At first I didn't want to see how much I needed this to bring me back to Him . . .”

I felt a wave of nausea at Ned's string of clichés and my mother's vulnerability to them so I put down the receiver. I stood there in the hallway, the faint squawk of the conversation still audible, arrested by an image. Ned's God was a life coach—the kind for whom you had to be at least a mid-six-figure earner. Ned's God was a superstar, a braggart and a motivational speaker, presiding from an office whose walls were lined with awards, diplomas and framed pictures taken with celebrities. Ned's God would have to take an interest in the workings of his personal ego.

Even Ned's Lagerfeld cologne, I thought, would be a matter of no small interest to the God he conceived of.

I smiled at that and the movement of smiling let me lift the receiver again.

Thankfully the talk of religiosity had passed and Ned had moved on to a discussion of his electoral goals, his new mandate to serve the people, and his humble wish for Lena and me to be with him in what was, it turned out, chiefly a humanitarian crusade for public office. He deployed some pieces of text from his website, evoking the twin needs to
restore values
and
build communities
(wisely passing over those pieces of his rhetoric that would not jibe with my parents' political leanings, moderate Democrat). He said the word
humbled
several times: he was humbled by the growing “grass-roots” support for his candidacy and also humbled by the “tireless dedication” of the campaign's volunteers.

Finally, it seemed to me, he was quite humbled by his own humility.

Later I'd try to explain his cynicism to my mother, the connection between his recent discovery of the joys of piety and his career. It was painstaking because she doesn't want to impute evil motives to anyone, much less a son-in-law and in spiritual matters—a generous but inconvenient aspect of her personality. I'd step lightly, not arguing my end too hard, but still she wouldn't be entirely persuaded.

“I'd just ask, if you do talk to her over this holiday weekend,” said Ned mournfully, getting ready to wrap up, “I'd just ask that you give her my love. She doesn't take my calls anymore, and so I can't . . . say it to her myself. But I
want
to, Lindsay. You know? I may not have given her the . . . well, the full and complete attention that she obviously needed. I know that now. If I had it to do again, I would. There were pressures, of course . . . but I shouldn't have let my passion for my work come between us. I'd try as hard as I could to give her the attention that she really needs.”

There were subtle stresses on certain words. And I knew. I knew
he
knew not only that I was in the house, but also that I was listening.

“WELL, DEAR,
” said my mother, coming in after she hung up. “Ned tells me he misses you. I
must
say he didn't say much about his little girl. I think that's very strange.”

Probably the harshest thing she's ever said about Ned.

I mulled it over in my bed that night, what advantage he hoped to gain by calling. If he
was
letting me know he was watching, why? The element of stealth had been sacrificed, which must mean he wouldn't be showing up in person. So there was that.

I thought of his false regretful tone, saying
the full and complete attention that she obviously needed
. The implication, not too deeply buried, that I was secretly demanding, that I was a woman with hidden and deep reserves of
need
, was intended less for my mother than for me—for me to get a taste of poison, to see how sly he could be.

Maybe coming here physically was too much of a risk, though it was hard to believe his contest for the Alaska state senate was going to expose him to the media in far-off Rhode Island. He's egotistical, but not unrealistic.

But he knows Solly sees through him, and likely he didn't want to have to deal with my family—whose money was still in play for him—on their own ground.

I lay restless on the bed I shared with Lena, who was snoring lightly. I listened to the radiator knock. In the end I decided that, along with laying the groundwork with my mother for our eventual “reconciliation,” Ned must want me to feel a threat. To know that he can still touch me.

3

HIGHLY EDUCATED, MODERN PROFESSIONALS

A
FTER TEN DAYS AT MY PARENTS' HOUSE WE'VE COME BACK TO THE
motel. Snow has fallen and lies in the evergreen branches in perfect white tufts. Meanwhile another three rooms have been filled.

Since it's a small place, rooms numbering one to ten, this means we're close to capacity.

“Business is booming!” I said to Don with forced cheer.

I felt put-upon, since the motel is supposed to be my personal refuge.

He nodded and smiled warmly.

“We're glad to have you back,” he said.

Don's elderly father is among the new tenants, so not every new guest is a paying one, I guess. He totters around in faded plaid shirts, leaning on a cane, and smiles apologetically. When his arthritis is bad he lives here so Don can take care of him. There's also a pair of mannish, gangly sisters from Vermont, whom I haven't seen up close but who give an impression of short hair and protruding teeth.

The fourth new resident is a guy not too many years out of college who seems an unlikely person to land alone at an obscure motel on the coast of Maine in early December. He's handsome, with a five o'clock shadow, and unlike Kay—not far from him in age—has an arrogant manner. Maybe he's a drug dealer seeking shelter or a day laborer whose work has disappeared with the cold; maybe he has a trust fund but is aimless and deranged.

But I haven't met the new guests yet, save for sightings of Don Sr., because as soon as we got back from Thanksgiving Lena came down with the flu. Since we went to see the doctor in town she's been confined to her bed. She sleeps for most of the day; I stay with her, I read to her and I write this account. Occasionally, feeling stir-crazy, I emerge for a few minutes, locking the door behind me, and stroll to the lobby or amble to the edge of the bluffs and stare out over the ocean. I leave the picture-window drapes open so I can check on her.

WHEN WE FIRST
got here, months ago now, I went over the clutch of notes I'd made during Lena's first year—some from the time of belief in hallucination and some from afterward, the uncertain time.

After the fact it was easy to find a thread that ran throughout them, a thread that reinforced my idea that the voice
had
said “Phowa,” that it might have referred, on Lena's first day, to the transmigration of souls. I patched together pieces of text and saw a story there, I thought—did I imagine it, or was it real? I read the pieces as a story of consciousness, believing the voice had always known it would fade when its host began to speak on her own.

I uncovered references to the human brain, to “Broca's area” and “Wernicke's area,” which at the time I'd assumed were geographic but which an online search told me had to do with the capacity for speech. There were terms like
remote insult
and
neural plasticity
. Yet there was also a lexicon of religious terms, of Hindu words like
jiva
, mentions of the Sikh brotherhood, the passing along of the soul from one body to another until its liberation.

There were allusions to Jainism and to African faiths—
Àtúnwá
, I was even able to decipher: a Yoruba belief in the rebirth of the ancestors.

KAY OFFERED
to babysit Lena tonight while I went to the café to grab some dinner, to give me time out of the room. Lena was already sleeping when I got back after the meal and Kay and I talked in hushed tones, standing near the doorway.

She told me she was a med student and volunteered in a neonatal intensive care unit. There, she said, one of her tasks was “cuddling”—their name for holding babies, just as Lena had said. These were sick babies, some born without a chance of lasting, and they liked the touch of skin. Incubators and other machines weren't enough.

“My shift was late-night,” she said. “You know, when the mothers were sleeping. Or some of the NICU babies didn't have mothers who could hold them, they'd be addicts or occasionally they'd have died in childbirth.”

She'd hold one of these fragile infants and her next shift, if the infant had gone, she never followed up—it was the policy and she tried to observe it. But this part of her work had proved too much for her. Eventually it had driven her to antidepressants that didn't work and she'd spun out and taken a leave of absence.

She was unfit to be a doctor, she said, shaking her head, but she'd wanted to be a doctor all her life.

“I don't have much longer to decide, the program will give my place to someone else,” she said, and looked down at the floor to hide the fact that her eyes were filling.

She's just a girl, I thought with a pang, grown up thin and sad. I wondered where her parents were, if they knew how miserable she was. Since I had Lena I see my own child in any young woman; before that they were only adults, but now they're former children.