Read Online Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science by Lucia Greenhouse - Free Book Online

they have children?—from before he married Ammie, but I’ve never met them.
    For a commanding officer, Grandpa is quiet by nature. He sits at the head of the table, his posture board-straight, and chews his food deliberately, rarely speaking between mouthfuls. When someone says something funny—if Uncle Truck boasts about being the only person in the world to have gotten kicked out of Dartmouth twice, and accepted
thrice
—Grandpa’s laugh is nearly mute, his face turns crimson, and he holds a napkin to the corner of his eye to wipe away a tear.
    “Here he goes!” someone will say.
    Grandpa looks down in his lap, so we can see his gleaming bald head, and transfers his napkin to his opposite hand to wipe the corner of his other eye.
    Ammie is a natural storyteller. She keeps us on the edges of our seats with her tales of life at Highcroft: the Christmas pageants in which all the kids—including grandchildren and second cousins and the help’s children and grandchildren—acted in the Nativityplay; rites of passage, like learning to drive, and carving one’s initials in the old Ford’s dashboard upon mastery.
    Invariably, someone mentions Mr. D, the butler, and then someone else hollers “the pervert!” and then everyone laughs some more.
    I don’t know why that’s funny.
    Once in a while, but not today, someone tells about the time little Heff (Dad) threw a chair at Grandpa. I have always laughed along with everyone else, thinking this was hilarious, but now I’m not so sure.
    On Thanksgiving night
, we are back at home and I am in bed. Dad brings me a glass of water and tucks me in.
    “How come our house doesn’t have a name?” I ask.
    Dad smiles and pats my knee, a bony knob beneath the covers.
    “You know, like Highcroft,” I say, “and Many Pines” (Ammie and Grandpa’s place up north), “and … what’s Hickory Hill again?”
    “That’s where I was born,” Dad says, “in Pleasantville, New York.”
    “Oh,” I say.
    Dad doesn’t offer an answer, but I don’t really give him time to before I’ve moved on to my next question.
    “And why do you call Grandpa
Unc
?”
    At this, Dad pauses.
    “Well …,” he says, “it’s short for Uncle Terry. When I was little, I could only say Unc, so it stuck, and I’ve called him that ever since.”
    “But he’s not your uncle,” I say.
    “No, he’s not. He’s my stepfather.”
    “Oh.”
    “You knew that, though, didn’t you,” Dad says, not as a question but as a statement.
    “Of course!” I say. I feel embarrassed, somehow, for having asked.
    After Dad kisses me good night, Mom comes in and sits on the bed between Dad and me, so that we are all three together. “Good night, sweetheart,” she says. She pushes my hair out of my face and kisses my forehead. Dad puts his arm lovingly on Mom’s shoulder, and they gaze at me like I’m some sort of miracle, which, even at twelve years old, still feels wonderful. I’m glad they are both my real parents, no steps.
    Together, we say prayers.

S PRING 1975
     
    Several of my
friends at school start going to Perkins Cake & Steak for breakfast on Thursday mornings with Bill, a youth leader for Young Life, a Christian organization. I plead with my parents to let me join this group (“All they do is eat breakfast, it’s not like they’re going to convert me or anything”), and when I point out that our church doesn’t have a youth group—no camping trips, not even a choir—Mom and Dad give in.
    My first Thursday morning, Bill’s old station wagon pulls up to our house. I see Mimi, Mary, and James among the faces peering through the car windows, ballooning their cheeks with their mouths on the glass. Bill walks up to our front door and rings the bell. He has clean, shoulder-length hair and dresses sort of like a hippie, in a wrinkled shirt and baggy white painter’s pants.
    Mom and I answer the door together. She introduces herself as Joanne, and then me, and shakes Bill’s