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came tumbling down with a noise that sent my poor mother out into the yard in a panic, thinking I had fallen off the roof. It was a bitter blow and I never had the heart to rebuild it.
    My father was a staunch atheist. In New England at the time, atheism was tolerated as an eccentricity, not like Unitarianism, which was much worse. He said he had been converted to atheism at the age of six, when his Sunday school teacher had described with relish the eternal fires of Hell. He trotted out his atheism with great pride, while everybody rolled their eyes. I always believed (at least until the end) it was a case of the lady protesting too much. “Mary and Joseph,” he said, “turned a very embarrassing situation into one of the greatest coups in history. Clever, clever, clever!” And he wagged his fat finger back and forth in everyone’s deliciously scandalized faces.
    My mother took us to church every Sunday. This was fine with my father. He used to say: “Your grandmother sent me to church every day, and it did me no harm. It was in church that I was converted to atheism. Also, it’s a wise hedge. I myself might take it up on my deathbed, just in case.”
    I once asked my mother, “Aren’t you worried that Dad’s going to go to Hell?”
    â€œGod doesn’t send good people to Hell,” she said with absolute serenity of conviction. She had a deep faith in the goodness of people, and by extension the absolute goodness of God. In my mother’s cosmogony, if there were a Hell, it would be an empty place indeed.
    I always believed my father would take up religion on his deathbed, if he were given the time. He died in St. Clare’s Hospital in 1958, of congestive heart failure. St. Clare’s is across the street from the Boston Museum of Natural History (I can see its facadefrom my window as I write), and when I got the call from my mother I was the only one of his children there. He was lying in a private room in the intensive care unit, tubes coming out from the most unlikely places, his face gray and his bulky body and fleshy face melting heavily into the bed. The wild, Einsteinian tuft of hair that usually stood out from his forehead was laid low, soaked with sweat. There was a look of panic in his eyes. When I came in he raised his hand and gestured for me to come over; he clearly had something he wished to say. This is it, I thought. He’s going to send for the minister or the priest or (it was not inconceivable) the rabbi. I leaned over and he gripped my forearm with fingers of steel, his strength shocking.
    â€œListen!” he said, so loudly the nurse started and admonished him not to excite himself.
    â€œListen to me!” he hissed. “You’ve got to promise me something. I don’t entirely trust your mother in this. You know she believes in
God
. She doesn’t understand.”
    â€œYes, yes, of course, anything,” I said. “Anything you want.” I was suddenly puzzled. This was not how I imagined the conversation to unfold. His voice resonated in the tubes coming out of his nose, making him sound like Donald Duck. It was not a dignified scene.
    â€œNo matter how bad it gets, no matter how sick I am . . .”
    And he paused to catch his breath.
    â€œ. . . no matter if I become a complete drooling vegetable, no matter if my EEG is flat as a pancake . . .”
    Wheeze
.
    â€œYes?” I said.
    â€œEven if there is no hope at all, none whatsoever . . .”
    Wheeze
.
    â€œYes?”
    Another wheeze.
    â€œDon’t you, don’t you . . .”
    Wheeze
.
    â€œ. . . let them pull . . .”
    Wheeze
.
    â€œ. . . the plug.” And his grip relaxed and he sank back, with a look of peace finally on his face. “Promise?” he croaked.
    â€œI promise,” I said. Mother, who had been hanging on to every word over my shoulder, was irritated.
    â€œHenry, how many times do I, and the doctors and