Sweet Lamb of Heaven (15)

I watched my parents’ beaming faces as they bent to encircle her with their arms—my father doing so in a spirit of general camaraderie, not specific attachment. He doesn’t recognize Lena across time but since his memory went he has learned to obey my mother; he simply believes her when she tells him that he knows or loves someone. He has agreed to go along with it. In a way this trust is the crowning glory of their lives, a final achievement. He knows my mother and through her he accepts the rest.

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 When the outdated rotary phone on the kitchen wall rang, she answered it with a voice that faltered at first, though it was perfectly pleasant.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.