Sweet Lamb of Heaven (32)

Surely there was nothing else I could have done.



IT HAPPENED THAT I didn’t have to buttonhole Don. With his customary placidness he stopped by our table. The family from town had left and Lena was picking at a berry cobbler. He had a tray of cobbler dishes in his hands, which he set down on the table next to us before he placed his hand on the back of my chair; I studied the waves of whipped cream on top of the pie.

Don’s friendly, familiar slump suggested nothing too significant was happening; and yet he knew.

“The others found us through a website,” he said. “Call it a support group.”

“But I didn’t,” I said.

Lena wasn’t listening but waving her spoon and making faces at Faneesha, who sat across the room making them back at her. I thought of the Hearing Voices Movement; I thought of support groups in general, and how I’d never been drawn to them.

“Well, you needed something else,” said Don. “You recovered and they’re still struggling. You needed a different kind of assistance.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Thank you so much for today. Your timing was perfect.”

“No trouble,” said Don. “But we’re still worried about you.”

“What you just said, though, it doesn’t explain how I knew where to come.”

“You could think of it like salmon,” he said, cocking his head. “Or migrating birds. They know where to go, but no one really knows how they know.”

“Ducks fly south in winter,” said Lena, who’d put down her fork. She had no idea what we were discussing, but lack of context has never stopped her.

“That’s right, Lena,” said Don solemnly. “That they do.”

“Except Lucky Duck,” said Lena. She patted him on the chair next to her. “This guy’s lazy.”

“But ducks and geese and salmon migrate in groups,” I said to Don. “They have other ducks and salmon.”

“Mostly. But not always,” said Don lightly. “Individuals of many species engage in solitary migrations. Humpback whales, for instance. Young songbirds often make their first trips alone. Scientists say direction and distance are written into their genes.”

“They travel for food or breeding, don’t they?” I said. “But I didn’t travel for those reasons.” Because Lena was there, I couldn’t be more specific and I wanted to keep it casual.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Don, and took a bowl off his tray before he picked it up to move on. “Have some cobbler. It’s on the house.”



BACK IN the room I went online briefly.


In some butterfly species, for example the monarch, no single individual completes a migratory journey, which is spread over a number of generations. Instead the animals reproduce and die while underway, and it is left to the next generation to complete the next leg of the journey. —Wikipedia 2015

“Are you mad at Don, Mama?” asked Lena when I was putting her to bed.

She clutched both the duck and the sheep.

“What? No, I’m not mad at him,” I said.

“Don’s too nice to be mad at.”

“Don’s definitely nice,” I said. “And we’re getting to know him better, aren’t we.”

“People ask questions to know each other better,” she said.

“Exactly.”

“Are you mad at my father?”

“Hmm. Well, that’s a good question.”

“You don’t like him.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“How would you put it, then.”

At that moment she sounded over forty.

“I’d say . . . well, I’d say we turned out not to have as much in common as I first thought we did.”

“I don’t know if I like him either. I love him, because everyone loves their father.”

“Right. Of course you do.”

“We used to live with him.”

“Yes. We certainly did.”

“He never gave me a present before. Even though it’s not Christmas. Did he give me a present ever before this?”

“Hmm. He must have, mustn’t he?”

“I like my sheep.”

“That’s good. It’s a nice sheep.”

“I like living here. With you and me.”

“I know you do. I do too.”

“We live at Don’s motel.”

“For now. But not forever, sweetie. You know that.”

“I know. One day we have to go. That’s why they call it a motel. It’s not a house or apartment.”

“No.”

“One day we have to live in one of those.”

“I expect so. We’ll have neighbors, I bet. You’ll like that, too.”

“OK. I’m going to go to sleep now.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”



I COULDN’T SLEEP, so I wrote down that exchange, figuring it might give me needed insight, further on, into my failings as a parent.

Then I consoled myself by thinking that at least I was a good enough parent to try to keep account of those failings.

I lay in the other bed, letting the TV play muted in front of me, laptop on my knees. Don had to be some kind of counselor, some kind of advisor to those who’d heard . . . but now that I wasn’t the only one who spoke of “hearing,” the word seemed cultish to me and I didn’t like it, not at all. The word hearing had an unpleasant ring suddenly—now it was a matter for shame, almost, rather than one of the senses—and “the voice” wasn’t the plain and straightforward moniker I’d taken it for but a worshipful honorific.