fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science by Greenhouse Lucia

Author:Greenhouse, Lucia [Greenhouse, Lucia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307720948
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2011-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

THURSDAY, JUNE 26

I am sitting in Mimi’s studio apartment in Greenwich Village, smoking a cigarette and sipping a glass of wine at her small café table. I am watching The Cosby Show—The Cosby Show, as if nothing’s wrong!—while Mimi stands in her bathroom with the door open, applying her makeup.

“So, what have you been up to?” she asks. “You’re never around.”

“Work,” I say.

“Been out at all?”

“Not really.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.

I take a long drag on the cigarette. I can tell Mimi is eyeing me in the mirror.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” I say, trying not to sound defensive. “Yeah, why?”

There is a long silence before Mimi turns to look at me.

What am I to do? I cannot look her—my cousin, my best friend, my mom’s sister’s daughter—in the eye and lie any longer.

“Everything’s not okay,” I blurt out.

Mimi waits.

“Mom’s sick.”

Mimi pulls up a chair and puts her arms around me. I rest my head on my folded arms and begin to cry.

I confess everything to Mimi, just as I did to Aunt Nan a few days earlier.

Mimi tells me she will respect Mom’s wishes and keep her illness a secret. I don’t know whether I feel better or worse.

A few days later, Aunt Nan calls to say that she spoke with Dad, and he told her that Mom was “working out a problem” and that she was staying at Tenacre. When Aunt Nan asked if she could visit Mom, or at least talk to her, Dad said no: If Mom knew that Aunt Nan—or anyone else—had knowledge of her situation, she would be very upset. “Already I’m betraying Jo’s wishes by admitting anything at all,” he said to his sister. “I’m not going to risk upsetting her. Nor am I going to undermine her efforts to rely on Christian Science.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.