Marcia: Can’t you see I’m talking about something important here?
Anita: Yes, but—
Marcia: And I am paying you.
Anita: You said something happened last night.
(Jon enters.)
Jon: I was late.
Anita: Well there’s a surprise.
Jon: Sorry. I couldn’t find a parking place.
Anita: Last night, or today?
Marcia: His cell phone battery was dead or he would have called me. That does happen sometimes. Imagine if it had happened in Grand Canyon. Kevin Kline would have been killed by that gang before Danny Glover got there to save him—
Jon: Marcia, no one hurt me. It was okay. We made it through the late thing okay, remember?
Anita: So what happened then?
Jon: (Looks at Marcia.) We fell asleep.
Anita: You fell asleep?
Jon: Right. We fell asleep. It was late, okay, Anita? We made love, and then we fell asleep.
Anita: Both of you?
Jon: No, just me. I got my rocks off and passed out.
Anita: The sarcasm is not necessary, Jon.
Jon: You know, I think you’re making things worse.
Anita: You need to comply with our agreements. You could have set an alarm—
Jon: It’s fucking late at night, okay? So you don’t always think of things ahead of time.
Anita: Obviously that’s something to work on.
Marcia: Just tell her what I did.
Anita: Marcia, we’ve talked about your habit of blaming yourself.
Marcia: I’d like to see you find someone else to pin this one on. God, even Bobby Donnell on The Practice couldn’t get me off—
Jon: Can we get to the fucking point here? Pun intended.
Marcia: I’m sorry, Jon.
Anita: Marcia, are you alright?

The smell placed me next to my father in the second row pew where we always sat, my fingers sliding over the shining wood as I tucked my skirt around my bare legs. Each week I refused the joke books and Tic-Tac-Toe my father offered and instead watched my mother on the raised platform of the chancel, her dark curly hair falling over the Episcopal vestments patterned in gold.

And when she ascended to the pulpit, and began to speak, her words opened around me like tiny packages filled with that bright, sweet scent. Standing in the light of the stained glass, my mother explained the world. She lit up with grace—because she possessed it, the real thing, that dignity, that power—and she’d look down once in a while and meet my eyes, letting me know the biblical quotes and poetry, the small jokes and lessons, were just for me.

Or so I thought.

And then it was over. A quick hug from her before she went to the line of waiting parishioners, if I was lucky. If not, I watched them gather around her. The Sermon on the Mount all over again.

I went back home with my father, where he’d watch football or grade papers and I’d go up to my room to read and wait, curled on my single bed, hoping there were no baptisms, no deaths, no marriages, no Bible study classes, to keep her from me.

My mother, the love of my life, whom I waited for, and received like a blessing, late at night after her visits to prisons, to the dying, to the homeless, and then early in the morning before I left for school and she went to her office at the church.

Not like other mothers.

So determined to do right by everyone.

And I can’t even say she forgot me, ever. She squeezed me in after school and before Eucharist, on evenings when she could leave her responsibilities alone. I don’t think she ever forgot to try.

But still, I waited, hours and hours, maybe that whole first part of my life.

Not for my father, who made me dinners, who tucked me in. But for the parent who always had a list of people for whom she needed to be that shining figure of grace.

Chapter One

When I head home from Stanford to visit my mother, the vibration in my body turns up, until my cells sing like notes from a 12-string guitar. Too many notes, really. Longing, hope, the prayer that peace will come, that I will be like her, that I won’t, that she’ll tell me what to do, that she’ll listen, for once, without comments or questions.

I could be the subject of my own psych dissertation. Really. Mommy issues. Give me a break.

But I can’t help tracking the way she looks, from that first moment in the airport terminal. Tonight will be no different: I’ll search for her face, and try to catch her before she sees me. Will her bones hold the suffering she sees every day? Will the skin and muscles pull her face into heaviness? Or will she have been able to set it aside? It’s not whether she’ll light up—she always does—it’s the effort it will cost her. It’s the dimming of her on holidays, or any time the people she serves falter, or need or, cry. Where do I go, wanting home, if she hasn’t found a way to arrive?

I thought about skipping Easter. I’d already skipped Christmas—not a popular decision—and it seemed easier to miss again. The wish and the hope—I wanted to skip them. Because no one with compassion could bring her one more problem to solve, right? And I had nothing to bring her but the mess I was making of my life.

I bought the plane ticket the week before, my finger hovering over the mouse for a long moment before I clicked “Yes.” My father demanded to pay and I let him. As I always did. Because then he could do his Dad thing, puffing up a little, getting protective, getting into the my little girl, I’ll do anything for you.

Annoying and sweet.

I twist my too-thick hair into a braid before I walk off the plane, down the long tunnel of hallway, over the thin carpet and linoleum, under the fluorescent lights, and down to baggage claim, where he waits, hands in his pockets, the familiar blue-button down.

He’s alone. She didn’t even come.

He hugs me, and I inhale the scent of male sweat, of laundry detergent and starch, of the hamburger he no doubt ate on the way.

“Sarah, Sarah, Sarah,” he says. “Too long. Eight months is seven too long.”

He steps back and looks at me. And does what he always does; makes an excuse for my mother.

“Remember Tiff, that girl you used to babysit? Her mom’s got cancer. She could be dying as we speak.”

I stare, without changing expression. He drops his hands from my arms. I turn away.

“Okay.” I go to the slow moving carousel, stare into the metal panels as if I could see myself in their burnish: hippie girl, braided hair, thick eyebrows, a face both intelligent and ultimately Midwest. Give me a makeover and I could do a commercial for household products. That Americana look. Which is a complete deception. Because that girl could never be this angry, clenching and unclenching her fists against the dying, and their endless, terrible needs.

When my bag finally drops down the conveyor and comes within reach, I grab and lift the old canvas duffel bag. And because I’m angry at my sweet, innocent father, I sling it over my shoulder, even though he reaches out to take it for me.

“Where’s the car, Dad?” I ask him.

“Don’t be that way, Sar,” he says. “You know she wanted to be here more than anything.”

I take off my Indian-patterned skirt swirling around my thighs, purple and blue, but then I stop because only he knows where we’re headed. He gives me that look, hurt for my mother, his mouth downturned like a child. A sad, unbearded Santa Claus. I relent and take his arm as we walk to the car, his old/new car, a silver Camry, replacing the last silver Camry. He turns on Sirius—always the tech geek—and starts telling me about his students at the university, about how one invented an app that helps people find clean water, a technological dowsing stick. Then he keeps on right on chatting about the gig he played with his old band mates, middle-aged men shedding their button-downs for ratty T-shirts and cargo shorts, for electric guitar and bass.

I listen to him the way I always do, with barely enough attention to drop the occasional uh-huh, or really? The streetlights fall over his earnest, round face and his bald pate when we pass. Streaks trace the windshield in front of me, but the exterior shines, pristine—the guys at the car wash must have cleaned the outside and missed wiping the inside glass.

Of course. He went to the car wash before picking me up. She probably reminded him to do so. Making everything right for this visit.

We drive past my old school, him reminiscing about the time I’d fallen off the monkey bars, filling us both with images of Band-Aids and Neosporin, stitches, bikes, and birthday parties. I trace my finger over the old scar on my knee. I can see him rushing through the emergency room doors with me in his arms, calling out for a nurse. Not the calmer parent, my father.

Then he passes the church. I look for her car—a Prius, of course, because she makes every choice based on doing no harm, the Hippocratic oath for ministers. It isn’t there. She’s with a parishioner. Or home, waiting for me. But the church, gleaming under the floodlights, with its clean white lines, its utter clarity, feels like her. Familiar.

We pull into the driveway behind the pale green of her car. She beat us home. And then we walk into the house through the back door. The light over the oven glows dim. We walk past the appliances—also new, my Dad has been busy—and into the living room, where my mother sits, sleeping, her graying curls and pale Irish skin shadowed by the lamp light, next to the end table upon which rests her white priest collar. I look at the shape of her mouth, the upturn of her nose, the long, slender waist and legs, and see myself in thirty years.

“Alex,” my Dad says softly. She jumps awake.

Uncanny, the way she can leap into full alertness at the sound of her name.

She stands, moves to me so quickly I feel her arms pulling me in before I can react to the fleeting look of despair that passes as soon as she thinks I see it. She holds me tight, a shock . . . my mother never grabs me like this. And then I think, oh, right, ministering to the dying mother who won’t see her daughter again. What my mother has witnessed, what she has touched, and now me, all messy, screwed up life . . .

I smell coffee on her breath, the icky sweet of a sickroom on her clothes. I feel the usual sinking of guilt.

“Hi, Mom,” I say.

She doesn’t pull away. She’s taller, so my face rests just on her shoulder.

“What is it?” she says softly into my braided hair.

I step back and she lets go immediately.

“You’re tired,” I tell her.

She turns to my father. “Can you make us pancakes, Charlie?”

Pancakes, the answer to every problem. He’ll probably put blueberries in them, or chocolate chips. The three of us, in our dance, the one whose moves never change. Breakfast for dinner. Welcome, crisis, or both.

He takes a short breath, the one I know means he feels left out already. He even hesitates, looking at me. But then he smiles, says, “Sure,” and I’m left alone with my mother, the thing I want, and don’t want, and crave.

“So?” she says. “Ready to come out of the closet?”

“Ha-ha.” I take off my jacket and drop it on the couch.

“So you’re not ready.”

“How can I be in the closet if you’ve already told me I’m gay?”

She smiles, not reacting at all to the resentment in my voice. “Are you gay, Sarah?”

I cross my arms over my chest. “Probably,” I mutter. “I’m not straight, anyhow.”

“Good enough.”

We look at each other. Crow’s feet have started to deepen around her eyes, as have the lines at the sides of her mouth. They make her look fierce and kind at the same time. As if age can only make what shines out of her more beautiful.

How I hate that I see this. And yet I want to reach her because of it. I want to tell her everything I can’t articulate to myself.

“I might have a girlfriend,” I say. “Or a girl/boyfriend.”

“Gender queer?” she asks.

I glare at her. “You know, if you’re too cool, it’s not cool at all.”

“So, she’s gender queer?”

“Oh, my God, Mom. Yes, she’s gender queer.”

My mother’s dark blue eyes darken further. Whatever she’s seeing isn’t what I want her to see. What I want her to know, what I’m afraid of her knowing, what I’m dying to blurt out except for what she might think of me. She stands in her standard black pants, in her untucked minister’s shirt, in her practical shoes, the silver attachments for her collar pulling the cloth open at her neck. Tall, still pretty in that corn-fed way, her face intelligent and kind as she looks at me.

“Mom?” I blurt. “Did you ever love someone, like, before Dad?”