“You were saying,” he said, his voice wooden, as he pulled her back down next to him. “Oregon.”
“Yes,” she said, dreading the telling of her own story.
“How often do you visit?” he asked.
“Never.”
“But why?” Calvin almost shouted, shocked that she could throw away a perfectly good family. One that was still alive anyway.
“Religious reasons.”
Calvin paused, as if he might have missed something.
“My father was a…a type of religious expert,” she explained.
“A what?”
“A sort of God salesman.”
“I’m not following—”
“Someone who preaches gloom and doom to make money. You know,” she said, her voice filling with embarrassment, “the kind who rants about how the end is near but has a solution—say a specialized baptism or a pricey amulet—that will keep Judgment Day off just a bit longer.”
“There’s a living in that?”
She turned her head toward his. “Oh yes.”
He lay silent, trying to imagine it.
“Anyway,” she said, “we had to move a lot because of it. You can’t keep telling everyone the end is near if the end never comes.”
“What about your mother?”
“She made the amulets.”
“No, I mean, was she also very religious?”
Elizabeth hesitated. “Only if you count greed as a religion. There’s lots of competition in this area, Calvin—it’s extremely lucrative. But my father was especially gifted and the new Cadillac he got every year proved it. But when it comes down to it, I think my father’s talent for spontaneous combustion really made him stand out.”
“Wait. What?”
“It’s really hard to ignore someone who shouts, ‘Give me a sign,’ and then something bursts into flame.”
“Wait. Are you saying—”
“Calvin,” she said, reverting to her standard scientific tone, “did you know pistachios are naturally flammable? It’s because of their high fat content. Normally pistachios are stored under fairly rigid conditions of humidity, temperature, and pressure, but should those conditions be altered, the pistachio’s fat-cleaving enzymes produce free fatty acids that are broken down when the seed takes in oxygen and sheds carbon dioxide. Result? Fire. I will credit my father for two things: he could conjure a spontaneous combustion whenever he needed a convenient sign from God.” She shook her head. “Boy, did we go through the pistachios.”
“And the other?” he asked in wonder.
“He was the one who introduced me to chemistry.” She exhaled. “I should thank him for that, I guess,” she said bitterly. “But I don’t.”
Calvin turned his head to the left, trying to disguise his disappointment. In that moment, he realized how much he’d wanted to meet her family—how much he’d hoped to sit at a Thanksgiving table, surrounded by people who would finally be his because he was hers.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked.
“Dead.” Her voice was hard. “Suicide.”
“Suicide?” Air left his chest. “How?”
“He hanged himself.”
“But…but why?”
“Because my father told him God hated him.”
“But…but…”
“Like I said, my father was very convincing. If my father said God wanted something, God usually got it. God being my father.”
Calvin’s stomach tensed.
“Were…were you and he close?”
She took a deep breath. “Yes.
“But I don’t understand,” he persisted. “Why would your father do such a thing?” He turned his attention to the dark ceiling. He’d not had much experience with families, but he’d always assumed that being part of one was important: a prerequisite for stability, what one relied on to get through the hard times. He’d never really considered that a family could actually be the hard times.
“John—my brother—was a homosexual,” Elizabeth said.
“Oh,” he said, as if now he understood. “I’m sorry.”
She propped herself up on one elbow and peered at him in the darkness. “What is that supposed to mean?” she shot back.
“Well, but—how did you know? Surely he didn’t tell you he was.”
“I’m a scientist, Calvin, remember? I knew. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with homosexuality; it’s completely normal— a basic fact of human biology. I have no idea why people don’t know this. Does no one read Margaret Mead anymore? The point is, I knew John was a homosexual, and he knew I knew. We talked about it. He didn’t choose it; it was simply part of who he was. The best part was,” she said wistfully, “he knew about me, too.”