By Blood by Ellen Ullman Page B

said it so quickly, blurted it out. All I could say was, He was born
what
?
    He was born a Catholic, she repeated. His father—
    Grandfather Avery?
    Grandfather Avery was a devout Catholic—
    What? Why didn’t Father say so?
    Because he and his father became completely estranged.
    Her mother stopped to sip her drink, then said: Over me.
    I never knew Father’s father, the patient said to the doctor. He died before I was born, my parents always told me. And no one ever talked about him. A few pictures once fell out of an old album, a thin, bearded man, that’s all I thought of him, and otherwise he didn’t exist for me. So I couldn’t bring this nonperson back to life, I mean in my mind, and didn’t stop to notice Mother’s face, and didn’t realize how long she’d paused. But now I think something like thirty seconds must have gone by before she went on to say:
    Your father converted when he married me. And because of this, his father cut him off. Completely. You see, your grandfather was not just a Catholic, but a traditionalist Catholic. Mass twice a day, confessions, rosary beads, murmuring Latin in the dark in a haze of incense. Bleeding Jesus crucifixes everywhere, even over the bed. Horrid to have the image of a man—even if he is the son of God, he’s a man—horrid to have a man nailed at the hands and feet bleeding over your headboard. That was their house, and it was what your grandfather expected of Father. Not only that, but the whole family was part of a group preparing to move to some big piece of property in southern Illinois. Five families were going, and your father—with a proper wife, not someone like me—was expected to join them. Your grandfather was a single man then—your father’s mother died long before all this happened—and he was going to be the patriarch, the wise layman leading the flock under the guidance of their guru priest. You see, it was a cult, a religious cult, although people didn’t call it that in those days. They just said they were “forming a religious community.”
    I couldn’t speak, said the patient to her therapist. I didn’t know what to think. I couldn’t imagine Father in a situation like that. He’s so sophisticated, looking more like David Niven every day, with his pencil mustache and cashmere sweaters, his virgin wool slacks breaking just so over his soft Italian loafers. Mr. Architect with plans rolled up under his arm. Mr. Perfect WASP. All I could manage to say was:
    I can’t imagine it—
Father
?
    Yes, said Mother. Father grew up like that. And he hated it. Hated them. They were evil to me, and to him, when he brought me home. All they could think of was the money they’d spent sending your father to architecture school in the expectation that he would build them their compound in the wilds of southern Illinois. People think “the Midwest” when they think Illinois, they think Chicago, but southern Illinois is the Bible Belt, right above Kentucky; it’s the South. They were going to a place called Mount—something with a
C
; I can’t remember; I suppose I’ve blotted it out—to their mount, there to be surrounded by Baptists and Lutherans, practically one church for every ten people, and teach them all the way back to the One Holy Apostolic Catholic Church.
    Mother laughed, bitterly, said the patient. Then she took three long pulls on her martini and tipped the last drop into her mouth.
    Mother! I said to her. You promised you’d go slow on that stuff.
    She lit a cigarette. Do you want to know all this or not? she asked.
    Yes, I said.
    So let me do this my way.
    Then she sat quietly for a while, smoking, just looking out the window. And I could see the bad memories coming back to her, crawling between her eyebrows and cracking her lips like ice. She went on to tell me about all the humiliations Grandfather’s family put her through, how they took her into a chapel and made her kneel for two hours as they prayed over her and nearly