the dump many years before. Thick rugs with intricate patterns
covered half the floor, while the other half was raw cement. There were
several pianos, only one of which looked playable, and a television the
size of a dining table. The room suited my father perfectly: it was larger
than life and wonderfully incongruous.
Dad had always said he wanted to build a room the size of a cruise
ship but I’d never thought he’d have the money. I looked to Mother for
an explanation but it was Dad who answered. The business was a
roaring success, he explained. Essential oils were popular, and Mother
had the best on the market. “Our oils are so good,” he said, “we’ve
started eating into the profits of the large corporate producers. They
know all about them Westovers in Idaho.” Dad told me that one
company had been so alarmed by the success of Mother’s oils, they had
offered to buy her out for an astonishing three million dollars. My
parents hadn’t even considered it. Healing was their calling. No
amount of money could tempt them. Dad explained that they were
taking the bulk of their profits and reconsecrating them to God in the
form of supplies—food, fuel, maybe even a real bomb shelter. I
suppressed a grin. From what I could tell, Dad was on track to become
the best-funded lunatic in the Mountain West.
Richard appeared on the stairwell. He was finishing his
undergraduate degree in chemistry at Idaho State. He’d come home for
Christmas, and he’d brought his wife, Kami, and their one-month-old
son, Donavan. When I’d met Kami a year before, just before the
wedding, I’d been struck by how normal she was. Like Tyler’s wife,
Stefanie, Kami was an outsider: she was a Mormon, but she was what
Dad would have called “mainstream.” She thanked Mother for her
herbal advice but seemed oblivious to the expectation that she
renounce doctors. Donavan had been born in a hospital.
I wondered how Richard was navigating the turbulent waters
between his normal wife and his abnormal parents. I watched him
closely that night, and to me it seemed he was trying to live in both
worlds, to be a loyal adherent to all creeds. When my father
condemned doctors as minions of Satan, Richard turned to Kami and
gave a small laugh, as if Dad were joking. But when my father’s
eyebrows rose, Richard’s expression changed to one of serious
contemplation and accord. He seemed in a state of constant transition,
phasing in and out of dimensions, unsure whether to be my father’s
son or his wife’s husband.