call the family to order. To be the other was to be among those called.
I knew my yearning was unnatural. This knowledge, like so much of
my self-knowledge, had come to me in the voice of people I knew,
people I loved. All through the years that voice had been with me,
whispering, wondering, worrying. That I was not right. That my
dreams were perversions. That voice had many timbres, many tones.
Sometimes it was my father’s voice; more often it was my own.
I carried the books to my room and read through the night. I loved
the fiery pages of Mary Wollstonecraft, but there was a single line
written by John Stuart Mill that, when I read it, moved the world: “It is
a subject on which nothing final can be known.” The subject Mill had
in mind was the nature of women. Mill claimed that women have been
coaxed, cajoled, shoved and squashed into a series of feminine
contortions for so many centuries, that it is now quite impossible to
define their natural abilities or aspirations.
Blood rushed to my brain; I felt an animating surge of adrenaline, of
possibility, of a frontier being pushed outward. Of the nature of
women, nothing final can be known. Never had I found such comfort
in a void, in the black absence of knowledge. It seemed to say:
whatever you are, you are woman.
—IN DECEMBER, AFTER I had submitted my last essay, I took a train to
London and boarded a plane. Mother, Audrey and Emily picked me up
at the airport in Salt Lake City, and together we skidded onto the
interstate. It was nearly midnight when the mountain came into view. I
could only just make out her grand form against the inky sky.
When I entered the kitchen I noticed a gaping hole in the wall, which
led to a new extension Dad was building. Mother walked with me
through the hole and switched on the light.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” she said. “Amazing” was the word.
It was a single massive room the size of the chapel at church, with a
vaulted ceiling that rose some sixteen feet into the air. The size of the
room was so ridiculous, it took me a moment to notice the decor. The
walls were exposed Sheetrock, which contrasted spectacularly with the
wood paneling on the vaulted ceiling. Crimson suede sofas sat cordially
next to the stained upholstery love seat my father had dragged in from