many times in the years since the explosion, but it wasn’t until he came
to Harvard, and I saw him set against my life there, that I realized how
severely he’d disfigured himself. That awareness reached me through
the eyes of others—strangers whose faces changed when he passed
them in the street, who turned to get a second look. Then I would look
at him, too, and notice how the skin on his chin was taut and plastic;
how his lips lacked natural roundness; how his cheeks sucked inward
at an angle that was almost skeletal. His right hand, which he often
raised to point at some feature or other, was knotted and twisted, and
when I gazed at it, set against Harvard’s antediluvian steeples and
columns, it seemed to me the claw of some mythical creature.
Dad had little interest in the university, so I took him into the city. I
taught him how to take the T—how to feed his card through the slot
and push through the rotating gate. He laughed out loud, as if it were a
fabulous technology. A homeless man passed through our subway car
and asked for a dollar. Dad gave him a crisp fifty.
“You keep that up in Boston, you won’t have any money left,” I said.
“Doubt it,” Dad said with a wink. “The business is rolling. We got
more than we can spend!”
Because his health was fragile, my father took the bed. I had
purchased an air mattress, which I gave to Mother. I slept on the tile
floor. Both my parents snored loudly, and I lay awake all night. When
the sun finally rose I stayed on the floor, eyes closed, breathing slow,
deep breaths, while my parents ransacked my mini fridge and
discussed me in hushed tones.
“The Lord has commanded me to testify,” Dad said. “She may yet be
brought to the Lord.”
While they plotted how to reconvert me, I plotted how to let them. I
was ready to yield, even if it meant an exorcism. A miracle would be
useful: if I could stage a convincing rebirth, I could dissociate from
everything I’d said and done in the last year. I could take it all back—
blame Lucifer and be given a clean slate. I imagined how esteemed I
would be, as a newly cleansed vessel. How loved. All I had to do was
swap my memories for theirs, and I could have my family.
My father wanted to visit the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York—
the forest where, according to Joseph Smith, God had appeared and
commanded him to found the true church. We rented a car and six