Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science by Lucia Greenhouse Page B

don’t show it. I know it was a joke—but it felt like a jolt. Grandpa is Dad’s stepfather, and Uncle Nick and Uncle Truck are Dad’s half brothers. Still, I have always felt fully my grandpa’s granddaughter. That we are Ewings and not Morrisons has never, until now, been pointed out.
    We march up to the dining room, where there are, in fact, two tables set. The big table has place cards for all the grown-ups, plus Olivia. The lower table is for the rest of us, and there is no division along last names. Jane rearranges the place cards at our table so that we can sit together. I feel only slightly relieved.
    In the living room, a fire crackles and blazes. I survey the room and allow its familiarity to soothe me because I am suddenly feeling like I’d rather not be here. On one wall hangs the gilded portrait of Grandpa as a younger man, clad in a khaki-colored military jacket, complete with medals and badges, sitting erect with his arms folded on his desk, peering discerningly right into my eyes.
    You are my Grandpa too, I think.
    Yes, I am, he seems to be saying.
    Jane and I plop down on one of the sofas by the fire. On the coffee table, we spot the small, familiar photo album, in aged brown leather, with HIGHCROFT embossed on it in gold. We nestle together and hold the book between us, poring over the yellowing black-and-white photos encased in crisp cellophane sleeves. Ammie’s maiden name was Heffelfinger, and her grandparents built Highcroft. I used to laugh at the funny-sounding name, and poor Olivia was teased mercilessly for it when grade school classmates discovered it was her middle name. But over the years I’ve heard enough stories, and seen enough pictures, to know that Heffelfinger is a name my family takes pride in. When people say “She’s a Heffelfinger”—and they actually do—even though it’s not my name, I feel connected, anchored.
    The first photograph shows the front of Highcroft, buried in several feet of snow. From the size of the trees flanking the brick house, and the Classical entrance, it looks like an important house, and even though it was torn down several years before I was born, the picture fills me with a satisfying pride. Another picture shows the same view in summer. Each window is shaded by an awning, the kind I have seen at country clubs. I count twenty awnings on the front of the house alone, not including the third-floor windows, which are bare. A third picture shows the back of the house from a distance, with a three-story colonnade partially shaded by two tall trees. In the foreground is a sprawling lawn.
    I prefer the pictures of the outside of the house to the ones of the inside. The interior pictures remain lifeless, gray, and cluttered. We skip over these to find our favorite picture: the summer gardens, with huge swaths of well-tended flowers, which I visualize as pink and white.
    In the buffet line
, Mom and the aunts serve food from chafing dishes set up on the sideboard. Everyone knows to stand behindhis or her assigned place and wait for Grandpa’s nod to be seated. Then, in silence, with bowed heads, we hold hands and listen to Grandpa’s soft, commanding voice: “Bless this food to our use, and us to Thy service. Amen.”
    Then he raises his glass. “Here’s to family, to those of us who are here”—Grandpa pauses. Gazing over the room, his eyes fall on each of us (including the Ewings)—“and to those of us who cannot be here.”
    In my head, I count those missing: Uncle Sherm, Dad’s brother who is a rancher in Calgary; his wife, Aunt Claire; and their three grown kids. Dad’s sister Aunt Nan, who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, with Uncle Dave. They have six kids, three in college, one in boarding school, two still at home. And Dad’s other sister, Aunt Lucia, who lives in New Hampshire and is divorced. She has three, all grown. That makes twelve more cousins, twenty-three grandchildren in all.
    I think Grandpa has two more children—and maybe