LETHE: Book One
(full copy available on request)
The Bathroom
Rose never told anyone why she was always in the bathroom—her husband assumed that her
“difficulties” originated in the distant past. She had been married for twelve years before she met the
Doctor, and that was nearly a life-time ago when she lived in a cramped city apartment without any
privacy. Not until she moved into the house in Barclay Park, with a spacious marble bathroom all her
own, was Rose finally able to have a moment of peace.
And these moments came frequently. Something went off in her mind, like a trigger, that told her she had
to go, she had to go. Rose hurried to the bathroom, remembering that she shouldn’t hurry, because just
last week she fell and bruised her upper thigh on the hard marble tiles. Her fingers reached for the edge
of the vanity top as she sidled her way to the toilet. Once she was safe inside the little chamber, behind
the fogged glass door, Rose tried to shut everything out of her mind. She tried to relax. And sometimes
she fell into a state of deep concentration, wherein the magazine rack on the wall, the toilet paper
dispenser, and the little chamber itself disappeared. During these moments, she was absolutely alone,
and the noises that had been eddying around in her mind all day long, became suddenly still. Then she
would hear a quiet sound, like a stream, flowing directly beneath her.
But nothing ever seemed to come out. (Sighing.) Her focus continued—and she could almost feel
something giving way—but no, there was nothing. Her imagination was deceiving her again. She
always thought that she had to go to the bathroom. Maybe it was just another false alarm. She waited.
Ten minutes longer. Twenty minutes. She picked up a magazine, Reform Judaism.
Rose’s bathroom looked like one of those grottos in the South of France where sunlight peeps in through
a crack in the cave and reflects off the crystal ponds inside. Orchids and azaleas were set in brass at
the foot of the oversized marble Jacuzzi. Bonsai plants sat on high nooks. The polished floors were
grey and glistening, and mirrors gave the illusion of infinite space.
Despite the splendor and security of Rose’s bathroom, every so often her son, Lethe, tramped inside,
busted open the fogged glass door, and saw his mother’s naked thighs wedged over the toilet seat.
Startled by her son’s intrusion, Rose flexed the great wing-shapes of her arms. Don’t you dare come in
here Lethe Bashar—she spat out at her son, shooing him away with her large, flapping arms. Don’t you
dare, don’t you dare. Leave Mommy alone. I said I’m busy. Leave me alone.
Lethe reads with his father
Expelled from his mother’s bathroom, Lethe retreated down into the basement where his father sat in his
pinewood study, skimming medical journals and examining X-Rays or speaking into a voice-recorder.
His father’s study was the size of a guestroom, with an Italian leather sofa, a large hardwood desk and a
New World globe poised on a wrought-iron stand. Four columns of bookshelves filled with
encyclopedias, history books and a collection of leather bound Classics, extended across the walls on
each side of the room.
Lethe’s father held X-Rays up to the light as he identified the different types of bone fractures and jotted
down some notes. When Lethe stormed into his private study, he beckoned him closer with an
outstretched arm, and the little boy nestled his head into the side of his father’s ribs. While Lethe could
be restless at times, his father knew how to tame him by applying a small pressure to the nape of his
neck. Feeling the pinch of forefinger and thumb, Lethe squirmed to get away.
“I heard your mother screaming.”
Lethe’s eyes grew big and expressionless.
“Were you bothering her again? You know you’re not supposed to be in her bathroom. Lethe? Are you
listening to me? Do you want to read now?” Lethe’s father bundled him into his arms.
“Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver’s Travels.” The boy’s high-pitched voice rang out.
Together they sat on the Italian leather sofa and exchanged turns reading from Swift’s masterpiece. The
Doctor had a passion for literature, and young Lethe watched his father’s face change expression, his
voice become fantastical and dreamy.
“Very good, very good. Continue.” He patted his son on the head.
Sometimes after finishing a chapter, the Doctor digressed into a story about the country where he was
born.
“No, I want to read more Gulliver—”
Again the Doctor affectionately pinched the nape of his son’s neck, and young Lethe responded by
sinking back into the leather sofa.
“Do you know why they call Iraq the ‘the cradle of civilization’?”
The little boy shook his head, angling his eyes to the closed book on his father’s lap. “You told me this
story already—”
“Iraq is called ‘the cradle of civilization’ because that’s where civilization began. The soil was rich
between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. It was good for farming so people settled around these
areas and built villages.”
The boy didn’t seem to be listening. “Tell me about Grandma. I want to hear the story about Grandma.”
“That’s fine. I’ll tell you the story about Grandma. But tomorrow night we’re going to talk more about Iraq’
s history.”
Lethe mashed his lips together.
“You can’t ignore history, little man. History is bigger than you think. It’ll eat you up when you’re not
looking”
The boy was silent. “I want to hear the story about when Grandma used to take you to all the different
people’s houses.”
“That’s fine. But you’ll have to promise to go to sleep after that.”
“I promise—did you live in a big house when you were my age?”
“Yes we lived in my Grandfather’s house and there were ten of us.”
“You said it was a mansion.”
“Yes, it was very big.”
Housecleaning
After his marriage to Rose, the Doctor bought a big white house for his wife and children to live in. Rose
adored this two-story modern house and it was her obsession to make sure it never fell into a state of
disorder. Depending on whom you asked, some said that Rose’s need to keep her house spotlessly
clean was a neurosis, while others upheld that Rose simply enjoyed having a clean house, or that she
was a perfectionist with high standards. With the exception of the Doctor’s pinewood study, everything
in Rose’s house conformed to white or marble. Rose was preoccupied with the appearance of her
house. Hidden spots of dust and dirt threatened her household ideal, reminding her of her previous life-
time when she lived in a cramped city apartment. Every morning she walked through the halls, searching
for fingerprints her two children may have left during the night.
Housecleaning was an activity that had to be engaged on many levels. There was the weekly scouring of
the house—and there was the regular, daily cleaning. A grey van packed with Polish and Slavic ladies
arrived at Rose’s house every Thursday morning to accomplish the former of the two missions, which
entailed bleaching the grout between the tiles, cleaning out the refrigerator, vacuuming all the rooms,
cleaning mirrors, wiping windows, polishing cabinets, and various other jobs that are too numerous and
picayune to list here. The battalion of cleaning ladies was distinct in purpose and duty from the two
regular housekeepers who also acted as nannies. In accomplishing her vision for a clean house, Rose
wanted two women who could act as her right hand men.
Dora broke stride down the tiled hallway nearly twenty times a day. Her tall, lanky build and vigorous arm
movements resembled the idiosyncrasies of the ostrich. The brunt of the work fell on Dora, who was
younger than Mabel, and who strove to meet Rose’s often unreasonable demands for a clean house.
She also worked in Rose’s art studio, building frames, stretching canvases, and banging nails into
wooden beams. Often Dora and Rose worked side-by-side, whether they were scrubbing floors or
cleaning paint brushes.
In addition, Dora and Mabel made the beds, changed the sheets, tidied the bedrooms, did the laundry
and dusted the blinds. They also emptied the garbage cans, watered the plants, did the grocery
shopping and made school lunches. On most days, they also prepared dinner. After a day’s worth of
cleaning, the house looked completely anonymous, and Lethe and his sister had the strange impression
they were staying in a hotel. Their rooms were in perfect order—the only thing missing—a mint on their
pillows.
The Obsessive Artist
Lethe and Mazzy saw that their mother escaped downstairs into the basement and sometimes did not
return to the upper floor until the next morning. During Rose’s stints of oil-painting, the housekeepers
took care of the children, preparing Macaroni and Cheese dinners, or helping Lethe and his sister with
their homework.
Rose worked tirelessly in her art studio, making numerous sketches, arranging scenes for her models,
and hovering anxiously over a large commercial easel. Night and day, the glare of extension lights
reflected off the walls in a harsh, artificial brightness. An old wine box overflowed with tubes of oil paint,
and horsehair brushes soaked in turpentine. Open cans of solvents and paint thinners gave off a
burning, astringent odor that lingered in the air and made your eyes water.
In the corner of the room, a breakfast scene was erected with a small table, chairs, and a television.
Mabel and her husband, Ernie, modeled for Rose. Mabel was a small woman with curly, white hair. Her
husband, an ex-truck driver, had round shoulders and a large, sedate body. In the pictures, Mabel
usually stood beside her husband nervously, tentatively, either fixing the breakfast or getting ready to
leave the house. Ernie, in contrast, was always eating at the table or napping in a wingback chair. Rose
used lots of props in her paintings, some of them incongruous with the scene itself. Scattered across the
floor of her studio were the objects she had collected over the years, African tribal mask, ceramic owl,
mannequin, gas mask, snake cage and sailor’s trunk. In the background of Rose’s paintings, we see
two geese hissing at each other. Flocks of Canadian geese lurked around the perimeter of a nearby
lake and wandered into the residents’ lawns. From her studio-window, Rose looked out at the ill-
tempered birds, and they came to hold a symbolic meaning for her.
In the beginning, Rose’s desire to paint was completely alien to her husband. He had never met an artist
before nor did he know what motivated a person to want to create art. He saw his wife’s painting as a
diversion, a hobby at best. When she transformed one of the rooms in the basement into an art studio,
he raised two concerns: (1) Rose was becoming obsessed with painting and (2) She was neglecting
her duties as mother and housewife.
And then, Rose began the habit of “dressing up”. When the Doctor came home one night, he found his
wife wearing purple tights, a white and black striped pullover and a red silk opera hat. She had painted
her face white with black teardrops under her eyes.
The Doctor exclaimed, “Honey, you look silly with that outfit on. Why don’t you go take it off?”
“After dinner—” she replied.
“But we’re eating as a family and you look like you’re in Vaudeville.”
Rose’s silverware fell to the floor—
She stood up in front of her family. Lethe and his sister were watching intently. The Doctor looked
alarmed.
Using hand gestures, Rose pretended to be trapped inside an invisible box. She struggled and
struggled to get out of the box. Her eyebrows flew up into her forehead and her small pupils became
frantic. The two siblings broke into a fit of giggles. The Doctor stared at his wife, blankly.
Christ Church of Barclay Park
In the beginning, Rose went to church only to please her husband . . .
The Christ Church of Barclay Park, a non-denominational Christian church, received a large amount of
charitable funds from the wealthy members of the surrounding area. The result of so many donations
was a beautiful sanctuary that held over five hundred people, with pews of dark mahogany, royal blue
carpet, and a panorama of stained glass windows. The stage of the chancel was divided into three
sections. On the far left of the stage, the choir’s high pews; in the center of the stage, a small baptismal
altar; off to the right of the stage, a leafy alcove with giant Roman candles in gold stands. This is where
the Reverend and the senior Pastor sat during the service. To give his sermons, the Reverend had to
ascend to the pulpit. The pulpit, a work of art in itself, was an engraved block of wood representing
scenes of the Resurrection and had been commissioned by the Church Elders.
Occasionally, she had panic attacks. The Church in these moments took on a sinister aspect, and she
felt, among the hordes of Christians, as if she were suffocating. She stood up in the pew, facing the
congregation. The mottled faces seemed to be staring at her with a uniform look of disapproval. She
scrambled out of the aisle, stepping over people’s feet in her haste. The Doctor called out to his wife
and began following after her.
They stood in the empty hallway outside of the sanctuary. “What’s wrong?” the Doctor asked.
Rose’s face was flushed. “I can’t sit in there.”
“Why not?”
“I’m uncomfortable.”
“Why are you uncomfortable?”
“You’re pressuring me to be here. I’m Jewish.”
The Reverend and Rose meet
At times, Rose’s “neurotic” behavior was simply baffling to her husband. He couldn’t understand how
such a compassionate environment could excite such hysterical emotions in a person. He spoke to the
Reverend in private about his difficulties with his wife, stressing the importance of raising their children
Christian. In a calm, self-assured voice, the Reverend told the Doctor not to worry. He asked the Doctor
to arrange a meeting where he could sit down with Rose and discuss spirituality.
The living room, beige carpeted with curio shelves and a white grand piano near the window, was rarely
used. Rose asked the members of her family, in fact, not to go into the living room. The room was
meant to be on display. It was in this room, however, that Rose and the Reverend “discussed
spirituality”. Surprisingly, she was not averse to meeting with the Reverend. They sat next to each other
and Rose inhaled the Reverend’s cool scent of aftershave and peppermint Listerine. He told Rose
about his Dutch-Reform upbringing, his years as a Pastor in a small rural church, and then recently about
coming to the Christ Church of Barclay Park.
He reminded her of her own father, who had died many years ago. Her father had been a man of quiet
sincerity and she remembered him like an angel. The Reverend also seemed to carry that gentle
bearing. Both men had clear blue eyes and a soft countenance. Rose smiled at the Reverend’s good-
natured jokes and was enamored with his soft-spoken eloquence. He helped her to forget about her
negative experiences in the Church. Before their meeting ended, Rose got the idea to paint the
Reverend’s portrait.
“My portrait?” The Reverend asked, surprised.
“Why not?” Rose said. “If you’re willing to sit for me, I’m willing to paint you.”
“Well, I suppose we could give it a try. We might even be able to hang it in the Church.”
Rose was excited to paint the Reverend’s portrait. Her eyes lit up when he mentioned hanging the
painting in the Church. She knew that the Reverend was an important member of the community and
that a portrait of him could bring her recognition. The next week, having regained her self-composure,
she returned to church with her family.
The Doctor’s Christian Revival
During church service, the Doctor stole a loving glance at his wife. He was grateful that Rose was
coming to church with him and hopeful about her new affinity to the Reverend. More than anything else,
he wanted his wife to become a Christian like himself and to feel comfortable in the Church. He basked
in the lofty ideal of family happiness, imagining that the four of them would share a sacred bond, husband
and wife, son and daughter; together they would be as one.
He was also captivated by the hospitality of the church atmosphere, and since he had left Iraq, he felt
part of a community. He enjoyed rubbing elbows with the sociable members; after service he engaged
in fellowship as the congregation funneled into the large central meeting area, where coffee and donuts
were served. There was always a line of parishioners waiting to share a word with the Reverend and the
Doctor stood in this long line because he wanted to thank the Reverend for reuniting him with his wife,
and bringing her into the open arms of the church.
Now that his wife was attending regularly, the Doctor felt a need to participate more in church life. During
the three months that Rose was painting the Reverend’s portrait, he signed up for a church retreat, went
to weekly Bible studies and enrolled in a family values seminar. He also registered his son and daughter
to take confirmation classes.
The Doctor’s enthusiasm for church was sharply curtailed by his twelve-year old son’s unabashed refusal
to obey his father’s orders. This caused a great uproar in the Bashar house. Almost overnight, Lethe
seemed to have grown into a monster. The youth’s “unruly, obnoxious, intolerable” behavior not only
threatened the Doctor’s sense of order and stability but Lethe was becoming a nemesis to his father’s
lofty ideal of family happiness. While the Doctor meticulously prepared to have his family ready for
church by nine-fifteen on Sunday mornings, now it was becoming a habit of Lethe’s to linger in his
bedroom, waiting until the last minute to get dressed. As the gray Oldsmobile sat in the driveway with
the engine running, the Doctor rang the doorbell several times. Still without his tie on, Lethe came to the
door.
“Put on your shoes and get in the car.”
No answer.
“PUT-ON-YOUR-SHOES.”
No answer.
“GET-IN-THE-CAR-NOW.”
Finally Lethe grabbed his coat, slipped on his shoes and hurried to the car.
The Doctor calls his son through the intercom
The intercom system of their house, built in the 1980’s, was semi-functional, capturing only traces of the
human voice, and transmitting static and incoherent echoes into the serpentine hollows and voids of the
interconnecting circuitry. Because the members of the Bashar family gravitated to their own isolated
parts of the house, dinner being the exception when they all met together in one room, speaking through
the intercom system became the standard mode of communication. One member of the family often
demanded the presence of another member in their part of the house, and no matter what the speaker’s
mood, once words were catapulted through the cacophony of the intercom system, the result always felt
like a babble of anger and resentment.
Lethe could barely make out his father’s words through the intercom system. But at nine o’clock every
night he was expected to meet his father in the pinewood study for their reading hour. Lethe had grown
to despise reading with his father. He was too old to be reading out loud. Next year he would be a
freshman in high school. The last time his friends read to their parents was in the second grade. Lethe
began to suspect something was wrong with him. He grew self-conscious reading out loud with his
father every night.
For the Doctor’s part, he cherished the time he spent with his son in the evenings. It was a father’s job to
broaden his son’s horizons, and what better way than reading Classical Literature? Of course, there
was a selfish motive too, why he wanted to read with his son. This was the nostalgia Lethe’s father had
for certain books, which reminded the Doctor of his own childhood and adolescence. And there was
another reason. A father and a son had a duty to bond with each other—reading together provided the
perfect opportunity. Sometimes, during their reading hour, the Doctor took a moment to instruct his son
on beliefs and principles that were dear to him.
“Do you know the definition of the word, ‘kin’?”
“No,” his son answered wearily. “Can we be done for tonight?”
“Not yet. I want to tell you something before you go to sleep.”
“What?”
“I want to tell you about the meaning of the word ‘kin’.”
Lethe stared blankly at his father. “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
“It means . . . . blood relation. A family sticks together no matter what. It’s different from your
relationships to your friends at school and to your teachers and other adults. ‘Kin’ are the people who
are related to you through blood. Like your aunts and uncles, Grandma and Grandpa. Your Sister and
me.”
“And Mom?”
“Yes. And your mother. Because family is a bond you can’t ignore. It’s very hard to separate from the
family. If you do it leaves scars. Permanent scars. Lethe, are you listening to me? As a family we’re
dependent upon each other. We help each other out. That’s what ‘kin’ means: we’re ‘blood’.
Understand?”
“I think so.”
An extended family problem
In the middle of the afternoon and then later, the telephone rang, both times an older man with a raspy
voice asking for Rose’s husband. Rose told the older man that her husband wasn’t home and that he
should call back after six o’clock. The second time the man called he identified himself as Uncle
Japhed, the Doctor’s great uncle. He told Rose that he had not spoken to his nephew for over three
years, and he was planning to visit him. Rose was silent.
“Hello? Hello?” The older man crowed.
Expressing some hesitancy, Rose mentioned that she would have to talk to her husband.
“What was there to talk about?” Uncle Japhed wanted to know. Finally had come the time, the great
uncle declared, when Salem’s parents in Iraq wanted to reconcile with their son, and the rest of the
family, those living in Massachusetts, also wanted to show their “happy love” toward the married couple.
“The whole family—plans to be there next weekend.”
For the rest of the day, Rose painted furiously in her art studio.
When her husband came home later that evening, she told him about the unexpected calls from Uncle
Japhed. An aura of happiness appeared on the Doctor’s brow. He hadn’t spoken to his aunts and
uncles in years.
“Did he leave his number?”
“Before you call him back, Salem—we need to talk.”
“Talk about what?”
“About your family coming to visit.”
“Did they say they were coming to visit?”
“Yes.”
“That’s wonderful. I’ll call him right away.”
“They can’t stay at our house.”
“What do you mean? We have a guestroom, don’t we?”
“I don’t want them in my house.” Rose declared.
“But they’re family—”
“I’m family. The kids are family. In America, people stay in hotels when they come to visit. It’s ‘low class’
to have all your two dozen relatives stay at your house. Nobody does that except poor people!”
He heard her talk like this before; it was a preoccupation of hers to be seen as “low class”. But that had
nothing to do with his family. His family in Iraq was wealthy. It was her family who had lived in poverty for
most of their lives.
“What’s the point of a guestroom if we’re not going to use it?”
“It’s occupied. I’m using the guestroom for my artwork.”
“But you have your own ‘art studio’.”
“Yes but I keep extra canvasses in the guestroom. It’s storage space. I already told you, Salem, nobody
is staying in my house.”
Was it wrong to want to see his mother and father? His wife stirred up feelings of guilt, she was good at
that. He felt ashamed to invite his relatives to his house because he couldn’t provide them with the
traditional Middle Eastern hospitality. He wanted his house to be open to everyone, friends, relatives,
acquaintances, because that’s how it was in Iraq. But his wife wouldn’t let him. She put restrictions on
him. He had to conform to her rules, which meant losing parts of his identity.
Rose unveils the Reverend’s Portrait
For the night of the unveiling, the Doctor hired a private chef and two waiters. The chef would prepare
garlic mashed potatoes and rosemary braised lamb shank with mint jelly on the side.
During the day, the housekeepers were busy bringing fresh flowers into the house, preparing trays of
assorted cheeses and arranging other fine delicacies from gourmet food shops. Rose too was busy as
she traveled into the city to get her hair done at her favorite salon, where she told Eduardo, her stylist,
that she wanted “something a little more artsy done to her hair.” Eduardo said he had an idea in mind
and shaved Rose’s entire head except for a wave of hair that fell over her forehead. To add to her
artistic look for the evening Rose put one long dangling silver earring in her right ear, and just a stud in
her left.
As Rose prepared herself in the marble bathroom, Little Mazzy sat on the rim of the oversized Jacuzzi.
Rose’s daughter had Eskimo eyes and cropped jet-black hair. She was a very tiny little girl, and her
mother’s bathroom was like a palace. The bright lights and mirrors, the plants hanging from high places,
the powders and perfumes pumped into the air, produced a fairy-tale-like effect in the child’s mind. She
loved to sit and watch her mother try on different outfits, and fuss in her grown-up way over which
necklace to wear with which dress. Once Rose had even shown her daughter how to use a lip-liner and
an eyebrow pencil.
To the little girl, the enormous closet in Rose’s bathroom was forbidden world. Her mother told her never
to go inside because the dresses were so expensive and she didn’t want them to get damaged. But the
shiny fabrics and hundreds of pairs of shoes called out to Little Mazzy during the day, especially when
her mother was painting, tempting the little girl to sneak into her mother’s closet and stuff herself in
between the garments. She inhaled the heady perfumes clinging to the wardrobe in the dark.
Rose plucked her eyebrows with meticulous care. She glanced up at the mirror four or five times every
thirty seconds. But then it seemed Rose had made a mistake. She had plucked too much—there was a
loss of symmetry. Mazzy watched her mother become fretful.
“What wrong?” Her daughter asked.
“I’ve plucked too many eyebrows, sweetie.” Rose said taking a deep breath and moving away from the
mirror.
“Never do that. Never pluck too many eyebrows. You’ll look sick, diseased. Like a cancer patient.”
“Where mommy? I don’t see anything.”
“Yes, sweetie. Just look. Look at my face. It’s obvious. I look horrible now.”
This could only be expected. Because no matter how much attention Rose devoted to her physical
appearance, there would always be something that would show itself at the last moment, confounding
her. For example, if her makeup was done perfectly, then she’d notice a chip in her nail polish. Or if her
nails were done perfectly, then she’d find a flaw in her hair. She could never get everything perfect at the
same time.
This was just how Rose felt right before the Reverend and his wife came over to her house. Before
having company, she always became extremely nervous. Hosting dinner parties was nerve-wracking to
Rose. She worried about her clean house. She worried about her hired help. And when the guests
arrived, she was thinking about their hands and how they might have touched the walls, their glasses and
how they were placed precariously on the edges of tables, their shoes and how they were spreading dirt
on her white carpet.
When the Reverend arrived, a cloud of tear-jerking perfume, Poison, followed Rose from the bathroom
into the lighted hallway, and then, at once, the Doctor appeared. As the Reverend introduced his family,
Rose caught a sour look from his wife who was wearing a gaudy dress which she did not find very
tasteful. The Reverend’s daughter was a facsimile of her mother with a long brooding face.
The much-awaited painting sat in the living room with a satin sheet covering it. The spotless, white room
held an aura of suspense and mystery partly as an effect of this crimson veil and partly as an effect of the
immaculate state of Rose’s house in general. The Doctor and the Reverend sauntered down the long
marble hallway, commenting on what an exciting occasion this was for everyone, while Rose took the
ladies for a quick tour of the house.
Over dinner Frances told the story of how she met the Reverend at Wheaton Christian College, when
both of them were studying theology and “looking to strengthen their faith in marriage.” The Doctor’s
thoughts, however, strayed to the painting in the other room. He couldn’t seem to keep his mind on the
dinner table. He wanted this occasion to be special for his wife, but for some reason he was getting the
impression that things might not go as planned.
Though well-intentioned, Frances had a nervous habit of prattling on about her husband. She heaped
praise after praise onto him, as if unknowingly. The praise was so abundant that Rose thought she too
should say something nice about the Reverend, if only to keep things on an even keel. Rose recalled
how after a day of modeling he got up from the armchair and walked around to the front of the canvas.
Surprised to see himself in the painting, he chuckled out loud, “Yes, that’s me, I suppose.” Then he
became quiet all of a sudden, pensive. She told this story to the table, but the Reverend’s wife and
daughter did not seem interested.
After dinner, the waiters brought out lemon-tarts on white doilies. The Doctor glanced into the adjoining
room and saw a corner of the crimson sheet and nothing else. The Reverend’s daughter sipped her
coffee. The Reverend seemed satisfied with his meal. At last, Rose ushered the party into the living
room as the Doctor made the joke, “drum-roll please.”
The Reverend walked forward into the center of the room. His wife and daughter hung on the periphery.
Rose pulled off the satin sheet and awaited the first words of affirmation. Mother and daughter narrowed
their tiny pupils simultaneously.
“It’s . . . gothic.” The Reverend’s daughter blurted out.
“I’m not very fond of it.” The Reverend’s wife rejoined.
In that moment, Rose knew that her portrait of the Reverend would never hang in the Christ Church of
Barclay Park. There was glint of pain in Rose’s eyes, receding into her distracted glare. Then Frances
said dryly that they could not accept the painting. Her husband looked too stern, too serious. The
painting bore no resemblance to the Reverend whatsoever.
“There are two parents in this house.”
After the night of the unveiling, Rose stopped going to church with her husband. Now she stayed home
on Sundays and painted in her art studio. And it was not long before young Lethe also refused to go to
church.
The grey Oldsmobile was parked in the driveway, the engine humming with steady agitation, as the
Doctor pressed the doorbell.
From his bedroom, Lethe could hear the chime. Rose rushed to the front door.
The door opened, the Doctor’s booming voice came in, a freight of sound traveling throughout the house
all at once, “IT’S NINE-TWENTY FIVE. WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE AGAIN. I TOLD HIM THE LAST
TIME THAT IF HE DIDN’T—”
“He’s not going to church today.” Rose said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Lethe is not going to church.”
“He doesn’t have a choice—”
“I’m a Jew, Salem. Remember? Which means if Lethe wants to be a Jew, he can go to temple instead.”
“Don’t start this nonsense with me again! I told him if he wasn’t ready by nine-fifteen, I’d ground him for
the entire month.”
“Stop yelling at me. He doesn’t have to go to church. He’s old enough to decide. Leave him alone.”
Marrying an American woman, he had only been asking for this sort of thing. When his mother and father
heard about Rose, they threatened to never speak to him again. (1) Jewish (2) Divorced (3) With a child
from a previous marriage. These were three big strikes. But the Doctor married Rose anyway. He didn’
t want to marry a woman from his own country. He had been attracted to Rose precisely because she
was independent and strong-willed. But lately her strong will was getting in the way of their marriage.
Everything between them was turning into a battle. Frustrated, the Doctor stepped back from the
doorway and got into the grey Oldsmobile without his son. Little Mazzy was sitting in the backseat with
her hands in her lap, like a stone effigy.
Lethe had heard the whole argument from the hallway. The youth usually hid in some corner of the house
to listen to his parents feuding. The aggravated, rising tension in their voices drew his attention like steel
fillings to a magnet. He liked to spy on his parents.
Rose found her son crouched beside the wall. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“There are two parents in this house. Don’t you forget that.”
“So I don’t have to go to church anymore?”
Instead of tie and jacket, Lethe threw on a pair of extra-large sweatpants. He followed his mother down
into her art studio. “You can watch me paint if you want,” she said.
The paint-bespattered radio was tuned to the voice of Garrison Keillor. The room was cluttered with
canvases and slats of mirror-glass leaning against the walls. Rose had already begun another painting.
The Reverend’s portrait was in the closet.
Church attendance drops
Under the Doctor’s stern and demanding exterior, he too was beginning to question the weekly ritual of
church-going. As a child he had attended a Jesuit high school. In Iraq, religion was interwoven into the
social and public life. Nobody had given him a choice of what religion to follow as his wife was
suggesting they do for Lethe. The whole family went to Church because it was a fundamental part of life.
The Christ Church of Barclay Park had its charms; the friendly atmosphere; the service; the sermons; the
people; of course, the Reverend. And in a sense the Doctor was carrying on the tradition of church-
going from back home. His desperate need for his wife to attend church and become a Christian was
not something he reflected on very much. When Rose told him that Lethe did not have to go to church
anymore, the Doctor was silent for several days. Night after night, he tried to figure out how this situation
could have arisen.
And then the strangest thing happened. One or two weeks out of the month, the Doctor began skipping
church service. It almost felt like he was twelve years old and playing hooky. Especially because the
Church Elders had been calling him for months. They wanted to know when he was ready to become a
Church Elder. But the Doctor had observed these church-fellows on Sundays, how they stood by the
pews like robots, directing the congregation and handing out programs mechanically. They had
hunched, smallish shoulders and a morbid seriousness about them.
The Doctor never had the “belief in Christ” that the Church Elders were always talking about. He simply
enjoyed the ritual of going to Church once a week; it reminded him of back home. When it came to
doctrine, he recoiled.