Matters of Faith Read Free

stopped eating red meat and feel so much better, you should really think about restricting meghan’s exposure to additives and stuff . . .), and her sleeping habits, ( i don’t know mom ), and skirted around the issue of her religion with vague questions about her family ( they’re really close . . . some interesting ideas . . . their church sent her to school on a full scholarship ).
    I researched vegetarianism and whole foods and stocked up on tofu and grains, and in the week leading up to their arrival I stopped work altogether, closing the door to my studio with three paintings in various stages of restoration, and worked on cleaning the house.
    Meghan’s allergies had turned me into a late-in-life clean freak, and our home was spotless most of the time. After the first horrifying anaphylactic episode when she was two—a friend’s daughter babysat and made Meghan homemade Play-Doh out of peanut butter—we’d gotten her tested for other allergies, and the results changed our lives. A whole host of airborne irritants threatened Meghan’s airways: dust mites, an endless variety of flower pollens, dander, mold. And food allergies, peanuts and shellfish, threatened her systemically. Thank God she was fine with fish, or our entire livelihood would have been threatened.
    Now our home was tiled throughout with only a few scattered throw rugs, no more drapes, no more overstuffed sofas. Marshall’s two cats had been pressed upon neighbors, and I learned how to steam clean everything.
    But this was different. This wasn’t cleaning for my daughter’s health; this was cleaning to impress. We didn’t have many house-guests, and I was a bit surprised to find that there was a difference. Meghan and I got haircuts, and she talked me into buying her two new tops, several pairs of shorts, and flip-flops with rhinestones on them, all of them a clear maturity level above what she had been wearing.
    Two days before their arrival, I put fresh sheets on Marshall’s bed, smoothing his pillows, running my hands down the spread, tugging at wrinkles that weren’t there. I missed him. His fresh-man year at college he’d come home as often as he could, called every other day, made me feel needed and missed. But this year I was lucky to get an e-mail once a week, and questions about his friends and classes that he used to answer readily had been met with silence.
    All natural, of course. All the way it was supposed to be. And, in fact, Marshall’s pulling away had probably come later than might have been considered normal. But then Marshall had never been a typical kid.
    I dusted his dresser, picked up the large wood cross he’d hung all his necklaces on, and wiped under that as the pendants swung and clinked against each other—crosses, crucifixes, ankhs, and spirals and stars—mixing happily, without rancor, the way their representative religions seemed unable to manage in the real world. I fingered the gold Star of David that Ira’s parents had given him after their son’s funeral.
    Poor Ira. At least his end had come rather quickly. There’s not much time for suffering when you are, literally, hit by a train. It was Ira’s parents who suffered, and Marshall, of course. Cal would say that was where all of Marshall’s issues started, but Marshall and I had been having theological discussions for years before that.
    True, it had escalated, more rapidly than I’d been aware of at the time. But he’d also been on the cusp of puberty, a natural time to start exploring the larger questions in life.
    Marshall’s first cross, small and silver, on a thin leather cord, hung between Ira’s star and a red, knotted kabbalah string. I clicked it with my fingernail and looked around Marshall’s room one last time, wondering what Ada would think of the lack of decoration—no posters, no sports equipment in the corners. Aside from the necklaces