I suddenly can't speak. The image of my mother, engulfed in flames, it isn't soon going to leave me. I can feel the tears coming again. This time they are gentle, no embarrassing sobs, no paroxysms of inconsolable grief. Carl is looking at me, his face all concern and gentle care.
"How are you?"
"Mom tried to kill me. She wanted to take me with her."
"She didn't want you to suffer as she was suffering."
"Well, she didn't try hard enough, did she?"
"What has your dad told you?"
"About my mother? Very little. That is one cupboard door he was never too eager to open.
"What do you remember?"
"Nothing. I only remembered her death just tonight."
It is now completely, totally dark outside. The window next to Carl's head is but a black rectangle opening out onto the eternal void.
I continue my narrative: "My grandparents helped dad remortgage the house so he could go to theological seminary. He was going to become an Anglican priest."
"Did he ever remarry?"
"No. He raised me alone. He took on almost a monastic kind of life and discipline, for an Anglican something very unusual. But I don't think my father, in his heart, really totally converted to Anglicanism. He didn't like the idea of compromising his faith with the world. He always saw himself as a bit of an outsider, or kind of an outpost, a connector between a church that is so ignorant of anything that isn't middle class status quo, and the marginalized and despised of the earth. He always had the most incredible love for people who suffered, for the hurting, the unwanted. Our home became for many a perpetually open door. I did become a bit embarrassed with his clinging to the evangelical wing of the church, but even if he never bought into their fundamentalism, for him, they were the Anglicans who were the least theologically impure. And then he got into that stupid conflagration about same sex marriage. I almost disowned him..."
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