After the final bell, I had an hour to kill before Mikey got out of soccer practice. So I drove down to the Texaco station and bought a pack of Marlboros. My plan was to drive around the block, smoke a couple, become a Systemite. The fucking Family. The utmost Systemite thing I could do was smoke a cigarette. (I wish I was kidding. But when big shot family leaders met in a public place, they’d smoke. They claimed the cigarettes were camouflage, but maybe it was just a convenient excuse to sneak a smoke. Obviously anyone looking at a group of adults standing together could think, You know, those people might be in a cult. Nope. Never mind. They’re smoking. Couldn’t possibly be a cult. Had me fooled for a second with those shitty haircuts.) I suppose I could’ve just eaten a bag of white sugar with a spoon, but smoking seemed cooler.

   So I lit a Marlboro. And I choked on the first inhale. I had to pull over in the Wienerschnitzel parking lot to finish. I thought I’d throw up, and I’d have to reconsider that white-sugar thing. But I fucking did it.

When I picked Mikey up from practice, I drove across the street to the bowling alley and parked (I wasn’t getting expelled for smoking on school grounds), lit another cigarette, and showed him the obituary. I expected shock, the same feelings that had overwhelmed me all day. What I got was a shrug. “You didn’t show that to anyone, did you?” He stripped off his socks and threw them onto the back seat.

“Who am I gonna show?”

“Are those any good?” He picked up the cigarette pack.

“The first one sucks. After that it’s okay.” I passed him the matches and he lit one. Choked. Threw it out the window.

“Just don’t show Mom,” he said. He might’ve meant the cigarettes, but I think he meant the obituary.

* * *

—

Gabe had bought into some franchise that treated restaurant and hotel floors with acid etching that was supposed to prevent slips, but all it did was stain the tile and sear your lungs. After dinner, he loaded his truck and left. Mom was watching ER in the living room. I took the now fuzzy page from my back pocket and handed it to her. She stared for a minute, then walked to her bedroom, the page dangling from her hand like she might drop it. Mikey was sitting on the floor, surrounded by his homework. “Don’t,” he said. But I’ve never been able to take good advice. I followed her.

   She was sitting on the edge of the tub, her face in her hands. “Did anyone see that?” she asked.

“It was in the paper,” I said. But I knew that wasn’t what she meant. “What did you do with it?”

“I flushed it. Jesus, Lauren. How could you be so stupid?”

“Mom, I didn’t show anyone but Mikey.” I lifted the toilet lid. Hoped I’d see the page floating. “Did you see him?”

“I thought he looked different,” she said. “Pass me the tissue.”

I handed her the box and sat on the floor, said, “Maybe if he’d shown his face, people would’ve left earlier.” Somehow I knew this would be the only time we’d talk about the Family.

“You can’t ever tell anyone.” She was desperate. She grabbed my hand and repeated it. “No one. Not your friends. Not your husband. They’ll never understand. We’d lose everything.”

I dug my toes into the pink shag carpet my grandmother would never replace. I thought that someday I’d have friends. I thought if I did have friends, they’d understand.

   “But you left,” I said. “You got us out.”

She said it wouldn’t matter. They’d never understand.

“Mom, I don’t understand,” I said. And I didn’t. I didn’t understand any of it.

“Neither do I,” she said. “I know I should apologize to you and your brother. But I don’t know where to begin.” Her shoulders shook, and I sat beside her, put my arm around her. I told her it was okay. “Are you smoking?” she said.

My first thought, always my first thought, was to lie. “Yeah. I bought a pack today,” I said.

She asked if I had any left. So we went outside and I dug the cigarettes and matches out of my glove box, lit one for both of us. We leaned against the trunk of my car, shivering in the cold, and watched the smoke curl in the frigid air. I’d always seen my mom as someone proud, my fierce protector. And she was. But underneath the calm on the surface, she was already more broken, more tortured than I’d ever be. She was fucking terrified. I agreed then to the charade we’d perform for the next twenty years. We would pretend nothing happened. We would lie until we began to believe our own lies.

* * *

—

For years, I kept the secret. Even if I’d wanted to tell someone, there’s no handbook to announce that sort of thing. I thought sometimes, back when I thought of it at all, that I should make a poster, like the ones we used to hand out. Maybe a picture of me on the front, like a lost kid poster: My name is Lauren. I was in the Family. It’s a cult. Nope, not that one. No Kool-Aid. Just an old guy who thought he talked to God. But what can I really tell you to explain my life? I know it’s fascinating because it’s so different. But it’s so fucking different. And no matter what I say, it’ll still be foreign to you.

   I can’t tell you what it feels like to live in a constant state of alert unless you’ve lived it. We watch horror movies because they’re fun. There’s tension. The dark room. The building music. The ominous threat. Then release. A cat jumps out of the cupboard. There’s no one behind the shower curtain. But in a cult, just like in any abusive relationship, there’s no release. It’s a constant threat. That sort of prolonged terror leaves a mark. But the problem with any sort of fucked-up childhood, just like any abusive relationship: you can’t talk about it because it’s a secret.