than everybody else. The whole world was wrong, but she had figured it all out. Very strict, very controlling.”
“What do you mean by ‘strict’?” I asked.
Cora described several prohibitions her mother had imposed, including a ban on the celebration of birthdays, Christmas, and other holidays.
“If anything bad happened to me,” she said, “it was because I was a sinner. It was because I deserved it. Instead of showing compassion or understanding or trying to help—you know, being a parent—my mother said things like that.”
I was dumbfounded. Westboro and this woman’s mother clearly did not draw from all the same wells, but their attitudes sounded remarkably similar: an unwavering certainty in their righteousness and a categorical disdain for any ideas that did not fit with their own. Although it saddened me to hear, I also felt a surge of recognition that made me oddly hopeful. Maybe it wasn’t just us. For so long, I had seen Westboro as an anomaly, unique among all the world. I feared no one would understand what that life was like, and it made me feel alone—cast out of our family and forever set apart from the world for all the years we had spent antagonizing others. Hiding from the past seemed like the only answer, and it was another reason we had come to this sleepy tourist town in the frozen Hills.
Grace and I looked at each other, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.
We turned back to Cora and told her everything.
“Next time,” she promised at the end of the night, “I’ll add a shot of Jack Daniels to your hot chocolate.”
* * *
It was nearing eleven the following morning by the time I finally awoke from a dead sleep. I opened my eyes and waited for them to adjust to the cold light pouring in from the windows just next to the head of the bed. I knew without looking that Grace was still asleep, her breath slow and even. Even under the blankets, I was shivering. I slowly sat up and scratched my sister’s head.
“Gracie?” I whispered.
“Emph!” she grunted in protest, pulling the blankets up to her ears.
I persisted. “Shall I go make us breakfast? Half a muffin and coffee?” We still weren’t eating much. There was another petulant grunt from beneath the blanket, but Grace opened her eyes and we bargained: I would go on a mission to find the kitchen and return with breakfast, while she did some more unpacking. I picked up a bag of English muffins and a can of Folgers instant coffee and headed downstairs. The kitchen seemed improbably small after the historic grandeur of the other rooms on the first floor—broad spaces with high ceilings, beautiful hardwood floors, and brilliant sunlight streaming in through huge windows that spanned most of the distance from floor to ceiling. When breakfast was ready, I returned to the attic and Grace and I got down to the main purpose of our trip: reading.
Back at the beginning of my communication with C.G.—Chad, I chided myself—he had introduced me to the writer David Foster Wallace. I’d begun exploring Wallace’s words in whatever forms I could find them—short stories, essays, interviews—and had shared them with Grace. We were particularly enthralled with a scene from one interview, in which Wallace recalled taking a year off from college to drive a school bus. He was unhappy, and there was much he wanted to read that wouldn’t be assigned in his classes. “And I read,” Wallace said; “pretty much everything I’ve read was read during that year.” Grace reminded me of the line in the weeks after we left Westboro, and it became an inspiration for our trip. I couldn’t think of a more suitable use of our newfound freedom: trying to see the world from the perspectives of others. Following Wallace’s example sounded like a grand adventure—an indulgence that would never have been countenanced at Westboro—but more than anything, it seemed like it might help Grace and me find some answers. We would only have one month before she’d have to return to school in Kansas for the spring semester, but it was better than nothing.
In preparation for our reading trip, Grace and I had gathered stacks of books from a few friends, and had also paid a visit to the Lawrence Public Library. While she had wandered off to the fiction section looking for Flannery O’Connor and J. D. Salinger, I’d asked a middle-aged librarian where I might find books on philosophy