This Is Where I Leave You

believe she really left,” he says.
    “Will you come down now?” Mom says.
    “I guess so.”
    But when he stands up to pull his leg back over the gable, his pants catch on one of the snow guards. He loses his footing and slides down the side of the roof, scrambling in vain to grab on to the slate shingles. There is time for him to gasp, “Fuck me!” as he slides down the roof and then over the gutter. He is briefly airborne, arms flailing, before landing hard in the hedges that line the side of the house. We all run around the corner of the house to find him lying flat on his back atop a crushed bush, looking up at the sky like he’s stoned.
    “Philly!” Mom shouts, falling to her knees in front of him. “Don’t try to move.”
    “You ever notice how much closer the sky looks when you’re lying down?” he says.
    “Can you move your legs?” Wendy says.
    “If I feel like it.” He closes his eyes for a second. “That really hurt,”
    he says.
    “I’m going to call 911,” Mom says.
    He opens his eyes and looks at her. “Mom.”
    “Yes, honey.”
    “So what, you’re like, a lesbian now?”

    7:30 p.m.
    Mom was taking care of Dad around the clock. When the stairs became a problem, they had a hospital bed installed in the den. Mom would put him to sleep and then go upstairs to sleep alone in their bed. She was tired and bereft and so Linda started spending the nights with her. One night, more as a distraction than anything else, Linda confessed to Mom that she’d had numerous female lovers in the years since her husband had died. Mom had never kissed another woman, a fact of which she was instantly ashamed. What kind of celebrity shrink hasn’t experimented? She owed it to her readers. “We were both sad and lonely and sexually deprived, and within minutes we were making out like a couple of high school kids.”
    No one really wants to hear the detailed story of how their mother became a lesbian, do they? That’s not bigotry. I never wanted to hear the details of her heterosexual sex life either. But Mom is ready to unload. She perches herself on one fat arm of the leather easy chair in the living room and tells us her story. Linda sits on the other arm, for purposes of symmetry. They have clearly imagined this moment before.
    “It started out as something purely surreal and physical.” Mom speaks in her TV voice, like she’s narrating the documentary of her bisexual awakening. “But Linda and I have been so close for so long. It was only natural that a physical relationship would evolve into something more.”
    “You make it all sound so perfectly normal,” Paul says.
    “Well, yes. That’s how it felt, I suppose.”
    “Except for the part where you were cheating on your dying husband.”
    “Paul,” Alice says.
    “No, it’s okay,” Mom says. “He knew.”
    “Dad knew?” I say.
    “Your father was a very enlightened man, sexually speaking.”
    “Our father?” Phillip.
    “Let me tell you a story about your father.”
    “Please don’t.” Wendy.
    Linda clears her throat. “Your father was always so good to Horry and me. He accepted us as family, he took care of our finances. When Horry was injured, and I was paying for all of his care, your father made our mortgage payments for a full year, so we wouldn’t lose the house. I would never have betrayed him. Hillary was the love of his life, and he died knowing she wouldn’t be alone. He told me that many times toward the end.”
    “So Dad was cool with it,” Phillip says.
    “He said he’d always sensed something there,” Mom says.
    “So why didn’t you tell us?” I say. “You’ve always been so open about your sex life.”
    “I didn’t want to complicate your grief. Mort was a generous and loving husband. He was a good father to all of you. He deserved to be mourned without any distractions.”
    Something occurs to me. “It wasn’t Dad who wanted us to sit shiva, was it?”
    Mom blushes and looks down at her lap. “Smart boy.”
    There are exclamations and groans of dismay from my siblings.
    “Oh, come on!” Mom says. “You knew how your father felt about religion. Or, rather, didn’t feel. I’m just surprised you all went along with it for so long.”
    “We thought it was his dying request!” Paul says. “Jesus Christ, Mom! What were you thinking?”
    “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the four of you to stay in the same place for more than a few hours? My husband, your father, had died. I