The Art of Shame

I am home, after breakfast out with my mother and brother, because it is her birthday. The dread I had felt before—because our last phone conversation had been cut short by her sullen “Fine, whatever,” when I had said I didn’t know when I’d be stopping by next, and because her sullenness wears off of her but not off of me—dissipated during the pleasant breakfast, only to be replaced by a new one.

My grandmother went last week to be with her nephew, who tried to commit suicide for the third time on Valentine’s Day. His wife is leaving him and he can’t imagine his life without her. She wanted to pray the demons of death away from him, she said, but wasn’t sure what responsibility he would have to keep them away—if they came back, they would return with seven more, according to Scripture. She called the pastor to find out. I didn’t listen for the answer.

Grandpa is home by himself this week, as he was last week. He’s nearing eighty, nearing the point when his irritation seems more confused and irrational and his head for numbers has begun failing him. I save him a seat in church every week, finding this the only connection we can establish—the only connection we’ve ever established. I should go sit with him, this lonely week especially; I should be leaving right now.

I can’t. I can’t wish to go. I can’t wish to sit and sing and listen, though these are my family. Even for my family, I can’t go.

I sit until the time the service starts, in my apartment, justifying myself to a god I know must have been an invention. I can’t do this, either. I get up, collect my things, and go to the car.

Anyway, Mom will be watching out the window of her house a block away, waiting to see my blue Geo pass by and turn left. Sometimes she calls me just to see where I’m going.

It would be an offense to avoid her on her birthday, and the gift I ordered didn’t come on time, so I’m already one behind on her internal scorecard. Church is a reason to be away from her, something she accepted about me a long time ago, and I can’t spend time with her now; I’m too pensive, too inward, and this is something she has never accepted. My week has been spent in this state, thoughtfully, and I have relished time spent away from requirements.

Today is a day of requirements. I start my car and pull out.

Maybe I will go somewhere else, I think. Maybe I’ll stop and never make it to church. I’ll tell Grandpa I went to a different service, or that it was Mom’s birthday. Mom will think I went to church. I’ll stay hidden, safe. I’ll be myself, not responsible for anyone else.

I sigh.

I pull onto West Main St, hoping to be brave enough to pull into the Starbucks near the strip mall, though I hate Starbucks. I prepare to turn, but can’t—perhaps I can go somewhere else, take a walk or a hike or go to the park, so I continue.

At the intersection where I must turn to get to church, I do, exhaling in frustration. Grandpa might be at the service already. He might be trying to save me a seat. I can’t stand to think about this.

I try to turn away but fail, and arrive at the parking lot of the sprawling contemporary warehouse-style building that used to be a New England brick Swedish Baptist church.

If there are no parking spaces, I don’t have to stay. I bargain with god and myself as I always have, superstitious because of guilt.

I pull around the first leg of the parking lot, seeing a half-space where snow had been pushed back, but not enough. God can’t expect me to park in that: so far, so good.

Around the corner, there’s a space right near the front.

Shit, I think, but don’t pull in.

I go around to the front of the building, thinking to look for Grandpa’s car. He may have gone to the earlier service, actually, leaving me almost completely guilt-free. There’s another space right at the front.

Shit.

But I don’t pull in, again, and I don’t pull into a third one. As I am turning out of the parking lot, I see what I think might be Grandpa’s car in my side mirror.

Fuck. But I don’t turn around. I turn out, away, others pulling in, probably assuming that I had gone to the earlier service. This is important to me, that they think so. It is important that they not know.

Maybe I don’t hate secrets. Maybe I just have too many of them to keep, I think.

I drive toward Berlin center, thinking the library might open at noon on Sundays, that I might sit there until church would be over. It doesn’t open until 1, and it’s only 11:30 now. I turn around, though I wish I were driving away, anywhere flat and clear and fast—toward Pennsylvania, maybe, and past, into the plains, Nebraska, Utah. But I have work tomorrow, and it’s my mother’s birthday, and anyway, I don’t have the money for that sort of thing. I drive into New Britain.

I pass the road that would have taken me over the hill we rode the wagon down, when it was just me and Mom and one brother and we walked from our house to Laura’s in Newington. I pass the funeral parlor that had outraged me as a child, because it replaced a stand of trees that had punctuated the gas stations and auto-body shops of South Main St. I pass the Tae Kwon Do studio where my then-best-friend Kelly had taken classes and earned bruises that I envied. I pass Buell St., the first place I can remember living—number 49, third floor—where our Polish landlord would give us maroon-dyed eggs for Easter, which we would hide in the bottom of our baskets. I am driving toward the center of town, hoping to be soothed by the echoes of how I used to feel and be but knowing I will not find what I’m looking for. I turn away before I can be proven right.

As I pull onto the highway, headed back home, it occurs to me that I had never decided to go to church or not to go; I only drifted, struggling with myself until it was too late to decide anything.

How many decisions have I avoided?

I decide to go to the Starbucks in Southington.

I order a “large hot chocolate,” a small rebellion against the ubiquitous, commercial presence of a coffeeshop that warps people’s language into “tall, grande, and venti.” This is not enough to justify my presence here, but corporate guilt is familiar to me, and comfortingly universal. I will not use their internet—I will go to the Southington library and sit upstairs, at the table where the strange girls accosted me. I will stay for one hour, maybe one and a half, and I will purge myself of this wounded self-immolation.

I will buy my mother a pre-made birthday cake that will have to defrost for an hour, and I will return to her house as my youngest brother gets off work.

This will be your spiritual act of worship.

I will call my grandfather and explain that I did not go to church, and ask how he is. He will tell me about coupons he’s clipped and meals he’s eaten with male friends over the week, and give me the update on Grandma and her nephew, and he will kindly end the conversation after less than ten minutes.

This will be your reasonable act of worship.

I will love other things more than certainty and shame. I am trying. I will try.