“I don’t care what the gas company says!” Dad yelled. “Just rip it out! Get rid of it!”
Of all the experts dispatched to investigate Mom’s illness, it was a plumber who finally solved the mystery. In early January 1981, a family friend who ran a plumbing/HVAC business went down to the basement and, on a hunch, pulled back the casing of the gas furnace. And there it was: three or four pinholes in the heat exchanger. Every time the heat came on, he explained, low levels of carbon monoxide had been escaping and circulating through our tightly sealed, energy-efficient home. Somehow the gas company had missed it. The friend helped Dad tear the heavy steel machine from the wall and throw it on the front curb, where it lay mangled and disarmed.
To confirm a diagnosis of carbon monoxide poisoning, Dr. Winston ordered a carboxyhemoglobin test, which would show the saturation level in Mom’s blood. An amount over 2 percent in a nonsmoker is a classic indicator of CO poisoning; over 24 percent, and you risk cardiac arrest.
Mom’s results came back at 25.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dr. Winston said.
We later learned that it’s common for the homemaker to be hit hardest by a carbon monoxide leak. In our case, Dad spent most days at his office, breathing clean air, and I was at preschool or running around in the backyard with friends. But Mom worked inside all day, battling dizziness, headache, and fatigue. And the worse she felt, the more she stayed in the house.
With the mystery now solved, Dad sent me and Mom to live with a neighbor while he worked quickly to detox our home. He bought and installed a new gas furnace and electric water heater. Friends from church helped him rip out two thousand square feet of wall-to-wall carpeting, which might have contained formaldehyde or other chemicals that would trigger Mom’s dizziness. They then worked their way through the house collecting rugs, cushions, and furniture pillows—anything with a chemical odor or under suspicion—and piled them in an upstairs guest room, a place we dubbed “the abandoned room.” It all had to be stashed away until Mom got better.
But despite Dad’s hard work, as soon as we moved back into our purified house, Mom got sick again. Even with the new furnace, her heart raced whenever the heat came on. So Dad turned the heat off. It was the dead of winter, and in order to keep warm, we slept in scratchy wool sweaters and hats, underneath layers of heavy blankets. It felt suffocating; to this day, I hate the feel of wool.
“What are we going to do?” Mom asked Dad one night, clearly in distress.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s freezing, and we can’t stay here if the house is still making you sick.”
He decided that we’d stay a few days at Mom’s parents’ place in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he’d make more calls and dig deeper into home-purification research. If the situation didn’t resolve itself, we’d stay with Dr. Winston’s family until Dad figured out our next move.
My grandparents’ house smelled like mothballs, musty carpets, and onions. Still, it was cozy and warm, and I loved it there. My feisty grandmother, who went by Garni, was always padding about her white linoleum kitchen floor, cooking savory stews and talking with her hands. After dinner, she would scold Mom for depriving me of sweets, and then sneak me handfuls of plastic-wrapped hard candies that made me hyperactive.
For as long as I can remember, sleep has been my enemy, action and constant movement my allies. And bedtime at Garni and Pop-Pop’s house would arrive at the worst times—often in the middle of a James Bond movie. Hopped up on sugar, I’d sneak out of my bed in the attic and tiptoe down the stairs, secretly listening to Sean Connery persuade beautiful women to do things I didn’t yet understand.
Pop-Pop, my grandfather, was quieter than Garni, with a big smile and a hidden mischievous streak. He taught me how to fish in a nearby limestone stream and gave me piano lessons on an old three-tiered organ in the house. My legs were too short to reach the foot pedals, but I pressed the keys with intensity.
“You don’t have to bang them, Scott,” Pop-Pop would say. “Gently does it!”
The pipe was Pop-Pop’s one vice. He’d light up in the basement while rigging our fishing poles, and a whisper-thin trail of smoke would waft upstairs to Mom, plaguing her with chronic headaches. Other times, the smells of hairspray and perfume would assault Mom when Garni returned from the salon, or the neighborhood ladies dropped by for tea and biscuits. At the first hint of a vapor, Mom’s head would tighten, and she’d get fidgety and nervous because she knew the pain was coming. After a while, even the aroma of Garni’s kitchen became too much for her.
“Mother’s cooking with onions again,” she’d complain to my dad on the phone. “She knows how sick they make me, but she keeps using them.”
She tried opening the bedroom window and stuffing rolled-up towels under the door, but nothing really worked. She’d leave the house and go on long aerobic walks in the nearby woods, angry about her predicament, angry that her parents didn’t understand her illness. But then she’d remember that the Bible and her new faith told her to thank and praise God for everything.
“Praise you for that onion, Lord. Praise you for the onion,” she’d repeat, pacing a new path in the tall grass at a furious clip.
By mid-January 1981, Mom still hadn’t found relief, so we moved again—this time to the home of Dr. Winston and his wife, Arlita. We stayed with the Winstons for six glorious weeks while Dad worked to fix our toxic house once and for all.
The Winstons were a gold-medal Christian family: loyal and kind to one another, firm with rules and expectations. They assigned each of their five kids thirty minutes of chores a day (dishes, laundry, bed making), and they kept a list on their refrigerator door of other jobs the children could do to earn extra money (washing windows, mowing, polishing silver). I was five years old, my parents’ adored only child, and had few responsibilities—that is, until the Winston kids taught me how to sweep a porch, rake leaves, and empty a trash can.
Every morning, as the Winston kids bounded down the stairs with full backpacks and marched off to school, I would do my best just to keep up. After school, the boys would throw me over their shoulders and roughhouse with me. They were athletic kids, and at any given moment, one of them would be heading off to a baseball tournament or wrestling match.
The Winstons taught me things about family and teamwork that have stayed with me to this day. And my parents learned that their only son could stand some firm discipline every now and then. It all started one bone-chilling cold day, when Arlita and Mom decided to take me on a walk.
“Get your jacket on, Scott,” Mom said for the fifth time.
“But Mommy,” I said, batting my eyelashes at her. “I don’t neeeeeed to.”
“Scott, please, just put it on,” she pleaded.
“But I don’t get cold when I’m walking and running!”
Mom chased me around the house, upstairs, downstairs, holding out my little red coat with extended arms, begging me to wear it. I wasn’t the type of kid to throw a tantrum or pout. I knew that persuasion and charm went a lot further than whining. I also knew that Mom rarely had the energy to outlast me.
Arlita Winston, however, was different. After watching this dance for thirty minutes, she spoke up. “Joan, stop,” she said. “Are we going for a walk or aren’t we?”
“But he won’t get his jacket on,” Mom said.
“And who’s in charge?”
Mom looked at me and crumpled into tears.
“Joan, I know you want to be a perfect mother,” Arlita told her. “And Scott is a bright, creative child. But you have to teach him to obey you immediately. Delayed obedience is disobedience.”
Arlita totally had my number. Mom used to call me a pint-size lawyer, as I guess most kids are. But Arlita and Joe were like Supreme Court justices, presiding over their five kids. Whatever parenting magic they seemed to possess, it worked. And before they knew it, my parents were watching in awe as I got right in line behind the Winston kids, welcoming the discipline, the chores…and the music lessons.
The Winstons required each of their children to learn an instrument, so there’d always be a cello, recorder, or clarinet lying around the house. When we moved in, I gravitated to their grand piano, though rarely playing it gently as Pop-Pop had instructed. Soon, I was pounding the keys at Sunday school, leading one hundred little worshippers in rousing renditions of “Jesus Loves Me.” Years later, I got barred from the church band for a whole month because I kept sneaking up the volume on my keyboard amplifier.
“Scott, this isn’t about the music,” the pastor said. “This is about worshipping God.”
I tried, unsuccessfully, to explain to him why the keyboard was the most important part of the ensemble and therefore should be the most audible. I was certain God agreed.
In the evenings, Dr. Winston would build a roaring fire and we’d all sprawl out on the couches or pillows on the living room floor. Arlita would bring out trays of cookies and hot cocoa, and we’d take turns reading aloud from The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, Sherlock Holmes stories, or Shakespeare’s plays.
Although I never dared tell my parents, I secretly wanted to be adopted by the Winstons. To me, they were like the Brady Bunch: a perfect, all-American family of seven. In comparison, we were a weird threesome who lived in a cold house with a sick mom and no couch cushions.
One night toward the end of our six weeks with the Winstons, I heard Dad asking Joe and Arlita to pray for us. “I’m thinking about whether to sue the gas company,” he said. He ticked off all the costs he and Mom had taken on: a new furnace, a new hot water heater, medical bills with no end in sight. As a matter of principle, shouldn’t the company have to pay? Dr. Winston listened patiently and then asked Dad if he was ready to endure months or even years of litigation if the gas company decided to fight back.
“The effect that could have on Joan’s health and on your family’s spiritual well-being—it may not be worth it,” he said.
Dad took Dr. Winston’s advice. When it came to Mom’s illness, he didn’t want to be bitter. “God will provide for our expenses,” he told my mom later that night.
In exchange for not suing the gas company, my parents received a settlement check in the mail for $1,500. When I was old enough to understand how little we received for our pain and suffering, I was offended. Oops, we’re so sorry we poisoned you and ruined your life! Don’t spend it all in one place! For Dad, though, the matter was settled forever.
“Now, Joanie,” he said. “We simply have to forgive them.” He meant it, too.
Shortly after my parents proclaimed their forgiveness, Dad and I were approached by a local photographer to model for an ad campaign. Dad said yes, thinking it would be a fun father-son activity. For about an hour, the guy took a bunch of shots of me holding a football and talking to Dad as he pretended to read his newspaper. When it was all over, I got $50.
Weeks later, my parents picked up the local paper and were shocked to see our photo in a full-page ad for…a gas company.
Dad held the paper up and laughed out loud. “You know, God!” he said. “What a sense of humor you have.”