Jack

by Marilynne Robinson

  The scheme was so trivial it made him feel how overwhelming the darkness was. Whenever he did something he thought might be ordinary, marrying for example, it was as if he’d bought a ticket and a box of popcorn for an event everybody was going to, streaming in, the quick and the dead. And then the curtain would go up and it was the Last Judgment. What was he supposed to do with that ticket? He’d try to slip it in his pocket, to conceal an embarrassing misunderstanding no one else shared, and there would be no pocket, only his bare side, his bare leg. It was ridiculous that he still had his hat on. A terrible occasion he hadn’t really remembered to prepare for. His astonishment would damn him all by itself.

  He had stood still to think these thoughts, and then he began groping along the benches until he found the blanket, then along the benches in the direction he had come, then along the wall to the door. It couldn’t be hard to find a door he had just left, but the distance from one thing to the next kept seeming wrong.

  His entire life was an engrossing confusion, very small change cosmically speaking, and still anything at all could loom up like a great foreshadowing and accuse him. A baffled struggle in a dark place. A veritable Jabbok. Some laming involved. True enough. Point taken. When his pocket had given out the other day and his money had spilled on the floor, coins rolling in various directions—what genius decided that coins should be round?—he kept looking for that last penny because he knew he had five of them. Two quarters, two dimes, and five pennies. Four bought four hard candies, but five bought a chocolate bar. The petty dramas of his earthly pilgrimage. And still these overwhelming, Balthazarian revelations were visited upon him. Reprobate in any case, he tried to make it a point of pride to ignore them, insofar as they seemed only to point to his human vulnerability, of which he was wholly aware, thank you very much. So they became less nuanced, even blunt. The debt collectors began using their fists, for one thing. He hadn’t told Della about that problem. He imagined himself with Della on his arm, showing her the city by night, when they appear, suddenly, anywhere, and he turns out his mended pockets and they punch him, anyway, for laughs, and what about Della? A miserable thought, bright as a dream. He might have a knife in his pocket, a switchblade, and then: Surprise! You didn’t expect that, did you? There would be four of them, at most. If they got the knife away from him, who knows what might happen. They were always meaner. What about Della? She wouldn’t run away. She might be all right if she were a white woman. Ah, Jesus!

  He took off his jacket and hung it on the doorknob because his shirt was wet. He tried to wipe the sweat away from his eyes with his damp sleeve. Then he took off his shirt and spread it out on the floor as well as he could. The air was so still in that room, it would never dry, but he would have to put it on again as soon as he could stand to, to be out of there, out on the street.

  The point was familiar enough. He was guilty of exposing this wonderful woman to risks—no, call them dangers—that he could not protect her from. It was as if he were being forced to see his whole life under an unbearably bright light. Was. The experience was not at all subjunctive. He had always been drawn to vulnerability, to doing damage where it was possible, because it was possible. Della was an educated woman firmly ensconced in a good life. He was nothing, a mere unshielded nerve, a pang mollified by a drink or two, a shine on his shoes. He had let himself be deceived by whatever it is that does the deceiving. He should have realized. No, he had to have known, somewhere in that dark brain of his that knew the word “uncountenanced” before it knew the state capitals. So he had committed himself to harmlessness, and it was his harmlessness that made a joke of their stealing from him, he even pretending they had some claim on him, some debt to be settled, to keep the transactions simple and brief, so he thought. It was his harmlessness that would make a joke of God knows what humiliation of him with God knows what consequences for his colored gal. He was still sweating, fanning himself with his hat. It was so clear, so obvious. An honorable man would never have let things go this far. But she could still go back to Memphis. Her family might be angry at her, but they would protect her. Her family would see to it that she was safe. He could not. He would tell her he had reached a decision. The thought calmed him, though he would like to ask that preacher how he could enjoy a moment of grace and refuse it at the same time, a fair question, the kind preachers take seriously.

  It was so late it would be early sooner or later. Night to morning turned like an hourglass, darkness divided arbitrarily. One of those mysteries sustained by nearly universal consent. Clearly prowlers and insomniacs were never consulted. In any case, he could go sit on Della’s steps until the sun was well up, and then he would knock at the door. If the sister answered, no matter, because the speech he was composing in his mind would be just what she wanted to hear from him. Then she would know something about him that she could not tell by looking at him: he could be honorable. She would tell Della’s father how candid and well-meaning he had been in his farewell, and how deeply he seemed to feel the loss to which he was nevertheless resigned. The whole business would be done within ten minutes. He could see past it already. He could draw his breath, almost light-headed with relief. “I have to give you up because I love you.” She would see his point. He would have to nerve himself to glance at her face, but he could do that. It shouldn’t seem too easy, since he believed that would hurt her. He knew how badly calculated his attempts at charm could be. Slick. But at worst that would make things final, which was the whole idea. She would think she had finally seen him for what he was, and honor would be served, at some cost in regret, which would involve him in fantasies of making things right to relieve the misery now and then. He went down the stairs to the street.

  He had rolled up his sleeves, left his collar unbuttoned, tipped back his hat. A breeze chilled him. He was carrying his jacket slung over his shoulder and the blanket under his arm. A black couple, out late, dressed up, arguing pleasantly—“No, I didn’t,” “Why yes, you did!”—smiled and said hello. He felt like part of the neighborhood sometimes, his familiarity made interesting by his stealthiness. He said, “Good evening.” At night the streets looked calm, solid, darkness hiding the decrepitude brought on by Eminent Domain, the giant that would fell forty churches. “Condemned” is the word they used. Bedamned. Steeples and sanctuaries bedamned. Even the very poor churches had managed a peaked window or two, or some lesser elegance that meant here we sing, here we pray, here we tell our children who they are. And all that life was condemned for the ground under it. He sat down on a stoop.

  Della’s church would be gone, and the house she lived in gone, too, condemnation certain, though every other part of the great plan was still being weighed. His own church would be gone, where he had known he could always go for a plate of beans and a little painful candor. Surely the Baptists would remove that rather bad painting of Christ ascending that hung behind the choir, put it away somewhere before a wrecking ball exposed it to the street, where its awkwardness, desacralized, ungraced, would make a joke of it. It was the earnest sign of solemn hope. It was a gloss on a beautiful text in the form of a clumsy image, which, he sometimes thought, if no other provision was made for it, he would steal and carry away to his room. It was hard to get a sense of its scale from the last pew, but he thought it would probably fit through his door edgewise. After that, decisions would be made. To stand upright it would have to be tilted, which would take up some part of a small space, from the floorboard to the foot of his bed. He’d have to move the dresser. This big, vivid, floating man did not square precisely with his own Presbyterian notion of Christ, but respect was owed. It might do him good to sleep under those blessing hands. If the desk clerk was astounded by a geranium, what would he make of this? The whole idea was ridiculous. The pastor probably knew the painter’s name and where he lived and how he fared or where he was buried. He might have six cousins in the choir. This Jesus was family, and he would be seen to.

  Exposure was a particular nightmare of Jack�
�s even when he was not reminded of it by walking through these streets. He imagined all the papered walls, too pretty or too bright, the shadows of vanished furniture showing that they had once been prettier and brighter. Gaping doorframes, the ghosts of stairways. The rooming house he lived in would be excellent material for demolition. The apparent pathos of its bared interior would align with reality exactly. But his side of town was under no threat. Why should he feel guilty about this? Perhaps because, an adult male from a fine family with a plausible claim to a little education, he had absolutely no influence of any kind. He was not dust in the scales. This was a condition to which he had once aspired, which he could no longer think of as exonerating. He could watch with a certain joy a wrecking ball making splinters of that oversized hovel he called home, since Jack the Cat was safe in Memphis and the desk clerk would have been warned ahead of time. But this was no part of any plan. The shadow of Civic Improvement would pass over his house, and there would be no more weeping and gnashing of teeth in it than usual.

  If he was going to spend the night on a stoop, it might as well be Della’s. He put on his jacket and tied his tie. The sister could be the first one to open the door. It wasn’t as if he had much to lose, as if her opinion of him could suffer any decline. Or it would be Della who opened the door, in which case he would rather not seem too hapless. He imagined himself making a dignified exit from her life, insofar as possible. He almost succeeded in persuading himself it would be better to go back to his room, to talk with Della in a clean shirt, with a fresh shave. He walked a block in that direction before he admitted to himself that he was very likely to lose his resolve. This was the kind of struggle he had often found himself sleeping off on a bench somewhere. And why assume her last impression of him would have a special importance? She had seen him drunk, as phony clergyman and roué; she had seen him as well turned out as circumstance permitted. She could be angry or scornful or wistful or embarrassed, and her memory would choose from the range of Jacks, narrow as it was, to suit her state of mind. He knew he would definitely have a place in her memory, for the misfortune he had been to her, and would continue to be, as long as she felt his effects on her good name and her father’s hopes. Ah, Jesus. Was he talking himself into or out of that final conversation? Having done so much harm, was it really the honorable thing to walk away from it all? He had done that once, so long ago, and there were still leaden guilt, merciless dreams.

  Ducking out was different from acknowledging the impossibility of going on together when the whole world has made and kept this infernal compact, making transgression and crime of something innocent, if anything could be called innocent, a marriage of true minds. Yes. Exacting from them a precious thing it had no right to and no use for. He could say this to Della, to be sure she would realize that he was saying goodbye because they were caught in a great web that made every choice impossible. He would be telling her something she knew much better than he did. There is always a risk in that. He must resist the temptation to lament to her as if the sorrow were his, when the whole brunt of trouble was already coming to bear on her. He had the distance between where he stood and where she might find him to decide if lamenting was a good idea, not simply an overwhelming impulse. Her composure was among the things that were beautiful about her. He might disrupt the courage and discipline and pride that sustained her. He could simply say, “I know you understand my decision. Of course you do. I thought this is what you might want to say to me. If you had, I’d have understood entirely.”

  When he came within sight of Della’s house, he could see she was sitting there on the porch steps in the dark, bent over as if she were reading, though she could not be reading. There she was. It was because he had spent so long nerving himself for this conversation that he was a little bewildered when he saw that it would not unfold as he had imagined it would. He had not anticipated the privilege of this long moment when he had not yet said what he had come to say. He took off his hat.

  When he saw that she had looked up at him, he said, “It’s Jack,” so she wouldn’t be alarmed. She laughed. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up, Jack Boughton.” She stood up and came to him and took his arm.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was expected. It’s not the sort of thing I would forget—”

  “I prayed you would come.”

  “And here I am.”

  “And here you are.”

  “This is very interesting. I thought I was engaged in a grim struggle with a decision, whether to come here or not, when there was no decision to be made. I was cosmically ensnared.”

  She nodded. “I plan to do this often. I get tired of sitting around waiting for the mail.” They were walking arm in arm away from her house, toward the darker streets. She was happy to be with him, resting her cheek on his shoulder. She said, “I’m thinking how this could work. I could make you eat a few square meals. I could snuff out all your nightmares—”

  “Thanks. You know, I might not be Jack without my nightmares. That’s all right with me. It’s just that I’ve never figured out the source of my appeal. So you might want to remember that random benevolence has risks. I do appreciate the thought.”

  She nodded. “I was drunk with power. I was about to give you a raise.”

  “Very kind.”

  “I know you’d just spend it on neckties.”

  He laughed, but he didn’t really feel like laughing. Dear Lord, he had never considered what he actually knew, which was that she considered this marriage real and thought of their dear friendship as ongoing, abiding, perpetual. These were not words he had ever found much use for. It was no doubt literally true that she had in fact prayed that he would come by her house, which struck him as extremely remarkable. There is a difference in kind between what you want or wish for and what you pray for. It would require some thought to figure out the ways in which this is true, but it is true. And into this moment he came with his goodbye, which he had told himself she would surely understand. What a stupid thing that would have been to say to her. He felt himself blush.

  She said, “You’re quiet.”

  “Della,” he said, “I’ve had a strange night. My boss gave me keys to the studio, the place where I work. So I can come early and open it up. That plan I mentioned—I thought if you met me there we could have a couple hours away from the world. I decided I’d try it out before I wrote to you about it. It was actually a very bad experience. Not that anything happened. I was just there by myself. An hour alone with my own worst enemy. I really roughed me up. You probably think I should be used to that. I thought I was.”

  “So you came to me! And I was waiting for you.” She said, “I was really hoping you’d come because I’ve been having some troubles myself. Trouble sleeping, for one thing.”

  “Is your sister still here?”

  “Yes, she is. She’s been almost living in that phone booth by the corner. Now she’s saying my brothers might come to St. Louis, at least two of them. Apparently they’ve persuaded my father to talk with me one more time. I’ll go home for a few days. I’ll have to do that. I love my father.”

  “Of course.”

  “All this scheming going on, all about me, and I’m just watching it happen. Every now and then Julia remembers to give me a little information. My mother is in on it, too, of course, planning everybody’s favorite dinners so we’ll all be in a good state of mind.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “I’ll just have to live through it. The hard part is that there’s no use in it. I’m going to disappoint them.” She said, “You’ll be praying for me this time. That they’ll let me come back here, first of all. I know this is not some kind of abduction, but—keep me in your prayers.”

  This would be the time to say something about understanding entirely if she decided to go back to her family, about how he would completely respect that decision. Then again, if she did stay in Memphis, he might be less miserable if he didn’t remember helping her find
the words, didn’t see them in the letter she would surely send him. She stopped where she was, and he put his arm around her. He said, “You know, I plan to try to find a real job. That might make things better.”

  She shook her head. “He doesn’t believe in marriage between the races. I probably don’t either.”

  “Is that a fact! Then I have a confession to make.”

  “You’re white? That’s one of the first things I noticed about you!” She laughed. “I thought, If that man is ever hit by a sunbeam, somebody better call an ambulance.”

  “Nocturnal habits.”

  “You really could use a little color. If you’re ever out in daylight, you might take off your hat.”

  “You don’t know what you are asking.”

  She laughed. “I have a general idea.” She said, “Let’s go to that studio of yours. We could still have the place to ourselves for an hour or so.”