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by Marilynne Robinson

  “Insinuating” is an ugly word, snakey. She’d have thought of a better one if she could. He had resumed his place in his father’s heart, that was clear. She believed that in twenty years there might have been four letters, because when she was newly returned to her father’s house she went to the big Bible with the altogether blameless intention of soothing her mind with a psalm or two, and the Bible opened on four letters, tucked between the Testaments. The envelopes were worn enough to make her think the letters might have some family interest, but when she saw the return addresses, she put them back unread. Whatever had passed between father and son, their father had not seen fit to tell any of the rest of them, at least as far as she knew. Jack had ceased to be spoken of, almost. Now here he was, without a word of explanation, crowding her out of that big, empty house, or so it seemed to her sometimes. I should leave, she told herself once or twice, to savor the thought of their surprise, their regret. What a childish idea. Then Jack would leave, no doubt, so that she would come back, as she would have to do, and her father would be plunged in sorrow of which she was directly the cause, and which would not end in this life.

  She was less inclined to pray than she had been once. In her childhood, when her father, a tall man then and graceful, had stepped into the pulpit and bowed his head, silence came over the people. He prayed before the commencement of prayer. May the meditations of our hearts be acceptable. It seemed to her that her own prayers never attained to that level of seriousness. They had been desperate from time to time, which was a different thing altogether. Her father told his children to pray for patience, for courage, for kindness, for clarity, for trust, for gratitude. Those prayers will be answered, he said. Others may not be. The Lord knows your needs. So she prayed, Lord, give me patience. She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord, my brother treats me like a hostile stranger, my father seems to have put me aside, I feel I have no place here in what I thought would be my refuge, I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse. But it cost her tears to think her situation might actually be that desolate, so she prayed again for patience, for tact, for understanding—for every virtue that might keep her safe from conflicts that would be sure to leave her wounded, every virtue that might at least help her preserve an appearance of dignity, for heaven’s sake. She did wonder what the neighbors thought, if anyone saw her in the street at that hour. Something fairly near the mark, no doubt.

  As she considered the prayer she was not yet disconsolate enough to put into words, the unwelcome realization came to her that she loved Jack and yearned for his approval. This was no doubt inevitable, since it was assumed to be true of the whole family, separately and together, excluding in-laws, who might never have met him or even heard his name, and who could only be a little amazed by the potency of this collective sentiment if by some means they became aware of it. He was the black sheep, the ne’er-do-well, unremarkable in photographs. None of the very few stories that mentioned him suggested the loss of him could have been wholly regrettable. It was the sad privilege of blood relations to love him despite all. Glory was thirteen when he left for college, having been by that time ignored by him for years. And here she was in middle age feeling the fact of his touchy indifference a judgment on her, so it seemed to her, though he had been so grievously at fault, and her intrusions all those years ago, her excesses, whatever he might have called them, were no such thing—she had defended them in her mind a thousand times and would defend them to his face if the occasion ever arose, which God forbid, God forbid.

  The thought had occurred to her more than once, even before the gradual catastrophe of her own venture into the world had come to an end, that “despite all” was a dangerous formula, and that the romance of absence was a distraction from more sustaining joys. Those years of her late childhood, when she felt so necessary, when she was so sure things would come right if only enough effort was given to making them come right—those years stayed with her as if they had been the whole of her life. The others hadn’t even known—not Faith, not Teddy. Her father said it was Jack’s choice to tell them or to be silent, since he might feel still less at ease with them if they knew, and not seek them out if the need arose. He might not come home when they came home, at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Her father told her with tears in his eyes that the three of them could alleviate Jack’s guilt and also his shame by making the very best of the situation. So she took up knitting. It was a deep secret. They were at work on a great rescue. Her parents talked freely to her or in her hearing about it all, trusted her, and she never breathed a word except to old Ames, whose discretion was perfect. It embarrassed her to remember how happy she had been, those three bitter, urgent years until it all ended. Her brother would never know the thousand things she had done to make life tolerable for him.

  Brothers. When she was a child, attention from any of her brothers was wonderful to her. It was rare, and it was wry, odd, not at all parental. Even Grace, who was older than she was by less than two years, tried sometimes to mother her, and Faith and Hope—such names!—were irksomely mature and responsible. But when any of the brothers noticed her, it was to swing her around by her hands or to carry her on his back or to show her a card trick or the husk of a cicada. When the boys had all gotten their growth, they were within an inch of one another in height, lanky young fellows with angular faces and unruly hair. Luke had left for school when she was four, Dan when she was seven. Jack and Teddy left the same year, the year she was thirteen, since Teddy was so good in school that he had skipped two grades. So when they were at home together, in the summer and at holidays, they took a conscious pleasure in it, and this was truer as the younger boys were recruited into the ranks of the fully grown. They joked and sparred and took off together in Luke’s old Ford, sometimes even to Des Moines, Jack with them if he could be cajoled. They were vain of their freedom and their manhood, of their cleverness and their long legs, but gentlemanly all the same, and vain of that, too. Their mother called them the princes of the church, and they did look fine, strolling into the sanctuary together in their jackets and ties, Bibles in hand, the three of them, and then sometimes the fourth. They said things like volo, nolo, and de gustibus and “Let me not to the marriage of true minds,” and she was in awe of them. Seeing Jack reminded her of those days. She knew the others now, after the manner of adult friendship. And fond as she was of them, it was hard to remember that they had ever seemed marvelous to her. But Jack was as remote from her as he ever had been, and she found herself waiting again for notice and approval, to her own considerable irritation.

  After a little while she went back to the house, thinking her father might be waiting up. But Jack had gotten him to bed and had gone upstairs to his room. The porch light was left on for her.

  THE NEXT MORNING SHE ROSE EARLY, EARLY ENOUGH THAT she could assume Jack was still sleeping, and she went downstairs to the kitchen, measured out coffee and made pancake batter, and then waited to hear her father stir, as he always did well before dawn, though it was his custom to wait to rouse himself until she came downstairs an hour or two later. Mornings were worst for him, and the tedium of lying awake wore on him, she knew. This morning and from now on she would do better by him. He loved pancakes. She would make them often.

  So when she heard him stirring, she started the coffeepot and the griddle, then she went into his room and helped him up, held his arm while he stepped into his slippers, bundled him into his robe. She brought a washcloth for his face and hands, and combed his hair.

  “Ready to greet the day, more or less,” he said.

  She said, “Pancakes.”

  “Yes, that’s wonderful. I heard you out there and I thought it was part of a dream I was having. I don’t remember the dream, but it had footsteps in it.”

  It had not occurred to her to look at the clock, assuming that, since she awoke feeling purposeful, w
ith a highly formed intention in her mind, it must be the dark of the morning. The clock on her father’s dresser said 3:10. He saw her look at it.

  “Pancakes are always welcome!” he said, mustering himself.

  “I can let you sleep for a couple more hours, Papa.”

  “Not at all! The smell of coffee,” he said, “has put all thought of sleep behind me! Yes!” and he moved with halting resolution toward the kitchen, and took his chair, and sat looking alertly at nothing in particular. So she gave him a plate and a knife and fork.

  “I’m afraid you children might not be getting along,” he said. This remark was so apt and abrupt it brought tears to her eyes. She turned to the business of making pancakes and said, when she could trust her voice, “It is hard, you know, after so many years—I was young when he left for school, and we were never close—” and she put a pancake on his plate. He took up his fork. She poured another pancake. “And I do think he feels uneasy with me. I’m not at ease with him, that’s a fact, and I might as well be honest about it—”

  She set the second pancake on the first, and her father said, “If you’ll put my foot on the stove there,” and something else, and she realized he was asleep. He was asleep with his fork in his hand and a sociable expression on his face. She couldn’t find it in her heart to wake him again, so she turned off the coffee and the griddle and the ceiling light and sat down at the table, too. And when she found she couldn’t hold up her head, she rested it on her arms, and wept a little, and drowsed a little. And then she heard Jack on the stairs.

  It was still long before dawn, so he switched on the light and as quickly switched it off again. He whispered, “What’s wrong?”

  She said, “Nothing, really.”

  “You’re crying.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “He’s sound asleep. You can turn the light on.”

  The light came on, and Jack stood in the doorway taking in the situation. “I did smell coffee,” he said.

  His father stirred in his chair, and Jack slipped the fork out of his hand. “It’d be a shame to waste those pancakes,” he said.

  “They’re cold.”

  “They’re still pancakes. Do you mind?”

  “I don’t mind. And there’s the cold coffee, too.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “Thank you.” He took his father’s plate and cup, filled the cup with coffee, and sat down to the pancakes. “This is nice in its way. But it’s a little strange. I don’t mean that as criticism.” Then he said, “You’re really not going to explain this, are you.”

  “No, it doesn’t matter. I don’t feel like it.”

  “Okay.” He laughed. “I’m always willing to play by the house rules.” Then he said, “When we finish our breakfast, can we go back to bed?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose I should have guessed that.”

  “He almost never sleeps this soundly. I’m not going to disturb him. But I don’t want him to be confused when he wakes up. I’ll stay here. You can go back to bed.”

  Jack watched his father for a moment. Then he stood up, put one arm under his knees and the other around his shoulders, and lifted him out of his chair. The old man murmured, and he said, “You’re fine, sir. It’s Jack.” A hand floated up to touch his face, his cheek and ear. Jack carried him into his room and tucked him into his bed. Then he came back to the kitchen.

  “Now you can get some more sleep,” he said.

  Glory said, “Thank you, I will.” And she went upstairs and lay on her bed and hated her life until morning.

  WHEN MORNING CAME, SHE WENT DOWN TO THE KITCHEN and made coffee and pancakes, as if for the first time. Jack’s expression was opaque. Her father was drowsy, or he was pensive. Finally he said, “I have something on my mind. ‘Last night I saw the new moon with the old moon in his arm.’ What is that? I’ve been trying to think.”

  She said, “‘The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens.’”

  Jack said, “Good for you, college girl.”

  “No,” the old man said. “She was an English teacher. In high school. A very fine teacher of English, for a number of years. Then she got married, so she had to resign. They made them do that. ‘The new moon with the old moon in his arm.’ That is a very sad song. A number of times I heard my grandmother sing it, and it was very sad. ‘Oh forty miles off Aberdour ’tis fifty fathoms deep, and there lies good Sir Patrick Spens with the Scots lairds at his feet.’ She said the life was very difficult in Scotland, but she was always homesick. She said she would die of the homesickness, and maybe she did, but she took her time about it. She was ninety-eight when she died.” He laughed. “‘We that are young will never see so much nor live so long.’” He said, “You just picked me up and carried me, didn’t you, Jack. Well, that’s all right. I’m not the father you remember, I know that.”

  Jack put his hand to his brow. “Of course you are. I didn’t—I’m sorry—”

  “No matter. Never mind. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  The color left Jack’s face. After a moment he pushed back his chair. “Well,” he said. “There’s work to be done.” He went out to the garden and stood in the path he had made along the iris beds and lighted a cigarette. Glory watched him from the porch. She said, “I should probably help him.”

  The old man said, “Yes, dear, that would be good of you.” So she settled her father in the Morris chair with the newspaper, and then she went out to the garden. She touched Jack’s arm and he looked at her.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “I just wanted to say that there was nothing wrong with what you did. He hates being feeble. And he’s had to put up with it for a long time.”

  He drew on his cigarette. “Thank you,” he said.

  “No, really. I thought it was gallant. A beau geste. A demonstration of your fabled charm.”

  “Too bad. I’ve found that people weary of my fabled charm.”

  “Well, I guess I haven’t had much chance to weary of it.”

  He laughed. “The day is young.” Then he said, “I didn’t intend anything when I said college girl. I don’t know what was offensive about it.”

  “It wasn’t offensive. He just wants to make sure you think well of me. He’s afraid we don’t get along.”

  He looked at her, studied her. “He said that?”

  “Yes, he mentioned it.”

  “Last night.”

  “Yes—”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Well, I said that you and I never did really know each other very well.”

  “That’s all?”

  “He was too sleepy to talk much.”

  “So he’s worried about it.”

  “He worries about everything. It’ll be fine. You’ve always known how to please him.”

  He shook his head. “No. I could always count on him to be pleased with me. From time to time. Often enough. I never understood it myself.” He shrugged and laughed. “What the hell,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever understood much of anything.” He threw down his cigarette and glanced at her, and there was a kind of irritation in his look, as if she had drawn him into a confidence he already regretted. “I’m not making excuses,” he said.

  “I know that. I want to get a bandage for your hand. I’ll be right back.”

  The old man had moved to the porch. She called to him and waved as she passed. She brought the gauze and the tape, and there where they knew he could watch them, she tended to Jack’s wound. “That should be all right.”

  “Very kind. Thank you,” he said. And with his bandaged hand, gravely and tentatively, he mussed her hair.

  SHE HAD LET HIM BELIEVE THAT THEIR FATHER WAS UP IN the night worrying. That was wrong, but it wasn’t really intentional. She had wanted to tell him how beautiful it was to have taken up his father in his arms that way. She had thought it at the time, and had felt bitterly how helpless she was to be so gentle, so sufficient. To
own up to this unwelcome feeling of admiration, aloud, to Jack himself, had given her a sense of freedom and strength, those rewards of self-overcoming her father had always promised. She had felt this briefly. Then she saw that wary look of his, caution with no certainty of the nature of the threat, and with no notion at all of possible refuge. He realized he did not please his father, did not know how to please his father. He would probably have liked to believe he had done something wrong so that he could at least orient himself a little, but she had told him a terrible thing, that he had done nothing to offend, that his father had found fault with him anyway, only because he was old and sad now, not the father he thought he had come home to.

  They worked quietly in the sunshine, heaving up irises and separating them. Jack was very earnest about the work, and very preoccupied, reflective. Glory replanted the best of the corms, setting a few aside for Lila. “You’re a friend of hers?” Jack asked.

  “We get along. She’s a nice woman. You haven’t stopped by the Ameses’ yet, have you.”

  “Too busy,” he said, and laughed. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “She keeps a big garden herself, and she’s offered to help me with this one, but I don’t want to take her away from her husband. Time’s wingèd chariot and so on.”

  “How is old Ames?”

  “Papa’s worried about him. He really does worry about everything. But he says, ‘Ames just isn’t quite right!’ He says, ‘I’ve known him all my life, and I can tell there’s something the matter!’” She looked toward the porch and whispered, “He’s supposed to be deaf, but he seems to hear whatever I’d rather he didn’t. I’d better be careful.”

  Jack said, “I’d have thought Ames would come by. No wonder the old fellow misses him. I didn’t know forty-eight hours could pass without a quarrel, or at least a checker game.”