Home

by Marilynne Robinson

  “I suppose he’s giving Papa time to enjoy having you here.”

  “Ah yes. Who better than Reverend Ames to understand that special joy I bring with me wherever I go—”

  “No, seriously. You don’t realize what this has meant.”

  “What it meant until I actually showed up.” He said, “The hangover was a mistake, that’s for sure.” He took the cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lighted one.

  “Children!” the old man shouted. “I think that’s enough for one day!”

  She said, “Ames has mellowed a little. At least he’s not as abstracted as he used to be. So much of that was loneliness, I think. And it would please Papa if you paid a call on him.”

  Jack looked at her. “I know. Of course. I intend to.” They were walking back to the house. He flicked his cigarette away and pushed the hair off his brow, and he held the door for her. Then he stood there just inside the door, like a stranger unsure of his welcome.

  THEIR FATHER HAD PUT THE CHECKERBOARD ON THE kitchen table. He said, “Jack, I like a good game of checkers. But Glory lets me win.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “She does. And I know it’s kindly meant.”

  “I don’t let you win.”

  “She doesn’t really enjoy the game, so half the time she more or less concedes by the third move. It’s frustrating. I can’t hone my skills!”

  Glory said, “I win about as often as you do.”

  Her father said, “That is my point! Half the time she is just letting me win!” And he laughed roguishly and winked at Jack, who smiled. He opened the box. “Black is my preference. Glory, you sit down here and watch. You might want to pick up some pointers. This fellow may have acquired strategies unheard of in Gilead!”

  “No, sir, “ Jack said. “Not where checkers are concerned.” He came to the table and took a seat. He placed the red checkers on their squares.

  Glory said, “I’ll make popcorn.”

  “Yes, like the old times—” Her father made a move.

  She thought, Yes, a little like the old times. Graying children, ancient father. If they could have looked forward from those old times, when even a game of checkers around that table was so rambunctious it would have driven her father off to parse his Hebrew in the stricken quiet of Ames’s house—if they could now look in the door of the kitchen at the three of them there, would they believe what they saw? No matter—her father was hunched over his side of the board, mock-intent, and Jack was reclined, legs crossed at the ankles, as if it were possible to relax in a straight-backed chair. The corn popped.

  After a while her father said, “Best two out of three! I know when I am outflanked.”

  “Are you sure?” Jack asked.

  “‘Sure’? If I do this, you do that. And if I do this, you do that,” he said, tapping the board with his finger. “It seems odd, in the circumstances, that I should be the one to point it out!”

  “If you hadn’t, I might not have thought of it.”

  “Well, then, we’ll call it a draw.”

  Jack laughed. “That’s fine with me.”

  “Whipped!” his father said. “Technicalities aside. It has taken the starch out of me! Glory, I’ve got the board warmed up. Let’s see what you can do with this fellow.”

  So she sat down opposite her brother. He smiled at her. “This is very fine popcorn,” he said.

  “Extra butter.”

  He nodded. They played a polite game, distracted by their father’s palpable hope that they would enjoy it a little. There was no trace in Jack’s expression of anything at all except a readiness to oblige, which was only emphasized by the promptness with which he took his turns. “Oh,” he said, when she triple-jumped him.

  Then his father said, “I believe you have an opportunity there, Jack.” And he reached over and made the move himself, a double jump. “Now you have a king, you see.”

  Glory said, “No fair,” and Jack laughed.

  “Old times, yes! It’s very good, but I can’t deal with all this excitement. I’m off to my room. No, you two finish your game,” he said, when Jack stood up to help him with his chair. “There’s time enough to get me to bed. I’m not going anywhere.”

  So they went on with their game. Glory said, “I don’t recall that we ever did play checkers, you and I. I always played with the younger kids.”

  Jack began to make his move, but his hand trembled and he dropped it into his lap.

  “What is it,” she said.

  He cleared his throat and smiled at her. “You never sneaked me upstairs with a bottle of aspirin. You were a little girl.”

  “No, I didn’t mean I did it myself. I just meant I knew that it happened.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize that. I didn’t realize at the time. That you would have been aware of it.” He cleared his throat.

  “It was a stupid thing for me to say, Jack. I apologize. I hope you will forget it.”

  He said, “It just makes things sound worse than they were. They were bad enough.”

  “All right. I will never say it again.”

  He considered. “Say what, exactly?”

  “Well, you’re right. I didn’t say that I personally was the one who sneaked you upstairs. That’s just what you heard.”

  He said, “I wouldn’t mind if we dropped the subject entirely. All that happened a long time ago.”

  At that point she lost her temper. She thought, Why am I apologizing to this man for something I did not say, and also for what I did say, which was only the truth?

  “Well.” She hoped she was controlling the quaver of anger in her voice. “At just that moment it was not obvious that all that had ended a long time ago.”

  He put his hand to his face. Oh, she thought, this is miserable. Dear God, I have made him ashamed. How will we live in the same house now? He will leave, and Papa will die of grief, and the fault will be mine. So she said, “Forgive me.”

  “Yes,” he said, “of course.”

  Their father called, “Could one of you children come and give me a little help?”

  “I’ll go,” Jack said. She put away the checkerboard, and then she looked down the hall, and there was Jack, kneeling to unlace the old man’s shoes. And his father regarding him with such sad tenderness that she wished she could will herself out of existence, herself and every word she had ever said.

  THAT WAS THE DAY A PHONE CALL CAME, A WOMAN ASKING to speak to Jack Boughton. Glory said he was in the garden and she would call him, but he wasn’t there, so she went to the barn, where she found him leaning into the engine of the car. “There’s a telephone call for you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “She didn’t say. A woman.”

  “Jesus,” he said, and he stepped past her and ran down the path and up the steps into the house. When she came into the kitchen the phone was back on its hook. “She hung up.” He said, “Sweet Jesus, I’m out of the house twenty minutes—”

  “I’m sorry—”

  He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. Did she tell you her name? What did she say?”

  “She said she was calling from St. Louis. The connection was very bad. There was a lot of noise. She was calling from a phone booth, I think.”

  “From St. Louis? She said that?”

  “Yes.”

  He sat down at the table. “St. Louis! Did she say she would call back?”

  “Well, no. I thought I would be able to find you. I guess I thought she’d stay on the line. I should have asked.”

  He drew a very deep breath and rubbed his eyes. “None of this is your fault,” he said. His hands were greasy, so he went to the sink and washed them, and washed his face, then he took a dishcloth and wiped down the telephone. “None of this is my fault, either, I suppose. There’s absolutely no comfort in that thought.” He sat down at the table. “I hope I’m not in the way here. I cannot be farther than an arm’s length from the telephone into the indefinite future. Jack Boughton in chains. Al
l I need is an eagle to peck at my liver, such as it is. Ah,” he said, and he laughed. “At least I got a call. That’s something.” The thought seemed to lift his spirits.

  “Can’t you call her? I mean, I know she was calling from a phone booth. But couldn’t you call her family and ask how to reach her?”

  He shook his head. “I have been warmly encouraged not to do that. By her father, no less.”

  She brought him the book she meant to read next, The Paths of Glory.

  “Your memoirs?”

  She said, “The girls in this family got named for theological abstractions and the boys got named for human beings. That’s bad enough without our having to be teased about it for the rest of our lives.”

  “Sorry. It just slipped out. No more jokes.”

  “‘The paths of Glory lead but to the grave.’ Now you don’t have to struggle with the urge to say that, either.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “What a relief!”

  So he sat in the kitchen reading, drumming his fingers. He turned the book to the last few pages and read the ending. “Sad!” He put it aside. She gave him a bowl of walnuts and he shelled them. And he paced. And he stood on the porch, just outside the back door, and smoked.

  Two hours passed and the phone rang.

  Her father called, in his sleep, “Could you get that, Glory?”

  “It’s probably for Jack, Papa.”

  “No, Faith said in her note she’d be giving me a call. She hasn’t called in a number of days.”

  “You talked to her yesterday.”

  The phone rang again. She whispered to Jack, “Answer it!” because he was just standing there, looking at her. She took the phone off the hook and handed it to him, and then she went to her father’s room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked drowsy, but he seemed set on getting up, so she brought his robe.

  She heard Jack clear his throat. “Hello?”

  Her father said, “That’s a very good thing. He should talk with all his sisters and brothers. Every one of them. They are anxious to hear from him.”

  Jack said, “What’s that? I can’t quite hear you! He did? When? I am talking louder! No, it’s not your fault, I know that! Yes, they do get upset!”

  Her father said, “Well, I can’t imagine that there could be any reason to shout like that!”

  Glory said, “It’s a bad connection, someone calling from a phone booth.”

  “Well, I hope so. Otherwise I’ll have to call Faith and explain. And I really don’t know how I could explain his shouting at her like that. I really don’t. She has always been very fond of him.” His eyes were closed, but she combed his hair and helped him into his slippers.

  “He would never shout at Faith, Papa. So it has to be someone else.”

  “Yes,” the old man said. “I suppose I should have realized that.”

  Glory was trying to distract her father from the conversation, and she was trying not to hear it herself, though Jack did sound alarmed, or aggrieved, and she could not help but wish she knew what the matter was.

  “If the boys could keep looking!” he shouted. “I’ll pay them! I’ll send money!” A pause. “No, I wasn’t suggesting that! I mean, I’m sure you are all doing your best, Mrs. Johnson! Believe me! I certainly don’t blame you!”

  Her father said, “Yes, he mentioned a Mrs. Johnson. He’s shouting at someone we don’t even know.”

  “Please, if he turns up, call any time! Call collect! Yes, thank you, thank you!”

  She followed her father down the hall to the kitchen. Jack was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up, rubbing his face. He stood up and smoothed back his hair. He was pale and his eyes were red. He said, “It’s nothing. A dog ran off. I promised someone I’d look after his dog.”

  “Oh yes,” his father said. “All that shouting was about a dog.” He shook his head. Her father woke up gruff sometimes, or confused. Sometimes he needed an hour or so to come into himself. Jack couldn’t know that.

  “It was about a dog,” he said softly, and he smiled at her, because they had spent those long hours together and she would understand the bitterness of his surprise. “I can’t be trusted with a dog.”

  She said, “They do come back sometimes. I think you’d better sit down.”

  He nodded and smiled, pale as she had ever seen him. “I’ll get past this,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” He took the chair she pulled out for him. “Thank you.” She gave him a glass of water. “Maybe I can make it up to him.” He shrugged.

  His father was gazing at him, and Jack glanced up and then looked away, uneasy. The old man said, “Well, whatever the trouble is, I’ll help if I can. I think you must know that by now.”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “At this point I’m pretty much reduced to praying for you. Of course I do that anyway. If anything else comes to mind, let me know.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  When they were children their father had always avoided fault-finding, at least in the actual words he spoke to them. But there was from time to time a tone of rebuke in his voice that overrode the mildness of his intentions. She had not heard him speak that way in any number of years, and she watched Jack accept it now, patiently, as if he were hearing something necessary and true, something chastening. So she said, “None of this is your fault, Jack. The phone woke Papa out of a sound sleep, and he’s a little cross. That’s all there is to it.”

  Jack said mildly, as if he found the fact interesting, “It never seems to make much difference. Whether I’m at fault or not.”

  “Yes, if Glory says I was cross, I suppose I was cross. It wasn’t my intention, not at all. I don’t know what it was I said. I believe I said I’d help if I could. That seems all right to me. I don’t know.” He shook his head.

  Jack said softly, “It was all right. It was very kind.”

  “Yes,” the old man said, “I meant to be kind to you. I certainly did.”

  MORE OFTEN, AS THE DAYS WENT BY, JACK SOUGHT HER out to talk with her, and when the talk drifted into silence, sometimes he would smile at her as if to say, You and I, of all people, here, of all places, killing time for lack of anything else to do with it. A stranger might look at her that way, past the tedium of their situation, past the accidental companionship that came with their whiling it out together, to let her know in a decorous and impersonal way how glad he was she was there.

  And sometimes, when they were working in the garden or doing the dishes, she would notice that he had drawn back to watch her, appraisingly, as if he had suddenly dropped every assumption about her, as if she were someone who figured in an intention of his and about whom he realized he knew nothing to be relied upon, or nothing that mattered, someone he must consider again carefully. She did not remember from her childhood the habit he had now of running the tip of his tongue across his lower lip, but she thought she did remember that estrangement of his gaze, that look of urgent calculation, of sharply attentive calm. It could only be fear, and she wanted to say, You can trust me, but that is what they had always told him, and he laughed and pretended to believe them, and wished to believe them, she was sure, and never did. Her father always said, “That loneliness of his,” and when she saw it in him now, she felt lonely, even abandoned for the moment it lasted, until the banter of comfort and familiarity took up again. He’d say, “Hey, chum,” to coax her out of her thoughts. They were indeed very sad thoughts, as his must have been, too, and he would smile with fellow feeling, her bemused and improbable companion.

  He would ask her advice about how to live in that house, and usually he would take it. He asked her if she thought it would be all right if he trimmed back the vines that grew on the front of the porch, and she said, “Better not. Those are there to attract hummingbirds.”

  “The old fellow can hardly see who’s going by in the road.”

  “Well, he doesn’t seem to mind that. He loves those birds. So did Mama. That’s part
of it.”

  Jack said, “Right.” Then he said, “When we were kids, we’d have thought crazy people must live in a house that looked like that. All overgrown.”

  She laughed. “I remember the Thrushes. Teddy used to make you go with him to collect for the newspaper, because those old shrubs had grown up and buried the house.”

  “I was thinking about that. She used to stand on her porch on Halloween night and call to the kids in the road. She’d say she had cookies and apples for them, and they’d take off running.”

  “Everybody knows about Papa and his trumpet vines, though. And the house is pretty strange-looking, anyway. In my opinion.”

  Jack said, “True.” But later she saw him appraising the vines again from the edge of the road, and the next day he began cutting back at the spragglier branches, more of them the next day and the next. She noticed the trimmings stacked out of sight behind the shed. Against her advice and to her surprise, he had undertaken a furtive campaign to make the house look a little less forbidding. He even found a flower pot in the barn and shoveled up some petunias to put in it and set it on the step.

  “I didn’t think anyone would mind,” he said, when he saw her notice it.

  GRADUALLY HE GAVE UP ON THE HOPE THAT THERE WOULD be another telephone call. He began spending time in the barn again, leaning into the engine of the DeSoto. To work on a car where anyone might see was considered unseemly by the Boughtons, not different essentially from setting it up on blocks. And Jack was aware of the likelihood of failure and therefore careful to provide as little opportunity as possible for anecdote or, worse, for offers of help or advice. Glory mused from time to time on how often the starchy proprieties observed in her family overlapped more or less precisely with Jack’s strategies for avoiding humiliation. In any case, he spent a good part of every day in earthy, dank concealment, oiling some memory of resilience into stiffened leather upholstery, or sinking inflated inner tubes into the horse trough to find the leaks in them.