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by Marilynne Robinson

  “So you’re thinking that woman friend might come here?”

  He shook his head. “Only when I’m trying to find a way to make myself go out and shop my miserable aspirations around town one more time. Or keep tinkering with that damn car. She’d probably hate it here, anyway.”

  “You’ve never told me her name.”

  “Her name is Della.”

  “I’d like to know her.”

  He said, “Would you be kind to her?”

  “What a question!”

  “Swear to God?”

  “Of course! I’d be a sister to her!”

  He laughed. “I’m going to hold you to that someday. If my wildest hopes are fulfilled. Which they won’t be.”

  After a minute she said, “Jack, there’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

  “Hmm?”

  “What do you act like when you’re happy?”

  He laughed. “I forget.”

  “Seriously. When you came in just now, I thought something good must have happened.”

  “Oh. How to account for the high spirits. Gasoline fumes? And I have replaced so much of that engine that I must be closing in on the problem by now. With any luck. When I turned the key this time it—chortled. And that triggered a fantasy of charging off in my father’s DeSoto to rescue my lady love from a smoldering Memphis.”

  “I thought she was in St. Louis.”

  He shrugged. “I’m a little tired of St. Louis. I’d rather rescue her from Memphis.”

  “I see.”

  “On second thought, her father is in Memphis. He’s very protective, and he has a car that actually runs. And he thinks I’m damn near worthless—‘damn near,’ because he’s professionally obligated to take a charitable view. She has three brothers in Memphis. So I guess I’d better rescue her from St. Louis.” He began to peel another potato. “Joking aside, maybe she would come to Gilead for a while, to give it a try. It’s possible.”

  They had an early supper. She had meant to serve the chicken cold, but she decided it was better to serve the bread while it was still warm, and what difference did it make when they did anything, anyway. Her father enjoyed the warm bread and the chicken, too, and the peas with potatoes in cream sauce. He grew voluble, talking about his own boyhood in Gilead, how, he said, he couldn’t even draw water from the well to his grandmother’s satisfaction, let alone split kindling, so he didn’t have as many chores as other children did. “She never trusted me to bring the eggs in, either,” he said. “It was her way of spoiling me. Yes. I used to go over to Ames’s and help him out a little, and then we’d have the whole day, in the summer. The whole day by the river. I don’t know how we passed all that time. It was wonderful. Sometimes his grandfather would be down there, fishing and talking to Jesus, and then we’d be pretty quiet, or we’d wade upstream a little way. He was a strange old fellow, but he was just a part of life, you know. Like the birds singing.”

  Jack said, “I spent time at the river. I liked to do that.”

  His father nodded. “I always thought this was an excellent place to be a child. Not that I had anything to compare it with.”

  “It is a good place.”

  “Well, Jack, I’m glad you think so. Yes. Some things might have worked out better than they did, I know that. But there was always a lot to enjoy. That was my feeling, at least. And there still is. I watch the children, and they seem happy to me. I think they should be happy.”

  AFTER SUPPER JACK CAME DOWNSTAIRS WITH THE NEW baseball mitt, flexing it and folding the pocket. He said, “I thought I’d see if the Ames kid would like to play a little catch. Is that a good idea? He’s old enough. He seemed interested.”

  She said, “I think it’s a good idea.”

  He went out to the porch and stood there for a while, and then he came into the kitchen again. “No,” he said. He shrugged. “I’m disreputable. I forget that from time to time. But I have it on excellent authority.” He smiled. “The good Reverend wouldn’t approve. I’m pretty sure they’ll give you your money back.” He handed her the glove. “Those high spirits,” he said. “They can get me in trouble.”

  She said, “I don’t understand any of this. I think you worry too much. I’ll keep the glove until you want it.”

  “You have to help me think things through, Glory.”

  “Does that mean remembering that you’re disreputable?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “I think you’re imagining.”

  “It is the central fact of my existence,” he said. “One of three, actually. The one you have to help me keep in mind.”

  “Well, really, Jack. How on earth am I supposed to do that?”

  He laughed. “Don’t be so kind to me,” he said.

  SHE THOUGHT ABOUT THE THING JACK HAD SEEMED TO ask of her, some attempt to save his soul. Dear Lord. How could that idea haunt her with a sense of obligation, when she really did not know what it meant. There are words you hear all your life, she thought. Then one day you stop to wonder. She would not bring it up again, but if he did, she should have some way to answer him. She was not at all sure that he had been serious, that he was not teasing her. She might even have taken offense at the time, if there had seemed to be any point in it. A genteel project for a pious lady with time on her hands. How condescending. But that was what he did whenever he felt vulnerable—he found some way to sting, to make it clear that vulnerability was not all on one side. Poor man. But he was so practiced at reciting what he was also practiced at rejecting. He might have meant to draw her into some sort of argument and reject it, too, just to show her he could do it. He was uneasy. That was natural enough. And in fact he had made her embarrassed about that pleasant old habit of hers. Now she had to read the Bible in her room to avoid feeling like a hypocrite, like someone praying on a street corner. When Jack came out to the porch with his newspaper the next day and found her reading The Dollmaker he gave her a wistful, inquiring look, but he said nothing.

  She did not know what it meant to be pious. She had never been anything else. Remember also thy creator in the days of thy youth. She had done that. She could hardly have done otherwise. Her father never let a day pass without reminding them that all goodness came from the Lord, all love, all beauty. And failure and fault instructed us in the will of God in the very fact of departing from it. Then there were grace and forgiveness to compensate, to put things right, and these were the greatest goodness of God after creation itself, so far as we mortals can know. Her father’s rapt delight in this belief put it beyond question, since it was so intrinsic to his nature, and they loved and enjoyed his nature, and laughed about it a little, too. Yes! He would achieve some triumph of extenuation and emerge from his study, eyes blazing, having solved the riddle, ready to forgive heroically, to go that extra mile. True, the slights and foibles for which he found extenuation necessary may have been minor or even questionable in some cases, evidence of a certain irritability on his part. But the gallantry of his response to them was no less handsome on that account.

  As for herself, she did still pray on her knees. She also said or heard or thought a grace at every meal, even at a lunch counter or when she was with the fiancé. Train up a child in the way he should go and even when he is old he will not depart from it. The proverb was true in her case. And being at home only reinforced every habit that had been instilled in her there. Faith for her was habit and family loyalty, a reverence for the Bible which was also literary, admiration for her mother and father. And then that thrilling quiet of which she had never felt any need to speak. Her father had always said, God does not need our worship. We worship to enlarge our sense of the holy, so that we can feel and know the presence of the Lord, who is with us always. He said, Love is what it amounts to, a loftier love, and pleasure in a loving presence. She was pious, no doubt, though she would not have chosen that word to describe herself.

  MAYBE SHE KEPT THE BIBLE OUT OF SIGHT BECAUSE SHE was afraid that if he spoke to her that way a
gain she would have to tell him she had no certain notion what a soul is. She supposed it was not a mind or a self. Whatever they are. She supposed it was what the Lord saw when His regard fell upon any of us. But what can we know about that? Say we love and forgive, and enjoy the beauty of another life, however elusive it might be. Then, presumably, we have some idea of the soul we have encountered. That is what her father would say.

  Maybe she had never before known anyone who felt, or admitted he felt, that the state of his soul was in question. Whatever might transpire in her father’s study, there had been only calm and confidence among his flock, to all appearances. Granting the many perils of spiritual complacency, and her father did grant them as often as Pharisees figured in the text, complacency was consistent with the customs and manners of Presbyterian Gilead and was therefore assumed to be justified in every case. Christian charity demanded no less, after all. Among the denominations of Gilead, charity on this point was not granted by all and to all in principle, but in practice good manners were usually adhered to, and in general the right to complacency was conceded on every side. Even her father’s sermons treated salvation as a thing for which they could be grateful as a body, as if, for their purposes at least, that problem had been sorted out between the Druids and the centurions at about the time of Hadrian. He did mention sin, but it was rarefied in his understanding of it, a matter of acts and omissions so commonplace that no one could be wholly innocent of them or especially alarmed by them, either—the uncharitable thought, the neglected courtesy. While on one hand this excused him from the mention of those aspects of life that seemed remotest from Sabbath and sunlight, on the other hand it made the point that the very nicest among them, even the most virtuous, were in no position to pass judgment on anyone else, not on the sly or the incorrigible, not on those who trouble the peace of their families, not on those who might happen to have gotten their names in the newspaper in the past week. The doctrine of total depravity had served him well. Who, after all, could cast that first stone? He could not, he least of all. But it was hard to get a clear view of something so pervasive as to be total, especially if, as her father insisted, it was epitomized in his own estimable person.

  She did remember once, when Ames was at dinner years earlier, his mentioning to her father that a local man, unchurched, noted for bursts of rage and for a particular hostility toward children, his own included, had come to the parsonage at midnight to consider his soul. Ames had said, “It’s like a bad tooth—it acts up when everybody else is sleeping, and it’s not the kind of problem you want to deal with by yourself,” and they had laughed together, quietly. Who could know what they knew, what restive hearts had opened to them, how many midnights had brought the sleepless to their doors. She should ask Jack what a soul is, since he seemed to feel the presence of a soul. Cankered, perhaps, but that was what gave him his awareness of it. Either of those prayerful old men, Ames or her father, could probably tell her, too. But it was late to put such a question to them. Jack would laugh at her and tease her, which would be much preferable to their sober, gentle surprise.

  HER FATHER WANTED TO GO TO BED EARLY, BUT THEN HE was restless and asked to get up again. She helped him to his chair. “Where is Jack?” he said.

  “I think he’s working on the car.”

  After a minute he said, “I thought you might read to me. I’d like you to read from Luke.”

  She brought the Bible and opened it and began the greeting to Theophilus.

  “Yes,” her father said. “That’s fine. He gives a world of attention to that car. I wish he’d play the piano. Then at least I’d know where he is.”

  Glory said, “I’ll go find him. He’ll be happy to play for you, Papa.”

  “Yes. I’m Saul in his madness. I want some music around here.”

  She went out to the barn and Jack was there, sitting in the driver’s seat of the DeSoto. In the earthy, perpetual evening of the place he was reading a book by flashlight. She hesitated, but he saw her in the sideview mirror and put the book and the flashlight in the glove compartment and closed it. She saw him take the little leather folder, which had been standing open on the dashboard, and slip it into his breast pocket.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude. Papa’s awfully restless and he thought it would help if you played for him a little.”

  “Always glad to oblige,” he said, standing up out of the car and closing the door. He smiled at her the way he did when she had become privy to something he had no intention of explaining. He said, “My home away from home.”

  “Fine. I wouldn’t have bothered you, but he seems to be really uncomfortable this evening. He asked me to read to him, and that lasted about two minutes. I’d have played for him, but he wanted you to do it.”

  He said, “You never bother me, Glory. It’s remarkable how much you don’t bother me. Almost unprecedented.”

  “I’m so happy to know that.”

  He glanced at her, and when he saw she really was pleased, he smiled.

  “WELL, REVEREND,” HE SAID, “GLORY TELLS ME YOU’D LIKE TO hear a song or two. Any special requests?”

  “Yes. ‘Blessed Assurance’ and also ‘Whispering Hope.’ But I think I would be more comfortable lying on my bed, if you don’t mind.”

  “We can take care of that.” Jack helped him up, took him to his room, and settled him among his covers.

  “First ‘Blessed Assurance,’” the old man said. “If you know that one.”

  “I believe I do.” Jack sat down at the piano, tinkered at the keys for a moment, found the tune, and played it through. His father did not sing.

  “Now ‘Whispering Hope.’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When the song ended, his father said, “‘Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice.’ That can actually happen. I have had that experience. Hope is a very valuable thing, since there is not always so much to rejoice about in this life.”

  Jack went to stand in his father’s doorway, to spare him the effort of raising his voice. The old man said, “Come here, Jack. Bring the chair over here. There’s something I need to say to you. You’re probably going to have to forgive me for this.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Well, I know that. I can count on that. And you’re a grown man now.”

  Jack laughed. “True.”

  “So I want to put a question to you. All right?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I feel I didn’t do right by you. I wasn’t a good father to you.”

  “What? Really?”

  “No, it’s a feeling I have always had, almost since you were a baby. As though there was something you needed from me and I never figured out what it was.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “I really don’t know what to say. I’ve always thought you were a very good father. Much better than I deserved.”

  “No, but think about it now. You were always running off somewhere. Always hiding somewhere. Maybe you don’t even remember why you did those things. But I thought you might be able to give me some idea.”

  “I can’t explain it. I don’t know. I was a bad kid. I’m sorry about all that.”

  The old man shook his head. “That isn’t my meaning at all. You see, I feel as though you haven’t had a good life.”

  Jack laughed. “Oh! Well, I’m sorry about that, too.”

  “You misunderstand me. I mean your life has never seemed to have any real joy in it. I’m afraid you’ve never had much in the way of happiness.”

  “Oh. I see. Well, I’ve been happy from time to time. Things are a little difficult now—”

  “Yes, because you wouldn’t be here otherwise. That’s all right. I just never knew another child who didn’t feel at home in the house where he was born. All the others, you know, they come back for the holidays. It was always like a big party in here, all the games they would play, all the noise they made, and your mother laughing at the endless pranks and the nonsense. And if you could find a
way to leave, you’d be gone.”

  “I can’t explain that. I’m sorry about it—”

  “And then you really were gone, weren’t you. Twenty years, Jack!”

  Jack drew a deep breath and said nothing.

  “And why am I talking to you about this? But it was always a mystery to me. Be strict! People would say that to me. Lay down the law! Do it for his sake! But I always felt it was sadness I was dealing with, a sort of heavyheartedness. In a child! And how could I be angry at that? I should have known how to help you with it.”

  “You helped me. I mean, there are worse lives than mine. Mine could be worse.” He laughed and put his hand to his face.

  “Oh yes. I’m sure of that, Jack. I see how kind you are now. Very polite. I notice that.”

  “These last years I’ve been all right. Almost ten years.”

  “Well, that is wonderful. Now, do you forgive me for speaking to you this way?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course I do. I will. If you give me a little time.”

  The old man said, “You take your time. But I want you to give me your hand now.” And he took Jack’s hand and moved it gently toward himself, so he could study the face Jack would have hidden from him. “Yes,” he said, “here you are.” He laid the hand against his chest. “You feel that heart in there? My life became your life, like lighting one candle from another. Isn’t that a mystery? I’ve thought about it many times. And yet you always did the opposite of what I hoped for, the exact opposite. So I tried not to hope for anything at all, except that we wouldn’t lose you. So of course we did. That was the one hope I couldn’t put aside.”

  Jack withdrew his hand from his father’s and put it to his face again. “This is very difficult,” he said. “What can I do—I mean, is there something I can do now?”

  “That’s true,” his father said. “Not a thing to be done. I’m sorry I brought it up. I thought it was troubling my sleep. I guess it was. Why did that make me think it was important? I don’t know. All that old grief coming back on me. I’m tired now, though. It seems like I’m always tired.” And he settled into his pillows and turned onto his right side, away from Jack, toward the wall.