Lila

by Marilynne Robinson

  And she went up to the cemetery to look after Mrs. Ames and her child. She meant to ask the old man sometime what would happen when they were all resurrected and he had two wives. He had preached about that, which probably meant he had been wondering, too—they won’t be male or female, they won’t marry or be given in marriage. Jesus said that. So the old man wouldn’t have a wife at all, not even one. This girl and her child, after so many years, would be like anyone else to him. He might be as young as he was when she left him. Lila could see sometimes what he’d been like when he was young. The girl would still be holding that baby he had hardly even had a chance to hold. And there would be no change in her, and no change in him, as if dying had never happened. It would be a strange kind of heaven, after all they’d been through, and all the waiting, if he did not feel a different peace when he stood beside them. Lila could watch them, and love them, because old Doll would be there to say, “It don’t matter.” Don’t want what you don’t need and you’ll be fine. Don’t want what you can’t have. Doll would be there, ugly with all the trouble of her life. Lila might not know her otherwise.

  A month in that hotel, and then the wedding. Mrs. Graham told her the Reverend probably wanted people to understand that the marriage was a considered decision, since men his age could sometimes be a little foolish. Lila said, “Well, it seems pretty foolish anyway,” meaning that if she was as good as married, she might as well have some of the comforts of it. Mrs. Graham smiled and nodded and said, “He’s just trying to make the best of things. For your sake, too.” Lila hated Boughton. Once or twice she saw him taking a long look at the old man as if he was wondering about him, as if he might say, Are you really sure about this? Damn knives and forks. And he was always talking about foreign policy. Then the old man would say something just to remind him gently that Lila might not have an interest in foreign policy, which was true enough, since she’d never even known there was such a thing, and Boughton would start talking about theology. Then it would be something about somebody they had both known forever. They would be laughing at the thought of something that had happened when they were boys, and then the old man would turn to her and say, “Are you comfortable here? Is your room comfortable?” because he couldn’t think of anything to say to her, either. He couldn’t go up to her room to see for himself because of propriety. He blushed when she said she’d be happy to take him upstairs, and she had to laugh at herself, which made it worse. Boughton tried to change the subject. Mrs. Graham and her husband were there, too, ready to talk foreign policy out of the plain goodness of their hearts. They had dinner at the hotel a few times so that Mr. Graham would know her well enough to give her away. That was the strangest thing she’d heard of yet. But she had her days to herself.

  They were married in the parlor of Reverend Boughton’s house, with the Boughton children there except for the one. They even brought Mrs. Boughton downstairs in a pretty dress and put her in her chair. The girls bent down to tell her it was a wedding, John’s wedding, and wasn’t that nice? Then they left her to her smiling quiet, since it always upset her to feel that more was wanted of her.

  * * *

  They went to the old man’s house after the wedding and the dinner Boughton’s daughters had made for them. Lila had never understood the whole business of knives and forks, that there was a way you were supposed to use them. But he sat beside her, close to her, her husband, all their kind feelings toward him now owed to her, too. There was a big white cake with frosting roses on it, and the sisters laughed about how many they had made and how few of them turned out to look at all like the pictures in the magazine. Or anything else. Cauliflowers. Mushroom clouds. Gracie knocked one on the floor and got so frustrated she washed her hands of the whole thing and went for a walk, but Faith got the trick of it, just in time, before people began to arrive. Then there she was with frosting in her hair. There was frosting all over the kitchen. Teddy said he caught Glory licking her fingers. They were all laughing, all so used to each other, so fine-looking, the brothers, too. Lila could hardly wait to leave.

  Then there they were in that quiet house. Everything of hers, everything she had been given, had been brought from the hotel and hung in the front closet. There was food in the icebox and the pantry and on the kitchen table, and there were little gifts on the counters, embroidered tea towels and pillowcases and aprons, and a needlework picture of apples and pears and grapes with the words Bless This House. There were flowers in every room. The windows were all opened to let the day in. Everything that could be polished shone. “The church,” he said, and smiled as if to say, I did warn you. She stepped out on the back porch, just to look. They had weeded the garden.

  She’d thought, I’ll do this first and think about it afterward. Now afterward had come and she had no idea what to think. I am baptized, I am married, I am Lila Dahl, and Lila Ames. I don’t know what else I should want. Except for the shame to be gone, and it ain’t. I’m in a strange house with a man who can’t even figure out how to talk to me. Anything I could do around here has been done already. If I say something ignorant or crazy he’ll start thinking, Old men can be foolish. He’s thought it already. He’ll ask me to leave and no one will blame him. I won’t blame him. Marriage was supposed to put an end to these miseries. But now whatever happens everybody will know. She saw him standing in the parlor with his beautiful old head bowed down on his beautiful old chest. She thought, He sure better be praying. And then she thought, Praying looks just like grief. Like shame. Like regret.

  He showed her the house, where things were to be found. There was a room upstairs he said would be her study if she liked. The carpetbag with the tablet and Bible in it was there on a table by the window, beside a bowl of zinnias. Or she could have another room if there was one she liked better. The house had been built for a big family. The rooms weren’t large, but there were several of them. His own study was just down the hall. If there was anything at all she wanted to change, she should certainly feel free. The house was as it had always been, more or less, at least since his father and mother lived in it. But there was no reason to keep it that way. He said, “It is so wonderful to have you here, in this house. I hope you’ll be very happy. Of course.”

  She said, “I expect I will be. Happy enough. It’s yourself I’d be worried about.”

  He laughed. “I think I’ll be fine,” he said.

  “I seen you praying.”

  “A habit of mine. No cause for concern.”

  “Well,” she said, “if you decide sometime I’m a bother, you can just tell me.”

  He laughed. “Dear Lila, we’re married! For better and for worse!”

  “I spose so. We’ll see about that.”

  He took her hands and studied them, her big, hard hands. He said, “If you say so, I guess we will.”

  She had probably said a mean thing to him. For weeks she wished she could take it back. All it meant was that she still didn’t trust him and he’d be a fool to trust her. And that was only the truth. He might as well know it was her nature to feel that way, nothing she could change. She was just as lonely as she had ever been. The only difference was that now this kind old man was sad and embarrassed about it, still not even sure how to talk to her. If she was quiet for a while he would come down from his study to look for her in the kitchen or the garden—to get a drink of water or to enjoy the weather, he said. If she had walked out to the farm, to the shack, the sight of her coming in the door stung his eyes. It was to comfort him, and herself, that she slipped into his bed that first dark night.

  Lila thought once, when she was out walking, what if she saw someone ahead of her on the road and it was Doll. What if she called out her name, and the woman stopped and turned and laughed and held out her arms to her, wrapped her into her shawl. She would tell her, I have married a fine old man. I live in a good house that has plenty of room in it for you, too. You can stay forever, and we’ll work in the garden together. And Doll would laugh and squeeze her hand—�
��It come out right, after all! I ain’t dead and you ain’t in some shack just struggling to get by! I had to leave for a time, but I’m back now, I’m resurrected! I been looking everywhere for you, child!” She could tell herself what she would tell Doll, things that would help her stay in that life. A married woman with a good husband! It was worth all the trouble, every bit of it.

  Doll’s eyes would shine the way they never did when anyone but Lila was there to see. Just that little room in the house in Tammany made her happy for all she was giving her child, her own dresser drawer and a lamp with a ruffled shade and school besides. Then she must have seen someone, or heard that someone was asking after them, and they left as soon as Doll could dry her hands and change her apron. She said she had wearied of Mrs. Marker’s hollering, but they ate the lunch she had made for Lila to take to school as they walked away from Tammany, through the woods, not along the road. Doll had a red stain, like a birthmark, on one side of her brow and on her cheek, and people who saw her didn’t forget her. That was why they couldn’t stay in one place. She never explained any of this to Lila. It was a part of everything they never spoke of. But it was clear enough when she thought back on it. They managed to stay in that town for months, almost a school year, Doll taking the risk so Lila could learn to read. Well, the old man’s house was full of books. She would work on her reading. Doll would want her to.

  When she thought this way, she could almost begin to enjoy her life. She was stealing it, almost, to give it to Doll. People might think she liked the old man’s house and the Boughtons’ clothes and all the proprieties and the courtesies. They might think she liked the old man, too. But she just imagined how all of it would seem to Doll—a very good life, a comfortable life that she had because Doll had stolen her, and had taken care of her all those years. She lived for Doll to see. Lila made the old man smile for the pleasure in his eyes, because Doll would have been so happy to see it. When she put her arms around him, when she slipped into his bed, Doll would have smoothed the pillow and whispered to her, “He’s such a kind old man!”

  Lila went along with him to Boughton’s house to drink iced tea on the porch and listen while they talked, and one afternoon as she listened she understood that Doll was not, as Boughton said, among the elect. Like most people who lived on earth, she did not believe and was not baptized. None of Doane’s people were among the elect, so far as she knew, except herself, if she could believe it. Maybe their lives had gone on, and some revival preacher somewhere had taken them in hand. But Doll’s life ended, and no one had rested his hand on her head, and no one had said a word to her about the waters of regeneration. If there was a stone on her grave, there was no name on it. A real name might have made her easier to find, or have added another crime to child-stealing, so she never even told Lila what it was. When Doll gave Lila her knife she said, “It’s only for scaring folks with. If you go cutting somebody it’s going to be trouble no matter what the story is.” So Doll might have been hiding already when Lila first knew her, sleeping in that miserable, crowded old cabin, coming and going in the night the way she did. Calling herself by that one name. Maybe she died with dark sins on her soul. Lila had heard the preachers talk that way. Or maybe the other crime was just some desperate kindness, like stealing a sickly child. And maybe it made no difference to the Lord, one way or the other.

  The old man said, “We’ll be going home now. It must be close to suppertime.” He could tell when she was bothered, and Boughton could tell when he was concerned about her, so they said good evening without any of the usual joking and lingering and clearing away of glasses and spoons. He walked along beside her, silent in the way he was when he could not be sure what to say, or to ask. He opened the door for her. That house, so plain and orderly and safe. He said, “Boughton likes to talk about the thornier side of things. You don’t want to take him too seriously.”

  She went into the parlor and sat down, and rested her head in her hands. He stood near her chair, keeping a respectful, patient distance as he always did when he hoped she would tell him what she had on her mind.

  She said, “I just never thought about all them other people. Practically everybody I ever knew. Some of them been kind to me.”

  He said, “I’m so glad they were kind to you. I’m very grateful for that.”

  “But they never gave one thought to the Sabbath. You never heard such cussing and coveting. They stole sometimes, if they had to. I knew a woman who maybe killed somebody with a knife. She’s dead now, so I guess there’s nothing to be done about that.” She said, “Them women in St. Louis, I believe adultery is about the only thing they was ever up to. And there was no one to help them with any of it. Their sins. So I guess they’re all just lost? What happens to you if you’re lost?”

  He said, “Lila, you always do ask the hardest questions.” There was a gentleness in his voice that made her think he wouldn’t tell her painful things in words that really let her understand them.

  “I knew a man once who said churches tell folks things like that to scare them.”

  “Some do.”

  “So they’ll give them their money.”

  He nodded. “That happens.”

  “You never say nothing about any of it.”

  “I don’t really know what to say about it.”

  “But it’s true, then?”

  “There are other things I believe in. God loves the world. God is gracious. I can’t reconcile, you know, hell and the rest of it to things I do believe. And feel I understand, in a way. So I don’t talk about it very much.”

  “That’s the only time I ever heard you say that word, ‘hell.’”

  He shrugged. “Interesting.”

  “Does Jesus talk about it?”

  “Yes, He does. Not a lot. Still.”

  She said, “I don’t know. For a preacher you ain’t much at explaining things.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Sorry if you’re disappointed. Again. But if I tried to explain I wouldn’t believe what I was saying to you. That’s lying, isn’t it? I’m probably more afraid of that than of anything else. I really don’t think preachers ought to lie. Especially about religion.”

  She said, “I just wish I’d known a little more about what I was getting into. My own fault. I should’ve gone to them damn classes.”

  He sat down on the sofa. “My fault, too. My fault entirely.” They were quiet for a while.

  Then she said, “I know you didn’t mean no harm.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t do you any harm. I’m sure of that.”

  Well, he didn’t know Doll and the rest of them. The loneliness that settled over her at the thought that they were lost to her. He buried his face in his hands, praying most likely. So she went into the kitchen and made sandwiches.

  He’d wanted to get her baptized before she could take off and lose herself in some rough life and then be lost in whatever came after it. That was kind of him. Dipping his hand in that bucket, river water running up his sleeve while he blessed her with it. Bees buzzing, her catfish flopping in the weeds. He surely did look like he meant every word he said. The heavens torn asunder. A dove descending. There was no sign of all that except the look on his face and the touch of his hand. It wasn’t often in her life that anyone had been so set on doing her good as he was, after she had said she wouldn’t marry him, too. A preacher doing what preachers do to give you what safety they can. But it might not be a kind of safety you want, once you think about it. For a while Lila had liked the thought of resurrection because it would mean seeing Doll. The old man might have his wife and his child. She would have Doll, so that would be all right. There would be such crowds of people, but she would look for her until she found her if it took a hundred years. She understood the word “resurrection” to mean just what she wanted it to mean. The idea was precious to her. Doll just the way she used to be, but with death behind her, and all the peace that would come with that. A few blisters ain’t going to kill you. A little dus
t ain’t going to kill you. Nothing going to kill you ever again! Hanging couldn’t kill you! Doll would laugh at the surprise of it all, because she’d probably never heard of such a thing.

  But Boughton mentioned a Last Judgment. Souls just out of their graves having to answer for lives most of them never understood in the first place. Such hard lives. And there Doll would be, whatever guilt or shame she had hidden from all her life laid out for her, no bit of it forgotten. Or forgiven. But that wasn’t possible. The old man always said that God is kind. Doll was so tough and weary, with that stain on her face, and the patient way she had when people looked at her—I never see it, but I know what you see. Whatever it was she did with that knife, who could want to cause her more sorrow? Lila hated the thought of resurrection as much as she had ever hated anything. Better Doll should stay in her grave, if she had one. Better nothing the old men said should be true at all.

  He came into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “I must seem like a fool to you,” he said. “You must think I’ve never given a moment’s thought to anything.”

  She was always surprised when he spoke to her that way, answering to her, when she had never read more than a child’s schoolbook. “I’d never think you was a fool,” she said.