“Sometimes I don’t even know what’s true and not true. What I’ve done, or haven’t done. The mind’s a funny thing, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“It’s like we have to make things up to keep on going. Pretending we did do this, or didn’t do that.”
He looked back at her; her wet eyes, as she smiled at him, seemed to be winking.
“What dreams keep you going?” she asked.
Tyler pushed back his plate of coffee cake, cleared his throat. “Oh, sometimes these days I dream of going down south to help the ministers with the Negroes there. They organize sit-ins at the counters in five-and-dime stores.”
“I know. I’ve seen pictures. But sometimes those people get beaten. Sometimes the ministers go to jail. You’d want to do that? Godfrey. I’d rather die than go to jail.”
“I’m not crazy about that part,” Tyler admitted. “But it’s an awfully good cause.”
Connie nodded, stared at her coffee mug. “Well, I’d sure miss you,” she said.
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. “Yes,” Tyler said. “I don’t think you need to worry. I’m not going anywhere. I’ve no one to watch the children, and—” He raised his eyebrows. “The truth is, Connie, I’m in debt. I’ll be staying right here for some time to come, and when the church gives me a few more dollars, I can give you a full-time job. If you’re still interested.”
“Oh, I am.”
Washing the bathroom floor, Connie felt as though Scotch tape had been removed from her eyes. Everything now had a vividness; each tile she wiped clean seemed to have its own loveliness. Later, with a small whisk broom, she swept the mopboards of the upstairs hallway. The light above the stair landing cast a friendly feeling over the worn carpet runner; the wallpaper, with its thin blue stripes, seemed the cozy color of butter. And yet it was odd. Because accompanying the sense of lightness Connie felt in the minister’s house these days was a seeping upward of dark things, as though the warmth of the man’s friendship was like the sun on a field of snow, beneath which things deep in the soil were affected. Long-ago terrors from childhood, disappointments from her years of marriage, more recent anxieties and confusions, were all tucked down inside her, and, changing the sheets on Katherine’s bed, Connie wished she could weed out these deep shoots of darkness. She thought of the minister saying how that Bonhoeffer fellow had thought forgetting was a gift. Tossing the pillow on the bed, she nodded. She straightened the pillow, gave it a small punch.
Meanwhile, Tyler worked at his desk, and was glad to hear her footsteps on the stairs, the whisper of the whisk broom, the slight clumping of a pail, as he wrote a list of things to include in Sunday’s intercessionary prayer.
• All those affected by the steelworkers’ strike
• Negroes in the South who were visited daily by hatred, and found the courage to continue their quest for dignity
• The family of George Marshall, recently deceased, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
Tyler tapped his pencil. Bertha Babcock had said on her way out of church last week, “I wish you’d say a prayer for Bob Hope, who just lost the sight in his left eye,” and Tyler said, “Certainly.” But he did not want to include Bob Hope, and he put his pencil down.
The telephone rang. “Reporting in, Tyler,” said Ora Kendall. “The Ladies’ Aid, that little coven of witches, is having a fight, a revolution to match Cuba’s.”
“Oh, dear,” said Tyler.
“Irma Rand thinks it would be nice to have one of those little billboards out in front of the church. I think it would look like a movie theater. What do you think?”
“Well, Ora, I guess that’s for others to decide.”
“Have an opinion, for crying out loud. It’s your church.”
“Actually, Ora, the church belongs to the congregation.”
“All right. Don’t be surprised when you drive by and see a sign that says COME IN AND HAVE YOUR FAITH LIFTED. Doris is still mad at you because you haven’t said anything about the organ.”
When he hung up, he added Bob Hope to the list, and then, hearing the little bell ringing, he went into the kitchen for his lunch. He wanted to tell Connie that of course the steelworkers’ strike couldn’t be settled, when the congregation of one small town couldn’t even agree on a billboard. He wanted to tell Connie that Doris Austin dreamed of a new organ as much as Connie dreamed of children. He wanted to tell Connie that the Ladies’ Aid was gossiping about Katherine. He wanted to tell Connie everything! But a minister had to be careful. So Tyler said, “Will you be seeing your sister at Thanksgiving?” as he picked up his grilled-cheese sandwich.
“No.” Connie shook her head. She told him, in between bites of her sandwich, how her sister had, during the war, gone to live with their Uncle Ardell on a potato farm up north. There were German prisoners working the farm and Becky got pregnant by one. She stole money from Ardell and followed the man back to Germany after the war, but it turned out he was married. Connie propped both elbows up on the table and looked at Tyler. “A terrible, terrible mess. Adrian won’t have anything to do with her, I guess because of the German.”
“What happened to the baby?” Tyler asked.
“She lost it.” Connie drank some tomato soup from a mug in a big swallow. “Had it lost, is more the truth. Went to someone who did those things. And then she bled and bled and almost died. But she didn’t die. She’s still up there, living over the bar.”
Tyler straightened the napkin on his lap. Connie looked at him carefully, leaning toward him slightly, over the table. “Don’t you see?” she asked.
“See what?”
“I come from a family of sinners.”
“Oh, Connie,” the man said. “We all do.”
ON THE PLAYGROUND, Mary Ingersoll watched to make sure no child ate snow, but she was thinking of her wedding day three years ago. A winter wedding in New Hampshire; there had been candles in the church, and she had a white fur muff to tuck her hands into on the way to the reception. She had never felt so pretty, she thought, glancing around the playground, and maybe she never would again.
With her galoshes and brown wool coat, a scarf tied around her head, she felt matronly. This was the word that went through her mind, and she didn’t like it. It puzzled her, but she felt as though the long road of her life that lay ahead, that long, open-ended road where all sorts of wonderful things could happen (because she was young and wouldn’t die for ages) had curved around, and so many things were now decided. That delicious question—who will I marry?—had been answered. That delicious desire—I will be a teacher!—had come to pass. She hadn’t had her children yet—there was still that—but sometimes, like this morning, she had a momentary shiver of some irretrievable loss, and even as the principal, Mr. Waterbury, raised a cheerful hand and she waved back, she longed, in some deep part of her, to bury herself in a grown-up’s lap.
Katherine Caskey took a nasty spill. A group of boys had been running, and one knocked into her—it was an accident, but Katherine, so little, had been pushed right off her feet. She fell and banged her head against the metal pole of the swing set. Mary saw this, and ran over. “Katie,” she said, “are you all right?” She picked up the little girl, whose crying was genuine and full. “Let me see your head, honey,” Mary said, smoothing back the girl’s hair, but glad to hear the crying, because in these cases of a bang on the head, it was a good sign. “I think you’re all right,” Mary said. “But let’s see if you’re getting an egg.” She set the girl down gently and felt for the spot. “That was scary, wasn’t it?”
Katherine nodded, still crying. There was the blur of a blue jacket, Martha Watson’s voice singing as though she owned the whole playground: “Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around! Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground!” Katherine stepped closer to her teacher.
And Mary Ingersoll experienced a fullness of feeling that included the sweet edge of relief: She was not a matron headed down a dead-end street. This
was her job, to care for this child, and she could do it well. The child’s earlier obstinacy made the victory greater; what Mary felt was love. “Blow your nose,” she said, bringing a tissue from her pocket, and Katherine blew. “There’s the bump,” said Mary, feeling Katherine’s scalp. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
Katherine looked. She held up three of her own.
“Good girl,” said Mrs. Ingersoll, officious and teacherly. “Very scary to get knocked over like that.” She started to hug the girl again.
But Katherine was suddenly remembering how her father had said, “I didn’t think she was any prize.” She stood stiffly, not crying anymore.
“Katie?”
The girl turned away.
“Katherine?” Mrs. Ingersoll touched the tiny shoulder, and was amazed when Katherine turned once again, sharply away. It hurt the woman’s feelings. And when Katherine, running now, turned her head and stuck her tongue out at her teacher, Mrs. Ingersoll felt a swell of swift anger. “Katie Caskey, that’s rude!” she yelled.
Katherine kept running.
TYLER DROVE HOME in silence, the child next to him. He kept hearing the voice of Mary Ingersoll, high-pitched, like shards of glass. He pictured her speaking to him in the hallway outside the nurse’s room, her face closed off, lacking any vestige of warmth.
“But is Katherine all right?” he had asked.
“I doubt she has a concussion. But is she all right? I told you before she is not all right. There are agreed-upon rules of social behavior,” the young woman had said, looking at him with cold eyes. “And sticking out your tongue at people isn’t one of them.”
“Did Katherine apologize to you?”
“She did not.”
“Could you give us a moment, please?” And he had taken Katherine down the hall and whispered fiercely in her ear. “You apologize to Mrs. Ingersoll, or I will spank your bottom when we get home.”
The child stared at him, her pale lips parting. Back they went to Mrs. Ingersoll. Looking down, Katherine said a barely audible “I’m sorry.”
As he walked the child across the parking lot, he pictured telling Mary Ingersoll that, by the way, there was no point in her coming to church only on Christmas and Easter. The point in coming to church was to learn the Christian rules of behavior of love and understanding. The point of coming to church was to take into your heart the troubles of a little girl who had lost her mother. He suspected that Mary Ingersoll was on her way, right now, to tattle to Rhonda Skillings. It made him sick.
Through the bare trees, the horizon seemed to leak a pale, watery yellow that spread upward into the gray sky. A squirrel ran across the road. “Why did you stick your tongue out at Mrs. Ingersoll?”
The child didn’t move or speak.
“Answer me.”
Katherine whispered something.
“What was that?”
A tiny voice, not looking at him. “I don’t know.” She sat with her red boots stuck out in front of her, staring at her lap.
“Katherine. Do you feel like you might throw up?”
She shook her head.
“Do you feel sleepy?”
She shook her head.
He reached over and put a hand on her tiny knee; she turned her head toward the window. “Kitty-Kat,” he said. But he said nothing more. As he turned in to the driveway, he saw the light was on in the living room, and in the kitchen, too. He followed the child inside, and saw that she had wet her pants. “Go upstairs, Pumpkin,” he said. “You’re going to need a bath.”
Connie looked up from polishing the table. The room smelled like lemons. Tyler stood still, letting her gaze meet him straight on. Then he walked past her, unbuttoning his coat, and he thought of the line from Matthew: I was in prison, and you visited me.
ALL NIGHT IT SNOWED, slowly at times, then quickly. It didn’t taper off until dawn, and in the morning everything was white, fields of white snow so brilliant in the sunshine you had to look away because you could go snow-blind. The evergreens had their branches weighed down by the stuff, and the back roads were narrow, only as wide as a snowplow. Mrs. Carlson’s car drove slowly in to the driveway.
Katherine pushed back her bowl of Alpha-Bits and got down from her chair. “Wonderful out there,” her father said, opening the door for her. He had not bent down to zip up her coat, and the winter cold blasted Katherine’s front while the brightness of the new snow made her eyes twinkle and swirl—she felt she had become a pinwheel, and it scared her.
She reached for her father’s hand, but felt the plastic handle of her lunch box instead, and her father’s voice far above her saying, “It reminds me of snow days when I was a kid, and we’d build snow forts all day.” He was calling this out to Mrs. Carlson, perhaps.
Her father a kid, building snow forts—all this belonged in a world outside her own, which carried in its tiny globe the smell of the Carlsons’ car, which she would have to soon climb into, the gritty sand that waited on the floors in the backseat, the freckled, stunned face of the Carlson boy, who was peering right now through the car window, whose eyelashes always had crusty stuff in them.
Her father was not walking down the steps. She stayed with him, the cold air going straight through her dress, the hole in the knee of her tights. “Katherine. Are you?” He had asked if she was going to be a good girl today, and the question brought back the astonishing thing he had said to her in the car yesterday. Her father had said the word “bottom.” That he would spank her bottom. Embarrassment so deep it had no equivalent to any earlier shame in Katherine’s short life brought a color to her cheeks as she stood on the porch.
She nodded her head.
They walked down the steps together, and she climbed into the car.
TYLER WENT INTO his study for his morning prayer. It was Friday, and Connie would be here soon. He read from Winkworth’s translation of the Theologia Germanica: When a man truly findeth himself utterly vile and wicked and unworthy, he falleth into such a deep abasement that it seemeth to him reasonable that all creatures in heaven and earth should rise up against him. Tyler glanced at his watch, thinking perhaps Connie had had trouble with her car in the snow. And therefore he will not and dare not desire any consolation and release. But it was unlike her not to telephone. He lifted the receiver and heard the dial tone. And he who in this present time entereth into this hell, none may console him.
When later he tried calling her, nobody answered.
She did not show up.
ON SATURDAY NIGHT, after the children were in bed, and while a light snow fell outside the darkened windows, Tyler sat in the living room with his mother. Margaret Caskey said nothing. Leaning her narrow shoulders forward, she put the cup of tea Tyler had made for her onto its saucer there on the coffee table. Then she took a hankie and touched it to her lips.
“Mother,” Tyler finally said, “are you all right?”
“I guess,” she said slowly, her eyebrows rising high, “I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous.”
“How is it ridiculous?”
The woman stared off into the corner of the ceiling as though transfixed by a strange spiderweb that only she could see. She put her head back, studied the ceiling above her, before looking back at her son. “You amaze me, Tyler. We think we know someone, but we don’t. I guess we never really know someone.”
The stinging pain beneath his collarbone began. He rubbed it with his thumb. “Tell me,” he said pleasantly, “why it’s a ridiculous idea.”
“Oh, the stars in heaven, Tyler. That woman has the education of a twelve-year-old. She has no children of her own, she’s married to a man who drinks. I can only imagine what her home life is like. She’s odd, Tyler. Where does she come from, anyway? And you’re going to entrust your children to her?”
Now it was Tyler’s turn to be silent. Disappointment seemed to pour through him like an astringent.
“Have you already broached this idea to her?”
Tyler nodded.
“My word, Tyler.” Margaret Caskey’s eyes were shiny. “Well, you’ll simply have to tell her it’s not going to happen.”
“I think the children need to be together.”
“And they’ll be together as soon as you find yourself a proper wife.”
The word “proper” was like a small stone hurled across the room at him; he leaned back in his rocking chair. His heart was beating quickly.
“You’ve been through a great deal,” his mother conceded. “But the back strengthens to the burdens it has to bear, and I’d like to see a little more backbone in you.”
“How,” asked Tyler, “am I not showing backbone?”
“You’ve lost weight. You’re a big man, and big men need the meat on them or they look ill, and you look tired all the time. It’s very clear that, except for when I come here on weekends, you do not take care of yourself, sleeping in that study, for heaven’s sake.” The woman’s voice was trembling, and she nodded with a sharp, vehement gesture toward the study door. “Not even living as a civilized man. And Katherine,” she added, “so sulky and unpleasant now—”
“Her mother died.”
“Tyler, you’ve grown vulgar. I’m aware that the child’s mother passed away. And it’s awful. It is awful. But this happens when God so chooses. What I’m trying to point out to you is that you can barely hang on these days with one child in the house, and now you’re telling me you want two. Aren’t you grateful that Jeannie is happy? And she is happy. I take very good care of her.”
“I know you do.”
“I don’t know, actually, Tyler, if you do know. You say Connie could watch them during the day—but you have no idea, men don’t, how much work a baby is twenty-four hours a day.” The woman put her hankie to her mouth again, and Tyler saw her hand was shaking. She added, “You’ve given me quite a shock.”
“Yes. I can see. And it’s the last thing I intended to do.” But it was difficult to speak these words. His mouth was very dry. “Let’s leave it alone for now,” he offered.