She had thought of pulling down the barn because the worst hours of his life, surely, had passed in it. And she couldn’t walk into it without the thought of what might have happened, what she might have found, and then the terrible problem, the catastrophe it would have been for her father no matter what she could think of to say or do. Having to tell Teddy. It would have been the final insult, the most unpardonable desecration of everything they had somehow managed to cherish about him. Dear God in heaven. And then that hiding place he had made, comforting himself in concealment as he had always done. Or hiding his loneliness, or making his estrangement literal, visible. It was something a boy might do, that old game of hiding in the loft. He had done it as a boy and remembered, and maybe it made him feel at home. She should have pulled it apart herself, not left it for him to do. It was so profound a habit not to intrude on anything of his that she could hardly bring herself to do even what he had asked her. She wondered if he had taken it down, or if he might have left the house when she came upstairs and gone back to it again this very night. And then she wondered if he might not have another bottle hidden somewhere. In the DeSoto. She should have gone back to look around that afternoon, while he was sleeping. She hadn’t been thinking clearly.
What had changed, after all? He had shamed himself in front of her, making her cover for his awful helplessness, defenselessness. Not that she could hold that against him, but that he could never forget what she had seen. She knew this by the way he looked at her now, by the chastened softness of his voice. He had made a generous attempt to lie to his father and failed, and in trying had dropped a stone into a very deep well of sorrow. The report of terrible particulars coming to him after so long, and for no reason except that his poor father seemed to forget everything else while he remembered them more bitterly. Jack promised her that he would never again try to end his life, but then he also told her he had done it only because he’d been drinking, and that must mean that if he happened to have another bottle somewhere—
In the course of time the dim glow of the lightening sky paled the curtains, and she heard Jack stirring in his room. Then finally she fell asleep, and gradually awoke again to the smell of bacon, of coffee.
JACK HAD BROUGHT IN HIS SUIT FROM THE PORCH, WHERE she had hung it to air, and he was brushing and pressing it. There were no really noticeable grease marks except one above a trouser pocket and a few on the underside of the lapels where he had held them closed with his hand. His solicitude for that suit must have sunk so far into him that he had been a little careful of it even in extremis. If he remembered to keep the jacket closed to hide the smudge on the trousers, it would be about as presentable as it ever was. This was clearly a relief to him. He asked her for a needle and thread and secured a hanging button. She enjoyed the wry seriousness with which he went about such things, these unlikely shifts and competences she knew she was privileged to witness. Still, there was something slightly hectic about it this morning, something disturbingly purposeful.
He hung the suit on the door frame and stood back to look at it. “Not too bad, considering. Hmm?”
“Not bad at all.”
“There’s toast in the oven. And I fried some bacon. I could scramble an egg for you.”
“You’re being very nice.”
He nodded. “I called Teddy.”
It took her a moment to understand what he had said. “You called Teddy?”
“Yes. I woke him up. But I thought I’d better make the call before my resolve faded.”
“Just toast will be fine,” she said.
“As you wish.” He stacked toast on a plate and set it in front of her, and jam, and butter, and a cup of coffee. He said, “I went in to check on the old gent this morning, and he didn’t know who I was. He didn’t know who he was, either. No idea. He was very polite about it.” He propped himself against the counter. “So I thought I’d better talk with Teddy. He’s calling the others. He said he could be here by Tuesday.” It was the first time he had looked at her directly, met her eyes.
“All right. I’ll have to get the house ready. Make up the beds. I’ll need some groceries.”
Jack said, “I’ll be here to help you with that. Until Tuesday. Then I’ll be out of your way.”
“What? But you said you’d be staying, let’s see, ten more days. To wait for that letter.”
He smiled. “There won’t be a letter. I don’t know what that was—a joke. Don’t ask me to stay here, Glory, when all this is happening. You know I can’t trust myself. I could do something—unsightly. I could make everything much worse.” He said softly, “I really can’t deal with the thought that he will die.” Then he said, “Tears and more tears. But I won’t be leaving you here by yourself. Teddy said he would call from the road, from Fremont, and I’ll stay until he does. You won’t be alone.”
“Ah,” she said, “but who will look after you?”
“It will be fine. Better for me, anyway. Better for everyone. You know that.”
“But we won’t even know where you are, Jack.”
He said, “What does it matter?”
“Oh, how can you ask? How can you possibly ask? I can’t deal with— I know what it is you’re afraid of. It breaks my heart.”
He shrugged. “You really shouldn’t worry so much. I have an impressive history of failure. For what that’s worth. And people can be surprisingly decent about it. Cops. Nuns. The Salvation Army. Vulnerable women.”
She said, “Don’t you dare joke with me.”
He smiled. “I was pretty well telling you the truth just then.”
“Then don’t tell me the truth. You’ve worried us almost to death. You’ve scared us almost to death. But this really is your masterpiece.”
Then he looked at her, his face pale and grave and regretful, and she knew there was no more to be said, that she should not have said what she did say, because the grief he always carried with him was as much as he could bear. He said, “I took care of him. I made oatmeal and fed it to him. I cleaned him up and changed his sheets and turned him over, and I think he went back to sleep. Last night was too hard for him. My fault.”
“No. You were trying to comfort him. And this was coming. We all knew it would happen.”
He nodded. “I suppose so. Thanks. Thank you, Glory. I’m going to go take care of that thing in the loft. It won’t take long.”
Glory went to look in on her father. He lay on his right side, his face composed, intent on sleep. His hair had been brushed into a soft white cloud, like harmless aspiration, like a mist given off by the endless work of dreaming.
SHE WENT TO SPEAK WITH AMES, TO TELL HIM THE FAMily was being asked to come home. He hugged her and gave her his handkerchief and said, “I see, I see, yes. I’ll be by to look in on him when he’s had his sleep. I have a few things to take care of at the church first. And how is Jack?” So she told him, though she had not meant to, that Jack was leaving. She said it was so hard for her that he should leave just then, and she said it with all the passion of her worry and grief, but she did not let herself violate the secrecy she had been sworn to, more or less. She did not mention his dread of doing something unsightly. Ah, Jack.
“Yes,” Ames said, “his father would want him there with his family. It would be a pity for him to leave now.”
“It would,” she said.
There are very few comforts to be had from half-confiding, and Glory thanked him and went away before she could find herself giving in to habit and sadness and divulging her fears about Jack, the thing most offensive to him that they had done all through their childhood and his. That her father had done once again no doubt on his last visit to Ames’s kitchen. She had left Ames with the impression, she knew to her deep chagrin, that Jack was just behaving badly, a scoundrel disappointing the standards of civility. Ah well. Nothing to do but go home and start preparing for the brothers and sisters.
She came into the kitchen and found Jack there, wearing his suit and tie, brushing at a s
mudge on the brim of his hat. He said, by way of explanation, “I have one last glimmer of hope, a merest spark of optimism. I want to make sure it is extinguished before I leave this town.” He laughed. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I mean, I doubt that there’s any life in it, but I thought, you know, I’d inquire, just to be sure. I’m going to go speak with Reverend Ames again. I thought I’d give it one last try.” He shrugged.
Glory said, “Yes, fine. I just saw him. I told him about Papa. He said he would be at the church this morning, and then he would come by here. So you could wait and talk to him then.”
“No, I think I’ll stroll up to the church,” he said. “That’s more or less as I imagined it. It will be that kind of conversation. There will be a certain element of confession in it. I can do that.” He smiled. “Don’t look so worried. I won’t let him hurt my feelings this time. I mean, at least he won’t catch me off guard. For what that’s worth.”
Oh, she thought, dear God, let that be true! How to warn him. How to warn either of them. Jack would be walking into an embarrassment she had prepared for him. When Ames said to her, It would be a pity, his voice had a hint of that taut patience with which he had always heard out tales of Jack’s scoundrelism. And Jack had a way of conceding ground he could not defend, taking on a manner of evasive deference when he felt he might be seen as a shady character, which meant that he certainly would be seen that way, however bright the shine on his shoes. That weary smile of his, as if he knew that between him and anyone he spoke to there was none of the trust that sustained the most ordinary conversation, as if between them there was an uneasy mutual understanding that almost obviated words. The jaded intimacy in his assuming so much seemed to startle people. Still, he had to assure himself that his last spark of hope was extinguished, so he checked the knot of his tie and tipped his hat, and went off to find Ames at his church.
Glory looked in on her father, and finding him still asleep, she went up to her room, got down on her knees, and prayed fervently in the only words that came to her—“Dear God in heaven, help him. Dear God in heaven, protect him. Please don’t let him suffer for my stupidity, dear God, please.” Then she lay on her bed and thought. More precisely, she fell to remembering something she had almost forbidden herself to remember. Something it seemed she had now fully and finally given up, though it had never been hers. A modest sunlit house, everything in it spare and functional, airy. Nothing imposing about it at all. In front a picture window looking out on a garden, a patio in back. The kitchen would be spacious and sunlit, with a white painted table, no, a breakfast nook, where morning light would fall on it. Sometimes she had talked about this house with the fiancé, and they had been in such agreement, they were so much of one mind, that it was amazing to them. No gilt frames, no beetling cornices. She had mentioned children, and he had said they would have to be very practical the first few years, there was time enough to think about children. So she imagined the children playing quietly, tiptoeing in from the patio now and then to whisper a secret or open a hand to show her an interesting pebble, then back out the door again so quietly, because Papa must not be disturbed. He must not know they were there at all. She had names for them, which drifted among them, and changed, as did certain of their attributes, ages, gender, number. For a few weeks one or another of them had a stammer, because she had spoken with a child at school who stammered, a sweet child. But then they were infants again, no traits particular to them yet, happy to lie in her arms. They wore flannel pajamas every cool night, and in her fantasies she sang to them the ballad of lost children. “The robins so red brought strawberry leaves and over them spread.” They would weep in her arms and love her more, since she would keep them safe forever from abandonment and all bitter loss. She might have had doubts about dropping this tincture of sorrow into their hearts if they had been real children, though for herself she never could regret that her sisters had sung to her, making her feel so sharply the steadfast and effectual care of her family, while the great wind roared in the trees and rattled the windows. That wind, they all knew, could sweep up a town and scatter it hither and yon, houses and cattle and children. Robins so red. The words were bright as a prick of blood.
The fiancé had a habit of sitting with his heels together and his toes pointing outward. This was truer when he wished to seem content or ingratiating. She could never help feeling this meant something disheartening about him that would not be fixed even if she sometime mentioned to him that he might arrange his feet more gracefully and he complied. If she gave him a cup of coffee, he would lean there, elbows on his knees, holding the saucer under the cup, and he would grin at her, and those feet would seem to mimic the grin, which was excessive in itself. He told her she was a snob about her family, and that was true. And not without reason. They were all graceful people after their shambling style, and they did not grin.
The fact was, all the same, that she would have married him, that for years she had had no other intention, except when doubts emerged that reduced intention to hope. How miserable that was to remember, and how miserable the relief when a letter came, the phone rang, she heard his knock at the door. He was a pleasant-looking man, robust and ruddy, with clear blue eyes and red hair that crinkled against his scalp. If in person he did not altogether answer to the idea of him she took from his letters, he was agreeable enough. Sometimes he made her laugh. She would almost like to know how much money she had given him, only to be able to gauge the depth of an infatuation that seemed so remote to her now. It was for the children and the sunlit house that she had been diligent at discerning virtues and suppressing doubts, ready to give up mere money if it could put aside the obstacles to her happiness, or if it could keep the thought of happiness safe from disruption. God bless him, Jack had understood it all and laughed, a painful but companionable laugh, as if they’d been whiling away perdition together, telling tales of what got them there, to forestall tedium and the dread of what might come next. The sweet thought of sunlight and children she had cherished in secret was now utterly dispelled. No, she wanted to tell Jack about them, to dispel them, as if they were spirits of the kind that perish in daylight. But for that reason she could not and never would betray them. Let some sleep of oblivion overtake them, finally.
So Glory would live out her life in a place all the rest of them called home, a place they would mean to return to more often than they did. If she spoke discreetly to the high school principal about the fact that the marriage she intended had not in fact taken place, the information would pass through town and be absorbed and cease to be of particular interest. She could start teaching again.
She heard Jack walk into the kitchen, put his hat on the refrigerator. She heard him go down the hall, speak to his father, then come back to fill a glass with water and take it to him. After a few minutes, he went to the piano and began to play a hymn. “‘When all my trials and troubles are o’er, and I awake on that beautiful shore.’” Things must have gone well enough, thank God. So she went downstairs.
When he had finished the hymn he turned and looked at her. “It wasn’t bad,” he said softly. “He was very kind. He couldn’t do anything for me, but he was kind. It was all right. Better than I expected, really. Ames’s heart is failing, he said, so he won’t be around much longer. I thought he might, I don’t know, vouch for me. Help me overcome my reputation. But I have to leave here anyway. I don’t know why I bothered him.” He shrugged.
She said, “I’m glad it was a good conversation.”
He nodded. “I called him Papa, and this time I think it may even have pleased him a little.” He smiled to himself, and then he said, “I told him almost everything, and when I was done he said, ‘You are a good man.’ Imagine that.”
“Well, I could have told you you are a good man. I’ve said it in so many words, surely.”
He laughed. “You’re a miserable judge of character. Mine, especially. No objectivity at all.”
WHEN THEY HEARD THEIR FATHER ST
IR AND WAKE, JACK carried him to his chair on the porch and settled the quilt around him and read to him from the newspaper while Glory made potato soup almost the way he had always liked it, without onions but with butter melted into it and crackers crumbled on top. Jack fed him, held his cup for him. The old man accepted these attentions without comment. Then Jack changed into his work clothes and went out to the garden, where his father could watch him, as it seemed he did until he began to doze off. After a little while Jack came back and found him asleep and carried him to bed again, slipping the crooked body out of the robe with great care. It seemed to her there was a peacefulness about him that came with resignation, with the extinction of that last hope, like a perfect humility undistracted by the possible, the unrealized, the yet to be determined. He worked on the DeSoto, then sat in the porch and read till the sun went down. He went out for a stroll, just to look at the place, he said, and came back in an hour, stone sober. It may have been the saddest day of her life, one of the saddest of his. And yet, all in all, it wasn’t a bad day.
THEN IT WAS SUNDAY AND JACK WENT TO CHURCH. THIS was to show Ames his respect and, he said, appreciation. He asked her for two dollars for the offering, since he had made her put all money away out of sight, and had even, despite their sentimental value, given her dollar bills he had hidden years before in the pages of the Edinburgh books, the proceeds of youthful thefts, which he had put where he knew no one would find them. Twelve dollars scattered through The Monstrous Regiment of Women and nineteen in On Affliction. From The Hind Unloos’d, which their father had told them to revere as a great work, he took a few desolate report cards and a note to his father from a civics teacher who saw only the darkest clouds on his moral and educational horizon and asked urgently for a conference. He shook his head. “I guess I was a pretty cynical kid,” he said, and laughed. Glory suggested he put the money in the collection plate as a sort of penance, but he thought the amount was large enough to arouse suspicion. “Coming from me it would be, anyway.”