“But that’s what Bible School teaches,” Reverend Emmett said.
“It’s not enough,” Ian said.
They had both taken their seats now at the lace-covered table. Reverend Emmett was brandishing a bone-handled carving set. He paused and looked at Ian.
“I mean,” Ian said, “maybe it’s not enough.”
“Well, of course it is,” Reverend Emmett told him. “How do you suppose I learned? No one is born knowing.”
He started slicing the roast. Plainly it was overdone—a charred black knob glued fast to the pan it had been cooked in. “When I began seminary,” he said, sawing away manfully, “I had every possible misconception. I thought I was entering upon a career that was stable and comfortable, my father’s career—a family business like any other. I envisioned how Father and I would sit together in his study over sherry and ponder obscure interpretations of the New Testament. Finally he would think well of me; he would listen to my opinions. But it didn’t happen that way. What happened was I started reading the Bible, really reading it, and by the time I’d finished, my father wasn’t speaking to me and my fiancée had left me and all my classmates thought I was some kind of mental case.”
He laid down his knife. “Oh, dear,” he said, “that’s not the point I was trying to make.”
Ian laughed. Reverend Emmett glanced at him in surprise, and then he laughed too.
“Also, this meat is inedible, isn’t it?” he said. “Let’s face it, I’m a terrible cook.”
“We could always fill up on salad,” Ian told him.
“We could, but you know what I’d really like? I’d like to polish off that dip, your onion dip. That was excellent!”
“Let’s do it, then,” Ian said.
So while he helped himself to the salad, Reverend Emmett went out to the kitchen for the chips and dip. “No,” he said, returning, “that wasn’t my point at all, believe me. No, my point was … well, the ministry is like anything else: a matter of trial and error. I’ve made so many errors! In the hospital it seemed they all came back to me. I lay on that bed and looked at the ceiling and all my errors came scrolling across those dotted soundproof panels.”
“I’ve never seen you make an error.”
“Oh, Ian,” Reverend Emmett said, shaking his head. He noticed a blob of dip on his finger and reached for a linen napkin. “When I was starting out, my church was going to be perfect,” he said. “I figured I was setting up the ideal doctrine. But now I see how inconsistent it is, how riddled with holes and contradictions. What do I care if someone drinks a cup of coffee? Wouldn’t I have done better to ban TV? And here’s the worst, Ian: the thought of doing that did cross my mind, back in the beginning. But then I said, no, no. And never admitted the reason, which was: how would I get any members, if I didn’t let them watch TV?”
Ian didn’t know what to say to that. He supposed it would have been nearly impossible to get members, come to think of it.
“And then there’s tithing,” Reverend Emmett said. “Who am I to tell them they have to give a tenth of their income? Some of those people are dirt poor. Not a one of them is wealthy. Now I see that’s why I dispensed with the ritual of collection. I said, ‘Slip your envelopes through the mail slot, no return address,’ because secretly I hoped they wouldn’t tithe, even when the heating bill had to come out of my own pocket; and I didn’t want to have to deal with it if they didn’t. I preferred to be looking the other way. There’s so much I’ve looked away from! I see everyone has made Second Chance his own, adapted it to suit his own purposes, changed the rules to whatever is more convenient, and I pretend not to notice. I know Brother Kenneth smokes! I can smell it on his clothes, although I never say so. I know Daphne smokes too, and also drinks beer, and Sister Jessie has never given up her evening cocktail, not even the day she joined the church, which rumor has it she celebrated with a split of champagne after services. But I’ve never so much as mentioned it, because the awful truth is I find I don’t mind. I find as I get older that it all seems just sort of … endearing, really: this little flock of human beings who came to me first to atone for some sin, most of them, and then relaxed and settled in and entirely forgot about atonement. How long since you’ve seen someone stand up at Public Amending? And Christmas! Three-quarters of the congregation marks Christmas with trees and Santa Claus, don’t you think I know that?” Ian stirred guiltily.
“But the silliest,” Reverend Emmett said, “is the Sugar Rule.”
“Oh, well …” Ian said.
It wasn’t as if this subject hadn’t come up before, here and there.
“I knew almost from the start I’d made a mistake on that one. I just didn’t know how to get out of it. And truthfully, I never felt sure that I wasn’t merely rationalizing, once I’d seen how hard the rule was to follow. But in the hospital I was reading this book Sister Nell brought me. This nutrition book. I was trying to learn how to eat more healthily. Although,” he said, waving a hand toward the potato chips, “I may not always act on what I’ve learned. Well, I came upon a discussion of sugar, and do you know what? It’s not a stimulant.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s a tranquilizer.”
“It can’t be,” Ian said.
“It’s a tranquilizer. Oh, it gives you energy, all right. Physical energy. But as far as the mental effect: it lulls you.”
“Well, uh …”
“Want to know what is a stimulant?”
“What?”
“Milk.”
Ian thought about that. He started grinning.
“See?” Reverend Emmett said. He was grinning too. “How could you give answers any more wrong than mine have been, Ian? Why, you could be a better minister with one hand tied behind you!”
“No one could be a better minister,” Ian said.
He meant it with all his heart. Reverend Emmett must have realized that, because he sobered and said, “Well, thank you.”
“But I’ll think about Bible School, um, Emmett.”
“Wonderful,” Reverend Emmett said. Then he reached for another potato chip. His eyes seemed no longer brown but amber. “Oh,” he said, “it would be so wonderful to have somebody working at my side and calling me Emmett!”
And he popped the entire chip into his mouth and chomped down happily.
Bert was telling the new man, Rafael, how Mr. Brant had discovered his wife had left him. “First he claims she’s kidnapped,” Bert said. “He shows Jeannie the closet: ‘See? All her clothes still hanging here. She can’t have left on purpose.’ ‘Uncle,’ Jeannie goes. She goes, ‘These clothes are her very least favorites. Where’s her silk blouse with the poppies on it? Where’s her turquoise skirt? These are just the extras,’ she goes.”
Rafael tut-tutted. He said, “Womens always got so many emergency backups.”
“Tell about the neighbor,” Greg said, nudging Bert in the ribs.
“Jeannie goes, ‘Uncle, your neighbor Mr. Hoffberg is missing too. His wife is just about frantic.’ Know what he says? Says, ‘Why!’ Says, ‘Why, it’s a rash of kidnaps!’ ”
The three men chuckled. Ian frowned at the bureau he was working on. He should have given Mr. Brant some warning. He wished he had it to do over again.
Unexpectedly, Gideon and the redhead strolled through his memory. Framed by the church’s doorway, they kissed, and Ian all at once straightened.
What if that was the sign he had prayed for inside the church?
But if it was, he had no idea what it meant.
The others went for their break and Ian drove off to pick up Daphne. It was a crisp, glittery day, and the leaves were at their brightest. He found the ride so pleasant that when he reached the school, it took him a moment to notice the place was deserted. Not a single car sat out front; not a single student loitered on the grounds. He got out of the car and went to try the main entrance, but it was locked. A janitor pushing a broom down the hall saw him through the glass and came over to open the door. ?
??School’s closed,” he told Ian. “There’s a teachers’ meeting. Kids got out at noon.”
“Oh. Great,” Ian said. “Thanks.”
He walked around to the phone booth at one side of the building and called home. “Mom?” he said. “Is Daphne there?”
“Why, no, I thought she was at school.”
“They got out at noon today.”
“Well, you might try calling the Locklear girl,” she said. “Shall I look up her telephone number?”
“Never mind,” Ian said.
He wondered how his mother could stay so naive. She must work at it. She still thought the biggest issue confronting a teenaged girl was whether or not to kiss on the first date, and the answer (he’d heard her tell Daphne) was no, no, no. “You have years and years to do all that. You don’t want them saying you’re cheap.”
He drove to Gideon’s—a sagging, unpainted house on Greenmount—and parked sloppily and crossed the porch in two strides and rang the doorbell. No one answered, but he sensed a sudden freezing of movement somewhere inside the house. He opened the screen and knocked on the inner door. Shading his eyes, he peered through the windowpane. He saw a threadbare rug, part of a banister, and then Gideon lumbering down the stairs, tucking his shirt into his jeans. For a moment they faced each other through the glass. Gideon yawned. He opened the door and stuck his head out.
“I’d like to speak to Daphne,” Ian told him.
Gideon considered. “Okay,” he said finally.
He had a burnt, ashy smell, as if his skin were smoldering. And although his shirt was more or less tucked in now, it wasn’t buttoned. A slice of his bare chest showed through. “Daph!” he called. “Your uncle’s here.” He went on facing Ian. Up close, his hair was brittle as broom straw. The color must come from a bottle.
“Ian?” Daphne said. She came clomping down the stairs in her combat boots. Her face looked puckered, the way it did when she first woke up, and her eyes were slits. “What are you doing here?” she asked, arriving next to Gideon.
“I might ask you the same,” Ian told her.
“We had a half day. I forgot to mention.”
“Did you also forget the way home?”
She adjusted an earring.
“Let’s go,” Ian told her. “I’m running late.”
“Can Gideon come?”
“Not this time.”
She didn’t argue. She tossed Gideon a look, and Gideon gazed back at her expressionlessly. Then she unhooked her leather jacket from the newel post. She shrugged herself into it, slung her knapsack over her shoulder, and followed Ian out to the car.
When they’d been driving a while she said, “You didn’t have to be rude to him.”
“I wasn’t rude. I just want to talk to you alone.”
She clutched her knapsack to her chest. Now that she sat so close, he realized she too had that burnt smell. And her lips were swollen and blurry, and a red splotch stretched from her throat to the neckline of her Black Sabbath T-shirt.
“Daph,” he said.
She hugged her knapsack tighter.
“Daphne, some things are not what they seem,” he said.
“Watch out for that car,” she told him.
“I mean some people aren’t what they seem. People you imagine you’ll be with forever, say—”
“That car’s edging over the line, Ian.”
She meant the dark green Plymouth that was wavering a bit in the right-hand lane just ahead. “No doubt some teenager,” Ian grumbled.
“Prejudice, prejudice!” Daphne scolded him. “Nope, it’s an old man. See how low his head is? Some white-haired old man just barely peeking over the steering wheel and hanging on for dear life.”
Ian said, “What I’m trying to tell you—”
“He’s showing off for his girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend!”
“See the lady next to him? Probably this hot-and-heavy pickup from the Senior Citizens’ Center. He’s showing her how in-charge he is, and reliable and steady.”
Ian snorted. He applied his brakes and fell behind, allowing the Plymouth more room.
“You think I don’t know what I’m up to, don’t you,” Daphne said.
“Pardon?”
“You think I’m some ninny who wants to do right but keeps goofing. But what you don’t see is, I goof on purpose. I’m not like you: King Careful. Mr. Look-Both-Ways. Saint Maybe.”
“Now look,” Ian said. “The Plymouth is slowing down too. Seems he’s set on staying with us.”
“Mess up, I say!” Daphne crowed. “Fall flat on your face! Make every mistake you can think of! Use all the life you’ve got!”
Ian glanced over at her, but he didn’t speak.
“Let’s pass,” Daphne told him.
“Pass?”
“Speed up and pass. This driver’s a turkey.”
He obeyed. He whizzed through a yellow light, leaving the Plymouth behind, while Daphne rolled down her window and squawked out: “Attention! Attention! Lady in the green car! Your date’s been spotted on an FBI’s Most Wanted poster! I repeat!”
“Honestly, Daphne,” Ian said. But he was smiling.
He turned down Waverly Street, pulled up in front of the house, and sat there with the engine running. He said, “Daph?”
“Thanks for the lift,” she told him, and she hopped out.
He watched her cut across the front lawn—her knapsack bouncing, her ragged hair ruffling. The sole of one combat boot was working loose, and at every step she had to swing her left foot unnaturally high off the ground and stamp down hard. It gave her a slapdash, rollicking gait. It made her seem glorious. He was still smiling when he drove away.
* * *
At Prayer Meeting, the church always felt even smaller and cozier than it did ordinarily. It was something to do with the darkness closing in around it, Ian supposed. This was especially true tonight, for he was early and the fluorescent lights had not yet been switched on. He made his way through the rows of dimly gleaming metal chairs. He stepped behind the shop counter and tapped on the office door, which showed a thin line of yellow around the edges.
“Come in,” Reverend Emmett called.
He was sitting in one of the armchairs with his legs stretched out very long and straight. He was thumbing through a hymn pamphlet. “Why, Ian!” he said, smiling, and he rose to his feet in his loose-strung, jerky manner.
Ian said, “Reverend Emmett—”
He probably could have stopped right there. Reverend Emmett looked so crestfallen, all of a sudden; he must have guessed what Ian was about to say.
“It’s not only whether I’d be able to give people answers,” Ian told him. “It’s whether I’d want to. Whether I’d feel right about it.”
Reverend Emmett went on waiting, and Ian knew he should explain further. He should tell him about the sign from God. He should say what the sign had finally recalled to him: Lucy rushing home out of breath, laughing and excited, and his own arrogant certitude that he had an obligation to inform his brother. But that would have opened the way for debate. (When is something philosophical acceptance and when is it dumb passivity? When is something a moral decision and when is it scar tissue?) He wasn’t up to that. He just said, “I’m sorry.”
Reverend Emmett said, “I’m sorry, too.”
“I hope we can still be friends,” Ian told him.
“Yes, of course,” Reverend Emmett said gently.
Out in the main room, Ian lowered himself into a seat and unbuttoned his jacket. His fingers felt weak, as if he’d come through an ordeal. To steady himself, he bowed his head and prayed. He prayed as he almost always did, not forming actual words but picturing instead this spinning green planet safe in the hands of God, with the children and his parents and Ian himself small trusting dots among all the other dots. And the room around him seemed to rustle with prayers from years and years past: Let me get well and Make her love me and Forgive what I have done.
Then Si
ster Myra arrived with Sister Edna and flipped the light switch, flooding the room with a buzzing glare, and soon afterward others followed and settled themselves noisily. Ian sat among them, at peace, absorbing the cheery sound of their voices and the gaudy, bold, forthright colors of their clothes.
9
The Flooded Sewing Box
The spring of 1988 was the wettest anyone could remember. It rained nearly every day in May, and all the storm drains overflowed and the gutters ran like rivers and the Bedloes’ roof developed a leak directly above the linen closet. One morning when Daphne went to get a fresh towel she found the whole stack soaked through. Ian called Davidson Roofers, but the man who came said there wasn’t a thing he could do till the weather cleared. Even then they’d have a wait, he said, because half the city had sprung leaks in this downpour. So they kept a saucepan on the top closet shelf with a folded cloth in the bottom to muffle the constant drip, drip. Of course they’d moved the linens elsewhere, but still the upstairs hall smelled of something dank and swampy. Ian said it was him. He said he had mildew of the armpits.
Then along came June, dry as a bone. Only one brief shower fell that entire scorching month, and the yard turned brown and the cat lay stretched on the cool kitchen floor as flat as she could make herself. By that time, though, the Bedloes hardly cared; for Bee had awakened one June morning unable to speak, and two days later she was dead.
Agatha and her husband flew in from California. Thomas came down from New York. Claudia and Macy arrived from Pittsburgh with their two youngest, George and Henry; and their oldest, Abbie, drove up from Charleston. The house was not just full but splitting at the seams. Still, Daphne felt oddly lonesome. Late at night she cruised the dark rooms, stepping over sleeping bags, brushing past a snoring shape on the couch, and she thought, Somebody’s missing. She poured a shot of her grandfather’s whiskey and stood drinking it at the kitchen window, and she thought, It’s Grandma. In all the flurry of arrivals and arrangements, it seemed they had lost track of that.