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“Now you can get some more sleep,” he said.

Glory said, “Thank you, I will.” And she went upstairs and lay on her bed and hated her life until morning.

W
HEN MORNING CAME, SHE WENT DOWN TO THE KITCHEN
and made coffee and pancakes, as if for the first time. Jack’s expression was opaque. Her father was drowsy, or he was pensive. Finally he said, “I have something on my mind. ‘Last night I saw the new moon with the old moon in his arm.’ What is that? I’ve been trying to think.”

She said, “‘The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens.’”

Jack said, “Good for you, college girl.”

“No,” the old man said. “She was an English teacher. In high school. A very fine teacher of English, for a number of years. Then she got married, so she had to resign. They made them do that. ‘The new moon with the old moon in his arm.’ That is a very sad song. A number of times I heard my grandmother sing it, and it was very sad. ‘Oh forty miles off Aberdour ’tis fifty fathoms deep, and there lies good Sir Patrick Spens with the Scots lairds at his feet.’ She said the life was very difficult in Scotland, but she was always homesick. She said she would die of the homesickness, and maybe she did, but she took her time about it. She was ninety-eight when she died.” He laughed. “‘We that are young will never see so much nor live so long.’” He said, “You just picked me up and carried me, didn’t you, Jack. Well, that’s all right. I’m not the father you remember, I know that.”

Jack put his hand to his brow. “Of course you are. I didn’t—I’m sorry—”

“No matter. Never mind. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

The color left Jack’s face. After a moment he pushed back his
chair. “Well,” he said. “There’s work to be done.” He went out to the garden and stood in the path he had made along the iris beds and lighted a cigarette. Glory watched him from the porch. She said, “I should probably help him.”

The old man said, “Yes, dear, that would be good of you.” So she settled her father in the Morris chair with the newspaper, and then she went out to the garden. She touched Jack’s arm and he looked at her.

“What is it?” he said.

“I just wanted to say that there was nothing wrong with what you did. He hates being feeble. And he’s had to put up with it for a long time.”

He drew on his cigarette. “Thank you,” he said.

“No, really. I thought it was gallant. A beau geste. A demonstration of your fabled charm.”

“Too bad. I’ve found that people weary of my fabled charm.”

“Well, I guess I haven’t had much chance to weary of it.”

He laughed. “The day is young.” Then he said, “I didn’t intend anything when I said college girl. I don’t know what was offensive about it.”

“It wasn’t offensive. He just wants to make sure you think well of me. He’s afraid we don’t get along.”

He looked at her, studied her. “He said that?”

“Yes, he mentioned it.”

“Last night.”

“Yes—”

“And what did you say?”

“Well, I said that you and I never did really know each other very well.”

“That’s all?”

“He was too sleepy to talk much.”

“So he’s worried about it.”

“He worries about everything. It’ll be fine. You’ve always known how to please him.”

He shook his head. “No. I could always count on him to be
pleased with me. From time to time. Often enough. I never understood it myself.” He shrugged and laughed. “What the hell,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever understood much of anything.” He threw down his cigarette and glanced at her, and there was a kind of irritation in his look, as if she had drawn him into a confidence he already regretted. “I’m not making excuses,” he said.

“I know that. I want to get a bandage for your hand. I’ll be right back.”

The old man had moved to the porch. She called to him and waved as she passed. She brought the gauze and the tape, and there where they knew he could watch them, she tended to Jack’s wound. “That should be all right.”

“Very kind. Thank you,” he said. And with his bandaged hand, gravely and tentatively, he mussed her hair.

S
HE HAD LET HIM BELIEVE THAT THEIR FATHER WAS UP IN
the night worrying. That was wrong, but it wasn’t really intentional. She had wanted to tell him how beautiful it was to have taken up his father in his arms that way. She had thought it at the time, and had felt bitterly how helpless she was to be so gentle, so sufficient. To own up to this unwelcome feeling of admiration, aloud, to Jack himself, had given her a sense of freedom and strength, those rewards of self-overcoming her father had always promised. She had felt this briefly. Then she saw that wary look of his, caution with no certainty of the nature of the threat, and with no notion at all of possible refuge. He realized he did not please his father, did not know how to please his father. He would probably have liked to believe he had done something wrong so that he could at least orient himself a little, but she had told him a terrible thing, that he had done nothing to offend, that his father had found fault with him anyway, only because he was old and sad now, not the father he thought he had come home to.

They worked quietly in the sunshine, heaving up irises and separating them. Jack was very earnest about the work, and very
preoccupied, reflective. Glory replanted the best of the corms, setting a few aside for Lila. “You’re a friend of hers?” Jack asked.

“We get along. She’s a nice woman. You haven’t stopped by the Ameses’ yet, have you.”

“Too busy,” he said, and laughed. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“She keeps a big garden herself, and she’s offered to help me with this one, but I don’t want to take her away from her husband. Time’s wingèd chariot and so on.”

“How is old Ames?”

“Papa’s worried about him. He really does worry about everything. But he says, ‘Ames just isn’t quite right!’ He says, ‘I’ve known him all my life, and I can tell there’s something the matter!’” She looked toward the porch and whispered, “He’s supposed to be deaf, but he seems to hear whatever I’d rather he didn’t. I’d better be careful.”

Jack said, “I’d have thought Ames would come by. No wonder the old fellow misses him. I didn’t know forty-eight hours could pass without a quarrel, or at least a checker game.”

“I suppose he’s giving Papa time to enjoy having you here.”

“Ah yes. Who better than Reverend Ames to understand that special joy I bring with me wherever I go—”

“No, seriously. You don’t realize what this has meant.”

“What it meant until I actually showed up.” He said, “The hangover was a mistake, that’s for sure.” He took the cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lighted one.

“Children!” the old man shouted. “I think that’s enough for one day!”

She said, “Ames has mellowed a little. At least he’s not as abstracted as he used to be. So much of that was loneliness, I think. And it would please Papa if you paid a call on him.”

Jack looked at her. “I know. Of course. I intend to.” They were walking back to the house. He flicked his cigarette away and pushed the hair off his brow, and he held the door for her. Then he stood there just inside the door, like a stranger unsure of his welcome.

T
HEIR FATHER HAD PUT THE CHECKERBOARD ON THE
kitchen table. He said, “Jack, I like a good game of checkers. But Glory lets me win.”

“No, I don’t.”

“She does. And I know it’s kindly meant.”

“I don’t let you win.”

“She doesn’t really enjoy the game, so half the time she more or less concedes by the third move. It’s frustrating. I can’t hone my skills!”

Glory said, “I win about as often as you do.”

Her father said, “That is my point! Half the time she is just letting me win!” And he laughed roguishly and winked at Jack, who smiled. He opened the box. “Black is my preference. Glory, you sit down here and watch. You might want to pick up some pointers. This fellow may have acquired strategies unheard of in Gilead!”

“No, sir, “ Jack said. “Not where checkers are concerned.” He came to the table and took a seat. He placed the red checkers on their squares.

Glory said, “I’ll make popcorn.”

“Yes, like the old times—” Her father made a move.

She thought, Yes, a little like the old times. Graying children, ancient father. If they could have looked forward from those old times, when even a game of checkers around that table was so rambunctious it would have driven her father off to parse his Hebrew in the stricken quiet of Ames’s house—if they could now look in the door of the kitchen at the three of them there, would they believe what they saw? No matter—her father was hunched over his side of the board, mock-intent, and Jack was reclined, legs crossed at the ankles, as if it were possible to relax in a straight-backed chair. The corn popped.

After a while her father said, “Best two out of three! I know when I am outflanked.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked.

“‘Sure’? If I do this, you do that. And if I do this, you do that,” he said, tapping the board with his finger. “It seems odd, in the circumstances, that I should be the one to point it out!”

“If you hadn’t, I might not have thought of it.”

“Well, then, we’ll call it a draw.”

Jack laughed. “That’s fine with me.”

“Whipped!” his father said. “Technicalities aside. It has taken the starch out of me! Glory, I’ve got the board warmed up. Let’s see what you can do with this fellow.”

So she sat down opposite her brother. He smiled at her. “This is very fine popcorn,” he said.

“Extra butter.”

He nodded. They played a polite game, distracted by their father’s palpable hope that they would enjoy it a little. There was no trace in Jack’s expression of anything at all except a readiness to oblige, which was only emphasized by the promptness with which he took his turns. “Oh,” he said, when she triple-jumped him.

Then his father said, “I believe you have an opportunity there, Jack.” And he reached over and made the move himself, a double jump. “Now you have a king, you see.”

Glory said, “No fair,” and Jack laughed.

“Old times, yes! It’s very good, but I can’t deal with all this excitement. I’m off to my room. No, you two finish your game,” he said, when Jack stood up to help him with his chair. “There’s time enough to get me to bed. I’m not going anywhere.”

So they went on with their game. Glory said, “I don’t recall that we ever did play checkers, you and I. I always played with the younger kids.”

Jack began to make his move, but his hand trembled and he dropped it into his lap.

“What is it,” she said.

He cleared his throat and smiled at her. “You never sneaked me upstairs with a bottle of aspirin. You were a little girl.”

“No, I didn’t mean I did it myself. I just meant I knew that it happened.”

“Sorry. I didn’t realize that. I didn’t realize at the time. That you would have been aware of it.” He cleared his throat.

“It was a stupid thing for me to say, Jack. I apologize. I hope you will forget it.”

He said, “It just makes things sound worse than they were. They were bad enough.”

“All right. I will never say it again.”

He considered. “Say what, exactly?”

“Well, you’re right. I didn’t say that I personally was the one who sneaked you upstairs. That’s just what you heard.”

He said, “I wouldn’t mind if we dropped the subject entirely. All that happened a long time ago.”

At that point she lost her temper. She thought, Why am I apologizing to this man for something I did not say, and also for what I did say, which was only the truth?

“Well.” She hoped she was controlling the quaver of anger in her voice. “At just that moment it was not obvious that all that had ended a long time ago.”

He put his hand to his face. Oh, she thought, this is miserable. Dear God, I have made him ashamed. How will we live in the same house now? He will leave, and Papa will die of grief, and the fault will be mine. So she said, “Forgive me.”

“Yes,” he said, “of course.”

Their father called, “Could one of you children come and give me a little help?”

“I’ll go,” Jack said. She put away the checkerboard, and then she looked down the hall, and there was Jack, kneeling to unlace the old man’s shoes. And his father regarding him with such sad tenderness that she wished she could will herself out of existence, herself and every word she had ever said.