Home (29 page)

Jack smiled. He said, “A powerful sermon. It gave me a lot to consider.”

“Well, that’s all right,” his father said. “No harm in that, I suppose. I’m sure he must have meant well. Nothing I would
have expected. He seems to have squandered a wonderful opportunity.” His voice became softer and his gaze more fixed as realization settled in.

Jack said, “Please don’t worry about it. It really doesn’t matter,” and went up to his room.

Days passed without any word from Ames. Their father read and prayed and brooded, and every time the telephone rang he said, “If it’s Ames, tell him I’m dead.”

H
ER FATHER HAD SUFFERED A TERRIBLE SHOCK
. I
T WAS
his habit to consider Ames another self, for most purposes. And here his son, for whose spiritual comfort and peace he had prayed endlessly, often enough in Ames’s kitchen, in his hearing, and in full confidence that his friend seconded his prayers—his son had made himself vulnerable to him and had been injured, insulted. That Jack was a wound in his father’s heart, a terrible tenderness, was as fully known to Ames, almost, as it was to the Lord. And here the boy had put on a suit and tie—he had borrowed one of his father’s ties—and gotten himself to church, for heaven’s sake, despite reluctance, despite even fear, to judge by the potency of his reluctance. Glory could read her father’s thoughts as they sat together over their breakfast that morning—the look of vindication, of confidence that things were miraculously about to come right. He had stood at the front of his own church year after year, hoping to be able to preach again about grace and the loving heart of Christ to his aloof, his endlessly lonely son. When he smiled to himself, he was certainly imagining himself in that pulpit, amazed and so grateful. Who better than Jack’s second father, his father’s second self, to say the words of welcome and comfort he could not say? It would never have occurred to him that Ames would not speak to the boy as if from his own heart.

Then this incomprehensible disappointment. The old man muttered and stared, his eyes flickering over the memory of the kindnesses he had done Ames through all those years, the trust he
had placed in him. He frowned as he did when he was rehearsing grievance and rebuke. Never since the darkest storms of his retirement had she seen him so morose.

Over the decades there had been actual shouting matches between Ames and her father, set off by matters so abstruse no one dared attempt mediation. Once, when her mother tried to say something emollient about the communion of saints, her father, in the persisting heat of disputation, said, “That’s just foolish!” and she terrified them all by packing a bag. Sometimes the older children tried to soothe, to make peace, but in fact the friendship was not threatened but secured by a mutual intelligibility so profound it enabled them to sustain for days an argument incomprehensible to those around them, to drop it when they wearied of it and then to take it up again just where they had left it. No one could predict when the warmth of their pleasure in argument would kindle and flare into mutual irritation, though weariness and bad weather were factors.

But in all those years neither of them had ever done the other any harm. This particular injury, utterly unexpected, to the old man’s dearest affection—it was without question the costliest of them all, therefore most precious to him—was hardly to be imagined. Her father was in mourning, and Ames stayed away, no doubt waiting for a sign that he had not alienated the Boughtons forever. He would be in mourning, too.

S
OMETHING HAD TO BE DONE
. A
MES ALREADY HAD THEIR
copies of
Life
and
The Nation
, and he had his own subscriptions to
Christian Century
and the
Post
. So far as Glory knew, there were no books around the house that he had lent their father, or that he had said he would like to borrow. Every vegetable and flower they grew Lila grew more abundantly. Glory decided to make a batch of cookies. But Jack came downstairs with a faded copy of
Ladies’ Home Journal
. He tapped the note on the cover:
Show Ames
. “I’ve been up in the attic a few times. All sorts of
things up there. I found an article in here about American religion. Pretty interesting.”

“Nineteen forty-eight. It’s so old he’s probably seen it.”

He nodded. “It’s so old he’s probably forgotten it.”

“Well, I think I’ll just make cookies.”

“Whatever you say.” Jack put the magazine on the table. Then he stood looking at it with his hands on his hips, as if he were relinquishing something that mattered. “Interesting article, though.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll need a minute to comb my hair.”

“Sure.” Then he said, “My idea was that you would give it to the old gent first, before you take it to Ames. Then they’ll have something to argue about. I mean, conversation might be strained. In the circumstances. So I thought this might help.” He shrugged.

She put away the mixing bowl and the measuring spoons. “Any further instructions?”

“Not at the moment. Well, he’s awake and dressed. I thought maybe you might read it to him over breakfast. I’ve eaten. I’m—” He made a gesture toward the door that suggested he had some sort of intention to act upon. Some hoe blade to whet. He had already oiled the horse collar.

“All right,” she said. “Should I tell him this is your idea?”

“Yes. Tell him that. Say I’m afraid I might have offended Ames, and I’d like to put things right.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself? I suppose he’d want the particulars.”

“Bright girl,” he said. “Thanks, Glory.” And he left.

H
ER FATHER TOOK INSTANTLY TO THE IDEA OF RECONCIL
iation. He relaxed visibly at the very word. There was nothing improbable in the idea that Jack was somehow at fault, though, after allowing himself the thought a few times, he still had no specific notion of how he could have been. A skeptical look, perhaps, but that was to be expected. Still, Jack was Jack, and there
was nothing disloyal about accepting that Jack might be at fault in some degree, since forgiving him was deeper even than habit, since it was in fact the sum and substance of loyalty. Yes. The old man always interpreted any pleasing turn of events as if he were opening a text, to have a full enjoyment of all reassuring implications and all good consequences. “It’s very kind of Jack to recognize his part in this, and to want to make amends. Christian of him. I believe he may be doing this to please his old father, too. So I have something to think about that might not have been so clear to me otherwise.” He laughed. “That sermon was for my benefit. Yes. The Lord is wonderful.” He said, “Old Ames says he remembers me in skirts and a lace bonnet, and that could be true. My grandmother took my infancy in hand and she made it last as long as she possibly could. Longer, I guess. She meant well. My mother’s health failed after I was born. That was Mother’s opinion, anyway. But you just can’t give up a friendship that goes back as far as that!” He loved to reflect on the fact that grace was never singular in its effects, as now, when he could please his son by forgiving his friend. “That is why it is called a Spirit,” he said. “The word in Hebrew also means wind. ‘The Spirit of God brooded on the face of the deep.’ It is a sort of enveloping atmosphere.” Her father was always so struck by his insights that it was impossible for him to tell those specific to the moment from those on which he had preached any number of times. It had made him a little less sensitive than he ought to have been to the risk of repeating himself. Ah well.

So she read the article to her father, and he chuckled over the passages by which Ames was certain to be exasperated, his eyes alight with the pleasure of knowing he and the Reverend were, for Jack’s purposes, entirely of one mind. “Very thoughtful of him to find this for us,” he said.

When they had finished reading it, Glory took the magazine to Ames’s house and left it with Lila, since the Reverend was out calling. A day passed. Jack came in from the garden to ask if she
had delivered it, then to ask if there had been any response. Finally, weary of all the anxiety, she went again without gift or pretext and found Ames at home. He opened the door, and when he saw her there, his eyes teared with regret and relief. “Come in, dear,” he said. “I’m very glad to see you. How is your father doing these days?”

“As well as can be expected. Jack helps me take care of him. Or I help Jack.” She said, “We’ve missed you.”

Ames rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “Yes. I know it has been wonderful for Robert to have him home again.” He looked tired and moved and as if he needed to recover himself, so she said that her father had asked her to look in but she really couldn’t stay.

“I haven’t been sleeping very well so I’m not worth much right now, but I’ll come by tomorrow or the next day.” He said, “Give Jack my regards.”

He seemed so robust beside her father that it was hard to remember Ames was old, too.

The next day Ames strolled up the street with Robby tagging after him, running ahead of him, pouncing at grasshoppers. “Like a puppy,” her father said. “Into everything.” Glory went inside to make lemonade and allow the two old gentlemen time to follow out the protocols of renewed cordiality. Jack came downstairs to the kitchen and leaned against the counter with his arms folded. Together they listened for a while to the voices, firmer as talk proceeded. There was laughter and the creaking of chairs, and there were silences, too, but there were always silences. When she was no longer afraid of disrupting any delicate work of reparation, Glory took them their lemonade and sat with them a while. Robby went to the garden and came back with a toy tractor he had brought on another visit and forgotten to take home with him. He drove it here and there around the porch floor, under his father’s chair and around his shoes.

The conversation turned to the article Jack had found, “God and the American People.” It was contemptuous of the entire enterprise
of religion in the United States. But it was awkwardly reasoned, so the two old clergymen could enjoy refuting it. They had labored earnestly at propagating the true faith, which had never seemed to them to have national traits or boundaries. Nor did they feel directly implicated in whatever eccentricities and deficiencies in the local practice of it they might be obliged to grant.

Jack came out on the porch with a glass of lemonade and took a chair. There was a little silence. “Reverend,” he said.

Ames said, “Jack, it’s good to see you,” and he glanced away, at Boughton, at the glass in his hand.

Jack watched him for a moment. Then he said, “I heard you two laughing about that magazine. It’s pretty foolish, all in all. Could I see it for a second? Thanks. I thought he made one interesting point in here somewhere, though. He said the seriousness of American Christianity was called into question by our treatment of the Negro. It seems to me there is something to be said for that idea.”

Boughton said, “Jack’s been looking at television.”

“Yes, I have. And I have lived in places where there are Negro people. They are very fine Christians, many of them.”

Boughton said, “Then we can’t have done so badly by them, can we? That is the essential thing.”

Jack looked at him, and then he laughed. “I’d say we’ve done pretty badly. Especially by Christian standards. As I understand them.” Jack sank back into his chair as if he were the most casual man on earth and said, “What do you think, Reverend Ames.”

Ames looked at him. “I have to agree with you. I’m not really familiar with the issue. I haven’t been following the news as closely as I once did. But I agree.”

“It isn’t exactly news—” Jack smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, Reverend,” he said. Robby brought the tractor to show him, let him work the steering wheel, ran the tractor along the arm and over the back of his chair.

Boughton said, “I don’t believe in calling anyone’s religion
into question because he has certain failings. A blind spot or two. There are better ways to talk about these things.”

Ames said, “Jack does have a point, though.”

“And I have a point, too. My point is that it’s very easy to judge.”

That was meant to end the conversation, but Jack, who was studying the ice in his glass, said, “True. Remarkably easy in this case, it seems to me.”

“All the more reason to resist that impulse!”

Jack laughed, and Ames looked at him, not quite reprovingly. Jack’s gaze fell.

Boughton said, “If there is one thing the faith teaches us clearly it is that we are all sinners and we owe each other pardon and grace. ‘Honor everyone,’ the Apostle says.”

“Yes, sir. I know the text. It’s the application that confuses me a little.”

Ames said, “I think your father has shown us all a good many times how he applies that text.”

Jack sat back and held up his hands, a gesture of surrender. “Yes, sir. Yes, he has. For which I have special reason to be grateful.”

Ames nodded. “And so have I, Jack. So have I.”

There was a silence. Her father averted his face, full as it was of vindication and conscious humility.

Lila came up the walk. Jack saw her first and smiled and stood. Ames turned and saw her and stood, also. When she came through the screen door, Boughton gestured toward his friend and his son and said, “I’d stand up, too, my dear, if I could.”

“Thank you, Reverend.” She said, “I can’t stay. I just come to tell John I fixed a supper for him. It’s cold cuts and a salad, so there’s no hurry about it.”

Boughton said, “Join us for a few minutes. Jack will get you a chair.”

Jack said, “Please take mine, Mrs. Ames. I’ll bring one from the kitchen.” And he seated her beside his father with that gallantry
of his that exceeded ordinary good manners only enough to make one wonder what was meant by it.

Glory thought Jack might have made an excuse to have a word or two with her about how she thought things were going, so she went into the kitchen after him. She was ready to tell him it might be time to mention the weather, baseball, even politics. But he pointedly did not meet her gaze and went out to the porch again.