Saint Maybe (17 page)

Ian couldn’t believe his ears. Was this even legal, inquiring into a person’s private prayers? He ought to spin on his heel and walk out. But instead his heart began hammering as if he were about to do something brave. In a voice not quite his own, he said, “I caused my brother to, um, kill himself.”

Reverend Emmett gazed at him thoughtfully.

“I told him his wife was cheating on him,” Ian said in a rush, “and now I’m not even sure she was. I mean I’m pretty sure she did in the past, I know I wasn’t
totally
wrong, but … So he drove into a wall. And then his wife died of sleeping pills and I guess you could say I caused that too, more or less …”

He paused, because Reverend Emmett might want to disagree here. (Really Lucy’s death was just indirectly caused by Ian, and maybe not even that. It might have been accidental.) But Reverend Emmett only rocked from heel to toe.

“So it looks as if my parents are going to have to raise the children,” Ian said. Had he mentioned there were children? “Everything’s been dumped on my mom and I don’t think she’s up to it—her or my dad, either one. I don’t think they’ll ever be the same, after this. And my sister’s busy with her own kids and I’m away at college most of the time …”

In the light of Reverend Emmett’s blue eyes—which had the clean transparency of those marbles that Ian used to call ginger-ales—he began to relax. “So anyhow,” he said, “that’s why I asked for that prayer. And I honestly believe it might have worked. Oh, it’s not like I got an answer in plain English, of course, but … don’t you think? Don’t you think I’m forgiven?”

“Goodness, no,” Reverend Emmett said briskly.

Ian’s mouth fell open. He wondered if he’d misunderstood. He said, “I’m
not
forgiven?”

“Oh, no.”

“But … I thought that was kind of the point,” Ian said. “I thought God forgives everything.”

“He does,” Reverend Emmett said. “But you can’t just say, ‘I’m sorry, God.’ Why, anyone could do that much! You have to offer reparation—concrete, practical reparation, according to the rules of our church.”

“But what if there isn’t any reparation? What if it’s something nothing will fix?”

“Well, that’s where Jesus comes in, of course.”

Another itchy word: Jesus. Ian averted his eyes.

“Jesus remembers how difficult life on earth can be,” Reverend Emmett told him. “He helps with what you can’t undo. But only after you’ve
tried
to undo it.”

“Tried? Tried how?” Ian asked. “What would it take?”

Reverend Emmett started collecting hymnals from the chair seats. Apparently he was so certain of the answer, he didn’t even have to think about it. “Well, first you’ll need to see to those children,” he said.

“Okay. But … see to them in what way, exactly?”

“Why, raise them, I suppose.”

“Huh?” Ian said. “But I’m only a freshman!”

Reverend Emmett turned to face him, hugging the stack of hymnals against his concave shirt front.

“I’m away in Pennsylvania most of the time!” Ian told him.

“Then maybe you should drop out.”

“Drop out?”

“Right.”

“Drop out of college?”

“Right.”

Ian stared at him.

“This is some kind of test, isn’t it?” he said finally.

Reverend Emmett nodded, smiling. Ian sagged with relief.

“It’s God’s test,” Reverend Emmett told him.

“So …”

“God wants to know how far you’ll go to undo the harm you’ve done.”

“But He wouldn’t really make me follow through with it,” Ian said.

“How else would He know, then?”

“Wait,” Ian said. “You’re saying God would want me to give up my education. Change all my parents’ plans for me and give up my education.”

“Yes, if that’s what’s required,” Reverend Emmett said.

“But that’s crazy! I’d have to be crazy!”

“ ‘Let us not love in word, neither in tongue,’ ” Reverend Emmett said, “ ‘but in deed and in truth.’ First John three, eighteen.”

“I can’t take on a bunch of kids! Who do you think I am? I’m nineteen years old!” Ian said. “What kind of a cockeyed religion
is
this?”

“It’s the religion of atonement and complete forgiveness,” Reverend Emmett said. “It’s the religion of the Second Chance.”

Then he set the hymnals on the counter and turned to offer Ian a beatific smile. Ian thought he had never seen anyone so absolutely at peace.

“I don’t understand,” his mother said.

“What’s to understand? It’s simple,” Ian told her. “What you mean is, you don’t approve.”

“Well, of course she doesn’t approve,” his father said. “Neither one of us approves. No one in his right mind would approve. Here you are, attending a perfectly decent college which you barely got into by the skin of your teeth, incidentally; you’ve had no complaints about the place that your mother or I are aware of; you’re due back this Sunday evening to begin your second semester and what do you up and tell us? You’re dropping out.”

“I’m taking a leave of absence,” Ian said.

They were sitting in the dining room late Friday night—much too late to have only then finished supper, but Daphne had developed an earache and what with one thing and another it had somehow got to be nine
P.M
. before they’d put the children in bed. Now Bee, having risen to clear the table, sank back into her chair. Doug shoved his plate away and leaned his elbows on the table. “Just tell me this,” he said to Ian. “How long do you expect this leave of absence to last?”

“Oh, maybe till Daphne’s in first grade. Or kindergarten, at least,” Ian said.

“Daphne? What’s Daphne got to do with it?”

“The reason I’m taking a leave is to help Mom raise the kids.”

“Me?” his mother cried. “I’m not raising those children! We’re looking for a guardian! First we’ll find Lucy’s people and then I know there’ll be someone, some young couple maybe who would just love to—”

“Mom,” Ian said. “You know the chances of that are getting slimmer all the time.”

“I know nothing of the sort! Or an aunt, maybe, or—”

Doug said, “Well, he’s got a point, Bee. You’ve been running yourself ragged with those kids.”

Contrarily, Ian felt a pinch of alarm. Would his father really let him go through with this?

His mother said, “And anyway, how about the draft? You’ll be drafted the minute you leave school.”

“If I am, I am,” Ian told her, “but I don’t think I will be. I think God will take care of that.”

“Who?”

“And I do plan to pay my own way,” he said. “I’ve already found a job.”

“Doing what?” his father asked. “Moving poor folks’ furniture?”

“
Building
furniture.”

They peered at him.

“I’ve made arrangements with this cabinetmaker,” Ian said. “I’ve seen him at work and I asked if I could be his apprentice.”

Student, was the way he’d finally put it. Having sought out the cabinetmaker in that apartment full of china crates and mothballs, he had plunged into the subject of apprenticeship only to be met with a baffled stare. The man had sat back on his heels and studied Ian’s lips. “Apprentice,” Ian had repeated, enunciating carefully. “Pupil.”

“People?” the man had asked. Two furrows stitched themselves across his leathery forehead.

“I already have some experience,” Ian said. “I used to help my father in the basement. I know I could build a kitchen cabinet.”

“I dislike kitchens,” the man said harshly.

For a moment, Ian thought he still hadn’t made himself clear. But the man went on: “They’re junk. See this hinge.” He pointed to it—an ornately curlicued piece of black metal, dimpled all over with artificial hammer marks. “My real work is furniture,” he said.

“Fine,” Ian told him. What did he care? Kitchen cabinets, furniture, it was all the same to him: inanimate objects. Something he could deal with that he couldn’t mess up. Or if he did mess up, it was possible to repair the damage.

“I have a workshop. I make things I like,” the man said. He spoke like anyone else except for a certain insistence of tone, a thickness in the consonants, as if he had a cold. “These kitchens, they’re just for the money.”

“That’s okay! That’s fine! And as for money,” Ian said, “you could pay me minimum wage. Or lower, to start with, because I’m just an apprentice. Student,” he added, for he saw now that it was the uncommon word “apprentice” that had given him trouble. “And any time you have to do a kitchen, you could send me instead.”

He knew he had a hope, then. He could tell by the wistful, visionary look that slowly dawned in the man’s gray eyes.

But were his parents impressed with Ian’s initiative? No. They just sat there blankly. “It’s not brute labor, after all,” he told them. “It’s a craft! It’s like an art.”

“Ian,” his father said, “if you’re busy learning this … art, how will you help with the kids?”

“I’ll work out a schedule with my boss,” Ian said. “Also there’s this church that’s going to pitch in.”

“This what?”

“Church.”

They tilted their heads.

“There’s this … it’s kind of hard to explain,” he said. “This church sort of place on York Road, see, that believes you have to really do something practical to atone for your, shall we call them, sins. And if you agree to that, they’ll pitch in. You can sign up on a bulletin board—the hours you need help, the hours you’ve got free to help others—”

“What in the name of God …?” Bee asked.

“Well, that’s just it,” Ian said. “I mean, I don’t want to sound corny or anything but it
is
in the name of God. ‘Let us not love in—’ what—‘in just words or in tongue, but in—’ ”

“Ian, have you fallen into the hands of some
sect
?” his father asked.

“No, I haven’t,” Ian said. “I have merely discovered a church that makes sense to me, the same as Dober Street Presbyterian makes sense to you and Mom.”

“Dober Street didn’t ask us to abandon our educations,” his mother told him. “Of course we have nothing against religion; we raised all of you children to be Christians. But
our
church never asked us to abandon our entire way of life.”

“Well, maybe it should have,” Ian said.

His parents looked at each other.

His mother said, “I don’t believe this. I do not believe it. No matter how long I’ve been a mother, it seems my children can still come up with something new and unexpected to do to me.”

“I’m not doing this to
you!
Why does everything have to relate to
you
all the time? It’s for me, can’t you get that into your head? It’s something I have to do for myself, to be forgiven.”

“Forgiven what, Ian?” his father asked.

Ian swallowed.

“You’re nineteen years old, son. You’re a fine, considerate, upstanding human being. What sin could you possibly be guilty of that would require you to uproot your whole existence?”

Reverend Emmett had said Ian would have to tell them. He’d said that was the only way. Ian had tried to explain how much it would hurt them, but Reverend Emmett had held firm. Sometimes a wound must be scraped out before it can heal, he had said.

Ian said, “I’m the one who caused Danny to die. He drove into that wall on purpose.”

Nobody spoke. His mother’s face was white, almost flinty.

“I told him Lucy was, um, not faithful,” he said.

He had thought there would be questions. He had assumed they would ask for details, pull the single strand he’d handed them till the whole ugly story came tumbling out. But they just sat silent, staring at him.

“I’m sorry!” he cried. “I’m
really
sorry!”

His mother moved her lips, which seemed unusually wrinkled. No sound emerged.

After a while, he rose awkwardly and left the table. He paused in the dining room doorway, just in case they wanted to call him back. But they didn’t. He crossed the hall and started up the stairs.

For the first time it occurred to him that there was something steely and inhuman to this religion business, Had Reverend Emmett taken fully into account the lonely thud of his sneakers on the steps, the shattered, splintered air he left behind him?

The little lamp on his desk gave off just enough light so it wouldn’t wake Daphne. He leaned over the crib to check on her. She had a feverish smell that reminded
him of a sour dishcloth. He straightened her blanket, and then he crossed to the bureau and looked in the mirror that hung above it. Back-lit, he was nothing but a silhouette. He saw himself suddenly as the figure he had feared in his childhood, the intruder who lurked beneath his bed so he had to take a running leap from the doorway every night. He turned aside sharply and picked up the mail his mother had set out for him: a
Playboy
magazine, an advertisement for a record club, a postcard from his roommate. The magazine and the ad he dropped into the wastebasket. The postcard showed a wild-haired woman barely covered by a white fur dress that hung in strategic zigzags around her thighs. (
SHE-WOLVES OF ANTARCTICA! In Vivi-Color!
the legend read.)
Dear Ian, How do you like my Christmas card? Better late than never. Kind of boring here at home, no Ian and Cicely across the room oh-so-silently hanky-pankying
 … He winced and dropped the card on top of the magazine. It made a whiskery sound as it landed.

He saw that he was beginning from scratch, from the very ground level, as low as he could get. It was a satisfaction, really.

That night he dreamed he was carrying a cardboard moving carton for Sid ’n’ Ed. It held books or something; it weighed a ton. “Here,” Danny said, “let me help you,” and he took one end and started backing down the steps with it. And all the while he and Ian smiled into each other’s eyes.

It was the last such dream Ian would ever have of Danny, although of course he didn’t know that at the time. At the time he woke clenched and anxious, and all he could think of for comfort was the hymn they had sung in the Church of the Second Chance. “Leaning,”
they sang, “leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms …” Gradually he drifted loose, giving himself over to God. He rested all his weight on God, trustfully, serenely, the way his roommate used to rest in his chair that resembled the palm of a hand.