by Cara Wall
“I’d like for you to think of it as your college career.”
She understood, then, that this was not a discussion. The decision had been made.
She left Mississippi in late August. Her mother helped her pack, stuffing shoes with old stockings and rolling them in rags before she laid them in the suitcase.
“I can talk your father into one year,” her mother told her.
“It’s all right,” Nan said, folding a dress in half. “I’m ready to go.”
“And then you’ll come back,” her mother continued. “You’ll hardly miss anything.”
They finished packing in silence, the only sound the tissue paper they laid between each layer of clothing. When they were done, when there was nothing in Nan’s drawers, when her closet was empty and her vanity bare, Nan lay awake in her bed and prayed. She knew she should thank God for this opportunity, but instead she prayed for courage in the face of fear. She prayed God would show her the meaning in the crumbling of her world.
THREE
Tom Adams stopped Charles after class one afternoon, called him over to his desk as the rest of the students emptied out of the room. Charles hitched his books up under one arm so he could straighten his tie. He didn’t think the summons strange. All of his professors paid him certain special attentions: assigned him extra books, pointed him in the direction of respected journals, offered to fix him up for lunch with venerable editors, authors, scholars they knew. They were ensuring the right recommendations, the best course of study. They were establishing for him an unassailable reputation of merit, so that his father could keep his hands clean, could just nod with satisfaction when the right graduate school envelope arrived.
Tom Adams helped, too, in his own way: he slipped hard-to-find reference books into Charles’s campus mailbox, forwarded him invitations to department gatherings. Today, though, he was unusually hesitant. He frowned, looked down, tapped a finger on his desk.
“Well,” he said after a moment. “This is a sensitive question, but I’m going to ask it.” He straightened, tapped his finger on his desk again. “Are you a churchgoing man?” He looked warily at Charles.
“Not really,” Charles said.
His father thought religion was a farce. The illogical province of primitive man. In the classroom, he taught it as an instrument of power—a system of rules, with attendant punishments and rewards, wielded by cunning men to keep less cunning men in line. Its persistence in modern life frustrated him, especially because it required him to go to church three times a year: Convocation, Christmas, and Easter. This was the tithe of attention expected of the civilized, academic man, proof of morality and respect for tradition.
On those days, Charles’s family attended service in the same spirit they went to the dentist: at a determined time, in a determined place, Charles in his tweed coat and brown lace-ups, his mother wearing a hat and her most expensive gloves, his father stiff with frustration for a social convention he knew advanced his reputation but which was also a complete waste of his intellectual time. During the sermon he scribbled fierce notes on the back of an offering envelope with one of the church’s tiny golf pencils. Sentimental, he wrote, repetitive, you’ve got to be kidding, and often: translation, sharply underlined. During prayers, he closed his eyes, bowed his head a fraction of an inch, as if the soft words might have actually been comforting him. Not until he was in graduate school did Charles understand this meant his father was sleeping.
“I mean, every once in a while.”
Tom Adams nodded, started to gather his notes into a leather bag. “Well, in any case, there’s a lecture tonight I think you might like,” he declared. “Given by a friend of mine. ‘The Reality of Faith in the Middle Ages.’ ”
Charles frowned at him, confused by Tom’s reticence. He seemed almost embarrassed, and Charles had only ever seen him fiercely self-assured. Charles hesitated.
“It won’t be as disturbing as it sounds,” Tom said with a disconcerting smile.
“All right,” Charles said. It didn’t sound disturbing to him at all and wondered why Tom thought it might.
The lecture was held in a small room, close to the library, lined with folding chairs and warmed by a fire in the hearth. The chairs were filled with boys he knew: many from his own classes, some from his dorm, others he had seen in the halls. Most turned when Charles walked in, nodded their hellos or raised a hand in greeting, but the atmosphere was curiously hushed.
Tom’s friend, surprisingly, was a priest—Father Martin. He was a real priest, in black pants and a black shirt, a white collar, a small silver cross around his neck. He was young, as lively and athletic-looking as Tom, who was speaking with him quietly, happily, who ended the conversation with one hand on the priest’s shoulder in the manner of old companions. Charles realized he had never seen someone look glad to see a priest in his whole life.
It wasn’t a long lecture. It was about Joan of Arc.
“We know much about Joan,” Father Martin said, leaning forward on his chair, elbows on his knees. “Even though history was written by men. For some reason, men found this particular woman worthy of mention.”
Charles and his fellow students nodded.
“She was a French peasant. She believed she had visions, claimed the saints told her to drive the English out of France. She dressed as a boy and managed to convince her king to send her into battle at the head of his army.”
Father Martin paused for a moment and smiled.
“The Dauphin must have been desperate, yes? To send a woman into battle?” Around the room men smiled. Father Martin nodded and continued. “He was. Every obvious, rational military strategy had been tried and failed.”
Charles was enjoying this story. He knew it already, but Father Martin was a compelling speaker, sure-footed as he walked them down the path.
“And what do you think of Joan?” Father Martin asked. “Do you find her strong? Daring? Crazy?” The fire crackled in the hearth. “I expect most of us think of her as tragic. What a pity to die so young, for faith, in such a futile way.” Charles and the other students nodded once again. Father Martin took a sip of water.
“Let me pose a question,” he said, pausing for a moment, taking a breath. “What if God is real?”
The room was still and mute. This was a house of academia, where intellect and ambition were idolized. Where research, analysis, and insight were required. Where proof was always the goal. To admit that God existed was as shocking as taking off one’s shirt in the middle of a meal.
“All right,” Father Martin amended, “what if God was real then?” A foot scuffed on the carpet. A throat cleared. “What if instead of being naive or foolish or mad, Joan actually did speak the word of the Lord?”
The room was stunned.
“I think many of you find it hard to imagine—really imagine—a time in which God felt immediate. A world in which it made sense for armies to be led by girls who saw saints. But to understand history, you have to find a way to accept the possibility that Joan was sane. That her visions were real. That the king’s decision to employ her was sound.”
Despite the looks of disapproval the audience was giving him, Father Martin continued. “My friend Tom, here, asks you not to think of yourself as a king. But I ask you to consider this: as king, you would have believed, ardently, that you were the heir of God on earth. The heir of God. You study men’s wars and their courts, their manners and land usage. And yet, you find their faith quaint and outdated. It diminishes them, somehow. But what if God is real?”
Father Martin smiled. “Rest assured,” he said. “I am not here to convert. I simply want to open a small door in your mind. Tom asks you to understand historical figures as real men. And to do that, you must let yourself experience faith. To feel the urgency of their belief in God. For it was a reality in the Middle Ages. Not a question—very, very real.”
That was it. Not a lecture, really, more of a curved lens through which to examine the world,
an interesting sidebar to Charles’s studies. But it took hold. In the days that followed the lecture, Charles felt odder than he had ever felt before. There was a lump inside his chest, solid and damp like wet clay, as if Father Martin had opened a door in his rib cage and slipped an unfinished piece of pottery inside of him, turned Charles into a kiln. He could not shake the feeling of a shape drying to completion, the colors of its glaze becoming vivid. It was hot, so intense sometimes that Charles was afraid it would shatter, so unbearable that it drove him out of bed into the cool night, where he could parse its urgency into footsteps, breath, and forward motion.
It felt like an answer.
He had not known the question was God. He had not been aware that he had even ever wondered about God, not really, not deeply. But here was this certainty, arising in the same way clarity rose out of Charles’s papers after hours of his sitting with scattered ideas, writing and rewriting, twisting words like brass links into a chain until his argument was sound.
The pain he felt, now, he realized, came from forbidding himself to believe it, this answer to a question he did not think he had asked, this confidence growing in him—both secret and certain. God existed; God was real. He could not explain this new conclusion, except to say that when he put it away, it was agony, and when he brought it out, it was the deepest, most beautiful relief he had ever known.
After a month, he went to Tom Adams’s office hours. He meant to begin with a question about a paper, to mention the lecture casually, just as he was leaving. Instead he stood in the doorway and said, “Do you believe in God?”
Tom looked up from his desk. “I don’t know,” he said.
Charles sat down in the old chair tucked in the corner. “But Father Martin does.”
“Yes.”
“And how does he know?”
Tom smiled. “He says it’s like knowing that your mother slept with the milkman. You wish you didn’t have to know, but there it is.”
“And you don’t know.”
“My mother never slept with the milkman,” Tom said. Then seeing that Charles was serious, he said, “I have never been certain about faith. I expect the same enlightenment of it that I expect from study. But, even when I pray, I still see things in the world I don’t understand. Martin tells me I should stop assuming God is so like me. He says the challenge is not to understand, but merely to believe that all things are understandable.”
Charles felt pale. “I think,” he said and cleared his throat. “I think that may be how I feel.”
Tom was silent for a moment. “Then you’re lucky,” he said finally. “And I don’t think you know yet just how lucky you are.”
Charles did not feel lucky. He felt like he was going to have to tell his father that his mother slept with the milkman.
He chose Sunday dinner, because that was the time allotted in his family for serious things.
“Mom, Dad,” he said, when the table was empty—before dessert, but after the chicken and potatoes had been cleared away. “I’d like to discuss graduate school.” His voice was careful and slow. He chose words he knew would calm them both: discuss, graduate, school. His father held up a hand.
“I’m afraid not,” his father said. “I can’t know anything about your process. You’ll apply, that’s fine. But it can’t look as if I’ve encouraged you or biased you in any way. I can’t be in front of it or behind it. Discuss it with your mother,” he said, rising from the table.
“But you’re not behind it,” Charles said, without careful thought. His father raised an eyebrow.
“Mind your talk to your father,” his mother said. She began to cut the cake.
His father sat back down. “Charles,” he said, “you’re a brilliant student. I’m not flattering you. My colleagues tell me so, and I am inclined to believe it.” Out of the corner of his eye, Charles saw his mother smile.
“I am also inclined to believe that, though there are those who toady up to me, there are also those who would like to see me go. I don’t keep tabs on who outnumbers whom at any given moment. My support of your application could help, but it could hurt, depending on who has the final decision. It’s better that I remain removed.”
Remain removed, Charles repeated to himself, what a cunning encapsulation of his father’s life.
“Thank you,” Charles said. “But it’s something else I need to tell you.”
His parents both looked at him. His mother, holding a piece of cake on the flat edge of a spatula, seemed alarmed.
“I think I’d like to go to divinity school,” Charles said. To his chagrin, his voice was small and quiet. His parents did not answer. There was a moment of silence during which his mother transferred the piece of cake to a plate and put it in front of his father, and still no one spoke.
Suddenly his father smiled. It was a real smile, a big smile, a smile Charles had never seen before.
“Hah!” his father exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “Hah!” He stood up then sat back down. “You’ve done it,” he said, leaning toward Charles. “You’ve done it brilliantly.” He sat back and took a bite of cake. “It’s brilliant,” he said, chewing.
“What’s he done?” his mother asked, putting a piece of cake in front of Charles.
“He’s come up with a way to completely divorce himself from my shadow.” His father shook his head, almost in glee. “I didn’t think it could be done. I didn’t see how it could be done—it’s bothered me all these years, ever since he started liking history. How was he going to make it on his own? How was he going to prove to everyone he didn’t need me?”
Charles had never seen his father so animated. He wondered if this was what he was like behind the closed door of his study.
“You could have gone to a different school, of course, but that would have been silly. You would have given up greatness for independence, which isn’t what I call a fair trade. So you came to Harvard, and I have been trying to stay out of the way. But divinity school, of course. Of course! Especially with medieval studies. You’ll continue Latin, and Greek. Greek!” It was as if his father’s hair was standing straight up on his head. “You can finally study the Greeks! And the Romans! You can finally study them because you won’t have to study them with me!” His father paused to catch his breath. “It’s brilliant,” he said peacefully. “It’s almost the same course of study. You’ll publish something excellent, and any department will let you cross over. Divinity school. It will probably even lend you more cachet.”
Charles wanted to let the moment live. A doctoral degree was six years. Six years in which he could bask in the glow of his father’s pride. He didn’t want to see this glorious, effervescent being become again the grey tweed man it used to be. He wanted to make his father happy.
But as his faith had fallen deeper into him, like drops of indigo in a glass of water, Charles had been thinking. His future was academic; it always had been. His talent was research and writing, distilling thoughts into theses and supporting arguments, crafting paragraphs that fit together like ice cubes in their metal trays. Expressing ideas clearly was his life’s work. And now his ideas were about God, about life and how to live it better. As much as it surprised him, he no longer wanted to be a professor, and so though it pained him, he was forced to say, “Actually, sir, I think I’d like to preach.”
His father wiped his mouth, set down his napkin, rose from the table, and left the house, slamming the door.
Charles had been prepared for that, but still did not like the finality of it, the emptiness in the room. His mother reached across the table to pat his hand. “Your father will come around,” she said. “It’s just a shock, especially after you’d made him so happy. At some point, he’ll find it noble; he’ll write some paper about the history of religious callings.”
Charles smiled; it was true. His mother cleared her throat. “Do you,” she looked down, then back up. “Do you feel you have a call?” she asked.
“Yes,” Charles said. “I do. I�
��m absolutely certain that God exists. I can’t tell you it’s rational, only that it’s immediate, and urgent, and true.” It was the most personal thing he had ever told her.
His mother frowned slightly, then looked at him directly. “A minister,” she said. “It seems useful, doesn’t it? It seems like a pleasant way to spend a day.”
“Thank you,” Charles said. “That’s just the way it feels to me.”
And so Charles started his doctorate in theology, reading the Bible for the first time, studying Hebrew, Greek, papyrology, and biblical archaeology. It was not that different from his study of history, except that it was entirely personal: each assignment, each text, each lecture pertained to the way he would use his faith. Or rather, how he would explain it, how he would bring its peace into other people’s lives. Before his first semester was over, he knew he had made the right choice. He was happy—as happy as he had been during his childhood summers, but in a deeper way, because this interlude would not come to an end. When he graduated, he would take a post as an associate pastor, and when that term was done, he would find his own church: a place to minister and serve. It was remarkable to look out on his future and see no impending disassembly of his contentment.
Lily had chosen Fridays. On Fridays, she did not think about her parents at all. It was a relief.
All of Radcliffe was a relief. Though the dormitory was crowded and loud, and girls congregated in the hallways at all hours, smoking cigarettes and singing bits of popular songs, Lily quickly learned that a DEAD END sign hung on her door discouraged people from knocking and that she could skip the weeknight coffees in the living room. This antisocial attitude branded her a grinder who cared about grades more than anything else; it was not a flattering reputation, but she did not mind it. There were plenty of other grinders to sit with in the dining room at meals, textbooks open on the tablecloths, girls who accepted her as a colleague and did not expect her to be their friend.
At the end of her freshman year, she enrolled in summer school. She had gone back to Maryville for Christmas and discovered that, in her absence, her family’s grief had scabbed over. Their sadness had thinned and lightened, new skin had grown, fresh and pink. While she was away, they had been able to forget the accident. When she returned, they had been forced to pick up their rakes of grief and drag them along the ground.