The Dearly Beloved

by Cara Wall

  Over the next few weeks, they exchanged a dozen letters, from which James learned that his uncle worked in finance because he liked numbers, specifically their round weight, like that of marbles, sensible and clear. At the same time, James learned that his uncle experienced God as a tangible entity in his life, unseen but present, most often at dusk, and that he prayed to Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints, according to their particular auspices.

  James ignored his uncle’s theology and wrote, finally, They’re all so busy being clever they’ve forgotten that once I graduate, I’ve got to get a job.

  And what job would you like to find? his uncle asked.

  I don’t know, James answered. I want to be useful. I want to see results. I don’t ever want to have to go back home.

  His uncle took longer than usual to reply. I think you should know, he wrote, eventually, that I tried to help your mother. A hundred times I tried to help her, and she wouldn’t let me.

  Because she was afraid?

  Because she wouldn’t subject your father to the shame of being supported by another man. That’s the choice she made.

  James had never realized his mother had been given choices. He took some time to write his answer. When he finally did he said, I don’t ever want to have to stand by and watch people suffer. I want to confront the things that need confronting. How do I do that?

  Politics, his uncle answered, medicine, religion, education, law.

  James nodded as he read the letter. Law, he thought, I’ll be a lawyer, and Nan will be proud.

  On Tuesdays, Nan arrived early for her afternoon French class so that she could get a seat by the window and watch for James to come loping up the pathway in his khakis and grey tweed coat. At first sight of him, she closed her notebook and put her pencil in her bag, so that she could pack up as quickly as possible and be the first person out the door.

  Nan had always expected to meet her husband in college. She had assumed some boy would find her pretty and charming, like her more than he liked other girls, trust her enough to let her choose a house and raise his children. She had assumed she would find a boy she thought was handsome, who was on his way to making money, whom she trusted to buy her jewelry and pick out their cars.

  She had not expected James, with his wry smile and messy hair. She had not expected to wake up in the morning and wish he were with her, to hurry through breakfast, leave class directly at the ring of the bell so she could be with him more quickly. She had not expected to feel panicked when he was late or relieved when she saw him, to relax when he put his arm around her. She had not expected her heart to race furiously when he kissed her, or to want to be with him more than anyone else. She had not expected to need him as surely as she needed shoes. She had not expected him to become so quickly, so irreversibly, essential.

  She wanted James to love her. She knew he was wary. He often walked awkwardly, one shoulder hunched, tense, ready to run away. She recognized his vigilance; she had seen the same look of distrust in so many eyes on her visits to parishioners with her father. It was the look people had when they needed to be treated with dignity after so much of life had been unfair. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, hold him as she would a frightened bird, thumb on its back, fingers on its shaking, feathered chest.

  She thought he might be worried that she was as silly as her friends, only interested in clothes and cars and television. So she told him about music: about learning how to tune a piano, to transpose a score, her first experiments in conducting. She told him about her mother and father, and how they had fought about her leaving home. She told him how homesick she was, sometimes—how much she missed the smell of mown grass and the ironed sheets on her childhood bed. As she spoke about them, she realized she was letting them slip away.

  She invited James to church. The prospect terrified her. James had told her he was not religious; he had meant it, and the determination in his voice had given her great pause. Of all the things she thought she could give up for him, she could not give up her faith in God. She had pondered this as deeply as her father would have wanted her to, and she had come to the conclusion that her faith was an essential part of the person she wanted to be. Who would she be without God? What purpose would her childhood have served? Whom would she thank for her blessings? How would she understand the workings of the world? How would she accept its mysteries?

  On the appointed Sunday, James arrived in a coat and tie that he had obviously borrowed from Bill. Nan was instantly less nervous; it was a gesture that meant he was willing to try. They arrived for the eleven o’clock service ten minutes early and sat in the third pew. Nan was usually in the choir stalls, as she had been since childhood, but she didn’t want this to be a performance. She didn’t want James to be her audience. She wanted him to be her date, her partner. She wanted to listen to the word of God with him, to have a shared experience of faith. She wanted it so badly she felt made of glass.

  It had been years since she had sat in a church pew, facing the altar instead of standing with her back to it, looking out over the congregation as she sang. She felt ordinary and plain. But she didn’t mind, because she was sitting next to someone whose hand she could reach out and hold, marveling at how astonishing it felt to love God and man so fully at the same time.

  James, however, was obviously distracted. It seemed he could not be still. He opened and closed the hymnal and the prayer book, read ahead in the bulletin, took his offering cash out of his pocket much too early, folded and unfolded it until the offering plate finally came around. He rubbed his temples during the sermon and sat on his hands during the prayers. Nan had never seen him so uncomfortable, and she sat through the service wondering if he would ever want to try it again, anxious that this Sunday would be his last.

  FIVE

  For three weeks, Charles tried to forget Lily. He attended class, ate in the dining hall, wrote papers, and went to church on Sundays. He read the newspaper, shined his shoes, took his blazers in to be pressed, all while trying to forget Lily’s brown hair and slight frame.

  It did not work. He wanted to know her. He wanted to put depth and shadow and texture to her outline. He wanted to discover the timbre of her voice, to watch her hands move as she talked, to know her stride, her pace, to hear her snap at him in annoyance, to feel her hand on his arm as she made him pause to look at something that had caught her eye. He wanted to know how she sat, how she held her cup, how she brushed her hair. He was surprised by how much he wanted to see her room, to know what color it was painted, what light it got, whether her desk was wide or narrow. He wanted to know how she moved in the world, so that he could recognize her in a crowd just from the way she tucked her hair behind her ear.

  But she did not believe in God, and he did. In any intelligent analysis, it was an insurmountable divide. Wars had been started for less, civilizations razed to dust. He supposed he should try to find a girl who understood the deep comfort and broad joy God gave him, who smiled when he talked about becoming a minister, who told her family their plans with pride. He made a point of looking at other girls in the library. Some of them were there to study, lugging stacks of books, wearing tweed skirts, cardigans, and lace-up shoes. Some were there to meet men; he could tell by their tightly curled hair, bright blouses, and open-toed sandals. Any one of them could be the right girl for him; but not one of them was Lily.

  It was strange to him that so soon after finding his faith—after believing every need could be fulfilled—a new longing had been awakened in him. A longing for a girl who did not believe in God. But then, his mother did not believe in God, or his father, or Tom Adams—who was, perhaps, the person he most admired in the world—yet he loved them, and they loved him. And also, there was a chance that any girl he dated would reject something inherent about him, wouldn’t like history or Martha’s Vineyard or comic books or baseball. He, in turn, might dislike her brother or her cat or how she spent her money. So why should he give up on Lily before he’d even
tried?

  He appealed once again to the librarian, Eileen.

  “Look,” he said to her. “I’m not crazy. You know me. I study divinity. I think I might be totally in love with that girl, Lily, and I’ve got to know where she lives or her phone number, or something.” He felt like a scrambling puppy.

  “She studies English literature,” Eileen said.

  So Charles stationed himself in the lobby of Radcliffe’s English building. He did not know Lily’s schedule, so he started his campaign first period on Monday morning, arriving ten minutes before dismissal, hoping to catch her as she came out of a class. He sat on a slatted wooden bench outside the administrative office, his eyes trained on the wide expanse of the marble staircase to the second floor. There were other men there with him, suitors waiting for their own unforgettable girls. Eavesdropping, he realized that most of these boys were English majors, like Lily, and that they could vigorously debate the merits of English literature versus American literature versus literature in translation. These boys seemed to him pale and floppy, and he wondered whether this was the sort of boy Lily admired.

  As he waited, Charles worried that Lily would equate him with other divinity students, men who disdained atheists, who worked to debunk disbelief, whose faith called them to save unenlightened souls. He puzzled over how he would explain his own faith to her, how to make her understand that he knew God, but he did not need others to. How to explain that God was like a mentor, a person whom Charles admired, whose company he enjoyed and whom he asked for advice. That analogy left out the feeling of Charles’s faith completely, but Charles thought it would help Lily see him as sensible and levelheaded. He wanted to describe his faith as one part of him, like being tall or needing glasses—intrinsic and essential, but not something others needed to possess as well.

  The bell rang. Lily did not emerge from a classroom, so Charles walked back through Cambridge to his own second period class, the class he skipped the next day so that he could pace the long halls of Lily’s school building, still wondering what she would think of him.

  His father thought he was crazy. “God,” his father said, rolling his eyes, “the greatest myth ever adopted by humanity.”

  Tom Adams agreed. “God,” he said, shaking his head. “Not what I saw coming. I thought you were going to be my competition. I thought you were going to write the books I wanted to write. I thought you were going to write them better.”

  Charles had thought that, too. But now he knew his studies had been his preparation for ministering. There was suffering, and he could help. There was loneliness, and he could keep company. There was despair, and he could hope. Charles did not question this calling. It was as certain as the facts of his life that had come before. But now he knew his call was not everything. Now, there was Lily.

  Charles returned to look for her again the next day. His in-class essay had taken longer than he’d thought it would, even with his rushing it, and he arrived later than he’d wanted to, dropping onto the bench hot and slightly out of breath. Carrying his books had made his palms sticky; he wiped them on his pants then raked them through his hair. He looked up. The bell rang across the marble floors, a door opened at the top of the staircase, and Lily emerged. She was wearing a grey dress with a full skirt, no stockings, flat shoes. She was pushing a notebook into her green Radcliffe book bag, and she did not see Charles at first. He was glad, because if she had looked at him, she would have seen his face awash in incredulity as he realized that it was not their difference of faith that was absurd—it was the depth and certainty of feeling that he had for a girl he did not know.

  His attraction was as unavoidable as a baseball spinning toward him, as his raising his arm to catch it, feeling it land hard in his mitt, the force of it reverberating through his shoulder, simple and solid and obvious. He was relieved when Lily looked back into the classroom to say goodbye to her professor. He needed a moment to take her in, a moment to compose himself, to realize that he felt in that moment exactly as he’d felt in front of Father Martin: that when given the possibility that God—and now love—might be real, he couldn’t possibly turn away.

  When Lily came down the stairs of the English building to find Charles waiting on a bench in the hallway, she thought, How ridiculous, and averted her eyes. She recognized him by his height; even sitting, he was a full head taller than the other boys on the bench. He wore a perfectly normal tweed blazer, white shirt, and khakis. It did not occur to her that Charles might be waiting for another girl; she turned away from him because she had absolutely no idea what to do with a boy with such a look of determination in his eyes.

  She had just left a discussion about Leaves of Grass, during which she had been reminded how different she was from other people. Her classmates needed to discuss what Whitman was trying to do with his fragmented language, to ask what does it mean? Their sincerity made Lily feel as if she was watching them from the distance of the moon. How could she be the only one who knew that some experiences could not be translated into language, could only be measured or explained by the gaps left between the words? She left class with a silence inside of her, a memorial to what was missing.

  And now there was a boy who wanted to talk to her. A boy in a striped tie and penny loafers who jumped up to follow her as she strode quickly past him down the hall. He caught up to her before she reached the door, the rough sleeve of his jacket just grazing her bare arm; he smelled like cedar.

  She stopped with an audible sigh and looked up at him, wary. He really was absurdly tall; she had to step back to see him properly. His eyes were grey, which surprised her. She had expected them to be as brown as his shoes, and for them to be insistent. Instead, he was looking down at her with an expression that Lily, even in her annoyance, could only describe as nervously kind.

  “I’m Charles Barrett,” he said. “I’d like to take you to dinner.” His voice was round; he spoke loudly, and two boys in bow ties standing by the bulletin board turned to stare. Another jostled past him so forcefully that he had to take a step closer to her to avoid being shoved aside. Lily took a step back. She wanted him to go away. She wanted to ignore him, to push past him without saying a word. But she did not want to make a scene.

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  “I asked the librarian,” Charles said. “Don’t be angry. She knows me. I’d like to take you to dinner.”

  Lily scowled. “Why?”

  Charles looked startled. “To get to know you,” he said.

  “Absolutely not,” she answered.

  Charles took a step back. “Pardon?”

  “I don’t think you would like to get to know me. I’ve told you what you need to know. You’re studying to be a minister and I don’t believe in God.”

  To her surprise, Charles smiled and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s true,” he said, looking back down at her. His skin was pale; his hair fell over the left side of his forehead. “I’d like to take you to dinner, anyway. Please?”

  Lily glared at him, stiffly aware of the passing crowd and the raised-eyebrow looks her classmates were giving her. She could see them lifting their notebooks to cover their mouths as they whispered to one another. Rumors would sprout and twine around the two of them as long as they stood there, as long as they gave everyone something to see. She could not stand it.

  “One dinner,” Lily said. “And then you have to leave me alone.”

  Charles left the English building draped in a golden relief so heavy it made him want to lie down. He had expected Lily to reject him, had prepared to make his case. Still, in the moment after she had said absolutely not, when her eyes were hard and dismissive, he had felt utterly undone, as if someone had opened a window and taken away the whole living room.

  But he had won a dinner. One dinner in which to persuade her to have another. How would he do that without discussing God? It was all he had, really, all that he was: a man who wanted to become a minister. He spent his days in church-adjacent rooms
parsing men’s callings and their hopes of sharing them with others. He spent his evenings absorbed in Hebrew translations, authenticating primary sources, reading testaments—reading everything—with an eye to how he might use them in a sermon, or in counseling, to illustrate or shore up his own words of wisdom and advice.

  Lily wanted to hear none of this. He would only be able to tell her that school was easy for him and dancing was not, that his mother made him anxious and his father made him sad, that he loved the Vineyard and sailing and eating lobster on the deck before the sunset, in the clear, bright days of summer. As he showered and shaved and put on a clean shirt, he wondered: Would it be enough?

  Lily dressed for dinner with as little effort as possible in a straight navy skirt and navy blouse, red lipstick, and four quick brushes of her hair. She locked the door to her room, put her keys in her purse, and went downstairs to wait for Charles on the bench outside the dorm, so that the other girls would not see him pick her up.

  He was exactly on time. He smiled at her as he walked up the path, studiously casual in a grey wool blazer over a navy sweater and white shirt. His hair was neatly combed and still damp from the shower. He smelled like shaving cream.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Lily raised her eyebrows as she picked up her scarf from the arm of the bench where she had laid it and put on her gloves.

  They walked to a tavern nearby, where they sat across from each other in a dark wooden booth. The table between them was sloped and scarred with initials. Instead of looking at Charles, Lily let her eyes fall on the tables around them. Other booths were full of people, their tables crowded with glasses and pitchers of beer. She was surprised, as she often was, that her classmates lived noisy, companionable lives. When she finally looked at Charles, who had not taken his eyes off of her, she saw that he was approachable and earnest; there was no grief in his eyes, no sign of a fare hard-paid.