by Cara Wall
The answer was yes. Unfortunately.
SIX
Of all the things James had imagined about college, it had never crossed his mind that he might meet a girl he wanted to marry. James had longed for girls before, admired their beauty, stared at them for hours, but only because they were vibrant and happy. He had wanted them because he wanted something in his life that he did not want to make go away. He had never thought of marriage, because his parents’ marriage was the circumstance that most frightened him, the prison where he and his family lived in poverty under a gin-sodden roof that leaked rage.
But Nan did not see life this way. Her life was constructed of three things she loved: her family, music, and God. It was to these three things she would compare James, the measure by which she would decide if she loved him. It was these three things James would have to accept in order to truly love her. Family, he knew, was inescapable. Music, he understood. He accepted the fact that during their walks, dinners, and lunches in the park, Nan was always half distracted by melodies in her head, notes stacking themselves up and down the treble clef. He found it charming that when she talked, she used her hands as if she were conducting. He knew she’d had a bad day if she did not have a little song or part of a symphony to sing for him.
Her love for God, however, gave James pause. He did not believe in God; he had to be honest with himself about that. He did not believe there was an eternal, ethereal intelligence guiding the daily lives of all the people on Earth. He didn’t believe there was meaning to be found in suffering or that any intelligent being would have created war. And he could never put his trust in any entity called Father. Every time he heard that word his whole body clenched into a punch he wanted to throw.
No one had ever challenged him to think differently about this. Men in his neighborhood did not believe in God, or if they did, they knew that God was not with them. Their wives went to church, but men—depending on their character—slept late, read the newspaper, or worked on their houses. God was women’s work, the province of softer minds that had not seen the second between breath and nothing, how long it could take to die, how absent God was on the battlefield. James believed that God was left to those whose faith had not been tried.
But Nan’s father was a minister, and her faith was in every word she spoke, every touch she gave. To love and be loved by her in any meaningful way, James would have to at least go to church.
Services at the Wheaton chapel were ecumenical. James was glad for that; it was easier to listen to an expression of values rather than the tenets of a particular faith. The eleven o’clock service was crowded every week, and the congregation was full of students. The men wore blazers and the women wore dresses, sometimes with small round hats and white gloves. How on earth, James asked himself, did so many people of his own age decide to believe in God? Where did they come from? What were their parents like? Why did they take time out of their week to worship?
At first the services themselves had been so new to James that he could not quite follow the standing and sitting, the prayers the congregation joined and those it did not, the offering and doxology sung from a memory that James did not possess. He merely hung on, trying to find the pattern, as Nan handed him well-worn red hymnals and Bibles turned to the right page. The sermons were the one respite in which he could relax, listen, and try to understand what the people sitting next to him found so appealing.
This minister, a small, balding, quick-spoken man, said often that faith, at its simplest, was the acceptance of the possibility that things one had never seen could be real. James could accept that; he knew there was more to the world than he had ever experienced, and his time at college had showed him just how limited his experience was. The prayers recited each week were expressions of gratitude, and that was easy for him, now: He was grateful for his uncle, for his mother, for his friends, for Nan. The scriptures read in this church most often described a God of love, and James finally knew what love was: the amazement of encountering someone astounding, like an ocean full of snow.
Because Nan knew everyone in the room, it always took longer than James liked for them to leave coffee hour, but he met at least ten new people a week: English majors, math students, future lawyers and engineers. They all shook his hand warmly and looked him in the eye; James had never experienced a community so free of arrogance or disdain. At first, it made him uncomfortable. But as the weeks passed, he began to look forward to the hour spent in the fellowship room, with its blue carpet and bay window view of the walled garden that set the church apart from the rest of the campus. He began to recognize faces and see them as individuals—sunny, serious, smart, fun—understanding that they were distinct individuals, even in their faith in God.
Why did you want to be a priest? James wrote his uncle.
I had a call, his uncle wrote back.
What stopped you? James asked.
I didn’t want to live in poverty, his uncle answered. I’d already lived that way; I wanted to escape it. So I took a break. I wanted to wait until my call returned. But it never did; God never asked me to serve again. And now I give almost all my money away, anyway. Funny. But I do like the choice. I like knowing I don’t have to give it away. I like that I still do.
James’s prelaw classes were proving to be long and complicated; every case seemed constrained by those preceding them. Lawyers, he came to understand, served the law; they hardly ever changed it. Politics was corrupt, medicine beyond him. Education intrigued him not at all. A thought began to grow in him, lurking in the lining of his sport coats, sliding out of every notebook he opened: the people in the world to whom he was most indebted—his mother, his uncle, and Nan—believed in God. With growing clarity, James understood that his goal had always been to get out, away from a circumstance he found intolerable. But now he was out, and he needed to make that mean something.
James’s mother invited Nan to dinner. On the appointed Saturday, his mother nagged him and his brothers to move the furniture, handed his sisters brooms. Together, they cleaned the entire house, top to bottom. James tried to tell her Nan wouldn’t go in the bedrooms, wouldn’t look behind the cupboard doors.
“Yeah, Ma,” his brother Alfie said, “She’s already met Jamie—she’s not expecting a palace.”
James’s mother flicked him on the shoulder with her dishtowel. “I want this house to look respectable,” she said.
James wanted her to get up off her knees and stop scrubbing the floors with a wooden brush, to get out of her housecoat and slippers, because he didn’t want to see how much work had to be done to make him respectable enough for Nan. He didn’t want to see that all he had to offer were his studies and his determination. It was not much, and he was afraid.
When the house was clean, James’s mother shooed James’s siblings upstairs to take baths and iron their collars. James had taken the night off from the pizza parlor and borrowed Bill’s car. As he shrugged himself into his blazer, his mother put her hand on his shoulder and held out a ten-dollar bill.
“No, Ma,” James said.
“Yes, James,” she said. “For gas. We all want to meet her, so we’re all chipping in to get her here.” James was surprised at the relief that swelled inside him. For so long, he had been alone in his hope that Nan might love him. And now he had company.
Nan smiled when she came out of her dorm. When they pulled up outside his house, she smiled again.
“It’s just like you told me,” she said. It wasn’t. The house sparkled. All the lights were on, there were crisp white doilies on the back of the sofa, and his dad was awake, clutching a cup of coffee between shaking hands.
“Oh!” his mother cried and hugged Nan tightly. “Oh,” she said again, and wiped her eyes. Nan had brought her flowers, and his mother put them in a cut glass vase. James wondered from which neighbor she’d borrowed it.
His brothers had combed their hair and his sisters were wearing lipstick. James was a bit overwhelmed that they understood how m
uch this mattered to him. Nan sat among them as if she had always known them, asking them questions about their work and remembering all of their names. They ate roast beef, potatoes, and coconut cake, and after dinner, his father asked Nan to sing.
She blushed. “Oh, I don’t really sing,” she said, “I play the piano.”
But his family pressed her, and she agreed, standing in the dining room, her hands clasped at her waist. She sang a little song, one she’d sung for James a hundred times, and when she was done, his father whistled and his mother cried.
“I think they’re wonderful,” Nan said on the way home.
“They think you’re a celebrity,” James said tiredly. He felt stunned, literally, the same way he had felt after each of the three times in his life he had been punched in the jaw. He did not know how else to feel. His fears had been for naught. And still, as James had watched everyone being their best selves, pulling themselves together and getting along, he had been aware, so painfully aware, of how different Nan was from all of them. For her, the evening was one more lovely night added to all the others she had known, set close beside each other like a string of pearls. How could he ever re-create it, again and again, across a lifetime? The chasm between their upbringings seemed dark and large. He had spent the night wondering how it could be mapped, navigated, bridged. He was worn out by the failure of his imagination, which seemed only able to ask him: What is the point of climbing down into something from which you can never climb back out?
Nan turned to him. “Listen to me,” she said as sharply as he’d ever heard her speak. He looked at her. She was sitting straight up, twisted toward him. Her cheeks were pink, her mouth tight, her eyes glistening. She pointed at him. “You’re afraid I’m someone I’m not. You’re afraid that because I have a tennis bracelet and more than one pair of dress shoes that I’m too wealthy to love you.”
James kept his eyes on the road in front of him and did not answer.
“Well, I am wealthy,” Nan continued. “I’ve always had more than enough, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t mean I’m going to act like Millie. Millie would have thought your house was crooked, your mother’s dress was cheap, and your sisters were going to be spinsters. Millie would never have come here, would never have even thought about dating you once you told her where you came from. I thought your family was wonderful. I think your sisters are pretty, your brothers tell good jokes, and your father is so proud of you he managed to stay sober for one whole evening. I think that whole house made you just what you are, and that’s why you love me.”
James realized she was crying. She bowed her head and began to rummage through her pocketbook. He handed her a handkerchief from his breast pocket. She took it without looking at him, pressed it to her eyes. He wanted to reach out and take her hand, wipe the tears away himself, but he was a tin man, stiff with shame.
“You hardly said one word to me tonight,” she said, her voice muffled. “I know it’s because you thought I was going to see where you came from and never be able to look at you again.”
She was right, of course. Nan saw everything clearly; she knew what people were feeling and she acknowledged it. She never made a joke or looked away. James loved that about her.
Nan put the handkerchief on her lap, straightened, and stared at him, fierce. “I was taught to speak to everyone,” she said. “And I was taught to love everyone.”
James nodded without looking at her. This was her religion: to see and help. But he did not want to be one of the people her father made her visit. He didn’t want to be a person in need. Nan shook her head sternly, as if James had spoken out loud.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “You know what I mean. You know I mean I love you most of all.”
He did. And as soon as he heard Nan say it, James took her hand. For as much as he did not want to need her, did not want her to see him as he really was, and did not want to spend his whole life trying to live up to her, he loved her, too.
James understood, with a dread that felt like a fishhook, that he was going to have to meet Nan’s family before he proposed.
They undertook this at Thanksgiving. Nan boarded the train with two little leather suitcases; James borrowed a canvas duffel from his brother so as not to pack his things in a paper bag. She kept her ticket neatly between the pages of her book; he stashed his in a back pocket and gave it to the conductor rumpled and crushed. She had ridden this route often enough to sleep and read; he had never been out of Chicago and kept his eyes glued to the window the entire way.
Mississippi was hot. The city around the train station was dry and dusty, but as soon as their taxi reached the outskirts, the landscape burst into being around them, humid, green, heavy with the smell of honeysuckle. Lush trees shaded white picket fences and houses that rambled across cleanly shorn lawns. James looked at her and raised his eyebrows.
“I am not too good for you,” she said.
Nan’s parents lived in a white house with two thick columns holding up the porch roof. They were waiting on the smooth front steps to hug Nan and shake James’s hand. “So glad to meet you,” they said. “So happy you’re here.” The four of them spent three days driving big cars around the countryside, visiting various family members. They sat at a long table filled with silver bowls and platters for Thanksgiving dinner. The high polish of Nan’s life made James even more acutely aware of how coarse his own upbringing had been and how undeserving of her he might seem. But still, after they had eaten and the guests had left, James screwed up his courage and asked Nan’s father if he might have a moment of his time.
“Come into my office,” Nan’s father said.
James followed him out of the dining room, into the front entryway, and through the door to his office. The heels of his shoes were loud on the wood floors.
Nan’s father used his chin to gesture to a chair in front of the window that overlooked the grey stone church. James sat down.
“I like to sit here when I know someone’s about to come see me,” Nan’s father said, lowering himself into the chair across from James. He loosened his tie, undid the top button of his shirt. He nodded at the sanctuary across the street. “If it’s a simple problem, they come right over here. If it’s bigger trouble, they stop over there and pray first.” He looked out the window and tapped the arm of his chair with a finger. “I like to know how much trouble they’re in before they sit down with me,” he said, turning his gaze to James.
The chair James sat in was sturdy and well built; the wall behind him was heavy with books. Nan’s father’s desk was oiled and gleaming. Nan’s father’s shoes were new. It was worse than James had imagined it would be, this feeling of wearing a thin sweater and having nothing in reserve.
“You’re going to ask if you can marry my daughter,” Nan’s father said.
“Yes,” James answered.
“Why?”
James thought: Because she is jolly and pretty and bright, like a firefly, blinking in and out of hedges and trees. Because I imagine her in the kitchen, washing dishes, looking out the window and humming to herself, her brow knit in concentration. I imagine myself coming up behind her, putting my arms around her, resting my chin on her shoulder. I imagine her face turning up to me, bright and pale and astonishing, and I imagine her lips just before I kiss her, full and parted, almost singing the words of a song. Because I think beyond kissing her, because I think about her naked and warm under clean sheets and damp from the bath. I imagine her bare ankle rubbing against my own. I imagine her hair disheveled; I imagine myself smoothing it out of her eyes. I imagine making toast with her and eating it at a round table. When I do, I am just as crazed with passion for her as I would be in bed. There is no difference between imagining her naked and imagining her with a kerchief over her hair.
“Because I love her,” he said.
Her father said nothing, staring in James’s direction but past him, as if he were trying to solve a math problem written on a chalkboard
behind James’s head.
“How will you support her?” Nan’s father asked.
James had anticipated this question. He knew from Nan that her father respected anyone who worked hard, no matter what they earned. But he had not asked if James was a hard worker, and after spending a day in this house, James had a better idea of what Nan’s father meant by support. He did not mean food on the table and a new dress once a year. He meant cars in driveways and trees on the street. He meant friends and parties and pretty things when Nan wanted them. James had thought his answer would please Nan’s father; now he was not so sure.
“Actually, sir, I’m thinking about becoming a minister.”
Nan’s father lowered his chin and raised his eyebrows over his glasses. “Do you believe in God?” he asked.
It was an honest question; Nan’s father wanted an honest answer. That was fine. James had already decided he would tell Nan’s father the truth, and if Nan’s father accepted it, then James could live his life clearly and cleanly. James just wished his honest answer was one he knew would hit the target instead of an arrow disassembled, its parts strewn across the floor.
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t know.”
Nan’s father gave a sharp laugh. “Then I wouldn’t recommend it.”
James knew he sounded childish, foolish. He scrambled to explain.
“My father went to war, sir,” he said. “It ruined him, and it would have ruined all of us—my whole family—if my mother had let it.” James had not realized that before and was glad to understand it now; he relaxed slightly as he continued. “My father hated God. He blamed God for the war, for not keeping him out of it, for his drinking, for all the evils in the world. He couldn’t stand anyone worshipping. Once, he woke up early and caught my mother dressed for church. ‘Goddammit, Alice,’ he said. ‘There’s no great protector. No one is listening. Not to you or anyone you know—great spoiled women who got to stay home from it all, who got to stay here and pray for us. Well, it didn’t work, did it? All of your praying didn’t do one bit of good.’ ”