by Cara Wall
Twenty minutes passed. She went downstairs to the dorm living room and dialed the telephone.
Charles answered.
“Hello,” she said.
On the other end of the line, Charles closed his eyes. He had not walked away because he was angry. He had been angry—angrier than he ever thought he could be—but he had left because he hadn’t wanted Lily to see his face. He hadn’t wanted her to see how sad he was for her, how hopelessly and utterly sad. And he hadn’t seen her or called her because he didn’t want to admit that she was right: He had wanted to make her whole. He had hoped he would be enough to make her happy. If he could not make her happy, what was the point?
“There are no classes tomorrow,” Lily said.
“I know.”
“So you won’t be waiting for me.”
“No,” he said, but inside him something broke and spilled out a thimbleful of hope.
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I was unkind.”
“Yes, you were.” He did not want to say more.
“My parents were in love,” Lily said, “so I know it’s possible. I know people can love each other wholeheartedly. I don’t know if I can love you that way. But I can try.”
And so, their first kiss was on the walkway leading to her dormitory, at two in the afternoon on the day before her graduation, when Charles arrived to find Lily waiting on her front steps. She stood up and walked toward him; when she reached him, Charles realized something had shifted, that her eyes were saying I don’t want you to go.
He leaned into her, but she stopped him with a hand on his chest. There was one more question.
“Do you really not need me to believe?” she asked.
He had already thought about this, thought about it hard.
“Not in God,” he told her. “I just need you to believe in me.”
Charles was, actually, the one thing in the world in which Lily believed the most. And so she nodded and, finally—finally—his lips met hers, warm and strong. When she put her arms around his neck and he put his around her waist, he knew they had turned the page. He felt he had been given the answer to every question there was to know.
“Please don’t ask me to get married,” she said, when the kiss had finished.
“Are you kidding me?” Charles asked, incredulously, but he waited two more years, so Lily could feel certain their engagement would not derail her PhD.
Then Charles bought her a sapphire ring, and they turned the wedding planning over to their aunts in order to spend their last unmarried year in uncomplicated academia. The day after Charles’s divinity school graduation, they were married on Martha’s Vineyard, in the living room of his grandparents’ house, with all their collective cousins and aunts and uncles gathered around. Lily wore a simple white satin dress and carried a bouquet of climbing roses that Charles had cut down off the trellis that morning. In a gesture that both gave him hope and broke his heart, Lily had said, “Let’s wear my parents’ rings.”
They did, and as he slid her mother’s on her finger, Charles saw a small smile he had never seen on Lily before, as if she were, at last, a little bit less sad.
EIGHT
In London, James and Nan found a flat in Kensington, on the top floor of a white row house among identical row houses, all of them prim behind black gates, a long, green garden spread out behind them like the sweep of a skirt. The flat had two coal fireplaces and lead-paned windows. From the living room, Nan could see the current of people walking to work each morning, huddled under their umbrellas.
James began his divinity studies at King’s College London. He left early each morning, placing his rinsed coffee cup by the side of the sink. What coffee they could find was awful, instant. Nan easily switched to tea, but James hung on, stubbornly, swallowing with closed eyes. She marveled at his persistence. She had never known anyone so unwilling to compromise.
Nan constructed their household thoughtfully. She found food stores she liked—a butcher who smiled at her, a green grocer who didn’t mind if she touched each apple before she chose. She learned to bring her own shopping bag, to always ask if there was something nicer in the back. She tried to cook something new for dinner every night and had figured out how to make enough so James could take leftovers to school and she could have a lazy little lunch without cooking more than once a day. She learned how to keep the pantry stocked without buying so much that bread went stale or peaches brown. She discovered what the two of them were like, together—what time they preferred to eat dinner, what they enjoyed for snacks in the afternoon. She liked marriage. It was a puzzle, and it was not hard for her.
She rented an upright piano and a sewing machine. She was relieved that neither bothered the neighbors. In fact, the landlord and his wife—Henry and Lucinda—professed to like the piano. If they were in the garden while she played, they clapped after every piece, their applause clattering through the window.
“Brava!” Henry, a tall, barrel-chested doctor, shouted.
“Come down for tea when you’re done,” Lucinda yelled.
Nan liked both of them. Henry was stately and dramatic, given to gesturing while he talked, even when holding the butter knife or jam spoon.
“Tell me, Nan,” he said. “How is married life? Babies soon?”
“Careful, darling,” his wife said, taking the saltshaker from his hand.
“Babies soon,” Nan said, and blushed. She and James were trying, often. It was only a matter of time.
“Oh, wait as long as you can, love,” Lucinda said, setting down a plate of sandwiches. “Babies take over. They absolutely take center stage.”
“Rubbish. Muck,” Henry said genially. “They’re absolutely wonderful.” He took a bite of scone. “You come to me when you’re enceinte, my dear. I’ll send you to someone I know.”
“Henry,” Lucinda warned him, tapping the back of his palm with her finger. She turned to Nan. “What are you doing up there? How is it looking?”
The flat had been drab when Nan and James moved in: brown sofa, dark wooden chairs, dour carved headboard. Nan had made long, double-lined curtains from a yellow cotton embroidered with green leaves and bluebirds. She sewed matching throw pillows for the couch, with silky blue-and-green fringe. She made pale orange, floor-length covers for the pocked wooden side tables. She put wedding pictures on the mantel, in silver and tortoiseshell frames. She arranged the furniture to hide the thin spots in the rug. She bought new pillows for the bed, and better light bulbs for the reading lamps. She made dishtowels from leftover fabric.
“Would you like to come and see?” she offered.
“Oh, yes!” Lucinda jumped up from the table, pulling her bright red shawl off the back of her chair. “You stay here, dear.” She put a hand on Henry’s shoulder when he started to rise. “Give us girls a moment. I’ll be back.”
They went up the carpeted staircase together, Lucinda wrapping herself in her shawl. Nan turned the brass doorknob, stepped inside, and gestured for Lucinda to join her, pleased to see the delight on Lucinda’s face.
“It’s just lovely in here,” Lucinda said, running her hand over the polished telephone table in the entryway. She continued into the living room and took the fringe of one of the throw pillows between her fingers. “You’ve positively made it a home.”
“I like to make the best of things,” Nan beamed.
“I remember first being married,” Lucinda said. She walked to the mantel and picked up the photo of Nan resting her head on James’s shoulder. “It was hell.”
Nan was still standing in the doorway.
Lucinda put the picture down and rubbed her eyes. “We had no money. Henry was a student, so we paid for everything with loans. Everything we did incurred debt. Not what I thought it would be. I expected to putter around, read magazines, get dressed for drinks at the end of the day.” She smiled at Nan somewhat sadly and sat down on the sofa.
“We used to have the most awful arguments,” Lucinda continued, leaning bac
k against the cushion. “I used to throw things, and Henry used to growl.” She smiled at this memory.
“Growl,” she said again, beginning to giggle. Her hair and her chest shook, and the red shawl came unsettled.
“Growl!” She was laughing outright now, hooting like an owl, her eyes closed, wiping tears from her eyes.
“Oh, God, it’s funny,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I mean it isn’t, but we were so stupid. It all mattered so much, and we were so caught up in it. Oh,” she said, calming down. “When I think of those days.” She shook her head. “I was so angry, which was ridiculous, because I was young and beautiful and in love.”
She wiped her eyes one last time with the back of her hand. “Well,” she said, “that wasn’t what I wanted to say at all.”
She patted the seat next to her and motioned for Nan to sit down. Nan did, nervously. Lucinda put her arm around her. “What I wanted to say is that I remember how awful it was when we first got married; how none of my friends would talk about their husbands, how everyone closed their doors out of loyalty. What I wanted to say is that if you need someone to talk to about your marriage, I can be counted on. If you’re feeling blue.”
Nan had a strong and sudden surge of compassion for this woman. How awful those times must have been if Lucinda still remembered them so clearly, still needed to talk and share. Nan took her hand and leaned toward her, full of gratitude for Lucinda’s secrets and her trust.
“Thank you so much,” Nan said. “But I really, really love being married.”
“Well, splendid, then.” Lucinda took her arm away and looked around the room.
It was splendid, Nan thought. It was an adventure.
After their wedding, Charles and Lily moved to Nantucket, so Charles could be the associate pastor to Harold Evans, a white-bearded, old-fashioned, shirtsleeved man ministering at a small, windswept church. Charles was happy on the island; he walked around the hedge-rowed streets in elated relief. He was amazed that he had found a job, that Lily had married him, that he was living year-round in a place so close to the one he had loved as a child.
He and Lily rented an old saltbox house, grey with white trim. It was left to them almost empty, with scuffed walls, bare windows, and unpolished floors. Lily made it fit for habitation by visiting the antique shops and yard sales on the island. Charles watched with curiosity as she approached each cluttered tabletop display. He took note of which cups she touched and which napkins she did not, which vases she carried to the person sitting behind the cashbox and which she discarded before she got there. She liked white, silver, leather, and navy. She did not like paisley. She did not buy things of poor quality. She was not tempted by low prices. She took careful measurements with a blue measuring tape she carried, neatly rolled, in the top pocket of her shirt. He marveled at how deftly she found what they needed, how every piece she brought home fit perfectly in the place for which it had been purchased.
For her efforts, they had a bedroom painted a deep, rich shade of cream, a spare, inlaid mahogany bed frame, and linen sheets embroidered after the design from an old convent. Their entryway was painted sky blue; the kitchen was yellow and green. There were lamps everywhere. They were all different—some delicate and spindly, some solid and hard to move. The one by the arm of the couch was perfect for reading. The one in the bedroom gave just enough light to help him choose a tie. Charles found himself forming attachments to all of them. He had lived, for almost all his life, with overhead fixtures—lights were either on, revealing everything, or off, hiding it all. Now he could have different moods in the same room; he could turn on all the lamps to celebrate, or he could hide what needed to be hidden. He liked the shadow and the brilliance of this place Lily had created.
They settled into a routine. Lily was deciding on a topic for her dissertation. She had annexed most of the table space in the house for textbooks and scrap paper. She researched and took notes sitting cross-legged on the braided rag rug, her back against the old green sofa, entirely distracted by the project. But every Friday evening she said, “Let me see what you’ve done,” and Charles gave her the sermon he was drafting. This she edited late into the night, leaving it red-penciled on the kitchen table for him to see when he came down to make coffee in the morning. Her edits cut easily through his wordy prose, created rhythm and clarity that he could not achieve on his own. Nothing made him feel closer to her. His love was a steady longing that climbed around him, as if silkworms were using him as a loom.
Still, it was strange to be married. He and Lily had spent such a long time deciding if they could live with one another, and now they did. Now he woke with her curled up next to him, warm in her white pajamas, her hair dark on the pillow. He came home to find her taking casseroles out of the oven. But he still did not feel certain he had access to all of her, could not often guess with any accuracy what was going on in her heart or mind. He wanted to feel as if they had been married twenty years, to know each other’s mood by the cast of a head or an angle of the eye. But he did not, and it bothered him.
Charles was also puzzled by Harold Evans. On the one hand, Harold was an educated, cultured man who spoke French and German, published book reviews, and had traveled to Asia and Africa during the course of his missionary work. He played chess, scratched marginalia in his books, wrote at least one letter to the editor of a major newspaper a week. On the other hand, he seemed to regard life as one expansive opportunity for fun. He wore silly hats to the office, invented ice cream flavors, was always the first up to bat at church softball games and the first to strike out, spinning crazily before falling in the dirt. His desk was covered with cartoons clipped from the same papers to which he wrote about world hunger, political prisoners, censorship. Charles had never heard him end a telephone conversation without a hearty, jovial laugh.
It was all so confusing. Charles was not sure what he was meant to be, what role there was left to play, how to complement this man who seemed to be so much to so many people at once.
“Lighten up, Charles,” Harold said, clapping him on the back. “You’re here to learn. Just watch and absorb, don’t worry.”
So Charles watched Harold Evans shepherd his congregation, moving from member to member throughout the day, now sitting on a front porch, now helping to load groceries, now dancing a jig at a celebration, now rubbing his forehead while witnessing grief. What Charles learned was that humor eased all situations, and humor was one of two things he didn’t have.
He also did not have a wife who believed in God.
He had a congregation who stopped by their house with bundt cakes, wanting to sit at their kitchen table and talk to Lily about their new dog, their new garden, their mother’s health problems. And they assumed Lily wanted to talk to them, too. She did not. She wanted to take endless notes on yellow legal pads without interruption. She made a little sign for their door that said: SORRY WE MISSED YOU, PLEASE CALL AGAIN. Charles often came home to find two or three apple pies on the front steps.
Charles, himself, enjoyed the endless tiny conversations; they made him feel at home.
“How are you?” people asked and seemed to genuinely want to know.
“The house is coming along very nicely,” he answered. “We’ve put up the storm windows and Lily made some curtains.”
“Ah. Blackout?”
“Not yet,” Charles said. “We don’t mind getting up early.”
“Well, come winter, you’ll want an extra layer,” they said.
Charles nodded.
“How’s that chimney?” they asked.
“Holding up.”
“Anything we can fix for you?”
“Not yet, but I’ll let you know.” Charles was grateful for their interest and their care.
Lily did not mind the house she and Charles had rented; she liked its wide plank floor, its simple doors, the sparse geometry of the windows and the rooms. She liked their bedroom under the sharp peak of the roof, where she could lie on cold mornings
, warm under four quilts, listening to the rain. She liked the smell of coffee mixed with the smell of salt mist; she liked the big, sloping kitchen table—the one thing the owner had left for them to use.
She liked the austerity of the island in winter. She liked putting on rain boots, Charles’s fisherman sweater, and a mackintosh, then heading out into the wind to walk the beach. She had never spent much time by the ocean; she was astonished by its endless, thick expanse, by the space it created around her and within her. She found she could not let a day go by without standing on the shore, her eyes drawn to the far horizon, the sea always flat as an answer.
Charles was like this landscape, straightforward and earnest, and she still could not quite believe she had married him. In their wedding picture he was tall, so much taller than Lily that it looked as if her choice had been deliberate, as if one could only marry a man so tall if she knew what she was getting into, if she loved him above all else. She did love him; she had chosen him carefully. But she had not entirely understood what that entailed.
For a while she had gone to church. She had dressed carefully, always in stockings and a skirt, and she had tried to arrive early, because she knew it would be remarked upon if she slid in after the first hymn. She paid attention, followed the readings in her pew Bible, one finger on the black-inked words. Charles did not expect her to attend; he stayed true to his word that she did not need to be part of his ministerial life. But she wanted to try. She wanted to accept the service as ritual, a lecture, like a slideshow in a classroom. But she could not.
The earnestness in the damp faces of the people around her scratched at her like wool. The need in their hands holding the brims of their hats humiliated her. Their shuffling voices reciting the Lord’s Prayer rang shame in her like a tuning fork, a metallic chime that made her bones ache, made her want to twist to get away. It was the same way she felt when Charles asked if she wanted to visit her family: trapped, panicked, short of breath, the wretchedness of fellowship, hope, and faith in anything too painful to bear.