by Cara Wall
When he asked Nan’s father about it later, in the same office in which they had sat once before, her father said, “In my opinion, the most important job a minister has is to become a man who can lead his congregation through difficult times.”
James nodded.
“This,” her father continued, “requires you to become someone they can trust.” James flinched; it was a quick and sudden cut. He saw, instantly, that he was not that man for his congregation.
“Nan tells me you are the one causing trouble at your church.” James nodded. Nan’s father shook his head and sighed. “That’s one option—standing for what you want to stand for. If you stick with it, you’ll earn people’s respect. But if you want to earn people’s trust, you can’t chastise those who disagree with you. You have to include everyone—no matter how misguided they seem to you. You have to give them time to say their piece, look them in the eye, and give them credit for it.”
James said, “That is the very last thing I want to do.”
“Then you’re an activist, James, and you should quit the ministry.”
James flinched again. He had seen, in this trip, what Nan had lost in marrying him. In marrying her, he had lost the freedom of choosing any other profession. And he did not regret it. “That’s the other very last thing I want to do.”
“A divided congregation will always turn on itself, James, and then what use will they be to the outside world?”
It was exactly what Nan had been trying to tell him. As he watched her brush her hair before bed that night, leaning against the edge of the dresser, he said, “Your father is a wise man.”
Nan turned to him and smiled. “I know.”
“I haven’t been so wise.”
Nan put down the brush, tucked her hair behind her ears, stood up, and took his hands. “It’s all right,” she said. “You’ve been on a mission.”
The moment widened around them as if stretched by a fermata. She felt suspended in midair, the lacuna wrapping her like a splint, her scattered parts assembling in an order that made sense. She let the silence linger, a whole bar of rest. She was a minister’s wife, and she had done her job.
On the last Sunday of the project, Lily breathed a sigh of relief. She had done as Nan had asked: sat in church, borne the attention, watched the congregation whisper about her. It had been hard for her to stomach; it had been even harder to witness Charles preach about history, to see him revel in his expertise, to be thrilled by his meticulous intellect, imagining the life they could have had, if God had not found him first.
But she had seen the way the gossip had drawn the church together, the way the congregation relaxed into the predictability of Charles’s series of sermons, how much fuller coffee hour was on the fifth week rather than the first. When Nan led the junior choir down the aisle, arranged them on the steps in front of the altar, untangled one small boy’s blue robe, and lifted her hand to conduct the anthem, Lily had to admit she had underestimated her. Though Nan operated in a small and particular world, she had known what she was doing. And she had been right.
Two weeks later, Nan had another miscarriage. She had not realized she was pregnant. In the planning and packing and rehearsing of the previous eight weeks, she had not thought to keep track, but she recognized the very particular pain. She was glad she had not known, had not told James, because if he had whooped with joy she would have known he was as desperate for a child as she was, she would have known he had been hoping, too. She thought she could not bear to see James as stoically grim as he’d been the time before. When the cramps hit her, she said to herself, I’m not going to the hospital. I’m staying here, and I’m bearing it alone. Which was exactly what she did, sitting over the toilet, bleeding, but it was impossible not to tell James when he came home.
Nan had always known, even as a child, that God did not answer prayers for worldly things like candy or new shoes. God answered prayers that helped her help others. God did not change the circumstances of your life; God changed you. She had seen it happen too many times to doubt it. She had seen so many people walk nervously down the aisle of her father’s church to accept God at the altar, then had seen them find friends, drink less, hug their children more. She had seen the transformative power of the church, and she knew there was a God, even if no one could be sure in what form God came. If you were good, God liked you.
But God had turned away from her. This was how she felt, lying in her bed each night, praying. God was not listening. Or God was listening and not answering, because she had once again prayed for the wrong thing. She had prayed for children. So she began to pray to not want children, to be happy with what she had, to be content with her husband, her home, herself. “Help it be enough,” she prayed. “I want it to be enough.” But it was not enough. She was not changed. She wanted a child.
Instead, that honor was given to Lily. Nan found out about it, a few weeks later, when Lily crashed into Jane’s organized waiting room, dazed.
“I’d like to see my husband,” she said. Nan had pulled up a chair to Jane’s desk, where she was addressing envelopes.
“I need to see my husband,” Lily amended. Nan felt Jane sigh. Despite Lily’s assistance in restoring the church’s equilibrium, Jane Atlas was not impressed. Anyone can be useful every once in a while, she’d said.
Now she told Lily, “He’s busy.” Lily looked around the empty waiting room, unsteadily, her movements jerky.
“Are you all right?” Nan asked.
“No,” Lily said. “I’m pregnant.”
She had come straight from the doctor’s office to tell Charles, without thinking about what she was doing, which was a marker of how stunned she was by the news. At the doctor’s she had managed to not say, Don’t be ridiculous; instead she had said, “Oh.”
“A surprise, then?” the doctor said, washing his hands at the metal sink.
“Yes, quite,” Lily said without getting off the examining table.
“Well,” the doctor smiled at her. “Babies give us nine months to get used to the idea, thank goodness.”
Lily managed to get dressed, pay the bill, and leave the office building. Outside, she took a deep breath; the air was full of the smell of concrete. She would have a child. She had been actively trying to prevent it. She wanted to keep teaching, to have summers off to read, to start a new school year, and then another, a string of years spun into a cocoon out of which she could emerge unmarked by tragedy, a person whose life was not defined by death but by work. Books, students, pencils, lined paper, classrooms: all of these occurring in succession, meant to be enjoyed then finished with. A life built on blocks for which substitutes and replacements could easily be found.
Now she was going to have a baby. Her scalp prickled and her ears rang. She leaned against a fire hydrant and put her head between her knees.
Nan did exactly the same thing when she heard Lily’s news; she put her hot, stinging head between her knees so that neither Jane nor Lily would see her cry.
FIFTEEN
Charles woke each morning more awake than he had ever been, alight with expectation. He could not stop smiling. He would have a child. A child to sail with, to read with, to talk to while holding hands and walking down the street. He realized how little he had been smiling lately, at least without ruefulness or concern. Now, he was unabashed. He would have a house full of puzzles, card games, and high chairs at the dinner table. For the first time, the cool and bright expanse of faith he always felt around him was inside of him, like a pencil lead, silver and strong, ready for him to put to paper and draw lovely, lucky scenes.
He had not even had to convince Lily. That was a moment of luck Charles could not explain. He had been formulating his argument for months, wondering how to convince Lily she, too, wanted a baby. His determination had dulled in the face of James and Nan’s misfortune; it seemed disloyal to actively campaign for a child when his friends could not have one. But now, it had happened. Just happened, without conversation, wi
thout Lily’s skepticism or resistance. They were having a child. His prayers were full of gratitude and incredulity.
As it turned out, they were expecting twins. And Charles was even more delighted. The house would be full at once, no waiting for another. He began to wonder more ardently if this was ordained from on high somewhere, as if the universe knew Lily might stop at one child, might go back to work and be content, and had given her two, so that he could have the family he wanted.
“Twins,” James said. “Cain and Abel. Jacob and Esau. How very biblical of her.”
Charles was besieged by well-wishers, women of the parish who marched to the church to take up a walk-in time.
“When the baby cries, rub him with Epsom salt,” some said.
“Oh no, give her just a little bit of whiskey,” others countered.
“Bright lights—you wouldn’t think it would get babies to fall asleep, but it does.”
“Tell Lily,” some commanded, “not to go to them every time they cry.”
“Best thing I ever did,” others admonished, “was pick my children up every time they whimpered.”
On and on their advice continued, punctuated by stories of their own children or childhoods. When their appointment times were finished, the well-wishing women waited in the lobby for their friends to be done. Charles often encountered them there, clucking together, having thought of something else they hadn’t told him.
He had never known it could be so exhausting to smile and nod.
“It’s like Lilliput,” James said. “I see you sitting here every day, and all I can do is step carefully over all these little ropes.”
“I enjoy it,” Charles said with careful humility. “But I do sometimes wonder if it’s a waste of time.”
James looked surprised. “You’re helping them feel important,” he said. “They’re getting to tell you something they know.”
“Yes,” Charles told James, “but Lily’s not going to use a single shred of this advice. Even if it kills her. She’ll do something completely unorthodox, and there will have been no reason for any of us to have sat through it all.”
James was more grateful than ever for the manse, had come to respect its basic vocation, which was to nurture, inspire introspection, sequester him and Nan from the distractions of the outside world. It was not meant for guests or entertainment, but for quiet conversation and cups of soup by the fire. He liked its smooth corners and flowered sofas, the curtains and the thick, warm rugs and the polished tables. He did not take it for granted. He was relieved to have this refuge that made it possible for him to go out into the jagged world. But the manse was not a house that inspired change, and it had enveloped Nan, enshrouded her, allowed her to hoard her suffering, to dwell on her pain.
She was letting Jane handle the busybodies and, most worrying of all, had taken a break from the junior choir—left the children in Dr. Rose’s less capable hands. It had been weeks since she had joined James at coffee hour. He wanted to move on. He wanted her to do something. He assumed their next baby would stick; he needed Nan to believe that, too. So he told her about the ladies who dropped in on Charles. He knew this would distress her, but he hoped that recommendations for buggies and diapers might get her thinking about the future.
Nan had no energy to think about the future. It was all she could do to go to church, and she did that only because she had fought so hard for James to stay there. She was so angry at God. She could not understand why God had given Lily two babies and her none. Why Charles and Lily were embraced by goodwill but desperate to escape it.
“Those women are doing their best,” Nan said. “They want to help.” She wanted to fling herself on their bosoms, never to emerge. She wanted to take every shred of their advice, listen to every word about dinner and baths and school. How dare Lily look down on them and their domestic wisdom? It was not something to be pitied. It was Nan’s fondest dream.
James was so worried about her that he sent Jane Atlas to the manse. He gave her the key, in case Nan was too tired to open the door. Jane did not even knock. She opened the door, closed it loudly behind her, and shouted, “It’s Jane Atlas. I’m coming in.”
She heard Nan stand up in the living room, found her—thankfully—fully dressed in a light blue skirt and sweater, bleary-eyed and rumpled.
“Your husband gave me the key,” she said. “He wanted me to startle you. Let’s have some whiskey.”
“I don’t need whiskey,” Nan said.
“Of course you do.” Jane pulled a silver flask out of her purse. She went into the kitchen and opened cabinet doors until she found the glasses. She came back into the living room with two of Nan’s fanciest tumblers, etched with flowers and vines. She sat down on one of the red sofas, put the glasses on the coffee table, and poured a finger of whiskey into each one.
“Sit there,” she told Nan, pointing to the couch across from her, pushing a glass across the wood. “And drink.”
Nan did as she was told. The whiskey numbed her throat. She realized it had been days since she had seen anyone but her husband. She felt stiff and stale. Her days were an ocean of sameness: the same food, the same rooms, every day a house unchanged. Even her favorite arias, played over and over again, gave her no comfort. She had thought she could put down roots in New York. Instead, she felt as rudderless as a broken boat. No, she realized; James was in the boat. She was in the water, holding on to his hand. She needed other company. She needed people who drank iced tea, who had time to linger over conversation, who wanted to talk about music and marriage. She knew she needed help.
“What am I going to do?” she whispered.
Jane surveyed her carefully. “You’re going to take a bath, put on clean clothes, eat an omelet and make new friends.” Nan stared at her.
“Go on,” Jane waved at her. “I’ll find the eggs, and then we are going to the knitting circle.”
Nan knew that every Wednesday a group of women met in the coffee hour room to knit booties and caps for the Foundling Hospital. She also knew they were all at least sixty years old. She had never joined them, just as she had never joined her mother’s friends at their card games. In her house, the young needed an invitation to join their elders.
After Nan had eaten, Jane marched her across the path, into the church building, up the stairs, and into the fellowship room, where she said, “Here’s that fresh face you’re always telling me we need.” Nan recognized them all; they were the ladies who sat in the third row at church, who stood together in a corner during coffee hour. She had said Hello, how are you? to them a hundred times and had been met with somewhat curt Fine, thank yous that told her she should not intrude. She was surprised to see them out of their church clothes, stylishly dressed and obviously gossiping.
“These are my friends,” Jane leaned up to whisper in Nan’s ear. “You can share them. But you cannot tell the boys. It would ruin my reputation.”
Nan found a seat on a blue upholstered chair, next to a woman her mother’s age who was knitting so fast Nan could hardly see her fingers.
“I don’t really know how to do this,” Nan said, as Jane Atlas handed her a pair of silver needles.
“We’ll teach you,” a woman in a black pantsuit across from her said, tugging a ball of yellow yarn from a chic basket handbag at her feet.
The knitter on Nan’s other side, a woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a huge diamond ring said, “It’s nice to see a young girl who has time for this sort of thing.”
Nan realized they had been watching her, judging her as she went about her business of being a minister’s wife. She could not tell what conclusion they had come to; they were looking at her as if deciding how to proceed.
The collective pause went on too long, until Jane said, with equal parts gravity and compassion, “Nan does not want to talk about Lily.”
And Nan understood: They had been judging all four of them. And Jane had just told them that Nan and Lily did not get along. Nan knew it should have
embarrassed her, but she wanted to hug Jane, to kiss her on the cheek for making her life one small bit more true.
The room erupted into lively conversation, and Nan concentrated on looping her yarn around the sharp point of the needle. For the next six months, she spent Wednesdays with that group of women, talking about church and the manse and being married to a minister. She heard stories about dachshunds and dinner parties and Paris. She learned about wills and nursing homes and widowhood. She knitted a scarf, a blanket, and a pair of mittens. She resumed her parish work and returned to the junior choir. Not once did anyone mention Lily.
Six months in, Lily was still stunned. She woke each morning frozen—not cold, but desperately still, as she had held herself as a child when she was reading in the hammock and wanted her cousins to pass her by. She spent her days like this, her feelings in a glass jar on a high shelf, the rest of her blank and numb. She registered Charles’s happiness, and was not opposed to it; children should be happy occurrences, and his cheer was so bright that it seemed to hide her dullness from him. It was easy to let him make plans, choose blankets, bottles, cups, and spoons.
But she could not ignore that there were two people growing inside of her. They had begun to move, rolling and kicking so strongly that she sometimes had to sit down. She did not understand their enthusiasm. Did they not know that she lived in a tiny apartment and had nowhere to put them? Did they not know that she wanted to work, not stay home and make oatmeal? Did they not know they were forcing her hand, that now she would have to stay married, stay in New York, be part of a life she was still not sure she had chosen correctly?