Boughton said, “Yes. So much to be grateful for.”
After a moment Jack said, “‘Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sinneth, it shall die.’ That’s Ezekiel. But Moses says the Lord ‘will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation.’ I wondered if you could explain that to me. It seems like a contradiction.”
There was a silence. Then Boughton said, “He knows his Scripture.”
“Yes, he does.”
Boughton cleared his throat. “If you look at the Code of Hammurabi, I believe that’s Davies—”
Ames nodded. “Davies.”
“—you will find that if a man kills another man’s son, then his own son will be killed. That was the punishment. Ezekiel was writing in Babylon, for the people living there in exile. So I think he was probably referring to the way things were done in that country, by the Babylonians.”
Ames said, “Ezekiel does mention the proverb among the Israelites, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and so on.”
“But the language of the proverb does not by itself imply anyone should exact a punishment of the sons. I believe at the time Ezekiel wrote, that proverb must have been interpreted in a way that justified the Babylonian practice.” Boughton rallied when he made arguments of this kind, spoke in the language of the old life, and wearied even to crankiness if the discussion went on very long.
Ames said, “Yes, Reverend, that may well have been the case.”
Jack said, “Thank you. So the law can’t punish a child for his father’s sins, but the Lord will.”
His father said, “There is the passage in John, the ninth chapter, in which the Lord Himself says, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned.’ Speaking of the man born blind.”
“Yes, sir. But how do we know what He says is not specific to that case? Or that what He means is that sin can’t always be inferred from—misfortune? He doesn’t really say that if the parents had sinned, they would not be punished through the child. As I read it.”
Silence again. Then Ames, clearly irritated, said, “It is true that children suffer when their fathers aren’t good men. Anyone can see that. That’s common sense. It’s a grave error, I think, to interpret their suffering as an act of God, rather than as a consequence of their fathers’ own behavior.”
Boughton said, “We tried to do right by her. We should have done much more, I know that.”
Jack smiled. He said very softly, “I really am a sinful man. Granting your terms.” He shrugged. “Granting my terms.”
Boughton waved this off, a gesture that discouraged elaboration. There was a long silence. Then he said, “Nonsense. That had nothing to do with it.”
“And I don’t know why I am. There’s no pleasure in it. For me, at least. Not much, anyway.”
Boughton covered his face with his hands.
Ames said, “I think your father is tired.”
But Jack continued, very softly. “I’m the amateur here. If I had your history with the question I’d be sick of it, too, no doubt. Well I do have a history with it. I’ve wondered from time to time if I might not be an instance of predestination. A sort of proof. If I may not experience predestination in my own person. That would be interesting, if the consequences were not so painful. For other people. If it did not seem as though I spread a contagion of some kind. Of misfortune. Is that possible?”
Ames said, “No. That isn’t possible. Not at all.”
“No,” his father said. “It just isn’t.”
Jack laughed. “What a relief. Because that visiting of the sins, it seems to describe something. It works the other way, too. The sins of the sons are visited on the fathers.”
There was a silence. Then Ames said, “‘If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart.’ That’s from the First Epistle of John.”
Jack nodded. “He is writing to the ‘beloved,’ the church. I do not enjoy the honor of membership in that body.”
“I don’t know why you want to insist on that,” his father said. “Why you want to set yourself apart like that. You were baptized and confirmed just like anybody else. How can you know all this Scripture when all you do is reject it?”
Ames said, “He doesn’t exactly reject it, Robert. He’s clearly given it a good deal of thought.”
“Still. It seems almost like pride to me.”
Jack said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. My question is, are there people who are simply born evil, live evil lives, and then go to hell?”
Ames took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Scripture is not really clear on that point. Generally, a person’s behavior is consistent with his nature, which is to say that his behavior is consistent. The consistency is what I mean when I speak of his nature.”
Boughton chuckled. “Do I detect a little circularity in your reasoning, Reverend Eisenhower?”
Jack said, “People don’t change, then.”
“They do, if there is some other factor involved. Drink, say. Their behavior changes. I don’t know if that means their nature has changed.”
Jack smiled. “For a man of the cloth, you’re pretty cagey.”
Boughton said, “You should have seen him thirty years ago.”
“I did.”
“Well, you should have been paying attention.”
“I was.”
Ames was becoming irritated, clearly. He said, “I’m not going to apologize for the fact that there are things I don’t understand. I’d be a fool if I thought there weren’t. And I’m not going to make nonsense of a mystery, just because that’s what people always do when they try to talk about it. Always. And then they think the mystery itself is nonsense. Conversation of this kind is a good deal worse than useless. In my opinion.”
Glory said, “Your five minutes aren’t up yet.”
Jack glanced up at her blandly, not quite smiling, touching his fingertips together as if there were no such thing in the world as a hint. So she went into the parlor and turned on the radio and took up a book and tried to read, and tried to stop wanting to make sense of words she was doing her best not to hear. The Presbyterian Church. Redemption. Karl Barth. She read one page over three times without giving it enough of her attention to remember anything about it, and the radio was playing the William Tell Overture, so she set the book aside and went to stand in the doorway.
Lila said, “What about being saved?” She spoke softly and blushed deeply, looking at the hands that lay folded in her lap, but she continued. “If you can’t change, there don’t seem much point in it. That’s not really what I meant.”
Jack smiled. “Of course I myself have attended tent meetings only as an interested observer. I would not have wanted to find my salvation along some muddy riverbank in the middle of the night. Half the crowd there to pick each other’s pocket, or to sell each other hot dogs—”
Lila said, “—Caramel corn—”
He laughed. “—Cotton candy. And everybody singing off key—” They both laughed.
“—to some old accordion or something—” she said, never looking up.
“And all of them coming to Jesus. Except myself, of course.” Then he said, “Amazing how the world never seems any better for it all. If I am any judge.”
“Mrs. Ames has made an excellent point,” Boughton said, his voice statesmanlike. He sensed a wistfulness in Ames as often as he was reminded of all the unknowable life his wife had lived and would live without him. “Yes, I worried a long time about how the mystery of predestination could be reconciled with the mystery of salvation.”
“No conclusions?”
“None that I can recall just now.” He said, “It seems as though the conclusions are never as interesting as the questions. I mean, they’re not what you remember.” He closed his eyes.
Jack finally looked up at Glory, reading her look and finding in it, apparently,
anxiety or irritation, because he said, “I’m sorry. I think I have gone on with this too long. I’ll let it go.”
Lila said, never looking up from her hands, “I’m interested.”
Jack smiled at her. “That’s kind of you, Mrs. Ames. But I think Glory wants to put me to work. My father has always said the best way for me to keep out of trouble would be to make myself useful.”
“Just stay for a minute,” she said, and Jack sat back in his chair, and watched her, as they all did, because she seemed to be mustering herself. Then she looked up at him and said, “A person can change. Everything can change.”
Ames took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He felt a sort of wonder for this wife of his, in so many ways so unknown to him, and he could be suddenly moved by some glimpse he had never had before of the days of her youth or her loneliness, or of the thoughts of her soul.
Jack said, very gently, “Why, thank you, Mrs. Ames. That’s all I wanted to know.”
THE NEXT MORNING THE MAIL CAME EARLY, SO SHE SAW it first. Jack was upstairs. Once he would have been waiting somewhere, lingering, even an hour before the usual time for it to come, but that sharp old hope seemed to have dulled a little. Notes to her from her sisters. And four of Jack’s letters, addressed to Della Miles in Memphis. They were unopened, and the words Return to Sender were written across each one, in bold print and underlined. She put the envelopes facedown on the hall table and went into the kitchen to collect herself.
Glory had begun to despise this Della. The woman had to have a fairly good idea of the misery she was causing, if she knew Jack at all. Granted that she had no obligation to be in love with him, simply because he was in love with her. Granted that his persistence must seem irksome, unwelcome as it was—by now she had certainly made that clear. But she had read French novels with him, and had embroidered his sleeve with flowers, for heaven’s sake. Don’t laugh while you’re smoking, he had said, if you’re carrying a birthday cake. He had showered himself with ashes. Then all that whimsical, meticulous embroidery, not mending but commemoration. What was it that had made them laugh? Whoever Della was, she knew him too well to treat him this way. She could ignore his letters if she wanted to. But this was cruelty.
Since Glory had seen the letters, she would have to tell him they had been returned. She thought of putting them back in the box and letting him find them himself. But what was the point of that? He might think he could keep them a secret from her, since that was always his first impulse, and then she couldn’t speak with him about them, which she thought she should do, at least to offer him comfort, if she could think of any comfort to offer. Four letters! If any more came back like that, she would burn them. The point was made. She thought she might take three of these, or two, and hide them somewhere and burn them when she had the chance, since two would be sufficient for this Della’s purposes. Two would be unambiguous but not quite so insulting.
She might say, How do you know it was Della who sent them back? It might have been her father. The printing was very bold, even allowing for the emphasis intended. Her impression of Della had been of someone with a lighter touch, a kind of delicacy she would not depart from if only because she herself was not quite aware of it. But what did she know about Della, except that Jack had courted her as if she were the virtuous lady in an old book? Poetry. Flowers, no doubt. All with a fresh shave and polished shoes and that air of mild irony he assumed whenever his sincerity embarrassed him.
Jack came down the stairs and went out to the mailbox, then came back in again. She went into the hallway. He found the letters lying where she had put them. His back was turned to her, but she could see the shock travel up his body. His weight on his heels, the setting of his knees, and then the recoil in his shoulders. He turned the letters over in his hands. He knew she was watching, and he said, “Have any more of these come back?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t keep it from me if they did.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that. I wish I could.”
He nodded.
She said, “I wanted to think a little before I gave them to you.”
He nodded. “Any ideas?”
“Well,” she said, “you haven’t told me much about all this, but from what you have told me, I thought it might not be Della who sent them back. I thought it might be her father or someone else in her family. You said she’s living with her family. This doesn’t really seem like her, my impression of her, anyway.”
He shook his head. “Mine either.” He dropped the letters on the table again. He turned around and smiled at her. “Not much to do, is there.”
Glory said, “I was wondering if you had a mutual friend you could write to. Maybe the friend could send a letter from you, and she would read it. I mean, if her father or someone is keeping her from reading your letters, that might be a way to reach her. It could be worth a try.”
He nodded. “I’ll give it some thought.” He said, “I don’t blame her, though. I don’t blame her father, if he did it. I understand it. They’re good people. I should just—respect her judgment. Or his. I’m pretty used to the idea by now.” He said, “I’ve sent a couple more letters. I suppose they’ll come back, too. If you’d burn them, I’d be grateful.”
“Should I burn these?”
He nodded. He touched the table as if it reminded him of something that had mattered once, and then he shrugged. “I don’t really know what to do with myself. Any suggestions?”
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS THREE MORE LETTERS CAME back. She made careful fires of small kindling in the fireplace and tended them until each of the letters was burned to ashes. Jack saw her kneeling there, Jack who had taken to wearing his suit again, jacket open and tie loose to acknowledge the late-summer heat. He watched from the door, smiled and nodded to her, and stepped away when she tried to speak to him. There was still courtesy, taken back to what was for him its essence, the dread and certainty of being unwelcome, a bother, out of place. He had fallen back on estrangement, his oldest habit. As if he knew his unease made him seem aloof, he left the house in the morning and stayed away until evening, too late for supper but in time to spare his father his darkest fears. She left biscuits on the counter with the thought that he might pocket a few of them, and he did. She set out oatmeal cookies and hard-boiled eggs. She left coffee for him in a thermos bottle and a cup beside it, which he washed and put away. While he was gone she was very careful to see to everything he might have helped her with, so that he would not have to choose between the embarrassment of imposing on her and the forced familiarity of her company. And she prayed for him and prayed for him, she and her father, in long, silent graces that were grateful in anticipation of their relief at hearing him come through the door.
At supper the third night her father said, “I don’t know what it is, Glory. I don’t know what has happened.”
She said, “He is in love with a woman he knew in St. Louis.”
“Well, I figured out that much. All those letters.”
“Yes. The last week she’s been returning his letters.”
“Oh.” He took off his glasses and blotted his face with his napkin. After a moment he said gruffly, “I thought that might happen. Something like that. He doesn’t have a job. I don’t believe he ever graduated from college. He’s not a young man, not likely to change his life, and I don’t think it’s been a very good life. I can see why a woman might—” He cleared his throat. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“He’s known her for years. Those ten good years he talks about. He says she has helped him.”
Her father looked at her. “And they were never married at all?”
“I don’t know,” she said. Her father looked somber. A failed lie meant his suspicions were correct, and she had probably never lied to him successfully. In fact, lying in that family almost always meant only that the liar would appreciate discretion. So the transparency of a falsehood was very much to the point. She had cordoned off her own embarr
assments from inquiry by means of a few explanations that were false on their face and never tested or returned to for that reason. As a matter of courtesy they treated one another’s deceptions like truth, which was a different thing from deceiving or being deceived. In fact, it was a great part of the fabric of mutual understanding that made their family close.
She told some truth in this case because she was offended for Jack’s sake by the suggestion that he had simply thrown himself at a woman and been rejected, as if he were not ruefully aware as anyone could be of his utter ineligibility. It must have been this Della who kept him safe despite everything they feared, who may have kept him alive, and in any case who had made the world a tolerable place for him for a while, as they had somehow never managed to do. Jack had said that he worried about the casting of aspersions on Della and on their relationship, told her about trying to defend her honor, and Glory knew even as she did it that she should not have mentioned those ten years. Still, Jack should not be made to seem like a fool. And Della, whoever she was, had not reckoned his worth in terms of his prospects, for heaven’s sake. That much had to be said for her.
She knew she had made a grave mistake in giving her father’s anxieties some grounding in fact. She said, “The woman is a minister’s daughter.”
Her father nodded. “And Jack is a minister’s son.” Then he said, “There are no children involved.” This was a statement of the kind that meant he did not want his hope contradicted.
“No,” she said. From time to time she had wondered, too.
His face settled into that grave look it took on when he felt some sort of moral intervention was required of him. It was a sad, even a bitter look, because only the lack or failure of other approaches could induce him to fall back on this one, and because he knew it had never yielded any wholly good result. It might be that Jack had obligations he could not meet. If he did, then the family must act on behalf of those to whom he was obligated. Especially since they were no doubt also family. The old man would have to know what he was dealing with here, even though Jack was sure to be offended. His questions would inevitably sound like accusation. Such misery, just to learn what he did not want to know.
Home Page 24