Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

Reverend Emmett studied him. (His skin was an unhealthy shade of white, although that could have been the fluorescent lighting.) “But your prayer,” he said finally. “Was there any response?”

“Response?”

“Did you get a reply?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“I see,” Reverend Emmett said. He watched an aged couple assist each other through the door — the very last to leave. Then he said, “What was it that you needed forgiven?”

Ian couldn’t believe his ears. Was this even legal, inquiring into a person’s private prayers? He ought to spin on his heel and walk out. But instead his heart began hammering as if he were about to do something brave. In a voice not quite his own, he said, “I caused my brother to, um, kill himself.”

Reverend Emmett gazed at him thoughtfully.

“I told him his wife was cheating on him,” Ian said in a rush, “and now I’m not even sure she was. I mean I’m pretty sure she did in the past, I know I wasn’t totally wrong, but … So he drove into a wall. And then his wife died of sleeping pills and I guess you could say I caused that too, more or less …”

He paused, because Reverend Emmett might want to disagree here. (Really Lucy’s death was just indirectly caused by Ian, and maybe not even that. It might have been accidental.) But Reverend Emmett only rocked from heel to toe.

“So it looks as if my parents are going to have to raise the children,” Ian said. Had he mentioned there were children? “Everything’s been dumped on my mom and I don’t think she’s up to it — her or my dad, either one. I don’t think they’ll ever be the same, after this. And my sister’s busy with her own kids and I’m away at college most of the time …”

In the light of Reverend Emmett’s blue eyes — which had the clean transparency of those marbles that Ian used to call ginger-ales — he began to relax. “So anyhow,” he said, “that’s why I asked for that prayer. And I honestly believe it might have worked. Oh, it’s not like I got an answer in plain English, of course, but … don’t you think? Don’t you think I’m forgiven?”

“Goodness, no,” Reverend Emmett said briskly.

Ian’s mouth fell open. He wondered if he’d misunderstood. He said, “I’m not forgiven?”

“Oh, no.”

“But … I thought that was kind of the point,” Ian said. “I thought God forgives everything.”

“He does,” Reverend Emmett said. “But you can’t just say, ‘I’m sorry, God.’ Why, anyone could do that much! You have to offer reparation — concrete, practical reparation, according to the rules of our church.”

“But what if there isn’t any reparation? What if it’s something nothing will fix?”

“Well, that’s where Jesus comes in, of course.”

Another itchy word: Jesus. Ian averted his eyes.

“Jesus remembers how difficult life on earth can be,” Reverend Emmett told him. “He helps with what you can’t undo. But only after you’ve tried to undo it.”

“Tried? Tried how?” Ian asked. “What would it take?”

Reverend Emmett started collecting hymnals from the chair seats. Apparently he was so certain of the answer, he didn’t even have to think about it. “Well, first you’ll need to see to those children,” he said.

“Okay. But … see to them in what way, exactly?”

“Why, raise them, I suppose.”

“Huh?” Ian said. “But I’m only a freshman!”

Reverend Emmett turned to face him, hugging the stack of hymnals against his concave shirt front.

“I’m away in Pennsylvania most of the time!” Ian told him.

“Then maybe you should drop out.”

“Drop out?”

“Right.”

“Drop out of college?”

“Right.”

Ian stared at him.

“This is some kind of test, isn’t it?” he said finally.

Reverend Emmett nodded, smiling. Ian sagged with relief.

“It’s God’s test,” Reverend Emmett told him.

“So …”

“God wants to know how far you’ll go to undo the harm you’ve done.”

“But He wouldn’t really make me follow through with it,” Ian said.

“How else would He know, then?”

“Wait,” Ian said. “You’re saying God would want me to give up my education. Change all my parents’ plans for me and give up my education.”

“Yes, if that’s what’s required,” Reverend Emmett said.

“But that’s crazy! I’d have to be crazy!”

“ ‘Let us not love in word, neither in tongue,’ ” Reverend Emmett said, “ ‘but in deed and in truth.’ First John three, eighteen.”

“I can’t take on a bunch of kids! Who do you think I am? I’m nineteen years old!” Ian said. “What kind of a cockeyed religion is this?”

“It’s the religion of atonement and complete forgiveness,” Reverend Emmett said. “It’s the religion of the Second Chance.”

Then he set the hymnals on the counter and turned to offer Ian a beatific smile. Ian thought he had never seen anyone so absolutely at peace.

“I don’t understand,” his mother said.

“What’s to understand? It’s simple,” Ian told her. “What you mean is, you don’t approve.”

“Well, of course she doesn’t approve,” his father said. “Neither one of us approves. No one in his right mind would approve. Here you are, attending a perfectly decent college which you barely got into by the skin of your teeth, incidentally; you’ve had no complaints about the place that your mother or I are aware of; you’re due back this Sunday evening to begin your second semester and what do you up and tell us? You’re dropping out.”

“I’m taking a leave of absence,” Ian said.

They were sitting in the dining room late Friday night — much too late to have only then finished supper, but Daphne had developed an earache and what with one thing and another it had somehow got to be nine P.M. before they’d put the children in bed. Now Bee, having risen to clear the table, sank back into her chair. Doug shoved his plate away and leaned his elbows on the table. “Just tell me this,” he said to Ian. “How long do you expect this leave of absence to last?”

“Oh, maybe till Daphne’s in first grade. Or kindergarten, at least,” Ian said.

“Daphne? What’s Daphne got to do with it?”

“The reason I’m taking a leave is to help Mom raise the kids.”

“Me?” his mother cried. “I’m not raising those children! We’re looking for a guardian! First we’ll find Lucy’s people and then I know there’ll be someone, some young couple maybe who would just love to—”

“Mom,” Ian said. “You know the chances of that are getting slimmer all the time.”

“I know nothing of the sort! Or an aunt, maybe, or—”

Doug said, “Well, he’s got a point, Bee. You’ve been running yourself ragged with those kids.”

Contrarily, Ian felt a pinch of alarm. Would his father really let him go through with this?

His mother said, “And anyway, how about the draft? You’ll be drafted the minute you leave school.”

“If I am, I am,” Ian told her, “but I don’t think I will be. I think God will take care of that.”

“Who?”

“And I do plan to pay my own way,” he said. “I’ve already found a job.”

“Doing what?” his father asked. “Moving poor folks’ furniture?”

“ Building furniture.”

They peered at him.

“I’ve made arrangements with this cabinetmaker,” Ian said. “I’ve seen him at work and I asked if I could be his apprentice.”

Student, was the way he’d finally put it. Having sought out the cabinetmaker in that apartment full of china crates and mothballs, he had plunged into the subject of apprenticeship only to be met with a baffled stare. The man had sat back on his heels and studied Ian’s lips. “Apprentice,” Ian had repeated, enunciating carefully. “Pupil.”