Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

Picture how they must look from outside, Ian thought. A cleaned and pressed little family walking together to church, discussing matters of theology. Perfect.

From outside.

“Or Abraham and Isaac. That one really ticks me off. God asks Abraham to kill his own son. And Abraham says, ‘Okay.’ Can you believe it? And then at the very last minute God says, ‘Only testing. Ha-ha.’ Boy, I’d like to know what Isaac thought. All the rest of his life, any time his father so much as looked in his direction Isaac would think—”

Ian said, “Agatha, it’s very bad manners to criticize other people’s religion.”

“It’s very bad manners to force your own religion on them, too,” Agatha told him. “Shoot, it’s very unconstitutional . To make me go to church when I don’t want to.”

“Well, you’re right,” Ian said.

“Huh?”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t have done it.”

By now, they had stopped walking. Agatha peered at him. She said, “So can I leave now?”

“You can leave.”

She stood there a moment longer. The other two watched with interest. “Okay,” she said finally. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

She turned and set off toward home.

But without her it seemed so quiet. He missed her firm, opinionated voice and that little trick she had of varying her tone to quote each person’s remarks. No matter how imaginary those remarks might be.

“I the Lord thy God am a jealous God,” Reverend Emmett read from Exodus, and Ian could almost hear Agatha beside him: “Any time we act jealous, people have a fit.” He shook the thought away. He bowed lower in his seat, propping his forehead on two fingers. Next to him, Daphne tore a tiny corner off a page of her hymnal and placed it on her tongue. Thomas was sitting behind them with Kenny Larson and his family. A fly was crawling up the front counter.

Reverend Emmett called for a hymn: “Blessed Assurance.” The congregation rose to sing, standing shoulder to shoulder. Everyone here was familiar to Ian. Or at least, semifamiliar. (Eli Everjohn and his wife were sitting with Sister Bertha, and Mrs. Jordan had brought her cousin.) “This is my story,” they sang, “this is my song …” Ian put an arm around Daphne and she nestled against him as she sang, her voice incongruously husky for such a little girl.

The sermon was on the Sugar Rule. Recently a committee had approached Reverend Emmett suggesting that the rule be dropped. It was just so complicated, they said. Face it, they were eating sugar every day of their lives, one way or another. Even peanut butter contained sugar if you bought it from a supermarket. Reverend Emmett had told them he would meditate on the issue and report his conclusions. What he said this morning — pacing behind the counter, running his long fingers through his forelock — was that the Sugar Rule was supposed to be complicated. “Like error itself,” he said, “sugar creeps in the cracks. You tell yourself you didn’t realize, you were subject to circumstance, you forgot to read the list of ingredients and anyhow, it’s everywhere and it can’t be helped. Isn’t that significant? It’s not that you’ll be damned forever if you take a grain of sugar; nobody says that. Sugar is merely a distraction, not a sin. But I feel it’s important to keep the rule because of what it stands for: the need for eternal watchfulness.”

The children — those who were listening — sent each other disappointed grimaces, but Ian didn’t really care that much. The Sugar Rule was a minor inconvenience, at most. So was the Coffee Rule; so was the Alcohol Rule. The difficult one was the Unmarried Sex Rule. “How can something be right one day and wrong the next?” Cicely had asked him. “And what’s done is done, anyway, and can’t be undone, right?”

He had said, “If I thought that, I wouldn’t be able to go on living.” Then he’d told her he wanted them to get married.

“Married!” Cicely had cried. “Married, at our age! I haven’t seen the world yet! I haven’t had any fun!”

He covered his eyes with his hand.

In his daydreams, he walked into services one morning and found a lovely, golden-haired girl sitting in the row just ahead. She would be so intent on the sermon that she wouldn’t even look his way; she had grown up in a religion very much like this one, it turned out, and believed with all her heart. After the Benediction Ian introduced himself, and she looked shy and pleased. They had the most proper courtship, but he could tell she felt the same way he did. They would marry at Second Chance with Reverend Emmett officiating. She would love the three children as much as if they were hers and stay home forever after to tend them. The Church Maiden, Ian called her in his mind. He never entered this building without scanning the rows for the Church Maiden.

After the sermon came Amending. “Does somebody want to stand up?” Reverend Emmett asked. But standing up was for serious sins, where you confessed to the whole congregation and discussed in public all possible methods of atonement. Evidently none of them had strayed so grievously during this past week. “Well, then,” Reverend Emmett said, smiling, “we’ll amend in private,” and they bowed their heads and whispered their mistakes to themselves. Ian caught snatches of “lied to my husband” and “slapped my daughter” and “drank part of a beer with my boss.” “Thursday I stole my sister’s new bra and wore it to gym class,” Daphne said, startling Ian, but of course he should not have been listening. He averted his face from her and whispered, “I was snappish with the children three different times. Four. And I told Mr. Brant I was sick with the flu when really I just wanted a day off.”

Unlike the other denominations Ian knew of, this one had nothing against sinning in your thoughts. To think a sinful thought and not act upon it was to practice righteousness, Reverend Emmett said — almost as much righteousness as not thinking the thought in the first place. Jesus must have been misquoted on that business about committing adultery in your heart. So Ian left unspoken what troubled him the most:

I’ve been atoning and atoning, and sometimes lately I’ve hated God for taking so long to forgive me. Some days I feel I’m speaking into a dead telephone. My words are knocking against a blank wall. Nothing comes back to show I’ve been heard .

“Let it vanish now from our souls, Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen,” Reverend Emmett said. He looked radiant. Whatever had weighed on his own soul (for his lips had moved with the others’, this morning) had obviously been lifted from him.

They sang “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” in a tone that struck Ian as lingering and regretful. Then Reverend Emmett gave the Benediction, and they were free to go. Daphne shot off to join a friend. Ian wove his way through the other members’ greetings. He answered several inquiries about his mother’s arthritis, and politely refused Mrs. Jordan’s offer of a ride home. (She drove like a maniac.) Near the door, Eli Everjohn stood awkwardly by in a brilliant blue suit while his wife talked with Sister Myra. “Morning, Brother Eli,” Ian said. He started to edge past him, but Eli, who must have been feeling left out, brightened and said, “Why, hey there! Hey!”

“Enjoy the service?” Ian asked.

“Oh, I’m sure your pastor means well,” Eli said. “But forbidding ordinary white sugar, and then allowing your young folks to listen to rock-and-roll music! Seems like to me he’s got his priorities mixed up. I don’t know that I hold with this Amending business, either. Awful close to Roman Catholic, if you ask me.”

“Ah, well, it’s a matter of opinion, I guess.”