Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

“Thanks,” Ian told her.

Then Reverend Emmett announced the opening hymn: “Work for the Night Is Coming.”

Every time Ian attended Prayer Meeting, he thought of his first visit here. He remembered how he had felt welcomed by the loving voices of the singers; he remembered the sensation of prayers flowing heavenward. Coming here had saved him, he knew. Without the Church of the Second Chance he would have struggled alone forever, sunk in hopelessness.

So when Prayer Meeting seemed long-winded or inconsequential, when the petitions had to do with minor health complaints and personal disputes, he controlled his impatience. Tonight he prayed for Brother Kenneth’s colon to grow less irritable, for Sister Myra’s husband to appreciate her more fully. He listened to a recitation from Sister Nell that seemed not so much a request for prayers as an autobiography. “I learned to stop blaming myself for everything that went wrong,” one of her paragraphs went. “I had all the time been blaming myself. But really, you know, when you think about it, mostly it’s other people to blame, the godless and the self-centered, and so I said to this gal on my shift, I said, ‘Now listen here, Miss Maggie. You may think I was the one in charge of the …’ ”

Till Reverend Emmett broke in. “Ah, Sister Nell?”

“What?”

“What would you like us to pray for, exactly?”

“Pray for me to have strength,” she said, “in the face of fools and sinners.”

Ian prayed for Sister Nell to have strength.

The closing hymn was “Softly and Tenderly,” and when they sang, “Come home! Come home!” Ian felt he was the one they were calling.

“Go ye now into the world and bear witness to His teachings,” Reverend Emmett said, raising his arms. Almost before his “Amen,” people were stirring and preparing to leave. Several spoke to Ian as they passed. “Good to see you, Brother Ian.” “How’re the kids?” “Coming to paint with us Saturday?” They filed out. Ian hung behind.

Often it seemed to him that this room itself was his source of peace. Even the flicker of the fluorescent lights heartened him, and the faint chemical smell left over from when the place had been a dry cleaner’s. He found reasons to loiter, first collecting the hymn pamphlets and then stacking them just so on the counter. He paused at the edges of a conversation between Reverend Emmett and Brother Kenneth, who was offering further details about his colon. He rolled down his shirtsleeves and carefully buttoned his cuffs before, at long last, stepping out the door.

Then behind him, Reverend Emmett said, “Brother Ian? Mind if I walk partway with you?”

Ian felt his shoulders loosen. Possibly, this was what he’d been hoping for all along.

They walked north on York Road through a summer-like night, Reverend Emmett swinging his Bible. He was taller than Ian and took longer strides, although he kept trying to slow down. Occasionally he hummed a few notes beneath his breath—“Softly and Tenderly” again. Ian thought of an evening back in his Boy Scout days, when the scoutmaster (a young, athletic man, a former basketball star) had given him a ride home, filling him with a mixture of joy and self-consciousness. He knew Reverend Emmett merely acted as God’s steward, and that for someone who was the church’s founder and its sole leader he seemed remarkably unimpressed with his own importance. Still, Ian always felt tongue-tied around him. Tonight he considered discussing the weather but decided that was too mundane, and then when the silence stretched on too long he wished he had discussed the weather, but if he brought it up now it would seem strained. So he kept quiet, and it was Reverend Emmett who finally spoke.

“Some Prayer Meetings,” he said, “are like cleaning out a closet. Clearing away the dribs and drabs. Necessary, but tedious.”

And Ian said, as if making a perfectly apt response: “Is there such a thing as the Devil?”

Reverend Emmett glanced over at him.

“I mean,” Ian said, “does someone exist whose purpose is to tempt people into evil? To make them feel torn one way and another so they’re not sure which way is right anymore?”

“What is it you’re tempted to do, Brother Ian?” Reverend Emmett asked.

Ian swallowed. “I’m wasting my life,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

He must have mumbled the words. He raised his chin and said, almost shouting, “I’m wasting the only life I have! I have one single life in this universe and I’m not using it!”

“Well, of course you’re using it,” Reverend Emmett said calmly.

“I am?”

“This is your life,” Reverend Emmett said.

They faced each other at an intersection. A woman swerved around them.

“Lean into it, Ian,” Reverend Emmett said. Not “Brother Ian,” but “Ian.” It made what he said sound more direct, more oracular. He said, “View your burden as a gift. It’s the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that, and lean into it. This is the only life you’ll have.”

Then he clapped Ian on the shoulder, and turned away to cross York Road.

Ian resumed walking. For a while he pondered Reverend Emmett’s message, but he didn’t find it much help. To tell the truth, the man had disappointed him. And besides, he hadn’t answered Ian’s question. The question was: Is there such a thing as the Devil?

Ian had been referring to Jeannie, of course — Jeannie sitting forward compellingly, the hollow deepening at the base of her throat as she tempted him from his path. But the face that came to his mind at this moment was not Jeannie’s. It was Lucy’s. It was the tiny, perfect, heart-shaped face of Lucy Dean.

“Honeybunch has worms,” Agatha told Ian.

“How do you know that?”

“You really want me to say?”

“On second thought, never mind,” Ian said. “So, what? We have to take her to the vet?”

“I made an appointment: tomorrow afternoon at four.”

She and Thomas sat on either side of Ian in the porch swing, enjoying the last of a golden autumn day. Down on the front walk, Daphne was playing hopscotch with the Carter girl and the newlyweds’ five-year-old. “You did step on the line, Tracy. You did,” she said in her raucous little voice.

Ian said, “Maybe Grandpa could drive you. I could leave the car with him tomorrow and take the bus.”

“We like it better when you come,” Agatha said.

“Well, but I have work.”

“Please, Ian,” Thomas said. “Grandpa drove us when we went to get her cat shots and he yelled at her for sitting on his foot.”

“His accelerator foot,” Agatha explained.

“We like it better when you’re there, acting in charge,” Thomas told him.

Ian looked at him a moment. His mind had drifted elsewhere. “Thomas,” he said, “remember that big doll you used to carry around?”

“Oh, well, that was a long time ago,” Thomas said.

“Yes, but I was wondering. How come you named her Dulcimer?”

“I don’t even know where she is anymore. I don’t know why I named her that,” Thomas said.

He seemed embarrassed, rather than secretive. And Agatha wasn’t listening. You’d think she would suspect; she was the one who’d kept that box hidden away. But she stirred the porch swing dreamily with one foot. “Suppose we got bombed,” she said to Ian.

“Pardon?”

He saw the stationery box in his mind: the dust on the lid, the congealed sheaf of papers. She must not have glanced inside for years, he realized. She might even have forgotten it existed.

“Suppose Baltimore got atom-bombed,” she was saying. “Know what I’d do?”

“You wouldn’t do a thing,” Thomas told her. “You’d be dead.”