Anne Tyler - Saint Maybe

Reverend Emmett waited till Ian had wound down. Then he said, “What grade is Daphne in in school?”

“She’s a junior.”

“So two more years,” Reverend Emmett said. “Maybe less, if she straightens out before she graduates. And I’m certain that she will straighten out. Daphne’s always been a strong person. But even if she doesn’t, in two years she’ll be on her own. Meanwhile, you can start with a few courses here in Baltimore. Night school. Towson State, or maybe community college.”

Ian said, “But also …”

“Yes?”

“I mean, shouldn’t I hear a call to the ministry?”

Reverend Emmett said, “Maybe I’m the call.”

Ian blinked.

“And maybe not, of course,” Reverend Emmett told him. “But it’s always a possibility.”

Then he rose and once again shook Ian’s hand, with those long, dry fingers so bony they fairly rattled.

When Ian arrived home, Daphne was talking on the kitchen telephone and her grandmother was setting various dishes on the table. Sunday dinner would apparently be leftovers — tiny bowls of cold peas, soggy salad, and reheated stew from a tin. “Cool,” Daphne was saying. “We can get together later and study for that Spanish test.” Something artificial and showy in her tone made Ian flick a glance at Bee, but Bee missed his point and merely said, “Well? How was church?”

“It was all right.”

“Could you tell your father lunch is on?”

He called down to the basement and then beckoned Daphne from the phone. “I gotta go now,” she said into the receiver. “My folks are starting brunch.”

“Oh, is this brunch?” Ian asked his mother.

She smiled and set a loaf of bread on the table.

Once they were seated Ian said the blessing hurriedly, conscious of his father drumming his fingers on his knees. Then each of them embarked on a different meal. Doug reached for the stew, Ian put together a peanut butter sandwich, and Daphne, who was a vegetarian, dreamily plucked peas from the bowl one by one with her fingers. Bee finished anything the others wouldn’t — more a matter of housekeeping than personal taste, Ian thought.

He missed the two older children. Thomas was away at Cornell and Agatha was in her second year of medical school. Most meals now were just this makeshift, often served on only half the table because Daphne’s homework covered the other half. And most of their conversations felt disjointed, absentminded, like the scattered bits of talk after the main guests have left the room.

“Me and Gideon are going to study Spanish at his house,” Daphne announced into one stretch of silence.

“Gideon and I,” her grandmother said.

Ian asked, “Will Gideon’s mother be home?”

“Sure.”

Ian scrutinized her. Gideon was Daphne’s boyfriend, an aloof, chilly type. Evidently his mother, a divorcee, had a boyfriend of her own. She was often out somewhere when Ian stopped by for Daphne.

“Maybe you could study here instead,” he told her.

But Daphne said, “I already promised I’d go there.” Then she picked up her empty bowl and licked it daintily, like a cat. Everyone noticed but no one objected. You had to select your issues, with someone like Daphne.

It unsettled Ian, sometimes, how much Daphne reminded him of Lucy. She had Lucy’s small face and her curly black hair, although it was cut short and ragged. She had her froggy voice. Even in voluminous army fatigues, her slender, fine bones seemed so neatly turned that they might have been produced by a lathe. Her eyes were her own, though: still a dense, navy blue. And her own native scent of vanilla underlay the smells of cigarettes and motor oil and leather.

At the end of the meal Ian’s father rose and brought a bowl of instant pudding from the refrigerator. He wiggled it at the others inquiringly, but Bee said, “No, thanks,” and Daphne shook her head. “All the more for me, then,” Doug said cheerfully, and he sat down and started eating directly from the bowl.

Was it because of the Sugar Rule that Daphne had declined? No, probably not. This was a girl who drank beer in parked cars during lunch hour, according to her principal. But she did continue to go to church every Sunday, singing the hymns lustily and bowing her head during prayers, when most other young people lost interest as soon as they reached their teens. And she flung herself into Good Works with real spirit. Whether she was actually a believer, though, Ian couldn’t decide, and something kept him from asking.

There was a knock at the kitchen door, a single, surly thud, and they looked over to find Gideon surveying them through the windowpanes. “Oops! I’m off,” Daphne said. No question of inviting Gideon in; he didn’t talk to grownups. All they saw of him was the tilt of his sharp face and the curtain of straight blond hair, and then Daphne spun through the door and the two of them were gone. “Daph? Oh, goodness, she’ll freeze to death,” Bee said.

Ian wished Daphne’s freezing to death were the worst he had to worry about.

Doug and Bee went upstairs for their Sunday nap and Ian did the dishes. Scraping the last of the pudding into a smaller container, he thought again about Reverend Emmett’s proposal. Bible School! He had a flash of himself packing the car to leave home — participating in the September ritual that he had watched so often from the sidelines. The car stuffed to the ceiling with clothes and LP records, his parents standing by to wave him off. Maybe even a roof rack, with a bike or a stereo lashed on top. Or a butterfly chair like his former roommate’s. Provided they still made butterfly chairs.

Over the years he had often wondered whatever had become of his roommate. He had imagined Winston proceeding through school and graduating and finding a job. By now he would be well established, probably in some field involving creative thought and invention. He had probably made a name for himself.

Ian glanced down at the pudding bowl and realized he had been eating each spoonful as he scraped it up. The inside of his mouth felt thick and coated. An unfamiliar sweetness clogged his throat.

At work he was training a new employee, a stocky, bearded black man named Rafael. He was giving his usual speech about the importance of choosing your wood. “Me, I always go for cherry if I can,” he said. “It’s the friendliest, you could put it. The most obedient.”

“Cherry,” the man said, nodding.

“It’s very nearly alive . It changes color over time and it even changes shape and it breathes.”

Rafael suddenly squinted at him, as if checking on his sanity.

The shop had seven employees now, not counting the high-school girl who came in afternoons to type and do the paperwork. (And they probably shouldn’t count her; sometimes her order sheets were so garbled that Ian had to sit down at the typewriter and place his fingers wrongly on the keys so as to figure out what, for instance, she’d meant by “nitrsi.”) All around the room various carpenters worked on their separate projects. They murmured companionably among themselves but left Ian alone mostly. He knew they considered him peculiar. A couple of years ago he had made the mistake of trying to talk about Second Chance with Greg, who happened to be going through some troubles. Forever after that Greg kept his distance and so did all the others, apparently tipped off. They were polite but embarrassed, wary. As for Mr. Brant, he was even less company than usual these days. It was said that his wife had left him for a younger man. The one who said it was Mrs. Brant’s niece Jeannie, who didn’t work there anymore but sometimes dropped by to visit. Mr. Brant himself never mentioned his wife.

Last spring, Mrs. Brant had paused to admire a bench Ian was sanding and she had softly but deliberately laid a hand on top of his. Her husband was in his rear office and the others were taking a break. Mrs. Brant had looked up into Ian’s eyes with an oddly cool expression, as if this were some kind of test. Ian wasn’t completely surprised (several times, women who knew his religious convictions had started behaving very forwardly, evidently finding him a challenge), and he dealt with it fairly well, he thought. He had merely slid his hand out from under and left her with the sandpaper, pretending he’d mistaken her move for an offer to help. And of course he had said nothing to her husband. But not two months later Jeannie announced that she was gone, and then Ian thought maybe he should have said something after all. “Mr. Brant,” he should have said, “it seems to me your wife is acting lonely.” Or, “Wouldn’t you and Mrs. Brant like to take a trip together or something?”