Marilynne Robinson - Lila

It was evening when she opened the gate to the preacher’s garden. She picked some beans and groped under the plants for some potatoes. There was light from an upstairs window and no other light in the house. Let him be — all right. That seemed like a decent prayer. Let him stop making me feel so damn broke all the time. That was a good one. Better to tell him that one herself. She could do it right now if she wanted. Maybe she hadn’t been as quiet as she thought, because he knew she was there. He opened the front door as she was walking to the gate. He said, “I’ve written you a note. I thought I might give it to you. Well, of course I will give it to you. There wouldn’t be much point—” He laughed. “I hope — well, obviously. I mean, if there is anything in it you find disagreeable, that will be despite my best efforts. To the contrary. If you see—” He handed her an envelope. “Good evening. It’s a fine evening.” He went back into the house. The envelope wasn’t sealed, and when she was out of sight of his house she opened it just enough to see that there was no money in it, only the note. She had to laugh at a pinch of something like disappointment. She was close now to having enough money to be able to leave. Maybe it was more than enough. A couple of weeks ago she’d have thought it was. The more you have, the more you want. If he had given her money, there’d have been anger and shame to get her on that bus. She could have stopped thinking about it.

One other time she had been given a note, for Doll from that teacher. Lila read it to her because, Doll said, her hands was all wet and soapy. It said that she was a smart girl and would benefit from further schooling, and that the teacher would be happy to do whatever she could to help make this possible. “Lila is an unusually bright child.” Doll said, “Benefit,” and Lila told her it meant that it would do her good to stay in school another year. Doll said, “I already knew you was bright. I could’ve told you that.” That was all she said. It was so easy for Lila to forget that Doll had broken the law when she carried her away, and had set off a grudge, too, which was a good deal worse. And for a long time she hadn’t realized that the life they lived with Doane was one that would make them hard to find. Because people like them don’t talk to outsiders. And they all know that if somebody is on your trail, you can just slip into a cornfield. Once, Doll must have thought she saw somebody from the old place. She’d kept Lila with her a whole day in a hayloft, quiet as could be. That was before the corn was high. But to spend almost a year in a town was dangerous if anyone happened to be looking for them. Doll knew those people and Lila didn’t, so if Doll thought they might try to catch her for the sheer devilment of it, Lila guessed they really might have tried. But that was nothing the two of them mentioned even between themselves.

She has made remarkable progress. Lila knew that note by heart. No point reading Doll the parts she wouldn’t understand. She was glad that teacher couldn’t see her now. What was this old man going to tell her in his note? Don’t matter. A letter makes ordinary things seem important. He was wearing a necktie. Expecting her, maybe, because she’d been at Mrs. Graham’s and might be wanting to thank him for the coat. Or maybe he waited for her every evening. She found herself sometimes listening for his steps in the road. People talk themselves into these things, and then nothing comes of it. They don’t even want to remember there was a time when it mattered to them. They hate you for mentioning it. Those women in St. Louis, the young ones, there was always somebody they were waiting for, or trying to get over. And the older ones would just laugh at them. They’d be laughing at her now. He probably had a meeting at the church, so he was wearing a necktie. You fool, Lila. Whatever it said, it would be kind. And if it wasn’t, he’d have found the kindest way to say it.

St. Louis. Much better to be there in the shack by herself. In the evening, with her potatoes roasting outside. Doane used to push a spud out of the fire with a stick, and they’d toss it one to another until one of them could stand to hold on to it, and then it was his. One of Arthur’s boys, always. They’d just go to sleep when it got dark. She should buy some candles, maybe even a kerosene lamp, so she could read and practice her writing if she felt like it. But light did draw bugs. And it was better if no one saw the shack at night. Not that people passing by wouldn’t notice her fire. But light made you blind in the dark and there might be something you really needed to see out there. The evening was peaceful. But she couldn’t stop wondering about that letter. She might just light a cigarette. She might strike another match to read the first few words. They were: Dear Lila (if I may), You asked me once why things happen the way they do. Well, she wasn’t really expecting that. I have felt considerable regret over my failure to respond to your question . She shook out the match. He wasn’t asking for his umbrella back anyway.

The next morning she took her tablet and copied, as neatly as she could, You must have thought that it has never occurred to me to wonder about the deeper things religion is really concerned with, the meaning of existence, of human life. You must have thought I say the things I do out of habit and custom, rather than from experience and reflection. I admit there is some truth in this. It is inevitable, I suppose. She wrote it ten times. Well, what did old Ezekiel say next? And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot; and they sparkled like burnished brass. She wrote this ten times. Salted babies, sparkling calves’ feet. Strange as it was, there was something to it. Well, there was the strangeness of it. That old man had no idea. Let us pray, and they all did pray. Let us join in hymn number no matter what, and they all sang. Why did they waste candles on daylight? Him standing there, talking about people dead who knows how long, if the stories about them were even true, and most of the people listening, or trying to listen. There was no need for any of it. The days came and went on their own, without any praying about it. And still, everywhere, meetings and revivals, people seeing the light. Finding comfort where there was no comfort, just an old man saying something he’d said so many times he probably didn’t hear it himself. It was about the meaning of existence, he said. All right. She knew a little bit about existence. That was pretty well the only thing she knew about, and she had learned the word for it from him. It was like the United States of America — they had to call it something. The evening and the morning, sleeping and waking. Hunger and loneliness and weariness and still wanting more of it. Existence. Why do I bother? He couldn’t tell her that, either. But he knows, she could see it in him. Why does he want more of it, with his house so empty, his wife and child so long in the ground? The evening and the morning, the singing and the praying. The strangeness of it. You couldn’t stop looking. He would walk up the hill to that sad place and find them all covered in roses. If he knew, and if he didn’t know, who had made them bloom that way, he would think it was strange and right. There was no need for roses.

Marcelle chose that name for herself after she heard some women talking in a beauty parlor. When he started turning mean, Doane began calling her Marcelle in a way that let you know it wasn’t her real name. When he did that, it made her cry sometimes. She pretended, but she always had, and they had always wanted her to. Lila and Mellie loved to watch when she opened the little box where she kept her powder and rouge and lip rouge, her eyebrow pencil. She almost never opened it, it was so precious. The stale sweet smell of it. Sometimes she let them brush out her hair. They did all think she was pretty. They felt a little pleasure and a little envy at the way Doane favored her. He would take her arm to help her through a muddy place in the road. Once, he bought ribbons at a carnival and tied one in her hair and one in a bow around her neck, and wound one around her wrist and one around her ankle, kneeling right on the ground to do it and setting her foot on his bent knee. Doll said, “They’re married people.” Lila had no particular notion of what the word “married” meant, except that there was an endless, pleasant joke between them that excluded everybody else and that all the rest of them were welcome to admire. It was that way before times got hard. After that, Doane seemed almost angry at Marcelle because there wasn’t much he could spare her. Still, he looked for her and he stood beside her, even when he had no word to say. There are the things people need, and the things people don’t need. That might not be true. Maybe they don’t need existence. If you took that away, everything else would go with it. So if you don’t need to exist, then there is no reason to think about other things you don’t need as if they didn’t matter. You don’t need somebody standing beside you. You don’t, but you do. Take away every pleasure — but you couldn’t, because there can be pleasure in a sip of water. A thought. There was no reason for Doane to tie a ribbon on Marcelle’s wrist, and that was why she laughed when he did it, and loved him for it. Why they all loved them both. There was no reason to let an old man dip his hand in water and touch it to your forehead, as if he loved you the way people do who would touch your face and your hair. You’d have thought those babies were his own. All right, she thought. All right.