Marilynne Robinson - Lila

He said, “So, then, you’ve decided to stay.”

“I never did plan on leaving.” For a town it wasn’t such a bad place. The trees were big enough that it was almost like living in the woods. There was no reason not to make another garden. She could plant some flowers.

After a minute he said, “When you go off like that, you might leave a note. I don’t always know what to think. You left your wedding ring.”

“I just forget to put it on sometimes.”

“Yes. I guess I knew that.”

“I’m always wearing that locket you give me.”

It seemed strange to her to wear a ring. It was a gold ring. She might harm it in some way. It might slip off her finger and be lost.

“Lila,” he said, “I’m glad to know you aren’t planning to leave. But if you ever change your mind, I want you to leave by daylight. I want you to have a train ticket in your hand that will take you right where you want to go, and I want you to take your ring and anything else I have given you. You might want to sell it. That would be all right. It’s yours, not mine. It doesn’t belong here — I mean it wouldn’t—” He cleared his throat. “You’re my wife,” he said. “I want to take care of you, even if that means someday seeing you to the train.” He leaned forward and looked into her face, almost sternly, so she would know he meant what he said.

She thought, We would be safe here. He would be good to a child. But if he was going to put her on the train, where would the child be then? Would he expect her to leave it behind when she left? Or did he think there wasn’t going to be any child? Well, sometimes you expect you’re going to have a baby, then nothing comes of it. You can’t set your heart on it.

“I can’t yet know for sure,” she said. “Whether there’s going to be a baby.”

“I understand that.”

“You might think it’s a story I made up to smooth things over. If it don’t turn out to be true.” She didn’t want to have to worry about what he might think if a day came when he stopped trusting her. When that day came. She was sure it would.

He said, very gently, “I would never suspect you of such a thing,” as if a lie like that would be too low for her even to think about.

She thought, If it was a lie, and if it had come to mind, I just might have told it. It surely did smooth things over. She said, “I ain’t what you seem to think I am. I done some things in my life. Like I told you.” The time would come when he would understand that, too. Better that he shouldn’t be too surprised. She knew he wouldn’t ask for more particulars, not now.

He was quiet, and then he said, “You are the only person in this world I want to have sitting here beside me. That isn’t what I think, it’s what I know. I guess it doesn’t explain anything. Have you had supper?”

“Some bread and jam.”

He patted her knee. “I wouldn’t call that supper. We have to take care of you.” The kitchen was empty, so he went to the neighbors and came back with a bottle of milk and a can of baked beans. He laughed. “We’ll do better tomorrow.” She knew about that other wife and that other baby. If she had given herself some time to think, she’d have realized they would be on his mind.

* * *

She was there in Gilead in the first place because once when she was walking along the road, probably hoping to get to Sioux City, tired of walking, tired of carrying her suitcase and her bedroll, she had noticed a little house sitting a way off by a cluster of cottonwood trees, a sort of cabin someone had built and abandoned along with the fields around it. So she thought she’d take a look. Then she knew for sure it was abandoned because people had camped there and left clutter behind, and broken up the stoop for firewood, and no one had ever fixed any of it or cleared it away. The people who left the mess might come back and tell her it was their place — just look at the beer cans and the snoose tins, who you think put them there? She had seen that happen before. You seen them spent cartridges out by the trees? You think it was squirrels dropped them? Nothing to do then but move on.

But she had been there for weeks and so far no one had come. She knew how to get by so long as nobody bothered her. Plenty of fish in the river. There were dandelion greens. Mushrooms. You can chew pine sap if you want to. You can eat the roots of things. Cattails. Wild carrot. Nettles are very good if you know how to pick them and cook them. Doll said you just had to know what wouldn’t kill you. Most folks don’t eat squirrel, but you can. Turtles. Snakes, if need be. Lila couldn’t really live that way for very long, only until the weather turned cold. But she wanted to stay in one place for a while. The loneliness was bad, but it was better than anything else she could think of. It was probably loneliness that made her walk the mile or so into town every few days just to look at the houses and stores and the flower gardens. She never meant to talk to anybody. She had a dress she wore and a dress she saved, and she was wearing the good one, the clean one, the one she kept a little nice so that she could go walking where people might see her, when she got caught in the rain that Sunday and stepped into the church, just to save her dress. And there was that old man, speaking above the sound of the rain against the windows. He looked at her, and looked away again. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

They didn’t really ask for money. They passed a plate, but nobody made you put anything in it. She began counting up the days, so she would know when it was Sunday again. She lost count once. People living the way she was could go crazy. She began to wonder if that had already happened to her. She thought, If I’m crazy, I may as well do what I feel like doing. No point being crazy if you have to worry all the time about what people are thinking anyway. There were ten or twenty good reasons why she would not go to church. Doll never did. The place was full of strangers. She had only the one dress to wear. They all knew the songs, they knew what they were supposed to do and say and what it meant. They all knew each other. The preacher said things that bothered her, she couldn’t make sense of them. Resurrection. But she guessed she liked the candles and the singing. She guessed she didn’t have a better place to be.

She was probably crazy, and she was probably leaving, so she decided she would talk to that preacher. There were a hundred reasons why she would never go to his house, in that same old dress, and ask him a question. She was never one to put herself forward. But there was no way to keep the mice out of that shack. The fields around it were going all to tansy. In St. Louis they gave them tansy tea, and she hated the smell of it. So she had decided to leave. Then why not ask him? He would just say, That crazy woman came to my door with something on her mind, and then I never saw her again after that. Soon enough he’d forget it ever happened. He wouldn’t know what to tell her. But who else was she ever going to ask?

When he saw her at the door he looked surprised and not surprised, as if he had no reason to expect her and there she was anyway. He was in his shirtsleeves and house slippers, looking older than he did in the pulpit, and she thought she had come too early in the morning. But what did it matter.

He said, “Hello. Good morning,” and waited, as if he expected her to explain herself. Then he said, “Please come in.” When she stepped inside the house, he began to apologize for how bare it was. “I’m not much for keeping things up. I suppose you can see that. Still—” and he gestured at the sofa, which was covered with papers and books. “Let me make a little space for you here. I don’t have much company. You can probably see that, too.” She didn’t know then that it would have embarrassed him to have her there, a woman alone with him, a stranger. But he didn’t want her to leave, she did know that. “Can I get you a glass of water? I could make coffee, if you have a few minutes.”