Marilynne Robinson - Lila

She thought maybe, just by worrying about it, Boughton would sweep up China into an eternity that would surprise him out of all his wondering. God is good, the old men say. That would be the proof.

Can a soul in bliss feel a weight lift off his heart? She couldn’t help imagining— Oh, here you are! Your dear weariness and ugliness as beautiful as light! That boy, weeping over what he was, his big, dirty hands that had done something he couldn’t quite believe, and then there he would be, fresh from the gallows, shocked at the kindness all around him, which was the last thing he expected. He’d had the idea “father.” That was what made him so desperate that his father in this life never said a gentle word to him. And there that mangy old father would be, too, because the boy couldn’t bear heaven without him. He’d say, See, you was lucky to have me for a son, after all! Look what I done for you! And, Ain’t this better than anything! Better than money! He’d be as proud of heaven as if he’d come up with it all on his own.

So it couldn’t matter much how life seemed. The old man always said we should attend to the things we have some hope of understanding, and eternity isn’t one of them. Well, this world isn’t one either. Most of the time she thought she understood things better when she didn’t try. Things happen the way they do. Why was a foolish question. In a song a note follows the one before because it is that song and not another one. Once, she and Mellie tried to count up all the songs they knew. How could there be so many? Because every one was just itself. It was eternity that let her think this way. In eternity people’s lives could be altogether what they were and had been, not just the worst things they ever did, or the best things either. So she decided that she should believe in it, or that she believed in it already. How else could she imagine seeing Doll again? Never once had she taken her to be dead, plain and simple. If any scoundrel could be pulled into heaven just to make his mother happy, it couldn’t be fair to punish scoundrels who happened to be orphans, or whose mothers didn’t even like them, and who would probably have better excuses for the harm they did than the ones who had somebody caring about them. It couldn’t be fair to punish people for trying to get by, people who were good by their own lights, when it took all the courage they had to be good. Doane tying that ribbon around Marcelle’s ankle. If that wasn’t good or bad, it was something she was glad to have seen. Mellie singing to soothe some borrowed baby.

That’s what she was thinking. The Reverend couldn’t bear to be without her. Nothing against Mrs. Ames and her baby. Eternity had more of every kind of room in it than this world did. She could even think of wicked old Mack in the light of that other life, looking it over, wondering what the catch was, what the joke was, somehow knowing that she had brought him there. And his child. She couldn’t bear to be without them. It was eternity that let her think like that without a bit of shame.

There was no end to it. Thank God, as the old men would say.

But the baby started fussing and Mrs. Graham took him and jostled him a little in her arms and let him suck her finger — such a good boy, such a good boy — and Lila heard the final hymn and the benediction. Then the Reverend came in, looking a little worried as he always did when he thought he might not have been attentive enough, and then she realized how tired she was. But she knew she would come back to what she’d been thinking about. And also to “the peace that passeth all human understanding,” which was the blessing he said over his flock as they drifted out into Gilead, the small, frail, ragtag work of their hands.

So when she told him she meant to keep that knife and he nodded, she could explain to herself why she meant to keep it. There was no way to abandon guilt, no decent way to disown it. All the tangles and knots of bitterness and desperation and fear had to be pitied. No, better, grace had to fall over them. Doll hunched in the firelight whetting her courage, dreaming vengeance because she knew someone somewhere was dreaming vengeance against her. Thinking terrible thoughts to blunt her own fear.

That’s how it is. Lila had borne a child into a world where a wind could rise that would take him from her arms as if there were no strength in them at all. Pity us, yes, but we are brave, she thought, and wild, more life in us than we can bear, the fire infolding itself in us. That peace could only be amazement, too.

Well, for now there were geraniums in the windows, and an old man at the kitchen table telling his baby some rhyme he’d known forever, probably still wondering if he had managed to bring her along into that next life, if he could ever be certain of it. Almost letting himself imagine grieving for her in heaven, because not to grieve for her would mean he was dead, after all.

Someday she would tell him what she knew.

Marilynne Robinsonis the author of the novels Home, Gilead (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Housekeeping , and four books of nonfiction: When I Was a Child I Read Books, Mother Country, The Death of Adam , and Absence of Mind . She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.