Marilynne Robinson - Home

“Well,” she said, “you know more than I do about the particulars. I’m just telling you how you seemed to the rest of us.”

He smiled. “What a pleasant surprise.” Then he said, “Ames always saw right through me. And when he looks at me he still sees a scoundrel. The other day I had the terrible feeling that maybe he wasn’t quite wrong. So I began to be charming, you know. A little oily.” He laughed. “I called him Papa. He deserved it, too. He hadn’t even mentioned to the wife that my father had honored him with a namesake. Can you imagine?”

“You did bring out the crotchety side in him.”

“The poor old devil.” Jack shook his head. “I tried his patience. Like I would have teased a cat or stirred an anthill. Once I blew up his mailbox. He was walking up the street from Bible study. He just put his books down on the porch step and went and got the garden hose. I don’t believe he ever told anybody a thing about it.” He laughed. “It really was quite a spectacle. It was dark. I’d had to climb through my window to be out so late.”

“You know, they moved you into that room, with the porch roof under the window, so that you could make your escape without killing yourself. You remember that time the trellis broke and Mama thought you were dead because you’d gotten the wind knocked out of you.”

“I thought they’d just moved me away from the trellis.”

“That, too, of course. They thought of telling you that you could leave through the door if you were so intent on leaving. But they were afraid that might seem like encouragement.”

He looked at her. “What right did I have to be so strange? A good question. I’ve lost my watch. It must be ten o’clock by now.”

“Yes, five after. I was a child when I said that to you. I hoped you had forgotten it. It didn’t mean anything.”

He laughed. “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. Good night, now.”

She went up to her room and sat down at the dresser to brush out her hair. She heard the front door open and, quietly, close.

JACK CAME DOWNSTAIRS LATE THE NEXT MORNING AND asked if he could borrow an envelope.

“Do you need a stamp?”

“Yes. Thank you.” He took a folded letter from his jacket pocket and slipped it into the envelope and sealed it, affixed the stamp, and then went into the dining room to write the address. When he came back into the kitchen, he picked up the coffeepot. “All gone.”

“I’ll have a fresh pot for you when you come back.”

“Thanks, Glory.” Then he said, “I’m sorry if I kept you awake last night. I was restless. I needed to take a walk.”

“No, I went right to sleep,” she said, which was not true. “I tried to be quiet.”

“I didn’t hear a thing.” That also was not true. She had heard him come through the door at a little after three. A five-hour walk. Well, he was always a mystery.

Her father had been grave that morning, having heard the furtive opening and closing of the door, she supposed, and again, the opening and closing of it and the cautious steps on the stairs. “No Jack for breakfast this morning, I see,” he said. “Things don’t change, I guess. People don’t. So it seems.” He picked up the newspaper, looked at it for a minute or two, and put it down again. “I guess I’m off to my room, Glory, if you don’t mind helping me here.”

“You haven’t touched your cereal, Papa.”

“That’s a fact. I just don’t feel up to it. If you don’t mind.” So she took him to his room and helped him into bed again. She would speak to Jack, when the time seemed right, and when she could think of a tactful way to broach the subject. There was no knowing what the old man heard, or what he knew, but it was clearly anxiety that made him so unaccountably aware. Jack troubled his sleep even when he didn’t leave the house in the middle of the night. Five hours, she thought, imagining her father awake in the darkness. She sat down with the crossword puzzle. Before she was done with it, Jack had come downstairs with his letter and had left for the post office.

SHE SAW HIM COMING UP THE ROAD AGAIN, LOOKING A little dejected, she thought, but he smiled when he came in the door and set his hat on the refrigerator and a can of coffee on the table. “I thought we might be running out,” he said. “The Reverend isn’t up yet?”

“I guess he didn’t sleep well. He didn’t want any breakfast. I put him back to bed.”

“Oh,” Jack said. “I’m sorry. It’s probably my fault.”

“No way of knowing. Sleep isn’t always easy for him.”

Jack said, “Yes,” and nodded, as if he were accepting a rebuke. He poured himself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table, and opened the newspaper. Then he put it aside. “Did he see this?”

“What?” She looked at the headline. RASH OF BURGLARIES. “I don’t know. I suppose he did. Why?”

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “No reason, I suppose. When I walked into the drugstore this morning, the conversation stopped. You know that feeling you have when you’re the reason people aren’t talking.” He laughed. “So I went into the grocery store, just to see if it would happen again. And it did. I was trying to tell myself it didn’t mean anything.”

“Well,” she said, “I doubt that it did, Jack. Why should anyone think this has anything to do with you? Papa wouldn’t think that.”

He laughed into his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is humiliating.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I did that once. I did exactly that. I went out at night and tried doorknobs. And I found a couple of doors that were unlocked and took some money and some beer. Teddy saw it in my room. He said he’d tell the Reverend if I didn’t. He gave me an hour. I used the time to drink the beer. Then the old gent came upstairs and gathered up the money and took me off to return it, drunk as I was. I couldn’t stop laughing — ah!”

“Really, Jack. That must have been — what? — thirty years ago?”

“Hmm. More like twenty-eight.”

“How can you think anyone would remember?”

“You don’t think he remembers?”

“He probably does, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean anyone else would. And it doesn’t mean he thinks you did this, for heaven’s sake.”

He looked at her. “Would you be willing to vouch for my whereabouts?”

“Willing,” she said. “Of course I’d be willing. But I don’t know a thing in the world — your whereabouts are always your best-kept secret.”

He nodded. “That’ll change. But you see my point.”

“No, I don’t. Besides, this must have happened night before last, to be in the paper this morning.”

“Did I leave the house night before last?”

“I don’t know.”

He shrugged. “You see what I mean.”

“Did you?”

He nodded. “I can’t sleep,” he said. “I can’t walk around in the house. He hears me. I can’t stay in that room. Well, now I will.” He looked at her. “I’m not going to leave yet.”

“Leave? But maybe nothing has happened, Jack. Maybe Papa was reminded of that other time, but he’ll forget it again—”

“What will I say to him? By the way, Dad, I sure haven’t been out stealing petty cash from the dime store?” He laughed.

“You won’t say anything. Things like this happen. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Right. I have to remember that. I will keep that firmly in mind.”

“Now, what would you like for breakfast?”

“A little more coffee.”

“No. You’re going to eat something. If you want to look like Raskolnikov, all right. Otherwise, you had better start eating. It would probably help you sleep. I’m going to make pancakes.”