Marilynne Robinson - Home

Glory said good morning, and Lila answered, “It is. It’s a fine morning.” She brushed her hair back with her hands. “Could you use some salad? It’s coming in faster than I can eat it myself, and my men aren’t much for greens, neither one of them.” She handed the basin to Glory. “I was just picking it because it’s so pretty. I’d be glad if you could use it.”

Lila was wide at the shoulders and hips, and her hands were large, tentative, competent. Sometime, somewhere, it had seemed good to her to pluck her brows thin and arched, and so they remained, a suggestion of former worldliness at odds with her stalwartly maternal frame. Sunlight seemed a bother to her, like a friendly attention she might sometime weary of, though for now she only smiled and shrugged away from it, holding up her hand to shield her eyes. Glory said, “Papa asked me to invite you to dinner tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Jack stopped by a few minutes ago. I told him I’d speak to the Reverend about it. Preaching wearies him more than he likes to admit.”

“It could be an evening dinner. That would give him time to rest.”

THAT AFTERNOON, WHEN SHE WAS OUT IN THE GARDEN weeding the strawberries, picking the handful of ripe ones, she heard the DeSoto’s starter straining twice, then again, and then the roar of an automobile engine, the sound robust for a moment, then trailing away. Again the starter and the engine, and after a minute or two the rattle and pop of gravel as the DeSoto eased backward out of the barn. It gleamed darkly and demurely, like a ripe plum. Its chrome was polished, hubcaps and grille, and the side walls of the tires were snowy white. There was a preposterous beauty in all that shine that made her laugh. Jack put his arm out the window, waving his hat like a visiting dignitary, backed into the street, and floated away, gentling the gleaming dirigible through the shadows of arching elm trees, light dropping on it through their leaves like confetti as it made its ceremonious passage. After a few minutes she heard a horn, and there were Jack and the DeSoto going by the house. A few minutes more and they came back from the other direction, swung into the driveway, and idled there. Jack leaned across the front seat to open the passenger door. She walked across the lawn to the car and slid in.

“Wonderful!”

He nodded. “We’re doing all right so far. I smell strawberries.”

She held out her hands. “I haven’t washed them.”

He took one, eyed it, and gave it back. “How about a little spin around the block?”

“Papa will want to come.”

“Yes, well, I’m working up to that. I’d like to put a couple of miles on this thing, so I’ll know it can be trusted. We wouldn’t want to make the old fellow walk home.”

So she closed the door and they pulled into the street.

He said, “You must have a license. You used to drive.”

“I do. Somewhere. Do you?”

He looked at her. “Why do you ask?”

“Never mind. Just making conversation.” They completed a decorous circuit of the block, and when they pulled into the driveway, they saw their father standing in the screen door.

“Something very exciting!” he called. “I thought I might come along, if it’s no trouble.” He seemed even about to attempt the front steps.

“Wait!” Jack ran across the lawn and took him by his arms and helped him down to the sidewalk.

“Thank you, dear. This is very good.” He leaned on his cane and gazed appraisingly at the DeSoto. “Yes. It’s a fine-looking car. I knew I must be saving it for some reason.” He chuckled. There was a barely restrained glee about him, as though he felt he had done something, or had done nothing, to excellent effect. “I had offers for it, you know. Several of them. Yes.” He regarded the gleaming DeSoto with something warmer than pride of ownership. “And now, look what you have done with it! Jack, this is wonderful!”

Jack was watching all this with his hands on his hips and a look of grave, distant pleasure, as if it were a moment proposed to him by imagination, an indulgence he could not finally allow himself. “It seems to run all right,” he said. “I suppose we could take a little drive.” He helped his father into the front seat. “I’ll go in and get a couple of dollars for gas, just in case.” He walked toward the house, then came back. He held out his cupped hands to Glory and she emptied the berries into them. “Two minutes,” he said. When he came back he had the berries in a cereal bowl, rinsed and glistening with water. He handed the bowl to Glory and climbed into the driver’s seat. He turned the key, turned it again, and the engine caught, and the three of them backed out and sailed off down the street. When a neighbor waved, the old man made the merest gesture of his hand in reply, as if this were all foreseen and intended, too perfect a vindication to be in any way remarkable. Jack laughed.

Glory said, “Have a strawberry.”

Jack took one and handed it to his father, then took one for himself. He popped it in his mouth and spat the stem out the window.

“Yes,” his father said, as they passed through the countrified outer reaches of Gilead into country itself, “this is the high life.”

The sky was blue, the terraced hills glittered with new corn, and in the pastures the cows were standing with their calves or lying in the mingled, muddied shade of oak trees. “Well, I’d almost forgotten it all,” the old man said. “It’s good to get out of the house from time to time. Ames will enjoy it.” He talked for a while about the old Gilead. It was the smell that reminded him. There used to be chicken coops and rabbit hutches behind every house almost, and people kept milk cows, and there was enough open land right in town to be plowed with a horse or a mule and planted in corn. You knew the animals around town just like you knew the children, and if some old she-goat was grazing in the flower garden, well, you knew her and she knew you and you could just walk her home. But the geese could be mean, and noisy. They’d follow you along and nip at you, pinch your heels. There was no sleeping through the racket all those roosters made in the morning. But at night you could hear the animals settling, and that was very comforting. Jack drove with such solemn caution that the dogs that ran out to the car were a long time in giving up the chase and falling back.

They turned onto another road, and then Glory and her father were silent for a while, watching the landscape grow uneasily familiar. Then Jack said, “Oh.” He said “I—” and pulled off onto the shoulder to turn the car around, so close to a shallow ditch that the rear wheels slid in the sand. A hundred yards ahead of them was the bridge across the West Nishnabotna, and a little way beyond it that small white house. Jack gunned the car and it lurched into the road and stalled. “Sorry. I can deal with this,” he said. “Give me a minute.” He put his hands to his face and took a breath. Then he put the car in gear and turned the key and touched the choke and it started, and he maneuvered it very carefully, reversing twice before he eased onto the right side of the road. “I guess it’s time to go home,” he said.

Through all this his father maintained a serene, high-minded expression, as he always did when he sensed emergency. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I have been keeping an eye on events in Egypt. In that one case I have felt that the policies of Eisenhower are appropriate to the situation. But time will tell.”

Jack said, “True.”

“Kenya is another matter.”

“That’s true, too.”

After another mile or so he pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. “Glory, would you mind driving the rest of the way? It isn’t far. I forgot to get gas. I’m not sure the gas gauge is working, and it distracts me to worry about it. And that worries me.” He laughed. “I haven’t driven a car in twenty years.”