Marilynne Robinson - Home

She put away the mixing bowl and the measuring spoons. “Any further instructions?”

“Not at the moment. Well, he’s awake and dressed. I thought maybe you might read it to him over breakfast. I’ve eaten. I’m—” He made a gesture toward the door that suggested he had some sort of intention to act upon. Some hoe blade to whet. He had already oiled the horse collar.

“All right,” she said. “Should I tell him this is your idea?”

“Yes. Tell him that. Say I’m afraid I might have offended Ames, and I’d like to put things right.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself? I suppose he’d want the particulars.”

“Bright girl,” he said. “Thanks, Glory.” And he left.

HER FATHER TOOK INSTANTLY TO THE IDEA OF RECONCILiation. He relaxed visibly at the very word. There was nothing improbable in the idea that Jack was somehow at fault, though, after allowing himself the thought a few times, he still had no specific notion of how he could have been. A skeptical look, perhaps, but that was to be expected. Still, Jack was Jack, and there was nothing disloyal about accepting that Jack might be at fault in some degree, since forgiving him was deeper even than habit, since it was in fact the sum and substance of loyalty. Yes. The old man always interpreted any pleasing turn of events as if he were opening a text, to have a full enjoyment of all reassuring implications and all good consequences. “It’s very kind of Jack to recognize his part in this, and to want to make amends. Christian of him. I believe he may be doing this to please his old father, too. So I have something to think about that might not have been so clear to me otherwise.” He laughed. “That sermon was for my benefit. Yes. The Lord is wonderful.” He said, “Old Ames says he remembers me in skirts and a lace bonnet, and that could be true. My grandmother took my infancy in hand and she made it last as long as she possibly could. Longer, I guess. She meant well. My mother’s health failed after I was born. That was Mother’s opinion, anyway. But you just can’t give up a friendship that goes back as far as that!” He loved to reflect on the fact that grace was never singular in its effects, as now, when he could please his son by forgiving his friend. “That is why it is called a Spirit,” he said. “The word in Hebrew also means wind. ‘The Spirit of God brooded on the face of the deep.’ It is a sort of enveloping atmosphere.” Her father was always so struck by his insights that it was impossible for him to tell those specific to the moment from those on which he had preached any number of times. It had made him a little less sensitive than he ought to have been to the risk of repeating himself. Ah well.

So she read the article to her father, and he chuckled over the passages by which Ames was certain to be exasperated, his eyes alight with the pleasure of knowing he and the Reverend were, for Jack’s purposes, entirely of one mind. “Very thoughtful of him to find this for us,” he said.

When they had finished reading it, Glory took the magazine to Ames’s house and left it with Lila, since the Reverend was out calling. A day passed. Jack came in from the garden to ask if she had delivered it, then to ask if there had been any response. Finally, weary of all the anxiety, she went again without gift or pretext and found Ames at home. He opened the door, and when he saw her there, his eyes teared with regret and relief. “Come in, dear,” he said. “I’m very glad to see you. How is your father doing these days?”

“As well as can be expected. Jack helps me take care of him. Or I help Jack.” She said, “We’ve missed you.”

Ames rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “Yes. I know it has been wonderful for Robert to have him home again.” He looked tired and moved and as if he needed to recover himself, so she said that her father had asked her to look in but she really couldn’t stay.

“I haven’t been sleeping very well so I’m not worth much right now, but I’ll come by tomorrow or the next day.” He said, “Give Jack my regards.”

He seemed so robust beside her father that it was hard to remember Ames was old, too.

The next day Ames strolled up the street with Robby tagging after him, running ahead of him, pouncing at grasshoppers. “Like a puppy,” her father said. “Into everything.” Glory went inside to make lemonade and allow the two old gentlemen time to follow out the protocols of renewed cordiality. Jack came downstairs to the kitchen and leaned against the counter with his arms folded. Together they listened for a while to the voices, firmer as talk proceeded. There was laughter and the creaking of chairs, and there were silences, too, but there were always silences. When she was no longer afraid of disrupting any delicate work of reparation, Glory took them their lemonade and sat with them a while. Robby went to the garden and came back with a toy tractor he had brought on another visit and forgotten to take home with him. He drove it here and there around the porch floor, under his father’s chair and around his shoes.

The conversation turned to the article Jack had found, “God and the American People.” It was contemptuous of the entire enterprise of religion in the United States. But it was awkwardly reasoned, so the two old clergymen could enjoy refuting it. They had labored earnestly at propagating the true faith, which had never seemed to them to have national traits or boundaries. Nor did they feel directly implicated in whatever eccentricities and deficiencies in the local practice of it they might be obliged to grant.

Jack came out on the porch with a glass of lemonade and took a chair. There was a little silence. “Reverend,” he said.

Ames said, “Jack, it’s good to see you,” and he glanced away, at Boughton, at the glass in his hand.

Jack watched him for a moment. Then he said, “I heard you two laughing about that magazine. It’s pretty foolish, all in all. Could I see it for a second? Thanks. I thought he made one interesting point in here somewhere, though. He said the seriousness of American Christianity was called into question by our treatment of the Negro. It seems to me there is something to be said for that idea.”

Boughton said, “Jack’s been looking at television.”

“Yes, I have. And I have lived in places where there are Negro people. They are very fine Christians, many of them.”

Boughton said, “Then we can’t have done so badly by them, can we? That is the essential thing.”

Jack looked at him, and then he laughed. “I’d say we’ve done pretty badly. Especially by Christian standards. As I understand them.” Jack sank back into his chair as if he were the most casual man on earth and said, “What do you think, Reverend Ames.”

Ames looked at him. “I have to agree with you. I’m not really familiar with the issue. I haven’t been following the news as closely as I once did. But I agree.”

“It isn’t exactly news—” Jack smiled and shook his head. “Sorry, Reverend,” he said. Robby brought the tractor to show him, let him work the steering wheel, ran the tractor along the arm and over the back of his chair.

Boughton said, “I don’t believe in calling anyone’s religion into question because he has certain failings. A blind spot or two. There are better ways to talk about these things.”

Ames said, “Jack does have a point, though.”

“And I have a point, too. My point is that it’s very easy to judge.”

That was meant to end the conversation, but Jack, who was studying the ice in his glass, said, “True. Remarkably easy in this case, it seems to me.”

“All the more reason to resist that impulse!”

Jack laughed, and Ames looked at him, not quite reprovingly. Jack’s gaze fell.