Marilynne Robinson - Gilead

I believe they thought I had nodded off, as I do with fair frequency, I know. They began to talk. Your mother said, in a lowered voice, “Have you decided how long you will be staying here?”

He said, “I’m afraid it’s already begun to seem long — not to me so much.”

There was a silence, and then she said, “You’ll be going back to St. Louis?”

“That’s possible.”

Another silence. He struck a match. I could smell the smoke of a cigarette.

“Would you care for one?”

“No, thank you.” She laughed. “Sure I would. It just isn’t seemly in a preacher’s wife.”

” ‘It just isn’t seemly’! I guess they’ve been after you.”

“I don’t mind,” she said. “Somebody had to tell me a few things sooner or later. Now I been seemly so long I’m almost beginning to like it.”

He laughed.

She said, “It did take me a while to get used to this place. That’s a fact.”

“Well, for me that’s not the problem. It feels familiar to me, all right. It feels a little like returning to the scene of the crime.”

After a moment she said, “Everybody speaks about you very kindly, you know.”

“Really? Interesting. I suppose I believe you.” She laughed. “I haven’t lied in years.”

“Hmm. That sounds exhausting.”

“They say you can get used to anything.”

He said, “Reverend Ames still hasn’t warned you about me?”

She found my hand and took it between her two warm hands. “He don’t speak unkindly. He never does.”

There was a silence. I was fairly uncomfortable with myself, as you can imagine, and I was about to show some signs of stirring, just to extricate myself from this discreditable situation I had put myself into, which seemed almost to be spying.

But your mother said, “I was in St. Louis once. Some of us went there looking for work.” She laughed. “No luck.”

He said, “It’s a miserable place to be broke.”

“If there’s a good place to be broke, I sure never found it. And I tried ‘em all.”

They laughed.

He said, “When I was young I thought a settled life was what happened to you if you weren’t careful.”

She said, “I always knew better than that. It was the one thing I wanted. I used to look in people’s windows at night and wonder what it was like.”

He laughed. “That’s how I was planning to spend this very evening.”

There was a silence.

“Well,” she said, and her voice was very gentle, “well, Jack, bless your heart.”

And he said, “Why, I thank you for that, Lila.” Then he stood up. “Tell the reverend good night for me.” And he went away.

I lay awake the whole night, except for the part of it I spent sitting at my desk, writing this all out and thinking it over. Of course I was touched by your mother’s pride in my tendency to avoid speaking evil. It is something I do in fact try to avoid, though you know very well what a struggle it has been for me in this case.

But I could only be struck by young Boughton’s amazement that I had not yet, in his words, warned her about him. It was almost as if he thought I had been negligent. And who would be a better judge of that than he is? He might think I know things I don’t know, assuming Boughton confided in me more than he ever did, or that talk about him would have reached me, as in fact it did only rarely. I always suspected people of a good deal of tact where he was concerned.

“The scene of the crime.” That was a joke, I’m pretty sure. But it does lead me to wonder how much of the misery I feel in him comes from the fact that he is here, where things went on that still might cause him suffering, maybe shame.

I wish I could put my hand on his brow and calm away all the guilt and regret that is exaggerated or misplaced, or beyond rectification in the terms of this world. Then I could see what I’m actually dealing with.

Theologically, that is a completely unacceptable notion. It just happened to cross my mind. I apologize for it.

Since I am trying to tell the truth, there is one other thing. The edginess went out of his voice while he was talking with your mother. I would almost say he seemed to relax. He sounded like someone speaking with a friend. And so did she.

I believe I am beginning to see where the grace is for me in this. I have prayed considerably, and I have slept awhile, too, and I feel I am reaching some clarity.

I have never been to St. Louis, a fact I now regret.

I have been looking through these pages, and I realize that for some time I have mainly been worrying to myself, when my intention from the beginning was to speak to you. I meant to leave you a reasonably candid testament to my better self, and it seems to me now that what you must see here is just an old man struggling with the difficulty of understanding what it is he’s struggling with.

I believe I may have found a way out of the cave of this tedious preoccupation, however. It’s worth a try. So:

When I was sitting there on the porch last night more or less feigning sleep and your mother took my hand and held it in her hands, that was a great happiness to me. I see I did indicate this—”her two warm hands”—and I noted that at the same time she spoke of me much more kindly than I deserve. Only thinking back on it did I realize that she was speaking as if from that settled life she said she had always wanted and as if it could not be lost to her, though in every practical, material sense she knows it will be. That pleased me, too. Remembering when they said what they did about looking in windows and wondering about other people’s lives made me feel companionable with them. I could have said that’s three of us, because, as the Lord knows, for many years I did exactly the same thing. But in that moment, the way she spoke, it seemed that all the wondering about life had been answered for her, once and for all, and if that is true, it is wonderful. The notion is a source of peace for me.

***

I had a dream once that Boughton and I were down at the river looking around in the shallows for something or other — when we were boys it would have been tadpoles-and my grandfather stalked out of the trees in that furious way he had, scooped his hat full of water, and threw it, so a sheet of water came sailing toward us, billowing in the air like a veil, and fell down over us. Then he put his hat back on his head and stalked off into the trees again and left us standing there in that glistening river, amazed at ourselves and shining like the apostles.

I mention this because it seems to me transformations just that abrupt do occur in this life, and they occur unsought and unawaited, and they beggar your hopes and your deserving. This came to my mind as I was reflecting on the day I first saw your mother, that blessed, rainy Pentecost.

That morning something began that felt to me as if my soul were being teased out of my body, and that’s a fact. I have never told you how all that came about, how we came to be married. And I learned a great deal from the experience, believe me. It enlarged my understanding of hope, just to know that such a transformation can occur. And it has greatly sweetened my imagination of death, odd as that may sound.

Even though I told myself I had hardly noticed her that first morning, I spent the whole next week hoping she would come back. I rebuked myself considerably for forgetting to ask her name as she went out the door, thinking about it in terms of my obligations to “strayed sheep” and “lost souls,” which are expressions I never do use, even in my thoughts, and which I would certainly never have applied to her. One interesting aspect of the whole experience was that I simply could not be honest with myself, and I couldn’t deceive myself, either. It was terrible. I felt like such a fool. But you see, I was mindful of her youth and of my age, and I knew nothing about her, whether she might be married or not. So I couldn’t admit to myself that I simply wanted to see her, to hear her voice again. She said, “Good morning, Reverend,” that was all. But I remember trying to retain the sound of it, trying to hear it again in my mind.