Jack (Gilead #4)(31)
She said, “I don’t know, Slick. You could be doing me a world of good.” Then she began tidying up, putting lids on boxes. Indiscriminately.
It was the letter. He was on a knife edge—rebuffed, maybe. Or assured a little that no harm had been done. What to make of it, her, himself? Possibilities were pleasant on one side, drastic on the other. It was not in the nature of a letter to settle anywhere in between. He had to wash his hands before he could touch it. Whatever it said, he would keep it. He would read it once, and then it would be among his effects. Teddy would say, “There was a girl,” and they would make it so much more than it was. So much less.
He wiped his fingers on the cleanest part of a towel they kept for buffing shoes and opened the letter. It said, “Dear Mr. Boughton, My aunt Delia is here visiting for the week. I would like you to meet her. Could you come for coffee at any time on Saturday or Sunday afternoon? Or any weekday evening? If you could come by for a few minutes, I would be very grateful.” Then, “Yours truly.”
This was worse than the worst he could have imagined. An aunt. Aunts never just drop by. Aunts weigh in. He had to go, even though he knew what the lady would say. It is better form, no doubt, to say face-to-face, “How do you do. Lovely weather. Don’t come near my niece again.” Very much meaning, where aunts come, uncles follow. Diplomacy is war by other means. He would show up, sober, looking as decent as he could without expense or trouble, take his scolding, and take his leave. “It has been a pleasure.” Della’s good name depended in some part on his presenting himself as a gentleman. He could not very well tell this aunt about the iron resolve that had kept him off her street for fifteen days, or that for weeks, before the one, inauspicious night, he had kept his distance as scrupulously as any aunt could wish. That hint at an address he had incised in her book was only meant as an assurance to himself that a cobweb of connection still existed between them. He’d have penciled in a nice little couplet, if he could have thought of one, something sad and formal, an adieu. So very sad and formal she would see the humor of it and laugh. That failing, he put his address, a sort of “I exist!” Thinking that, if she ever noticed it, it might also make her laugh. Well, he did imagine she might sometime stroll past, out of curiosity, and he might just then be stepping out his door, and there would be pleasantries, and they might walk a few blocks together. This sort of fantasy was lively enough that he knew he would never again fall behind on his rent. He would not have inscribed that tiny message if he had imagined at the end of it all having an aunt to deal with. He was so used to the sensation of being caught at some trifling, stupid thing, which always became a reflection on the whole of his character and his prospects—irrefutably, since the very triviality of it all would probably, sweet Jesus, make him laugh. But this was worse. This was not just anyone, self-deputized by an inch or two of standing in the world. This was a personage who would take some few minutes, at least, of his acute embarrassment back to Memphis, as an anecdote to be pondered, chuckled at, dismissed, that Della herself might smile at and shrug off when they teased her about it.
If he did not obey this summons, that would seem to signal disrespect, as if his acquaintance with Della meant nothing to him, whatever it might mean to her. Or it would suggest shame or guilt, and that would cast doubt on Della’s insistence that their poor, strange shred of a relationship was entirely honorable. When, Christ knows, it was utterly, lyrically, gallantly honorable, whatever the neighbors were saying. A shabby fellow with a furtive air can be as gallant as the next man, depending on circumstances. The thought passed through his mind, actually unsettled his hair, that if he made a bad impression, one that cast doubt on her good judgment, her great, ministerial, aunt-delegating family might whisk her away to Memphis, away from Sumner and the dreams she thought had been fulfilled. He knew that if he dwelt on the possibility, he would be doomed, and she would, too.
The invitation was written to make excuses impossible. Come any time at all. It gave fair warning. My family have sent an emissary to look you over. He had never imagined that his name would be spoken to or among her family. He was hardly a beau, a suitor. And he had long felt at home, so to speak, among the anonymous, whose behavior might arouse some small interest in the criminal justice system, but no more than a “Get lost” from family and friends, assuming they took that much notice. He could probably take it as a compliment, an elevation of status, that an aunt would have come from Memphis, presumably to dismiss him with a ceremonious cup of coffee. He must be careful not to say, “I do stay away from her. I stay away from her every day. Hour by hour.” He had learned that determination is suspect, more so as more effort is involved in it.
He would carry a folded newspaper to suggest he was a man with interests, with a foot in the larger world. A man with no lesser worries than the emergence of a stable peace in Europe. He would have bought it, the last journalistic word, not some fractious waif of time left on a park bench with the puzzle half finished. Aside from that, a shave, a haircut, that familiar walk, Aunt Delia.
It is odd, what families do to their children—Faith, Hope, Grace, Glory, the names of his good, plain sisters like an ascending scale of spiritual attainment, a veritable anthem, culminating in, as they said sometimes, the least of these, Glory, who fretted at her own childishness, the hand-me-down, tag-along existence of the eighth of eight children. He himself, who aspired to harmlessness, was named for a man who was named for a man remembered, if he was, for antique passions and heroics involving gunfire. He was afraid that Delia or Della might mention a cousin named Dahlia, and he would laugh. Sweet Jesus, do not let me laugh inappropriately.