Jack (Gilead #4)(32)

He wrote back on Tuesday, saying that he would come to her house at two o’clock on Saturday, allowing himself some time to consider the situation, though he knew this was not wise. There was the mustering of a somewhat presentable self, which might take two days. That brought him to Thursday. He would spend Friday at work and then the library and then in his room trying to sleep. He would spend Saturday morning looking for someone selling something edible on the street, though he knew he would not be hungry. At one o’clock he would shave again, brush his hat, straighten his tie. And there his imagination failed.

He wrote several more letters and did not send them. He had done nothing to bring about that meeting in the cemetery. His being there at all was fairly unusual. It had honestly never occurred to him that Della might be there, too. And it was certainly not his intention to fall asleep on that couch. He was not drunk that night, though he had been recently, which was probably a factor. He crossed that out.

He had never been good at explaining things he did. It was just alarming to him to consider how much sense they always made at the time, or in any case, how unavoidable they seemed. He suspected he drank to give himself a way of accounting for the vast difference between any present situation and the intentions that brought him to it. By Friday he had covered every page in the little notebook he had bought so he could write that first letter. And then it was Saturday.





* * *





The aunt was bespectacled, shorter than Della and not as dark. She was one of those people whose flesh cleaves to her bones so neatly that he could not guess her age within ten years. She offered her hand, “Mr. Boughton. It’s very good of you to come,” and gestured toward the sofa. “Sit down, please.” She sat down in the armchair. She looked at him without seeming at all to be looking him over, though of course she was doing just that. At any moment old Slick might emerge, Slick, the terror of every good aunt. She said, “Della has told me about you. She speaks very well of you.”

“She’s very kind.”

“Yes, she is,” Delia said. “Very kind.”

There was a silence. He thought she might be waiting for him to say that Della had spoken about her, too, which was the kind of polite lie he was prone to, a garden gate opening on a minefield, more often than not.

“Well,” she said, “I’m sure Della mentioned a cup of coffee—”

“Please don’t go to any trouble.” He stood up when she did.

She said, “It’s no trouble! I’ll only be a minute!” Kindly and officious, that little fluster of making welcome. So he took the minute to step over and look at the pictures on the piano. Slender young men and sturdy old men in dark suits and clerical collars, women and children in church clothes. And that picture of Jesus, the same one his father kept in his study. They were a sound, substantial family, clearly. If anyone could be safe anywhere, it would be in the embrace of a family like this one, he thought. Like his own family. And here he was, the shabby outsider, self-orphaned, wondering why all this seemed oppressive to him, why attention in the person of this unexceptionable aunt should make him feel something so like guilt, when the idea was to seem capable of respectability, to shore up whatever Della might have said about him for Della’s sake, though it bothered him to think she had told them anything at all.

Delia came back into the room. “Do sit down.” She might have said, “Sit down, dear,” without the slightest change in the tone of her voice. “I wanted a few minutes to talk with you.”

“Yes, ma’am, I understand.”

“You know that Della is a wonderful young woman.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Even as a little child she was just as bright as a button. Always in a corner somewhere reading a book. She was already reading before she started school! Always talking about being a teacher. Then she read about Sumner High School, and she started dreaming about coming here to St. Louis.”

“Yes, she told me that.”

“Yes, well, of course she did. It has meant so much to her. Her daddy wanted to keep her closer to home. We all did. But her heart was set on coming here.” There was a silence, and then she said, “I think that coffee must be done by now.”

This kindly woman was struggling to get from the part of the conversation where they agreed that Della was a precious soul to the part where she told Jack to leave her alone. How to proceed gently enough to be rid of him without avoidable injury to him. He might just tell her he knew what she wanted to say, he appreciated the truth of it, had concluded on his own that his friendship with Della should be ended for her sake, and that he had come that afternoon to let her family know he understood and respected—for that matter, shared—their concern.

But she brought him his coffee, two cookies on the saucer, a tremor in her hand, a narrow bracelet loose on her wrist, and he realized he had decided not to put an end to this interesting struggle of hers. She sat down in the armchair again, and after a few minutes she said, “Della’s father asked me to look in on her. We do worry. I wouldn’t say she’s headstrong. She isn’t willful. She’s just impatient with—certain limits. She acts sometimes like they don’t even exist. Smart as she is, I think she may not quite realize what the consequences can be for a woman in her situation, how much she can lose if there’s even talk. I mention these things to her, and she just, you know, hangs her head and waits till I’m done.”