Jack (Gilead #4)(53)

“Now I have to go in, smelling of aftershave! Aftershave all over me! I’ll just say—what am I going to say? The house will smell like this for a month.” There was laughter in her voice, thank God, because she had every reason to be mad at him. He should have thought this through, but he hadn’t expected to actually see her.

“I didn’t really expect to see you,” he said.

“You were just going to sit here in the dark? You and your cat? You couldn’t spare me a knock on the door?”

He said, “Della, I’m ridiculous. It never changes. Every day is a new proof. An entirely sufficient proof. This probably isn’t even my cat. For example.” No point getting into that. He said, “It would be like a curse, the everlastingness of it, except that it is so trifling, so meaningless. Half the time, when something happens, I’m thinking, Thank God Della didn’t see that. I wanted to say goodbye to you. In my mind, anyway. And I knew it would calm me, just being here for a few minutes. One last time.” He said, “‘All losses are restored, and sorrows end.’ One last time.”

“I love that poem,” she said softly. “‘Dear friend.’”

“Yes.”

They were quiet.

Then she said, “Is this the only time you’ve come here like this? Because there have been other times when I thought you were here, but when I looked, you weren’t, and I thought you’d slipped away and I’d missed you. So here I am in my bathrobe with curlers in my hair, because I didn’t want to miss you this time.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“That means a great deal to me.”

After a minute, she said, “It’s real. That peace.”

“‘The peace that passes all understanding.’ Sorry. I shouldn’t joke—”

“No, it really does pass understanding. That has to mean something.”

“Nothing has to mean something. So far as I can tell. Well, it does mean I’m much too happy to be where I shouldn’t be. Which is here on your stoop. But that is its effect, which is not the same as its meaning, if it has one, I realize.” The light from the streetlamp shone softly on her eyes, the planes of her face. She had taken to rubbing the cat’s belly. Pensive.

After a while, she said, “If you make a sound it’s just a sound, unless it belongs to a language, and then it’s a word. It means something. It can’t not mean something.”

“‘Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; Yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.’ Is that what you mean? I used to memorize things. I was pretty good at it. I’ve forgotten the rest. The sun, ‘like a strong man runs its course with joy.’ And so on.” He said, “Did you just come up with that? The thing you were saying about words? It was pretty interesting.”

“Oh no. I believe I came up with that about a week ago. You and I argue in my mind all the time. Often I win.” She laughed. “I’m serious, though.”

“So if I were to grant what I can’t grant, everything would begin to make sense.”

“Well, put it the other way. If, certain things being granted, the world began to make sense, that would be a reason to have some respect for the—hypothesis.”

He truly did respect the hypothesis, and yet, feeling that old thrill of dread and compulsion, he knew circumstance had once again put him too close to a fragile thing. He said, “Look at the life we live, Della. I have to sneak over here in the dark just to steal a few words with you. Is that language, or is it noise?”

She said, “It’s noise that you have to do it, and language that you do it, anyway.” She said softly, “Maybe poetry.”

Well, he would be thinking about that for a while, conjuring a memory of the flush of happiness that startled him at the time. Why should an emotion like that be as sudden as fear is? What use is it, when there’s nothing to be done with it? The body imposes on itself a few seconds of pleasurable confusion, of vulnerability. Why? He stood up and stepped away from her, mainly just to look at her, her kerchiefed head and slender neck and that big robe falling around her. Chenille, sisterly and commonplace, probably pink, but so elegant in the faint light.

She stood up, too, abruptly. She said, “I have to keep this cat. He’s my alibi.” And she went up the steps to her door and went inside. He heard her speak to Lorraine, “I’m sorry if we kept you from sleeping. I know, Lorraine, I’m sorry.” And the door closed. But it didn’t lock. So he took off his hat and he opened the door and stepped into that room, the little table by the window, the picture of Jesus on the piano, all of it so familiar, or at least so precisely remembered, that he almost felt as though he had some right to be there.

Lorraine said, “Now, what do you think you’re doing in here, walking in like that. You go away. I’m about to start yelling.”

But, what the hell, anyway, he went to Della and put his arms around her.

“Just a second,” she said, and put the cat on the couch, and then she came back into his arms, and there they were.

Lorraine said, “They’re going to be hearing about this in Memphis, I can tell you that for sure,” and more to the same effect, but he held Della, and he kissed her lips. And she kissed his lips. It was entirely mutual, perfectly simultaneous, he was sure of it. There was no one to blame. He was about to say, I love you very much, thinking he might expect a reply of some kind. She said, “Goodbye” and stepped away from him, turned away from him.