Jack (Gilead #4)(61)

He laughed. “I’m not sure I know how to take that.”

“She sort of liked you. We’ve always had some secrets, the two of us. She took me aside one day and asked if I’d seen you at all since she visited. She said she’d been so rude to you it worried her.”

“She was actually very kind. That was the gentlest expulsion I have ever suffered. A fond memory, more or less.” He watched her hands break the loaf, smooth the waxed paper.

She said, “You wouldn’t have knives or forks or plates. Or cups.”

“True. I don’t really spend much time here. Except to sleep.” He wanted to assure her that his life was solitary and ascetic, as it was, almost past bearing, relieved by the library, occasional drunkenness, and lately by lunch with the Baptists. But he knew how this would sound, either pathetic or, better, like lying.

She said, softly, “I had a terrible dream, that you needed me and I couldn’t get to you. That you were so much alone, you were dying of it.”

“Wait!” he said, and laughed. The tears were painfully abrupt, and he wiped his eyes with his hands.

She said, very softly, “I was dying, too. In the dream.”

“I’m happy to know that, Della. I mean, it’s kind of you to tell me that.”

“But I was still glad you were longing for me.”

“I was!”

“What a mess we’re in, causing each other all this misery.”

“And this is just the beginning.”

“Promise?”

“Promise!”

She laughed. “Well, then, I guess we might as well have our breakfast. That’s what people do.”

“And you might as well come sit beside me, so I can put my arm around you. So you can put your head on my shoulder. People do that, too. A fellow told me that if the Lord gave this doomed soul a few minutes of grace, He wouldn’t mind if I en joyed it. If you’re going to be doomed, too, you can join me in this moment of reprieve.”

“You’re not doomed. Neither am I. We’ve chosen a difficult life, that’s all.”

“You’ve chosen a difficult life, I’m doomed. But we have other things in common.”

She did sit down next to him, actually against him, and he put his arm around her waist. She took his hand, turned it up, measured her hand against it, turned it over. She said, “This won’t work. You’re right-handed. We’ll have to change sides so you won’t have an excuse for not eating anything.”

“Ah! But one of the little known wonders of my nature—I am ambidextrous! I use my right hand by preference, so that I’ll seem ordinary to people.”

She laughed. “That would do it.”

“No, really. I have to keep my left hand in my pocket sometimes, to keep it from being too useful. I’m serious.”

“Then eat something with it. I’ll watch.”

The pecan bread was very good. “See that?”

“Too easy. Can you peel an egg with one hand? I have an uncle who can.”

“I like to keep some wonders in reserve.”

“Meaning no.”

“Meaning they’re slippery little devils with the shells off. They can end up on the floor.”

She peeled an egg and gave it to him. She said, “Isn’t it strange?”

“Yes, it is. Very strange. I don’t know what we’re talking about, but I’m sure you’re right.”

After a minute he believed she had spent composing her thoughts, she said, “Isn’t it strange that I could hardly wait to see you, and you were longing to see me, and here we are talking about hard-boiled eggs.”

Oh. He had been thrown off guard by the surprise of it all, never mind the pleasure of it, and he had not paused to think what such a situation might demand of him, what might be expected. He said, “You brought it up,” which sounded completely defensive, and a little cross. So he said, “Give me a chance here,” which was worse, since it made clear that he was entirely at a loss.

“I just mean it’s strange that there is nothing more I want from life. If I could imagine an eternity of sitting here with you talking nonsense, there’d be nothing more I would want from death. I mean it. And I’m a good Christian woman.” Her voice was very calm, but there were tears on her cheeks. He touched them away.

She said, “Oh dear.”

He said, “Yes.” Further into trouble, past the last threshold where they could even imagine turning back. Should he mention to her that, if eternity existed, his eternity would be a very different thing from hers? He hated the thought of her waiting it out alone. People were always waiting, their oldest habit, and they would go on with it even though the end of all the waiting would be—never. He tossing in the fires of perdition, while she failed to attend as completely as she should to the gold and pearl and the hosannahs. His father, too, trying to find a calendar, sneaking a look at his watch, still hoping, in the perfect knowledge that the end of time made hope a nostalgia. Jack caught in the snares of loyalties he could only disappoint. Maybe this was hell. Hellfire is figurative, his father had said, in that tone of certainty that had nothing to do with his belief in what he was saying and everything to do with the certainty that it must be said. Still, what if it was true? No flames at all, just an eternity of disheartened self-awareness. Outer darkness. Wailing and gnashing of teeth.