Jack (Gilead #4)(64)

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Jack had gone to Chicago years before, just on the chance that he might come across that girl. He couldn’t find her, strictly speaking, because he had no idea where to look for her. He had a little money he could give her, in an envelope with a letter of apology. Very difficult to write, a disappointing piece of work. But he knew, if he did find her, he might not actually say anything to her, or he might say something even more disappointing than the letter. The money was from his father, and the pretext was that he was buying that convertible—“For a while there we thought you might be coming back for it.” The car wasn’t exactly his, and it wasn’t worth half the money the old man had sent. But that would be all right if he could send a note back to his father that said he’d found that girl, that he’d given her the money. And told him about whatever happened next. He might mention the apology.

When people have wearied of life in Gilead, when they want another life altogether, they mention Chicago. She had told him once that she would go to Chicago to see all the movies. She had the impression that movies all pre-existed in Chicago and were eked out to the provinces a few a year. Even for someone so young, it was amazing how little she knew and how much she believed. He blushed to remember. These jolts of realization stayed with him undiminished, try as he might to smother them, drown them, even conjure cynicism enough to attempt excuses or indifference.

He was getting used to St. Louis. Chicago couldn’t be so different. One problem was that she had been young, and the last few years would inevitably have changed her. Even in those days her freckles were fading, little smudges half worn away. She could be tall now, or plump. Women dye their hair. She could be changed by the ways she might have managed to survive in a city alone. Jesus, don’t let me think about that. He had almost told his father that she was not an innocent girl, when that would only have meant she was unsheltered, uncared for, and he was cad enough to make it all worse. When he remembered that he had almost said this, he could imagine he saw what he had never really seen, contempt in his father’s eyes. Teddy had said, “What’s wrong with you, Jack?” A real, sad question. And Jack took in the fact that his brother’s unshakable loyalty to him was illusionless compassion, the kind he would see in prison chaplains, the Salvation Army. What is wrong with me?

A problem of finding that girl in Chicago was the near-certainty that he would not know her if he saw her. But she might recognize him. He believed that he had gone through certain things with her, but at such a remove they could hardly have changed him. Damned Glory, his sheltered and sanctimonious sister, had sent him photographs, which actually seemed to him to prove that his family were looking after the girl and her baby and nothing was needed from him. Then came the letters from his sister and his mother about the baby’s death, his mother’s distant and gentle, Glory’s full of heartbroken wrath and exasperation. Once, she had sent him a baby picture of himself, pried from a locket, and one of his daughter at the same age, her point being that the two of them were for all purposes identical. Years later, after all that, he had put the two pictures in a cigarette case he had pocketed at a bar, a rather nice one with working hinges and a clasp, a little wear on the corners. He took it to Bellefontaine, to the monument of the infant and the angel, pried some turf away from its base, slipped the cigarette case into the space he had made, and tamped it down with his foot. He had no right to take any comfort from the sentimentality of the gesture, which in fact appalled him a little. But how better to be rid of these pictures? All the others he had sent back to Glory, without comment. He had hardly glanced at them.

Then he began thinking seriously about Chicago, even planning to go there. His father’s money came, which felt like an affirmation, a fatherly nudge. He could buy a ticket, pay for a room, and still have something to give her, and the letter of apology, if he had the nerve to give her that. So sorry to have visited such utter grief on you, to have done you such terrible harm, before you had even lost your freckles. Words to that effect. Well, he’d get a haircut, shorter on the sides, and a very close shave. Painful as it was to remember, besides the convertible, the girl was much impressed with a sweater he took from Teddy’s closet, bright gold with a big black I on the chest. Teddy was varsity. He had lettered in baseball. The girl thought it belonged to Jack and that it meant he was a college man. She wanted her cousins to see him in it, though he always talked her into long drives farther into the country. When Jack was packing to leave Gilead, after that talk with his father, Teddy came into his room with the sweater and stuffed it into his suitcase, and the corduroy slacks he wore with it. He did this without a word. Jack said nothing. Sometimes they understood each other perfectly.

He was glad he had kept the things for a while, because it occurred to him that she might notice him, wandering the streets in his Joe College attire. The sweater was absurdly bright. Teddy never wore it.

So he had taken the train to Chicago, carrying the sweater rolled up in a paper sack. At the station he put his jacket in a locker, pulled on the sweater, and walked into the men’s room to comb his hair. Overhead lights. His pallor against that yellow was downright alarming. His face was thinner than he expected, and his hair. His closely shaved jaw was blue. Daylight might be even crueler. Oh well. He thought he had an idea. In the ranks of phone booths he found an empty one with a phone book in it, two things that were not often to be found together. He thought he might come across her name. What was it? Walker? Turner? Wheeler? Why didn’t he remember? And that’s another thing about women that changes, anyway. It was a very large directory. He had turned to Boughton, which made no sense at all. An inconsiderable lot, he noticed, so few of them in such a large city. He wasn’t thinking clearly, so he went to a bench and sat down. A vast, echoing room, baronial, civic, neglected. Sparrows flying across the ceiling, pigeons burbling around his feet. The great male voice of Announcement moving the crowds, trains shaking the building. His cigarettes were in his jacket pocket. He checked to be sure he hadn’t lost the locker key. Well, he shouldn’t be sitting there, anyway. He had to make the most of his time. He went out into the bright street. Pavement, trolley tracks, beyond them cheap hotels.