Jack (Gilead #4)(66)

And so he had lived, more or less, until he met Della. A little thievery when the opportunity was too patent to be ignored, or too interesting. A drinking bout for some reason or no reason. A stint in prison. Then an occasion for him to try out his manners, so long of no use to him, put away with his necktie and his shoelaces. Running after her papers as they blew down the street, then “Thank you, Reverend,” and tea in her parlor with Jesus looking on. She so lovely besides, and a woman of some learning. What more could fate have done to stamp her in his mind as the angel waiting at the door of his tomb? No wonder he could hardly go an hour without thinking about her. And since it was always true of him, truer since prison, that his thoughts were the idle companions of his idleness, his isolation, and were never meant to govern his behavior any more than practicality or ambition could do, he really had believed she was safe in his thoughts, and aloof from him, too, for good measure.

And here he was married to her. Granting that the marriage was only an agreement between them—not “only,” as if it were diminished by secrecy and illegality and the rest. Those were the things that made it pure, or proved that it was pure. He did take a kind of comfort from the fact that there seemed to be little more than loyalty involved, which might come very easily to him in this case. And as for her, if sometime she decided she wanted another kind of life, he would forgive her on account of her youth and love her, anyway, at the same sanctified distance they had agreed to. That moment could come at any time. She would go back to her family and her life with his blessing, with no new experience of sorrow or guilt, uninjured in his care. He would never have imagined that harmlessness could be so sweet and so protective of them both, or that solitude could be the proof and seal of marriage. A few old songs came to mind—Every road I walk along I walked along with you—which had never been true of them and never would be. Something to regret, of course, but they would understand that being apart was the pact they had made, and the sadness they felt would be the secret they shared, always tenderly alive as even shared memories would not be. All this seemed possible, he believed.





* * *





That was a Wednesday, or it became a Wednesday as he washed and dressed and buffed his shoes, and walked out into a world oddly untransformed. Miracles leave no trace. He had decided, hearing his father preach on the subject, that they happened once as a sort of commentary on the blandness and inadequacy of the reality they break in on, and then vanish, leaving a world behind that refutes the very idea that such a thing could have happened. He left the bright day behind for the twilight of the big upstairs room with its mirror ball and its smell of wood and wax. First to arrive, an effect of his resolve to embrace conscientiousness in every circumstance, he sat down on a bench with his hat beside him and thought what it might be like if the miraculous became the natural order of things. Loaves and fishes in inexhaustible supply. Troops of Lazaruses putting off their cerements. Infinite hours where Della was always waiting for him, and he was always somehow not a disappointment.

The boss walked in and pulled the chain that started the mirror ball, and tawdry spangles swept the room. First there were the ladies who came in after lunch, and then a few high-school girls who stood at the door laughing among themselves, perhaps at the fact that his jitterbug was brisk and exact and his hair was thinning. On the street they might have avoided him, hid their laughter behind their hands if he smiled at them. Then there was the unaccountable Della. While I think on thee, dear friend. How could anyone promise to be loyal to anyone? Loyalty is fragile. A change would come over her face and she would never look at him that way again, with that sweet trust he had done nothing to deserve and could lose in a moment of ill-considered honesty.

By Thursday he had begun telling himself that there wouldn’t be any harm in a drink or two, so he went to the library, found a book on orchids and a fussy little volume of poetry whose flyleaf had mellowed to cream through its many years of deserved neglect. It tore out nicely. He copied an especially flamboyant blossom, enhancing it a little, with all due respect to the Creator or evolution or some combination of the two. His hand was still clever. He could still please himself with a sense of the sketch answering back to him, a pretty line, shading that did look like shadow. This would be the flower he brought her, and she would laugh and put it aside somewhere to keep it safe, and then she would go look at it again. It occurred to him to wonder how long ago this seraphic bloom had been translated into the ghost of itself, an unusually slight change. Thy eternal summer shall not fade. He wondered if he might love Della less if that look of gentle trust passed out of her eyes. One way to find out. No one would ever see it again. There would always be a shadow, her memory of him. When he was a kid, he used to know if there was something he was going to steal or break. He resisted just enough so that there was a certain relief in actually doing it. Ah, Jesus, not this time.

But when Friday came, he took the day off work, did as much as scrubbing and shaving and brushing and buffing could do for his appearance and self-respect, then did it all over again. He wished there were such a thing as a warm and manly scent, and that he had a bottle of it. Don’t let me get arrested, don’t let me get drunk.

He knocked on Della’s door at six. She kissed him before he had even put down his hat. So there he was, with Della in his arms, on time and sober. She had roasted a chicken. She had made biscuits. The table was set, with candles and what he supposed was a vase for flowers. Everything else was exactly the way it always was, but perfect. He knew there was no mote of dust in that room. There was no slightest sign of rumple or displacement in the couch cushions. “Here,” he said, taking the page from his pocket, “this is what I have for flowers. Sorry.” And she unfolded the page and said “Oh!” and then she said, “Another angel!” which pleased him, because seraphic was his thought as he made the drawing.