Jack (Gilead #4)(90)

When he did come back soon, Della was with him. Her father shook his head, absorbing a difficult fact, and said, “She’s been waiting for you. I hoped you might not come, but here you are.”

Della came and stood beside him in that way she had, somehow affirming every vow he could ask of her, as if every promise was as good as kept before it was ever made. Forsaking all others, remarkably enough. Her father walked out of the room. Della sat down on a couch and patted the place next to her. She said, “I meant to just come here for a visit. But then after a few days I started feeling bad in the mornings. And my mother knew what that was.” She smoothed the lap of her dress with both hands.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yes.”

He was glad she did not look at him. Shame and embarrassment overwhelmed him before he had time to think, and he was ashamed and embarrassed to realize that this was true. His wife was expecting a child. This was a blessing, pure and simple. But shame was a very old habit with him. He had long considered it penitential, payment extracted in the form of steady, tolerable misery, against a debt he would never settle. He was even a little loyal to it, as if it assured him there was justice in the universe. Shame stirred in him when he felt disapproval, like an ache in bad weather, and here he was, the center of scandal, and of outrage pent up on grounds of religion and good manners. That big room they sat in was conspicuously empty. All the wear of endless, impersonal hospitality meant emptiness, as if someone had shouted “Fire!” Word had gone out. This good family would be spared at least the crudest effects of scandal. He took Della’s hand and she leaned against him. Well, that was wonderful.

“What now?” she said.

“I’ve been thinking about St. Louis.”

She nodded. “I think about it all the time.”

“I tried Chicago. It didn’t work out. Neither did St. Louis, I suppose.”

They laughed. “We had some good times there, though,” she said. “We did.”

Julia came into the room, all tact, to head off a dozen adolescents who had gathered at the front door. A confirmation class, no doubt. She spoke to them and they went away adolescent fashion, jumping from the top step to the sidewalk two or three times, laughing, bickering companionably, scuffling a little, expending energy that came with being released from expectation. That part of life wasn’t a bad thing to give someone.

Julia said, “I’m going to go find Auntie. She’s probably still at the church,” and she left.

After a few minutes, the brother Marcus stepped into the doorway. “I have an appointment,” he said. “I’ll see you later, Della. Tell them not to wait dinner for me.”

She said, “Marcus, you don’t have an appointment. At dinnertime on Sunday?”

He shrugged. “I was just trying to be polite,” he said, and he put on his hat and left.

Jack had stood when Della’s father came back with her, of course, and both times Julia came in, and again when Marcus had stood there in the doorway. He was beginning to feel ridiculous, thrown back on that punctilious courtesy that struck more than a few people as sardonic. He could never find just the right degree of deference. There were things other people seemed to be born knowing. He could hear voices in other rooms, some of them sounding heated. Whoever appeared, in whatever emotional state, he had only courtesy to defend himself. He had stood there, hat in hand figuratively speaking, while Marcus paused in the doorway, barely glancing at him, and excused himself from any acquaintance with him. Why were there an infinite number of ways to feel awkward? He believed this was a theological question having to do with man’s place in the universe. But when he felt the true force of the question, he was always in the middle of an embarrassing emergency of some kind that paralyzed reflection.

But each time he sat down again Della took his hand. He had pondered at some length the very great comfort there was in the touch of that hand. Another theological question, how one human being can mean so much to another human being in terms of peace and assurance, as if loyalty were as real as gravity. His father said it had to be that real, because the Lord is loyal. Jack was just then feeling the force of the idea.

Julia came in, smiling, with smiling Aunt Delia, who offered a hand in a lavender glove and said, “Mr. Boughton!” in a tone that acknowledged old acquaintance. “It’s good to see you!” A favorite aunt with the kind of charm that came with a good heart. Della kissed her. Jack could have kissed her. She was pretty and enjoyed the fact. She was the ally anyone could wish for and enjoyed that, too. “I’ve been recruited to help with dinner,” she said, and laughed. “So I guess I have some work to do!” Julia looked on, pleased, and then they went away.

Jack said, “I should go. I mean, I shouldn’t be hanging around. Maybe I could see you tomorrow.”

Della said, “Don’t leave. Nothing will be better tomorrow. At least today we still have the advantage of surprise.” She said, “It’s not so pleasant for me here, either. No one has been unkind, really, but everything is different. My fault.”

“Mine, too. We’re in this together.”

She nodded. “That’s the good part,” she said.

He did not put his arm around Della, his wife, or kiss her. That could easily inflame the situation. “I do have something to give you.” He had, in the last furious moment, jammed the pictures he had made of her into the valise, since, disappointing as they were, they might be the only likeness he would ever have of her. “I was trying to remember your face,” he said. “Please don’t be offended.”