Lila: A Novel (12 page)

“But that ain’t my name.”

“What is your name?”

“Nobody ever said.”

“All right. It’s a good name. If I christen you with it, then it
is
your name.”

“Christen?”

“Baptize.”

“All right.”

“Lila Dahl, I baptize you—” His voice broke. “I baptize you in the name of the Father. And of the Son. And of the Holy Spirit.” Resting his hand three times on her hair. That was what made her cry. Just the touch of his hand. He watched her with surprise and tenderness, and she cried some more. He gave her his handkerchief. After a while he said, “When I was a boy, we used to come out along this road to pick black raspberries. I think I still know where to look for them.”

She said, “I know where,” and the two of them walked across the meadow, through the daisies and sunflowers, through an ash grove and into another fallow field. There were brambles along the farther side, weighed down with berries. She said, “We don’t have nothing to put them in,” and he said, “I guess we’ll just have to eat them.” He picked one and gave it to her, as if she couldn’t do it for herself. He said, “We could put them in my handkerchief. I’ll hold it.”

“You’ll get stains all over it.”

He laughed. “Good.”

She spread it across his open hands and filled them, and then she tied the corners together. Fragrance and purple bled through the cloth. He said, “I’ll carry it so it doesn’t stain your clothes, but it’s for you, if you want it. You can steal my handkerchief. If you want to remember. The day you became Lila Dahl.”

She said, “Thanks. I figure I’ll remember anyway.”

They walked up to the road. “Well,” he said. “It’s almost evening. And we forgot all about your catfish, didn’t we. And your Bible, and your tablet. I’ll help you gather them up. It might rain. And then I’ll be going.”

“Wait,” she said. “I was wondering. Can you still get married to somebody you baptized?”

He raised his eyebrows. “No law against it. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. Seems like I just want to rest my head—”

He said, “I’d like that, too, Lila. But I think we made a decision.”

“No. No.” She wasn’t crying. She couldn’t look at him. “I want this so damn bad. And I hate to want anything.”

“‘This’?”

“I want you to marry me! I wish I didn’t. It’s just a misery for me.”

“For me, too, as it happens.”

“I can’t trust you!”

“I guess that’s why I can’t trust you.”

“Oh,” she said, “that’s a fact. I don’t trust nobody. I can’t stay nowhere. I can’t get a minute of rest.”

“Well, if that’s how it is, I guess you’d better put your head on my shoulder, after all.”

She did. And he put his arms around her. She said, “The second you walk off down that road I’ll start telling myself you’re gone for good, and why wouldn’t you be, and I’ll start trying to hate you for it. I
will
hate you for it. I might even leave here entirely.”

He said, “I expect I’ll be having a few sleepless nights myself. A few more, that is. I was thinking, if you moved into town we could sort of keep an eye on each other. Talk now and then. That should make things better. Boughton will marry us. I’ll talk to him about it. We’ll do it soon. To put an end to the worrying.”

“But don’t you wonder why I don’t even know my own name?”

“You’ll tell me sometime, if you feel like it.”

“I worked in a whorehouse in St. Louis. A whorehouse. You probably don’t even know what that is. Oh! Why did I say that.” She stepped away from him, and he gathered her back and pressed her head against his shoulder.

He said, “Lila Dahl, I just washed you in the waters of regeneration. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a newborn babe. And yes, I do know what a whorehouse is. Though not from personal experience. You’re making sure you can trust me, which is wise. Much better for both of us.”

“I done other things.”

“I get the idea.” He stroked her hair, and her cheek. Then he said, “I really better go home. If I find a place for you, will you move into town? Yes? And I’ll talk to Boughton. Promise you won’t be out here trying to hate me. If that’s something you can promise.” He went off and came back with her Bible and tablet and that muddy catfish, which he had dropped into the bucket, along with the bouquet of sunflowers. He said, “With a catfish you just never know.” He looked at her. “Sleep well,” he said gently, like benediction, as if he meant grace and peace. So now she was going to marry this old preacher. She couldn’t see any way around it that would not shock all the sweetness right out of him.

*   *   *

The hotel belonged to an old friend of Boughton’s, and Lila had a room there free of charge. Such a dead little town, half the rooms were empty. Reverend Ames came by most nights for supper on the veranda under the big ceiling fans, bringing Boughton along often enough. Mrs. Graham brought clothes, from the Boughtons’ attic, she said. He had four daughters. They were very good quality clothes, they might as well get some use. The mothball smell will air out. Lila hated the hotel, the drapes and sofas and the great big pink and purple flowers on the wallpaper and the rugs. Dressing nice for the evening.

Sometimes she would walk out to that farm to help, to sweat and get her hands dirty. So she could sleep at night. They might give her a little money, depending. But she was back before supper and washed up before the old men came. And smelling like mothballs. She learned about propriety without anybody ever telling her there was a word for it. “He’s very protective of you,” Mrs. Graham said, which meant she sat next to him but not close to him, that he touched her elbow but did not take her hand. That she was about as lonely as she had ever been.

On her way to the farm she might look in on the shack. Nobody there but the mice and the spiders. She’d sit on the stoop and light a cigarette. Her money was still in the jar under the loose plank. She’d stuffed that handkerchief into it, too, because it reminded her of a wound and trying to blot it up or bind it. The field was turning brown and the milkweed pods were dry and prying themselves open. Everything in that shack she had not hidden was gone, every useless thing. He had come there and gathered it all up, she was sure, to save it for her. Some visiting Boughton had brought him out there in his father’s car, no doubt, since the odds and ends, the pot and bucket and bedroll and suitcase and the rest, would be far too much to carry. So much that she would have left it behind when the winter drove her out. Maybe the Boughtons helped take her things to the car. She hated to think they had been there. If he had asked, she’d have said don’t do it, so he didn’t ask. She never thought of emptying the shack, even though the winter would ruin whatever was left in it. If a farmer decided to plant the field, he would probably knock it down or burn it. Still, she had thought of it as hers. Her things had been her claim on it. The money wasn’t safe—only the Reverend would not think to look under a loose board—but it was hers while it was there. Her knife was gone. What did the old man think about that knife? Why did she wonder? Everybody needs a knife. Fish don’t clean themselves.

And she went up to the cemetery to look after Mrs. Ames and her child. She meant to ask the old man sometime what would happen when they were all resurrected and he had two wives. He had preached about that, which probably meant he had been wondering, too—they won’t be male or female, they won’t marry or be given in marriage. Jesus said that. So the old man wouldn’t have a wife at all, not even one. This girl and her child, after so many years, would be like anyone else to him. He might be as young as he was when she left him. Lila could see sometimes what he’d been like when he was young. The girl would still be holding that baby he had hardly even had a chance to hold. And there would be no change in her, and no change in him, as if dying had never happened. It would be a strange kind of heaven, after all they’d been through, and all the waiting, if he did not feel a different peace when he stood beside them. Lila could watch them, and love them, because old Doll would be there to say, “It don’t matter.” Don’t want what you don’t need and you’ll be fine. Don’t want what you can’t have. Doll would be there, ugly with all the trouble of her life. Lila might not know her otherwise.

A month in that hotel, and then the wedding. Mrs. Graham told her the Reverend probably wanted people to understand that the marriage was a considered decision, since men his age could sometimes be a little foolish. Lila said, “Well, it seems pretty foolish anyway,” meaning that if she was as good as married, she might as well have some of the comforts of it. Mrs. Graham smiled and nodded and said, “He’s just trying to make the best of things. For your sake, too.” Lila hated Boughton. Once or twice she saw him taking a long look at the old man as if he was wondering about him, as if he might say, Are you really sure about this? Damn knives and forks. And he was always talking about foreign policy. Then the old man would say something just to remind him gently that Lila might not have an interest in foreign policy, which was true enough, since she’d never even known there was such a thing, and Boughton would start talking about theology. Then it would be something about somebody they had both known forever. They would be laughing at the thought of something that had happened when they were boys, and then the old man would turn to her and say, “Are you comfortable here? Is your room comfortable?” because he couldn’t think of anything to say to her, either. He couldn’t go up to her room to see for himself because of propriety. He blushed when she said she’d be happy to take him upstairs, and she had to laugh at herself, which made it worse. Boughton tried to change the subject. Mrs. Graham and her husband were there, too, ready to talk foreign policy out of the plain goodness of their hearts. They had dinner at the hotel a few times so that Mr. Graham would know her well enough to give her away. That was the strangest thing she’d heard of yet. But she had her days to herself.

They were married in the parlor of Reverend Boughton’s house, with the Boughton children there except for the one. They even brought Mrs. Boughton downstairs in a pretty dress and put her in her chair. The girls bent down to tell her it was a wedding, John’s wedding, and wasn’t that nice? Then they left her to her smiling quiet, since it always upset her to feel that more was wanted of her.

*   *   *

They went to the old man’s house after the wedding and the dinner Boughton’s daughters had made for them. Lila had never understood the whole business of knives and forks, that there was a way you were supposed to use them. But he sat beside her, close to her, her husband, all their kind feelings toward him now owed to her, too. There was a big white cake with frosting roses on it, and the sisters laughed about how many they had made and how few of them turned out to look at all like the pictures in the magazine. Or anything else. Cauliflowers. Mushroom clouds. Gracie knocked one on the floor and got so frustrated she washed her hands of the whole thing and went for a walk, but Faith got the trick of it, just in time, before people began to arrive. Then there she was with frosting in her hair. There was frosting all over the kitchen. Teddy said he caught Glory licking her fingers. They were all laughing, all so used to each other, so fine-looking, the brothers, too. Lila could hardly wait to leave.

Then there they were in that quiet house. Everything of hers, everything she had been given, had been brought from the hotel and hung in the front closet. There was food in the icebox and the pantry and on the kitchen table, and there were little gifts on the counters, embroidered tea towels and pillowcases and aprons, and a needlework picture of apples and pears and grapes with the words
Bless This House
. There were flowers in every room. The windows were all opened to let the day in. Everything that could be polished shone. “The church,” he said, and smiled as if to say, I did warn you. She stepped out on the back porch, just to look. They had weeded the garden.

She’d thought, I’ll do this first and think about it afterward. Now afterward had come and she had no idea what to think. I am baptized, I am married, I am Lila Dahl, and Lila Ames. I don’t know what else I should want. Except for the shame to be gone, and it ain’t. I’m in a strange house with a man who can’t even figure out how to talk to me. Anything I could do around here has been done already. If I say something ignorant or crazy he’ll start thinking, Old men can be foolish. He’s thought it already. He’ll ask me to leave and no one will blame him. I won’t blame him. Marriage was supposed to put an end to these miseries. But now whatever happens everybody will know. She saw him standing in the parlor with his beautiful old head bowed down on his beautiful old chest. She thought, He sure better be praying. And then she thought, Praying looks just like grief. Like shame. Like regret.

He showed her the house, where things were to be found. There was a room upstairs he said would be her study if she liked. The carpetbag with the tablet and Bible in it was there on a table by the window, beside a bowl of zinnias. Or she could have another room if there was one she liked better. The house had been built for a big family. The rooms weren’t large, but there were several of them. His own study was just down the hall. If there was anything at all she wanted to change, she should certainly feel free. The house was as it had always been, more or less, at least since his father and mother lived in it. But there was no reason to keep it that way. He said, “It is so wonderful to have you here, in this house. I hope you’ll be very happy. Of course.”

She said, “I expect I will be. Happy enough. It’s yourself I’d be worried about.”

He laughed. “I think I’ll be fine,” he said.

“I seen you praying.”

“A habit of mine. No cause for concern.”

“Well,” she said, “if you decide sometime I’m a bother, you can just tell me.”

He laughed. “Dear Lila, we’re married! For better and for worse!”

“I spose so. We’ll see about that.”

He took her hands and studied them, her big, hard hands. He said, “If you say so, I guess we will.”

She had probably said a mean thing to him. For weeks she wished she could take it back. All it meant was that she still didn’t trust him and he’d be a fool to trust her. And that was only the truth. He might as well know it was her nature to feel that way, nothing she could change. She was just as lonely as she had ever been. The only difference was that now this kind old man was sad and embarrassed about it, still not even sure how to talk to her. If she was quiet for a while he would come down from his study to look for her in the kitchen or the garden—to get a drink of water or to enjoy the weather, he said. If she had walked out to the farm, to the shack, the sight of her coming in the door stung his eyes. It was to comfort him, and herself, that she slipped into his bed that first dark night.