Lila: A Novel (22 page)

He said, “Yes.” And then he said, “It makes me uncomfortable, you can see that. But I feel as though I need to know—how things stand. I can’t help wondering why you went back there. What you were doing there.”

“I was just going to look at the pelicans on the river, and seeing the shack reminded me that I left some money hidden under a plank in the floor. I could see the place was empty. I looked for the money and it was gone. I thought it would feel good to rest a little anyway, so I sat there on the stoop in the sunshine and I guess I fell asleep. Then I woke up and that boy was standing there looking at me.”

“You didn’t know him at all.”

“Never seen him in my life before. That’s the truth.”

“Yes, of course. Of course.” Then he said, “I hate to seem to be questioning you, Lila. But when I heard you had gone out there, I thought it might mean you weren’t happy. You know, here, with me. I knew from the beginning that things might be difficult, and I thought I could accept whatever happened. But it never crossed my mind there might be a child. I thought I had learned not to set my heart on anything. But I find myself thinking about that child—much of the time. So the idea that you might want to leave—it would be extremely difficult for me to live with that.”

She said, “I ain’t leaving. Farthest thing from my mind.” If this was not entirely true, it was true enough. “I just go off to look at pelicans and everything goes haywire. I don’t know. I thought I might as well get some use out of that money. Took me all summer to save it up.”

“I only asked because, if there was anything I could do to make you want to stay—”

She said, “My child is going to have a big old preacher for its papa, and live in a good, warm house, and eat ham and eggs three times a week. And it’s going to know all them hymns by heart. You’ll see.”

“Well,” he said, “that will be wonderful. Wonderful.” Then he sat down to his breakfast. He said his grace to himself, behind his trembling hands, and she thought it would be good if she could tell him she had meant to buy him a present with her money, but that would sound like a lie, and then he wouldn’t trust her the way he wanted to.

She said, “That boy out at the shack, he was just an ugly, dirty, lonely little cuss, half scared to death. And I was thinking he could’ve been any child that had nobody to take him up and see to him.”

He looked at her. Then he said softly, “I
did
know you. I
do
know you,” and his eyes filled with tears.

“That’s good, I guess.” She shrugged and turned away. “Maybe I ain’t so hard to know as some people. No reason why I should be. More coffee?” She couldn’t talk to him the way he was talking to her. That boy out at the cabin, he knew her. Married? To a preacher? Sounds like you making that up. That his child you got there? Meaning no harm, knowing no better. It seemed almost as if she had lied to the preacher when she said she didn’t know that boy. He had been at the edge of her sight all those years, orphaned, his whole life just that terrible little ember of pride, meanness and kindness all that he had to shelter it with, and the injured fearfulness that comes when anybody at all might do you the worst kind of harm, just by the way they look at you. This old man is beautiful and kind and very patient, she thought, and if he looked at me that way I might just die of it. Well, but for now he is mine to touch if I want to. So when she brought his coffee she put her arms around his neck and she kissed his hair. Might as well take pleasure where you can.

He stroked her hands. Then he said, “I’ve been thinking, Lila—at my age I can’t really hope for a call to another church, but maybe we could move to another house, at least. The church could rent this one, to cover the cost. It would give us a fresh start. We could get rid of some things around here that I’ve been looking at for too long and just start over.”

She said, “Well, I tell you one thing. That’s the last time I’m going out looking for pelicans.”

“So you’re all right here?”

“I’m just fine.”

“You don’t mind all the scars and scratches? All the departed souls who left them behind? You don’t mind if the Lord’s in the parlor?”

“I believe I’d be lonesome without them.”

He said, “I think you’re being kind. I’m going to let you do it, though. I’m pretty sure I’d miss them.”

“’Course you would.” She rested her cheek against his hair. She thought, The child knows about this, too. Not just the dread I feel sometimes. Not just the cold.

It was probably Mrs. Ames he was thinking about. He never said her name. One so lovely. There was a wedding picture in his study he never showed to her and never hid from her. Him with his collar standing up, beside him a pretty girl in an old-fashioned dress, one hand in the bend of his elbow, the other holding a bunch of roses. The big front bedroom he kept for guests who never came, that would be where they made the child, and where Boughton in his unimaginable youth had stood weeping while he prayed, touching water to the tiny head. Two young men in that room, one of them Jesus. One of them hardly knowing what to think, the other knowing, leaving it to Boughton to find words if he could. Well, that was a thing she did not understand. But Boughton had taken up that child while it was still in its blood, held it and blessed it from his very heart, and she did understand that. She wished she could have done the same for that boy at the shack, done right by him, filthy thing that he was, all trembling at the thought of what he was. Teddy had gone out looking for him, walking the empty woods alone so the boy wouldn’t be afraid to be found. One day was all Teddy had to give to him, because he was studying to be a doctor, just home to check on his mother and old Boughton. Lila couldn’t go off wandering in the cold, what with the child she was carrying. So the boy would be on his own.

She went up to that bedroom with her Bible and sat in the rocking chair by the window. There was just the faintest shadow of dust on the dresser, but once she noticed it, it bothered her, so she found a cloth and wiped it off. Now that winter had come and there wasn’t much to do outside, she had started tending to the house a little, even though women from the church came in every week or two to take care of things, as they had done for years because he was alone, and as they still did because now they were looking after his wife and his child, doing all the heavy work, hoping to protect him. But there was always more dust, drifting down from somewhere.

When she told the old man that she thought she might start reading the Book of Job, saying it “job,” which is exactly the way it is spelled, he had all he could do to keep from laughing. He had to wipe tears from his eyes. He told her it was a man’s name, so it was pronounced differently, and this made her a good deal less interested in it. But she had to read it so he could pretend she wasn’t just making an ignorant mistake in the first place, though he knew perfectly well that she was. He said, “You really do have a way of finding the very hardest parts—for somebody starting out. For anybody. That’s fine. They’re Scripture, too.” And then he could let himself laugh a little, which must have been a relief.

So she meant to sit in the rocking chair by the window with Job open in her lap and see what she could make of it. She did wonder why dust fell so evenly, more like rain than like snow, since the wind pushed snow into drifts. Well, the air in a good house is so still. There was the clock ticking, steady as could be, and time passing, and no sign of anything else happening at all, but then in two days there would be the shadow of dust again, anywhere you happened to look for it. She wiped it away, the room was perfect for a little while, and then she fell to thinking. Rocking for the sound it made, and thinking.

The clock struck eleven. He always came home for lunch. If she met him at the door he put his arms around her. If there was rain on him he still might not even wait to take his coat off first before he kissed her forehead or her cheek, and she liked the coldness and the good smell. He never asked her how she had spent the morning, but she told him sometimes. Reading a little. Thinking about things. She felt good, and the baby was moving around more than ever, elbows and knees. The old man would look into her face for sadness or weariness, and she would turn her face away, since there was no telling what he might see in it, her thoughts being what they were. She’d been thinking that folks are their bodies. And bodies can’t be trusted at all. Her own body was so strong with working, for what that was worth. She’d known from her childhood there was no use being scared of pain. She was always telling the old man, women have babies, no reason I can’t do it. But they both knew things can go wrong. That’s how it is. Then there’d be poor old Boughton again, if he could even make it up the stairs this time, and there’d be Jesus, still keeping His thoughts to Himself. And she’d be thinking, Here’s my body, dying on me, when I almost promised him I wouldn’t let it happen. It might make her believe she was something besides her body, but what was the good of that when she’d be gone anyway and there’d be nothing in the world that could comfort him. She guessed she really was married to him, the way she hated the thought of him grieving for her. It might even make him give up praying. Then he’d hardly be himself anymore.

Well.
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and turned away from evil.
All right.
And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.
But she kept thinking, What happens when somebody isn’t herself anymore? I seem to be getting used to things I never even knew about just a few months ago. Not wondering what in the world I’m going to do next, for one thing. Maybe it’ll be something the old man liked about me that will be gone sometime, and I won’t even know what it was. She found herself thinking she might stay around anyway. She thought she’d always like the feel of him, she’d probably always like to creep into bed beside him. He didn’t seemed to mind it.

That boy, never meaning to kill his father, looking at his hands, almost wishing he could be rid of them. Rid of himself. She’d felt that way, too, plenty of times. That night or morning when she was trying to clean away all the blood, and Doll, who probably wasn’t in her right mind, saying, “He wasn’t your pa. I’m pretty sure. Maybe a cousin or something. An uncle, maybe.” And here was his blood all over Lila’s hands and her clothes, some in her hair. She had brushed a strand away from her eyes, and it fell back, wet and heavy. So much blood she knew he was dead, whoever he was. So, whoever he was, he took it with him. It died in his body. Doll said, “A grudge was all it come down to. They should’ve let me be. After all these years.”

Lila said, “What was his name?”

“Which one? There’s just so damn many of ’em.” And she gave Lila a look, puzzled and scared and tired of it all. Rolling her eyes, too old and spent to lift her head, still trying to settle on any sort of plan, what to do next.

The name of the man she was fighting with.

“You expect me to know? There must be a dozen of ’em. One meaner than the next.” She said, “I’m the only ma you ever had. You could’ve just died entirely, for all they was doing for you.”

Lila knew. She remembered. But what was their name?

“There was that one—I cut his hamstring. Years ago. I thought that might put an end to all the trouble he was causing me. But it give him a dreadful limp and his brothers got all riled up about it, so I just had more to worry me. His cousins. They thought they could catch me easy enough, a scar-faced woman with a child in hand.” She laughed. “I guess it weren’t so easy after all.”

The folks at that cabin?

“Don’t matter. They wasn’t your folks. You was just boarded out there.” She said, “Your pa got the idea he should take you back from me, after he’d left you behind like that. Then the whole bunch of ’em was looking for me, whenever any of ’em could spare a little time. Where was they when you was just scrawny and naked? Folks like a grudge. That’s all it comes to.”

Lila said she wouldn’t mind knowing a name, though.

“What? You going to go looking for ’em?”

No. No point in it.

“That’s the truth. I think they pretty well forgot about you anyway. Me laming that fellow was what mattered to ’em. Because he was so young, I suppose. Well, they shouldn’ta sent him after me. It was just the revenge they was after. This last one never asked me where you was. Not that I give him much chance.”

So he might have been her pa.

“He wasn’t your pa. He didn’t look like him, far as I could tell. It’d been a while. It was pretty dark.” So Lila had that blood all over her, and it was the first time she had heard a word about her father. And here was Doll, probably dying. For months Lila had had a decent room and a job clerking in a store, and she’d been thinking just that day how good it was of Doll to make sure she could read and figure. Now all that was done with. The more she tried to wash the blood away, the more of it there was. Blood had soaked into the rug and stained the floor. She wished everything was done with, every damn thing. That she could be rid of herself. Somebody was going to find her like this. But there was Doll to see to. She’d ripped her other dress into rags before she even thought how fouled the one she was wearing was. Oh, what to do next. How to live through the next damned hour. That has to be the worst feeling there is. She hated the way she could stand just anything. It was her body going on. Her body, her hands remembering how Doll used to comfort her.

She shouldn’t be thinking about any of this. Here I go, scaring the child. She said, “Your papa’s going to be coming home pretty soon. He just loves you so much.” When she hugged her belly the child might feel her holding it in her arms. It might feel safe. She said, “Now, you going to go kicking that book off my lap? What’s your papa going to say about that?” She had a child now, this morning, whatever happened. She had a husband. Maybe loneliness was something she’d get over, sooner or later, if things went well enough. That night on the stoop was the first time Doll ever took her up in her arms, and she still remembered how good it felt. Those shy little presents, made of nothing. The rag baby. That shawl she could have used to keep herself warm at night, but she put it over Lila when she came in and only took it away again just before she went out the door in the dark of the morning. Maybe she never would have been so fierce if she hadn’t been set on keeping the child she’d stolen. She could probably feel the life coming into the child, sleeping in her arms day and night. And the child could feel it, too. Now motherhood was forcing itself into Lila’s breasts. They ached with it.