Lila: A Novel (32 page)

He laughed. “Who else?”

She said, “Nobody else in this world.”

*   *   *

There was more snow after that one, sugar snow, the old man called it, because his grandfather said that in Maine the last snow fell while the sap was running in the maple trees and they were catching it in buckets and boiling it into syrup. If he had ever visited Maine, it would have been in the spring. His grandfather talked about the wood fires and the sweet fog in the air and fresh syrup poured over fresh snow, the one earthly delight he would confess a craving for. “They ate it with a dill pickle. Afraid to enjoy it too much, I suppose.” He was happier than he wanted her to see, relieved even though he knew it was too soon to trust that they were safe yet, and worried that he was too ready to be happy and relieved. After breakfast he set a little glass bowl on the porch railing to catch some snow as it fell, and when he saw it had stopped falling, he took the bowl out to the rosebushes to pluck snow that had caught in the brambles. He brought it inside and set it on the windowsill so the sun would melt it. It was pretty the way the light made kind of a little flame, floating in the middle of the water, burning away in there cold as could be. It was for christening the child, she knew without asking. If the child came struggling into the world, that water would be ready for him. If it had to be his only blessing, then it would be a pure and lovely blessing. That was the old man getting ready to make the best of the worst that could happen. Not my will but Thine. In his sermons he was always reminding himself of that prayer. She would wake up at night and find him sitting on the edge of the bed in the dark, his head in his hands. Maybe he never really slept.

Then there was a day of pangs and a night of misery, and after that the baby, scrawny and red as a skinned rabbit. When Boughton saw it he said, “Oh!” It was pity, startled out of him, and then he said, “My babies were always big, brawny fellows, except the one. And he grew up to be as tall and fine-looking as any of them. I always thought so. You can’t tell by—you can’t tell.” Boughton had to be there because he was always there when he thought he might be able to help, bony old thing that he was, eyes full of tears. And the old man wanted him there, too, to help him when he decided he should bring that little bowl of water up the stairs. They didn’t say so, but she knew. Teddy came the minute he could, probably afraid his father would die of grief. He was almost a doctor, there to keep an eye on the other fellow, his father said. She heard the phone ringing and the soft voices. People from the church. All the Boughtons would be coming from everywhere. Except the one. She wondered if she’d ever see the one. What did he do to make them all turn against him? “Well,” the old man had said, “it was really more the other way around.” She didn’t tell him she sort of understood how that could happen.

The nurse washed the child and tied the cord, and Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Wertz bathed Lila and changed the bed with her in it. You could tell they’d done it a hundred times, they were so quick and gentle. It made her feel calm lying there in her clean nightgown, all the sweat wiped away with lavender water. How could she feel so calm? Had she died? All this quiet, as if no one could believe the saddest thing that could happen really did happen. Her old man was sitting there beside her, his hand on her hand, white as death. She thought, How many years has this cost him, how many will it cost? This was the moment before everything changed, and there was nothing else to do but watch and listen. The house was as quiet as a held breath. She said, “Well, you should give me that baby anyway.”

He looked up at her and smiled. “Yes. Yes, the doctor has been checking him over a little. But he’ll be wanting his mama. He’s had a tough night.” He said, “And so have you, precious Lila.” So much regret.

She said, “You’re praying for him.”

He laughed and wiped his eyes. “Troubling heaven. You may be assured of it.”

“Boughton, too.”

“Boughton, too. Every last Boughton, in fact.”

“Except the one.”

He laughed. “I’m sure we would have his very best wishes.” His face was so white and weary.

“Well now, don’t you stop praying.”

“I don’t believe I could stop. For more than a minute or two.”

“You might mention yourself,” she said. “And Boughton. And the other one.”

The nurse brought the baby and put him against her side. Such a little thing, he could get lost in the covers. But there he was, all bundled up like a cocoon. The nurse said, “Now he’s happy.” Nothing about giving him the breast. Teddy was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, just watching, not saying a thing, but when the old man lifted his head and glanced at him, he nodded, so slightly, and they all knew what that meant. The old man got up from his chair. “I’ll get it. I don’t know. It seems better than tap water, I suppose.” He was a long time on the stairs, going down and coming back up again, with the little bowl of water trembling in his hands. She didn’t see any light in it.

Boughton said, “John, let me hold that for you.”

The old man took his Bible from the top of the dresser and opened it and read, “‘But thou art he that took me out of the womb; thou didst make me trust when I was upon my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb; thou art my God since my mother bare me. Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.’”

There was a silence. Boughton said, “Yes. I’m a little surprised you chose that text, John. It’s a fine text. I just wouldn’t have expected it. Don’t mind me.”

“No, you’re right. I’ve had that psalm on my mind lately, I guess.”

“Those verses in 139, ‘For thou didst form my inward parts: thou didst cover me in my mother’s womb’—very fine.” He said, “The darkness is as light to You,” and he shook his head. “Excuse me.” He began groping for his handkerchief, holding the bowl in his weaker hand, and the water spilled, enough of it falling on the baby to make him mad, to judge by the look on his face and the sound he made.

Teddy laughed. “That was quite a howl.” He came over to the side of the bed. “I think he’s been playing possum.”

Boughton said, “Yes, well, I don’t think that was an actual baptism, though. I do apologize. There’s still a little water left in the bowl here.”

And Lila said, “We’re going to get this wet blanket off of him, first of all.” Teddy unbundled him and gave him to her, and there he was, a little naked man, not a Christian yet, needing comfort, then lying against her naked side where she unbuttoned herself so he could feel the softness of her breast. That wound when they cut him away from her, that dark knot, but never mind. He bumped his face against her side and pursed his mouth and found her breast with his wavering fist. She turned on her side to help him.

Teddy said, “Well, look at that! He’s pretty spry.”

Boughton was so upset with himself that all he could think of to say was “There is some water here. It hardly takes any at all.” Then he said, “It’s snowing again. That’s good, I suppose, if you want snow. I never saw such a spring.”

Teddy took the bowl out of his trembling hands and set it aside and put his arms around him. “Here,” he said. “Just rest your head for a minute. You’re all worn out.” And he did rest his head against Teddy’s chest, his sweater, crooked and small as he was, her old man watching the way he did when she knew he was thinking, that’s how it would be to have a son. And then he turned back the sheet and looked at the son he had, so small he could fit in her two hands, but alive just the same, and he laughed. The tip of his finger on the little bird bone of your shoulder.

*   *   *

So that other life began, almost the one she used to imagine for herself when she thought she might just slip a baby under her coat and walk away with it. She knew better than to waste that time. There isn’t always someone who wants you singing to him or nibbling his ear or brushing his cheek with a dandelion blossom. Somebody who knows when you’re being silly, and laughs and laughs. So long as he was little enough to carry, she could hardly bring herself to put him down. She thought, I know what happens next. Old Boughton will tell you that story a hundred times. He will say he performed a miracle and that was why we had to name you after him, because he really was your godfather, yes! If anybody in the world has ever had a godson! And that is why you love the snow so much! You were christened with it! And you will wonder what such an old, old man could have to say to you, what it could mean. Putting his face down close to yours, making his eyes big, and you just staring at the way his flesh hangs off his skull, and how there are always whiskers in the creases of it. It’s all strange. People never really believe they were taken from their mother’s womb and laid on her breast. I could see your eyes behind your eyelids, and veins through the skin of your belly, and they were that blue that was never meant to be seen. It is so strange that it belongs in the Bible, with the seraphim and the dry bones. The day you were born there was just wind enough to stir the curtains a little, and there was just light enough to make it seem like evening all day long. And there was quiet enough to make it seem as though sound had passed out of the world altogether, leaving the wind behind to sweep up after it. And then you with your big belly and your skinny legs, like a wet cat, not half looking like the makings of a child. I’ll never tell you that. It was a month before your father had the courage even to hold you in his lap. But when you were just two weeks old we took you to the church to be christened for sure, because Boughton kept on worrying until it was done. Your father said it was intention that mattered, and that didn’t matter, either, because a newborn child is as pure as the snow. Boughton said if they did not act on the intention when circumstance allowed them to, then the seriousness of the intention was questionable.

“Robert, I hope I never have to be that serious again in this life.”

“I can say that you were distracted from it. Your intention. I know what Calvin said as well as you do! Better! Don’t even bother me with it!” Maybe you will remember how they sound when they argue about something,

Boughton thought it was all his fault, or he would have been the cause of any harm that came from it, which was just as bad. So when you were two weeks old we took you down to the church one cold Sunday, the first time you felt the air on your face. I carried you inside my coat, and I could see you peeking out at things. There you were, right against my heart, with a shawl around us both. Nobody but the two of us knew how plump and beautiful you were, because nobody knew what a pitiful thing you had been just a few days before, except Boughton, who was still scared to look at you and couldn’t think of a thing except making a Christian out of you while we had the chance. Teddy told him to stop coming around so much, worrying everybody, and mostly he minded. Teddy had to be back at school, but he called every day and then every other day and then once a week, and then we all forgot to be frightened of you. You turned into a perfectly fine baby. Maybe your father has enough years left in him to see you turn into a perfectly fine boy. And maybe not. Old men are hard to keep.

Lila knew what would really happen next. One day she and the child would watch them lower John Ames into his grave, Mrs. Ames on one side and his father, John Ames, on the other, and his mother and that boy John Ames and his sisters, a little garden of Ameses, all planted there waiting for the Resurrection. She knew it was ridiculous, but she always imagined them coming up some June day, right through the roses, not breaking a stem or bruising a petal. Shaking hands, patting backs, too taken up with it all to notice her flowers. Except Mrs. Ames, who might stoop down and pick one to show that baby, This is a rose. See how cool it is, how nice it smells. Holding it away from the baby’s hand because in the world as they left it there’d have been thorns. That day might come in a thousand years. But soon, before he was half grown, the boy would be standing beside her and he would ask where their places were, his and hers, because the plots were all taken up, and she would say, It don’t matter. We’ll just wander a while. We’ll be nowhere, and it will be all right. I have friends there.

She would keep every promise she had made, the boy would learn “Holy, Holy, Holy” and the Hundredth Psalm. He’d pray before he ate, breakfast, lunch, and supper, for as long as she had anything to say about it. Every day of every year they lived in Gilead she would be remembering what happened that very day, reciting it to herself in her mind so sometime she could say, One time when you weren’t even walking yet he took you fishing with him. He had his pole and creel in his hand and you in the crook of his arm and he went off down the road in the morning sunshine, striding along like a younger man, talking to you, laughing. He came back an hour later and set the empty creel on the table and said, “We propped the pole and watched dragonflies. Then we got a little tired.” And what a look he gave her, in the sorrow of his happiness. He might as well have said, When he is old enough to understand, tell him about the day we went fishing. So she said, “You might as well be writing things down.” Coming from him it would mean more. That was one of those days that is so mild and bright you know you’ll never see a better one. The weather just flaunting itself. She might wait for another day like it to tell the boy how his father couldn’t wait to have a son, because if you just say a day was fine, nobody makes much of it.

She could tell him how the old man looked standing in the pulpit, his hair pure white, his face all serious and gentle. He had looked into those faces in the pews for so many years, and couldn’t look at any one of them without remembering the day he buried a mother, christened a child, soothed a parting as well as he could. And sometimes rebuked where he should have comforted—mainly when he was young, he told her. But he never forgot that he’d done it, and he said no one who heard one of those stories ever forgot either. So he spoke with a tenderness he wasn’t even aware of anymore, that you could read if you knew how, like reading the bottom of a river from its pools and flows. He had paused over the word “widow” even before he knew her name, there were so many of them, but it was harder for him now. The word “orphan” troubled him after she told him a little about where she came from, and then after he had a child, he could hardly even say it. His preaching was a sort of pattern of his mind, like the lines in his face.