Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [32]
“Why not call it the rejoicing bench,” I said, “if that’s where they go to be reborn.”
“Yes, but first they have to repent their past ways.”
“You certainly know a lot about it,” I said.
“Oh, I’ve been on the mourners’ bench.”
“You have?”
“Of course.”
“You’ve been … saved?”
“Saved and repented and dunked in Clarion Lake,” he told me. “Before I joined the Army.”
I couldn’t get over it. I walked the rest of the way home in total silence. I just never had realized how very different from me he really was.
Mama wouldn’t finish my gown. I suspected her of pulling out seams every night. The day before my wedding I said, “Look here, Mama, it’s all the same to me if I get married in my black lace slip. I mean, not having that dress won’t stop the wedding.” So she got down to work then, sewed all afternoon and then had me stand on the dining room table while she pinned up the hem. I revolved slowly, like a bride on a music box. Mama talked on and on about Grandma Debney’s china, which I was to have, but I didn’t really listen. Some little string of sadness kept pulling at my mind.
After that we went to the studio and I set up the camera. Then Mama took a picture of Saul and me. We stood very straight, like an old-fashioned couple, while Mama said, “Where is it? What do I pull out? How do I go about this?” Then I took a picture of Saul with his arm around Mama. “Oh no, please, I’m not photogenic,” she said, but he said, “Mother Ames, you’re a member of my family now, and I need your portrait for my family album.”
“It’s sweet of you to be so nice to her,” I told him later.
“Nice? Who’s being nice?” he said. “I meant it.”
And I could see that he did.
It was a small wedding. No bridesmaids, no best man. (Saul had wanted one of his brothers, but none could make it.) He wouldn’t let me invite Alberta, but my uncle’s family came and so did a few Holy Basis members who’d seen the announcement in the bulletin. Later we drove to Ocean City in my father’s old pickup, which Saul had repaired and repainted. We hardly swam at all, though. Saul spent his days pacing by the edge of the water while I lay flat on the sand, recuperating from the years of loneliness, warming and glowing and deepening all week long.
———
I remember the date: July 14, 1960. A Thursday. We’d been back from Ocean City five days. I was in the studio, cropping an enlargement. Mama was knitting on the couch. Saul walked in the door with an envelope. He said he would like to talk to me a minute.
“Why, surely,” I said.
Already I felt uneasy.
I followed him up the stairs to his room. Our room, it was now. I sat on the sleigh bed. He started walking back and forth, slapping the envelope against one palm. “Listen to what I’m going to say,” he told me. I swallowed and sat up straighter.
“All along,” he said, “I’ve been wondering why things are working out like this. Finding you, I mean, just at this point in my life. Oh, I did plan that when I got out of the Army I’d like a wife and home. But first I had to make a living. So that day when you opened the door, and wore that faded soft sweater—well, why now? I wanted to know. When I’ve got no means to support her and nothing steady to offer. Couldn’t this have waited? Then I tried believing I should let you pass by, but it wasn’t possible. Well, now I have the answer, Charlotte. I know what it’s all about.”
He stopped pacing, and turned and smiled down at me. I felt more puzzled than ever. I said, “You do?”
“Charlotte,” Saul said, “I’ve been called to preach.”
“Been—what?”
“Don’t you see? That’s what it was. If I hadn’t met you I wouldn’t have gone back to Holy Basis Church, I might never have known what I was supposed to do. Now it’s plain.”
Well. I was so stunned I couldn’t even take in air. I mean I just wasn’t prepared for this, nothing that had happened up till now had given me