Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [33]
“Let me tell you how it came about,” he said. “Remember that Sunday I helped pack the hymnbooks? I carried a box to the basement. I passed the preschool room where I used to stay when I was a kid. Had its same old blue linoleum and those pipes they were always telling us not to swing on. Then I heard this song: me and my three brothers singing ‘Love Lifted Me.’ I swear it. Do you believe me? Our identical voices, I couldn’t mistake them. I just stood there with my mouth open. I even heard that lisp of Julian’s he lost when his second teeth came in. We sang two lines and got fainter on the third and then drifted off, still singing.”
“Well, wait,” I said. “The four of you together? In the preschool room? Surely that never happened, there’s too much difference in your ages.”
“This is not all that logical,” Saul told me.
“No, it certainly isn’t,” I said.
“Reverend Davitt felt it was an experience of a religious nature.”
I didn’t like the way he phrased it. Certain parts of him suddenly began to seem preacherly—even his bone structure, the echo in his voice, the tranquil gaze that could also be viewed as complacent, I saw now. Why hadn’t I noticed before? I’d been too busy gathering other messages, that’s why. I hadn’t even had a warning twinge.
Still, I held out. “But listen, Saul,” I said. “Maybe it was leftover sound waves or something, have you thought of that?”
“He felt it might be a call to preach. We had several talks about it,” Saul said.
I watched him open the envelope, with long brown fingers that could easily be pictured turning the pages of a Bible. Although I didn’t believe in God, I could almost change my mind now and imagine one, for who else would play such a joke on me? The only place more closed-in than this house was a church. The only person odder than my mother was a hellfire preacher. I nearly laughed. I took a mild, amused interest in the sheet of paper he pulled from the envelope.
“This is what came in the mail today. I didn’t want to tell you till I got it,” he said. “A letter of acceptance from the Hamden Bible College.”
“Bible College,” I said.
“Oh, I know it takes money. The Army won’t pay for a school that’s not accredited—pure prejudice. But look at the advantages: Hamden’s just a two-year school, and half an hour away. We can live right here with your mother! I’ll reopen Dad’s radio shop and that’ll pay the tuition. For I know I’m meant to stay in Clarion, Charlotte. This all came to me; it’s what I have to do. Don’t you see?”
All I saw was the view from his window: a cross-section of Alberta’s house with flowered wallpaper, copper pipes writhing toward the sky, and a medicine cabinet wide open and empty. It was very clear: they were tearing down the rest of the world completely. They were leaving no place standing but my mother’s. They were keeping me here forever, all the long, slow days of my life.
9
We drove through an endless afternoon, passing scenery that appeared to have wilted. Crumbling sheds and unpainted houses, bony cattle drooping over fences. “Whereabouts is this?” I finally asked.
“Georgia,” said Jake.
“Georgia!”
I sat up straighter and looked around me. I had never imagined finding myself in Georgia. But still there wasn’t much to see. “Well,” I said, “I tell you what. I think I’ll go in the back and take a nap.”
“No,” said Jake.
“Why not?”
“I ain’t going to have you slipping away from me. You would open that door and slip right away.”
“Well, for goodness sake,” I said. I felt insulted. “Why would I do that? All I want is a little sleep. Lock the door, if you like.”
“No way of doing that.”
“Get another chain from somewhere.”
“What, and lock myself in too?”
“You could keep a key. Find one of those—”
“Lay off of me, Charlotte.”
I was quiet for a while. I studied snuff adds. Then I said, “You really ought to get over this thing about locks, you know.”
“Lay off, I said.”
I looked for a radio, but there wasn’t one. I opened the glove compartment to check the insides: road maps, a flashlight, cigarettes,