Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [113]
“The fact is, um … Ian, hardly anyone I know calls me just plain Emmett anymore,” Reverend Emmett said. “The fact is, this is a lonely profession. Oh, but not for you, it wouldn’t be. You would be training among our own kind from the start. You would be making your friendships among them, and whoever you marry will know she shouldn’t expect a half-timbered rectory and white-glove teas.”
“But … Emmett,” Ian said, “how can I be certain I’m cut out for this? I’m nothing but a carpenter.”
“Our Lord was a carpenter,” Reverend Emmett reminded him. He rose and went to peer inside the oven.
“Maybe so,” Ian said, “but that might have been made a little too much of.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, we don’t seem to hear about anything He built, do we? I wish we did. Sometimes when I look at paintings of Him I try to see what kind of muscles He had—whether they’re the kind that come from hammering and sawing. I like to think He really did put a few bits of wood together; He didn’t just stand around discussing theology with His friends while Joseph built the furniture.”
Reverend Emmett set the roast on the counter and cocked his head at him thoughtfully.
“Or camel barns, or whatever it was,” Ian said. “I hope I don’t sound disrespectful.”
“No, no … Could you bring in that salad, please?”
“But anyhow,” Ian said. He picked up the salad bowl and followed Reverend Emmett into the dining room. “I’m getting off the track here. What I’m trying to say is, I’m not sure someone like me would be able to give people answers. When they had doubts and serious problems and such. All those ups and downs people go through, those little hells they go through—I wouldn’t know what to tell them.”
“But that’s what Bible School teaches,” Reverend Emmett said.
“It’s not enough,” Ian said.
They had both taken their seats now at the lace-covered table. Reverend Emmett was brandishing a bone-handled carving set. He paused and looked at Ian.
“I mean,” Ian said, “maybe it’s not enough.”
“Well, of course it is,” Reverend Emmett told him. “How do you suppose I learned? No one is born knowing.”
He started slicing the roast. Plainly it was overdone—a charred black knob glued fast to the pan it had been cooked in. “When I began seminary,” he said, sawing away manfully, “I had every possible misconception. I thought I was entering upon a career that was stable and comfortable, my father’s career—a family business like any other. I envisioned how Father and I would sit together in his study over sherry and ponder obscure interpretations of the New Testament. Finally he would think well of me; he would listen to my opinions. But it didn’t happen that way. What happened was I started reading the Bible, really reading it, and by the time I’d finished, my father wasn’t speaking to me and my fiancée had left me and all my classmates thought I was some kind of mental case.”
He laid down his knife. “Oh, dear,” he said, “that’s not the point I was trying to make.”
Ian laughed. Reverend Emmett glanced at him in surprise, and then he laughed too.
“Also, this meat is inedible, isn’t it?” he said. “Let’s face it, I’m a terrible cook.”
“We could always fill up on salad,” Ian told him.
“We could, but you know what I’d really like? I’d like to polish off that dip, your onion dip. That was excellent!”
“Let’s do it, then,” Ian said.
So while he helped himself to the salad, Reverend Emmett went out to the kitchen for the chips and dip. “No,” he said, returning, “that wasn’t my point at all, believe me. No, my point was … well, the ministry is like anything else: a matter of trial and error. I’ve made so many errors! In the hospital it seemed they all came back to me. I lay on that bed and looked at the ceiling and all my errors came scrolling across those dotted soundproof panels.”
“I’ve never seen you make an error.”
“Oh, Ian,” Reverend Emmett said, shaking his head. He noticed a blob of dip on his finger and reached for a linen napkin. “When I was starting out, my church was going to be perfect,” he