Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [45]
The prayer was for the living. “We know Thy daughter Lucy is safely by Thy side,” Dr. Prescott intoned, “but we ask Thee to console those left behind. Comfort them, we pray, and ease their pain. Let Thy mercy pour like a healing balm upon their hearts.” Like a healing balm. Ian pictured something white and semiliquid—the bottle of lotion his mother kept by the kitchen sink, say—pleasantly scented with almonds. Could the balm soothe not just grief but guilt? Not just guilt but racking anguish over something impulsively done that could not be undone?
Ordinarily indifferent to prayers (or to anything else even vaguely religious), Ian listened to this one yearningly. He leaned forward in his seat as if he could ride the words all the way to heaven. He kept his eyes tightly shut. He thought, Please. Please. Please.
In the pews around him he heard a rustling and a creaking, and he opened his eyes and found the congregation rising. Struggling to his feet, he peered at the hymnbook Cicely held in front of him. “… with me,” he joined in belatedly, “fast falls the eventide …” His voice was a creak. He fell silent and listened to the others—to Cicely’s clear soprano, Mrs. Jordan’s plain, true alto, Dr. Prescott’s rich bass. “The darkness deepens,” they sang, “Lord, with me abide!” The voices ceased to be separate. They plaited themselves into a multistranded chord, and now it seemed the congregation was a single person—someone of great kindness and compassion, someone gentle and wise and forgiving. “In life, in death, O Lord,” they finished, “abide with me.” And then came the long, sighed “Amen.” They sat down. Ian sat too. His knees were trembling. He felt that everything had been drained away from him, all the grief and self-blame. He was limp and pure and pliant as an infant. He was, in fact, born again.
Through the burial in Pleasant Memory Cemetery and the car trip home, through the flurry of reclaiming the children, setting up the coffeepot, and greeting the guests who stopped by afterward, Ian wandered in a dreamlike state of mind. He traveled around the living room with a plate of butterscotch brownies, failing to notice it was empty till his brother-in-law pointed it out. “Earth to Ian,” Macy said, guffawing, and then Mrs. Jordan relieved Ian of the plate. Cicely came up from behind and slipped a hand into his. “Are you all right?” she asked him.
“Yes, fine,” he said.
Her fingertips were soft little nubbins because she bit her nails. Her breath gave off the metallic scent of Coca-Cola. Mrs. Jordan’s craggy face had a hinged and plated look, like an armadillo hide. Everything seemed very distinct, but also far away.
“It’s been too much,” Mrs. Jordan told Cicely. “Just too much to take in all at once. First Danny, and now Lucy!” She turned to draw one of the foreigners into the conversation; he was hovering hopefully nearby. “Why, I remember the day they announced their engagement!” she said. “Remember, Jim?”
“Jack,” the foreigner said.
“Jack, I was there when he brought her home. I’d come over to borrow the pinking shears and in they walked. Well, I knew right away what was what. Pretty little thing like that, who wouldn’t want to marry her?”
“Woe betide you,” Jack told Ian.
“Um …”
“O lud lud! Please to accept my lamentations.”
This must be the foreigner who was so devoted to Roget’s Thesaurus. Bee was always quoting choice remarks. Mrs. Jordan gave him a speculative stare. “I suppose in your culture, Lucy wouldn’t have lasted even this long,” she said. “Don’t they throw themselves on their husband’s pyre or something?”
“Pyre?”
“And now I reckon Doug and Bee will have to take on those poor children,” she told Ian.
Ian said, “Well, actually—”
“Just look at that little one. Did you ever see anything so precious?”
Ian followed her gaze. In the doorway to the hall, Daphne stood rocking unsteadily. Her dazzling white shoes—hard-soled and ankle-high—no doubt helped to keep her upright; but still, standing alone at ten months was quite an accomplishment, Ian suspected. Was this