Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [47]
Ian awoke and blinked at the crack of light beneath the door. Winston was snoring. Someone’s radio was playing. He heard the scrape of a chair down the hall and carefree, unthinking laughter.
Sunday morning he rode into town on the college’s little blue church bus. Most of the passengers were students he’d never laid eyes on before, although he did recognize his lab partner, dressed in a hard-surfaced, voluminous gray coat. He pretended not to see her and proceeded toward the long seat at the rear, where he settled between two boys with haircuts so short and suits so tidy that they might have stepped out of the 1950s. Really this was a sort of losers’ bus, he realized, and he had an impulse to jump off while he still could. But then the senior class secretary boarded—a poised, attractive girl—and he felt reassured. He rode through the stubbled farmlands with his eyes fixed straight ahead, while the boy on his left fingered a rosary and the boy on his right whispered over a Bible.
At the courthouse square in Sumner, the bus stopped and everyone disembarked. Ian chose to follow the largest group of students, which included the senior class secretary and also a relatively normal-looking freshman named Eddie something whom he’d seen around the dorm. He and Eddie fell into step together, and Eddie said, “You on your way to Leeds Memorial?”
“Well, yeah, I guess so.”
Eddie nodded. “It’s not too bad,” he said. “I go every week on account of my grandmother’s paying me.”
“Paying you?”
“If I don’t miss a Sunday all year I get a check for a hundred bucks.”
“Gosh,” Ian said.
Leeds Memorial was a stately brick building with a white interior and dark, varnished pews. The choir sounded professional, and they sang the opening hymn on their own while the congregation stayed seated. Maybe that was why Ian didn’t have much feeling about it. It was only music, that was all—something unfamiliar, classical-sounding, flawlessly performed. Maybe the whole church had to be singing along.
The theme of the day was harvest, because they were drawing close to Thanksgiving. The Bible reading referred to the reaping of grain, and the sermon had to do with resting after one’s labors. The pastor—a slouching, easygoing, just-one-of-the-guys type with a sweater vest showing beneath his suit coat—counseled his listeners to be kind to themselves, to take time for themselves in the midst of the hurly-burly. Ian felt enormous yawns hollowing the back of his throat. Finally the organist began thrumming out a series of chords, and the sermon came to an end and everyone rose. The hymn was “Bringing in the Sheaves.” It was a simpleminded, seesawing sort of tune, Ian felt, and the collective voice of the congregation had a note of fluty gentility, as if dominated by the dressed-up old ladies lining the pews.
Walking back to the bus, Eddie asked if he’d be coming every Sunday.
Ian said he doubted it.
His Thanksgiving vacation was fractious and disorganized; Lucy’s children had still not been claimed. By now they had moved in upon the household in full force. Their toys littered the living room, their boats and ducks crowded the bathroom, and Daphne’s real crib—much larger than the Port-a-Crib—cramped his bedroom. He was alarmed at how haggard his mother looked, and how heavy and big-bellied. The waistband of her slacks was extended with one of those oversized safety pins women once decorated their kilts with. And the holiday dinner she served was halfhearted—no hors d’oeuvres, not even beforehand, and the turkey unstuffed and the pies store-bought. Even the company seemed lacking. Claudia snapped at her children, Macy kept drifting away from the table to watch a football game on TV, and the foreigners had to leave before dessert in order to meet the plane of a new arrival. All in all, it was a relief to have the meal over with.
He tried to help with the children as much as possible. He played endless games of Parcheesi; he read and reread The Sad Little Bunny. And he rose at least once each night to rock Daphne back to sleep, sometimes nodding off himself