Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler [51]
Thomas, on the other hand, could cause a serious puncture wound if he accidentally poked you with his elbow. Holding him on your lap was like holding a bunch of coat hangers. Which didn’t prevent his trying to climb up there, heaven knows. He had the nuzzling, desperate manner of a small dog starved for attention, which unfortunately lessened his appeal; while Agatha, who managed to act both sullen and ingratiating, came across as sly. Ian had seen how grownups (even his mother, even his earth-mother sister) turned narrow-eyed in Agatha’s presence. It seemed that only Ian knew how these children felt: how scary they found every waking minute.
Why, being a child at all was scary! Wasn’t that what grownups’ nightmares so often reflected—the nightmare of running but getting nowhere, the nightmare of the test you hadn’t studied for or the play you hadn’t rehearsed? Powerlessness, outsiderness. Murmurs over your head about something everyone knows but you.
• • •
He finished moving a family into a row house on York Road and went home from there on foot, passing a series of shabby stores. The job had run unusually late. It was after seven on a dismal January evening, and most places had closed. One window, though, glowed yellow—a wide expanse of plate glass with CHURCH OF THE SECOND CHANCE arching across it in block letters. Ian couldn’t see inside because the paper shade was lowered. He walked on by. Behind him a hymn began. “Something something something lead us …” He missed most of the words, but the voices were strong and joyful, overlaid by a single tenor that rose above the rest.
He paused at the intersection, the arches of his sneakers teetering on the curb. He peered at the DON’T WALK sign for a moment. Then he turned and headed back to the church.
A shopkeeper’s bell jingled when he opened the door. The singers looked around—some fifteen or twenty people, standing in rows with their backs to him—and smiled before they looked away again. They were facing a tall, black-haired man in a tieless white shirt and black trousers. The pulpit was an ordinary store counter. The floor was green linoleum. The lights overhead were long fluorescent tubes and one tube flickered rapidly, giving Ian the impression that he had a twitch in his eyelid.
“Blessed Jesus! Blessed Jesus!” the congregation sang. It was a tender, affectionate cry that sounded personally welcoming. Ian found his way to an empty spot beside a woman in a white uniform, a nurse or a waitress. Although she didn’t look at him, she moved closer and angled her hymnal so he could follow the words. The hymnal was one of those pocket-sized pamphlets handed out free at public sing-alongs. There wasn’t any accompaniment, not even a piano. And the pews—as Ian realized when the hymn came to an end and everyone sat down—were plain gray metal folding chairs, the kind you’d see at a bridge game.
“Friends,” the minister said, in a sensible, almost conversational tone. “And guests,” he added, nodding at Ian. All over again, the others turned and smiled. Ian smiled back, maybe a little too broadly. He had the feeling he was their first and only visitor.
“We have reached that point in the service,” the minister said, “when any person here is invited to step forward and ask for our prayers. No request is too great, no request is trivial in the eyes of God our Father.”
Ian thought of the plasterer who’d repaired his parents’ bathroom ceiling, NO JOB TOO LARGE OR TOO SMALL, his panel truck had read. He brushed the thought away. He watched a very fat young woman heave herself to her feet just in front of him.