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By Root 1335 0

other listening bodies. But something was different today. The deeper Mitchell went inside himself, the more troubled he was. Instead of his previous happiness, he felt a creeping unease, as if the floor were about to give way beneath him. He couldn’t testify that what he then experienced was an Indwelling of the Light. Though the Quakers believed that Christ revealed himself to every person, without intermediaries, and that each person was able to take part in a continuing revelation, the things Mitchell saw weren’t revelations of a universal significance. A still, small voice was speaking to him, but it was saying things he didn’t want to hear. Suddenly, as if he was truly in touch with his Deep Self and could view his situation objectively, Mitchell understood why making love with Madeleine had felt as strangely empty as it had. It was because Madeleine hadn’t been coming to him; she’d only been leaving Bankhead. After opposing her parents all summer, Madeleine was giving in to the necessity of an annulment. In order to make that clear to herself, she’d come up to Mitchell’s bedroom in the attic.

He was her survival kit.

The truth poured into him like light, and if any of the Friends nearby noticed Mitchell wiping his eyes, they gave no sign.

He cried for the last ten minutes, as quietly as he could. At some point, the voice also told Mitchell that, in addition to never living with Madeleine, he would never go to divinity school, either. It was unclear what he was going to do with his life, but he wasn’t going to be a monk, or a minister, or even a scholar. The voice was urging him to write Professor Richter to tell him so.

But that was all the understanding the Light brought him, because a minute later Clyde Pettengill shook hands with his wife, Mildred, and then everyone in the Meeting House was shaking hands.

Outside, Claire Ruth had set up muffins and coffee on the picnic table, but Mitchell didn’t stay for conversation. He headed along the path, past the Quaker cemetery, where the markers bore no names.

A half hour later, he entered the front door on Wilson Lane. He heard Madeleine moving around in her bedroom, and climbed the stairs.

As he entered her room, Madeleine glanced away, long enough for Mitchell to confirm his intuition.

He didn’t let things get any more awkward than they already were, and spoke quickly.

“You know that letter I sent you? From India?”

“That I didn’t get?”

“That’s the one. My memory of it’s a little sketchy, for the reasons I mentioned. But there was one part, at the end, where I said I was going to tell you something, ask you something, but I had to do it in person.”

Madeleine waited.

“It’s a literary question.”

“O.K.”

“From the books you read for your thesis, and for your article—the Austen and the James and everything—was there any novel where the heroine gets married to the wrong guy and then realizes it, and then the other suitor shows up, some guy who’s always been in love with her, and then they get together, but finally the second suitor realizes that the last thing the woman needs is to get married again, that she’s got more important things to do with her life? And so finally the guy doesn’t propose at all, even though he still loves her? Is there any book that ends like that?”

“No,” Madeleine said. “I don’t think there’s one like that.”

“But do you think that would be good? As an ending?”

He looked at Madeleine. She wasn’t so special, maybe. She was his ideal, but an early conception of it, and he would get over it in time. Mitchell gave her a slightly goofy smile. He was feeling a lot better about himself, as if he might do some good in the world.

Madeleine sat down on a packing box. Her face looked more drawn than usual, and older. She narrowed her eyes, as if trying to bring him into focus.

A moving van rolled down the street, shaking the house, the arthritic Great Dane next door bellowing hoarsely after it.

And Madeleine kept squinting, as though Mitchell was already far away, until finally, smiling gratefully, she answered, “Yes.”

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