Free Home by Marilynne Robinson Page B

could not allow that to be true, especially since it was her father who seemed to be in hell. He had come to the last inch of his power to forgive, and there was Jack, still far beyond his reach. So he stood at the verge of despair, despite whatever her mother might say to talk him away from it and despite every prayer and text old Ames could muster.
    Her mother said to her once, “I believe that boy was born to break his father’s heart.” And once she said, “I have never seen Robert so afflicted. It frightens me”—speaking to her as to an adult. That evening Glory wrote the first of her letters to Jack, having no clear sense of what she should ask of him, except that he call or make a visit home for their father’s sake.
    Already she had driven her father out across the river into the country, tense with responsibility because she had only begun to drive, and excited and protective because suddenly her parents seemed to depend on her. She had waited in the car with her father outside the gate until a woman appeared in the door of the disheveled little house and called the dogs in. Her father got out of the car and waited beside it, hat in hand. Then a man walked out to the gate and stood with his hands on his hips eyeing the car. It was Jack’s convertible, after all. He said to her father, “Who are you? What do you mean, coming around here?”
    Her father said, “I am Robert Boughton. I understand that my family has some responsibility toward your daughter and her child. I have come to let you know we are aware of our obligation and ready to assume it—” And he offered an envelope, apologetically, almost diffidently, but the man spat on the ground and said, “What’s that? Money? Well, you can keep your damn money.” But the woman appeared in the doorway again, this time holding the baby, and when the man had walked off toward the barn she came out to the gate and said, “You can just leave it on the postthere.” Then she folded back the blanket that had concealed the infant’s face.
    A moment passed. Her father said, “Yes. I am Robert Boughton. This is my daughter.” The woman nodded, turned away from them, and walked back to the house. A girl in a blue nightgown came out on the stoop and took the baby into her arms. She nuzzled its cheek, watching them until they drove away.
    J ACK DID COME HOME TO SPEAK WITH HER FATHER . G LORY thought this might have been an effect of her letter because when after half an hour of quiet talk behind a closed door he left the dining room and saw her in the parlor, sitting in their mother’s chair, he had said, “Do you have another sermon for me?” He might have meant that his father had just preached to him, but he might also have meant he had felt the weight and seriousness of her letter, which did indeed draw upon every resource her sixteen-year indoctrination in moral sincerity had conferred on her, and upon all the certainty of her youth. She had spoken mainly of her father’s grief, since all the rest of it was too delicate and complicated. But she had settled on the solution to it all. She had arrived at one great hope.
    So she asked him, “Are you going to marry her?”
    He was very pale. He smiled—that strange, hard shame of his—and said, “You’ve seen her.”
    She said, “Well, what is Papa going to do—”
    “Do to me? Nothing. I mean, he’s going to forgive me.” He laughed. “And now I have a train to catch.”
    “You won’t even stay for supper?”
    He said, “Poor Pigtails,” and smiled at her and walked out the door.
    And twenty years passed. There was no way of knowing that day that anything absolute had happened. Her mother had been so upset she stayed in her room, no doubt waiting for him to cometo her seeking reconciliation. She would never see him again in this life. When evening fell no lights were put on, and supper-time came and went unremarked. Her father stepped out of the dining room and saw her in the dark parlor.