whether in Calvary Lutheran or at Christ the Redeemer, which was the Episcopal church we attended in Milwaukee, through isolated lines from the Bible, sometimes out of context. From the Letter of Paul to the Philippians, for example:
In simple ideas or graceful language, I felt a resonance that was absent when I took Communion or said most prayers. (The Nicene Creed, with its exclusionary, aggressive certainty, made me particularly uncomfortable, and sometimes, if I thought I could do so inconspicuously, I refrained from saying it; but if, for instance, it was Christmas Eve and I was in the pew next to Priscilla Blackwell, that simply wasn’t a stand worth taking.) I considered it important to raise Ella in the church, if for no other reason than that years in the future, should she wish to take solace in religion, she would have a foundation for doing so; she would not need to seek it out as a stranger. The irony, then, was that on most weekends, I was the one who made sure we attended Christ the Redeemer. Early on in our time in Milwaukee, Charlie had been enthusiastic, but I think that had been related more to establishing us as a married couple in the community than to his faith, which was of the default variety. In Charlie’s mind, of course there was a God; of course we ought to pray to Him, especially at Christmas and Easter and in times of unrest; and no, it was not wrong to impose on Him even with our smallest concerns (that was what, like a concierge at a fancy hotel, He was there for). In recent years, Charlie had become less diligent about going each Sunday to Christ the Redeemer, and sometimes Ella and I went without him; she attended Sunday school, which she loved because the teacher was a nineteen-year-old named Bonnie who had a prosthetic eye, and at the end of classes during which the children had behaved, she would remove it for them. Bonnie had lost the eye, Ella somberly informed me, when she was three and her older brother shot a rubber band at her, but Bonnie had long since forgiven her brother because, as Ella reminded me, quoting Jesus, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will forgive you.”
It was as I was concluding my reading of the Beatitudes that I looked out and caught sight of Harold Blackwell, sitting in the church’s second-to-last occupied row. This was when I first felt tears well in my eyes. Even Jadey had not come—I had told her she didn’t need to, and I’d had the sense she was relieved. Harold had made a special trip back to Wisconsin, I realized. And while my grandmother herself had been wary of Harold’s political leanings, I was very moved. When I returned to my seat in the first pew, sliding past Lars and my mother into the space between Ella and Charlie, Charlie squeezed my hand and whispered, “Nice job.”
After the homily, Pastor Kluting delivered a eulogy that I didn’t think captured my grandmother—among other things, he referred to her as a pillar of the Riley community—and following the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Prayer of Commendation, the final hymn we sang was “Lift High the Cross.” Again I became choked up. It wasn’t that anything in the song reflected my grandmother, but it was a song I had heard and sung since I was a child, and as the organ played and the church was filled, or partially filled, by the voices of people who knew my family, there reared up in me a terrible sadness. Oh, how different my life would have been had I not grown up in the same house with my grandmother, how much narrower and blander! She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant and contradictory place, and it had made me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions. And would I have married Charlie if not for my grandmother? Surely not, less because of her high opinion of him on their first meeting than because of the qualities they shared, the traits I valued in him because I’d valued them first in her: mischief and humor and irreverence, an implied intelligence rather than an asserted one. He stood beside me now, I could see his gray suit in my peripheral vision, and I thought, hadn’t my grandmother been right about everything else? From fashion to education to helping me end my mistaken pregnancy, when had she not looked out for me, what had she ever misguessed? And must not she have been right, therefore, about him, too?
Her casket was on wheels, and the pallbearers were men from the funeral director’s office. During the last verse of the song, they walked down the aisle first, then the pastor, then the family members, and I could tell that my mother was smiling at people hostess-style and also crying. In the car en route to the cemetery—we had not rented a limousine, even then, people in Riley didn’t do such things—Ella leaned into the front seat and tapped my shoulder; Charlie was driving, and I was sitting in the passenger seat. When I turned, Ella seemed earnest, as if she’d been giving the subject serious thought. She said, “I think Granny would like my dress.”
AT THE RECEPTION
afterward, which was at our house on Amity Lane, I had just set a dish of Jell-O salad on the dining room table when Charlie slipped up behind me and said, “You think you’ll want to linger here awhile or get on the road?” He was chewing the last of something—it appeared to be the cold bacon-cheese dip, served with potato chips, that I had only ever seen at funerals—and he swallowed and wiped his hands on a cocktail napkin.
“Are you in a hurry?” I asked.
“I don’t want to make you feel pressed, so if you’re trying to tie up loose ends here, maybe Ella and I should catch a ride back with Dad. Just a thought.”
Nearly everyone from the funeral was sprinkled in the living room and dining room. The graveside ceremony had been short, and we’d arrived back at the house fifteen minutes earlier. Harold approached us then, standing between Charlie and me and setting a hand on each of our backs. (Since our arrival at the house, I’d sensed the other guests noticing Harold’s presence, nudging one another and whispering
But Harold either didn’t realize it or was so accustomed to it, he paid no attention.) He said, “Alice, on behalf of the extended family, all of us are holding you and your grandmother in our hearts today.”
“It was very good of you to come,” I said.
“Where could I be that would be more important? I’m only sorry I have to take off now, but I’m due in San Diego for a speech this evening. As you can imagine, Priscilla was terribly sorry to miss being here.”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“We just couldn’t love you one bit more,” he said, and as we hugged, I thought how there was nothing else in the world as endearing to me as Harold Blackwell’s sentimental streak. It was enough to make me wonder if there were other elected officials I was as wrong about as I’d been about him. Were there men (and it would be primarily men) who, instead of creating personas that were fakely righteous and honorable, were the opposite: fakely cruel, fakely callous? Men who, through the distortion of the media or a perceived pressure to act a certain way, sublimated, at least in public, their own decency and kindness?
When our embrace was finished, Harold patted Charlie on the shoulder. “Look after her, son,” he said, and Charlie said, “Think you’ve got room in your Batmobile for two more?”
“Sweetheart, you can stay,” I said. “You really won’t be in the way.”
