Silence again. “Did he say when he was coming? Did he say why?”
“He said he would come in the next week or two. That’s about all.”
“Well, that’s wonderful.” He said this without a trace of conviction. “Would your father feel up to a visit this afternoon?”
“I think he would.”
As he followed her down the walk to open the gate for her, he said, “It might be best if he doesn’t get his hopes too high.” Then they laughed. He said, “Well, there’s not much we can do about that.” But Glory had her own hopes, which were also too high — that this visit would happen at all, that it would be interesting, and that Jack would not remember her as the least tolerable, the most officious, the least to be trusted of his brothers and sisters. She thought and hoped he might hardly remember her.
WHEN SHE CAME HOME SHE FOUND THAT HER FATHER had written his letter, addressed it, and sealed it. “Yes, I put a little check in there just to be sure. Travel is expensive these days. I hope it won’t offend him, but I thought it was a way to emphasize how eager we are to see him. I thought it was a good idea on balance. I’ll take it out if you think I ought to—”
“He won’t be offended, Papa. You’ve always sent little checks.”
“Well, I just worry he might not remember, you know, my eccentricities. I should have waited so you could take a look at what I wrote. I just thought we’d want to get it in the mail. He’ll be waiting to hear. If it is ‘not inconvenient.’ Imagine! We certainly don’t want him to worry about that!”
“I’m sure he was just being polite.”
“Very polite. Yes. He might have been writing to a stranger. But here I am finding fault.”
She kissed his cheek. “I’ll take this to the post office.”
“I believe it is quite legible. The address is clear enough, I think.” He said, “I worried about that, the way my hands were trembling there for a while. I should have let you look it over. I hope he’ll be able to read it.”
“It will be just fine,” she said. But she knew he did not want any wholly sufficient, entirely persuasive assurance. If he was disappointed and Jack did not come home, he could tell himself that the fault was his own, taking the bitterness of it all on himself and sparing his miscreant son. He’d have done the same for any of them, had done it for her, she knew. But it was for Jack he had always devised and deployed his greatest strategies of — what to call it — rescue. He used to say, “That boy has really kept me on my knees!” He seemed to have persuaded himself that this was yet another blessing.
Ames arrived and the two of them put their heads together over the checkerboard. There were so many jokes between them. Once when they were boys in seminary they were walking across a bridge, arguing about some point of doctrine. A wind had blown her father’s hat into the water, and he had rolled up his pant legs and walked in the river after it, not gaining on it at all, still disputing, as it sailed along in the current. “I was winning that argument!” her father said.
“Well, I was laughing too hard to keep up my side of it.” The hat finally caught on a snag, and that was the whole story, but it always made them laugh. The joke seemed to be that once they were very young and now they were very old, and that they had been the same day after day and were somehow at the end of it all so utterly changed. In a calm, affectionate way they studied each other.
Ames said, “I understand that boy of yours is coming home.”
“So he tells me. He sent a letter.”
“Will the brothers and sisters be coming, too?”
Her father shook his head. “I’ve made some phone calls.” There it was, the parting of the sea. “They agree it would be best for them to wait until he wants to see them. He was never much at ease with them. I believe I was at fault in that. Of course, it’s good that Glory is here to help,” he said, remembering she was in the room. So she went into the parlor, sat beside the muttering radio, and worked a crossword puzzle. She thought, Is it good that I am here? That might be true. I will have to remember not to be angry. She reminded herself of this because Jack would probably still be insufferable and she had spent all her patience elsewhere.
WHAT FOLLOWED WERE WEEKS OF TROUBLE AND DISRUPtion, dealing with the old man’s anticipation and anxiety and then his disappointment, every one of which made him restless and sleepless and cross. She spent the days coaxing her father to eat. The refrigerator and the pantry were stocked with everything he thought he remembered Jack’s having a liking for, and he suspected Glory of wanting to give up too soon and eat it all on the pretext of avoiding waste. So he would accept nothing but a bowl of oatmeal or a poached egg, while skin thickened on cream pies and lettuce went limp. She had worried about what to do with it all if Jack never came. The thought of sitting down to a stale, humiliated feast with her
