Glory had rehearsed angry outbursts in anticipation of his arrival. Who do you think you are! and How can you be so inconsiderate! which became, as the days passed, How can you be so mean, cruel, vicious, and so on. She began to hope he would come so she could tell him exactly what she thought. Well, of course she was angry, with those loaves of banana bread ripening noisomely in the pantry. What right do you have! she stormed inwardly, knowing as she did that her father’s only prayers were that Jack would come, and that Jack would stay.
“He says here ‘for a while’! A while can be a significant amount of time!” They had Jack’s address after the Great Letter came, the one that made her father weep and tremble. Her father sent another note and a little check, in case the first had gone astray. And they waited. Jack’s letter lay open on the breakfast table and the supper table and the lamp table and the arm of the Morris chair. He had folded it away once, when Reverend Ames came for checkers, presumably because he did not want a doubtful glance to fall on it.
“Yes, he will definitely be coming,” he would conclude, as if uncertainty on that point had to do with the language of the letter. Two weeks passed, then three days. Then came the Telephone Call, and her father actually spoke with Jack, actually heard his voice. “He says he will be here day after tomorrow!” Her father’s anxiety turned to misery without ever losing the quality of patience. “I believe it could only be trouble of a serious kind that would account for this delay!” he said, comforting himself by terrifying himself. Another week, then the Second Telephone Call, again with the information that he would arrive in two days. Then four days passed, and there he was, standing in the back porch, a thin man in a brown suit, tapping his hat against his pant leg as if he could not make up his mind whether to knock on the glass or turn the knob or simply to leave again. He was watching her, as if suddenly reminded of an irritant or an obstacle, watching her with the kind of directness that forgets to conceal itself. She was a problem he had not taken into account. He did not expect to find me here, she thought. He is not happy to see me.
She opened the door. “Jack,” she said, “I was about to give up on you. Come in.” She wondered if she would have recognized him if she had passed him on the street. He was pale and unshaven, and there was a nick of scar under his eye.
“Well, here I am.” He shrugged. “Should I come in?” He seemed to be asking her advice as well as her permission.
“Yes, of course. You can’t imagine how much he has worried.”
“Is he here?”
Where else would he be? “He’s here. He’s sleeping.”
“I’m sorry I’m late. I tried to make a phone call and the bus left without me.”
“You should have called Papa.”
He looked at her. “The phone was in a bar,” he said. He was quiet, matter-of-fact. “I would have cleaned up a little, but I lost the bag that had my razor in it.” He touched the stubble on his jaw with a kind of concern, as if it were an abrasion. He had always been fastidious about such things.
“No matter. You can use Papa’s razor. Sit down. I’ll get you some coffee.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” She didn’t say it was late for him to start worrying about that. He was distant and respectful and tentative. In this, at least, he was so much like the brother of her memory that she knew one hard look from her might send him away, defeating all her prayers, not to mention her father’s prayers, which were unceasing. If he came and left again while her father was sleeping, would she ever tell the old man he had come and gone? Would she tell him it was her anger that had driven him away, this thin, weary, unkempt man who had been reluctant even to step through the door? And he had come to the kitchen door, a custom of the family from their childhood, because their mother was almost always in the warm kitchen, waiting for them. He must have done it unreflectingly, obedient to old habit. Like a ghost, she thought.
“It’s no trouble,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Thank you. Glory. That’s good to know.”
He hesitated over her name, maybe because he was not absolutely certain which sister he was dealing with, maybe because he did not wish to seem too familiar. Maybe because familiarity required an effort. She started putting water in the percolator. But he said, “I’m sorry about this — could I lie down for a little while?” He put his hand to his face. That gesture, she thought. “This shouldn’t have happened. I’ve been all right for a long time.”
“Sure, you go rest. I’ll get the aspirin.” She said, “It seems like old times, sneaking you upstairs with a bottle of aspirin.” She had meant
