The dining room was immutable, like the rest of the house. But it was oppressive in ways that could easily have been changed. If she could have taken down the plum-colored drapes that hung over the lace curtains that covered the window shades, she’d have done it in a minute. If she could have taken up the plum-colored carpet with lavender fins or fans or fronds in a border around it. She’d have cleared the sideboard of the clutter of knickknacks, gifts displayed as a courtesy to their givers, most of whom by now would have gone to their reward. Porcelain cats and dogs and birds, milk-glass compote dishes. But in this place of solemn and perpetual evening, every family joy had been given its occasion, and here they would celebrate Jack’s homecoming, if he woke up in time. When her father had been up and dressed for half an hour, he said, “You might just go knock at his door,” and then they heard him on the stairs.
He stepped through the doorway and paused there. He was wearing his jacket and tie. He looked tentative, as if he were afraid he might presume, and as if he would be happier somewhere else. He looked like the old Jack. Her father must have thought so, too, because he was clearly moved to see him. A moment passed before he said, “Come in, son. Sit down, sit down.”
Glory said, “You can light the candles, Jack.” She went into the kitchen for the roast and came back to find the two of them silent in the candlelight, her father lost in thought, Jack toying with a matchbook. Twenty years before, they had had a quiet conversation in that room. She should have thought of that. She should have served dinner in the kitchen.
When the biscuits were on the table and she had taken her place, the old man rose from his chair to address the Lord. “Dearest Father,” he said, “Father whose love, and whose strength, are unchanging, in whose eyes we too are unchanging, still your beloved children, however our fleshly garment may soil and wear—”
Jack smiled to himself, and touched the scar beneath his eye.
“Holy Father,” the old man said. “I have rehearsed this prayer in my mind a thousand times, this prayer of gratitude and rejoicing, as I waited for an evening like this one. Because I always knew the time would come. And now I find that words fail me. They do. Because while I was waiting I got old. I don’t remember those prayers now, but I remember the joy they gave me at the time, which was the confidence that someday I would say one or another of them here at this table. If I lived. I thought my good wife might be here, too. We do miss her. Well, I thank you for that joy, which helped through hard times. It helped very much.” He paused.
“But when I think what it is that brings us to our Father, it might be grief or sickness — trouble of some sort. Weariness. And then there we are, and it’s a good thing at such times to know we have a Father, whose joy it is to welcome us home. It really is. Still, humanly speaking, there is that trouble, that sorrow, and a Father has to be aware of it. He can’t help it. So there is a sadness even in great blessing, which can be a hard thing to understand.” He seemed to ponder.
“Lord, put the veil of time and sorrow aside for us. Restore us to those we love. And restore the ones we love to us. We do long for them—”
Jack said softly, “Amen.” His father looked up at him, so he shrugged and smiled and said, as if by way of explanation, “Amen.”
“Yes, well, I was finished, really. I’m sorry I went on.”
“No, sir. I’m sorry — I didn’t—” He put his hand to his face and laughed.
His father said, “No need to apologize, Jack! Here you’ve only been home a few hours and I have you apologizing to me! No! We can’t have that, can we now!” He put his hand very gently on Jack’s shoulder. “And here I am letting our dinner get cold! Do you want to carve, Jack?”
“Maybe Glory wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all,” she said, and she cut the roast, and gave the first piece to her father, the second to herself, and the third to Jack. “There’s still a little pink to that one,” she said.
And he said, “It looks wonderful. Thank you.”
Her father strove manfully to generate conversation at a level of undamaging abstraction. “I believe the threat of atomic war is very real!” he said. “This is a point on which Ames and I do not agree! He has never made a proper estimate of the force of sheer
