What had she thought? That he had dropped his suitcase out the window, absconding like someone trying to cheat the landlord? Why would he do that? But why did he do anything — come home, for example? She heard him go downstairs again, and she heard her father say, “Yes, yes, we were beginning to miss you, Jack! Glory’s around here somewhere—” So she went down to the kitchen and there he was, studying the wound in his hand.
“How is it?” she asked.
“Mending nicely, thanks.” His glance was mild, unreadable. “I was out looking the place over. What do people do for work around here?”
“Well, that’s a good question,” she said. “Aside from farming, there’s the grocery store and the dry-goods store and the barbershop and the gas station and the bank.”
“Teachers are always needed!” the old man shouted from his chair, and Jack said, “I guess I’d better bring him in here, hadn’t I.”
His father was already halfway down the hall, but he let Jack take his arm. He even handed him his cane, as if all caution and struggle ended when he had Jack to lean on. “Yes!” he said. “I have never known it to be true that an educated man could not find work as a schoolteacher! There are more children every day! I notice them everywhere!” Jack helped him into his place at the table. “They pass by in the street!” he said, as if he thought he might have weakened his case by overstating it.
Jack gave him a glass of water. “I don’t really think I’m cut out to be a schoolteacher,” he said.
“Well, I hope you’ll give it some thought!”
“Yes, sir, I will. Is this today’s newspaper?”
His father said, “Yesterday’s, I believe. Not that it makes much difference. I put it aside because I didn’t quite finish the crossword puzzle.”
“Good. I’ll read my horoscope. I’ve sort of forgotten what I did yesterday. Here. It says new enterprises are favored. I guess I missed my chance.”
“That’s the only thing it ever says! That’s probably what mine says!”
“Yes, sir, it is. We have the same sign. And here’s yours, Glory. ‘Curiosity is not always welcome. Consider self-restraint.’” He smiled at her, folded the paper, and tucked it under his arm.
She felt herself blush hotly and, she knew, visibly. But he looked away from her quickly enough, almost, to make her believe he had not meant to embarrass her. Maybe the horoscope was real after all. She decided it was better to assume it was real, because if she took offense she would be confessing, and seeming to confess to worse by far than she had done, not that there was anything wrong with what she had done. And if she found out it was not real, that he was taunting her, everything would only be harder. That was the decision of the moment, and when she considered it afterward, she was grateful to herself for having made it. Consider self-restraint indeed, when she bit her tongue twenty times a day. All she had wanted when she stepped into his room was to know whether she had to begin hinting to her poor old father that Jack was gone again. It was not her fault that so ridiculous a fear was justified. And she did not intend to notice now that nothing suggested he had been drinking.
“I believe I’ll go out for a little walk,” she said. It was late enough to have made her father worry, if he had been paying attention. But he was consulting with Jack about the crossword puzzle.
She was afraid to be angry, and that made her angry. What right did he have to take over the house this way? Granting he had as much claim to it as she did, the only difference being that she had spent some months caring for the house and her father before he arrived. Now he seemed inclined to help with the old man, too, and he did it well, and as if something were communicated in it that made it more a gracious ceremony than the acting out of duty or obligation. A tacit agreement had formed between the two men that Jack would help his father with the bathing and changing that had been the uneasiest part of her caring for him, and that was a great relief, since he had been reluctant to accept the attention he needed. The fact was that she had taken comfort from the thought that her duty was plain and that a sense of obligation was becoming in anyone and so on. But things were better with Jack in the house.
“Insinuating” is an ugly word, snakey. She’d have thought of a better one if she could. He had resumed his place in his father’s heart, that was clear. She believed that in twenty years there might have been four letters, because when she was newly returned to her father’s house she went to the big Bible with the altogether blameless intention of soothing her mind with a psalm or two, and the Bible opened on four letters, tucked between the Testaments. The envelopes were worn enough to make her think the letters might have some family interest, but when she saw the return addresses, she put them back unread. Whatever had passed between father and son, their father had not seen fit to tell any of the rest of them, at least as far as she knew. Jack had ceased to be spoken of, almost. Now here he was, without a word of explanation, crowding her out of that big, empty house, or so it seemed to her sometimes.
