“Can’t you call her? I mean, I know she was calling from a phone booth. But couldn’t you call her family and ask how to reach her?”
He shook his head. “I have been warmly encouraged not to do that. By her father, no less.”
She brought him the book she meant to read next, The Paths of Glory.
“Your memoirs?”
She said, “The girls in this family got named for theological abstractions and the boys got named for human beings. That’s bad enough without our having to be teased about it for the rest of our lives.”
“Sorry. It just slipped out. No more jokes.”
“‘The paths of Glory lead but to the grave.’ Now you don’t have to struggle with the urge to say that, either.”
“Thank you,” he said. “What a relief!”
So he sat in the kitchen reading, drumming his fingers. He turned the book to the last few pages and read the ending. “Sad!” He put it aside. She gave him a bowl of walnuts and he shelled them. And he paced. And he stood on the porch, just outside the back door, and smoked.
Two hours passed and the phone rang.
Her father called, in his sleep, “Could you get that, Glory?”
“It’s probably for Jack, Papa.”
“No, Faith said in her note she’d be giving me a call. She hasn’t called in a number of days.”
“You talked to her yesterday.”
The phone rang again. She whispered to Jack, “Answer it!” because he was just standing there, looking at her. She took the phone off the hook and handed it to him, and then she went to her father’s room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked drowsy, but he seemed set on getting up, so she brought his robe.
She heard Jack clear his throat. “Hello?”
Her father said, “That’s a very good thing. He should talk with all his sisters and brothers. Every one of them. They are anxious to hear from him.”
Jack said, “What’s that? I can’t quite hear you! He did? When? I am talking louder! No, it’s not your fault, I know that! Yes, they do get upset!”
Her father said, “Well, I can’t imagine that there could be any reason to shout like that!”
Glory said, “It’s a bad connection, someone calling from a phone booth.”
“Well, I hope so. Otherwise I’ll have to call Faith and explain. And I really don’t know how I could explain his shouting at her like that. I really don’t. She has always been very fond of him.” His eyes were closed, but she combed his hair and helped him into his slippers.
“He would never shout at Faith, Papa. So it has to be someone else.”
“Yes,” the old man said. “I suppose I should have realized that.”
Glory was trying to distract her father from the conversation, and she was trying not to hear it herself, though Jack did sound alarmed, or aggrieved, and she could not help but wish she knew what the matter was.
“If the boys could keep looking!” he shouted. “I’ll pay them! I’ll send money!” A pause. “No, I wasn’t suggesting that! I mean, I’m sure you are all doing your best, Mrs. Johnson! Believe me! I certainly don’t blame you!”
Her father said, “Yes, he mentioned a Mrs. Johnson. He’s shouting at someone we don’t even know.”
“Please, if he turns up, call any time! Call collect! Yes, thank you, thank you!”
She followed her father down the hall to the kitchen. Jack was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up, rubbing his face. He stood up and smoothed back his hair. He was pale and his eyes were red. He said, “It’s nothing. A dog ran off. I promised someone I’d look after his dog.”
“Oh yes,” his father said. “All that shouting was about a dog.” He shook his head. Her father woke up gruff sometimes, or confused. Sometimes he needed an hour or so to come into himself. Jack couldn’t know that.
“It was about a dog,” he said softly, and he smiled at her, because they had spent those long hours together and she would understand the bitterness of his surprise. “I can’t be trusted with a dog.”
She said, “They do come back sometimes. I think you’d better sit down.”
He nodded and smiled, pale as she had ever seen him. “I’ll get past this,” he said. “I’ll be all right.” He took the chair she pulled out for him. “Thank you.” She gave him a glass of water. “Maybe I can make it up to him.” He shrugged.
His father was gazing at him, and Jack glanced up and then looked away, uneasy. The old man said, “Well, whatever the trouble is, I’ll help if I can. I think you must know that by now.”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“At this point I’m pretty much reduced to praying for you. Of course I do that anyway. If anything else comes to mind, let me know.”
“Yes, I will.”
When they were children their father had always avoided fault-finding, at least in the actual words he spoke to them. But there was from time to time a tone of rebuke in his voice that overrode the mildness of his intentions. She had not heard him speak that way in any number of years, and she watched Jack accept it now, patiently, as if he were hearing something necessary and true,
