His father said, “Your obligations are your problem if you can meet them. If not, they become my problem. Things must be seen to. It’s only decent.”
Fealty to kin, actual and imagined, and the protection of them, possible or not, were their father’s pride, his strongest instinct, and his chief source of satisfaction, frustration, and anxiety. He had drawn himself up so that his words would have the force and dignity of their intent, but his eyes were closed and his mouth had turned down and the rectitude of his posture exposed his narrowed shoulders and his fallen throat. Jack gazed at him as if his father were the apparition of all the grief and weariness he had cost him, still gallant in his weakness, ready to be saddened again, ready to be burdened again.
“No. No, sir. Another time.”
“You know there won’t be another time. You’re planning to leave now.”
“I might not be here much longer. I’m trying to make some decisions.”
His father’s head fell to the side. He said, “I hope very much you will decide to stay. Stay for a while.”
Jack said, “That’s very kind.”
“No, it is just a hope of mine. It will be kind of you to give it a little consideration, if you can. Now Glory will help me to bed.”
THE NEXT MORNING THE OLD MAN POKED HIS SPOON AT his cereal for a little while, and then he said, “I want to talk with Ames. You can take me there in the DeSoto.”
The car worked well enough for errands, and Glory had used it to drive the Ameses to the river for a birthday picnic. Her father had not felt comfortable enough to go along that day, and when she mentioned it to Jack, he laughed at the idea—“Et ego in Arcadia”—but at least everything had gone well enough with the car to encourage her to make more use of it. Her father thought often about the DeSoto. In his mind it was an open promise of mobility, a puissance that could also be a boon to his good friend. So his thinking about it was generous and agreeable, tonic. He had not, however, consented to ride in it since the day Jack took them out to the country.
“Mrs. Ames and the boy will be there,” he said.
“I’ll take them to the matinee.”
“Very good.”
Glory arranged the day to her father’s specifications, and after lunch she helped him down the stairs and into the car. There was a ringing loneliness in the house with Jack always away somewhere, and it felt good to her to leave it for a while, to take her father away from it. She drove him past the church and past the war memorial to let him admire the gardens and the trees, and then she took him to Ames’s house and helped him again, out of the car, up the walk, up the steps. Ames seemed startled to find him at his door.
“Yes,” the old man said, “I thought you and I could look after each other while the women are out at the movies. I came over here in the DeSoto.”
Ames pulled a chair away from the table. “Unless you would rather sit somewhere else.”
Boughton said, “No, this has always been my chair, hasn’t it. My pew.” He sat down and hung his cane from the edge of the table and closed his eyes. Lila and Robby came downstairs, Robby with his hair neatly parted and his cheeks pink with scrubbing. Glory took them off to the musty little movie theater, where they watched good triumph over evil by means of some six-shooters and a posse. “Say your prayers!” said the bad guy to the harmless citizen trapped against a canyon wall. And in the moment he so graciously allowed his captive, horses came clattering up from behind him and he was made to drop his gun. Robby was amazed and gratified by this turn of events, which was as much as Glory could hope for. With previews and newsreels and a cartoon, and a short second feature in which good triumphed once again, more than two hours had passed by the time they came blinking out into afternoon sun.
The old men were still sitting at the table, and Jack was with them. He looked at Glory and smiled. “There was no one at home, so I thought something must be the matter. I came here—” She had not seen him for three days, except when he walked past her on the way to the door, saying nothing, tipping his hat as he left, or walked through the kitchen on the way to his room, saying only good night. It had never crossed her mind that he would come looking for them. If they had been there, it might have been the beginning of better times. Just the thought gave her a twinge of blighted joy. She wanted to look at him, to see how he was, but his smile was cool. He might be angry. He must think she had betrayed him. Well, she had betrayed him. Dear God, she hadn’t meant to, and what did that matter, when her father was here confiding in Ames again, telling him under the seal of old friendship what he suspected and what he feared, just as he had done in the endless, excruciating past. It was bad enough last night, the way he spoke to Jack. And now this. If her brother had had one surviving hope, she knew it was that he could find
