Jack said, “Please don’t worry about it. It really doesn’t matter,” and went up to his room.
Days passed without any word from Ames. Their father read and prayed and brooded, and every time the telephone rang he said, “If it’s Ames, tell him I’m dead.”
HER FATHER HAD SUFFERED A TERRIBLE SHOCK. IT WAS his habit to consider Ames another self, for most purposes. And here his son, for whose spiritual comfort and peace he had prayed endlessly, often enough in Ames’s kitchen, in his hearing, and in full confidence that his friend seconded his prayers — his son had made himself vulnerable to him and had been injured, insulted. That Jack was a wound in his father’s heart, a terrible tenderness, was as fully known to Ames, almost, as it was to the Lord. And here the boy had put on a suit and tie — he had borrowed one of his father’s ties — and gotten himself to church, for heaven’s sake, despite reluctance, despite even fear, to judge by the potency of his reluctance. Glory could read her father’s thoughts as they sat together over their breakfast that morning — the look of vindication, of confidence that things were miraculously about to come right. He had stood at the front of his own church year after year, hoping to be able to preach again about grace and the loving heart of Christ to his aloof, his endlessly lonely son. When he smiled to himself, he was certainly imagining himself in that pulpit, amazed and so grateful. Who better than Jack’s second father, his father’s second self, to say the words of welcome and comfort he could not say? It would never have occurred to him that Ames would not speak to the boy as if from his own heart.
Then this incomprehensible disappointment. The old man muttered and stared, his eyes flickering over the memory of the kindnesses he had done Ames through all those years, the trust he had placed in him. He frowned as he did when he was rehearsing grievance and rebuke. Never since the darkest storms of his retirement had she seen him so morose.
Over the decades there had been actual shouting matches between Ames and her father, set off by matters so abstruse no one dared attempt mediation. Once, when her mother tried to say something emollient about the communion of saints, her father, in the persisting heat of disputation, said, “That’s just foolish!” and she terrified them all by packing a bag. Sometimes the older children tried to soothe, to make peace, but in fact the friendship was not threatened but secured by a mutual intelligibility so profound it enabled them to sustain for days an argument incomprehensible to those around them, to drop it when they wearied of it and then to take it up again just where they had left it. No one could predict when the warmth of their pleasure in argument would kindle and flare into mutual irritation, though weariness and bad weather were factors.
But in all those years neither of them had ever done the other any harm. This particular injury, utterly unexpected, to the old man’s dearest affection — it was without question the costliest of them all, therefore most precious to him — was hardly to be imagined. Her father was in mourning, and Ames stayed away, no doubt waiting for a sign that he had not alienated the Boughtons forever. He would be in mourning, too.
SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE. AMES ALREADY HAD THEIR copies of Life and The Nation, and he had his own subscriptions to Christian Century and the Post. So far as Glory knew, there were no books around the house that he had lent their father, or that he had said he would like to borrow. Every vegetable and flower they grew Lila grew more abundantly. Glory decided to make a batch of cookies. But Jack came downstairs with a faded copy of Ladies’ Home Journal. He tapped the note on the cover: Show Ames. “I’ve been up in the attic a few times. All sorts of things up there. I found an article in here about American religion. Pretty interesting.”
“Nineteen forty-eight. It’s so old he’s probably seen it.”
He nodded. “It’s so old he’s probably forgotten it.”
“Well, I think I’ll just make cookies.”
“Whatever you say.” Jack put the magazine on the table. Then he stood looking at it with his hands on his hips, as if he were relinquishing something that mattered. “Interesting article, though.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll need a minute to comb my hair.”
“Sure.” Then he said, “My idea was that you would give it to the old gent first, before you take it to Ames. Then they’ll have something to argue about. I mean, conversation might be strained. In the circumstances. So I thought this might help.” He shrugged.
She put away the mixing bowl and the measuring spoons. “Any further instructions?”
“Not at the moment. Well, he’s awake and dressed. I thought maybe you might read it to him over breakfast. I’ve eaten. I’m—” He made a gesture toward the door that suggested he had some sort of intention to act upon. Some hoe blade to whet. He had already oiled the horse collar.
“All right,” she said. “Should I tell him this is your idea?”
“Yes. Tell him that. Say I’m afraid I might have offended Ames, and I’d like to put things right.”
“Why don’t you tell him yourself? I suppose he’d want the particulars.”
“Bright girl,” he said. “Thanks, Glory.” And he left.
HER FATHER TOOK INSTANTLY TO THE IDEA OF RECONCILiation. He relaxed visibly at the very word. There was nothing improbable in the idea that Jack was somehow at fault, though, after allowing himself the thought a few times, he still had no specific notion of how he could have been. A skeptical look, perhaps, but that was to be expected. Still, Jack was Jack, and there was nothing disloyal about accepting that Jack might be at fault in some degree, since forgiving him was deeper even than habit, since it was in fact the sum and substance of loyalty. Yes. The old man always interpreted any pleasing turn of events as if he were opening a text, to have a full enjoyment of all reassuring implications and all good consequences. “It’s very kind of Jack to recognize his part in this, and to want to make amends. Christian of him. I believe he may be doing this to please his old father, too. So I have something to think about that might not have been so clear to me otherwise.” He laughed. “That sermon was for my benefit. Yes. The Lord is wonderful.” He said, “Old Ames says he remembers me in skirts and a lace bonnet, and that could be true. My grandmother took my infancy in hand and she made it last as long as she possibly could. Longer, I guess. She meant well. My mother’s health failed after I was born. That was Mother’s opinion, anyway. But you just can’t give up a friendship that goes back as far as that!” He loved to reflect on the fact that grace was never singular in its effects, as now, when he could please his son by forgiving his friend. “That is why it is called a Spirit,” he said. “The word in Hebrew also means wind. ‘The Spirit of God brooded on the face of the deep.’ It is a sort of enveloping atmosphere.” Her father was always so struck by his insights that it was impossible for him to tell those specific to the moment from those on which he had preached any number of times. It had made him a little less sensitive than he ought to have been to the risk of repeating himself. Ah well.
So she read the article to her father, and he chuckled over the passages by which Ames was certain to be exasperated, his eyes alight with the pleasure of knowing he and the Reverend were, for Jack’s purposes, entirely of one mind. “Very thoughtful of him to find this for us,” he said.
When they had finished reading it, Glory took the magazine to Ames’s house and left it with Lila, since the Reverend was out calling. A day passed. Jack came in from the garden to ask if she had delivered it, then to ask if there had been any response. Finally, weary of all the anxiety, she went again without gift or pretext and found Ames at home. He opened the door, and when he saw her there, his eyes teared with regret and relief. “Come in, dear,” he said. “I’m very glad to see you. How is your father doing these days?”