* * *
The hotel belonged to an old friend of Boughton’s, and Lila had a room there free of charge. Such a dead little town, half the rooms were empty. Reverend Ames came by most nights for supper on the veranda under the big ceiling fans, bringing Boughton along often enough. Mrs. Graham brought clothes, from the Boughtons’ attic, she said. He had four daughters. They were very good quality clothes, they might as well get some use. The mothball smell will air out. Lila hated the hotel, the drapes and sofas and the great big pink and purple flowers on the wallpaper and the rugs. Dressing nice for the evening.
Sometimes she would walk out to that farm to help, to sweat and get her hands dirty. So she could sleep at night. They might give her a little money, depending. But she was back before supper and washed up before the old men came. And smelling like mothballs. She learned about propriety without anybody ever telling her there was a word for it. “He’s very protective of you,” Mrs. Graham said, which meant she sat next to him but not close to him, that he touched her elbow but did not take her hand. That she was about as lonely as she had ever been.
On her way to the farm she might look in on the shack. Nobody there but the mice and the spiders. She’d sit on the stoop and light a cigarette. Her money was still in the jar under the loose plank. She’d stuffed that handkerchief into it, too, because it reminded her of a wound and trying to blot it up or bind it. The field was turning brown and the milkweed pods were dry and prying themselves open. Everything in that shack she had not hidden was gone, every useless thing. He had come there and gathered it all up, she was sure, to save it for her. Some visiting Boughton had brought him out there in his father’s car, no doubt, since the odds and ends, the pot and bucket and bedroll and suitcase and the rest, would be far too much to carry. So much that she would have left it behind when the winter drove her out. Maybe the Boughtons helped take her things to the car. She hated to think they had been there. If he had asked, she’d have said don’t do it, so he didn’t ask. She never thought of emptying the shack, even though the winter would ruin whatever was left in it. If a farmer decided to plant the field, he would probably knock it down or burn it. Still, she had thought of it as hers. Her things had been her claim on it. The money wasn’t safe — only the Reverend would not think to look under a loose board — but it was hers while it was there. Her knife was gone. What did the old man think about that knife? Why did she wonder? Everybody needs a knife. Fish don’t clean themselves.
And she went up to the cemetery to look after Mrs. Ames and her child. She meant to ask the old man sometime what would happen when they were all resurrected and he had two wives. He had preached about that, which probably meant he had been wondering, too — they won’t be male or female, they won’t marry or be given in marriage. Jesus said that. So the old man wouldn’t have a wife at all, not even one. This girl and her child, after so many years, would be like anyone else to him. He might be as young as he was when she left him. Lila could see sometimes what he’d been like when he was young. The girl would still be holding that baby he had hardly even had a chance to hold. And there would be no change in her, and no change in him, as if dying had never happened. It would be a strange kind of heaven, after all they’d been through, and all the waiting, if he did not feel a different peace when he stood beside them. Lila could watch them, and love them, because old Doll would be there to say, “It don’t matter.” Don’t want what you don’t need and you’ll be fine. Don’t want what you can’t have. Doll would be there, ugly with all the trouble of her life. Lila might not know her otherwise.
A month in that hotel, and then the wedding. Mrs. Graham told her the Reverend probably wanted people to understand that the marriage was a considered decision, since men his age could sometimes be a little foolish. Lila said, “Well, it seems pretty foolish anyway,” meaning that if she was as good as married, she might as well have some of the comforts of it. Mrs. Graham smiled and nodded and said, “He’s just trying to make the best of things. For your sake, too.” Lila hated Boughton. Once or twice she saw him taking a long look at the old man as if he was wondering about him, as if he might say, Are you really sure about this? Damn knives and forks. And he was always talking about foreign policy. Then the old man would say something just to remind him gently that Lila might not have an interest in foreign policy, which was true enough, since she’d never even known there was such a thing, and Boughton would start talking about theology. Then it would be something about somebody they had both known forever. They would be laughing at the thought of something that had happened when they were boys, and then the old man would turn to her and say, “Are you comfortable here? Is your room comfortable?” because he couldn’t think of anything to say to her, either. He couldn’t go up to her room to see for himself because of propriety. He blushed when she said she’d be happy to take him upstairs, and she had to laugh at herself, which made it worse. Boughton tried to change the subject. Mrs. Graham and her husband were there, too, ready to talk foreign policy out of the plain goodness of their hearts. They had dinner at the hotel a few times so that Mr. Graham would know her well enough to give her away. That was the strangest thing she’d heard of yet. But she had her days to herself.
They were married in the parlor of Reverend Boughton’s house, with the Boughton children there except for the one. They even brought Mrs. Boughton downstairs in a pretty dress and put her in her chair. The girls bent down to tell her it was a wedding, John’s wedding, and wasn’t that nice? Then they left her to her smiling quiet, since it always upset her to feel that more was wanted of her.
* * *
They went to the old man’s house after the wedding and the dinner Boughton’s daughters had made for them. Lila had never understood the whole business of knives and forks, that there was a way you were supposed to use them. But he sat beside her, close to her, her husband, all their kind feelings toward him now owed to her, too. There was a big white cake with frosting roses on it, and the sisters laughed about how many they had made and how few of them turned out to look at all like the pictures in the magazine. Or anything else. Cauliflowers. Mushroom clouds. Gracie knocked one on the floor and got so frustrated she washed her hands of the whole thing and went for a walk, but Faith got the trick of it, just in time, before people began to arrive. Then there she was with frosting in her hair. There was frosting all over the kitchen. Teddy said he caught Glory licking her fingers. They were all laughing, all so used to each other, so fine-looking, the brothers, too. Lila could hardly wait to leave.
Then there they were in that quiet house. Everything of hers, everything she had been given, had been brought from the hotel and hung in the front closet. There was food in the icebox and the pantry and on the kitchen table, and there were little gifts on the counters, embroidered tea towels and pillowcases and aprons, and a needlework picture of apples and pears and grapes with the words Bless This House. There were flowers in every room. The windows were all opened to let the day in. Everything that could be polished shone. “The church,” he said, and smiled as if to say, I did warn you. She stepped out on the back porch, just to look. They had weeded the garden.