“Maybe in the fall, when things are quieter.”
“I don’t understand you, Duncan,” Justine told him. “What is it you have against this visit?”
But then he grew touchy. He always did object to the way she dragged his secret feelings into the open.
Still, on the fourth Sunday in August there he was, maybe a little grimmer than usual but resigned to the trip, heading the Ford along a gritty two-lane highway toward Semple with Justine sitting beside him and Grandfather Peck next to the window. On the rear seat was a stack of Meg’s summer dresses and a paper bag containing a dozen ears of corn. (“But the corn will be wasted,” Duncan said. “Reverend Mildew will try to eat it with a knife and fork.”) Meg’s other belongings—her set of Nancy Drew mysteries and her pennants and bottles of cologne—remained in her room. Duncan had thought they should bring everything in one fell swoop but Justine preferred not to. “All she asked for were her summer dresses,” she said. “Maybe she doesn’t have space yet for the rest.”
Duncan, who never dragged anyone’s secret feelings into the open if he could possibly help it, merely nodded and let her have her way.
They reached the outskirts of Semple at two in the afternoon. WELCOME TO SEMPLE, VA., “PRETTIEST LITTLE TOWN IN THE SOUTH,” the sign said, looming above a stack of pine boards weathering in a lumberyard. They bounced over railroad tracks, past rusty, gaping boxcars. “Now there was a town,” said Grandfather Peck. “Had its own train.”
“Only freight trains, Grandfather,” Justine said.
“Pardon? Freight? Didn’t we go to Nashville once from here?”
“That was from Fredericksburg. Three years back.”
“Oh yes.”
“Here we had to take a bus to Richmond and then catch a train.”
“Nashville was where that boy played the banjo,” said her grandfather. “His great-uncle taught Caleb how to work a stringed instrument when they were both fourteen.”
“That’s the place,” Justine said.
He slumped, as if the conversation had taken everything out of him.
On Main Street Justine saw someone she knew—old Miss Wheeler, who used to ask the cards whether she should put her father in a nursing home—and she wanted to stop and speak to her, but Duncan wouldn’t hear of it. “I’d like to get this over with, Justine,” he said. Going back to places always did make him cross. When they passed the Wayfarer’s Diner and then the Whole Self Health Food Store, whose tattered awning and baggy screens leapt out like familiar faces, Justine could feel the edginess in the skin of his arm. “Never mind, we’re only visiting,” she told him. But she had trespassed again and he drew himself in, moving slightly away from her so that their arms no longer touched and there was a sudden coolness along her left thigh.
Arthur Milsom’s church was a large brick building on the other side of town. Justine had never attended it, but of course Meg had pointed it out to her—she remembered how the steeple had seemed sharper than necessary, barbed with some glittery metal at the tip. The rectory was brick also, but the house of the assistant pastor, next door to the rectory, was a small white cottage without trees or shrubs, set on a square of artificial-looking grass. There was a bald picture window with a double-globed, rosebud-painted lamp centered in it, and beside the front walk a hitching post in the shape of a small boy with a newly whitened face and black hands. Duncan stopped to study it, but Justine took her grandfather by the elbow and hurried him up the steps. “Where is this?” he asked her.
“This is Meg’s, Grandfather. We’re visiting Meg.”
“Yes, yes, but—” And he revolved slowly, staring all about him. Justine pressed the doorbell, which was centered in a brass cross with scalloped edges. From somewhere far away she heard a whole melody ringing out in slow, measured, golden tones. Then the door opened and there was Meg, thinner and more poised, with longer hair. “Hello, Mama,” she said. She kissed Justine’s cheek, and then her great-grandfather’s. When Duncan had turned from the hitching post and climbed the steps she kissed his cheek as well. “Hello, Daddy,” she said.
“Well, Meggums.”
“I thought you might change your mind and not come.”
“Would I do a thing like that?”
She didn’t smile.
She led them across sculptured blue carpeting into the living room, where Christ gazed out of gilt frames on every wall. Most of the furniture seemed to come in twos—two identical tables flanking the sofa, two beaded lamps, two ice-blue satin easy chairs with skirted ottomans. On the spinet piano in the corner there were two framed photographs, one of Arthur in a clerical robe and the other of Meg with some sort of shiny drapery across her bare shoulders—but so retouched, so flawlessly complexioned, her hair so lacquered, that it took Justine a moment to recognize her. Besides, what right did some unknown woman have to set Meg’s photo in her living room? Justine picked it up and studied it. Meg said, “Oh, that’s my—that’s just the picture we put in the paper when we—” She snatched the photo away and set it down. “I’ll get Mother Milsom,” she said.
Justine sought out Duncan, who was slouched on the sofa leafing through a Lady’s Circle. His feet, in enormous grease-spattered desert boots, were resting on the coffee table. “Duncan!” she said, slapping his knee. He looked up and then moved his feet carefully, picking his way between china rabbits and birds, candles shaped like angels, a nativity scene in a seashell and a green glass shoe full of sourballs. Justine let out a long breath and settled down beside him. Across the room, her grandfather paced the carpet with his hands clasped behind his back. He did not like to sit when he would have to struggle up again so soon for the entrance of a lady. He paused before first one Christ and then another, peering closely at a series of melancholy brown eyes and lily-white necks. “Religious art in the living room?” he said.
“Ssh,” Justine told him.
“But I was always taught that that was in poor taste,” he said. “Unless it was an original.”
“Grandfather.”
She looked at the door where Meg had disappeared. There was no telling how much could be heard. “Grandfather,” she said, “wouldn’t you like to—”
“They’ve got him in the dining room too,” said Duncan, peering through the other doorway. “Praying in the garden.”
“Oh, Duncan, what do you care? When did you ever give a thought to interior decorating?”
He frowned at her. “So you’re going to take their side,” he said.
“I didn’t know there were sides.”
“How’s that?” asked her grandfather.
“Duncan thinks I’m defecting.”
“Hmm?”
“Defecting.”
“Nonsense,” said her grandfather. “You’re as smart as anybody.”
Duncan laughed. Justine turned on him. “Duncan,” she said, “I certainly hope you’re not going to go into one of your silly fits here. Duncan, I mean this. For Meg’s sake, now, can’t we just try to—”
But then whispery footsteps crossed the carpet, and a lady in white entered the room with Meg just behind her. “Mother Milsom, I’d like you to meet my mother,” Meg said. “And my father, and my great-grandfather Peck.” Meg’s face was stern and her forehead was tweaked together in the center; she was warning her family not to disgrace her. So Duncan rose to his full height, keeping one thumb in his magazine, while the grandfather touched his temple and Justine stood up and held out her hand. Mrs. Milsom’s fingers felt like damp spaghetti. She was a long, wilted lady with light-brown hair parted in the center and crimped tightly to her head, a pale tragic face, eyes as black and precisely lidded as a playing-card queen’s. Her dress, which was made of something crêpey, hung limp over her flat chest, billowed hollowly at the waist and wrists, and dripped in layers to her skinny sharp legs. She wore pointed silver pumps from the Sixties. When she smiled her eyes remained wide and lusterless, as if she were keeping in mind some secret sorrow. “So finally we meet,” she said.
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“We would have come before but Duncan was buying Prince Albert tins,” Justine told her. Nervousness always did make her talk too much.
“I understand. Won’t you be seated? Margaret, darling, would you care to serve the iced tea.”
Meg looked at her mother. Then she left the room. Mrs. Milsom floated slowly downward into one of the satin chairs, parts of her appearing to settle whole minutes after other parts. She laid her hands delicately together. “Arthur I hope will be joining us shortly,” she said. “At the moment he’s napping.”
“Arthur naps?” said Duncan.
“It’s a fourth Sunday. His day to preach. Preaching takes so much out of him. Naturally we had been hoping that you would be here in time to hear his sermon, but apparently things did not fall out that way.” She gave Justine a deep, mournful look.
“Oh well—” said Justine. They would have come for the sermon, even Duncan—anything for Meg—but Meg had specifically told them not to arrive till after lunch.
“Generally on fourth Sundays he awakes with a headache,” said Mrs. Milsom, “and sustains it during the entire service and even afterward, until he admits that I am right and takes to his bed. He suffers real pain. This is not some ordinary headache.”
“Maybe he should switch to fifth Sundays,” Duncan said. “Sixth, even.”
Justine shot him a look.
“Where’s the minister?” asked Grandfather Peck, settling creakily into an armchair.
“Grandfather, turn on your—”
“Arthur is napping, Mr. Peck,” said Mrs. Milsom. Her voice was thinned to just the right pitch. “I know all about the deaf,” she told Justine. “My father was afflicted. In his later years he would go so far as to sing the ‘Doxology’ while his congregation was on ‘Bringing in the Sheaves.’ ”
“Oh, your father was a minister too,” Justine said.
“Oh yes. Oh yes. All my family.”
“And your husband?”
“No, ah—he was in construction.”
“I see.”
“But my family, now they have been clergy for a great many years. I myself am a healer.”
“Is that right?” said Duncan. He stopped rolling up his magazine. “You heal by faith?”
“I certainly do.”
She smiled at him, her eyes like black pools. Then Meg came tinkling and clinking through the doorway with a tray, and Justine tensed because she herself, of course, would have spilled ice cubes into Mrs. Milsom’s snowy lap or tripped over the veins in the carpet. She forgot that Meg was as graceful and confident as her maiden aunts. The tray paused at each person, dipping neatly, holding steady. Mrs. Milsom watched its progress with her lower lip caught between her teeth. She was tense too, as if Meg were her daughter. It wasn’t fair. She had no right. Justine snatched a tumbler off the tray and a disk of tea flew onto the sofa cushion, but Duncan instantly covered it with his Lady’s Circle. “Mama. It’s sweetened,” Meg whispered.
“What?” Justine said aloud.
“It’s sweetened.”
“The tea is sweetened,” said Mrs. Milsom. “Thank you, Margaret. Won’t you take some yourself?”
“I was thinking I might go see if Arthur’s awake.”
“Oh no, dear, I wouldn’t do that just yet.”
“He did say to wake him when they came.”
“If we do he’ll have his head till tomorrow, believe me,” said Mrs. Milsom. “I know him.” She smiled and patted the arm of her chair. “Come sit with us a while.”
So Meg came to perch at Mrs. Milsom’s side, and Justine averted her eyes and concentrated on her tea. It was a fact that the only thing she couldn’t stand was sweetened tea. It made her gag. She would feel sick and heavy for the rest of the day. Still she drank it, searching with her tongue for the nearest ice cube to dilute the sugary taste. Duncan, who didn’t care one way or the other, finished his own drink in one breath and set the glass down upon the polished table. “Well,” he said. “So you’ve got your diploma, Meggie.”
She nodded. Her hair touched her collar, a little less neat than it used to be. Maybe she was trying to look older.
“So what next?” Duncan asked her.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Going to get some kind of a job?”
“Mr. Peck,” said Mrs. Milsom, “being a minister’s wife is a job.”
Duncan looked over at her. Justine grew worried, but in the end all he said was, “I meant, besides that.”
“Oh, there’s nothing besides that. Believe me, I know. I’m a minister’s daughter. And I’ve been standing behind Arthur all this time filling in until he found himself a wife: attending teas and sewing circles, helping at bazaars, fixing casseroles—”
“Meggie, your mother must know people,” Duncan said. “All sorts of people with jobs to offer, I’m sure of it. How about Pooch Sims? The veterinarian.” He turned to Justine. “She could use someone.”
“Oh, Mr. Peck,” said Mrs. Milsom. She laughed and her ice cubes rattled. “Margaret wouldn’t want to do that.”
Everyone looked at Meg. She stared down into her glass.
“Would you, Meg?” Duncan asked.
“No,” said Meg, “I guess I wouldn’t.”
“Well, then, what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Daddy. Mother Milsom’s right, I do have a lot to do already. I’ve taken over the nursery at church and I have so many calls to pay and everything.”
Justine’s teeth seemed to be growing fur, and still she hadn’t made a dent in her drink. She longed for something sour or salty. She had a craving for pickles, lemon rind, a potato chip even. But Mrs. Milsom gazed at her so reproachfully that she raised the glass and took another swallow.
“Mainly of course the minister’s wife is a buffer,” said Mrs. Milsom. “She filters his calls, tries to handle the little things that so clutter his day—oh, Margaret can tell you. We’ve been teaching her all about it. Arthur is not terribly strong, you see. He’s allergic to so much. And he has these headaches.”
“But I thought you were a healer,” Duncan said.
“A healer, yes! I have a little group that meets on Sunday evenings. Anyone can come. I inherited the gift from my father, who once gave sight to a blind man.”
“But your father was deaf.”
“He still had the gift, Mr. Peck.”
“I meant—”
“Of course the gift must be kept alive by prayer and faith, it has to be nurtured along. That’s what I tell Arthur. I feel that Arthur very definitely has the gift. I am working with him on it now. So far there has seemed to be some—I don’t know, some sort of resistance, I’m just not—but we’re working, I’m sure we’ll get there.”
“How about Grandfather here?” Duncan asked. “He could use some help.”
She hesitated.
“Think you could just clap a couple of hands on his ears to oblige us?”
“Well, I’m not—is it nerve deafness, or what?”
“Oh, if faith only heals certain kinds,” said Duncan.
Both Meg and Justine stirred, uneasily. Duncan gave them a wide, innocent smile that did not reassure them. “But never mind,” he said, “my real interest was headaches.”
“Headaches, Mr. Peck? Do you suffer from headaches?”
“No, your son does.”
“My son.”
“Arthur.”
“Oh, Arthur,” she said blankly.
“Didn’t you say that Arthur got headaches?”
“Why, yes.”
Duncan looked at her for a moment, honestly puzzled. “But then,” he said, “why can’t you heal him?”
Mrs. Milsom clasped her hands tightly. Her mouth became blurred and her eyes filled with what must surely be black tears; but no, when they spilled over they were clear and they made white tracks down her hollow white cheeks.
“Oh, Duncan,” Justine said. But what had he done, after all? Nobody understood, except perhaps Meg, who quickly buried h
er nose in her tea glass. Then Mrs. Milsom straightened and darted an index finger beneath each eye, quick as a frog’s tongue. “Well!” she said. “Haven’t we had nice weather for August?”
“It’s been very nice,” Duncan told her gently. And he must have been planning to stay that way to the end, sober and courteous; he would never willingly hurt anybody. Except that Justine chose that moment to reach toward the green glass shoe on the coffee table—sourballs! right under her nose!—and choose a lemony yellow globe and pop it into her mouth, where she instantly discovered that she had eaten a marble. While everyone watched in silence she plucked it out delicately between thumb and forefinger and replaced it, only a little shinier than before, in the green glass shoe. “I thought we could have used more rain,” she told the ring of faces.
Duncan made a peculiar sound. So he was going to have a silly fit after all. Justine had to sit as straight as a statue, dignified enough for the two of them, while at intervals Duncan steamed and chortled like an electric percolator on the couch beside her.
When Arthur was up (pale and rumpled, inadequate-looking in a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt) they moved out to the back yard to admire Mrs. Milsom’s flowerbeds, then over to the church to see the new red carpet just recently installed in the aisles. They tiptoed through the vaulted, echoing nave with their faces very serious. They were all particularly careful of one another, if you didn’t count Duncan’s pinching Justine when he didn’t know Mrs. Milsom was looking. They were so appreciative, so soft-voiced and attentive, that by the time they had assembled beside the Ford to say their goodbyes everyone was exhausted. But Mrs. Milsom held out both hands bravely for the sack of sun-baked corn, and Arthur insisted on taking the entire burden of wedding silver from the trunk. He staggered off, stringy-armed, swaybacked beneath his load. Meg remained beside the car with her pile of shirtwaist dresses. “Well,” said Justine, “I suppose we’ll be seeing you soon.” She felt bruised by disappointment. She had imagined that this visit might, in some way, wrap things up—that whatever had gone wrong in their family might finally be straightened out, or at least understood; and that having seen Meg settled and happy she could let her go at last. She had supposed that care and responsibility could be shucked like old skin, leaving her cool and smooth and lightweight. But Meg’s face was screwed so tight it made her ache, and she would never be free of Meg’s old, anxious eyes. “Meggie, is there anything you need?” she asked. “I mean, if you think of something, anything at all—”