“Sure,” I said, but I figured I probably wouldn’t.
Mrs. Klement stood up and held my mother’s hand a moment then returned to her husband and Peter went along.
My father came back to the table but didn’t sit.
“Could I have your attention?” Deacon Griswold called. “I’d like to ask Pastor Drum to offer a blessing for this meal.”
The room became quiet.
My father composed himself. He always spent a moment in silence before he prayed. His blessings tended to be comprehensive and include not just the immediate food on the table but reminders of all we had to be thankful for and very often a reminder of those who were not as fortunate as we.
In that silence while my father’s head filled with the words he deemed proper, my mother spoke. She said, “For God’s sake, Nathan, can’t you, just this once, offer an ordinary grace?”
There had been silence in the room, a respectful silence awaiting prayer. But that silence changed and what we waited for now was something filled with uncertainty and maybe even menace and I opened my eyes and saw that everyone was staring. Staring at the Drums. At the minister’s family. Looking at us as if we were a disaster taking place before their very eyes.
My father cleared his throat and said into the silence, “Is there anyone else who would care to offer the blessing?”
No one spoke and the silence stretched on painfully.
Then at my side a small clear voice replied, “I’ll say grace.”
I stood dumbfounded because, Jesus, the person who’d spoken was my stuttering brother Jake. He didn’t wait for my father’s permission. He rose from his chair and bowed his head.
I looked at all those people present none of whom could bring themselves to close their eyes and miss the train wreck that was about to take place and I prayed as desperately as I ever had, Oh, dear God, take me away from this torture.
Jake said, “Heavenly F-F-F-.” And he stopped.
O God, I prayed, just kill me now.
My mother reached up and put her hand gently on his shoulder and Jake cleared his throat and tried again.
“Heavenly Father, for the blessings of this food and these friends and our families, we thank you. In Jesus’s name, amen.”
That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.
“Thank you, Jake,” my mother said and I saw that her whole face had changed.
And my father looked mystified and almost happy and said, “Thank you, Son.”
And all the people as if released from some hypnotic trance began to move again though slowly and got into line and filled their plates.
And me, I looked at my brother with near reverence and thought to myself, Thank you, God.
• • •
My mother came home that night. She left the drapes open to a cooling breeze that had blown in with evening and when she went to bed my father went with her.
I lay awake late into the dark hours wondering.
I hadn’t asked Jake about the blessing. In a way I was afraid to open the door on the mystery of it because I knew that what we’d all heard was a miracle, the miracle I’d been hoping for ever since Ariel died. It had come from the mouth of a boy who never in his entire life had said three words in public without stumbling in the most horrible ways imaginable. With Mother home I liked the idea that we’d been saved as a family by the miracle of that ordinary grace. I didn’t know why God would take Ariel or Karl Brandt or Bobby Cole or even the nameless itinerant or if it was God’s doing or God’s will at all but I knew that the flawless grace delivered from my stuttering brother’s lips had been a gift of the divine and I took it as a sign that somehow the Drums would survive.
The grieving in fact went on for a long time, as grieving does. For months after Ariel’s burial I would stumble upon my mother in a moment when she believed herself to be alone and find her weeping. I’m not sure that the beauty of her vivacious smile ever fully returned but what remained was all the more touching to me because I understood completely the reason for what was missing.
36
The next day, Sunday, Nathan Drum preached in all three of the churches in his charge and he preached well. My mother led the choir and Jake and I sat in the back pew as we always had. Gus sat with us because Doyle had talked to the chief of police and somehow squared things and no charges were going to be filed.
It felt as if life might again assume a normal course but for two things: Nothing would ever be the same without Ariel, and the authorities still hadn’t apprehended Warren Redstone, the man I was sure had killed my sister. I was beginning to think they never would and I was trying to understand how I felt about that. I was afraid I would carry forever my guilt at letting Redstone get away and I knew I would have to find a way to live with it. But my anger over Ariel’s death seemed to have passed. Though I still felt her loss deeply, sadness was no longer a part of every moment for me and I thought I understood why: Her death hadn’t left me completely alone. There were still so many people whom I loved and cared about deeply: Jake and my mother and father and my grandfather and Liz and Gus. And so I’d begun to think about the question of forgiveness which had become a real consideration in my life, not just part of Sunday rhetoric. If they ever caught Warren Redstone, how would I respond? There was the question of law, certainly, but there was a question of deeper concern and it went straight to the heart of what I’d been taught by my father all my life.
After the final service on Sunday afternoon Liz and my grandfather came for dinner and Gus joined us. We still had food left from everything that had been given by the community during the days of our uncertainty and the days of our early grief. We ate and then Gus went off on his motorcycle and my grandparents went home and my mother and father sat in the porch swing and talked while Jake and I tossed a baseball in the front yard. Although they spoke quietly I caught the gist of their conversation. It was about the Brandts.
Emil alone among that family had come to Ariel’s funeral. He’d been brought by one of his colleagues at the college in town and he sat in the back of the church and at the grave site he stood well away from the others gathered there.
My mother told my father she’d seen him but couldn’t bring herself that day to talk to him. She felt bad about it. And she felt terrible about Karl and her heart went out to Julia and Axel and she wanted to tell them but was afraid they would refuse to see her.
As they drifted back and forth in the swing she asked, “Do you think if I spoke to Emil, he could arrange it? I need to apologize to him anyway.”
“I owe him an apology as well,” my father said. “I haven’t been much of a friend lately.”