Chapter One
“Home to stay, Glory! Yes!” her father said, and her heart sank. He attempted a twinkle of joy at this thought, but his eyes were damp with commiseration. “To stay for a while this time!” he amended, and took her bag from her, first shifting his cane to his weaker hand. Dear God, she thought, dear God in
heaven. So began and ended all her prayers these days, which
were really cries of amazement. How could her father be so frail?
And how could he be so recklessly intent on satisfying his notions
of gentlemanliness, hanging his cane on the railing of the stairs so
he could, dear God, carry her bag up to her room? But he did it,
and then he stood by the door, collecting himself.
“This is the nicest room. According to Mrs. Blank.” He indicated
the windows. “Cross ventilation. I don’t know. They all
seem nice to me.” He laughed. “Well, it’s a good house.” The
house embodied for him the general blessedness of his life, which
was manifest, really indisputable. And which he never failed to
acknowledge, especially when it stood over against particular sorrow.
Even more frequently after their mother died he spoke of
the house as if it were an old wife, beautiful for every comfort it
had offered, every grace, through all the long years. It was a
beauty that would not be apparent to every eye. It was too tall for
the neighborhood, with a flat face and a flattened roof and peaked
brows over the windows. “Italianate,” her father said, but that
was a guess, or a rationalization. In any case, it managed to look
both austere and pretentious despite the porch her father had had
built on the front of it to accommodate the local taste for socializing
in the hot summer evenings, and which had become overgrown
by an immense bramble of trumpet vines. It was a good
house, her father said, meaning that it had a gracious heart however
awkward its appearance. And now the gardens and the
shrubbery were disheveled, as he must have known, though he
rarely ventured beyond the porch.
Not that they had been especially presentable even while the
house was in its prime. Hide-and-seek had seen to that, and croquet
and badminton and baseball. “Such times you had!” her father
said, as if the present slight desolation were confetti and
candy wrappers left after the passing of some glorious parade.
And there was the oak tree in front of the house, much older than
the neighborhood or the town, which made rubble of the pavement
at its foot and flung its imponderable branches out over the
road and across the yard, branches whose girths were greater
than the trunk of any ordinary tree. There was a torsion in its
body that made it look like a giant dervish to them. Their father
said if they could see as God can, in geological time, they would
see it leap out of the ground and turn in the sun and spread its
arms and bask in the joys of being an oak tree in Iowa. There had
once been four swings suspended from those branches, announcing
to the world the fruitfulness of their household. The oak tree
flourished still, and of course there had been and there were the
apple and cherry and apricot trees, the lilacs and trumpet vines
and the day lilies. A few of her mother’s irises managed to bloom.
At Easter she and her sisters could still bring in armfuls of flowers,
and their father’s eyes would glitter with tears and he would
say, “Ah yes, yes,” as if they had brought some memento, these
flowers only a pleasant reminder of flowers.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Home
by Marilynne Robinson
Copyright © 2008 by Marilynne Robinson.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2008
Marilynne Robinson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-374-29910-1
