Ordinary Grace

35

We returned to the church, to the fellowship hall which had been set up with round tables and chairs. Food had been prepared in the kitchen-ham and fried chicken and au gratin potatoes and green bean casserole and a couple of salads and some rolls and cookies and dessert bars. There was cold lemonade and Kool-Aid and coffee. By the time we arrived we had all, except my mother, composed ourselves. Although she no longer wept, grief lay like a weight on every feature of her face and she walked like someone too long in a desert without water. My father stood on one side of her and my grandfather on the other and I realized they were afraid that she might fall. They sat her quickly at a table and Jake and Liz and I sat with her.

Some people had taken places at tables and others stood talking and no one had yet entered the serving line because the blessing hadn’t been said. That was a responsibility I knew would fall to my father who, after he’d seated my mother, had become involved in a quiet conversation with Deacon Griswold. Although folks spoke in voices moderated by the solemnity of the occasion there was still a lot of noise.

Amelia Klement separated from her husband and came our way and Peter followed a few steps behind. Mrs. Klement sat next to my mother and spoke to her quietly and Peter stood near enough to me that I figured he wanted to talk so I got up from my chair and went to him.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” he said.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“You know, my dad’s teaching me about motors and stuff. He’s showing me how to take them apart and put them back together and how to figure out what’s wrong if they don’t work. It’s fun if you ever want to come over and goof around with me.”

I remembered the day I’d stood in the doorway of the Klements’ barn and had been amazed by all the disassembled machinery inside and had seen the bruises on Peter’s face and on his mother’s, and I recalled how I’d felt sorry and was afraid for them as a family. I realized that although I hadn’t acknowledged it I’d thought that my own family was better, special somehow, and that we were indestructible. That day seemed to be on the far side of forever ago and now I saw on Peter’s face the same look I’d probably given him back then and I understood that he was afraid for me and for my family and I knew he was right to be.

“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.