But Amos gave him a puzzled stare and said, "Jiggs?" Then Dr. Sisk rose too, jarring the table, and leaned across the scrambled eggs to offer one freckled, webby hand, "Arthur Sisk," he said. "From the mourners' bench."
"Mourners' bench," said Amos, still waiting.
"I was contemplating suicide. Preacher up and offered me an alternative solution."
"Have some more eggs," I told Dr. Sisk.
"No thank you, darlin', maybe later," he said. He turned back to Amos. "Life was getting me down. Grinding on so. The tedium! I'm a G. P. All those infants with upper respiratory infections, Vicks VapoRub smeared on their chests.
Stethoscope goes 'Sppk!' when you pull it away. I thought of suicide."
"Is that so," said Amos.
"Preacher talked me out of it. Recommended I give my life to Christ, instead. Well, I liked the way he put it. I mean, just to hand my life over.
Isn't that true, my dear," he said to me.
"Well," I said, "but you still have income tax and license renewals."
"Beg pardon?"
"Still have bank statements and dental appointments and erroneous bills," I said. "If it were all that easy, don't you think I'd long ago have handed my life over?" Dr. Sisk sat down and started pulling at his nose. "Help yourself to some eggs," I told Amos. "What?" Amos said. "Oh… no, really I…"
"Saul is paying a hospital visit, he ought to be back before long."
"Well, do… I mean, funny, I thought it was a daughter you had," Amos said. He took a handful of his hair. "Didn't you send me a birth announcement? Daughter named Catherine."
"Oh yes, that would be Belinda," I said. "She's already left for school."
"Belinda."
"This is Jiggs."
"I see. Jiggs," said Amos. He let go of his hair but continued looking confused.
Then Jiggs seemed to feel he had to stand up all over again, flashing white moons off his fingerprinted spectacles. "Jiggs, please," I said. "In fifteen minutes you have to be ready to leave. Would you like some coffee, Amos?"
"No, thanks, I stopped for breakfast in Holgate."
"Well, come and sit in the living room," I said, and I led him down the hall, untying my apron as I went. "I hope you don't mind the mess. It's still a little early in the day." There was a mess, but nothing that would clear up as the day went on. Some guests can make you see these things. I had never realized, for instance, how very much dollhouse furniture Linus had produced in the last few years. People kept offering to buy it from him for fabulous amounts, but he wouldn't sell. It was all for me, he said. Now on every tabletop there were other tables, two inches high. Also breakfronts, cupboards, and bureaus, as well as couches upholstered in velvet and dining room chairs with needlepoint seats. And each tiny surface bore its own accessories: lamps with toothpaste-cap shades, books made from snippets of magazine bindings, and single wooden beads containing arrangements of dried baby's breath. Entire roomfuls were grouped beneath the desk and under the piano. I could see that Amos was startled. "They're Linus's," I told him.
"He makes them."
"Oh, yes," said Amos. He sat down on the couch, letting his moccasins sprawl out across the rug. "How is Linus these days?"
"He's fine."
"No more of his… trouble?"
"Oh no, he seems very steady. Right now he's over at the laundromat with Mama."
"And is Julian in these parts?"
"He's down at the shop already," I said.
"What shop?" The radio shop."
"Dot's radio shop?"
"Well, where have you been?" I 'asked. "Doesn't Saul keep in touch?"
"At Christmas he just sends this card from the church," said Amos, "telling me to bear in mind the true meaning."
"Oh, I see," I said. "Well, Julian works at the radio shop. It's TV now, mostly, but we still call it the radio shop. He's doing just fine. I really believe his lapses are going to get fewer."
"Is that right," said Amos. He drummed his fingers on his knapsack. _ "Pretty soon well start trusting him with money again, but meanwhile the customers just come by here and pay Miss Feather instead."
"Miss…?' "But what about you?" I asked. "Do you think you'll get this job?"
"Oh, sure, the principal wrote and told me it's mine if I want it.
And I guess I do want it. Tve been in one place too long; it's time for a change. And I'd just broken off with this girl, felt ready to… though I'm not so certain that I could take Clarion again. I wish this offer had turned up someplace else."
"There's nothing wrong with Clarion," I said. (I don't know why.) "No, of course not, it's fine," said Amos. "I didn't mean it wasn't." He hooked his thumbs in his belt and tipped his head back against the couch, closing the conversation. I remembered that Amos used to be the Emory who ran away. Maybe he still was. Weaknesses came one to a person in that family, and could be conquered but not destroyed; they merely moved on to someone else. To Julian. Julian was collecting weaknesses like so many coins or postage stamps.
Saul's old trouble with girls was Julian's now and so was Linus's tendency to break down. We all loved Julian a lot, and no wonder. We were fond of his smudgy, weary eyes and exhausted good looks, and if "he took on Amos's habit of running away then we would be in trouble. I said, "Amos, do you still run away?"
He seemed to have been caught off-guard. "What?" he said. "Well, no, for heaven's sake, why would you ask a thing like that? Of course not"
"Where did it go?" I asked him.
"What?" But before I could explain, in came Saul, stooping automatically in the doorway. He stopped. "Amos?" he said.
Amos stood up and said, "Hello, Saul."
"We've waited a long time for you,"
Saul told him, and set a hand on his shoulder. I was smiling as I watched, but what I wondered was: why did Amos look so much younger, when he was the oldest of the Emory boys?
Now they were complete, the four of them under one roof again. Amos's job didn't start till fall, so meanwhile he helped at the radio shop. Also, he got our old piano tuned and practiced every day. It never failed to amaze me that Amos had become a musician. Having barely scraped through school, he'd fallen into music like a duck finally hitting water and worked his way gladly through the Peabody Institute. Amos Emory! He sat hunched at the yellow-toothed piano playing Chopin, his moccasins set gingerly among the dollhouse furniture, elbows close to his sides as if he feared to damage the keys with his huge square hands. A rag of black hair fell over his forehead. "This has got to be the worst piano I've ever come across," he told me, but he continued pulling in its faded, tinny, long-ago notes.
Unfortunately, I don't like piano. Something about it has always irritated me. But Mama loved to hear him; she'd been musical herself once, she said. And Belinda often paused on her way to someplace else and listened from the door.
She was thirteen that summer and had suddenly turned beautiful. Her hair was blonder from the sun and she had these burnished, threadlike eyebrows and dusty freckles. And close behind her you'd generally find Jiggs, who came running from anywhere as soon as he heard music. He coaxed lessons from Amos and then practiced what he learned for hours at a time-plodding about on the keys, breathing through his mouth, fogging up his spectacles. Whenever I passed through the living room, I would smile at the back of his soft fair head and make "my eternal, evil wish: Please let his mother drop dead somewhere, I never hope for anything else in my life.