In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike Page A

lumber-and-brick business, locally retailing what he bought wholesale from larger suppliers. His older boy, Peter, had been groomed to inherit the enterprise; Clarence, who had followed Peter into the world after a run of three girls—Rachel, Esther, and unfortunate Phebe, born with a humped back and an extra thumb—was, from the start, of a retiring, obedient nature, and had sidled into the ministry as a path of least resistance. His happiest boyhood times had been spent in silent communication with a piece of printed paper, whether it be the local newspaper or an adventure romance by Mayne Reid or, at Princeton, the New Testament in its original Greek. Today, he and Stella and their three offspring had been invited to Sunday dinner with one of the more prominent of their parishioners, AmosThibeault, the owner of a little wire manufactory tucked over on McBride Avenue behind the larger mills, and the owner of an impressive Second-Empire mansion, bristling with iron spears at the edges of its many mansard roofs, on Park Avenue beyond Carroll Street. The occasion passed stiffly but without any marked embarrassment. The hostess but not the host had been present in the church when the minister’s power of speech had failed, and so Clarence’s silence at lunch, and his wordless head-shake of refusal when invited to pronounce the blessing, were not unexpected. As, with an expression of morose benignity, he sat consuming his share of pork roast and its ample vegetable accompaniment, his wife and children—except for the youngest, little, careful, tongue-tied Teddy—were exceptionally animated and conversational. He was a vacuum they were moving into. On the long walk home to Straight Street and Broadway, the family was silent, sensing itself to be imperilled. A wagon selling ice chips tinted and flavored by a variety of irresistibly sweet syrups was passed without importunities; a crowd of near-naked working-class children uproariously and defiantly splashing in the puddles around a gushing public faucet aroused no comment or combative exchange from the Wilmot children; the vulgarly vivid plantings of petunias and marigolds that the Italians and Polish had established in their front yards around plaster statues of a blue-gowned Madonna drew their eyes but no remark. These were not fashionable neighborhoods. The residents displayed themselves on their sagging wooden porches and stoops in shirtsleeves and loose, un-corseted dresses that permitted glimpses of more than dusty ankles and callused bare feet. Foreign languages—operatic ribbons of Italian, rapid stabs of Yiddish, mushy thrusts of Polish—floated through the air as shadows reached acrossthe brown little lawns between the weedy, battered hedges; dark-eyed glances insolently grazed the straggling family of Protestants. The three Wilmot children walked with eyes down and scattered to their rooms and thence out into their own neighborhood when they arrived at the manse at four o’clock; they knew their parents had to talk, and feared that the family destiny was pregnant with something vague and dismal.
    “Well, Mr. Wilmot, I must say,” Stella began when their bedroom door was closed and her heavy white dress had been returned to her cedar wardrobe, and her corset loosened above her thin chemise of sweat-stained nainsook, “I’ve heard no thanks for my part in patching over your strange exhibition this morning. Whatever ailed you, dear?”
    He wanly smiled; his mustache—which looked dirty, as fair mustaches do—drooped a little less, exposing his lower teeth. His voice was hoarse and softer than usual but distinct, and unexpectedly sardonic. “My dear, you appeared to enjoy yourself so much I didn’t think you needed thanks. In one bound, you overleaped the whole vexed question of female ordination. You were a veritable Louisa Woosley—splendid, my dear! Would that you had my male prerogatives, or I your dauntless faith.”
    “Faith?” she repeated