“Four and a half,” Irene corrected her.
“Almost five,” Lisa said again. She was good with numbers. The heat of the bulbs radiated outward from the ticket booth out front; it felt like she’d entered a dream.
“Are you a churchgoer?” asked the woman from the sidewalk, keeping a respectful distance. Her dress was plain but not frumpy; it had pockets on the front that stood out like Roman numerals on a watch. She offered a tract.
“When I get the chance,” said Irene, flashing on memories of her young life in Tama and then smiling, delighted, as she took up the tract: “I have this one! I’ve read it!” Ahead, Lisa was lost in all the giant movie posters behind glass: Silent Running. The Cowboys. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
“Oh!” said the woman in the brown dress. “I haven’t seen you.”
“I got it last winter,” she said. “Or just before winter, anyway. A young man”—she caught herself quickly—“a man with a beard gave it to me.”
“Michael!” said the woman, her eyes big: “You met Michael!”
“I—yes, I suppose so,” said Irene. “Anyway, our church is across the river, where we live.”
It seemed to Irene that the woman was looking very deeply into her eyes. It was unusual. “Is your church alive?” she asked in a tone that hinted at uncertainties, unforeseen outcomes, vague worries: concern.
“Oh, there aren’t so many of us,” she said: she’d taken the question to be about the liveliness of the congregation. “Not everybody makes it in every Sunday.” It was true; most Sundays Irene herself just couldn’t find the time no matter how she tried. Life seemed so busy.
“Oh,” said the woman sadly. “Your church is not alive.”
“Well, it’s not so bad as all that,” said Irene. She brooked so few offenses in her daily life that she wasn’t quite sure what to do with this one. She liked the Church of the Redeemer; it made the town feel less small.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” said the woman, adjusting her tone. She located a stubby pencil in her dress pocket, taking the tract back from Irene and circling something on its reverse in one quick motion before handing it back. “There are a lot of fine churches but time is short now.”
Irene tucked it away in the pocket of her cardigan. “If you don’t mind my asking, where are you from?” she said, meaning only to make small talk, to steer things into happier terrain: she’d been good at this in her waitressing days.
“Michigan, originally,” said the woman. “I’m Lisa.”
“That’s my daughter’s name!” said Irene, pointing over at Lisa, whose face was now pressed up against the glass doors of the theater: she could see the popcorn machine inside, yellow light beckoning above a plush red carpet.
“It’s harder when you have children,” the woman said. Irene looked again at her eyes: there was something locked away in there, not quite buried.
“That’s strange,” said Irene; she didn’t want to seem stern, but she felt mildly insulted.
“Oh, I have children myself,” said the woman, smiling for the first time, deep lines suddenly appearing at the corners of her smile. Irene noticed that she was very beautiful, and wondered why she hadn’t seen it earlier. “It just makes life busier, I mean. Harder to find time.”
“Mom!” said Lisa, turning.
“We have to go,” said Irene.
“Do come to church, if you can, sometime,” said Lisa in the brown dress, grown-up Lisa from the church whose name and address had been absent from the tract Michael’d given Irene last fall but whose address—still headless, still without a name—was printed and now circled in dark pencil on the otherwise identical tract now being urged into Irene’s hand: just a number and a street in Council Bluffs. In the margin, in pencil, someone had written: Wed. 10 a.m., Fri–Sun 9:30 a.m.
“Well, I hope we can, sometime,” said Irene, beginning to turn.
“Good luck,” said Lisa.
“Mom!” said Lisa Sample, now standing in front of the box office, holding a place for her mother.