Crossroads

“Only because I was out of my mind.”

“Anger strikes me as quite a reasonable response to how he’d treated you.”

Marion shook her head. No sooner had she refound a treasure than the dumpling was trying to take it away from her.

“You’ve told me a horrific story,” Sophie said. “In your own words, you met Satan himself. I wouldn’t expect a self-described believer to be so forgiving of Satan.”

“That’s because you’re not a believer. I might as well be angry at the rain for falling on me. I knew perfectly well who he was. I let him into me anyway, and I got the punishment I deserved.”

“You blame yourself, not him.”

“What’s wrong with that? There’s a reason why anger is a deadly sin. I was full of anger when I was young—I felt like murdering people. If I hadn’t been so angry, I might have made better decisions. I know you think it’s sick to blame myself, but spiritually I think it’s healthier.”

“Maybe,” Sophie said. “As long as you’re happy with where it’s gotten you.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning anxious and depressed. Unable to sleep. Hating your body. I have a hard time believing that any religion would condemn an emotion as natural as anger. Think about the civil rights movement. Do you think Dr. King wasn’t angry when his people were murdered by Klansmen? He may have preached nonviolence, but sometimes, when a problem is intractable, only anger can change things.”

“I would never compare my situation to a Black person’s in Alabama. That’s really almost offensive.”

Sophie smiled pleasantly. “I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

“I was lucky to find someone to marry me at all, after what I’d been through. And even then I married him under false pretenses. I can hardly go complaining that I’m oppressed by him now. Even the business with his widow friend—I didn’t blame Bradley for losing interest in his wife. Why should I blame Russ for losing interest in me? I’m a lot older and fatter than Bradley’s wife was.”

“Anger is an emotion,” Sophie said. “It doesn’t have to be logical. Right now, for example, I’m feeling very angry at your abuser. I’m also a little bit angry with you.”

“What for?”

“Listen to your assumptions. You were lucky to find someone to marry you? Why? What was so wrong with you? You were sexually experienced? You’d had a nervous breakdown? Would that have been a problem if you were male? Would you have been lucky to find a wife? And why was it so important to be married in the first place? Because a woman isn’t really a woman if she can’t find a husband and procreate? Because she—”

Sophie stopped herself and shook her head, as if she’d said too much. And Marion indeed was disappointed in her. The dumpling was so soft and slippery in her manner that her underlying conceptual program, whether Freudian or medical or political or what, had been hard to pinpoint. Now the program stood revealed. Marion guessed that it applied to every one of the neglected or discarded wives who came here—One Size Fits All. Was she supposed to be delighted that it fit her, too?

“You must get tired of it,” she said, not kindly. “All the ladies coming to you and complaining about their men. Week after week, men men men. It must be frustrating for you—that we can’t talk about something else. That we can’t see how oppressed we are.”

Sophie, who’d regained her composure, smiled pleasantly. “It’s interesting that you assume my other female patients only talk about men.”

“Are you telling me they don’t?”

“It doesn’t matter if they do or don’t. What matters is how you imagine them. Do you think I think you talk too much about men?”

“I think you do,” Marion said. “You keep telling me I need to develop more of an independent life. I think what you’re really saying is ‘Enough about men already—go liberate yourself.’”

“You don’t care for the idea of women’s liberation.”

“If that’s your program, I don’t object to it. If it works for your other patients, more power to them.”

“But it’s not for you.”

“That landlord was a sicko. I never saw my friend again, I never saw Isabelle, but I’ll bet you he’d found a way to have sex with her. She got behind with her rent, or she needed a professional favor, and he used his power to take advantage of her. He was fat and repulsive, and he only ran that house as a way to have sex with lots of girls. I was one of them, and what he did to me was sick. Even the part that was normal sex wasn’t normal. It was all happening in his head—I was just a thing.”

“Exactly.”

“But let’s say he went to a psychiatrist: Sir, you’re making me a little bit angry. Isn’t it time you developed a more independent life? All you ever talk about is girls!”

Sophie drew a slow breath and slowly let it out. “A good psychiatrist might have helped him identify the trauma he felt compelled to reenact.”

“Ah, there we go. What am I reenacting?”

“What’s your guess?”

“I don’t know. Guilt about my father’s suicide. Is that the idea?”

“If that’s what you say.”

“I’ve stopped feeling guilty about Russ. I certainly don’t feel guilty about the landlord. I was guilty, but that’s different from a feeling. That’s an objective fact. The people I feel guilty about are Perry and the child of Bradley’s I killed without telling him. They were innocent, and I’m responsible for them.”

The dumpling looked down at her pudgy hands. Darkness had fallen outside the window. Elsewhere in the dental office, late units of pain were being manufactured with a drill.

“Your mother,” Sophie said. “You said she was skiing with her friends when you needed help with your pregnancy. Did you feel angry about that?”

“My mother was a self-centered alcoholic nightmare.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. You’ve also told me about your anger at your sister. But it was your father who bankrupted your family—”

“Shirley and my mother made him do it.”

“He committed fraud and lied to you. Then your car salesman takes advantage of you, despite knowing how sensitive you are. A sexual deviant does unspeakable things to you. You support your husband for twenty-five years, and now he’s chasing someone else. And yet the only people you seem to be angry with are your mother and your sister. Do you see what I’m not understanding?”

“I guess I’m not a women’s libber.”

“I’m not asking you to be one. I’m asking you to try to see yourself.”

“The person I see isn’t good.”

“Marion, listen to me.” The dumpling leaned forward. “Do you want to know a thing I really am getting tired of hearing? That particular refrain of yours.”

“But it’s true.”

“Really? You’ve raised four great kids. You’ve given your husband as much as any man could deserve. You did everything you could for your father. You even took care of your sister when she was dying.”

“That wasn’t me, though. It was me playing a role. The real me…” She shook her head.

“Tell me about the real you,” Sophie said. “Besides being a ‘bad’ person, how would you describe her? What is she like?”

“She’s thin,” Marion said emphatically.

“She’s thin.”

“She feels everything intensely. She’s a sinner, and she’s honest with God about that. She hopes He understands that sinning is inseparable from feeling alive, but she doesn’t care if He forgives her, because she’s not really capable of regret. She’s probably an actress—she wants attention. She’s fairly crazy, but not in a way that hurts anyone. She was never suicidal.”

The dumpling seemed unimpressed.

“Your sister was an actress,” she remarked. “You’ve also described her as nutty and thin.”

“Oh, thanks for that.”

Sophie gestured suggestively, not retracting her remark.

“Shirley was spoiled and bitter,” Marion said. “She wasn’t a real actress.”

“Okay.”

“The person I’m describing is the opposite of bitter.”

“Okay. Let’s say that’s the real you. What do you think is stopping you from being that person?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m fifty years old. Being divorced would be a disaster. Even if I found a way to make it work, I’d still be responsible for my kids, especially Perry. There’s no escaping the consequences of the life I’ve made.”

“Not to nitpick,” Sophie said, smiling pleasantly, “but if the real you is incapable of regret, why does she care about the consequences?”

“You asked me for my fantasy.”

“No, I asked you for the opposite. It’s interesting that you interpreted me to mean a fantasy.”

The dumpling’s endurance was extraordinary. Marion could talk to her forever, going around and around, and never get anywhere. It was nothing but a waste of money.

“I wonder if it has to be an either-or,” Sophie said. “Maybe there’s a way to feel truer to yourself and still be a good mother. What if you started with the local theater? Tried getting involved and seeing where it leads.”

This was the kind of suggestion—moderate, sensible, incremental—that Marion might have made to one of her kids, but waddling around on a stage with other middle-aged suburbanites held no appeal. She needed to be the intense, skinny woman smoking a cigarette at the back of the theater, watching the actors fail and finally losing her patience, striding up to the stage to show them how to do a scene. A fantasy? Maybe, but maybe not. Once upon a time, on a Murphy bed in Los Angeles, her acting had mesmerized Bradley Grant.

“What are you thinking?” Sophie asked.

“I’m thinking I’m going to let you go home.”

“Yes, in a few minutes. I feel we’re—”

“No.” Marion stood up. “Russ and I have to go to the open house for clergy. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

She went to the door and took her gabardine coat off its hook.

“I guarantee you,” she said, “it won’t be fun for Russ unless one of the wives is good-looking. Otherwise it’s just another occasion for his insecurity, and I’m no help with that. I’m the fat little humiliation he’s married to. His only consolation is how good I am at playing nice, remembering the name of every wife, making sure they all get greeted by a Hildebrandt. Later on, he’ll tell me how bad it felt to be the oldest junior minister at the party, how frustrated he is, and I’ll tell him he deserves his own church. I’ll tell him how much better his sermons are than Dwight’s, how much harder he works than Dwight, how much I admire him. That’s another role I’m insanely good at. Except then, if the party was hard enough for him, he’ll complain that his sermons are only good because I write them for him. Ha!”

Batting her eyelashes, exaggerating her role, she turned back to Sophie.

“Oh that’s not true at all, honey. The ideas are all yours, I just do a little tidying up to help you express your ideas more clearly. I couldn’t do anything without you. I’m just an empty vessel who knows how to write a clean English sentence—Ha!”

Her audience of one was watching her with somber compassion.

“You wanted mad?” Marion said to her. “I can do mad.”

She meant mad as in angry, but the way she exited the office, jerking open the door and closing it too hard, was mad in both senses. She was mad at herself for using the word fantasy, mad at Sophie for pouncing on the slip. The self she’d unearthed was only a fantasy? They’d see about that. The important thing, she told herself, as she sailed past the Greek receptionist and out into the weather, was to not eat one more goddamned cookie, ever again. To properly starve herself; to see food as the enemy it was; to glow white-hot with the burning of her fat, false self. If it was mad to be obsessed with her weight, then let her be mad. Her fat-loss program in the fall had been a feeble thing, born of a dumpling-sanctioned hope of rekindling Russ’s interest in her, of avoiding a split from which she stood to lose far more than he did. Her heart hadn’t been in it, and now she knew why: she’d never gotten over Bradley. The man in whom she’d invested herself had been a second choice—as insecure as Bradley was confident, as clumsy at writing and tentative at sex as Bradley was magnificent. Maybe, at the time, in Arizona, she’d needed a man she could manage and be more brilliant than, but the marriage had long since dwindled to a mere arrangement: in return for her services, Russ didn’t throw her to the wolves. She still had Christian compassion for him, but when she thought about his penis, vis-à-vis Frances Cottrell and the other pretty women of New Prospect, it wasn’t quite true that there was no comparing him to her long-ago abuser. That much the dumpling had been right about.

The old corner drugstore had been Rockwellian when the Hildebrandts moved to town, but the owner had since remodeled it with ugly laminates, covered the wooden floor with linoleum, and installed fluorescent lighting. In the same improving spirit, the Christmas tree inside the door was artificial, its needles silver, not even fake green. Behind the front counter, doing the Sun-Times crossword with a pencil, was a large-eared man in his late twenties, too old to be working as a clerk if it wasn’t a career path he’d somehow, heartbreakingly, chosen. Marion stepped up to the counter and surveyed the candy-bar display with militant loathing.

“I need cigarettes,” she said.

“What kind?”

“Strangely,” she said, “the only brand that comes to mind is Benson & Hedges. It’s because of that TV commercial, the one with the elevator door.”

“‘They take some getting used to.’”

“Are Benson & Hedges any good?”

“I’m not a smoker.”

“What’s a popular brand these days?”

“Marlboro, Winston. Lucky Strike.”

“Lucky Strike! Of course! I used to smoke them. One of those, please.”

“Filter, no filter?”

“Good Lord. I have no idea. How about one of each?”

Handing over her money, she was tempted to explain that she hadn’t had a cigarette in thirty years; that she’d quit smoking after being released from a locked ward and moving in with her uncle Jimmy in Arizona; that cigarette smoke had aggravated Jimmy’s asthma and tasted wrong to her at high altitude; that she’d filled the hole of her missing habit with rosary beads and daily visits to the Church of the Nativity, a walk of two thousand four hundred and forty-two steps (habitually counted) from Jimmy’s front door; that she’d discovered Nativity when, eager to be helpful, she’d accompanied Rosalia, the mother of Jimmy’s man, Antonio, to a Sunday mass, because the men were late sleepers and Rosalia kept forgetting where she was going; that Marion, whose state of mind was like the high country in spring weather, strong sunlight snuffed by clouds and breaking out again, over and over, all day long the alternation, brightsummerwarm, darkwinterchilly, had thrown her soul open to every single thing she encountered, because none of these things was a locked ward, and that the presence and majesty of God, revealed in a womblike little Catholic church where her uncle’s lover’s senile mother received Communion, had happened to be one of them; that God had become a better friend to her than cigarettes. It saddened her to think that the big-eared young man had no larger ambition than working in retail, and she would have liked to enlarge his evening by sharing some of the high-country vividness with which, all of a sudden, she was recalling her life pre-Russ. But the clerk had already picked up his crossword again.

Heedless of the slush in her shoes, she ran across the street and took shelter beneath the awning of a travel agency. She wasted two matches before she got a filterless Lucky lit. Her first drag was reminiscent of losing her virginity—painful and awful and excellent. She knew very well that cigarettes had killed her sister. She also knew, from reports in the paper, that the risk of cancer was proportional to total lifetime exposure. Shirley had erred in not taking a thirty-year break from her exposure. Marion didn’t intend to smoke forever, just long enough to regain the figure of the girl who’d given her virginity to Bradley Grant.

A measure of her disturbance was that, although she felt light-headed, the Lucky didn’t make her sick. It made her want another one. She walked only two blocks, jumping at the sound of every passing car, jangled and buffeted by the snowy mayhem of it all, before she sat down on a bench outside the town hall and lit up again. Had cigarettes always been so delicious? She gladly noted her lack of hunger. The thought of Doris Haefle’s Swedish meatballs—how many of which Marion had eaten, exactly a year earlier, she’d enjoined herself to keep count of, before losing count—turned her stomach. Snowmelt was seeping through her coat beneath her butt. The boughs of the town hall’s ornamental hemlocks sagged under heavy loads of white. She was smoking the second Lucky faster than the first one; an elation long lost to her was building in her chest. To do something with it, she spoke aloud a word she didn’t think she’d used since the morning the police picked her up in Los Angeles. She said, “Fuck!”

Oh, it felt good.

“Fuck Doris Haefle. Fuck her meatballs.”

A hatted commuter, briefcase in hand, head lowered against the driving snow, paused on the sidewalk to look at her. She raised the hand with the Lucky in it and waved to him.

“Everything okay?” the man said.

“Never better, thank you.”

He continued down the sidewalk. Something about his gait, the determined slant of his body, reminded her of Bradley. Bringing her Lucky to her lips, she saw that its coal was about to burn her fingers. She frantically shook it into the snow.

Bradley would be sixty-five now. Old, but not so very old, not in a preservative clime like Southern California’s. Did he still think about her? Or had he, like her, entombed his memories and tried to make himself a different person? It would be terrible if he’d forgotten her. But even worse if he remembered her only as the girl who’d behaved unforgivably: if their months of bliss had all been blotted out by the day she’d gone to his house and spoken to his wife. Why had she had to do that? Why had she had to hurt an innocent third party? Everything might be perfect if she hadn’t.

The matches were damp now—she scorched a fingertip lighting one. To make an informed guess about which version of her had stayed with Bradley, whether the good might outweigh the very bad, she tried to summon her memories of his passion for her. The memories wouldn’t sit still, one bled into another, but she had the impression of a great many instances of passion. Even when she’d lost her mind and frightened him, he’d had to struggle to keep away from her. Later, yes, surely, he’d hated her for going to his wife. But so what? She’d hated him, too, for rejecting her. The hatred had quickly faded. What remained in her memory was the thrilling rightness of being with him. Maybe, with the passage of time, he’d come to feel the same way?

She imagined abandoning Russ before he could get around to abandoning her. Wouldn’t that be a surprise. The fantasy of losing thirty pounds and ditching Russ was so satisfying that she might have been content to keep indulging in it, sitting on her bench, if it hadn’t occurred to her that the library had a collection of phonebooks …

In the mangy snow behind the library, she flicked the end of her fourth cigarette into the parking lot. The facts of the world had submitted to her state of mind. She now had good reason to hope that Bradley was alive in Los Angeles; she had an address and a phone number. Electrified by nicotine, she wondered what to do next with her disturbance. Low on the list of options was smelling the meatballs of Dwight Haefle’s nasty wife. For a moment, she worried that Becky might be waiting at home to go to the open house; that her sense of duty had prevailed over her need to be with Tanner Evans. But this seemed unlikely, and Becky, if it came to that, could go by herself to the open house with Russ, who’d be happier with that arrangement anyway. He was proud of Becky’s beauty and preferred parading it in public, every Sunday afternoon, to being seen with his wife.

“Fuck you, Russ.”

Remembering how it felt to want to murder someone, she thought she might yet become a women’s libber. But she was done with the psychiatric dumpling. No imaginable breakthrough could leave her more broken through than she was now. She felt like going home and emptying her hosiery drawer of its remaining cash, to forestall any temptation to crawl back to Sophie, and spending it on an extravagant present for Perry, but the stores were all closing.

She saw what she had to do next. She had to confess to Perry, too. Confiding in Sophie had only been practice, a warm-up. Someone in her family needed to know what she’d done, and it sure as fucking hell wasn’t Russ. Perry was the person most like her, the person in danger of disturbance like her own, the person she had to warn. Wherever her disturbance might lead her, whether back into Bradley’s arms or merely to a divorcée’s career in local theater, she would have to bring Perry along with her. Her responsibility for him would keep her from flying too dangerously high. This would be the deal she made with God.

Insulated by her fatness, she went around the side of the library, pushed through a weak spot in its hedge, and made tracks across its front lawn, which she’d never seen one person set foot on. New Prospect was lovely in the snow but not as beautiful as Arizona, because it was already shadowed by a tomorrow of gray slush-puddles, of salt-corroded snowbanks blackened by the exhaust pipes of cars gunning their engines, spinning their wheels. In Arizona, the white purity had persisted for weeks.

Fighting uphill against the wind on Maple Avenue made her aware of nicotine’s poisoning of the heart. At the corner of Highland, she stopped to catch her breath and check her watch. It was nearly seven o’clock. With all the snow, Russ might only now be getting home himself. She could always say to him, “Fuck the reception—I’m not going.” But a sweeter way to punish him would be to let him wonder why she hadn’t come home. She was pretty sure he’d lied to her at breakfast, pretty sure he was with his widow friend. And there was, she realized, an easy way to be certain. Kitty Reynolds, his putative companion for the outing in the city, lived in one of the little houses farther up on Maple, near the high school.

Decisions being simple for a person unafraid of consequences, Marion crossed Highland and proceeded up Maple, into the wind. Her feet were frozen, her fingers getting there. She couldn’t quite picture Kitty’s house, but she recognized it when she came to it. There was light in every downstairs window, a sports car with a Michigan license in the driveway, no wreath on the door, no lights on the bushes. Marion marched up the front walk, noting that it had been shoveled perhaps an hour earlier, and rang the doorbell. For a heart-clutching moment, she confused what she was doing with the thing she’d done to Bradley’s wife, as if she were reenacting it. Then clarity returned. Her situation now was exactly the reverse.

An elderly man in a thick cardigan opened the door. She was afraid she had the wrong house, but he identified himself as Kitty’s brother. “She’s just draining the spaghetti,” he said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry to bother you at dinnertime.”

“Who can I tell her is here?”

“I—it’s not important. I should have stopped by earlier. Was she here in the afternoon?”

“Yep. Trouncing me at Scrabble. It was the perfect day for sitting by the fire. Would you like to come in?”

“No, I, no,” Marion said, turning away. “Thank you. I’ll see her in church on Sunday.”

“And you are…?”

She raised a hand and waved it as she walked away. As soon as she heard the door close, she took out her Luckies. One of her match packs was sodden, the other still usable. Suspicious though she’d been that Russ had lied to her, it had taken conclusive proof to make her furious about it. His lie had been stupid, easily found out, the lie of a little boy, and this made her even angrier. Did he think she was stupid? Probably not even. She’d barely registered as a person at all. She’d been little more than an inconvenient object at the breakfast table, an annoying vase in the way of his sugar bowl, not even worth telling a decent lie to. Soon enough, when she’d lost her fat, she would have more ways to make him pay. For now, the sweetest punishment would be to say nothing, let him think she knew nothing, let him damn himself by telling further lies.

It was nearly seven thirty when she got back to the parsonage. There was no sign of the car, no car tracks in the driveway. Inside the back door, she took off her shoes and coat and ran her fingers through her slushy hair. On the kitchen counter were sugar cookies whose allure she could no longer fathom. Everything in the kitchen seemed lusterless and alien. She might have been entering the house of someone recently deceased.

“Perry?” she called. “Becky?”

Climbing the stairs, she called their names again. Maybe the boys had gone out sledding? Their bedroom was dark, the door ajar. She turned on a light in her and Russ’s room. On the foot of the bed was a note in Perry’s artistic hand.

Dear Mom,

Dad is stuck in the city, so I’m taking Jay to the Haefles. Becky waited for you. I told her to go to the concert.

Perry

Now came, without warning, the tears she hadn’t shed in her confession. Whatever Russ might mean or not mean to her, however poorly he and Perry got along, he would always be the person Perry called Dad—would forever be his father. And how unjust she’d been to Becky, imagining that she wouldn’t come to the open house. How poignant Perry’s striving to behave like an adult, how generous his mentioning that his sister had waited; how dear and real her children were, how lucky she was to have them; what a difference there was between proclaiming her badness to the dumpling, the abstract fact of it, and experiencing it in relation to her children. She’d let them down. Becky had obediently waited for her, and Perry had made the best decision he could.

Clumsy, her eyesight teary, she tore off her exercise clothes and rubbed her hair with a towel. She truly was a bad person, because along with love and remorse, no less strongly, she was feeling self-pity for having been wrenched from the vividness of memory and fantasy; resentment for the interruption of her disturbance. Also hatred of the sack of a dress in which she was now obliged to encase the sausage of her body. In the bathroom, after brushing her hair, she forced herself to step onto the corroded old scale by the toilet, to establish a new baseline. Counting clothes, she weighed one hundred and forty-four pounds. It was almost enough to make a person cry again. When she went back to the kitchen for her cigarettes, wearing her good winter coat and her good fur-trimmed boots, the sugar cookies had regained their allure.

Eating cookies is an interesting response to feeling overweight.

“Really?” she said aloud, to the dumpling in her head. “Is that really so goddamned fucking hard to understand? Have you never in your life felt sorry for yourself?”

After a fortifying smoke on the front porch, she set out for the Haefles’. The snow was still coming down heavily, but the air’s flavor had turned Canadian as the cold front gained the upper hand. Her only consolation for having let her children down was that Russ was letting them down even worse. Whom she felt more like murdering, him or the slender widow with whom he was stuck in the city, was a toss-up.

Leaving the Haefles’ house as she approached it were two priests in identical sable-collared overcoats. Her fear of priests outside a church, which dated from her Catholic years, was related to an atavistic fear of all things monstrous, even the ostensibly laudable monstrosity of being half human and half divinely anointed: of being celibate. She lurked on the sidewalk until the priests had climbed into a Country Squire station wagon. That it looked brand-new was itself vaguely monstrous.

She knew the Haefles well enough to let herself inside without knocking. Smelling meatballs, blessedly also cigarette smoke, she took her Luckies from her coat before she hung it in the closet by the basement stairs. From the basement came the sound of Hollywood violins and then a familiar little voice, Judson’s.

Downstairs, in the rec room, she found him on a sofa between two girls in whose faces the unfortunate lineaments of Doris Haefle were discernible. They were watching Miracle on 34th Street on a portable Zenith. On the screen, Kris Kringle was seated on the bed of a little-girl character whose mother, as Marion recalled, saw nothing wrong with leaving her alone with strange men and their penises. As the camera framed Santa’s face, her chest tightened. Not her favorite movie. She went behind the TV to avoid it.

“Hi, Mom,” Judson said.

“Hello, dear. I’m sorry I’m so late. Did you have some dinner?”

“Yes, but now we’re watching this movie.”

“I’m Judson’s mother,” Marion explained to the girls.

They mumbled hellos. Judson was slouched low on the sofa, the girls inclining toward each other, their bodies touching his. Although he was a happy child in general, Marion was struck by the heavy-lidded dreaminess of his expression. He seemed to be enjoying more than just the movie. He looked like a cat transported by petting. She had the uneasy sense that she was interrupting something.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your movie,” she said. “Perry is upstairs?”

Judson’s gaze stayed on the screen. “Presumably,” he said.

There was an edge of sarcasm in his voice, as if he were performing for the girls. Marion went upstairs feeling like no better a mother than the one in the movie. Judson was nine years old. She knew it was time for Becky to have a boyfriend, past time for Clem to have a girl in his life, but she was not remotely ready for Judson to lose his innocence.

In the hallway, standing with her back to the party and popping a whole cookie into her mouth, was the Lutheran pastor’s wife—Jane. Definitely Jane Walsh, not Janet. On her dessert plate were four more cookies, and she was even heavier than Marion.

“Hello, Jane. Marion Hildebrandt—Russ’s wife.”

One greeting down, a million to go.

“This party is a lovely tradition,” Jane said, “but Doris’s cookies are not what I need at this time of year. I always seem to overdo.”

Marion herself preferred the meatballs. The cookies here, though impeccably Swedish, were dry and flavorless. She was on the verge of expressing this judgment, on the theory that she was done with censoring herself, when the sociable din in the living room died down suddenly. She wondered if Dwight Haefle might be making a little speech. Instead, she heard another familiar voice rising. It was Perry, shouting something about … being damned?

She hurried past Jane Walsh and pushed through the party’s margins. Perry was standing by the fireplace, his face extremely red, a Haefle to either side of him. Everyone else in the room was watching them.

“What’s going on?” Marion said.

Perry swallowed a sob. “Mom, I’m sorry.”

“What is it? What’s happening?”

“Son,” Dwight Haefle said, putting an arm around Perry. “Let’s, ah. Let’s take a little walk.”

Perry bowed his head and let himself be led away. Marion tried to follow, but Doris Haefle arrested her. Her expression blazed with triumph. “Your son is intoxicated.”

“I’m very sorry to hear it.”

“Hm, yes, this is what happens when children aren’t supervised. Did you only get here now?”

“A few minutes ago.”

“It’s quite unusual that your children came without you.”

“I know. The weather is just … Perry was trying to do a good thing.”

“You didn’t tell him to come?”

“God, no.”

“That’s good, then, dear.” Doris patted Marion on the shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You just need to take him home now.”

Doris Haefle had a grossly inflated sense of the importance of a pastor’s wife, was sensitive to every slight to it, and therefore, because the world didn’t share her regard for the role, existed in a state of perpetual grievance. Among the crosses she bore was being married to a pastor who ironically deprecated his own role. For Marion, the miserable thing was that she, too, was a pastor’s wife and thus, in Doris’s view, worthy of the highest respect. She had to endure not only Doris’s unsolicited suggestions on how to comport herself, in her exalted role, but the unfailingly tender manner in which she offered them. It was awkward to be called dear by a person you felt like calling insufferable bitch.

Perry was slumped forward on a chair in the dining room, his hair draping his face. Dwight came over to Marion and spoke in a low voice. “He does seem to have been drinking gløgg.”

“I’ll take care of it,” she said. “I apologize for this.”

“Should we be worried about Russ?”

“No, he’s on a date with Frances Cottrell.”

The widening of Dwight’s eyes amused her.

“They’re delivering toys and canned goods in the city.”

“Ah.”

“But listen,” she said. “Judson’s in the basement watching Miracle on 34th Street. Would you mind if I left him here and came back later?”

“Not at all,” Dwight said. “If you don’t want to come back, I can run him home.”

How often a marriage consisted of nasty paired with nice. If her own marriage didn’t strike people this way, it was only because they’d never met the real her. She needed to go down and tell Judson that she was taking Perry home, but the scene in the basement had left an unsettling aftertaste, and so she asked nice Dwight to do it. When he was gone, she went to Perry and crouched at his feet.

“Sweetie,” she said. “How drunk are you? A lot, or not very?”

“Relatively not very,” he said, his face still hidden. “Mrs. Haefle overreacted.”

The word relatively didn’t surprise Marion. She herself had done her first drinking when she was his age. Then again, look how she’d turned out.

“What were you thinking?” she said. “You brought Judson here. You were responsible for him—did you not think of that?”

“Mother. Please. I am very sorry, all right?”

“Sweetie, look at me. Will you look at me? I’m not angry with you. I’m just surprised—you’re always so considerate of Judson.”

“I’m sorry!”

The poor boy. She took his hands and kissed his head.

“Jay was fine,” he said. “He was playing Yahtzee, and I wasn’t that buzzed. Everything was fine until…”

“You picked the wrong woman’s house to get drunk in.”

He gave a little snort. Her opinion of Doris Haefle was known to him. She’d told him all sorts of things she didn’t tell the other kids. And now she had new things to tell him. The hotness of his hands, the reality of the boy she so especially loved, was burning a hole in the tissue of her fantasies of Bradley. “Let’s get you home,” she said.

When she returned from the closet with their coats, Perry was eating from a plate of meatballs. They were tempting, but so were cigarettes. The old cycles of nicotine, of hunger and its suppression, of anxiety and relief, were coming back to her. Leaving Perry to get some food in him, she stepped out onto the front stoop.

She was only halfway through the Lucky when he opened the door. She had a red-handed impulse to drop the cigarette, but it was important that he see her as she really was.

He goggled in cartoonish astonishment. “What, may I ask, are you doing?”

“I have my own contraband tonight.”

“You smoke?”

“I used to, a long time ago. But it’s a terrible habit and you must never try it.”

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

“Exactly.”

He shut the door and stepped into his rubbers. “Can I try one anyway?”

Too late, she realized her mistake. At some point, she was sure of it, he’d take her smoking as permission to smoke himself, and it would be yet another thing to feel guilty about having done to him. To quell this new anxiety, she sucked hard on the cigarette.

“Perry, listen to me. There’s one thing you can do that I will not forgive. I will never forgive you if you become a smoker. Do you understand?”

“Honestly, no,” he said, buckling his rubbers. “I don’t think of you as being a hypocrite.”

“I started smoking before anyone knew how dangerous it is. You’re too intelligent to make the same mistake.”

“And yet here you are, smoking.”

“Well, there’s a reason for that. Would you like me to tell you what it is?”

“I want you not to die.”

“I don’t intend to die, sweetie. But there are some things you need to know about me. How are you feeling now?”

“The buzz no longer buzzeth. Buzzeth buzzeth buzzeth—see?”

In the story she began to tell him, as they made their way home, there was nothing of Bradley Grant, nothing of any man except her father. The snow, deep on the ground and still falling, gave her voice a curious distinctness while dampening its carry, as if the world were an enlargement of her skull. Perry listened in silence, wordlessly offering her a hand where the snow had formed drifts. Until now, she’d kept the suicide a secret from her kids. Even to Russ she hadn’t spoken of it in many years; she had the sense that it frightened him, or embarrassed him; as did, for that matter, everything else related to her innermost self. Perry’s face was hidden by the hood of his parka, and as she proceeded to describe her own mental disturbance, following the suicide—the dissociation, the episodes of slippage, the months of insomnia, the weeks of catatonic lowness—she had no idea what he was making of it.

They reached the parsonage before she’d finished. In the driveway were two sets of recent footprints, one coming, one going. Guessing that they were Clem’s, she called his name as soon as she and Perry were in the kitchen, but the house was obviously empty.

“I wonder if he went to the concert,” she said. “You probably want to get down there, too. We can talk more in the morning.”

Perry was eating a cookie. “If you have more to say, let’s hear it.”

She retrieved the Luckies from her coat and opened the back door for ventilation.

“I’m sorry, sweetie. This is hard for me to do without smoking.”

Her hands were too shaky to get a match lit. Perry took the matches and flared one for her. She was feeling somehow younger than he was; more daughter than mother. She gratefully inhaled the smoke and tried to blow it out the door, but the wind pushed it in.

“Put that out,” he said. “I have a better idea.”

“The front porch.”

“No. Third floor.”

In the gloom of the front hall, she was surprised to see two massive pieces of luggage. For a moment, as in a dream, she thought that they were hers—that she was leaving tonight, perhaps for Los Angeles. Then she understood that they were Clem’s. Why had he brought so much luggage?

Perry had run up the stairs. Huffing, with poisoned heart, she followed him to the third-floor storage room. No guilty secrets were buried here. She’d arrived at her uncle Jimmy’s with only one suitcase, and before she married Russ she’d burned her diaries in Jimmy’s fireplace, destroying the last evidence of the person she’d been. The oldest relics now were from Indiana—a crib and a high chair last used by Judson, an old movie projector, a cedar chest of blankets and linens not worth keeping, a wardrobe of fashions unlikely to return, a mildewed army-surplus tent that Russ had wrongly imagined the family might camp in. It was all just sadness.

Without turning on a light, Perry opened the mullioned dormer window. “The house has some kind of chimney effect,” he said. “Even with the door closed, there’s always a draft going out.”

“You seem to really know your way around up here.”

“You can use the outer sill as an ashtray.”

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me you smoke?”

“Finish your story. I thought you had more to say.”

There was indeed an outflowing draft. She could put her head out the window and still be in relative warmth—in the snow, feeling the flakes on her face, without being of it. Smoking but not in smoke.

“So, well, so,” she said. “I ended up losing my mind. I got picked up by the police when I was wandering around on Christmas morning. Thirty years ago tomorrow. They took me to the county hospital, and then I was committed to the women’s ward at Rancho Los Amigos, which is not the kind of place you ever want to be. Obviously, they couldn’t let me back out on the street, but to be locked up in a place with bars on the windows, surrounded by women even crazier than me—I still don’t really understand how I got better. The psychiatrists told me that my brain was still adolescent. The word they used was plastic. They said it was possible my hormones would settle down—that I’d stressed them by spending too much time alone, and by … other things. I didn’t really believe them, but there was a list of behaviors I had to exhibit before they’d let me leave, and I was so desperate to get out that I eventually exhibited every one of them. So. That’s another important fact about me. I was institutionalized for mental illness when I was twenty.”

She crushed her cigarette on the outer sill.

“Do you see why I was so worried about you in the spring? We’re so much alike—we’re not like the others. Your trouble sleeping, your mood swings, I think that’s something you get from me. From my side of the family. I feel terrible about it, but it’s something you need to know. I don’t want you to ever have to go through what I did.”

It was hard to turn away from the window, but she did it. The room seemed brighter now that her eyes had adjusted. Perry was sitting on the cedar chest, his own eyes on the floor. When she sat down in his line of vision, he lowered his chin to his chest.

“Your father doesn’t know about any of this,” she said. “I never told him I’d been in a hospital—because I got better. I’d been better for a number of years when I met him, and I want you to remember that. The psychiatrists were right. It was something I outgrew.”

This was to some extent a lie, so she repeated it.

“You don’t have to worry about me, sweetie. But I am worried about you. You’re still a teenager, and you’re so precious to me. You need to tell me what’s happening in your head. If there’s a problem, we can work on it, but you need to be honest with me. Will you do that? Will you tell me what you’re thinking?”

His breath was hot and she could smell the liquor on it. To have named, aloud, to him, the thing for which she felt guiltiest made it larger; realer; inescapable-seeming. She thought of her earlier hesitation at the door of the dumpling’s office—her sense that she had only two choices, either submit to God’s will and devote herself to Perry, or godlessly devote herself to herself. It was cruel how mutually exclusive the choices seemed to be. In the heat of her son’s breath, she could feel her elation evaporating, her longing for Bradley escaping her grasp.

“Sweetie? Please say something.”

With a breathy sound, almost a laugh, he sat up straight and looked around the room as if he didn’t see her at his feet. “What’s there to say? It’s not like this is any great surprise.”

“How so?”

He was smiling. “I already knew I was damned. Right?”

“No, no, no.”

“I’m not saying it’s your fault. It’s just a fact. There’s something bad in my head.”

“No, sweetie. You’re just intelligent and sensitive. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can be a very good thing, too.”

“Not true. Here, you want to see?”

He stood up with surprising energy and stepped onto the cedar chest. From the top of the wardrobe, he took down a shoe box. He wasn’t reacting at all the way she’d expected. There was no distress on her behalf, no fear on his own. It was as if a switch had been flipped and he wasn’t reacting at all. And she knew that switch. It was the worst sort of punishment to see her son flipping it.

He removed the lid of the shoe box and held up a clear plastic bag that appeared to be filled with plant matter. “These,” he said, “are the seeds and stems from what I’ve smoked up here. They correspond to maybe ten percent of my total intake, counting other locations.” He rooted in the box. “Here we have my papers. Here’s the pipe I thought would be great but didn’t quite work for me. Trusty Bic lighter, of course. Roach clip. Miniature mouthwash bottle. And this—” He held up a gleaming apparatus. “You might as well know about this, too. This is a more or less serviceable hand scale. Useful if you’re in the business of selling pot.”

“Holy Mary.”

“You asked me to be honest with you.”

He put the lid back on the box. All business, no emotion. It occurred to her that the Perry in her head had been nothing but a sentimental projection, extrapolated from the little boy he’d been. She didn’t know the real Perry any more than Russ knew the real her.

“How did this all happen so quickly?” she said, meaning his becoming a stranger.

“Three years isn’t quick.”

“Oh my. Three years? I must be very stupid and very blind.”

“Not necessarily. It isn’t hard to hide a drug habit if you’re sedulous about the protocols.”

“I thought we had a close relationship.”

“We do, in a way. It’s not like I thought I knew everything about you. As, indeed, I’m now learning, I didn’t.”

“If you’re selling drugs, though. That is not at all the same kind of thing.”

“I’m not proud of it.”

“You mustn’t sell drugs.”

“For the record, I no longer do. I’ve been trying to turn over a new leaf. You can thank Becky for that.”

“Becky? Becky knows about this?”

“Not the selling part, I don’t think. But otherwise, yes, she’s pretty well apprised.”

At the vista that was opening, the image of her children conspiring to exclude her, Marion felt a dizzying resurgence of her disturbance. Evidently, she was anything but the indispensable, confided-in mother she’d imagined herself to be. She’d fooled Russ, but she hadn’t fooled her kids, and her feral intelligence was quick to recognize a kind of permission in this: if she ever managed to walk away, she might not be so missed.

“I’m going to have one more cigarette,” she said.

“Permission granted.”

She went back to the window and lit up. There was still some juice in her; the old organs of longing still functioned. Either-or, either-or. It was almost comical to watch her mind flip back and forth between irreconcilable contraries, God-fearing mother, unregretting sinner. She leaned as far as she dared out the window, trying to escape the house’s leaking warmth and feel the winter air on her skin. She leaned out even farther and caught a little gust of wind. Snowflakes were melting on her cheeks. Everything was a mess, and it was wonderful.

“Whoa, Mom, careful,” Perry said.

The amplified harmonies of “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” stripped of reverb by the density of the crowd inside the function hall, came through the open doors. Two girls in mittens and pom-pommed stocking caps were at a table in the vestibule. They wanted three dollars.

“I’m not here for the concert,” Clem said. “I’m looking for Becky Hildebrandt.”

“She’s here. But we’re not supposed to—”

“I’m not giving you three dollars.”

Inside, the heads of taller concertgoers were silhouetted by stage lights. Seated in a half circle, with dreadnought guitars, behind cantilevered mics, were the Isner brothers and a statuesque girl, Amy Jenner, whose hair was longer than her torso. Clem remembered Amy well. Two years ago, in a Crossroads exercise, she’d given him a note that said You’re sexy. The assertion was so absurd that he’d taken it to be a joke, but seeing Amy now, having learned from Sharon what the world was made of, he understood it differently. The prettiness of Amy’s voice, as she sang of hating to see her lover go, salted the wound he’d inflicted on himself in Sharon’s bedroom.

On the bus to Chicago, he and the baby behind him had finally slept, but it hadn’t been worth the cost of waking up. Returning to his consciousness of the actions he’d taken, to his aloneness with the knowledge of them, was like the reverse of awakening from a bad dream. After a brutal portage to the train station, he’d caught the 7:25 to New Prospect, where a good Samaritan had offered him a ride. He’d dropped his bags at the parsonage and charged back out into the snow, lashing himself forward. He was determined not to sleep until he could wake up knowing he wasn’t alone.

He moved into the crowd, looking for Becky, but the concert was also a reunion. He was immediately pounced upon by a mature edition of Kelly Woehlke, a girl he’d grown up with at First Reformed. They’d never been friends, and on any other night the hug she gave him might have seemed unwarranted. Tonight the touch of a warm body nearly made him cry. His few real Crossroads friends were too anti-sentimental to bother with a reunion, but other alumni were crowding around him, and despite how peripheral he’d felt in the fellowship, how unwowed by the trust-building exercises and the rhetoric of personal growth, he received their hugs gratefully, as if they were the condolences of family. He wondered what Sharon would make of all the hugging. Then he wished he hadn’t wondered, because every specific thought of Sharon, no matter how innocuous, triggered another wave of guilt and hurt.

By the time he’d circled through the crowd, not finding Becky, the Isner brothers and Amy Jenner were rousingly singing of what they would do with a hammer at various times of day. Clem’s energy was spent, and the loudness of the scene had become somewhat hellish. He’d run aground by the stage, stalled out in front of a stack of speakers, when his friend John Goya’s little brother Davy approached him. Not only was Davy no longer little, he looked strangely middle-aged. “Are you looking for Becky?” he shouted.

“Yeah, is she here?”

“I’m worried about her. Did she go home?”

“No,” Clem shouted. “I just came from home.”

Davy frowned.

“Did something happen?” Clem shouted.

The singing mercifully stopped, leaving only a low hum in the speakers.

“I don’t know,” Davy said. “She’s probably just lying down somewhere.”

Into Clem’s ear came the amplified mellifluence of Toby Isner, the elder of the two musical brothers. “Thank you, all. Thank you. I’m afraid we only have time for one more song.”

Toby paused for expressions of disappointment, and someone in the audience politely moaned. Toby had an unctuous sensitive-guy sincerity, a self-pleasuring way of smiling when he sang, that never failed to make Clem’s skin crawl. Now he’d grown a dark beard of biblical dimensions.

“You know,” Toby said, “I love that we’re all gathered here tonight, so many amazing people, so many wonderful friends, so much love, so much laughter. But I want to get serious for a minute. Can we do that? I want us all to remember there’s still a war going on. Right now, right this minute, it’s morning in Vietnam. People are still getting slaughtered, and, man, we gotta put a stop to that. Stop that war. We need America out of Vietnam right now. You dig me?”

Toby was such a preening asshole that Clem almost pitied him. And yet quite a few people were clapping and whooping. Toby, encouraged, shouted, “I want to hear it from you, people! All together now! What do we want?”

He cupped his ear with his hand, and a smattering of voices, mostly female, obliged him. “We want peace!”

“Louder, man! What do we want?”

“We want peace!”

“What do we want?”

“WE WANT PEACE!”

“When do we want it?”

“RIGHT NOW!”

“We want peace!”

“RIGHT NOW!”

Although Davy Goya, God bless him, was coolly inspecting his fingernails, it seemed to Clem that every other person in the hall had taken up the chant. He’d done his share of chanting at various protests, before he met Sharon, but the sound of it now was so alienating that he felt ashamed of himself, ashamed of his weakness, for having hugged the other alumni. Not only were they safe and self-righteous, they weren’t appalled by Toby Isner. If they’d ever been Clem’s people, they definitely weren’t now.

Toby lowered his fist, which he’d been pumping to the rhythm of the chanting, and hit the opening notes to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” A shout went up from the audience, and Clem couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed through the crowd and escaped into the church’s central hallway, where the bathrooms were. He opened the ladies’-room door a crack. “Becky?”

No answer. He checked the other rooms along the hallway—also empty. He could still hear Toby Isner’s voice, could picture him simpering through his beard, when he reached the main church entrance. Sitting on the floor inside the door, smoking a cigarette, was a girl in a biker jacket. It was Laura Dobrinsky.

“Hey Laura, good to see you. I wonder—have you seen my sister?”

Laura took a sideways puff as if she hadn’t heard him. She looked like she’d been crying.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said. “I’m just looking for Becky.”

Between him and Laura was the social ease of having long ago established that they didn’t like each other. She took another sideways puff. “Last I saw her, she was stoned off her ass.”

“She was—what?”

“Stoned off her ass.”

His vision swam as if he’d been punched. Now he understood why Davy Goya was worried. Leaving Laura to her private woe, he ran up two flights of stairs to the Crossroads meeting room. In the dimness of it, from the doorway, he saw a girl supine on a sofa, beneath a skinny boy. Both of them were clothed, and thankfully the girl wasn’t Becky.

“Sorry. Have either of you seen Becky Hildebrandt?”

“No,” the girl said. “Go away.”

As he descended the stairs, he was hammered by his lack of sleep. He would have sat down for a smoke if he’d believed it would make him feel anything but worse. His eyes were fried, his head full of rottenness, his shoulders aching from carrying his luggage, his mouth sour from the cookies he’d grabbed on his way out of the parsonage, and the complication of Becky made it almost unbearable. He knew Perry smoked pot, but Becky? He needed her to be her shining, clearheaded self. He needed her on his side before he told his parents what he’d done.

The second-floor hallway was dark, but the door of Rick Ambrose’s office was ajar. Clem had always appreciated Ambrose for understanding his ambivalent relationship with Crossroads, and he appreciated him now for wanting nothing to do with the concert. On the chance that his sister might be in the office, safe, Clem peeked inside. Ambrose was slouched in his desk chair, reading a book, and appeared to be alone.

Farther up the hallway to the sanctuary, Clem noticed a strip of light beneath the associate minister’s office door. Evidently his father, who would now be at the Haefles’ annual party, had forgotten to turn out the lights. As he walked past the door, he heard a laugh that sounded like Becky’s.

He stopped. Did she somehow have an office key? He tapped on the door. “Becky?”

“Who’s there?”

His blood pressure jumped. The voice was his father’s. Clem hadn’t expected to see him—had counted on not seeing him—before he’d talked to Becky and gotten her blessing.

“It’s me,” he said. “It’s Clem. Is Becky in there?”

There was a silence, long enough to be unnatural. Then the door was opened by his father. He was wearing his old Arizona coat, and his face was strangely pale. “Clem, hi.”

He seemed not at all happy to see his son. Behind him, in a hunting jacket and a matching cap, stood a clear-skinned boy who was, in fact, Clem realized, a short-haired woman.

“Is Becky here?”

“Becky? No. No, ah, this is one of our parishioners, Mrs. Cottrell.”

The woman gave Clem a little wave. Her face was very pretty.

“This is my son Clem,” his father said. “Mrs. Cottrell and I were just, uh—actually, maybe you can help us. Whoever shoveled the parking lot blocked her car in. We need to dig her out. Would you mind?”

Mrs. Cottrell came over and offered Clem a hand. It was cool and firm.

“Frances, don’t forget your records. I think—oh, Clem, I think I saw a couple of shovels by the front door. Mrs. Cottrell and I were late getting—we were down at Theo’s church and. So, and, yes, we had a, uh. Little accident.”

Whatever it was that Clem had interrupted, his father couldn’t have been more nervous.

“I don’t think I’m up for shoveling snow.”

“You—? It won’t take any time at all with two of us. Shall we?” The old man turned off the overhead light and said, again, “Don’t forget the records.”

“If it takes no time at all with two people,” Clem said, “how much time can it take with one person?”

“Clem, she really needs to get home.”

“But if I hadn’t happened to knock on your door.”

“I’m asking you a favor. Since when do you mind a little work?”

His father held the door for Mrs. Cottrell, who emerged with a stack of old records. Everything about her was delicate, desirable, and it gave Clem an ill feeling. Even though he’d warned Becky that men like their father, weak men whose vanity needed stroking, were liable to cheat on their wives, it was hideous to think that it might actually be happening—that his father, having failed to be as groovy as Rick Ambrose, had gotten his hands on someone closer to his age. Couldn’t she see how weak he was?

In the parking lot, in less densely falling snow, clusters of alumni were enjoying intermission cigarettes. While Mrs. Cottrell cleared the windows of her sedan, he and his father hacked at the mountain of snow in front of it. To get the car over the layer of hardened slush they uncovered, they had to push it from behind—just like the old days, dad and son working side by side—while Mrs. Cottrell rocked it with the accelerator. When it finally broke free, she drove a short distance and lowered her window.

Out of the window came a delicate hand. It beckoned with one finger. Not the typical gesture of a parishioner to a pastor.

The finger beckoned again.

“Ah—one second,” the old man said. He trotted over to the car and bent down to the open window. Clem couldn’t hear what Mrs. Cottrell was saying, but it must have been fascinating, because his father seemed to forget that Clem was there.

He waited for at least a minute, sickened by the spectacle of their tête-à-tête. Then he walked back toward the church with the shovels. He’d already noticed the family station wagon parked outside the main entrance, but only now did he see that the back end of it was maimed, the bumper missing, a taillight smashed. The bumper was inside the car.

There was a squeal of tires, and his father came hurrying up behind him. “This is something else you can help me with tomorrow,” he said. “If we hammer out the dent, I think we can reattach the bumper.”

Clem stared at the damage. His chest was so full of anger that speaking was an effort. “Why aren’t you at the Haefles’ party?”

“Oh, well,” his father said, “you’re looking at the reason. Frances and—Mrs. Cottrell and I were badly delayed in the city. I also had to change a tire.”

Clem nodded. His neck, too, was stiff with anger. “I wonder,” he said, “what she was doing in your office. If she was in such a hurry to get home.”

“Aha. Yes. She was just picking up some records I’d … borrowed.” His father jingled his car keys. “I’d offer you a ride, but I’m guessing you want to stay for the concert.”

Bumperless, the Fury’s rear end resembled a face without a mouth.

“She didn’t strike me,” Clem said, “as being in any hurry to get home.”

“She—just now? She was—it was just some business about the Tuesday circle.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really.”

“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

A cheer went up inside the function hall.

“You’re lying,” Clem said.

“Now, wait a minute—”

“Because I know what you’re like. I’ve been watching it my whole life and I’m sick of it.”

“That’s—whatever you’re imputing, you’re—that’s not right.”

Clem turned to his father. The fear in his face made him laugh. “Liar.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but—”

“I’m thinking Mom is at the Haefles’ and you’re falling all over a woman who isn’t her.”

“That’s—there is nothing wrong with a pastor attending to one of his parishioners.”

“Jesus Christ. The fact that you even have to say that.”

A drum intro, congas, drifted from the function hall, followed by another cheer. The last of the alumni smokers were heading inside. As if music ever solved anything. No more war, man. Gotta put a stop to that war. Clem’s disgust with the hippie-dippie Crossroads people intensified his disgust with his father. He’d always hated bullies, but now he understood how enraging another person’s fear could be. How the sight of it incited taunting. Incited violence.

His father spoke again, in a low unsteady voice. “Mrs. Cottrell and I were making a delivery to Theo’s church. We got a bit of a late start, and then there was—”

“Yeah, you know what? Fuck that. I don’t care what your story is. If you feel like going and boning some other woman, it’s a free country. If it makes you feel better about yourself, I don’t fucking care.”

His father looked at him in horror.

“I’m out of here anyway,” Clem said. “I wasn’t going to tell you this tonight, but you might as well know it. I quit school. I already sent a letter to the draft board. I’m going to Vietnam.”

He dropped the snow shovels and stalked away.

“Clem,” his father shouted. “Come back here.”

Clem raised his arm and gave him the middle finger as he went into the church. The entry hall was empty. Laura Dobrinsky had left two butts and a mess of ashes on the floor. He paused to consider where else to look for Becky, and the door behind him burst open.

“Don’t you walk away from me.”

He ran up a flight of stairs. He still hadn’t checked the parlor or the sanctuary. He was halfway down the hallway when his father caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder. “Why are you walking away from me?”

“Take your hands off me. I’m looking for Becky.”

“She’s at the Haefles’ with your mother.”

“No, she’s not. Becky is sick of you, too.”

His father glanced at Ambrose’s open door, unlocked his own office, and lowered his voice. “If you have something to say to me, you could pay me the courtesy of not walking away before I can answer.”

“Courtesy?” Clem followed him into the office. “You mean, like the courtesy of leaving Mom at the Haefles’ while you entertain your little lady friend?”

His father turned on the light and closed the door. “If you would calm down, I would be happy to explain what happened tonight.”

“Yeah, but look me in the eye, Dad. Look me in the eye and see if I believe a word of it.”

“That’s enough.” The old man was angry now, too. “You were out of line at Thanksgiving, and you’re very much out of line now.”

“Because I’m so fucking sick of you.”

“And I am sick of your disrespect.”

“Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to be your son?”

“I said that’s enough!”

Clem would have welcomed a fight. He hadn’t thrown a punch since junior high. “You want to hit me? You want to try me?”

“No, Clem.”

“Mister Nonviolence?”

There was Christian forbearance in the way his father shook his head. Clem would have loved to at least shove him against the wall, but this would merely have fed his Christian victimhood. The only thing Clem could hit him with was words.

“Did you even hear what I said in the parking lot? I quit school.”

“I heard that you were very angry and trying to provoke me.”

“I wasn’t being provoking. I was conveying a fact.”

His father sank into his swivel chair. A blank sheet of paper was in his typewriter. He rolled it out and smoothed it. “I’m sorry we got off on such a wrong foot. Tomorrow I hope we can be more civil to each other.”

“I wrote to the draft board, Dad. I mailed the letter this morning.”

The old man nodded to himself, as if he knew better. “You can threaten me all you want, but you’re not going to Vietnam.”

“The hell I’m not.”

“We have our differences, but I know who you are. You can’t seriously expect me to believe you intend to be a soldier. It makes no sense.”

The complacency of his father’s certainty—that no son of his could be anything but a replica of himself—inflamed the bully in Clem.

“I know it’s hard for you to imagine,” he said, “but some people actually pay a price for what they believe in. You and your little parishioner can go and be the nice white people at Theo Crenshaw’s church. You can pull some weeds in Englewood and feel good about yourself. You can march in your marches and brag about it to your all-white congregation. But when it’s time to put your money where your mouth is, you don’t see any problem with me being in college and letting some Black kid fight for me in Vietnam. Or some poor white kid from Appalachia. Or some poor Navajo, like Keith Durochie’s son. Do you think you’re better than Keith? Do you think my life is worth more than Tommy Durochie’s? Do you think it’s right that I get to be in college while Navajo boys are dying? Is that what you’re saying makes sense to you?”

It satisfied the bully to see his father’s confusion, as it dawned on him that Clem was serious.

“No American boy should be in Vietnam,” he said quietly. “I thought you and I agreed on that.”

“I do agree. It’s a shitty war. But that doesn’t—”

“It’s an immoral war. All war is immoral, but this one especially. Whoever fights in it partakes of the immorality. I’m surprised I have to explain that to you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the same as you. Dad. In case you hadn’t noticed. I don’t have the luxury of being born a Mennonite. I don’t believe in a metaphysical deity whose commandments I have to obey. I have to follow my own personal ethics, and I don’t know if you remember, but my lottery number was nineteen.”

“Of course I remember. And you’re right—it was an immense relief, for your mother and me, that you had a student deferment. I seem to recall you feeling the same way.”

“Only because I hadn’t given it any thought.”

“And now you’ve thought about it. Fine. I understand why student deferments seem unfair to you—you raise a legitimate point. I also understand feeling obliged to serve your country, because of your lottery number. But to go and serve in that war, it makes no sense.”

“Maybe not to you. To me there’s no alternative.”

“You already waited a year—why not wait one more semester? Most of our troops are already home. Six months from now, I doubt they’ll even be taking new recruits.”

“That’s exactly why I’m doing it now.”

“Why? To make a point? You could do that by giving up your deferment and conscientiously objecting. The son of a CO, from a family of pastors—you’d have a very strong case.”

“Right. That’s what you did. But you know what? The man who took your place in 1944 was probably white and middle-class. That’s a moral luxury I don’t have.”

“Luxury?” His father banged the arm of his chair. “It wasn’t a moral luxury. It was a moral choice, and the fact that most Americans supported the war made it harder, not easier. They called us traitors. They called us cowards, they tried to run our parents out of town—some of us even went to prison. Every one of us paid a price.”

Recalling the pride he’d once taken in his father’s principles, Clem felt the reins of his argument going slack in his hands. He gave them a savage tug. “Yeah, luckily for you, plenty of other people were willing to fight the Fascists.”

“That was their own moral choice. I grant that, under the circumstances, their choice was defensible. But Vietnam? There’s no defense whatsoever for our involvement there. It’s senseless slaughter. The boys we’re killing are even younger than you are.”

“They’re killing other Vietnamese, Dad. You can sentimentalize it all you want, but the North Vietnamese are the aggressors. They signed up to kill, and they’re killing.”

His father made a sour face. “Since when do you parrot Lyndon Johnson?”

“LBJ was a fraud. He signed the Civil Rights Act with one hand and sent ghetto boys to Vietnam with the other. This is what I’m talking about—moral hypocrisy.”

His father sighed as if it were pointless to keep arguing. “And you don’t care how I might feel as your father. You don’t care how your mother might feel about it.”

“Since when do you care about Mom’s feelings?”

“I care about them very much.”

“Bullshit. She’s loyal to you, and you treat her like garbage. Do you think I can’t see it? Do you think Becky can’t see it? How cold you are to Mom? It’s like you wish she didn’t exist.”

His father winced. The punch had landed. Clem waited for him to say something else, so that he could knock it down, but his father just sat there. He was defenseless against Clem’s superior reasoning, his intimate knowledge of his failings. Into the silence, through the door, through the floor, came the pulse of a distant bass guitar.

“Anyway,” Clem said. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me. I’ve sent the letter.”

“That’s right,” his father said. “Legally, you’re free to do as you please. But emotionally you’re still very young. Very young and, if I may say so, very self-involved. The only thing that seems to matter to you is moral consistency.”

“It’s hard work, but somebody’s got to do it.”

“You seem to think you’re thinking clearly, but what I’m hearing is a person who’s forgotten how to listen to his heart. You think I don’t understand you, but I know how devastated you would be, how utterly shattered, if you had to see a child burned up with napalm, a village bombed for no reason. You can do all the rationalizing you want, you can try to reason your way out of having a heart, but I know it’s there in you. I’ve been watching it grow, my God, for twenty years. You’ve made me so proud that you’re my son. Your kindness—your generosity—your loyalty—your sense of justice—your goodness—”

His father broke off, overcome with emotion. Until this moment, it hadn’t occurred to Clem that he could be anything but an adversary to his father; that his animosity might not be reciprocated. It seemed unfair to him—intolerable—that his father still loved him. Unable to think of a rejoinder, he jerked open the door and ran out into the hallway. For relief from the remorse that was rising in him, his mind went reflexively to the person who validated his reasoning, who shared his convictions, who freely and wholly gave herself to him. But the thought of Sharon only deepened his remorse, because he’d broken her heart that very day. Broken it violently, with merciless rationality. He’d shot her down with her own moral arguments, and she’d said it in so many words: “You’re breaking my heart.” He could hear the words so clearly, she might have been standing next to him.

There was no telling how long Becky might have stayed in the sanctuary, exploring what it meant to have found religion, if she’d eaten anything but sugar cookies since the night before. As God’s goodness routed the evil of marijuana, leaving only a fluish hotness in her eyes and chest, stray wisps of strange thought, she was beset by images of the baked goods in the function hall. She recalled a moist-looking chocolate layer cake, a loaf of cheese-and-chive bread, practically a balanced meal in itself, and a tray of lemon bars—she’d noticed lemon bars. She was so famished that she finally gave up on praying. By way of apology, she stood up and kissed the brass of the hanging cross.

“I’m your girl now,” she told it. “I promise.”

Hearing her own words, she felt a quake in her nether parts, as if her promise were romantic. It was akin to the shudder of ecstasy with which she’d beheld the golden light inside her. She wondered if the satisfaction of accepting Christ, becoming his girl, might enable her to renounce more worldly pleasures, such as kissing Tanner. The wrongness of kissing him before he’d broken up with Laura was clear to her now. So was the wrongness of her behavior in the ice cave of his van. Instead of celebrating the news that an agent was coming to hear the Bleu Notes, instead of sharing in his joy, she’d selfishly pressured him to dump Laura, and now God had shown her what to do. She needed to apologize for pressuring him. She needed to tell him that if he just wanted to be friends with her, see her in church on Sunday, explore Christianity with her, forget they’d ever kissed, she would cherish his friendship and be glad of heart.

First, however, she needed to see if any chocolate cake was left. It was nearly nine thirty and the concertgoers would be hungry. Letting the sanctuary door lock itself behind her, she paused in the front hall to collect herself. There was a scraping rumble from a snowplow in the street, a nasty rip in her beloved coat. She pulled on the loose threads, wondering if it could be repaired. She’d reentered a mundane world in which it wouldn’t be so easy to stay connected with God. For the first time, she understood how a person might actually look forward to Sunday worship in the sanctuary.

She must still have been lingeringly stoned, because her torn coat pocket had absorbed her for quite a while, without her reaching any conclusions, when she heard footsteps in the church parlor. Into the front hall came an older man with permed-looking hair and thick sideburns. He wore a wide-lapelled jacket of apricot-colored leather. His face brightened as if he knew her. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Hey.”

“Can I help you?”

“Nah, just looking around.”

She waited for the man to leave, so she could proceed to the baked goods, but he approached her and extended a hand. “Gig Benedetti.”

It would have been rude not to shake his hand.

“Sorry, didn’t catch your name,” he said.

“Becky.”

“Nice to meet you, Becky.”

He smiled at her expectantly, as if he had nowhere else to be. He was an inch or two shorter than she was.

“Are you … here for the concert?” she asked.

“That was the plan. Although, a night like this, it really makes me question. They already canceled the other show I wanted to catch out here.”

She was definitely still a bit stoned. There was a delay in her processing. Then sudden clarity: “Are you a music agent?”

“In my own little way.”

“Tell me your name again?”

“It’s Gig—Guglielmo, for the adventurous. Gig Benedetti.”

“You’re here to see the Bleu Notes.”

He seemed delighted with her. His eyes darted down to her body and back up to her face. “Either you’re a very good guesser, or you’re the person I’m hoping you might be.”

“Which person is that?”

“The one with the voice. I’m told it’s gotta be heard to be believed.”

There was another delay in her comprehension and then a clutching fear. The voice could only be Laura’s. Until this moment, Becky hadn’t given one thought to her encounter with Laura behind the church. It was like a drunk-driving accident she’d fled the scene of and forgotten.

“You must mean Laura,” she said.

“Laura, yeah, that sounds right. Obviously, if you’re Becky, you’re not Laura.”

“Definitely not Laura.”

“You had my hopes up for a minute. There’s ten freaking inches of snow out there. The only reason I’m waiting around is to hear that girl sing.”

Now there was no delay in Becky’s comprehension—she was immediately offended. Gig ought to have been waiting to hear Tanner, who was at least as talented as Laura and was the one with the ambition. Laura didn’t even care about getting an agent.

“It’s really more Tanner’s band,” she said.

“Tanner, right. Talked to him this afternoon. Nice guy. Friend of yours?”

“Very good friend, yes.”

Again his eyes went up and down her body, lingering at her breasts. It was a thing older men had been doing more and more often, especially at the Grove. It was gross.

“So, his girlfriend?” Gig said casually.

“Not exactly.”

“Oh, well then. How would you feel about grabbing a drink with me?”

“No, thank you.”

“I thought, they’re playing a church, how late can this thing go? I thought I’d be outta here by nine, nine thirty at the latest. But, no, we gotta hear from Peter Paul and Betty Lou. We gotta hear from Donny Osmond Santana and the Lilywhites. I’m not hitting on you, Becky. Or, like you say, not exactly. I just happened to notice a little tavern down the street. It could be an another freaking hour before we see your headliners.”

“I don’t drink,” she said, as if this were the issue.

“Pfff.”

“Also, I’m pretty much with Tanner, so.”

“Good, good. We’re up to pretty much. But that’s all the more reason you should get to know me. I’m praying to God these guys are—wait. Are you in the band?”

“No.”

“More’s the pity. My point is, if I can’t sign them, I suffered through Peter Paul and Betty Lou and drove eight miles in a blizzard for no reason. I’m already favorably predisposed, if you take my meaning, and if they end up signing I’ll be seeing you around. Why not start things off with a little drink?”

“I can’t. In fact, I should be—”

“Follow-up question: Why aren’t you in the band?”

“Me? I’m not musical.”

“Everybody’s musical. Have you tried the tambourine?”

She stared at him. There was a gold chain around his neck.

“The reason I ask,” he said, “is your presentation is extremely classy. I could really dig seeing you on a stage.”

She tried to unfog her brain and calculate whether being nice to Gig would further incline him to sign the Bleu Notes, or whether she should even want him to be Tanner’s agent, given his apparently icky character. Deeper in the fog was the upsetting news that he was there to hear Laura.

“Ugh, listen to me,” he said. “I totally sound like I’m hitting on you, although I bet you get that all the time. You’re a seriously good-looking girl. If I may say so, it’s good to see you dressing like you know it. I don’t think I ever saw a dowdier crowd than what’s downstairs. Clodhoppers and overalls and thermal underwear—is it a religious thing?”

“It’s just the style of the youth group.”

“Which you don’t want any part of. I get it. I presume that’s why you’re up here hiding?”

In the sanctuary, Becky had promised Jesus that she would live in accordance with his teachings and not shy from proclaiming it. Now she could see how much courage it would take to be a Christian in the mundane world. “No,” she said. “I came up here to pray.”

“Oh boy.” Gig laughed. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, being as we’re in a church. But—pardon my forwardness. I didn’t realize.”

“It’s okay. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever really prayed.”

“My timing perfect as always.”

It was wrong to apologize for praying, but she didn’t want to hurt the Bleu Notes’ chances. “It’s just me,” she said. “The band isn’t, you know, religious or anything.”

“I don’t care if they’re Hare Krishnas, as long as they show up on time and play some Billboard hits. Which, by the way, I’m serious about the tambourine. You can be as Christian as you want on the inside—it’s all about keeping people buying drinks. That is the sad little secret of the business I’m in. Something for the ears, something for the eyes.” His own eyes went up and down her yet again. “‘Why, yes, we’ll have another round.’”

“I’m sorry,” Becky said, “but I’m so hungry. I need to go eat something.”

Gig peeled back an apricot leather sleeve and exposed an enormous watch. “Not sure we quite have time for dinner, but there’s bound to be something salty at the tavern.”

“The band is really excited that you’re here, I—I’ll see you later, okay?”

She ran away, actually ran, for fear of being pursued. At New Prospect Township, one little flick of her disdain was enough to drive away aggressive boys, and at the Grove, whenever an older man tried to flirt with her, she frostily asked him for his order. If she ended up with Tanner, despite her new willingness to renounce him, she would be entering a world of older men, men like Gig. If only to help Tanner professionally, she would need to learn to play the game. It was disturbing to think that her looks might be of use to him. When she saw people flirting, she saw people who wanted to have sex, and sex still seemed more than gross to her; it seemed—wrong. In the light of her religious experience, it seemed even wronger. Sweet though Tanner was, there was little doubt that he had sex with Laura. Maybe it really would be better to leave them to it and simply be his friend.

Halfway down the church’s central staircase was a landing that led to the rear parking lot. Outside the glass door, someone in a peacoat was smoking a cigarette in the snow. With a lurch in her heart, she saw that it was Clem.

She hesitated on the landing. Catching sight of Clem usually brought a rush of happiness, but the feeling she had now was the opposite of happy. His new peacoat reminded her of the walk they’d taken at Thanksgiving, his boasting about sex with his college girlfriend, but it was more than that. She was afraid of his judgment. She’d smoked marijuana, and, worse yet, she’d been praying. He was so contemptuous of religion, he would make her ashamed of finding God.

Worried that he’d come to the church specifically to see her, she continued down the stairs. She thought she was in the clear, but the door behind her clanked open, and Clem called her name. She looked back guiltily. “Oh, hey.”

“Hi, hi, hi,” he said, running down to her.

His peacoat, when he hugged her, smelled of winter air and cigarettes, and he wouldn’t let go. She had to squirm to extricate herself.

“Where have you been?” he accused. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

“I was just … I’m getting something to eat.”

She started down the corridor to the function hall.

“Wait,” Clem said, grabbing her arm. “We need to talk. There’s stuff I have to tell you.”

She yanked her arm away. “I’m really hungry.”

“Becky—”

“I’m sorry, okay? I need food.”

The function hall was much hotter than the corridor. Raising her arms to make herself narrower, she entered a humid thicket of dark bodies. Hands were clapping to the beat of Biff Allard and his congas, and Gig was right: he looked like Donny Osmond. The crowd was so large that it pressed against the food tables in the back. Becky went around behind them, pursued by Clem. The first table was nearly depleted, but there was still a respectable wedge of Bundt cake, spangled with red and green cherries. She took out her pocketbook, paid for a slice, and retreated to the back wall to eat it.

“Where have you been?” Clem shouted.

Her mouth full, she waved a limp hand. Clem was practically thrashing with impatience. She was relieved to see Kim Perkins and David Goya coming their way.

“There you are,” Kim shouted. “You had us worried.”

“I’m fine.”

Kim reached for a fragment of Bundt cake, and Becky raised the paper plate above her head. Kim made a jumping pass at it.

“Down, girl,” David shouted.

From the stage came a thunderous coda, every instrument at full volume. The hall erupted in applause.

“Thank you,” Biff Allard shouted. “We’ve still got one act coming, our own Tanner Evans and Laura Dobrinsky, with the one and only Bleu Notes, so stick around! Good night!”

The hall lights came up. Becky ate the last bite of cake feeling more famished, not less.

“I should have warned you,” David said to her. “That shit is pretty killer. They grow it indoors in Montreal.” He patted her arm, as if to make sure she really was intact, and nodded to Clem. “Thanks for finding her.”

Clem was watching them with a demented kind of fixity, his face haggard.

“I need more food,” she said.

“Somebody has the munchies,” Kim said.

A woman on a mission, Becky marched over to the other food table. In the middle of it, as in a holy vision, sat two-thirds of a loaf of cheese-and-chive bread.

“Can I have, like, all of that?” she asked the sophomore boy taking money.

“Sure. Buck-fifty?”

This was too little, but she didn’t offer more. When she turned away from the table, clutching the bread like a squirrel, Kim was there to grab at it.

“Fine, fine,” Becky said, tearing off a hunk.

David, in his harmless way, had engaged Clem in some topic of interest to himself, and she took the opportunity to slip through the crowd and back out to the corridor, where there was a drinking fountain. The bread was delicious but her throat was parched. While she was bent over the fountain, someone came up behind her. Afraid that it was Clem, she kept drinking.

“Becky.”

The voice was Tanner’s. Turning around, she experienced the rush of joy that seeing Clem hadn’t given her. Somehow her intention to renounce Tanner had made him even more gorgeous. He was like a young Jesus in a fringed suede jacket. Without saying a word, he took her head in his hands and kissed her hard on the mouth.

She was too surprised to kiss him back. Her arms hung at her sides, the ridiculous bread in one hand. By the time she got over her surprise, he was pulling her away from the fountain and leading her up the hallway.

“We’re so fucked,” he said. “Laura’s gone. She went home.”

“She went home?”

“An hour ago. She quit the band.”

Becky was horrified. It was like learning that the accident she’d fled the scene of had been fatal. So much for Gig hearing the voice he’d come to hear.

“Just play,” she bravely said. “You’ll be great. I saw the agent upstairs—he’s been waiting to hear you.”

Tanner stopped in the front hall and looked around it, very agitated. When his eyes alighted on Becky, it was as if she was the very thing he’d been looking for. He took her head in his hands again. “I did what you asked me to.”

“Oh.”

“But now—I had to redo the whole playlist. I’m not sure Biff and Darryl know half of it.”

“It’ll be fine. Gig told me he wants to sign you.”

“You talked to him? What’s he like?”

“I don’t know. Just—a guy.”

“Shit. Shit shit shit.” Tanner let go of her and gazed down the corridor, toward the function hall, where failure awaited him. “Tonight of all nights. I really didn’t—and now—shit. It’s going to be a mess.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. You were right. It had to be done.”

“Okay, but…” She took a breath. “Something amazing just happened to me. Upstairs, in the sanctuary. Tanner, it was so amazing. I think I saw God.”

This got his attention.

“I want to be a Christian,” she said. “I want you to help me be a real Christian. Even if it means—I don’t know what it means. For us, I mean. Will you help me?”

“You saw God?”

“I think so. I was praying for the longest time. I could feel God in me—I could feel Jesus. He was there.”

“Wow.”

“Have you ever felt that?”

He didn’t answer. He seemed a little frightened of her.

“You can go back to Laura,” she said. “I shouldn’t have tried to pressure you. It was selfish of me, and I wanted to tell you that. I want to be a better person. If you just want to be friends with me, or whatever, it’s really all right. I’m sorry I pressured you.”

He stared at her. “Do you not want this?”

“I don’t know. I did, but—I’m saying there’s no hurry. I bet if you went back to her now—maybe you should go back to her. Tell her you’re sorry and see if she’ll play with you.”

“We’re going on in ten minutes!”

“You can be a little late, no one’s going to leave. You should go. Just go. Go get Laura.”

Tanner seemed confounded. “But you made such a big deal out of this.”

“I’m sorry! It was wrong! I’m sorry!” Becky threw up her hands and found a loaf of bread in one of them. She set it down on a table arrayed with church-related literature. Tanner enveloped her again.

“You’re the person I want to be with,” he said. “I should have been clear about that. I’m crazy about you. This is going to be a really hard show, but I’m not sorry about Laura.”

Over Tanner’s shoulder, Becky saw Clem standing halfway down the corridor. He looked—demented. A few hours ago, she’d wanted nothing more than to be seen in Tanner’s arms, and now the impediment of Laura had been removed, now her wish was coming true; but the person seeing her was Clem.

She wriggled free of Tanner. “You need to go and get her.”

“No way.”

“Well, someone needs to get her. You need your full sound tonight.”

“I don’t even care. The only thing that matters is that you believe in me.”

“Yes, but you still need to get her. Just say—whatever it takes, just say it.”

“Are you saying you don’t believe in me?”

“No, I do, but…” Becky imagined Gig Benedetti’s disappointment, his anger, when the Bleu Notes took the stage without the singer he’d come to hear. It was all her fault, and she had to make it right. “Where does she live?”

“At this point, I doubt she’d even let me in the door.”

“I’m saying let me go. I owe her a huge apology anyway.”

“Are you kidding me? The only person she’s madder at than me is you.”

“Where does she live?”

“In the apartment above the drugstore. With Kay and Louise. But, Becky, there’s no way.”

She buttoned her coat. She was reluctant to part with the cheese-and-chive bread, but it wasn’t a convenient thing to carry around. While she considered where to hide it, Clem walked up.

“Clem,” Tanner said nervously. “Welcome back.”

“I need to talk to my sister.”

Becky unfolded a church bulletin and draped it over the bread, concealing it no better than she’d been concealed by Tanner’s blanket the night before. Tanner collared her from behind and kissed her cheek. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said. “I need to know you’re in the audience.”

He hurried off toward the function hall. The pleasure of his kiss had been killed by the discomfort of Clem’s seeing it. Without looking at her brother, she ran outside. There was a new layer of snow on the shoveled pavement, and Clem was right behind her.

“Stop following me,” she said.

“Why won’t you talk to me? Are you high on drugs? I’ve never seen you like this.”

“Leave me alone!”

She slipped on underlying ice, and he caught her by the wrist. “Tell me what is going on.”

“Nothing. I have to talk to Laura.”

“Dobrinsky? Why?”

She wrenched her wrist free and pressed onward. “Because Tanner needs her to play and she won’t do it.”

“So, wait. Are you and he—”

“Yes! Okay? I’m with Tanner! Okay?”

“But when did this happen?”

“Stop following me.”

“I’m just trying to—you’re with Tanner?”

“How many times do I have to say it?”

“You only said it once.”

“I’m with Tanner and he’s with me. Is there something wrong with that?”

“No. I’m just surprised. Davy Goya said—are you smoking pot now, too? Is that because of Tanner?”

She strode alongside a ridge of plowed snow on Pirsig Avenue. “It had nothing to do with Tanner. It was just a mistake.”

“I always wondered if he smoked pot.”

“I can make my own decisions, Clem. I don’t need you to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. What I need right now is for you to stay out of my business.”

She could see the drugstore ahead of her. Lights were on upstairs.

“Fine,” Clem said huskily. “I’ll stay out of your business. Although I must say…”

“What must you say.”

“I don’t know. I’m just surprised. I mean—Tanner Evans? He’s a good guy. He’s super nice, but … not exactly a live wire. He’s kind of the definition of passive.”

The sensation of hating Clem was new and overwhelming. It was like love ripped brutally inside out.

“Go to hell,” she said.

“Becky, come on. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. It’s just that you’ve got so much going on. You’re about to start college, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. And Tanner—I wouldn’t be surprised if he never leaves New Prospect.”

She stopped and wheeled around. “Go to hell! I’m sick of you! I’m sick of you judging me and my friends! You’ve been doing it my whole life and I’m sick of it! I’m not six years old anymore! You’ve got your amazing life-changing sex-loving girlfriend—why don’t you stop bossing me around and tell her what to do? Or is she not passive?”

She hardly knew what she was saying. An evil spirit had possessed her, and Clem’s shock was apparent in the streetlight. She struggled to regain her Christian bearings, but her hatred was too intense. She turned and ran full-tilt toward the drugstore.

Russ was happy with his Christmas present. He’d had more than six hours with Frances, enough to feel like an entire day, and every seeming setback had turned into an advance. She’d no sooner disclosed her affair with the heart surgeon than she contrasted him unfavorably with Russ, no sooner threatened to go to Arizona than pushed Russ to join her there, no sooner antagonized Theo Crenshaw than commended herself to Russ’s guidance. Even the accident on Fifty-ninth Street had been a boon. He’d wrestled with the Fury’s mangled bumper and its frozen lug nuts, displaying strength of body and coolness of head, and when a group of teenagers loomed up in the snow, causing her to clutch his arm in suburban terror, she’d learned an important lesson about racial prejudice: the young men were only offering to help. The accident had made Russ so late that he now had no choice but to tell Marion he’d been with Frances, thus sparing him from fretting that Perry would tell her. Frances still claimed to be in a hurry to get home, but when he proposed a quick stop at McDonald’s she’d admitted she was starving, and when they finally returned to First Reformed her reluctance to go inside with him had yielded, piquantly, to his insistence.

In his office, he’d handed her his blues records one by one, relating what little was known of Robert Johnson, what a tragic alcoholic Tommy Johnson had been, what a miracle that Victor and Paramount and Vocalion had made recordings of the early greats. The 78s were among his most valuable possessions, and she accepted them with appropriate reverence. She was sitting on his desk with her legs uncrossed, snowmelt dripping from her dangling feet. He was a short step away from standing between her legs, if he’d had the nerve of a heart surgeon.

“I’m going to go straight home and listen to these,” she said. “I’d ask you to join me, but I’ve already kept you way too long.”

“Not at all,” he said. “It’s been a rare pleasure.”

“The other ladies will be jealous. But you know what? Tough luck. Fortune favors the bold.”

He found it necessary to clear his throat. “I’m not sure I’d have time to listen to all ten of the records, but I could certainly—”

“No, I don’t want to be greedy. You should get home.”

“I’m not in any rush.”

“Plus, what if I decide to get high with Larry’s pot? They say it’s great for appreciating music, but I don’t imagine you’d consider that a meaningful reason to break the law.”

“Now you’re teasing me.”

“You’re such a square, it’s irresistible.”

“I already told you I’m open to experimenting with you.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what to do with that.” She laughed. “Has the church ever had to excommunicate someone? I could see me being the first, if it came out I’d lured you into reefer madness. You’d see me down at the A&P, wearing a scarlet letter.”

“R for reefer,” he said, trying to keep up with her.

“R for Russ. It could also stand for Russ.”

He couldn’t remember her having spoken his first name. It was somehow astonishing that she even knew it, so breathtaking was the intimacy it seemed to promise.

“I’m willing to take the chance if you are.”

“Okay, noted,” she said, hopping off his desk. “But not tonight. I’m sure your wife is wondering where you are.”

“She’s not. I left a message with Perry.”

What he wanted must have been plain to her. She looked him in the eye and scrunched up her face, as if she smelled something off and wondered if he did, too. “This has been enough, don’t you think?”

“If you say so.”

“I—you don’t think so?”

“I am in no hurry at all for this evening to end.”

He could hardly have been plainer, and he saw her blanch. Then she laughed and touched him on the nose. “I like you, Reverend Hildebrandt. But I think it’s time for me to go.”

That Clem had found that very moment to knock on his door, before the cataclysm of being beeped on the nose had fully registered, was simply an embarrassment, not a setback, but it had been followed, in the church parking lot, after he and Clem had dug out her Buick, by yet another advance. Frances beckoned him over and said, “It’s probably good he came when he did. Things were getting a little tensy-tense.”

“I’m sorry I tried to keep you. I should be grateful you donated as much time as you did.”

“Mission accomplished. Deliverables delivered.”

“I truly am grateful,” he said with feeling.

“Oh, pooh. I’m grateful, too. But if you really want to show your gratitude…”

“Yes.”

“You could go and talk to Rick. It looked like he was still in his office.”

“Talk to him now?”

“No time like the present.”

It seemed to Russ that any other time would be better than the present.

“I’m serious about going to Arizona,” she said, “and it won’t be half as rewarding if you aren’t there. I know that sounds selfish, but I’m not just being selfish. I hate to see you holding on to a grudge.”

“I’ll—see what I can do.”

“Good. I’ll be waiting. I want you to call me and tell me how it goes.”

“Call you on the telephone.”

“Is there some other kind of calling? I suppose I could ask you to drop by, but who knows what kind of reefer madness you’d be walking into.”

“Seriously, Frances. You should not be doing that experiment by yourself.”

“Okay, I’ll make sure to have a pastor present. I was going to say a pastor and a physician, but maybe we can do without the physician. I suspect he wouldn’t approve of—you.”

Russ didn’t know what to say. Was the heart surgeon still a threat?

“Anyway,” she said, “I hope you’ll make peace with Rick. Until you do, you’re not allowed to call me.” She shifted her car into forward gear. “Ha, listen to her. Giving ultimatums to a pastor. Who does she think she is?”

And away she went.

Russ had once devoted a Sunday sermon to Jesus’s disturbing prophesy to Peter at the Last Supper—his prediction that his most faithful disciple would thrice, before the cock crowed, deny that he knew him. The conclusion Russ had drawn from Peter’s fulfillment of the prophesy, and from the tears he then shed for his betrayal of his Lord, was that the prophesy had in fact been a profound parting gift. Jesus had told Peter, in effect, that he knew that Peter was only human; was fearful of worldly censure and punishment. The prophesy was his assurance that he would still be there in Peter at the moment when Peter most bitterly failed him—would always be there, would always understand him, always love him, in spite of his human weakness. In Russ’s interpretation, Peter had wept not simply with remorse but with gratitude for the assurance.

Though the comparison was profane, Russ had been reminded of Peter’s denials when he denied to Clem, at least three times, that he lusted after Mrs. Cottrell. Frances was his joy of the season—she’d beeped him on the nose!—and he ought to have been shouting the good news from every rooftop, but Clem’s accusations had caught him off guard. The accusations, and even more the crazy talk of Vietnam, had reeked of adolescent moral absolutism. Clem was too young to understand that, although commandments were important, the callings of the heart amounted to a higher law. This had been Christ’s revision of the Covenant, his message of love, and Russ regretted having lacked the courage to level with his son and make an example of his own heart’s calling for Frances. Clem needed to be cured of his absolutism. By denying his feelings, Russ had done a disservice not only to them but arguably to his son as well.

Left alone in his office, he sat at his desk and tried to clear his head, telling himself that Clem might yet change his mind or fail to be drafted, and that, in any case, with American infantry no longer in combat, his risk of physical injury was low, so that he could devote his thoughts again to Frances. His outing with her hadn’t exceeded his wildest dreams, because it hadn’t ended with her sliding her hands inside his sheepskin coat and gazing up into his eyes, but it had come pretty close. She’d given him a dozen reasons to hope, and the tensy-tension she’d alluded to, in the parking lot, was unmistakably sexual.

The tension was still in him, palpable in the rapid beating of his heart. He’d never profaned the church by abusing himself in his office, but he was so deeply in the thrall of Frances that he was tempted to do it now. Turn out the light, lower his zipper, and declare his allegiance. Beneath his feet was a bass rhythm from the function hall, so blurred and diffracted that it was more of a random hum. Slipping in beneath his door was the attenuated smoke of countless concert cigarettes. The church was already profaned; there was license in the air. But the thought of Rick Ambrose stayed his hand.

Heart beating in a less agreeable way, he stood and opened his door. He couldn’t help hoping that Ambrose had gone home—had spared him from taking any action until after the holidays. But Ambrose’s door was still ajar. The very light spilling out of it was hateful to Russ. The last time he’d set foot in that office, three years ago, he’d been accused of coming on to Sally Perkins, and Ambrose had stabbed him in the back.

He closed his own door again and sat down to pray.

Heavenly Father, I come to you seeking the spirit of forgiveness. Already, as you know, I’ve broken your commandments by following my heart, and I pray you’ll forgive me for wanting to experience more joy in your Creation—to more fully rejoice in the life you’ve given me. What I need now is to find forgiveness in myself. Earlier tonight, when I felt moved to make peace with my enemy, I heard your Son speaking in my heart, and I allowed myself to hope that you were working your will through Frances. But now I’ve lost hold of the impulse. Now I worry that what I heard speaking wasn’t love of your Son but simply lust for Frances—a selfish wish to be with her in Arizona. Now I worry that “making peace” without love in my heart will only compound my offenses against you. I’m alone with my doubts and my weakness, and I beg you, humbly, to instill me again with the spirit of Christmas. Please help me sincerely want to forgive Rick.

He knew better than to expect a direct response. Prayer was an inflection of the soul in God’s direction, an inner movement. God’s answer, if it came at all, would seem to him his own idea. The thing to do was wait quietly and make himself receptive to it.

The first words that came to him were lacerating. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to be your son? In hindsight, of all the abuses Clem had rained on him, this was the hardest to dismiss, because it seemed to refer to more than just Russ’s weakness for Frances. It was an explicit eruption of a disrespect that had been building in Clem for several years. Russ had attributed the disrespect to adolescence, but it came to him now, all at once, that his humiliation at the hands of Rick Ambrose had been painful not only to him. The humiliation must have been painful to his son as well. He’d been too preoccupied with his own pain to see it.

At the humiliating fellowship meeting, the Clem who’d stood up to defend him against Sally Perkins and Laura Dobrinsky was still the Clem he knew and loved. But Clem had become less and less recognizable since then. He’d grossly overstepped at Thanksgiving, styling himself as Becky’s defender, ordering Russ to let her make her own decision about her inheritance. And now he wanted to go to Vietnam. What had happened to the boy who’d marched against the war’s immorality? Even allowing for his absolutism, even granting the validity of his point about student deferments, it made little sense to join the army when the war was winding down and he wasn’t saving some other boy’s life, just derailing his own. As an act of principle, it didn’t add up. He was clearly doing it to hurt his father.

How terribly Russ must have embarrassed him. It was all very well to be privately deplorable, cowering in his office, nursing his grudge, creeping through the attic for fear of running into Ambrose. He could bear the private shame; he could square his own accounts with God. But to be so deplorable in his son’s eyes? He saw that if he only thought of Frances he would never sincerely forgive Ambrose, because the impulse was impure. It was hopelessly tangled up with his desire to (in Clem’s outrageous word) bone her. But if he performed the act of forgiveness as a gift to Clem? To make himself a father more worthy of respect?

Keeping his eyes half shut, to protect his fragile idea, he left his office and went up the hallway to the hateful door. With someone’s volition, his own or God’s, he knocked.

The response was immediate and sharp. “Yep.”

Russ pushed the door farther open. Ambrose, seated at his desk, looked over his shoulder. To judge from his expression, Russ might have been a blood-soaked apparition.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Um—sure,” Ambrose said. “Come in.”

Russ shut the door and sat down on the sofa where the young crowd received its counseling. Its springs were so shot that his knees ended up higher than his head. He shifted to the edge of a cushion, trying to gain height, but the sofa insisted on his being lower than Ambrose. And just like that, in no time at all, despite his loving intentions, he was engulfed in hatred. Engulfed in the misery of being made to feel smaller than a man half his age. There was a reason he’d shunned Ambrose for three years. It was only in the madness of Frances that he’d forgotten. She had no concept of the enormity of what she’d asked of him.

“I suppose,” he said stiffly, “I should begin with an apology.”

Ambrose was now glowering. “You can skip it.”

“No, I have to say it. It’s long overdue. I’ve been—childish—and I apologize for that. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I apologize.”

The words rang completely hollow. Not only did he not expect to be forgiven, he didn’t even want to be. He struggled to find a way around his hatred, but it had grown so large in three years, and thinking of Clem helped him not at all.

“So,” Ambrose said. “What can I do for you?”

Russ leaned back on the sofa and looked at the ceiling. He wanted to be gone, but to run away now, it seemed to him, would be to admit that he would never have Frances, never regain Clem’s respect. He opened his mouth to see what he might say. “What do you make of all this?”

“All this what.”

“You, me, the situation. What do you make of it?”

Ambrose sighed. “I think it’s a misfortune. I won’t pretend I don’t blame you for it, but I understand that your pride was badly wounded. To the extent I made it worse, I regret it. I apologized to you at the time. I can apologize again if you’d like.”

“No. Skip it.”

“Then tell me what I can do for you.”

The tokens of love and adulation in Ambrose’s office had proliferated since Russ was last in it. Above the desk were poems and messages in female handwriting, on pages ripped from spiral notebooks. Hundreds of snapshots were thumbtacked on top of one another, teen faces peeking out from the lower strata. Silk-screened posters now entirely covered one wall, right up to the ceiling. Feathers and rocks and carved sticks and scraps of watercolor painting crowded two long shelves. The cup of Ambrose ranneth over.

“I don’t even know how it happened,” Russ said. “How I came to hate you so much. It goes way beyond pride—it’s basically consumed my life, and I don’t understand it. How I can be a servant of God and feel this way. Just being in this office is a torture. The only thing I can say in my defense is that I can’t control it. I can’t think of you for five seconds without feeling sick. I can’t even look at you now—your face makes me sick.”

He sounded like a little girl running to her parents with hurt feelings. Mean Rick made me feel bad.

“If it’s any comfort,” Ambrose said, “I don’t like you, either. I used to have a lot of respect for you, but that’s long gone.”

Beneath them, the bass vibrations crescendoed and stopped. That Russ could hear the crowd’s cheering at all, at this distance, suggested that it was very large. It really should have been a comfort to know that his hatred was reciprocated, but now it only reminded him of Clem’s disrespect.

“Be that as it may,” he said, “we can’t keep doing this to the church. It’s just too obscene. I don’t know how to get out of it, but we have to find a way to be more—civil.”

“It was brave of you to knock on my door. To take that step.”

“Oh my God.” Russ clutched at the air and made his hands into fists. “Talk about things that make me sick. That little tremor in your voice when you tell someone they’re brave. As if you’re the world’s leading authority on courage. As if your opinion is of the utmost importance.”

Ambrose laughed. “That was a brave thing to say.”

“I used to love you, Rick. I thought we were friends.” Again the hurt little girl.

“It was good while it lasted,” Ambrose said.

“No. I don’t think so. I think I was always basically a fraud. I had no business trying to be a youth minister—I was never any good at it. And then you came into my church, and you’re right, it was a blow to my pride. How good at it you were. It was stupid of me to envy that, because I’m good at other things—things you’re not good at. But none of them seemed to matter.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve gotten better at carpentry and plumbing.”

“You’ll never be as good as me. I’ve got any number of skills to feel good about. But all I have to do is think of you, and—none of them matters.”

Russ glanced at Ambrose, caught the gaze of his dark eyes, and quickly looked away again.

“I feel for you, Russ. But you probably don’t want to hear that.”

“You’re damn right I don’t. It’s easier for me if you’re an asshole. Which, by the way, I think you are. I think you’re a raging egomaniac. I think Crossroads for you is one big power trip. I think you get off on having all the pretty girls lined up outside your office. You’re an even bigger fraud than I was, but it doesn’t matter, because the kids still love you. You really do help them, because they’re too stupid to see through you. And then I don’t just hate you—I hate the kids for loving you.”

“What if I told you that I worry about the same thing? That I wrestle with these questions all the time?”

“That would be interesting. It’s interesting to imagine you as a person more or less like me, trying to be good, trying to serve God, but constantly doubting yourself. Rationally, I ought to be able to build on that and find a way to forgive you. But as soon as I put your face to the person I’m imagining, I’m sick with hatred. All I can see is you having it both ways. Getting off on your power and feeling good about the fact that it worries you. Being an asshole and congratulating yourself on your ‘honesty’ about it. And maybe everyone does that. Maybe everyone finds a way to feel good about their fundamental sinfulness, but it doesn’t make me hate you any less. It’s the other way around. I hate you so much that I start hating all of humanity, including myself. The idea that you and I are in any way alike—it’s disgusting.”

“Wow.” Ambrose shook his head, as if in wonder. “I knew things were bad, but I had no idea.”

“Do you see what I’ve been dealing with?”

“I guess I should be honored that I loom so large in your imagination.”

“Really? I thought you were the Second Coming. I’d have thought you’d be used to looming large.”

“But what you’re saying now, the way you’re speaking to me—there’s a level to this that I never saw when you were in the group. A level of honesty, vulnerability. If you could have opened yourself up like this even once … It’s kind of amazing to see it now.”

“Yeah, screw that. Screw you. I mean, Jesus Christ, Rick—you approve of my honesty? Who the hell are you to approve of me? I’m an ordained minister—I’m twice your age! I’m supposed to sit here and be grateful that some posturing upper-middle-class asshole from Shaker Heights approves of me? When he couldn’t care less if I approve of him?”

“You misunderstood me.”

“I’ve been thinking about Joseph and his brothers. I know how you feel about citing Scripture, but you’ll remember that the Bible is very clear on who the bad guys were. The older brothers sold Joseph into slavery, because why? Because they were envious. Because the Lord was with Joseph. That’s the refrain in Genesis: The Lord was with Joseph. He was the wunderkind, the favorite son, the person everyone went to with their dreams, because he had the gift from God. Everywhere he went, people put him in charge, they raised him up and praised him. And boy, did his approval matter to them. When I used to read Genesis as a young person, it seemed crystal clear who was good and who was bad. But you know what? When I read that book now, Joseph makes me sick. My sympathies are completely with the brothers, because God didn’t choose them. It was all preordained, and they were the unlucky ones, and it’s incredible: I hate you so much, I’ve started hating God!”

“Yikes.”

“I ask myself what I did to offend Him, what kind of abominations I committed, that I deserved the curse of you coming to this church. Or whether it was just His plan when He created me. That I be the bad guy. How am I supposed to love a God like that?”

Ambrose leaned forward, bringing his head closer to the height of Russ’s.

“Try to think,” he said. “Let’s both try to think. Is there anything I could say to you that wouldn’t set you off? I can’t express sympathy, I can’t say I admire you, I can’t apologize. It seems like literally any human response I could give you, you’ll turn it against me.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“Then what did you come here for? What do you want?”

“I want you to be a person you could never be.”

“What kind of person is that?”

Russ considered the question. It was a relief to finally air his feelings, but he was following a familiar pattern. Later on—soon—he would be mortified by everything he’d said. For better or worse, this was who he was. When he saw the answer to Ambrose’s question, he went ahead and spoke it.

“I want you to be a person who needs something. Who cares about my approval. You ask me what you could say that wouldn’t set me off, well, there is one thing. You could say you loved me, the way I used to love you.”

Ambrose sat up straight again.

“Don’t worry,” Russ said. “Even if you could say it, I wouldn’t believe you. You never loved me, and both of us know it.”

Afraid that he might cry, like a little girl, he closed his eyes. It seemed unfair that he’d been punished for loving Ambrose. Punished for loving Clem, too. Punished even for loving Marion, because she was the one person who loved him in return, and she was the very person he seemed fated to injure. Shouldn’t his capacity for love, which was the essence of Christ’s gospel, have earned him a modicum of credit with God?

“Wait here,” Ambrose said.

Russ heard him get up and leave the office. Even on his worst days, especially on his worst days, his unhappiness had been a portal to God’s mercy. Now he could find no reward in it at all. He couldn’t even count on the reward of being allowed to call Frances, because he’d failed at the task she’d set him.

Ambrose returned holding a collection plate from the sanctuary. When he crouched and set it on the floor, Russ saw that it was filled with water. Ambrose loosened the laces of the work shoes Russ was wearing. He’d bought them at Sears. “Lift your foot,” Ambrose said.

“Don’t.”

Ambrose lifted the foot himself and took off the shoe. Russ squirmed, but Ambrose held his leg and pulled off his sock. The ritual was too sacred, had too many biblical associations, for Russ to resist it by kicking him away.

“Rick. Really.”

Intent on his work, Ambrose pulled off the other shoe and sock.

“Seriously,” Russ said. “You want to play Jesus?”

“By that logic, anything we ever do to emulate him is grandiose.”

“I don’t want you washing my feet.”

“The gesture wasn’t original to him. It had a more general meaning, as an act of humility.”

The water in the plate was very cold—it must have come from a drinking fountain. Russ watched powerlessly while Ambrose, on his knees, his black hair hanging in his eyes, washed one foot and then the other. He took a flannel shirt from the back of his desk chair and gently dried Russ’s feet with it. Then, leaning forward, head bowed, he grasped Russ’s hand.

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m praying for you.”

“I don’t want your prayers.”

“Then I’m praying for myself. Shut the fuck up.”

Russ knew better than to try to pray his way out of his hatred—he’d tried it a hundred times to no avail. What moved him now was the hand grasping his. It was slender, black-haired, still youthful. It was just a human hand, a young man’s hand, and it reminded him of Clem. His chest began to shake. Ambrose tightened his grip; and Russ surrendered to his weakness.

He must have wept for ten minutes, with Ambrose kneeling at his feet. The goodness of Christ, the meaning of Christmas, was in him again. He’d forgotten its sweetness, but now he remembered. Remembered that when he was bathed in God’s goodness it was enough to simply remain in it, experience the joy of it, not think of anything, just be there. When Ambrose finally released his hand, Russ clutched at it. He didn’t want the moment to end.

Ambrose went away with the collection plate, and Russ put on his socks and shoes. His previous experiences of grace, most of them in his adolescence and his early twenties, had left his mind in a state of calm clarity, a kind of early-morning stillness that daily life would soon dispel. With the same clarity, now, he accepted that the Lord was with Ambrose.

“I feel better,” he announced when Ambrose returned.

“Then I’m not going to say another word. Let’s not mess it up.”

Standing up, Russ was reminded of how short his nemesis was. He looked like a long-haired boy with a bandito costume mustache. Russ suspected that his hatred was merely subdued, not vanquished, but his clarity was holding. He felt no envy of the shelves of gifts the teenagers had given Ambrose. On the lower shelf was a long feather, doubtless from Arizona, the tail feather of a hawk. He picked it up and twirled the quill between his fingers. It was better to have nothing. Better to be like the Navajos, the Diné, as they called themselves, in Diné Bikéyah, among the four sacred mountains. The Diné had nothing. In their hogans, they lived with almost nothing. Even in better times, before the Europeans came, they had never had much. But spiritually they were the richest people he’d ever known.

“I want to go to Arizona,” he said.

Becky was literally following in Laura Dobrinsky’s steps. Behind the drugstore, she found a single set of deep footprints leading up a flight of wooden stairs. At the top of them, outside a weather-beaten door, she looked down to make sure Clem hadn’t followed her. She was very afraid of Laura, but she had no time to waste. She knocked on the door and waited. Hearing nothing from within, she knocked again and tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.

Stepping inside, into a kitchenette, she saw Laura kneeling on a floor carpeted in tangerine shag. She was wearing her biker jacket and stuffing a fiberfill sleeping bag into a nylon sack. Beside it was a jumble of toiletries, a stack of books, and a military-style backpack, a sweater sleeve dangling from its mouth. An electrical space heater was scenting the air with burned dust.

“Laura?”

Laura stiffened, not turning her head.

“I know you don’t want to see me,” Becky said, “but this isn’t about me. This is about Tanner’s career. He really needs you to play tonight. Will you please do that?”

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

“I talked to the agent. I talked to Gig, and you know why he’s here? Because of you. I mean, you’re such an amazing singer. I know you must be hurt, but—Gig’s dying to hear you.”

“I know you must be hurt,” Laura echoed in a babyish voice. She punched the last of the sleeping bag into the nylon sack and tightened the drawstring.

“I’m sorry,” Becky said, moving toward her. “I wish I could take everything back. I wish I’d known yesterday—that there’s a right path. A right way to live. I was on the wrong path.”

“And praise be to Jesus for showing you the way.”

Becky struggled to forbear. “My point is, you shouldn’t take it out on Tanner. It’s my fault, not his. Can’t you take one hour to help him when he truly needs you?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m splitting. Going to San Francisco.”

“I’m saying right now, though.”

“Right now is when I’m doing it.”

“Now? There’s like a foot of snow out there.”

“No better time to thumb a ride. Everybody wants to help a stranger.”

Laura loosened straps on the backpack and pushed the sleeping bag under them. Tanner had said it himself—she was radical.

“I just think,” Becky said, “if you cared enough about Tanner to be with him for however long—”

“Four years, sister.”

“Don’t you still want the best for him?”

Laura looked up through her pink lenses. “Are you out of your mind?”

“No, I get that you’re angry. I get that I did a bad thing. But we both love Tanner—”

“Oh really. You love him.”

“I—think so.”

“Well, isn’t that the sweetest thing.”

Laura rooted in the pile of toiletries, and something came flying at Becky’s face. She caught it defensively. It was a toothpaste tube, halfway rolled up from the bottom. Seeing the word Gynol, she dropped it. Not toothpaste.

“A little present for you,” Laura said. “Unless—Jesus. You’re probably on the Pill.”

Becky’s hand felt dirtied. She rubbed it on her coat.

“Not that a cheerleader would care, but you do realize you’re just buying into the male-industrial complex? Messing with your hormones for their pleasure? There’s nothing a dick loves better than trouble-free access. Even Tanner tried to get me on the Pill. You’re going to make him sorry he ever bothered with me.”

The room was underheated, but Becky was sweating. The gagging sensation in her chest was like the carsickness of her childhood, the prospect of sex unfolding like a mountain road ahead of her, a hundred curves coming to make her even sicker. She’d gotten into the car of being Tanner’s. Now she wished it would slow down.

“My point is,” she said unsteadily, “he really needs you to play tonight.”

“Or wait. Wait.” The eyes behind the pink lenses narrowed. “Have you even had sex?”

“Have I—?”

“Oh my God. Of course you haven’t. No, please, no, the Bible says you shouldn’t touch me there.” Laura laughed. “Not that being a churchgoer ever stopped our boy. He’s quite the frisky Christian. You’d better be ready for that.”

The cold sweat of carsickness.

“Or, no, I hope you’re not ready. I hope the only thing you let him do with you is sing hymns. Serve him right.”

“Please,” Becky said. “We need to go right now. The agent is there, he came to hear you, and I just think—we should go.”

“I told you to get the fuck out of here.”

“Please, Laura.”

Laura sprang to her feet and came at Becky. Why Becky dropped to her knees, she couldn’t have said. Maybe she didn’t want to be so much taller, maybe it was a gesture of supplication. But, finding herself kneeling again, she bowed her head and pressed her palms together. Please help Laura, she prayed. Please forgive me.

Laura shrieked. “What the fuck? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Becky kept her head bowed. From above her came a sputtering, and then a cold hand was in her hair, grabbing a fistful of it, violating her physical sanctity, trying to yank her to her feet. She could feel hairs tearing from their roots, but she refused to stand up. The hand let go. An instant later, she was walloped in the ear. The blow was vicious, there was wristbone in it, and sparks in her vision—stars. She saw stars. The blow that followed was neck-wrenching, brain-shaking. Worse than the pain was the sheer fact of violence. No one had ever hit her. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to keep praying.

Now Laura was kneeling, too. Her fingertips brushed Becky’s ear, which felt skinless and hot. “Becky, I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

Please, God. Please, God.

“I’m—shit. I’m no better than my old man.”

At the change in Laura’s voice, which might have been an answer to her prayer, something stirred in Becky’s core—the same opening-up that she’d experienced in the sanctuary. God was still there. She concentrated, not wanting to lose her connection to Him. But Laura spoke again.

“You know about that, right? Tanner told you?”

Becky shook her head.

“He didn’t tell you why I moved in with him? With his family?”

It was news to Becky that Laura had lived with the Evanses. Never mind the why of it.

“I know what it’s like to be hit,” Laura said. “I’m sorry I did that to you.”

“It’s all right. I did a bad thing to you, too.”

“That’s exactly how my old man made me feel. Like I deserved it.” Laura touched Becky’s shoulder. “Are you really all right?”

“Yes.”

“An open hand can do a lot of damage. Like, I’m partially deaf in one ear. It was Tanner’s mom who noticed. She was my piano teacher, and now she’s basically my mother. The other one—I can’t even be in the same room with her. He still hits her, and she still thinks she deserves it.”

Becky felt grateful—to God—that Laura was speaking more kindly, but beneath the gratitude were the beginnings of a grievance with Tanner. He hadn’t told her that Laura’s father had beaten her; that Laura had lived with his family; that she was practically his sister. If Becky had understood the depths of what she was stepping into, she would have been more careful. The harm she’d proceeded to cause was partly her fault, but it seemed to her that it was partly also Tanner’s.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“It’s just the left ear.”

“No, I mean, about everything. I’m sorry about everything. I’m thinking—maybe I should step aside. Leave the two of you alone.”

“Too late for that, sister. He’s in love with you.”

Again the carsick vista.

“I asked him point-blank,” Laura said. “That was his answer.”

“But it’s only because I threw myself at him. If I just went away…”

“That’s not how it works.”

“But I know he still has feelings for you. If I just—”

“Mess with his emotions and walk away? That truly would be a cunt move. Not that I can’t see you doing it.”

Loudly, or angrily, it seemed, a telephone rang. The phone was on the wall in the kitchenette. Laura gave it an uninterested glance.

“I’m the one who’s going to split,” she said. “I should have done it years ago.” She stood up and added, “I’m sorry I hit you.”

She returned to her backpack, and the phone continued its angry ringing. Becky, who came from a family where ignoring a phone was unthinkable, jumped up and answered. She heard the sound of a crowd and Tanner shouting over it.

“Becky? What are you doing? I’ve been—Gig’s here—we have to play. What are you doing?”

“Just one second, okay?” She pressed the receiver to her chest and walked it toward Laura. “It’s Tanner,” she said. “They need to start. Will you come with me? Please?”

The fact that Laura, after a moment, made a petulant, hand-flinging gesture of assent—the fact that she would never have done this if she hadn’t hit Becky, which wouldn’t have happened if Becky hadn’t fallen to her knees to pray, which wouldn’t have happened if the spirit of Christ hadn’t brought her to Laura’s apartment, which wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t found God in the sanctuary, which wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t smoked marijuana—seemed to Becky, as she followed Laura down the snowy stairs behind the drugstore, the most beautiful proof of God’s mysterious workings. She’d done bad things, she’d accepted her punishment, and now she had her reward. She could feel a whole new life, a life in faith, beginning.

“This is so stupid,” Laura said as they strode along the sidewalk. “I hope you understand what this is costing me.”

The cold air stung Becky’s battered ear. She didn’t dare speak, lest Laura change her mind.

The crowd in the function hall was restive, the stage dimly bathed in purple light. Laura went straight to the door that led backstage while Becky hung back near the vestibule. Seeing the food tables, which were now fully denuded, she understood how considerably stoned she’d still been when she thought she was over being stoned. She was also reminded unpleasantly of Clem.

Gig Benedetti came ambling over to her, smiling. “We meet again.”

“Yeah, hi.”

“I can’t say I’m loving the level of organization here. By which I mean it’s rather low.”

“Laura wasn’t feeling well.”

Was there a commandment in the Bible against lying? Maybe not, but the truth would come out anyway. She wondered if, having performed one amazing deed, she might perform another.

“So, actually, though,” she said. “Actually, here’s the thing. Laura’s quitting the band.”

Gig laughed. “Seriously?”

“Um, yeah.”

“The act I came to hear included a female vocalist.”

“I know. But I’ve heard them play without her, and it’s actually better. Tanner really takes over when he doesn’t have to share the stage. It’s his band, not hers.”

“Is it possible you’re not the most objective critic?”

By instinct, her hand went to her hair and lifted it out from her coat collar. She gave it a luxuriant shake, nothing God could disapprove of. It wasn’t her fault if Gig thought she was a good-looking girl.

“If you really want to know,” she said, “I’m the reason Laura’s quitting. I’m going to feel very shitty if you don’t sign them because of me.” Likewise instinctual was the note of hurt in her voice. She shook her hair again. “I know it sounds like I’m asking you a favor, but Tanner’s the one with ambition. Laura’s just an amateur.”

Gig narrowed his eyes. “What’s your deal?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why am I talking to you and not him?”

“I don’t know. Just—if you sign the band, you’ll be seeing a whole lot of me.”

To really flirt, she should have looked him in the eye, but she couldn’t do it.

“That’s a consideration,” he said.

After the blizzard came a starry-skied chill. The parsonage was dark, but the snow on the driveway was furrowed with new tracks. As Clem followed them toward the back door, he caught a whiff of tobacco smoke. He stopped and sniffed the air. He was out of cigarettes, having emptied his pack after his fight with his father. He’d intended to quit smoking in New Prospect, but that was before Becky told him to go to hell.

The smoke was coming from the parsonage itself. Sitting on the front porch, on the firewood box, in a bulky coat, was—his mother? He was tempted to continue up the driveway, slip inside, go straight to bed. But he saw that his father had been right: he hadn’t considered his mother’s feelings when he wrote to the draft board. Worse yet, he saw that he needed to tell her, right now, what he’d done. Better that she hear it from him than from the old man.

He retraced his steps down the driveway. By the time he reached the porch, her cigarette had vanished and she was on her feet.

“Sweetie,” she said. “There you are.”

He leaned down and received a smoky kiss. He knew she’d smoked as a teenager, but that was thirty years ago.

“Yes,” she said, “I was having a cigarette. You caught me.”

“Actually—can I bum one?”

She laughed. “This is getting ridiculous.”

He didn’t know what she meant, but a laugh was better than a lecture. “I’m going to quit,” he said. “Tomorrow. But—just one?”

“The things I didn’t know.” She shook her head and reached into her pocket. “Filter? Nonfilter?”

The quicker to light up, he took a cigarette from the pack that was already open. Filterless Lucky Strikes. In the Arctic air, the smoke was abstract and nearly flavorless. He fastened his eyes on the white street, to make himself an abstraction, and told his mother about the letter and the reason he’d sent it.

Only when he’d finished did he turn to see how she was taking the news. In her hands was a coffee cup with cigarette ends in it. As if awakened by his silence, she looked down at the cup. It seemed to surprise her. She handed it to him and said, “I’m going inside.”

He didn’t know what exactly he’d expected, but he’d expected more than no response at all. He extinguished his Lucky and followed her into the house. His bags were at the bottom of the stairs, where he’d dropped them. The Christmas tree was dark.

In the kitchen, his mother had crouched by a seldom-opened cabinet.

“Mom, are you all right?”

She stood up with a bottle of J&B scotch. “Why do you ask? Is there a bottle of liquor in my hand? Oh, why, yes, there is.” She laughed and upended the bottle over a glass. Barely a finger of scotch came out. She drank it off. “What do you want me to say? That I’m happy my son wants to fight in that war?”

“I’m not going to be morally half-assed about it.”

She lowered her chin and fixed him with a dubious look, inviting him to amend what he’d said. When he didn’t, she crouched again by the cabinet.

“I can’t deal with this,” she said. “Not tonight. If you want me to worry about you every hour of the next two years, it’s your decision. It would have been nice to have a little warning, but—it’s your decision.”

Bottles clanked as she examined their discolored labels.

“This will devastate your father,” she added. “I imagine you know that.”

“Yeah, I saw him at church. He’s pretty mad.”

“He’s at the church?”

Mrs. Cottrell and her beckoning finger were still fresh in Clem’s mind, and he didn’t owe the old man anything. The question was whether to spare his mother’s feelings.

“He was with a parishioner,” he said carefully. “We had to dig her car out.”

“Let me guess. Frances Cottrell.”

It was dizzying to hear the name from his mother. He wondered if she was smoking and drinking because she knew all about Mrs. Cottrell. Knew more, perhaps, than he did.

“Do you want something?” she said. “Food? A drink? There’s still some bourbon here. Some ancient vermouth.”

“I might have a sandwich.”

She stood up with a bottle and squinted at the dram remaining in it. “Why does this happen? Why is it that, when a person finally really needs a drink, every damn bottle is empty? It can’t be random. If it were random, some of the bottles would be full.”

Something was definitely not right with her.

“Actually, no,” she said. “I suspect it’s your brother.” She poured the dram into her glass. “It’s sort of heartbreaking when you think about it. He keeps going back and taking a little more, but he can’t leave an empty bottle. How much can he take without making it officially empty? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

The state she was in was too much for Clem to process. In the relative warmth of the house, now that he’d told his parents what he’d done, his exhaustion was overwhelming. He sat down at the kitchen table and rested his head on his arms. He thought he might fall asleep instantly, but he’d passed that point. The exhaustion was so painful that it kept him awake. He heard his mother pouring herself a third drink, opening the refrigerator, handling utensils. He heard her setting a plate on the table.

“You should eat something,” she said.

With extreme exertion, he sat up. The sandwich on the plate was ham and Swiss on rye. He was grateful that she’d made it, too sick with exhaustion to want it. He thought of the cinnamon toast that Sharon had offered him that morning, the eggs she’d scrambled him on other mornings. He thought of how happy she’d been to see him, how full of plans for their future. The pain behind his eyes became unbearable.

“Oh, honey, Clem, sweetie, what is it? Why are you crying?”

He had so much misery to express and only one way to do it. When his mother put her arms around him, he struggled to maintain some shred of strength and dignity. But, really, he had none.

It was interesting to note that, when his tears subsided, the sandwich looked more appealing. He also wanted a cigarette. These were the same appetites that returned after sexual release.

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” his mother said. “Do you not really want to be in the army?”

Someone had left a paper napkin on the table. He blew his nose with it, and his mother sat down across from him. In her glass was some brownish vermouth.

“We can call the draft board in the morning,” she said. “You can say you changed your mind. No one will think any less of you.”

“No. I’m just worn out.”

“But that can affect your judgment. Maybe if you got some rest—this is such a crazy thing.”

“It’s not crazy. It’s the one thing I’m sure about.”

From his mother’s silence, he could tell that she was disappointed. Her way as a parent had always been to offer suggestions, hoping he would see that they were sensible, rather than telling him what to do.

“Do you remember what you told me?” he said. “That sex without commitment is a bad idea?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Well, so, I’ve been with a girl. A woman. It’s been the most amazing thing.”

His mother’s eyes widened as if he’d stuck her with a needle.

“But you were right,” he said. “If there’s no commitment, people get hurt. And that’s exactly what happened. She’s horribly hurt.”

The misery rose in him, and his mother reached across the table for his hand. Not wanting to cry again, he pulled it away.

“We broke up,” he said. “This morning. Or I broke up with her. She didn’t want to.”

“Oh, honey.”

“I had to—I’m leaving school.”

“You don’t have to leave school.”

“I did a horribly cruel thing to her.”

The misery overcame him. While he struggled to master it, his mother stood up and went to the stove. He heard a whoosh and smelled smoke. The weirdness of her smoking brought him back out of himself.

“Don’t you want to go outside?”

“No,” she said. “This is my house, too.”

“Why are you smoking?”

“I’m sorry. It’s been one thing after another today. I’m sorry you’re hurt. I’m sorry about—what’s her name?”

“Sharon.”

His mother drew hard on the cigarette. “It’s just hard for me to understand. If you were happy with her, why are you leaving school?”

“Because my lottery number is nineteen.”

“But why now? Why not wait another semester?”

“Because I’m too crazy about her to keep my grades up. As long as I’m there, I only want to be with her.”

“But that’s—” His mother frowned. “Are you quitting school to get away from her?”

“I’m pulling a B average. I don’t deserve a deferment.”

“No, no, no. You’re not thinking straight. Do you love her?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes. I mean—yes. But it doesn’t matter. It’s too late.”

His mother went to the sink and ran water on her cigarette.

“It’s never too late,” she said. “If you love her, and she loves you, then don’t leave her. It’s as simple as that. Do not run away from the person you love.”

“I know, but…”

His mother wheeled around from the sink. A strange light was in her eyes. “It’s not right! There’s nothing more terrible you can do!”

He’d never felt afraid of her before. She’d always only been his mother, small and soft, ever-present but diffuse. His fear deepened when she went to the wall phone by the dining-room door and took the receiver off its hook. She thrust it in his face.

“Call her.”

“Mom?”

“Honey, just do it. You’ll feel better. I want you to call her and tell her you’re sorry. Please. She’ll take you back.”

The receiver was emitting a dial tone. His mother’s hand was shaking.

“Is Sharon with her family? Did she go home, too?”

“Tomorrow, I think.”

“Then tell her you want to come and see her. It’s fine with me.”

“Mom, it’s Christmas.”

“So what? You have my permission. I mean, honestly—is this where you want to be? Here?” She made a sweeping gesture with the receiver. “In this?”

The disgust in her voice was shocking. And yet she had a point. He really didn’t want to be in the parsonage, not after what Becky had said to him.

“It’s too late to go back,” he said. “She’s leaving in the morning.”

The receiver burst into an off-the-hook yammering.

“Then go there now,” his mother said.

Why Perry, late in the evening, was on the far side of the tracks, in the prospectless part of New Prospect where streets of sorry little houses dead-ended at the rail embankment, was a question answerable only in the narrowest pragmatic sense. To address the greater why of it required a framework of ratiocination whose pointlessness was now evident. As he trotted along Terminal Street, the snow squeaking beneath his feet, he felt pursued by an expanding black crater. Before it caught up and swallowed him, he needed to reach the house whose threshold he hadn’t expected to cross again. Under the circumstances, this seemed excusable.

The crater had appeared after he confessed to his mother that he’d sold contraband. Although the confession had been strategic, a matter of securing her complicity against the raging of his father, should his misconduct ever come to general light, he’d been prepared to shed some tears, as he’d done with impressive success at Crossroads, in order to be forgiven. But his mother hadn’t seemed to care. She hadn’t scolded him; hadn’t even asked questions. The effect, when he left her to her cigarette and went downstairs, had been to render him defenseless against the mental crater that had opened.

He’d set out in the snow for Ansel Roder’s house. Surely, if only tonight, he was permitted to get very high. The anticipation of toke after toke in the trusty seclusion of the Roder swimming-pool shed, the foretaste of deliberately massive excess, the imminence of futurity-banishing befuddlement, was giving him a boner that grew harder as he imagined the pleasure of servicing it, while extremely high, in the bathroom Roder shared with his skinny, non-bra-wearing sister, Annette, when she was home from college. Annette was dry of wit, a junior at Grinnell, and had an oily, rough complexion that only added to her allure. She was close to Perry’s ideal, female-wise, and seemed approximately as attainable to him as the Andromeda Galaxy.

Embarrassingly, Annette herself answered his ringing of the Roder doorbell. He couldn’t look at her face; could barely find the voice to ask for Ansel. In his cheap parka, his dorkoid rubbers, his arrant craving, he was every inch the repulsive little worm. All he could do was wait for her to turn away. His desperation to be high and by himself, in a locked bathroom, was approaching intolerable. Through the open front door, he saw scintillant orange in the Roder fireplace. The fireplace was outsized, manorial, and burned longer split logs than he’d seen anywhere else.

Roder, when he came to the door, barefoot, seemed pre-annoyed. “What do you want?”

“I’d like to come in,” Perry said. “If I may.”

“Not a good time. We’re playing canasta.”

“Canasta.”

“It’s a holiday tradition. It’s actually pretty fun.”

“You and your family are playing a card game.”

“Troll the ancient yuletide carol and the like. Yes.”

The Roders were even less a family unit than the Hildebrandts. Their doing a fun thing together was unusual to the point of seeming cosmically unjust. Without looking behind him, Perry could sense the dark crater widening toward him.

“Well, then,” he said, his throat thick with disappointment, “I wonder, if you have a second—I made a small error in judgment today. A miscalculation.”

“Seriously, man.” Roder began to close the door. “Not a good time.”

“If you could just quickly run and get me one of the bags. Help a friend.”

“We’re playing a game here.”

“You mentioned that. If you’d like, I can give you some cash.”

Roder made a face, as if repulsed by a worm.

“Ansel, come on. When have I ever come to you like this?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned money. That was a mistake—I’m sorry.”

Roder shut the door in his face. Out of reach, not fifty feet from where he stood, in a drawer in Roder’s bedroom, were three ounces of weed, schoolyard in quality but adequate to the task at hand, and he couldn’t even blame the cosmos. It was he who’d offended Roder. By proposing a deal today, he’d rendered glaring a fact heretofore overlookable in the bonhomie of being high, of Roder’s generosity and his own capacity to amuse. The fact was that he didn’t love Roder. He loved drugs.

Pursued by the crater’s edge, he made his way to First Reformed. Of the friends of his who might be holding, only Roder wasn’t in Crossroads, and so the concert was his only recourse. His mother had lost her mind. She’d been committed to a loony bin, her father had drowned himself, and she’d named these facts to Perry—named two outcomes that had lurked behind doors in his head which he’d never permitted himself to open, not even on the most sleepless of nights. And yet, as if with X-ray vision, telekinetic intelligence, he must have seen through the shut doors, because nothing she’d told him had surprised him. He’d had only a dull sense of recognition. The outcomes were ugly but not shocking; he knew their faces.

He would tell her nothing more. Not now, not ever. In a sense, the crater he was fleeing was his mother.

He’d hoped to find a party in the church parking lot, but he’d arrived too late—the lot was empty. Inside the function hall, at the rear margin of the crowd, a couple of Crossroads alumnae were dancing with a blissy sloppiness to the instrumental jam in “Wooden Ships,” performed by a band Perry recognized by general repute, and also from having silk-screened its name on the concert posters, as the Bleu Notes. Through shifting lanes in the crowd, he caught glimpses of the fabled Laura Dobrinsky frowning over an electric keyboard, studious in her syncopations, and a tall Afro’d guitarist vaguely moving his lips to his riffing, and Tanner Evans behaving more like a rock star, tossing his hair and making little lunges as he whaled away on rhythm. They sounded note for note like Crosby, Stills and Nash on their first record, and the crowd, unfortunately, was totally into it. Except for the dancing girls, all he could see was the backs of nodding heads. Disappointment was rising in his throat when someone touched him on the shoulder.

Of all the useless people, it was Larry Cottrell. Larry had done something dumb to his hair, overcombed it, and the result was to make everything else about him—jean jacket, straight-legged corduroys, hiking boots—seem similarly overconsidered. He spread his arms as if, Jesus Christ, he expected a hug. Perry turned toward the stage and craned his neck, pretending to be greatly interested in the band. Having admitted to his mother that he’d been a dealer, and thereby inoculated himself against paternal discovery, he no longer had anything to fear from Larry.

We are lea-ea-ving, came the refrain onstage. You don’t nee-ee-eed us.

Larry, undiscouraged, shouted into Perry’s ear. “Where were you?”

As in a game of chess, Perry saw that, unless he took bold action, his little pawn would be dogging him at every turn, complicating the task of finding drugs. Again the sense of cosmic unfairness. Again the recognition that he had no one but himself to blame.

What to do? A bold move came to him as it did on a chessboard, with a frisson of do-I-dare. He beckoned Larry to follow him, which Larry eagerly did, out into the deserted vestibule.

“I had a thought,” he said.

“What, what,” Larry said.

“We need to get drunk.”

Larry’s fingers went straight to the sebaceous sides of his nose. “Okay.”

“I assume your mother has a liquor shelf?”

The fingers rubbed. The nose sniffed sebum. The eyes were wide.

“I want you to go there now,” Perry said. “Take something she won’t notice, triple sec or crème de menthe. Any bottle that’s more or less full.”

“Yeah, um. What about the rules, though?”

“You can hide the bottle in a snowdrift—it won’t freeze. Will you do that for me?”

Larry was obviously scared. “You have to come with me.”

“No. Too suspicious. You can take however long it takes—I’ll wait.”

“I don’t know about this.”

Perry grasped the arms of his pawn and looked into his eyes. “Just do it. You’ll thank me for it later.”

To observe his power over Larry was to push back the edge of the crater. There was a kind of liberation in jettisoning all thought of being a good person. From the outer doorway, he watched Larry hustle across the parking lot.

While Laura Dobrinsky, now seated at the church’s baby grand piano, belted out a Carole King song, he returned to the crowd and maneuvered through it, stopping for a hug from a Crossroads girl who’d confessed to being awed by his vocabulary, and a hug from a girl who’d challenged him to be more emotionally open, and a hug from a girl with whom he’d improvised a skit about the hazards of dishonesty, to much approbation, and a hug from a girl who’d vouchsafed to him, in a dyad, that she’d gotten her first period before she turned eleven, and then a thumbs-up from the boy who’d helped him with the concert posters, and a friendly nod from no less an eminence than Ike Isner, whose face he’d once palpated, while blindfolded, in a trust exercise, and whose blind fingers had then palpated his own face. None of these people could see inside his cranium, all had been fooled into applauding his emotional candor and collectively propelling him, with a kind of gently pulsing group action, like macroscopic cilia, in the direction of belonging to the Crossroads inner circle. The hugs in particular were still pleasant, but the edge of the crater was creeping up on him again, now taking the form of a classic depressive question: What was the point? The inner circle had no actual power. It was merely the goal of an abstract game.

Near the corner of the stage, by an American flag, which the church for unknowable reasons felt obliged to display on a pole, he found all his old friends in one tight group. Bobby Jett and Keith Stratton were there with David Goya and his ill-complected girlfriend, Kim, and also Becky, by whose side stood an older man, unfamiliar to Perry, lavishly sideburned and wearing a belted orange leather coat, who might have stepped off the set of The Mod Squad. Kim promptly hugged Perry, and he was pleased to detect a whiff of skunk in her hair. Where there was dope, there was hope. Becky only waved to him, but not unkindly. She looked taller to him somehow, radiantly okay, as if to accentuate his own runtiness, his galloping not-okayness.

Onstage, Tanner Evans had taken up an acoustic guitar, his Afro’d friend a banjo, and the Bleu Notes had rolled into a theologically tendentious ballad whose lyrics were known to Perry, because it was the semiofficial theme song of Crossroads, purportedly written by Tanner Evans himself, and was often sung at the end of Sunday-night meetings.

The song is in the changes not the notes

I was looking for a thing

Couldn’t find it in myself

Until I met somebody else

And I found it in between

Yeah, the song is in the changes not the notes

Becky seemed enthralled by the performance, the sideburned modster possibly a bit enthralled with Becky, but David Goya, who enjoyed amending the line I found it in between to I found it between her legs, was gazing at the crowd like a deaf old man puzzled by visual evidence of sound. Perry tugged on his sleeve and led him out into the hallway.

“Are you holding?” he said.

In the hallway light, Goya’s eyes were bloodshot, his expression wistful. “Sadly, I am not.”

“Then who is? If I may ask.”

“At this late hour, I couldn’t tell you. Demand was early and brisk.”

“David. Did you think I wasn’t coming?”

“What can I say? Events have taken their course. And now, yes, all pockets are empty. You should have been here with your sister.”

“My sister?”

“Is there a problem? Do we not like Becky?”

Something evil, the edge of the crater, was nipping the undersides of Perry’s heels. Evidently, despite the recent forward stride in relations with his sister, the cessation of hostilities, her larger project of dispossessing him was ongoing.

“Apropos of which,” Goya said. “Were you aware that she’s with Tanner Evans? Did you know this and not tell us?”

Perry stared at the brass handles of the doors to the function hall, behind which the Bleu Notes were doing better justice to “The Song Is in the Changes” than was done on Sunday nights.

“We have eyewitness reports of smooching,” Goya said. “Kim is—what’s the word. Kim is agog.”

Down down down. Perry was going down.

“Can we go to your house?” he said. “I was—that is … Can we do a resupply run?”

“There’s talk of pancakes,” Goya said. “Becky wants midnight pancakes, and who could blame her? Kim’s going. And whither Kim goest…”

“We could catch up with them later.”

The desperate edge in Perry’s voice seemed to cut through Goya’s mellowness. His eyes, though red, became alert. “Is something up with you?”

The cosmos was unjust. By dallying in conversation with his mother, Perry had made himself too late to procure relief from the disturbance the conversation had caused him, whereas, if he’d skipped the conversation and come to the concert earlier, when drugs were still available, he wouldn’t have been disturbed and could have stuck to his resolution.

“I just,” he said. “I, uh. Is—who’s going?”

“Kim, Becky, me. Tanner, too, I think. Maybe others.”

Perry saw an idea and pounced on it. “The band has to pack up. If we go right now, we’ll be back in plenty of time.”

The idea was rational and easily realized, but Goya was too stoned or too stubborn to see it. “Is something wrong?”

“No. No.”

“Then let’s not do this.”

A tremendous closing cheer went up in the function hall. Goya turned and went back in, and Perry, after a hesitation, followed. One might have expected an encore, but Laura Dobrinsky was hopping down from the stage. She lowered her head and charged into the crowd, jostling Perry as she hurried out the door. Over his shoulder, he saw her sprinting down the hallway.

The house lights had come up, and Tanner Evans, too, was in the crowd, his hair damp with musical exertion. He shook the modster’s hand and draped his arm around Becky. Perry couldn’t see her face, but he could see the few people who’d hugged him, the many who hadn’t. Every one of them was looking at his sister, who had both arms around Tanner Evans. She’d been in Crossroads for less than two months, and already, it was clear, she’d leaped past Perry and advanced to the center of it.

How happy her soul must have been with the person in whom it had chanced to land.

From the ensuing blackness in his head, he’d returned to himself on Pirsig Avenue, walking with apparent intention toward the Shell station. In his wallet were twenty-three dollars, currently earmarked for Christmas presents for Becky, Clem, and the Reverend, but the world wouldn’t end if he spent only a few dollars on each of them. He also had coins in the flat, clear-plastic coin purse that Judson had given him for his birthday. Reaching the gas station, he took a dime from the purse and put it in the frigid pay phone by the restrooms. Behind him, in the snow, a tow truck idled with its roof lights flashing, no driver at the wheel. The phone number, 241–7642, was a cinch to remember, the fourth digit being the sum of the first three, which also recurred in the decimal inverse of the fourth, and the concluding two-digit number being the product of the two foregoing integers.

The guy answered on the sixth ring. Perry got no further than pronouncing his first and last names when the guy interrupted him. “Sorry, man. Closed for the holidays.”

“It’s something of an emergency.”

The guy hung up on him.

At this point, Perry might wisely have conceded defeat and gone back to First Reformed to content himself with whatever bottle Larry Cottrell had managed to poach, but Larry’s success was by no means assured, perhaps more like the opposite, and Perry had money, the guy had drugs—what could be simpler?

He’d been to the guy’s house only once, not to cop but simply to be introduced to him by a disagreeable upperclassman, Randy Toft, who’d been Keith Stratton’s dealer. Subsequent guy–Perry meetings had occurred among potholes in the parking lot behind the old A&P, which was boarded up but not yet demolished or repurposed, and had invariably involved lengthy waiting for the guy’s anonymous white Dodge to nose into view, Perry stewing about his lack of punctuality but never brave enough, when the guy finally arrived, to raise the issue. Both of them knew who had the power and who didn’t.

The house was easy to find again, because it was on a dead-end street by the cheerful name of Felix and its street-side mailbox bore a weathered NIXON AGNEW bumper sticker, possibly humor, possibly a red herring for the township police, or possibly, who could say, a heartfelt statement. As Perry came up the street named Felix toward the rail embankment, he saw the white Dodge in the driveway, buried in whiter snow. Light showed around the edges of sagging shades in the house’s living-room windows. The front walk was unshoveled, altogether untrodden.

Resolved: that embracing badness accords power.

Because what else, the first affirmative speaker asked rhetorically, distinguishes the person who needs to score from the person who needs to sell? The buyer, after all, is as free to withhold money as the seller is free to withhold his goods. Doesn’t it follow that the difference in power must relate to the gravity of the offense? A high-school dealer is nothing worse than a dispersing nozzle on a hose, dispensing good times to his peers and to himself, whereas the man who makes a career of being the hose has chosen to flout stern federal statutes. He’s morally far worse than the young dealer, and this is why the latter silently endures the former’s lack of punctuality. The deeper you go into badness, the more formidable you become.

Empowered by the shittiness of what he’d done to Larry Cottrell, Perry opened the guy’s chain-link gate and waded through the snow to the door, behind which he heard music. Before he could knock, there came a kind of strangled howl from a dog he’d forgotten about until this moment, followed by a cascade of savage basso barks, as the dog found the breath it had lacked for its initial howl. On Perry’s only other visit to the house, the dog had stood in the open doorway, large and short-haired, slit-eyed with suspicion, its jaw muscles grotesquely bulging, while the guy met him and Randy Toft outside the gate and put his arms on their shoulders, demonstrating amity, which the dog had grudgingly conceded. Now the barking caused the porch light to come on. Through the door, he heard the guy shouting.

“What are you doing, man, it’s out of control! The dog is out of control! You better just get the fuck away from here! It’s nobody’s business!”

The door had a fish-eye peephole through which Perry felt sure he was being observed. Even discounting for a distributor’s understandable paranoia, the situation didn’t seem promising, but he thought it was worth trying to signal his harmlessness before he gave up. He fished out his wallet, removed his twenty-dollar bill, and dangled it at the peephole.

“What are you doing to me?” the guy shouted, over the barking. “Wrong house, man! Go away!”

To make his intention clear, Perry mimed taking a toke.

“Yeah, I get it! Go away!”

Perry made a beseeching gesture, and the porch light went out. This seemed to be the end of it, but the door suddenly opened. The guy was wearing only blue jeans, neither buttoned nor zipped, and had his fingers under the collar of the outraged dog, which was scratching at the air with raised forelegs. “What are you doing?” he said. “What are you standing there for? You can’t be standing there. What do you think I am?”

He dragged the lunging dog back from the door. Extremely warm air was flowing out.

“Shut the fucking door already!”

Taking this as an invitation, Perry entered and closed the door. The guy was straddling the dog as if it were a canine pony, hauling it farther back into the house while Perry waited on the entry rug, the snow on his rubbers immediately liquefying. The house temperature was a good ninety degrees. The music, which came from a wooden stereo console, was Vanilla Fudge. Perry remembered neither the console nor anything else about the living room, partly because the walls were bare and the furniture nondescript, but mainly because he’d been too agitated, too full of anxiety and shame, to pay attention. The guy, that afternoon, the previous April, had introduced himself as “Bill,” but his smirking intonation had led Perry to assume that Bill wasn’t his real name. He had a reddish mustache too large for his face, and one of his legs was an inch or two shorter than the other. According to Randy Toft, the leg had kept him out of Vietnam, but the guy didn’t seem to have much going for him otherwise. Namelessness suited his station in life.

A door slammed, and the dog howled more forlornly. The guy returned with his jeans still open, the zipper skewed by the differential in his leg lengths. His chest was nearly as hairless as Perry’s, but he was much furrier below the navel. He looked around the room, at everything but Perry, with jerky motions of his head, as though seeking the source of a threat. Seeming to find it in the stereo, he lifted the needle from the record with a shaking hand. There was a sickening sound of needle droppage, scratched vinyl. He raised the needle again and moved it safely aside. His head nodding rapidly, he stood and considered what he’d done.

“So,” Perry said carefully, for it was obvious that the guy was seriously amped on something, “I apologize for disturbing you—”

“Can’t do, can’t do, can’t do,” the guy said, staring at the turntable. “Nothing in the house, man, they fucked me over, why are you here?”

“I was hoping you might set me up.”

“You definitely shouldn’t be here—I don’t like it.”

“I’m aware of that, and I apologize.”

“You’re not listening. I’m saying I don’t like it. You know what I’m saying? I’m not talking about the thing, I’m talking about the thing behind the thing, the thing behind the thing behind the thing. You know what I’m saying?”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Perry said. “If you could just set me up, I’d be happy to pay full retail price, and I’ll be on my way again.”

The guy continued to nod. He’d been edgy and distracted the last time Perry saw him, six weeks ago, behind the A&P, but nothing like this. It came to Perry that he was looking at a speed freak. He’d heard about them but had never seen one. He didn’t want to leave, because the crater was waiting for him, right outside the house, but a self-preservative instinct was asserting itself. He turned toward the door.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, where you going?” The guy bounded over and put his hand on the door. There were ugly sores on the inside of his arm, a very rank odor coming off him. “What are you doing to me? I can’t deal with the dimensions of this.”

“If you can’t help me—”

“You’re fucking me over. Every one of you is fucking me over. I don’t have any weed, all right? Merry Christmas, Happy New Year—where’s your money?”

“I think I’d better go.”

“No no no no no no. You like the pills, you like the ’ludes, I’ve still got Ludydudies.”

“Unfortunately, I’m not in the market.”

The guy nodded vigorously. “That’s okay, man, we’re still good. Just don’t go anywhere, right? Stay here, don’t move, I’ve got something else for you.”

In his bare feet, with his hitching gait, he lumbered into the rear of the house, where the dog howled again. His eagerness, the shift in power it represented, was somewhat alleviating Perry’s fear, and he wondered what the something else might be.

The guy returned shaking a glass jar like a maraca, a Planters Peanuts jar with several hundred pills in it, a quantity that told Perry they couldn’t be valuable. Amphetamines, presumably. Not a substance he’d ever had reason to try.

“Take a handful,” the guy said, “there’s no such thing as too many.”

The lid of the jar hit the entry rug with a dull clank and rolled away. The open jar was offered with a trembling hand.

“What have we here?” Perry said.

“Take like four of ’em and chew ’em—you’ll see, there’s no such thing as too many, you’ll forget about your weed. Chew ’em up and wait a minute, it’ll hit you. The first four are on me, because, shit, man, it’s Christmas, I’ll give you another forty for your twenty dollars, you’ll forget about your weed, this shit’s like a bomb, take take take. If you like it, which you will, I can set you up with the big bomb. Take take take.”

The dark crater had appeared in front of Perry; it was both behind him and in front of him, which could only mean that he was falling into it. He held out his hand.

Having performed the task that Frances had set him, having secured a place on the Crossroads spring trip to Arizona, Russ returned to his office in a state of exultation. On the desk where his lady had sat in her hunting cap, her legs parted, he saw an Arizona landscape unfolding. In his mind, he was already driving deep into this landscape. He was tempted to call her immediately and report his accomplishment, but all afternoon, all evening, she’d been running the show, provoking his ardor, withholding rewards, and this needed to stop. It was he who’d slain the dragon! He who’d had the guts to knock on Ambrose’s door! Better, he thought, to leave her in suspense. Better to let her wonder until she finally had to ask. And then, casually, let drop that he’d forgiven Ambrose and was going to Arizona.

He locked his office and went down to the parking lot. In the snow on his Fury’s rear window, some teenaged hand had inscribed the word OOPS. Hearing the music from the function hall, he recalled that he and Frances wouldn’t be alone in Arizona; there would also be busloads of potentially hostile young people. It occurred to him that he was still wearing his sheepskin coat.

He had a guilty impulse to go back for his other one, but he was done with being gutless. He could wear whatever goddamned coat he pleased. He no longer cared if Marion knew he’d spent the day with Frances. In the future, yes, if he commenced an affair and it grew into something larger, a new life, a second chance, the repercussions would be daunting, but for now his only detectable crime was the little lie he’d told at breakfast. If Marion remarked on the sheepskin coat, made the mildest insinuation, he would blast her with the news that Perry was a pot smoker. Even better, he would tell her about Ambrose. For three years, she’d been maligning Rick, reinforcing Russ’s grudge against him, and when she learned that Russ had forgiven him, unilaterally, without consulting her, she was bound to feel betrayed. No doubt she’d imagined she was being a loyal wife. But she, in a sense, had betrayed him first. If she hadn’t been so supportive of his failings, he might have made peace long ago. Frances had restored him to his courage, his edge, by believing he was capable of more.

Not trusting his tires on the unplowed hill on Maple, and being in no hurry to lay eyes on Marion, he drove the long way home to Highland Street. Again and again today, for six hours, he’d glanced at the face of his female companion and liked what he saw. It was such a simple thing, a lightness that so many other men took for granted, to walk into a McDonald’s with Frances and not be embarrassed to be seen with her, but to him the relief of it, the contrast with the daily disappointment of seeing Marion, had felt almost miraculous. Where Frances’s hair, even flattened by the hunting cap, had flattered her, each of the hairstyles that Marion had tried in recent years had been wrong in a different way, too short or too long, each serving to accentuate the redness of her skin, the thickening of her neck, the pinching of her eyes by adipose and insomnia. He knew it was unfair of him to care. It was unfair that his eye should be more painfully affronted by his wife than by the many objectively worse-looking women in New Prospect. It was unfair to have enjoyed her body when she was young and then burdened her with children and a thousand duties, only to now feel miserable whenever he had to venture into public with her and her sorry hair, her unavailing makeup, her seemingly self-spiting choice of dress. He pitied her for the unfairness; he felt guilty. But he couldn’t help blaming her, too, because her unattractiveness advertised unhappiness. Sometimes, when she looked especially dumpy at a church dinner, he sensed a satisfaction in being unsightly to him, a wish to make him suffer along with her for what he and their marriage had done to her, but most of the time her unhappiness excluded him. Hating her looks was yet another of the jobs she quietly and capably took on for him. Was it any wonder he was lonely in his marriage?

When he finally reached the parsonage, a large Oldsmobile, Dwight Haefle’s, was backing out of the driveway. He tried to go around it, but Dwight stopped at an angle and lowered his window. Russ could only lower his.

“We missed you at the party,” Dwight said.

“Yes, I’m sorry about that.”

“Marion mentioned that you and Mrs. Cottrell had some trouble in the city?”

Dwight’s expression was unreadable in the incidental light. What was he doing at the parsonage? How had Marion known that Russ was with Frances and not Kitty Reynolds?

“No, ah, no injuries,” he said.

“I brought you some leftovers, in case you’re hungry.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“Don’t thank me, thank Doris.”

Dwight’s window went up again, quickly and smoothly. The Oldsmobile, its power windows, its capabilities and newness, seemed emblematic of the senior minister’s invulnerability to temptations of the flesh. The Lord was with him; but so was Doris. Russ was a wreck at the wheel of a wreck, but he had Mrs. Cottrell.

Only when he’d pulled into the driveway and cut the engine did he recall that Clem might be at home. He wanted to see Clem as little as he wanted to see Marion, but he knew he needed to speak to him again. He needed to revise what he’d said earlier—take the same risk he’d taken with Ambrose and be honest, confess to the complications of his heart and forgive, as he had with Ambrose, the hurtful things his son had said. Nothing less was demanded of the man he was becoming.

Inside, in the kitchen, he found Marion and Judson at the table with a carton of eggnog. Judson was leaning back with a nog-smeared glass in his hand, coaxing the last viscous drops into his mouth. A faint scent of bacon was in the air.

“Good Lord,” Marion said. “There you are.”

“Hi, Dad,” Judson said.

“Hello, lad. You’re up pretty late.”

“Perry took me to the Haefles’. I got to watch a movie, and it was excellent, it was in New York City, and there was a gigantic department store, the one that does the Macy’s parade—”

“Judson, honey,” Marion said, “why don’t you run upstairs and get your teeth brushed. I’ll come up and tuck you in.”

“I’d like to hear more about that movie,” Russ said heartily.

Without seeming to hear him, Judson got up and left the kitchen. Only for Marion did his children have ears. He pried off the work shoes that Ambrose had earlier unlaced.

“I’m sorry I missed the party.”

“I’m sure you are,” she said. “It was a laugh a minute.”

From the chill in her voice, without looking at her, he gathered that his lie at breakfast hadn’t gone unnoticed. He was tempted to explain it away—to volunteer that Mrs. Cottrell had unexpectedly taken Kitty’s place. But this would have been the old Russ.

“Is Clem here?”

“No,” she said.

“He’s—have you seen him?”

“I sent him back to Champaign.”

Now he looked at her. Her face was as red as ever, her hair no better, but there was something steely in her eyes.

“One of us needed to do something,” she said. “I gather you did less than nothing.”

“He’s going back to Champaign? Now?”

“There’s a midnight bus and apparently a girl he’s involved with. I don’t know if he’ll change his mind, but it’s a start.”

Russ looked away from her. “That’s unfortunate. I was hoping to talk to him again.”

“If only you hadn’t been detained…”

“I already apologized for being late. I didn’t realize—”

“That he was having a major crisis?”

“I tried to reason with him.”

“And how did that go?”

“I—not well.”

She laughed at him. Laughed and stood up and went to the coat hooks by the door, removed something from a coat pocket, and shook it. Though small, the white object she extracted with her lips was so alien, had such a powerful charge, that it was like a third presence in the room. The bacony smell, he realized, was coming from his wife.

“What in God’s name are you doing?”

“Smoking,” she said.

“Not in my house.”

“This isn’t your house, Russ. That’s a silly idea you need to let go of. The house is the church’s, and I’m the one who’s always in it. In what sense is it yours?”

The question took him aback. “It is part of my compensation as a minister.”

“Oh dear.” She laughed again. “You want to argue with me? I wouldn’t recommend it.”

He saw that she was angry, perhaps inordinately so, about his little lie. She lit a burner on the stove and leaned over it, holding her hair away from the flame.

“Put that out,” he said. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but put that out.”

With mirth in her eyes, she blew smoke in his direction.

“Marion. What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing!”

“If you’re angry with me about missing the party—”

“Truth be told, I was hardly even thinking of you.”

“I had an accident in the city. I ended up going with Mrs. Cottrell, by the way. Kitty couldn’t, ah. Kitty couldn’t make it. She, ah…”

He could feel himself being dragged down, by the inertia of marriage, into a well-established pattern of evasion. As long as he stayed with Marion, he would never change.

“You and I have a lot to discuss,” he said threateningly. “It’s not just Clem. There’s also a problem with Perry you need to know about. And— I went to see Ambrose. I thought it was—”

“Russ, really. I’m just having a cigarette.”

The sight of her smoking, in the middle of the kitchen, was uncanny. If she’d stripped out of her clothes and shaken her breasts at him, it wouldn’t have been any stranger. There was something of sex in the gasp of her drag on the cigarette.

“Although I do wonder,” she said, exhaling, “how you think it would work. Even at the level of fantasy, how do you picture it working?”

“How what would work?”

“You’d still have four kids to support. You’d still be making seven thousand dollars a year. Is the idea that you’d go and live on her charity? Forgive me for wondering how well you’ve thought it through.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Again Marion laughed. “I hope she’s good at writing sermons,” she said. “I hope she likes cooking your meals and washing your underwear. I hope she’s ready to have the relationship with your kids that you’re too busy saving the world for. I hope she’s up for dealing with your insecurity every night of the week. And you know what else? I hope she keeps a close eye on you.”

For the second time in two hours, he was being taunted. Although, in strict point of morality, he deserved it, he had a physical urge, stronger even than he’d had with Clem, to strike his wife. He felt like batting the cigarette from her hand, slapping her in the face, knocking the smile off it, so angering was the contrast between his family’s disrespect and Frances’s ingratiations.

“I didn’t realize,” he said stiffly, “that you resented helping me with my sermons.”

“I don’t, Russ. The help is freely given.”

“In the future, I will write them all myself.”

She took another puff on the cigarette. “Whatever you like, dear.”

“As for the rest of it,” he said, “I won’t dignify it with an answer. I’ve had a very long day, and I’m going to bed. I would only thank you not to smoke in a house where the rest of us need to sleep.”

In response, she made an O with her lips and blew a smoke ring. Her mouth stayed open.

“God damn it, Marion.”

“Yes, dear?”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove—”

“I’m sure you don’t. You have some fine qualities, but imagination was never one of them.”

The insult was naked and it shocked him. Time and again, in the early years of their marriage, he’d sensed that she was angry about something small or large he’d done or failed to do. Each time, he’d expected an explosion of the sort he knew occurred in other marriages, and each time her anger had faded into soft-spoken reproach, at worst a sulking that she maintained for a day or two and then let go of, until finally he’d understood that they weren’t a couple who had fights. He remembered feeling proud of this. Now it seemed like another instance of her deadness to him as a wife.

“I shouldn’t have to imagine,” he said. “If something is bothering you, the responsible thing is to tell me what it is, instead of making insinuations.”

“Be careful what you ask for.”

“Do you think I can’t handle it? There’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Tall words.”

“I mean it. If you have something to say to me, say it.”

“All right.” She brought the cigarette to her lips, her eyes crossing to focus on the coal. “It annoys me that you want to fuck her.”

The kitchen seemed to spin beneath his feet. He’d never heard that word from her.

“It’s really quite annoying, and if you think it’s because I’m jealous, that’s even more annoying. I mean, really—me? Jealous of that thing? Who do you think I am? Who do you think you married? I’ve seen the face of God.”

Russ stared at her. A schizophrenic parishioner had once said the same thing to him.

“You’ve got your liberal religion,” she said, “you’ve got your second-floor office, you’ve got your ladies on Tuesdays, but you have no idea what it means to know God. No idea what true belief is like. You think you’re God’s gift, you think you deserve better than what you’ve got, and, well, yes, I find that more than a little annoying. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your children are amazing—at least one of them is a flat-out genius. Where do you think that came from? Where do you think the brilliance in this family came from? Do you think it came from you? Ah—fuck!”

She shook her hand and dropped the cigarette, which had burned her. She picked it up and took it to the sink. She appeared to be having some kind of nervous breakdown, and it ought to have worried him, ought to have repelled him, but it didn’t. He remembered an intensity so deeply buried in the past it might have been a dream, the intensity she’d possessed at twenty-five, the intensity with which he’d wanted her. And she was still his wife. Still lawfully his. Provoked by her abandon, he approached her from behind and put his hands on her breasts. Beneath the wool of her dress and the folds of middle-aged flesh was the off-kilter girl who’d maddened him in Arizona. The smoke in her hair and something equally foreign, a smell of liquor, were further provocations. It was exciting to touch the breasts of a drunk stranger.

He tried to turn her around, but she ducked under his elbow and broke free. When he took a step toward her, she skittered away.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Marion—”

“You think I’m sloppy seconds?”

She never rejected him. In matters of the bedroom, he was the rejecter.

“Fine,” he said angrily. “I was simply trying to—”

“You and she deserve each other. Go ahead and see if I care. You have my permission.”

The contempt in her voice robbed him of any joy he might have taken in her permission. She really was smarter than he was. As crazy as she was acting, she was right about that, and it didn’t matter if she was squat and red-faced, it didn’t matter if he slew dragons. As long as they stayed married—even if they didn’t—she would always have that on him.

“You seem to think it’s just me,” he said, shaking, “but it’s not just me. You’re as much to blame as I am. You’ve got it set up so I’m the only one who needs support. You’ve got your whole litany—support, support, support. No joy, no nothing, just support. Is it any wonder I’m sick of it?”

“You can’t be half as sick of it as I am.”

“But you’re the one who wanted this.”

“This?”

“You wanted the kids. You wanted this life.”

“You didn’t?”

“If it had been up to me, we’d be devoted to service. You wouldn’t be a housewife, and I damn sure wouldn’t be giving sermons to bankers and the bridge club.”

“You’re saying that I’m the one who dragged you down? That you’re the one who sacrificed? That you’re doing me a favor with this marriage?”

“At this point? Yes. That is what I think. If you want to know why, take a look at yourself in the goddamned mirror.”

It was the cruelest thing he’d ever said.

“That hurts me,” she said quietly, “but not as much as you wish it did.”

“I—apologize.”

“You don’t have the faintest idea who you married.”

“Since I’m so stupid, maybe you should go ahead and tell me.”

“No. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

“What does that mean?”

She came over to him, stood on her toes, and tilted her face toward his. For a moment, he thought she might kiss him after all. But she merely blew a puff of air at him. It stank of tar and alcohol.

“Wait and see.”

“Do not crowd the gate area. If you insist on standing up, I’m going to need to see an orderly line. There is no reason to crowd the gate. Everyone holding a ticket will get a seat. If a second bus is needed, there will be a second bus. That bus will be making all the same stops. Due to inclement weather, we have system-wide delays, but there is equipment on the way. All you do by jostling is make yourself unhappy. The bus will not be boarding as long as I see jostling. No, ma’am, we do not have an estimated departure time as of yet. As soon as the equipment arrives and I see an orderly line, the boarding process will commence…”

On and on the voice went. It belonged to a heavy, dark-skinned woman whose exhaustion could not have exceeded Clem’s. On the lap of the very young mother seated next to him, a baby was sleeping with its arms outflung, its head dangling off the side of her thigh. Sixty or seventy people were at the gate, most of them Black, all traveling south to St. Louis, to Cairo, to Jackson, to New Orleans, in the cruel first hour of Christmas Eve. The station was reasonably warm, but Clem was still chilled in his core. He sat hugging himself tightly, his ticket clenched in his fist. A kiosk in the station was selling coffee, and he objectively observed the thing he rawly was, wondering if the thing might stand up and go to the kiosk. His exhaustion made his condition existential, beyond motive, like Meursault’s in The Stranger.

If, when he’d called the hippie house from the parsonage, the line hadn’t been busy, and if his mother, before sending him away with his duffel bag, hadn’t gone upstairs and returned with ten twenty-dollar bills and pressed them on him, and if he hadn’t then had time, on the inbound commuter train, to revisit the question of freedom, he might have done his mother’s bidding. Coming home to New Prospect and feeling loved by his father, hated by his favorite person in the world, and confused by his mother, he’d lost his bearings. His family had pulled him back into the conditioned lineaments of the self he’d taken action to escape. But the inbound train was slowed by heavy snow. By the time it dragged into Union Station, he’d recognized that he wasn’t obliged to step off the bus in Urbana; that he wasn’t a needle following the grooves of a familiar record; that radical freedom was still available. He’d had a month of mornings to wake up and reconsider his decision to quit school. Shouldn’t a decision so long and well considered outweigh a few hours with his family, on a night when he was wrecked by lack of sleep? He’d already seen his way clear of Sharon. If he went back to her now, his earlier reasoning would still be valid. He didn’t have the strength to meet the challenge of a woman, he wasn’t yet man enough. All that would come of going back to her was the pain of leaving her again. And so, when he reached the Trailways station, he’d bought a ticket for New Orleans. He’d never been to New Orleans. He had two hundred dollars, and he was glad to think of being alone.