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?