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.