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.