EASTER
Russ awoke in a strange house. Wind was banging on the windows, repulverizing the snow on the branches outside them, and Marion’s side of their bed had not been slept in. Frightened that she hadn’t softened toward him, frightened by the permission she’d given him, frightened also by the problem of Perry’s drug use, he could feel how very reliant he’d become on her support. Turning instead to God, he prayed in bed until he was able to put on a robe and venture into the hallway. Behind closed doors, his three younger children were still asleep. The door and the curtains of Clem’s room were open wide, his absence stark in the morning light. Downstairs, in the kitchen, a pot of coffee was on the stove. He took a mug of it up to his office, and there he found Marion. She was kneeling amid gifts and ribbons and didn’t even glance at him. The sight of her, in the same dress she’d worn the night before, recalled the shock of desiring her, the shame of being rejected. From the doorway, without preamble, he told her that Perry had sold or given marijuana to Larry Cottrell.
“It’s interesting,” she said, “that that’s the first thing you have to say to me today.”
“I meant to bring it up last night. We need to deal with this immediately.”
“I’ve already dealt with it. He told me he’d sold pot.”
“He what? When?”
She calmly ran scissors through a sheet of wrapping paper. Whatever Russ might do or say, she seemed to be a step ahead of him.
“Last night,” she said. “He’s been struggling, and I think the fact that he was open with me—he’s doing better now. As far as I’m concerned, it’s ancient history.”
“He broke the law. He needs to understand that there are consequences.”
“You want to punish him.”
“Yes.”
“I think that’s a mistake.”
“I don’t care what you think. We will present a united front.”
“A united front? Is that a joke?”
Her coolness was worse than coldness. He had an urge to break into it, grab hold of her, impose his will. Their fight the night before had tapped into an unguessed reservoir of rage.
She folded the wrapping paper around a shirt box. “Was there anything else, dear?”
Hatred silenced him. Returning to the second floor, he heard Perry’s and Judson’s voices behind their door. It was only seven thirty, strangely early for Perry to be awake. Russ was disturbed to think that his nine-year-old son, with whom he had semiformal but cordial relations, as if they were longtime next-door neighbors, had been sharing a room with a trafficker in drugs. It didn’t reflect well on the nine-year-old’s father. But when, an hour later, while channeling his rage into shoveling the driveway, he saw Perry and Judson heading out with their sleds, Perry was in such boyishly eager spirits that Russ didn’t have the heart to confront him. It was Christmas Eve, after all.
That night, at dinner—by tradition, spaghetti and meatballs—Perry was in charming form, and his manner with Becky had changed. Gone was his condescension, gone her defensiveness. Marion wouldn’t look at Russ, and all she ate was salad and a few strands of spaghetti. When she teased Becky about Tanner Evans, it fell to Judson to explain to Russ that Becky had a boyfriend, and Russ didn’t know which was more incriminating, that he was the last to learn this news or that he didn’t much care. He’d been living in a world consisting of Frances, God, Rick Ambrose, and the negative blot of Marion. Of his children, the only one he felt at all connected to was Clem, and it grieved him that Clem was with his girlfriend for the holiday; it deprived him of a chance to atone for embarrassing him. For relief from his isolation, he let his thoughts turn to Frances. He imagined smoking marijuana with her, imagined its lowering of their inhibitions. Then he wondered what it said about God’s intentions that the marijuana in question had passed through Perry’s hands.
Rising abruptly from the table, he said he’d forgotten an important call to a parishioner. As he left the room, Marion’s amused voice followed him. “Tell her I said Merry Christmas.”
The third floor smelled of her disturbance. On the sill of the storage-room window, an ashtray brimmed with cigarette ends, and this was fine with him. It somehow ratified the permission she’d given him. Using the permission, he picked up the phone in his office.
Frances, answering, brushed aside his apology for calling on a holiday—he was her pastor! He’d intended to let her wonder if he’d made peace with Ambrose and was going to Arizona, but he couldn’t help telling her immediately.