When the Tuesday circle returned to First Reformed, in the last light of day, he caught up with her before she could escape in her car. He chided her, gently, for not having stopped by his office. “I hope you’re not,” he said, “avoiding me for some reason?”
She edged away from him. She was wearing a puffy parka and a stocking cap, not her fetching hunter’s ensemble. “Actually I am, a little bit.”
“Will you—tell me why?”
“It’s terrible. You’re going to hate me.”
The twilight in January, the way it lingered in the western sky, partook of early spring, but the air was still bitterly dry and tasted of road salt.
“I was feeling bad,” she said, “that I hadn’t listened to your records. I didn’t want to talk to you until I did, and so finally, last week, I had them all spread out in the living room, and then the phone rang, and I had to make dinner, and I forgot about them. When I went to turn a light on, I didn’t see them on the floor.”
She sounded vaguely annoyed, as if it were the records’ fault.
“I already talked to the record store,” she said. “They’re going to try to find replacements. I only stepped on two of them, but apparently one of them is very hard to find.”
Russ’s heart felt stepped on.
“You don’t have to replace them,” he managed to say. “They’re just worldly things.”
“No, I’m absolutely going to.”
“As you wish.”
“See? You do hate me.”
“No, I—just think I might have misread something. I thought that you and I were going to—I thought I could help you on your journey.”
“I know. I was supposed to give you an answer about that.”
“It’s all right. Perry’s doing much better—I’m not going to punish him.”
“But I stepped on your records. The least I can do is give you an answer.”
“As you wish.”
“Except here’s another confession. I already sort of did the experiment, by myself. I can’t say it was life-altering. It was more like an hour-long head cold.”
Russ turned away, to hide his disappointment.
“I want to try again, though,” she said, touching his arm. “I’ve—there’s been a lot going on with me. But let’s you and me find a time. Okay?”
“It sounds like you’re doing fine without me.”
“No, let’s do it. Just the two of us. Unless you want to ask Kitty.”
“I don’t want to ask Kitty.”
“This’ll be fun,” Frances said.
Her enthusiasm sounded effortful, and when he called her that night, calendar in hand, their search for a mutually workable date had a flavor of dreary obligation. The experiment could only be done on a weekday, while her kids were at school, and his regular church duties fell precisely on the days that Frances had open. With some foreboding, he agreed to meet her on Ash Wednesday.
There was a foretaste of ash in his days of waiting for their date. The hope that Clem would reconsider his decision to quit school had already been dashed on Christmas Day, when he called to report that he hadn’t gone to his girlfriend in Urbana. He was alone in New Orleans—would rather spend Christmas in a squalid hotel room than with his family. Russ knew that the fault was his, and he wanted to write to Clem, to apologize and try to set things right, but he didn’t have a mailing address. In January, Clem called home periodically to ask Marion if a letter from the draft board had arrived. In February came the news that he’d spoken to the board and learned that it didn’t intend to call him up. The news ought to have been a pure relief for Russ, as it was for Marion, but he was hurt that he had to hear the news from Becky, hurt that Clem still hadn’t given them his address, hurt that he had no plans to come home. According to Becky, he was working at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
One of the few bright spots in Russ’s life—that Becky, against all expectations, had found her way to Christian faith and shared her inheritance with her brothers—was dimmed when she stopped attending services at First Reformed. She’d already spurned his invitation to join his confirmation class, and it now transpired that she and Tanner Evans were exploring other churches in New Prospect. When Russ asked why, she said she was looking for something more inspiring than Dwight Haefle’s sermons. “Does he even believe in God?” she said. “It’s like listening to Rod McKuen.” Russ, who had his own doubts about Dwight’s faith, replied that he, Russ, did believe in God. “Then maybe,” Becky said, “you should talk more about your relationship with Him and less about the evening news.” Her point was debatable, but he sensed that theology was just a pretext anyway; that her rejection of him was deeper and more personal; that Clem had done a thorough job of turning her against him. And perhaps rightly so. The bathroom sink into which he now regularly spent his seed, picturing Frances Cottrell and blocking from his mind all thought of God, was three steps from his daughter’s bedroom door.