“No. I’m not going there again—it’s just not for me. I wanted it to be for me. I looked at you and I said to myself, that’s the person I want to be like. It was exciting to be with you, but I think I mistook being with you for being like you. The reality is I’m a crap human being.”
“No, no, no.”
“Apparently I’m turned on by jerks. I’m turned on by money, by trips to Acapulco, nobody judging me, nobody forcing me to open doors I don’t feel like opening. The idea that I could be a different kind of person was just a fantasy.”
“There’s a difference between fantasy and aspiration.”
“You don’t know my fantasies. Actually, you did see one of them—I’m still ashamed of that.”
Russ sensed that she’d come to him wanting to be saved but not knowing how; was edging toward a breakthrough and needed a push. But saved from what? From loss of faith, or from the surgeon?
“What exactly—was it?” he said. “The fantasy.”
She blushed. “I imagined you were somebody who didn’t let being married get in the way of—I imagined you could be a jerk.” She shuddered at herself. “Do you see the kind of person I am? It’s like I needed to drag you down to my level. If you were at my level, I wouldn’t have to keep looking up to you and feeling like I was falling short.”
His dilemma had never been plainer. She liked him for his goodness, it was the best thing he had going for him, and by definition goodness meant not having her.
“I’m not so good,” he said. “I’m like you—I did the easy thing. I married, I had kids, I took a job in the suburbs, and it’s made me nothing but unhappy. My marriage is a disaster. Marion sleeps in a different room—we barely speak—and my children don’t respect me. I’m a failure as a father, worse than a failure as a husband. I’m more of a jerk than you may think.”
Frances shook her head. “That only makes me feel worse.”
“How so?”
She stood up and stepped around him. “I never should have flirted with you.”
“Just give me a chance,” he said, jumping to his feet. “At least come to Arizona. There’s a spirituality in the air, in the people. It changed my life—it could change yours, too.”
“Yeah, that was another mistake. Trying to make you go there with me.”
“Not at all. If it weren’t for you, I might never have patched things up with Rick. You did a great thing for me. You’ve been such a bright star in my life—I don’t know what’s happened to you.”
“Nothing’s happened. It was only dreading this conversation—having to disappoint you. I’ll be fine as soon as I can close the door again.”
By way of illustration, she moved toward the door, and Russ couldn’t stop her. He was utterly impotent. All at once, he was seized by a hatred so intense he could have strangled her. She was insensitive and self-adoring, a careless trampler of records, a casual crusher of hearts.
“That’s bullshit,” he said. “Everything you say is bullshit. You’re only running away because you’re too chicken to face the goodness in your heart, too chicken to take responsibility. I don’t believe that disengaging from the world is going to make you happy. But if that’s the miserable life you want, we don’t need you in the circle. We don’t need you in Arizona. If you don’t have the guts to honor your commitments, I say good riddance.”
His emotion was authentic, but to express it so directly was a Crossroads thing. He sounded like Rick Ambrose in confrontation mode.
“I mean it,” he said. “Get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see you again.”
“I guess I deserve that.”
“Fuck deserving. You’re a mess of phony self-reproach. It makes me sick.”
“Wow. Ouch.”
“Just leave. You really are a disappointment.”
He hardly knew what he was saying, but in sounding like Ambrose he felt some of the power that Ambrose must have felt all the time. As if, however momentarily, the Lord was with him. Frances looked at him with a new kind of interest.
“I like your honesty,” she said.
“I don’t give a damn what you like. Just, on your way out, tell Rick you’re not going to Arizona.”
“Unless I decide to go. Wouldn’t that be a surprise?”
“This isn’t a game. Either you’re going or you’re not.”