This was all she had to say, but Russ apparently had more. It might have been five minutes before he stood up and turned on the air conditioner.
“I know it’s private,” she said, “but—did you find Him?”
“I don’t know.”
“If we’re going to get through this, we need to stay connected.”
“I’m not like you. You were always so—it was always easy with you and God. It’s not so easy for me.”
He made her access to God sound slutty, like her talent for quick orgasms. She joined him in the air conditioner’s coolish outflow. It was a very long time since the two of them had been alone in a hotel room, almost as long as since Bradley had taken her to one. Had she ever been alone with a man in a hotel room without having sex? Possibly not.
“Usually it helps to be in a bad place,” Russ said. “But the place I’m in now is so bad…”
His shoulders began to shake, and he covered his face. When she tried to comfort him, he shuddered.
“Russ. Honey. Listen to me. I ignored things, too. I could see Perry wasn’t right, and I ignored it. This isn’t your fault.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I believe I do.”
“You have no idea what I’ve done! No idea!” He looked around wildly. “I’m going to get the luggage.”
She took her purse to the bathroom and unwrapped a drinking glass. The thinness of the woman in the mirror was a continuing surprise. Russ would now be stuck with this woman indefinitely, and she wondered if he might want her again. However deserving she was of God’s punishment, she was surely still allowed some pleasure. She wondered, indeed, if priming herself for Bradley but returning to Russ, excited and unsatisfied, had been part of God’s plan. She freshened her lipstick.
Russ was sitting on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands, as if replicating Perry’s condition. She sat down by him and touched him. When he shuddered, yet again, a suspicion crept into her.
“So,” she said. “What is it that you think you did?”
He rocked himself and didn’t answer.
“You said I had no idea. Maybe you’ll feel better if you tell me.”
“It’s all my fault.”
“So you keep insisting.”
“I—oh. What to say. God told me what to do, and I didn’t listen. And then Ambrose…”
“Ambrose?”
“He was waiting for me. Kevin reported Perry missing, and the sheriff had already put out a bulletin, so Kevin went straight to Farmington, but Wanda and Ambrose had to wait for me in Kitsillie. They waited an hour. An hour.” He shuddered. “I don’t think I mentioned to you— I didn’t mention that one of the parent advisers in Kitsillie was … So, Larry Cottrell was down in Many Farms, and his mother was on the mesa, and we’d had some trouble. The group, I mean. One of the Navajos broke into the school, and I had to … we had to … that is, I and, uh…”
“Larry’s mother.”
“Yes.”
“Frances Cottrell was with you in Kitsillie.”
“Yes.”
Now, at last, she saw the totality of the punishment God intended. Since her fight with Russ at Christmas, he’d made any number of overtures to her, and she’d spurned every one of them. From the overtures, and from his generally low spirits, she’d inferred that the Cottrell woman had opted out of an affair; Marion had gone so far as to make fun of him. Now, in a flash, she saw why he’d returned to Crossroads. Once upon a time, he’d beguiled her with his talk of the Navajos, and it had worked, and so he’d tried it again with the Cottrell woman, and again it had worked. The Cottrell woman was a fool. She herself was a fool. She had no one but herself to blame.
“And now you’re here with me,” she said. “It must be very strange for you. That we have to deal with this together. That we still happen to be married.”
He gave no sign of hearing her.
“I want you to leave me here alone,” she said. “Let me take responsibility. I want you to go and be as happy as you can. This isn’t your problem to deal with.”
He was hitting himself in the head with the heels of his hands. He was lost in his misery, like a little boy, and she couldn’t bring herself to hate him. He was her big little boy, entrusted to her care by God, and she’d driven him away. She grabbed one of his hands, but he kept hitting himself with the other.