“You said you would back me up,” Russ said. “You said, quote, you wouldn’t let it get out of hand.”
“And you refused to have the conversation.”
“I’d say this qualifies as out of hand!”
“This is serious, Russ. You need to hear what Sally just told me.”
The air was scarcely cooler on the second floor. Ambrose led Russ into his unventilated office, where Laura and Sally were seated on his sofa, and shut the door. Laura gave Russ a cruel smile of victory. Sally stared sullenly at her hands.
“Sally?” Ambrose said.
“I don’t really see the point,” Sally said. “I’m done with this church.”
“I think Russ has a right to hear from you directly.”
Sally closed her eyes. “It’s just that I’m totally creeped out. It’s just what a nightmare Spring Trip turned out to be. It was like my worst nightmare when he walked onto that bus. I couldn’t believe it.”
“There was a reason Russ and I traded places,” Ambrose said. “He was better at the work that needed to be done up there.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure he found some reason. But the way it felt to me was that I couldn’t get away from him.”
The office was unbearably hot. Russ was appalled and frightened and perplexed. “Sally, look at me,” he said. “Please open your eyes and look at me.”
“She doesn’t feel like opening her eyes,” Laura said in a righteous tone.
“I just wanted him to leave me alone,” Sally said. “I got a really creepy feeling, that time in his office. And then, I couldn’t believe it, he followed me to Kitsillie.”
Worse even than her refusal to look at Russ were the words he, his, him. They reduced him to the It in an I–It relationship.
“I don’t understand,” he said to Sally. “You and I had a good conversation in my office, and it would have been wrong of me not to follow up. That’s what I do as a minister. I don’t know why you think I’m somehow singling you out.”
“Because that’s how it feels to me,” she said. “How many ways do I have to find to tell you to leave me alone?”
“I truly wasn’t aware of trying to push you. I just wanted you to know that I’m available. That I’m a person you can trust and open up with.”
“That’s the thing,” Laura said. “She doesn’t trust you.”
“Laura,” Ambrose said. “Let Sally speak for herself.”
“No, I’m done,” Sally said, jumping to her feet. “He ruined Spring Trip for me. He gives me a bad feeling about this whole group. I’m done.”
She fled the office. With a withering glance at the It that was Russ, Laura stood up and followed her. It seemed to Russ, in the silence that ensued, that only he was sweating. When Ambrose leaned back in his desk chair and clasped his hands behind his head, the underarms of his denim shirt were enviably dry.
“I don’t know what to do here, Russ.”
“I was only trying to help her.”
“Really? She says you complained to her about your sex life with Marion.”
Sweat flowed from so many of Russ’s pores, it felt like a skin he was shedding. “Are you out of your mind? That is simply a lie.”
“I’m just reporting what she said.”
Blindsided by the accusation, Russ tried to shake his head clear, tried to remember his exact words in his conversation with Sally.
“That’s not correct,” he said. “What I said to her was—I said that marriage is a blessing but can also be a struggle. That the enemy in a long relationship is boredom. That sometimes there’s not enough love in a marriage to overcome that boredom. And then—you have to understand, there was a context to it.”
Ambrose waited, glowering.
“We’d been talking about her parents’ divorce, how angry she is at them, and I thought we were close to a breakthrough. When she asked me if I was ever bored in my marriage, I felt I had to share something honest with her. I thought it was important for her to know that even a man of the cloth, even a pastor she respects—”
“Russ, Russ, Russ.”
“What was I supposed to do? Not answer honestly?”
“Within reason. There’s a certain art to it.”
“She asked me, ‘Are you bored in your marriage?’”
“I’m sorry to say that’s not how she remembers it. As she understood it, you were coming on to her.”