Crossroads Page 44

  “Yeah, I finally met the guy. She made me and Amy go to lunch with him.”

  Russ cleared a sudden dryness from his throat. “When was this?”

  “Saturday.”

  Ten days after the marijuana experiment.

  “It was horrible,” Larry said. “I mean, obviously I’m not going to like him, because he’s not my dad, but he’s so full of himself, he’s bragging about doing surgery for sixteen hours, he’s showing off to the waiter, and he talked to Amy like she was three years old. He’s so full of shit, and my mom’s all fluttery and fake with him.”

  Russ cleared his throat again. “And you think this might—be a serious relationship? Your mother and the—surgeon? Is that what’s troubling you?”

  “I thought he was out of the picture, and now suddenly everything is ‘Philip’ this and ‘Philip’ that.”

  “Since—how long?”

  “I don’t know. The last few weeks.”

  “And—does your mother know how you feel about him?”

  “I said I thought he was a pompous jerk.”

  “And—how did she react?”

  “She got mad. She said I was being selfish and hadn’t given ‘Philip’ a chance. Which, like—I’m selfish? She was supposed to be an adviser on Spring Trip. She acted all hurt that I didn’t want to be in the same group with her, and now she tells me she isn’t sure she even wants to go. ‘Philip’ wants to take her to some bogus medical conference in Acapulco, that same week.”

  Russ’s face was ashen; he could feel it.

  “Sometimes I’m almost, like, why did it have to be my dad who died? He was always yelling, but at least he paid attention. My mom doesn’t even care. She only cares about herself.”

  There was recognizably a truth in this, but it didn’t bother Russ. He’d had enough of being married to a self-hating caretaker.

  “Maybe you should tell her,” he said, “that you want her to come on Spring Trip. Tell her how much it would mean to you.”

  “I don’t know which would be worse, having to be around her, or her being with that creep. It’s like I hate everyone.”

  “Well, it’s good that you’re honest about your feelings. That’s what Crossroads is about. I hope you’ll consider me someone you can open up to.”

  For the first time, Larry looked at Russ as if he were more than just a generic dyad partner. “Can I say something weird?”

  “Ah?”

  “She’s always talking about you. She keeps asking me what I think of you.”

  “Yes—well. She and I have the circle together. We’ve gotten to be—friendly.”

  “I’m going, Mom, he’s the minister. He’s married.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry—was that weird of me?”

  For a moment, Russ considered leveling with Larry, perhaps trying to enlist his aid, but the memory of leveling with Sally Perkins scared him off. The terms of the exercise now obliged him to offer a story of his own, but everything that troubled him pertained somehow to Larry. He obviously couldn’t talk about his marriage, or about Perry’s drug use. Clem’s crazy attempt to join the army was also off-limits, because Larry was proud of his father’s service. On Russ’s desk was a copy of an engineering report on the church sanctuary’s south wall, which was in danger of collapsing. It could be argued that this troubled him.

  When their allotted time expired, he sent Larry downstairs and stayed in his office to call Frances; he no longer had anything to lose. As soon as she heard his voice, the line went silent. Sensing that he’d overstepped, he rushed to apologize, but she cut him off. “I’m the one who should apologize.”

  “Not at all,” he said. “For whatever reason, I had a bad reaction to the, ah—”

  “I know. It was funny how paranoid you got. But it’s not like you could help it, and I totally understand why you ran away. You did the right thing—I was very, very out of line. That’s why I didn’t go to Tuesday circle last week. I was too ashamed of myself.”

  “But that’s—why were you ashamed?”

  “Um, because I basically tried to jump you? I can blame it on the you-know-what, but it was still completely inappropriate. I’m sorry I put you in that position. I’m in a much clearer place now. I did an honest reckoning, and, well, you don’t have to worry about me. If you can manage to forgive me, I promise it will never happen again.”

  Whether the good news here outweighed the bad was hard to judge. His chance with her had been even better than he’d surmised, his blowing of it even more conclusive than he’d feared.

  “I hope we can still be friends,” Frances said.

  A week later, she called to invite him to an evening with Buckminster Fuller at the Illinois Institute of Technology. No sooner had he accepted, in his capacity as a friend, than she added that this was the kind of evening that Philip hated. “Did I mention I’m seeing him again? I’m trying to be a good girl, but it’s no fun being in an audience with him. He gets all fidgety, like he can’t stand it that people are paying attention to someone else.” Russ was discouraged that she imagined he cared to hear about Philip, encouraged that she complained about him. Reminding himself that she’d been attracted to him enough to try to “jump” him, despite his being married, he dressed for their date in his most flattering shirt and applied, for the first time, some of the cologne that Becky had given him for Christmas, only to find, when Frances picked him up at the parsonage, that Kitty Reynolds was in her car. Frances hadn’t mentioned that Kitty was coming, and Russ, being merely her friend, had no basis for objecting. Nor did he have any great interest in Buckminster Fuller, though he was careful not to fidget in his seat.

  A consolation for losing Frances to the surgeon was that she didn’t avoid Russ on their next Tuesday in the city. She now evidently felt safe to ride in his Fury again, to prefer his company to Kitty’s and volunteer to work with him in an old woman’s Morgan Street kitchen, rolling onto its walls a paint color known as Ballerina Pink (wildly overproduced by its maker, now available for pennies) while he painted the edges. It was sad to be considered safe, but he was happy that she still wanted to be with him, happy to see her huddling companionably with Theo Crenshaw, happy to have helped her mend that fence.

  The shock was therefore brutal when, on a gray March morning, she came to his church office and announced that she was quitting the Tuesday circle. It might have been the gray light, but she seemed older, more brittle. He invited her to sit down.

  “No,” she said. “I wanted to tell you in person, but I can’t stay.”

  “Frances. You can’t just drop a bomb like that. Did something happen?”

  She looked close to tears. He stood up, closed the door, and managed to seat her in his visitor chair. Her hair, too, seemed older—darker, less silky.

  “I’m just not a good enough person,” she said.

  “That’s ridiculous. You’re a wonderful person.”

  “No. My children don’t respect me, and you—I know you like me, but you shouldn’t. I don’t believe in God—I don’t believe in anything.”

  He crouched at her feet. “Will you tell me what happened?”

  “There’s no point in explaining—you won’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  She shut her eyes. “Philip says I can’t go with you anymore. I know that sounds stupid, and if that’s all it was I wouldn’t—I might still go. But with everything else it’s just easier not to.”

  The thought that the surgeon might be jealous of him—had reason to be jealous—only deepened Russ’s sense of defeat.

  “He knew,” Frances said, “that I did volunteer work in the city. But when he found out where the church is, he said it was too dangerous. I tried to explain that it’s not so bad, but he wouldn’t listen, and—I hate being submissive. It’s not who I want to be, but in this case it’s just easier, because that really is who I am: I’m the person who does whatever’s easiest.”

  “That’s not true at all. Have you t
alked to Kitty about this?”

  “I can’t. Kitty won’t respect me, either. I mean—I know, I know, I know. I’m with another jerk—I know. Larry’s already barely speaking to me. I made him go to lunch with Philip, and Larry could see it—everyone can see it. I’m with a jerk again. A worse jerk, actually. Bobby at least wasn’t a racist.”

  “No one should be allowed to tell you what you can and can’t do.”

  “I know, and, like I said, if it was just Philip I might stand up to him. But the thing is, inside, I’m just like him. I still think I’m going to get raped or murdered every time I go down there.”

  “These are deep patterns,” Russ said. “It takes time to develop new patterns.”

  “I know, and I’ve been trying. I apologized to Theo, the way you told me to, and you were right—it made a difference. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Ronnie, how to help him, and so I talked to Theo again. According to him, the problem is that Ronnie’s mother is a heroin addict. I asked if he could get her into a treatment program—I offered to pay for it myself and let him say the money came from his congregation.”

  “That is not the action of a person who isn’t good.”

  “But he basically said it was impossible. He thinks Clarice would start using drugs again as soon as she gets out. I told Theo there has to be some okay foster family that would take a sweet little boy. I offered to talk to a social worker myself and make sure everything checked out. But Theo said, if I did that, the social worker would never let Clarice near Ronnie again. I said I thought that might be for the best. But Theo said Ronnie’s the only thing keeping Clarice alive, and that a social worker wouldn’t see that, because the state only cares about the boy’s welfare, not the mother’s. I tried to remember what you told me and not argue with him, but I pointed out that he’s okay with a situation no social worker would be okay with. I said that sooner or later something terrible is going to happen. And Theo just shrugs. He says, ‘That’s in God’s hands.’ And that shut me up. I didn’t argue with him.”

  “None of this,” Russ said, “makes me think less of you. Quite the opposite.”

  Frances didn’t seem to hear him. “I’m not like you,” she said. “I can’t accept that God creates a situation so terrible there’s no getting out of it. To me, it’s like there’s a door, and behind the door is the inner city, and everywhere you turn there’s a situation so terrible that no one can fix it, and I’ve reached the point where I just can’t open the door again. I just want to shut it and forget what’s behind it. When Philip said I couldn’t go with you again, I had this horrid sense of relief.”

  “I wish you’d told me sooner,” Russ said. “No situation is so hopeless that nothing can be done. Maybe, next time we’re down there, you and Theo and I can do some brainstorming.”

  “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.”

  “Well, in that case…” She made a little slide-step dance move. “Maybe I will. How about that?”

  In his anger, he didn’t care. Her maybes were like needles to his brain. He dropped into his desk chair and turned away from her. “Suit yourself.”

  Only after she was gone did he reconnect with his desire. All in all, he thought, their meeting could hardly have gone better. The revelation was how positively she’d responded to his anger, how negatively to his begging. He’d stumbled upon the key to her. If he kept away from her, let her think he’d lost his patience with her, she might yet defy the surgeon and go to Arizona.

  But it was a torment not to know what she was thinking. The following Sunday, at the last Crossroads meeting before Spring Trip, he searched the teenaged throng for Larry, intending to ask him what his mother’s plans were. When he discove
red that Larry, unaccountably, had skipped the meeting, his torment became acute. The next morning, first thing, he went to Ambrose’s office and asked if he’d heard anything from Mrs. Cottrell.

  Ambrose was reading the sports section of the Trib. “No,” he said. “Why?”

  “When I saw her last week, I had the sense she might bail out.”

  Ambrose shrugged. “No great loss. We already have Jim and Linda Stratton for Many Farms. Two parents there is plenty.”

  Russ was bewildered. A month earlier, when he and Ambrose had worked out the adviser assignments, he’d made sure that Frances was in his group.

  “I thought—” he said. “That’s not right. We had Mrs. Cottrell down for Kitsillie.”

  “Yeah, I switched her out and gave you Ted Jernigan. If she wants to wear blue jeans and hang out with the kids, she can do that in Many Farms. I’m not even sure why she’s coming—she kind of pulled a fast one on me.”

  “You underestimate her. She’s in my Tuesday women’s circle. She really gets it.”

  “Then we’ll see how she does in Many Farms.”

  “No. She needs to be in Kitsillie.”

  The eyes that flicked up from the sports pages were unpleasantly shrewd. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve worked with her. I want her in my group.”

  Ambrose nodded as if something made sense to him. “You know, I did wonder. Back in December, I wondered what moved you to come and see me. It was only because she’d been in my office the same day. She was hell-bent on going to Arizona, and then there you were, wanting to go to Arizona. I’m not taking anything away from the courage of what you did—I just had a little glimmer of wondering. I wouldn’t have thought of it if it weren’t for the business with you and Sally Perkins.”

  “Mrs. Cottrell is thirty-seven years old.”

  “I’m not judging you, Russ. Only saying I know you.”

  “Then tell me this. Why did you swap her and Ted Jernigan? To spite me?”

  “Cool your jets. I don’t care what you do on your own time. Just keep it out of Crossroads.”

  “You need to put her back in Kitsillie.”

  “Nope.”