The jangle jarred her awake. She glanced at her clock radio and a tightening in her stomach registered the fear. The phone at 5: 51 in the morning could only mean some disaster--her father, maybe his heart; or sister tangled in metal and wheels on the highway. My fault, my fault, my fault. Too critical. I should have understood.
      "So at least two hours. Maybe more with the way it's comin' down," Ed Kiser said and Set's stomach relaxed.
      "Thanks, Ed. Your voice is a delight on this occasion."
      "Hey, thanks, they all say that. Louden says he's got it on WHPO so stay tuned."
      Not only was Set immediately released from fear, she was buoyant. Two hours delay at school. A trial bus run proved certain back roads impassable. It was a teacher's greatest morning pleasure, something dreamed for all winter. And on this day, her euphoria seemed complete--the energetic turmoil of the day before vacation, a signal for loose classes, unrestrained shouting in the hall, and then a break-through to freedom.
      With its pubescent joy, its crescendo of celebration, the day before was always the best time of any vacation. On those days, Set felt an unexpected, disquieting let-down when she closed the door of her room behind her, littered with ribbons and spit-wads, and officially crossed the border into "vacation." Sometimes she wondered at her own lingering in the hall to exchange hurried, ecstatic, last-minute farewells with other teachers, sometimes Marigold, and sometimes, John, the custodian, who was forced to remain in the silent halls, sweeping up wadded notebook paper and candy bar wrappers that speckled the floor along the lockers.
      This morning, with the delay, she was assured of even more intensity in Thanksgiving reveling. Plus, now she could iron that cotton blouse into crispness and recheck her packing.
      Set padded from the sleeping room into the kitchen, clicking on the coffee-maker. At the entrance, she lifted the hood from Will and Geoffrey's cages. She peeked through the door's window and smiled. A diagonal column of glittering snow shimmered through the entrance light. From the kitchen she could hear the bubble and flow of coffee. Its woody aroma spread to every dusty corner of the caboose and even, she imagined, up into the frosty wooden crown of the cupola. She was thinking of the crown's new white perfection when her foot scrapped the wad of paper. She was not at all concerned that she had mangled several of the10R quizzes fallen at the ladder's base. But when she discovered three letters bound by a single purple ribbon, instead of wrinkled notebook paper, she was alarmed that a corner of an envelope below her heel was torn.
      In the kitchen's better light, Set knew she had never seen these envelopes. Slipping the ribbon off, she laid the partially torn papers side by side on the kitchen table. The characters were faded but she recognized the addressee--"M. Dunlap, 101 Poplar Lane, East Worthy, Ohio." On the other two, "Margory Dunlap" appeared. The script was scratched and hurried. No return address marked the corner. Maybe when I turned the seat, she thought. Maybe like Benny Alden. Maybe Aunt Margory had taken a cue from the caboose story.
      Set pulled a letter from inside one of the three envelopes, carefully smoothing out a wrinkled corner, trying to not rip the crisp paper. And then she saw the signature. Ivy. When she saw no date at the top of the page, she turned the envelope for a postmark. But on this envelope, and a second, the mark was only a pale ink circle. On the third she could make out a dim date--"Nov 14 1949." Set began with this, reading the penciled lines so quickly that she barely moved.

Dear Marjory,
     The last month has been trying. Doris has been absolutely wonderful, but after E's visit, I haven't been able to think straight. Thanks for calling last week. Without your acceptance, your laugh, your whole personality, I don't think I could make it through. I feel so very young. And so very old, all at once.
     By the way, my mother and father know now and though Mother was worse than Daddy, I think they'll be alright.
     Please write to me soon about what we talked about on the phone.
With love,
Ivy

When Set read the greeting of a second letter, she realized that it must have preceded the first.

Dear Miss Dunlap,
     I arrived last night and found D. M. almost at once. I was very nervous at the beginning--at the door--but your friend is exactly what you said she'd be--accepting, kind, making me feel like this arrangement is just what she needed.
     W. Solan is bigger that what I pictured. Somehow I thought it would be the size of EW, but it's good that it is this big. Last night I walked downtown to get a bottle of milk--Doris said it would be good for me, the walk, that is--and I felt almost anonymous. Is that the right word?
     Anyway, I will never forget what you've done for me. Most of all, I won't forget our talk.
     I'll write later when I get more adjusted.
Very sincerely,
Ivy G.

Set believed that the third letter she read was also the last letter Ivy had written.

Dear Friend,
     They will be here this morning to take him. I know how you feel, that you have such doubts, but, Margory, I see no other way. I have thought it through a hundred--no, a thousand times--and E's plan seems the least painful. And I am so tired that I can't think now. I am numb with doubt, confusion, hurt. But maybe time will heal, if only partially.
     Again and again I say thank you for your care and love.
Love,
Ivy
I will reenter Western in the fall

Ivy and Margory had been so much more than friends, or maybe they had been less than friends. But Set saw now in these pages the willowy, fragile, white Ivy as a girl who had found counsel in an older Margory Dunlap. The new picture included a shivering young girl who carried some unbearable secret, something that only Set's aunt and Doris M knew. Alone, afraid in--where was it?--East Solan. And in 1949? "They took him this morning" played in Set's ear and created the soggiest piece of fiction available. Pregnant. Ivy was pregnant in 1949. The initials were troubling. Ivy had been private even in the written word, even then. Someone with the initial "E" had to be a main player.
     Only when Set poured her first cup of coffee, watching through the kitchen's window frame a sliver of morning light ignite the crystalline air, did she think of the framed photograph at Ivy's. She had stood beside a tall man. Aaron Lieb's frenzied, uncollected babble had announced, "Looking at Ivy, looking at Eldon." No, maybe Ezra. Or Ephra. No. Set was not sure. But Set did know that at the first opportunity she would broach the subject with her mother. Who was Aunt Margory? And Doris M.

"You know, Maggie, I said to Kenny the other day, that with both the Miller twins in your class, you must have a real, well, interesting time every day." Pam Hostetler articulated "interesting," and broke into a dry, careful laugh, understanding that she was cleverly engaged with her peers. "Say, about sixth period or so?" She chortled again and called across the room to a balding man who leaned into a red grade book, a ball point pen angled down at square spaces he filled with marks. "Kenny, no response here," she said, poking her finger downward several times above Maggie's head. She extended her jaw in a "here's the victim" expression. "Must be worse than we thought." Her face tightened and glowed with this remark.
      Kenny Hostetler communicated a placid agreement with his wife's in-house humor, raising his pen and tipping it knowingly toward Maggie, although he seemed less taken up with the joke than his wife. When they appeared together--mostly at teacher's meetings--he seemed rather like a captive sidekick, the Pat Brady or Ed McMahon of a weak comedy team. Maggie turned a tolerant, bland half-smile to the poking hand above her, the square, practical appendage that ran upward and attached to the square practical head of Pam Hostetler, whose bright small eyes, with irises that mirrored rather than opened behind, blinked with pleasure. The English teacher registered no sign of perceiving the way the Home Ec teacher's eyes appeared unsmiling, although the corners of her mouth turned up. Set knew what lay behind Maggie's eyes and made the decision to make a sweeping rescue of her friend.
      "Maggie, could you spare a . . . Oh, Pam, when you're done there. I'm sorry, I don't want to interrupt," Set said, feigning a courtesy.
      "You ask, go on, you ask her, September, about her sixth period," Pam called across the room as she scooted in beside her husband. Neatly depositing her tote bag beside her chair, she pulled out a tidy, paper-clipped pile of papers. Set was amazed each time Pam achieved these separate actions as if they were one fluid motion. Set had to think about finding papers and then think about where she had mislaid her briefcase and then, if she found it, riffle through old Kleenexes, broken pencils, and a lipstick to get to three packets of papers that may or not be associated with one another. Senior quizzes mixed with speech evaluation sheets and a grocery list. But Set was convinced that the fluid motion was entirely linked with the mirror irises in Pam Hostetler's head. At least Set consoled herself with this equation--efficiency and mirrors--on a day she lost her car keys for the third time.
      "What a bovine," Set said through clinched teeth that opened onto her plaster smile. She leaned close to Maggie and waved to the Hostetlers two tables over. "The woman is an absolute tabula rasa and that cheeriness could make you strangle her. I'd like to pull that neat little tote bag over her head." Set’s voice was louder now. "I'd feel sorry for Kenny, but don't. He has volition; but he allows himself to be bulldozed." Set's volume increased until a round-faced woman drug a chair out at the table. Set, turning toward this woman, changed her tone. "Hi, Elise. You ready to vacate this place? Can you believe Louden called a meeting for now?"
      "O, I don't really mind. Ted and I get a treat. My sister Tammy is cooking this year. I told the kids to be packed when I get home after school. Tammy and Joe live over in Middleton." Elise Barnwell was unassuming and open. "What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?" Set liked Elise but she could not tolerate the opening of this conversation. Everything was measured, controlled. We go here; you go here. Who cares?
      "I'm cooking the bird this year," Maggie said. "Ray and I felt we needed to initiate the new family room." She gave Set a hardy thump between her ribs. "Ms. Hunt, here, is dining with her parents." The home ec teacher winked at Set, who smiled. She liked Elise and did not want to slash out at this genuinely good-willed creature who taught general biology with a sluggish determination; who inspired no passion in students, who continued to plod heavily through frog parts and crayfish with grim resolution, creating spiritless lesson plans and sadistic students--vicious teenagers who would crop up every several years and entertain themselves with breaking test tubes, hiding grade books, and flaming bunson burners when Elise's back was turned.
      Set leaned toward Elise. "Yes, I'm hitting the superslab tonight. Should be home about nine." Set felt hot and irritated. "How about a cup of coffee for you two. I'll bet Marigold has a few grounds left."
     Set jumped up. The library was beginning to fill now as the faculty wandered in from the hall. Ed Louden stood at the checkout desk with a paper folder in his hand. His head turned majestically, his eyes surveying his faculty, their faces tired, strained, although this afternoon most were smiling. In a few minutes they would break into freedom.
      "Is the English faculty trying to escape its academic duty?" a man in a blue apron said as he passed Set in the doorway.
      "Don't get yourself in an uproar, Dan. You take notes for me if I don't return." The pudgy, middle-aged man chuckled and limped into the room. He had limped since Set had known him, since the first time she had met him in the art room, standing at a dirty sink, splattered with flecks of color. He had been washing stained plastic containers and wore a short-sleeved shirt printed with bananas and parrots. The bananas and the dirty sink immediately endeared Dan Peerman to Set. And so did his determined gait, because he smiled and joked, often maliciously, as he bobbed down the hallways. He was not a rubber stamp; he could wear bananas and twist a phrase with delicious sarcasm. He was not afraid to hate the world. Set liked him.
      "Want a cup of coffee, Dan?" she called back down the hall.
      "No, thanks. But I have noted the time." He glanced at his watch. "I'll be watching for you," he said and hobbled into the room.
      When Set returned, balancing three mismatched cups, the volume had increased to a unprofessional roar. Madeline Swartz, the librarian, swept about the room gathering up World Books and thesaurus, wads of notebook paper, and stray Seventeens. Suddenly Madeline's mouth appeared dry and pinched--November's Glamour cover was hanging by one tab of paper and the bright-cheeked Princeton coed on front sported a mustache and a large penis at her waist, an unaccountable part of her anatomy, even had she been male. Louden swaggered to the checkout desk and cleared his throat convivially to signify the commencement of the meeting. When the roar did not decrease, his mouth took on the pinched look of Madeline's, and he tapped a pen briskly on the desktop. The pinch changed to a pasted smile.
      "Good night. He's got a new do. Look at that, Maggie. He must have made a run on Fiesta 'We'll take you at any time' Salon. He really tries, doesn't he?" Set said, distributing the coffee. The principal's hair had been coiffed into a puff, lifting from his large forehead. His hooked nose appeared almost balanced with this new contour and this strong silhouette might have inspired respect had it appeared on another person. But Ed Louden's profile elicited only a mild repulsion. His faulty attempts did, on occasion, inspire pathos, initially, but this emotion quickly dissolved into contempt when the man opened his mouth. He was an overachiever--a term he bandied about--and all the faces that turned to him now, as he continued to tap, knew it. Probably even he knew it but hid it in a clean desk and faultess memos. Today he wore his polyester olive green and brown plaid jacket.
      "I guess we're ready to begin. Except for Hal over there." Most people had stopped talking. But Hal Martin continued to wave his hand above his head, gesturing wildly with Dan Peerman. The collective body turned their heads toward Hal. "Musta had a rough day, eh, Hal? A little peer editing with Mr. Peerman is probably necessary." The principal forced a laugh. The heads, not laughing, collectively turned blank faces back toward the front again, except for Agnes Bolton who continued to look at Hal. She gazed and then abrubtly gave a hefty nod to Ed Louden.
      "I'm sure most of you are anxious to get on your way. So my agenda, you see, is short. Item one involves the abuse of hall passes, particularly between seventh and eighth periods. Now . . ." Set turned it off. Her eyes' hard glaze fixed the principal against the desk in a hazy frame that blocked motion and sound. She felt in herself, simultaneously, the emotions guilt and anger, an amalgamation that created the haze, turned off the sound.
      Set was guilty of not living out her own biological age and this turned inward to a self-castigating rage that evolved into the fury she felt now toward the entire room. She knew she had the right to elude her own age group: every self-help book and talk show host advocated the removal of boundaries. Those who are young and flooded with passion should become mature and controlled. Those who have reached senior citizenship--how she hated that phrase--should become marvels of geriatric wizardry, faces sutured into mask-like perfection, lives bounding into scuba-diving and global sailing. Last week on Oprah she had watched a group of golden age cheerleaders, but had turned off the TV when the woman with the highest hair kicked her left leg above her head. Would the Duchess of Windsor do that at any age, Set had thought. She could not find her own age niche, not because these media interferences messed up her mind, but because she was unable to identify the proper attitude for herself and her peers.
      The hazy frame jarred. Everyone was laughing, even Maggie, who punched Set's arm. Hal Martin was standing, waving his arms with the agenda memo as prop and his voice turned the sound on in Set's frame. "Some of us have been talking about number three here," he said. His deep athletic voice was firm, and rhetorical. "I'm wondering about the effect of faculty rotation on the athletic directors, namely Dan and me. I know there's an obligation but I'm not ready to commit to this arrangement with what it's going to mean for the football program. How about Saturday school? I can't speak for Dan, but I'd be willing to serve there with the detention program."
      "I have some problems with that arrangement." Agnes Bolton sat like a stone mummy, her acrid inscrutability waiting to be lifted for a grand pronouncement. The group, who stopped laughing, turned tired, strained faces to the thick body that squared off at Louden.
      Set was amazed, fearful then, because even Maggie offered up what seemed to be a serious suggestion for point three. And then to Set’s horror the whole room rose with concern and involvement, passion about the after-school detention assignments. Set couldn't believe it; an hysterical cry rose up, almost vibrating behind her eyes as she focused on Louden who leaned into the heat of the discussion.
      "Well, if the athletic department could see fit to take responsibility for Saturday school, perhaps the rest of the faculty could address themselves to the after-school problem." When he said "address themselves," Set burned, her mind spitting out internal expletives, reeling with revulsion at the jargon, at the other faces that did not react in any way to the idiocy of the moment. She focused on Louden's big nose and then Hal's graying hairline. She looked at Maggie's drooping knee-highs showing at the bottom edge of shiny polyester pants, and then at Agnes Bolton's thick hands propped like clubs on her plastic purse. When her eyes wandered to the dusty photograph of Lincoln's sad face at the far end of the room, she rose and fell in time-- Lincoln and Mary Todd, Washington and Martha, the window taped with a cardboard pilgrim man sporting blunderbuss and turkey. Beyond them she saw Brian Saddler's car parked on the street.
      "I'll have Marigold make out a sign-up sheet and we'll have that in the office by Monday," Louden said firmly. He was peaking now, giving just enough comradery to his brood to make them feel that they had achieved a democratic decision, priding himself on management and administrative acumen. The group felt him a burr in their sides, something to be generally shunned, but Set found him intolerable precisely because of that. The group did not rage; her associates, her friends were not appalled by the mundanity, this deadening strata of life where nothing happened but pink slips and sign-up sheets. She could have stood it if these--her comrades in the trenches, her teacher friends--had been hysterical along with her, but they were not. They went home to supper and kids, laughing a mild sarcasm over Louden, and carried on, rising the next morning to make out lesson plans, to smile in the hall. At times they bristled irritability for this flow of life; sometimes they would get worked up. But that was all. They accepted.
      Maybe it was not an age group, but a mind group, Set needed. There was no crescendo of euphoria tonight. Set was the second teacher to leave the building, right after Agnes Bolton.

She was packed and ready to go when he pulled up. Her hair was down, blonde, smooth under the peacock shade in the Keats room. Already it was later than "late afternoon" when he said he'd come, so she didn't move when car lights jostled the blind. Only when she heard a rustle on the step and the clack of the fox head knocker did she begin to move off the couch--a place she had forced herself to remain for the last forty-five minutes. Leafing through two Vogues and an Elle, she had kept her interest sporadically linked to the page, between bouts of anguished, rigid walks to peer between the slates. Now she rose slowly, her hand tucking under a wisp of hair that was not out of place.
      "I'm sorry, September," he said quickly when she opened the door. He seemed out of breath. "I generally try to be more responsible than this. You did say you were leaving at eight, right?"
      "O, thereabouts." Her voice was cool and weak. "Your journal was elegant. I didn't know you were an artist, too--I mean, of pen and paint." Her words were already losing their frost.
      "O, that's nothing. I've always played around with the visual arts. But what about the words? Did you like what you read?" Owen was animated as they moved to the couch.
      "Very much. What I learned about Oxford is wonderful for me." Her tone had melted into warmth. "But, David, I was . . .well, I don't want to say 'shocked' but I will . . . shocked that you can carry on, out there at Calvary, with your message, your lectures. I heard you and your power, on the first nights, before all of this with Sowders happened." Set paused, waiting for David Owen to respond. His face had turned a blank, except for a movement at the corner of his mouth.
      "You seemed so sincere. The people believed." Set felt her stomach flutter when he remained silent, staring at her with only that tiny movement at his mouth. "So that whole thing that took place at Little . . . Little . . ."
      "Little Gidding," he interjected.
      "At Little Gidding. Or what you said about not being converted to Christianity. I know the pain you felt about your parents, but . . ."
      "Oh, do you know?" Set heard the acid edge of speech. "And are you converted to Christianity, my little teacher friend?" The "c's" dredged the air between them.
      "O, I'm not pretending to be good Christian, or maybe not any kind of Christian. But you, you are speaking on a subject that seemed religious, or Christian. And I guess that doesn't matter either. You can be anything you want. But it's that they believe you are. That you are Christian. That you let them believe. And it's all so important to them." She looked away from him, embarrassed that she should be pointing a finger of accusation about anything in the intellect of David Owen. So she was startled at his laughter. He was leaning back, when she looked up, his head against the couch back, spilling with laughter. Set attempted to plant a pleasantness on her face, to be a proper respondent to the situation, to not look like an uncomprehending fool in light of his levity, but it was disconcerting when he did not stop. He looked up at Set and exploded again. Her planted pleasantness disappeared. "Really, David, I didn't think it was that humorous, or funny at all.. I don't like it that you can . . ."
      In a moment his arms were around her and he was kissing her face, her eyes, her mouth, her neck. And then he stopped, holding her back to look in her eyes. "You are so utterly simple. So uncomplicated. And so pretty." He smoothed her hair, lifting it out of her eyes. "At first, I thought it was all drama with you, Set. But now I see you are perfectly sincere. That this subterfuge you sense is a moral dilemma for you." He touched the inside of her hand with his lips as he done at the school. "You are actually delightful. In this moment." She wanted to lean into him, to be that close again, but even now she felt she would step over a line if she laid her head on his arm, or shoulder, or if she in any way became the aggressor. "Here," he said, and put his arm around her back, like a teenage boy would at a theatre, in the dark. "Here. Just be with me. Let me talk to you about things." He kissed her hair. "I don't want to hurt you. I really don't want to hurt you."
      "You haven't hurt . . ."
      "Yes, I have. I can. You have tried to know, to understand. But, you see, you can never fully comprehend what I know."
      "Who can fully understand all of another person at any time? Certainly . . ."
      "I should have said what I feel. You can never know; you won't even come close. First, because you are born out of another tradition, or lack of it. And, secondly, I will never let you know. That is part of it. You will never pin me to the wall. As soon as you find something you can define in me, you'll lose, because I will make you lose. I will slip and slide away from you. So don't try."
      "That's rather Napoleonic of you to think that I spend my time trying to find out what you are. I have my own . . ." Owen laughed again.
      "You do. You have ever since I came. I even noticed you in the congregation before Nate died. You looked so intense and sincere. You were a pretty woman. I noticed you. The way you held your head. Taking notes, nodding in agreement. Earnest and ardent, I said to myself. I have seen that face before."
      "My face? You had seen me before?"
      "I have seen your face a hundred times, at Oxford, in Pennsylvania, Ohio--I have seen the earnest and ardent, intent upon getting it all, making it perfect, containing the idea within notes and borders. And I have seen with it the real desire that comes slopping over the edges, the breathy words of introduction and sincerity after a lecture. All of the notes and outlines, all of the spiritual analysis, can fly in one simple question--would you like to join me for dinner." He laughed again.
      Set yanked away, standing up in front of him. Her face burned. "That is the most outrageous piece of self-centered, antiquated chauvinism I have ever heard. I'm just one of your little groupies who pant after you and your mystique? And all women succumb to your charm after your lectures?"
      "In some respects, yes. But I don't mean that I have had a hundred post-lecture intrigues. I'm not even talking about me, specifically. I'm only a conduit for an emotion, a universal thrust. I'm talking about the formula of the human condition." He stood near her.
      "O, spare me your irresistible philosophy," Set spit out furiously, feeling hot tears form on her lashes.
      "Set, I'm sorry." Taking her shoulders, he turned her toward him. Even had she wanted to resist, she could not--he intended to be strong. "You see, I have been cruel. And I genuinely care for you." He walked from her, his voice subdued. "It's not us, not you. It is the entire bloody biological condition."
      "Is that it then? We're animals responding to uncontrollable urges? You talk about Thomas Hardy and Nineteenth-Century thinking. This is no better than the depressing stuff I teach about Darwin and Victorian pessimism." The enormity of this obsolete reasoning spread over Set and she was afraid. Afraid of fully recognizing a definable block of theory in David Owen.
      "I am the product of this time-warp, East Worthy. But even if I had grown up in the Bronx, I would have come to the same conclusion. I have witnessed it, felt it, experienced even before I believed it. Before I knew it."
      "So what you're saying is there is no . . . no love?" Set seemed angry. "See, now, you've made me embarrassed to even say the word. As if I have to be ashamed of an emotion that has been defined, studied, catalogued for thousands of years. How can you deny centuries of interpretation, of glosses on love?" Set walked away belligerantly. "And I don't mean just male-female relationships, for your information." She immediately regretted her childish tone. "What about parent and child and plain old friendship? What about you and Ivy?" she said triumphantly.
      "I'm not denying that there is strong emotion, links of all kinds, that bind us together." He ran his fingers through his shock of hair, pushing it off his forehead. "But I do say that it is not the mystical, god-inspired union that has been touted as pure and holy. Presdestined for our time, all time."
      "It doesn't have to be predestined, as you call it. But, certainly, it can be real." She paused several seconds. "And besides, if it's not real, what does all your cynicism get you, anyway?"
      David Owen paced to the hall and looked up into the cupola. "I guess it gets me nothing." When he turned back to Set, he looked chiseled and perfect, a fallen figure from the Parthenon's frieze. It made Set sicken as she thought of this in the very moment she was denying simple animal attraction. "I do care deeply for Ivy. You know it. I cannot fully define the emotion, nor do I ever intend to spend much time on it. It's wasted. But I would probably call it need. Need is closer than anything."
      "So all of the world's relationships--lovers, mothers, daughters, fathers, friends--all is self-gratifying, self-seeking need? No one loves, no one gives something without expectation of reward?" This was becoming a dry dialogue of definition. Set wanted to be back on the couch with his lips on her neck. But David walked back and forth, transcribing a short circuit in the Keats room.
      "Call it what you will, Set. Love is fine, if that's what you want. But to clothe the concept in spiritual transcendence is more than I can stomach. So don't waste your time, or my time, with a monologue on the subject. I'm beyond all of that." He smiled at her, leading her back to the couch. "If I call it need or desire," and he pushed his knee against her thigh, "then let me have my singular definitions." He kissed her neck. "I won't ask you to change yours." His voice was low, his mouth against her ear.
     But then he stood and Set imagined she was being swung by a rope, back and forth, straining within the velocity of her arc. "When the fabled charm of the emotion you call love is joined with the fable of Christianity, the mix is laughable. Wrong, forgive me. Dark, crawling, destructive. Evil. There, is that archaic enough for you, my pretty friend?"
      "But, David, it can't all be evil. People are people, they make mistakes, serious mistakes. Horrible. Hurting. Like what was done to your parents. Is that it? Is that what has caused you to come to this? That you can fool the people? How can you lose your integrity?" She was pleading.
      "Why do you keep calling me a liar? What is this integrity thing? I am speaking on the subject they called for. My subject. Epiphany. Nate called me here for this conference. I have fulfilled the needs of his flock, his growing congregation. I will continue to do so. Without him, the Reverend Nathaniel Sowders." When he kissed her neck again, Set shivered. Fear and heat ran up through her center, incongruous, liquid, and immobilizing.
      "Is Franklin your father?" she said in a low voice, as if any question on this subject might keep him twisting between rage and this propelling passion. But it was an ill-timed reference and Set knew it the moment she spoke "Franklin." David did not turn from her abruptly, but softly put her back against the couch. He smiled and pushed her damp hair away from her eyes. When he spoke, he was quiet.
      "Yes. My father. Dad." He swallowed hard. "The journal, right? You wonder about what I wrote?" But then he turned on her, instantly agitated. "Or did someone in town mention his name?"
      "No, David," she said taking his hand. "Your words. The blood is on your hands. Franklin, the blood is on your hands. That whole entry seemed so tortured."
      "Yes, when I lectured at Oxford I had time to think. Too much time almost, and my ideas had new reference points and landscapes to play over. Towers and green quadrangles, perfect, manicured, the fields beyond the town, the stone, and all seemed grown up in the name of religious thought. The stones themselves rose from the ground as emblems of thought, a thousand years of idea. And not just any idea, but the idea that had consumed me as a kid. Consumed me because I was placed in the middle of the flame."
      "So all of that thought, that setting, made you think about your dad?"
      "I never stopped thinking about Dad or Mom. Not now, not then. But at Oxford I could see that the idea they had identified as theirs, so current, so newly spun out of updated fundamentalism, had been played over a thousand times. Had built tower upon tower, gargoyles and gardens, glass and intricate wood carvings in choir lofts and pubs. Even the alleys looked thoughtful." David almost smiled. "So, you see, what they thought they owned, what I thought they owned, had been rehashed for centuries. Torn down and rebuilt, crumbled and propped up. And Lydia and Franklin Owen thought they owned it, their way, their exclusive way. In East Worthy, Ohio."
      Set tried to reach out for where he was going, but his reasoning was not clear to her. "But doesn't everyone think he has the exclusive answer, David?"
      He laughed, but not out of humor. "O, but you don't understand yet. Calvary Chapel is the exclusive of the exclusive. The chosen, the anointed, the keeper of the answer. And the answer is new because they have found it hidden in their Scofields. It is new because no one else knows it, only they, and it is old because it is a direct link with God, Lord, Jesus." His mouth twisted with the word "Jesus." "And when you own Jesus your Thursday night potlucks will be holy affairs, because you have read Leviticus and Mark for the nineteenth time. And because you have defined 'The Rapture,' your noodles will be chosen. Then Enid Fout and Agnes Bolton and Eli Sowders will say, 'O, yes, these are the most holy of holy noodles.' And everyone will congratulate themselves solemnly, but with a secret smile inside, in the church basement." David paced now, back and forth, not looking at Set. Deep in his throat rose a sound that Set thought at first was a cry, but instead the foreign sound formed itself into acidic laughter. "Do you know what I used to call it after I had gone away to college?"
      "Call what, David? I don't know what you mean?"
      "Of course you don't. But try to keep up, will you?"
      "David, please don't make fun . . ."
      The acid was swallowed up in agony and fire. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Please. I told you I could be cruel. It's so difficult . . . for me . . .. I descend into this sometimes when I begin. Into this, that they are at their core." He looked momentarily lost in the caboose. "I don't want that. I don't ever want that." Again, he ran his hand through his glistening shock of hair and he put on his glasses, as if this piece of tortoise shell could provide a cosmetic straightening of his spirit, or his eyes could be contained within spheres of reason. "When I had been at Hadder University for several months, I hit upon the perfect epithet. Nightclub Christianity. It kept repeating itself in my mind. Nightclub Christianity. Perfect." He looked at her but she shook her head, afraid to acknowlegde the unintelligibility of these words. "When I was in high school--no, maybe it was as early as junior high--we would have these big gatherings at our house. After revivals and conferences. The periodic cleansing of the flock." He was kind now, almost teaching a naive pupil. "Mom was the best at that. And our house seemed the glossiest around. And that was probably while the church was in our basement."
      "In your basement?" Set was incredulous.
      "Yes, for a while it was there, before Dad built the church. Anyway, we would have these big potlucks, and, then, indeed, we had the holiest of holy noodles." Although he was attempting a pleasantness, his humor fell short of its mark. "To these gatherings came the Spinlow Brothers-Jim and Lynn Spinner--but their stage name was the Spinlow Brothers. Doesn't that just roll off your tongue?"
      Set giggled because it seemed appropriate. She sat up and watched his animated features; she saw his whole body move like a horse, the wind catching its mane. "I remember the first time I saw them. They were going to eat supper with us before the service. Mom had brought out the best gold and white china and our goblets. They were cheap goblets but I thought they were royal. When I came out from my bedroom, there they were, arrived from some newly conquered Christian conference, handsome and smooth. They both had on big rings. I was just a kid, probably thirteen, but I remember those rings. But, most of all, I remember their complete agility of--well, everything. Body, yes, but also words and transitions and smiles and humorous uptakes. I probably had on a plaid shirt and an untamed cowlick, but they acted as if I was brilliant and clever. And my mother gleamed with her bowls of mashed potatoes and her dark curly hair. Her face was pink and beautiful. I thought she was old then, but she was young, very young. Younger than I am now. That's startling, isn't it?"
     He was lost in thought. "I see her carrying green beans and scalloped corn to the table, her flushed face brimming with the act of serving supper to men of God, leaders in the spiritual powerhouse YFC, entertainers for Christ. But at the same time, they were on the cutting edge of the fundamentalists--they had moved into music that vaguely resembled rock and roll. But they could do it handily. They could be it because they knew the answer. They spoke the language. Their speech had the same quality as ours at Calvary--in Jesus's name we pray they said when Dad asked them to say grace. That was always a sure clue to the unprotected.--if you didn't say it. You had to say 'in Jesus's name' or the prayer didn't ascend. They prayed for the saving of the lost, empty souls that they would minister to that night, they prayed for the ministry of YFC and its stand in a world facing the end time. And that was over green beans. I could go on, but I'll spare you the catalogue. However, my dear," he said patting her hand, "if you ever need a complete listing, I'm the one to come to."
      "Well, did the Spinlow Brothers have a Christian nightclub or something?"
      "I think later, but not then. It's so hazy now. But they were the beginning of nightclub thought, in my mind When I got to Hadder, I heard that these nightclubs were the rage, the current cutting edge of Christian fundamentalism. Even then, even at twenty, and confused, I was appalled. The simpleton logic of it all made me laugh out loud. Why, if Christianity was so all-fired complete, why did it copy the evil, seductive ways of the world? That's what I had been told about nightclubs, dark, loud places with girls, I guess, and sequins, and drink. Liquor. I had never been to one, but out of the general overheard conversations, that's what I got." He must have realized the archaic diction. "I know this sounds like the props of a turn-of-the-century melodrama, but that's how nightclubs were painted. The point is, why did the Answer, the completed and only God, have to take on the accoutrements of the world, the world that was drawn as sucking and seductive. Even at the time, I felt that this movement somehow left behind the good core of what was real in nightclubs and took on the cheap, stupid, big-ringed residue. At least real nightspots were what they were. The sparkling Spinlows, I heard later, opened their own Christian nightclub."
      "Still, David, that seems harmless enough. So what if the committed to faith want to attend something that looks like the world, minus what they perceive as immoral?" Set said. A sudden shuddering of the caboose announced a change in wind. For a few seconds the car and its complex rattled, cups chattering on the kitchen shelf, the windows thumping and then gasping for air. Even the bird cage rocked as though the wind had entered the house. Set knew now that tonight she would be late getting home to Ludway.
      "Don't you understand? If the whole thing was or is as I heard it, as it was portrayed week after week, Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Thursday, then why in the name of Christ were these people not down on their knees every second praying for others, why not living in some jungle forever, pleading with the wretched pygmies who would burn in hell because they didn't know? Why not like Mother Theresa, giving up the entire nightclub world to do the work of the spirit?" He repeated it, "The work of the spirit," and then dropped his head. "Why, if you cared like you said, and you believed like you said, and the whole world was going to flame like Jonathan Edward's spider if you didn't know the Answer, why wouldn't you be out on the street, shouting and yelling for everyone to know it, learn it, hurry, hurry. How in the name of God would you have time for noodles and nightclubs?"
      David Owen looked up and he seemed to beg in his eyes for Set to understand. Understand so that he would not need to establish each nuance, each delicate prickly curve of his ecclesiastical memory, so that he would not have to repeat in heard words the pain of unresolved horror. Set knew it and yet could not bring a comforting empathy to the table, a salve to momentarily offset his fiery wounds, because she had never encountered an injury of religious thought. She saw pain here, but a brand she did not recognize. And although she could feel for him, she could not feel with him, and “feeling with” was the salve he needed.
      "Do you know," he said quietly, "what I associate with those days?" His face was clear. Set shook her head. "Lizard shoes. My mother's lizard shoes. She loved shoes and clothes. Slim elegant skirts with jackets and lizard shoes. Rows of shoes in her closet." He smiled.
      "Isn't your mother living in Florida? I mean, doesn't she like her shoes just the same as then?"
      "O, certainly, she has rows of shoes now, but those particular wine-colored shoes stand in high relief in my memory." He looked at Set's shoes and she extended just slightly her right leg, knowing that its proportions were good, revealing its firm shape. Radnor had loved her legs; he had said she had good appendages. She was perpetually thankful that she had not been born squat and round; there was nothing you could do to increase a femur. And your femur had to be just so long to allow your clothes to hang properly in the balanced silhouette.
      "I must admit, David, that I pay a lot of attention to clothes. So if you're poking blame at your mother for her lizard shoes, then you'll probably find fault with me."
      "Yes, I know you consider clothes an important part of your life." Smiling, he straightened her linen collar. "I noticed that the night I saw your earnest face." His smile made her feel uneasy, because she didn't understand its source. "Women of style I do notice. Something, no doubt, instilled early by my mother."
      "If you have the eye, and color and line simply pop out at you wherever you look, you have to go with it. Just look at you. GQ all the way. I can't help but respond to those forces. The visual seems just as compelling as the intellectual, don't you think?" She considered her words. "Maybe that's not right, the way I said it. I guess the visual is intellectual, too."
     David walked to the window and looked between the slats, his hands in his pockets. It was not clear if he was considering the night snow, the shoes, or Set's statement on aesthetics. "So, her shoes were part of this nightclub Christianity?" She wanted him to come away from the window, back to her. She didn't want to lose him.
      "In a way, that and golf carts and country clubs. Christ can go with you, you know, even onto the eighth green. Since it is grace and not works that save our very souls, we can pack our golf balls for the Lord. We can ask the Savior to burden the sinful hearts of the Indonesians in their boats and the Deli Lama in his Buddhist ignorance, even as we tee-off at nine." Owen wasn't speaking to Set. He seemed uninvolved with her, simply peering out onto the purple-black night, where fragments of the snow's increasing depth flicked when a car passed. "And when we read Vogue, we will give equal time to the saving of Mother Theresa who has probably not had a personal relationship with Christ, having been sent and supported by Papal dispensation. She's probably kissed the ring of the man who purports to be Christ's representative on earth. Catholicism--that enormous gold-encrusted gypsy-- might lure our children away. It comes with rings on its hands and colored glass in its arched windows and chants our children, or the weak, into idolatry." He stopped and Set could hear nothing, no breath, no wind from the street, no birds in the cage. Just silence after this strange barrage of stridency, not in his voice, but in the air around him, in the disconnected intensity of his language. He was at once a child and an aging cynic.
      "Your mother golfs and that you connect with this type of Christianity?"
      "It's not golf, or shoes, or nightclubs alone," he said, turning toward her. "It's the juxtaposition that's ludicrous. Don't you see it? With the shoes and the greens came the damnation of the whole world. I heard it from the pulpit every week. The Reverend Sowders would. . ."
      "Nate Sowders?"
      "No, his father, the Reverend Eli Sowders would tell us that according to Scripture there was no help for those who had not heard the Gospel. That was bad enough in my young mind, but when I thought of the millions of people living and dying before Christ's birth, I asked the question. I can still see me that Thursday night, Bible Club, trying to get my nerve up to broach the question. I probably was about fourteen, same period as the Spinner Brothers, and I was feeling my adolescence as a responsibility and an energy. Enid was leader then. We must have had several leaders but I can only remember Enid Fout, standing proper, her white starched blouses and big skirts, flannel board behind. Did you have a flannel board in church when you were a kid?" he asked, as if the question bore great weight.
      "I don't remember. Probably. I've seen them in the Sunday School area when I picked up my brother's kids. But nothing in particular."
      He laughed softly. "For me, the flannel board stands as an emblem of a child's version of fire and brimstone. Soft surfaces supporting flames of flannel, Ezekial's wheel, Zacheus in a tree, the fishes and bread, Jesus with his blue robed arm extended, sometimes folded onto itself. But Enid would unfold and flap the cloth into its proper place against the gray. The board sat on an easel and we lined up in front of it on clackety wooden chairs. Nate and I sat in the back. The back usually meant the third row. There were probably twelve of us at our maximum. Anyway, Enid was in charge that Thursday. When I asked it. Do all the people who haven't been saved--I mean who couldn't have heard about Christ because nobody ever got to them in Africa, or South America, or any place that our missionaries just couldn't reach--will all those people be lost? Enid looked pleased. I remember because I thought there must be some good conclusive answer about how God would let them off the hook. I remember because then good old Christian Enid said that yes they would be lost. I remember because she was still smiling. In that white blouse. Smiling as if the whole damned world could burn and it was only right. Because we knew the answer at Calvary Chapel. Smiling, internal and smug. Even at that ratty smart alec, self-centered, adolescence time, I couldn't comprehend it. It was too massive, too horrendous, and so unutterably incontrovertible to Enid, and by extension, my parents. My parents and the entire congregation" Set thought he laughed again. "So then I said, 'How can God let all those people suffer forever if they can't help it? There must be something that helps them, Enid,' I said. And she smiled. But it was a brief smile, just before she began." David stopped and Set sat there, in the dimness of the Keats room, waiting, waiting for him to begin again, to tell her Enid's answer. But his chiseled head did not move against the backdrop of the slatty window. His features looked like stone.
      "What did Enid say, David?"
      "The only thing to say to an inquiring adolescent, to anyone who strays too far from the internal logic of Calvary Chapel. Of course, the whole damned world is damned, my dear. It can't be helped. God is a wrathful God, but a loving God." Now he was laughing, strong and raucous. "That little fact should not, you see, disrupt the important matters of the Chapel. First, get rid of the Amen at the end of hymns. Too formal. The deacons decided. Second, immersion or sprinkle? Now there's a big one. Have you seen that little curtain behind me at the lectures? That's your answer. Eli and Nate have dunked with the best of them, plunging those believing heads into the baptismal tank like cadaverous fish. No colored glass in the windows, of course. Keep your eyes on Christ who cannot reside with the things of the world. But most of all, scour your mind for that infinitesimal moment when you were blinked into eternal life, when the angel wrote your name in the Book of Life. If you don't know, then you are quite simply going to fry in hell." His bouts of laughter were incongruous points of reference for Set who was trying to distinguish that which was humorous.
      "Communion. You know, the little squares of bread and the grape juice in tiny glasses lined up in metal trays? Nothing too formal, smacking of Rome, nothing too rustic, smacking of Pentacostals, just the right mix for the Chapel." He looked straight at Set. "But the really right mix came from Enid. Listen to a parable, my child. I overheard my mother laughing with a group of women. Early in the church days. The grand joke was this. Enid, having mistaken a refrigerated urine sample for a glass of pineapple juice, drank from the cup." Set felt nauseated and emitted a spitting sound. "Just the right mix for Enid and the Chapel," he said.
      "It’s horrible when you say it. Enid's drink, of course," Set said with some embarrassment. "But mostly the disparity between what should be, the doctrine and then the life style. I admit that's unsettling when you line up what really happens. But, David, aren't all denominations, all Christian organizations, all religious structures, by their very nature, inadequate to the task?"
      "What task is that, O wise philosopher of the couture?"
      "To the task of living up to a set of rules that are perfect," she said, mounting an offensive against his cruelty. "Trying to live perfectly when you are imperfect, human, fumbling."
      "Of course, of course, humanity has always tried. And will always be imperfect. But don't you see how utterly ridiculous-- no, no, too tame--how utterly evil this thought, this so-called doctrine is? If a pimple-faced kid can reason it, why can't you? While my parents poured iced tea around the pool, entertained the Spinlows, and wore lizard shoes, they told me the entire bloody world was dying because our missionaries weren't able to get a second stint in New Guinea. And my parents are good people. They're good. Dad always tried to help. Lions Club. He worked hard. Mother was a real mother. The best. The fifties and sixties. A time to grow up. They were good. But don't you see that they were dealing in the biggest questions of life, and yet the daily elements were self-centered. Even old Enid, in her righteous blouses, was altogether selfish. If this stuff is true, and your secret moment is real, then you would not be what I grew up with. It's playing house with God."
     David Owen was wearing down from internal rage, with arguments within. "You see, I loved my parents," he said deliberately, "but I cannot comprehend how they worked this doctrine through. I can blame the rest of their friends, those that came away with the new church. I can say they were stupid. Or less informed. But how can I work out the abyss of reason that allowed my glorious, lovely mother and father to live a life so grotesquely paradoxical?" He almost choked on the words "mother" and "father."
     "Here. Here. Let me show you. While I was at Hadder, I discovered a dim light of beauty in Whitestone Episcopal Church. My favorite instructor, Professor Hamlin Lynn, introduced me to my first real taste of formalism in the church. I found meaning and pleasure in the coffee groups right after Sunday morning church. I had never known a formal liturgy before that, kneeling and saying words together. Just a dim memory of some stained glass and some congregation responses, read from the back of the hymnal, from the Maple Way Christian, before they left it. But at the Episcopal, chants under light from colored glass windows, the swaying of the cope, the candles. I felt at home; I felt . . ." He stumbled on the words. "I felt holy. Not holy, but thoughtful. And since this beauty had been introduced to me by Professor Lynn, a representative of Calvanistic Hadder, I believed it was a part of a Christianity I could endure. I remember the unadulterated joy I felt at those talks over coffee. How Professor Lynn did not condemn but seemed an elegant Southern gentleman who was not afraid to discuss and think. To question. I thought for a while I had just been reared in the wrong kind of religious setting, but now I had found a path I could walk to think and learn. I could keep what my parents had taught me, I would simply change their brand of worship. Mine would be intellectual and hard. It could contain beauty."
     Owen sat next to Set and took her hand. "But in the end it all led to the same reasoning. I could not deny that the same message lurked behind the brass and the glass, in the perky Sunday hats and steaming coffee and the quiet poetry of the minister's language, in Professor Lynn's accepting warm hand after discussion. No, they did not poke or pull my spirit from me, cut it out with a hot knife. But, you see, Set, behind it all was the Christ that saved and did not save; behind it was the same blood that flooded Calvary's immersion tank and Enid's communion cup. And the blood excludes, leaves out, and condemns." He rubbed her hand and Set was reminded of her grandma rubbing her hand out of human touch, out of love, something her mother had never done.
      "Exclusion. That's Calvary's byword. I remember one thing that happened with my dad that . . . But now I've gotten away from the subject, haven't I?" Glancing at his watch, he started to rise. But Set pulled him back.
      "Please. David. Do you have to go? Go on. What happened with your dad?"
      "You were leaving at eight. It's past that now. I've gone on way too long. And I've kept you." He rose, took off his glasses, and inserted them into a leather, embossed case. When he tucked the case inside his jacket, Set saw that his chest was heaving with his heart. "Besides, to go on about the slings and arrows of my childhood is nonproductive and annoying. Particularly for you, Pretty." He bent and kissed her forehead.
      "It's important to you. Your poor heart," and she wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her cheek against his, as if she were his mother. He released his pull, but then leaned against her. She stroked his back. "Go on. Go on. It's right for you to say it," she said reacting to maternal instincts. But then she remembered herself and kissed his mouth with a long kiss. "Tell me. Tell me about your dad." She felt the pumping of his blood through his jacket, his proper shirt, her hand. "Tell me. I don't even have to start tonight for home. Please."
      "Aren't they expecting you?"
      "Yes, but I'm a grown woman." She smiled. "I'll give them a call. Honest, David. Besides the snow is really coming down. The plows will be out in the morning and that will be safer. So, you see, it's better if I stay. Whether you stay or not. Now I'm going to fix us some coffee."
      He followed her to the kitchen where she assembled the pleasant accoutrements of the coffee ceremony--the refrigerated ground auto-drip beans, the glass pot, the fresh woody filter, and cold tap water. Within minutes the comfort of hazelnut cream filled the room and Set felt at ease. In her element. David stood, leaning near her as she puttered. Neither spoke until Set released a soft "Oh" when she selected their cups. She had slid the Ivy-Marjory letters into the cupboard.
      "Something wrong?"
      "No, not wrong. But . . . You have to tell me about your dad first."
      After they had settled back on the couch, relaxed in the sensual solace of common acts, feeling the heated cup and drawing in of the coffee's nutty aroma, he appeared absolutely undisturbed by what had gone before. Snow drifted into Currier and Ives webs at the corners of the caboose.
      "This is hardly a climactic story, Set. Don't expect much. Mom and Dad were visiting me at Hadder one weekend and had gone to church with me and Professor Lynn. I was proud and excited about my new-found jewel of faith. Probably a little too proud because I wanted them to see the splendor of the new way. Acceptable and splendid I thought. But halfway through the service Dad began to shake. I mean really tremble. I looked at him and his face was white. I didn't understand. When he spoke he was choked. 'I didn't raise you this way,' he said. 'I didn't raise you this way.' I felt the strength draining out at my knees where I had knelt. Everything looked dark and twisted and it was a spring day. Strength left me because he was so terribly wrong and I saw it clearly in the clear light of that innocent service. Just a bend of the knee and a monotone reading of the same words, the same syllables from the back of the Readings book, and that made him tremble. It was the same God, the same bloody Christ, only in variegation. With some statuary at the front. Some stained glass. And kneeling benches. They sang Amen at the end of metaphors and poetry. 'Just as I am' was replaced with something Gregorian and that made him tremble. It escaped through my knees and then my heart. And finally my mind. He was entirely wrong. It was the sliding scale of form and he was stuck at one point. The message was the same, but he was stuck at form. Form, form." Now David's hands were pounding the couch.
      "Yes, form, David. But it's all form."
      He turned on her, his face icy cold, like marble, like frozen wind, like fury caught in time. "But that's why they left, don't you see, to avoid form because they knew the right content and content was greater than form. That's why they all left and Dad gave the land and built the church. Because they had the answer, the moment, the heart of God."
     His rage was magnificent and frightening, dramatic and pathetic. As before, incongruous laughter rose out of his throat. "So the sliding scale did not allow Mother Theresa or Pentecostals or Whitestone's kneeling benches or chants. Not too big, not too small. Like the Three Bears. And this one was just right. This one has lizard shoes and the Spinners, the bloody curtained pool and golf carts, and 'in the name of Jesus.' This one has prophecy and potlucks. This one is just right."
     He lifted his cup, hand shaking, and spilled coffee near his lips. His white shirt took the stain and, although Set knew she was probably just caught up in his words, it looked vaguely like a heart, a brown-blood shape, dripping and running down the front of his Oxford shirt.