Three-Legged Race

ABBY WAS QUIET IN THE CAR ON SUNDAY MORNING, AND AS USUAL, Tim wasn’t sure what to make of her silence. Was she sad about leaving him for another week, or relieved to be getting back to her normal life, the big fancy house she shared with her mother, stepfather, and little brother? Or was she just lost in her own head, worrying about homework, some intrigue with her school friends that didn’t concern him at all?

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little too quickly. “Why?”

“I don’t know. You just seem a little subdued or something.”

She insisted she was fine, leaving him to wonder if the sadness was all on his side, if he was simply fishing for a sign that she wanted to stay with him a little longer. He couldn’t help feeling a pang of nostalgia for the child she used to be, the little girl whose moods were as obvious as the weather. In the past year, she’d gone all poker-faced on him, turning every interaction into a guessing game. It didn’t help that Tim could never quite decide whether this awkwardness was just the normal weirdness of adolescence setting in or something more specific to the two of them.

“Oooh, look,” she said, whipping her head around to follow the path of a sports car that blew past on Pembroke Boulevard. “That’s an Audi TT. Those things are awesome.”

Tim didn’t reply. Since she’d started going to private school, Abby had developed what he thought was a dishearteningly well-informed enthusiasm for the finer things in life—plasma-screen TVs, Rolexes, designer handbags, iPods, cars that cost more than he made in a year—and he tried, without getting all self-righteous about it, to let her know that he wasn’t as impressed as she was, though she didn’t seem to care much about his opinion one way or the other.

“Maybe one of these days you can come to Sunday meeting with me,” he ventured. “You know, just give it a try. See what you think.”

“You’ll have to talk to Mom.”

They both knew what that meant. The custody agreement gave his ex-wife exclusive control over their daughter’s educational and spiritual upbringing, and Allison categorically refused to let Abby set foot in the Tabernacle, which she referred to as “that Nuthouse.” Tim understood all too well where she was coming from, and if he’d been coming from the same place, he would’ve felt exactly the same way. But that place just happened to be a swamp of vanity and self-delusion, and he prayed that Allison would find her way out of it someday, as unlikely as that seemed.

Not that he was losing any sleep over the state of his ex-wife’s soul; she was an adult, responsible for her own life, both in this world and the next. But Abby was still a child, and Tim felt like a coward and a bad father, letting some family court judge stand between his daughter and God. It was crazy: he was allowed to be Abby’s soccer coach, but was barred from guiding her in something way more important, the only thing that really mattered.

“So, uh, what are you going to do the rest of the day?”

“Chill out,” she said. “Probably just IM for a while, then go to the mall.”

Tim sighed in a way he instantly regretted, knowing it made him sound like a Goody Two-Shoes, Ned Flanders without the mustache.

“It’s the Lord’s Day, honey. You shouldn’t spend it at the mall.”

“We might go to the movies,” she said. “I’m not really sure.”

His sense of helplessness—of personal failure—intensified as he turned into Greenwillow Estates, a luxury development full of bloated McMansions, one monstrosity more gaudy and boastful than the next. His disgust at the sheer excess of the houses—what family actually needed six thousand square feet of living space?—was aggravated by a professional grievance. Tim was a mortgage broker, but somehow he never managed to connect with the kinds of clients who bought places like this. He just handled the little guys, people he met through church, mostly—hardworking, two-income families with shaky credit and not much in the way of savings, who could only qualify for high-interest, variable-rate loans that just barely got them inside a rundown ranch or a garrison colonial on a busy street or otherwise marginal neighborhood.

Driving past the vast, oddly immaculate lawns of Country Club Way—it was mid-October, and there was barely a fallen leaf in sight—he fantasized, as he did every week, about pulling a U-turn and heading straight to the Tabernacle. What a pleasure it would be, walking into church with his little girl at his side, the person he loved best in the world, to stand beside her as she listened to God’s word, surrounded by the love that filled the humble space, all those joyful voices mingling together in song.

But it wasn’t gonna happen. Abby’s stepfather was a lawyer, and by all accounts a good one. As polite and friendly as Mitchell always was, Tim had no illusions about the consequences he’d suffer if he violated the custody agreement. Pastor Dennis would have encouraged him to go for it anyway—to stand up for what was right, and trust Jesus to take it from there—but Tim hadn’t reached that level of faith yet. There was a special bond between him and Abby—he’d felt it the first time he saw her, just seconds after she’d slipped into the world—and it had survived all sorts of turmoil, those years when he’d disappeared into the wilderness and inflicted all sorts of suffering on the people he loved. He had a lot to make amends for, and couldn’t bear the thought of spending a minute less with his daughter than he already did, let alone risking the possibility of being cut off from her altogether.

MITCHELL AND Allison lived in something called a Greek Revival colonial on Running Brook Terrace, a monumental brick house with a portico supported by fluted pillars. Pulling his Saturn into the triple-wide driveway, next to an impossibly lustrous black Lexus SUV, Tim let the engine idle as he turned to his daughter. It was a way of prolonging their time together, as if his custodial rights didn’t officially come to an end until he shut off his ignition.

“My little girl,” he said, running his hand over her sleek dark hair, so similar to his own. “You be good, okay?”

She stared back at him, her face blank and patient. After a long moment, she nodded.

“Okay, Dad.”

He felt a fullness in his heart that was almost painful and wished he could think of something to say that would do it justice. But words like that were never there when he needed them.

“I’m gonna miss you, Ab.”

She laughed sweetly—the first happy sound that had come out of her mouth all morning—and patted him on the knee.

“Dude,” she said. “It’s only a week.”

ALLISON STOOD in the sunlit, two-story entrance foyer—it featured a glittering chandelier that could be raised and lowered by remote control—looking sweetly disheveled in a gold silk robe that Tim had never seen before, tied just loosely enough for him to get a tantalizing glimpse of the sheer black nightgown underneath. She hugged Abby, then invited him in for the ritual Sunday morning cup of coffee and parental debriefing. He could’ve begged off, of course, could’ve told her he was in a rush, had to get ready for church or whatever, but he never did. She was the mother of his child, a woman who’d stood by him for way longer than he deserved before finally throwing in the towel, and the least he could do was give her fifteen minutes a week of his time.

He just wished she would put some clothes on. Allison was a beautiful woman—even at forty, with twenty pounds of post-childbirth weight that looked like it was here to stay—and Tim had to force himself to keep his eyes where they belonged as he trailed her through the dining room to the entrance of the family room, where he paused to say hi to Mitchell and his two-year-old son, Logan, who were playing a wooden ring toss game that looked like it came from a catalogue that only sold toys made of natural materials by the finest Old World craftsmen.

“Hola,” Mitchell called out. He was a baby-faced guy in his late thirties with curly hair and a doughy physique. “It’s Señor Tim.”

“Hola to you,” Tim replied. “How’s the little guy?”

Mitchell wrapped his thumb and forefinger around Logan’s pudgy bicep.

“Strong like bull,” he declared in a ridiculous Russian accent that elicited a hearty chuckle from the boy, who appeared to have been cloned from his father.

Abby peeled off to join her brother and stepfather, while Tim and Allison continued into the breakfast nook. It was possible, he thought, that there was an innocent explanation for the fact that his ex-wife was hardly ever decently dressed when he showed up on Sunday mornings—it was true that she’d never been shy about her body, and had enjoyed lounging around half-naked on weekends ever since he’d known her—but he couldn’t help suspecting that she got some satisfaction from reminding him of everything he’d thrown away, all the pleasures and privileges he’d surrendered for the simple, stupid reason that he liked getting high better than he liked being a husband and father.

If that was her strategy, it was working a little too well. Standing in the archway of the eerily spotless dream kitchen—it looked like a movie set, not a place where actual people cooked actual food—watching her pour his coffee, he couldn’t help noticing how shamelessly short her robe was, not much longer than a miniskirt, which made him wonder how much shorter than that her nightgown must have been, which led, inevitably, to more specific thoughts about her body, and the many ways she’d shared it with him over the years. Mitchell must have felt like he’d died and gone to heaven, a nerdy intellectual property lawyer living in a house like this with a wife who had a black strawberry tattooed on her ass—she’d gotten it back in the mid-eighties, when it was still a little bit daring—and, unless things had changed, an unusually strong sex drive. The whole deferred-gratification thing had really paid off for the guy, and Tim couldn’t help envying him for his discipline and foresight.

THE BREAKFAST island was long and sleek, the countertop a thick slab of polished blue granite with a weirdly deep sink at one end. Sitting across from him, Allison rearranged the lapels of her robe in a gesture of belated modesty, as if it had just occurred to her what she was wearing and who she was with.

“So how’d the game go yesterday?”

“We won. We’re tied for first place in the division.”

“Wow.” She sounded impressed, though both of them knew she couldn’t have cared less. “How’d Abby do?”

“Great.” He took a sip of coffee, a dark roast that Allison insisted was way better than Starbucks, though Tim could never taste the difference. “I did want to tell you, though—she got into a pretty bad collision near the end of the game. She and this other girl crashed into each other at full speed, and I think she was knocked out for a minute or two.”

“Oh my God, did you—”

“Don’t worry. Dr. Felder says she’s fine, no sign of concussion or anything. He says to just keep an eye on her, but he doesn’t anticipate any problems. You can give him a call if you want.”

Tim had expected to be grilled for details—he knew she questioned the soundness of his parental judgments, a holdover from the days when her worries were more than justified—but his explanation seemed to satisfy her. She shook her head with what seemed like genuine empathy.

“That must have been scary for you.”

“You have no idea.”

“I’m glad it was you,” she said, rolling her neck in a lazy circle. She’d recently begun putting blond highlights in her hair, and he liked the way they glinted against the darker gold of her robe. He’d always enjoyed her hair; she used to tease him with it when they were making love, sweeping it across his face and belly like a broom, and she never complained if he pulled it when they were playing rough. “I woulda had a heart attack.”

The conversation flagged for a few seconds, just long enough for him to register the music playing in the background; it was the Dead, a live version of “Cassidy” he’d never heard before. He grunted with surprise.

“What’s this, a bootleg?”

“One of those Dick’s Picks,” she said.

“Since when do you—?”

“I always liked them,” she said, a bit defensively.

“News to me.”

“I appreciated the music. I just didn’t like all the drugs and craziness.”

“Okay,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

She looked at him with what felt like real curiosity.

“You still into them?”

“Not so much. I’m trying to put all that behind me.”

“Must be hard.” She smiled sadly, acknowledging the depth of his sacrifice.

“A little easier every day.”

“Good for you.” She paused, letting Jerry finish a jazzy little run, that clean sunny sound no one else could duplicate. “So how’s Carrie?”

“Fine.” He didn’t like discussing his wife with Allison, though she was more than happy to discuss her husband with him. “Same as always.”

“Well, tell her I said hi.”

Tim nodded, feeling momentarily disoriented. Sitting across from Allison in this gorgeous kitchen, listening to the Grateful Dead on Sunday morning, it was easy to believe that this was his life—their life—a new improved version of the one he’d screwed up so royally. Abby was with them, and Mitchell and Logan and Carrie were just people they knew, and not especially important ones. It was such a convincing sensation that he had to make a conscious effort to remind himself that losing that life, painful as it was, had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. God had a plan for him, and it involved something more important than a big house and a beautiful wife and a happy intact family. He slid off the stool and pressed his palm over the lid of his coffee mug.

“I better be going,” he told her.

MOST OF the time, Tim felt pretty good about his new condo—it was a two-bedroom townhouse with wood floors, central air, a gas fireplace, and Corian countertops—but it always struck him as cramped and dingy after he returned from Greenwillow Estates. Everything was all squashed together—the closet-sized half bath a step away from the front door, the kitchen table wedged between the refrigerator and the dishwasher, forcing you to turn sideways when serving or cleaning up. The furniture, which was perfectly nice, and not cheap by any means, seemed common and nondescript, and even slightly tacky, in a way he couldn’t put his finger on.

He had a similar reaction to Carrie, who was sitting on the living room couch, flipping through Parade magazine. With Allison fresh in his mind, she seemed paler and less vivid than usual, vaguely disappointing. He must have stared at her a moment too long, or with a little too much intensity, because she put down the magazine and looked up with a worried smile.

“Everything okay?”

Fine.

“How’s Abby’s mom?” For some reason, Carrie insisted on referring to Allison in this way, and Tim could never quite decide if she meant it as a subtle dig or an expression of respect.

“Hard to say. I just stopped in for a minute or two.”

She nodded, keeping her gaze trained on his face, as if awaiting instructions. Though she was already dressed for church, he knew she was expecting him to take her by the hand and lead her up to the bedroom, the way he did on most Sunday mornings, taking advantage of this brief interlude—their first free moment of the weekend—between dropping Abby off and heading to church.

But Tim just stood there, hands jammed into his pockets, reminding himself of the promise he’d made to Pastor Dennis after Wednesday Night Bible Study, not to touch his wife until he cleared his head and purified his heart. Because it was deceitful and disrespectful, making love to Carrie after being aroused by Allison, turning one woman into a substitute for another.

“You look upset,” she said. “Can I make you some eggs or something?”

He shook his head, feeling a sudden wave of affection for her. Carrie was a sweet girl and wanted nothing except to make him happy. He stepped toward the couch and extended his hand, as if asking her to dance.

“Pray with me,” he said. “Would you do that?”

TIM AND Carrie had been married for less than a year. Pastor Dennis had introduced them at a church picnic shortly after Tim had found his way to the Tabernacle and been reborn in Christ.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” he said. “I think you’ll like her.”

Tim was pleasantly surprised when the Pastor led him over to the condiment table, where a folksingery blond was struggling with a big Costco bag of plastic forks, spoons, and knives that didn’t seem to want to open. Unlike most of the single women who worshipped at the Tabernacle, she was young and reasonably cute, with long straight hair and startled-looking blue eyes. In the strong afternoon sunlight, Tim couldn’t help noticing that her peasant blouse—a gauzy embroidered garment, the kind of thing pothead girls wore in the late seventies—was translucent enough that you didn’t have to strain to see the outline of her bra underneath, which was about as much excitement as you could hope for at a gathering like this. Her breasts were plump and pillowy, not what he normally went for, but he had to make a conscious effort to stop staring at them. He wasn’t proud of himself for behaving in such an ungodly way, but he’d been lusting after women since he was twelve, and it was turning out to be a harder habit to break than he’d expected.

Pastor Dennis relieved Carrie of the troublesome bag.

“You’re fired,” he told her. “Now get outta here. And take this guy with you, okay?”

Carrie smiled sheepishly at Tim, wiping the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead.

“Hey,” she said. “You’re the guitar player.”

“Bass,” he corrected her, momentarily distracted by Pastor Dennis, who was having no more luck with the bag than Carrie had. He was tugging at it with both hands, grimacing fiercely, like a man trying to rip a phone book in two.

“Gosh darn it,” he muttered.

“That’s really thick plastic,” Carrie warned.

With one final heroic grunt, the Pastor tore the bag asunder, unleashing a mighty cascade of utensils all over the table, including a few knives that landed in a bowl of bean dip. Tim and Carrie tried to help him with the mess, but he shooed them away.

“I’m okay,” he insisted. “You two go and get acquainted. I bet you have a lot in common.”

THEY SAT in the shade, drinking lukewarm soda, watching the kids tie themselves together in preparation for a three-legged race. The Tabernacle was a relatively new church at that point—it had only been planted for two years, after Pastor Dennis and a handful of disaffected families had split off from the Living Waters Fellowship in Gifford Township, which he accused of being “a namby-pamby, touchy-feely bunch of mealymouthed hypocrites who loved their cable TV better than they loved Jesus Christ”—so there were only about a dozen contestants in the race, ranging in age from five or six to twelve or thirteen.

On the whole, Tim couldn’t help thinking, they were an unprepossessing bunch, the boys scrawny and somber, the girls overdressed for such a hot day, visibly uncomfortable, nothing at all like the confident little jockettes Abby played soccer with. They stood at slouchy attention, nodding earnestly as Youth Pastor Eddie explained that sin was like a third leg, a foreign growth that hobbled us on our walk through life. If we could just cut ourselves loose from it, we’d run like the wind, with our Savior at our side.

It was an interesting metaphor, and it didn’t seem to spoil anyone’s enjoyment. When the first heat began, the little kids leapt forward, managing a few herky-jerky steps before squealing in alarm and toppling onto the grass with their partners. After a few seconds of hilarity, they untangled themselves, got up, and started over, dragging that extra limb around as best they could.

“You’ve had such an interesting life,” Carrie told him. “I haven’t done hardly anything.”

As far as he could tell, she wasn’t exaggerating. She was a twenty-four-year-old woman, raised in a strict evangelical home, who hadn’t gone to college or even lived on her own. She rarely dated, had no close friends outside of church, and spent her days running the office of a Christian insurance agent who was a friend of the family. The way she described it, the only act of defiance she’d ever committed was to follow Pastor Dennis to the Tabernacle, against the wishes of her parents, who’d stayed behind at Living Waters. It made sense that she’d be intrigued by Tim’s checkered past, especially the rock bands he’d played in when he was her age.

“That must have been incredible,” she said, as if he’d told her that he’d climbed Mount Everest or fought in a war. “I can’t even imagine.”

“It seemed like fun at the time,” he conceded. “But I was selfish. I hurt a lot of people.”

“But now you’re saved,” she told him. “So it’s okay.”

For a second or two, he wasn’t quite sure if she was putting him on. It happened a lot to him in his first few months at the Tabernacle, before he’d spent a lot of time with hard-core Christians. He’d gotten so used to hanging around with wiseasses, liars, and addicts that he was easily thrown off-balance when someone spoke to him in a forthright manner, without doubt or irony.

“It’s wonderful,” he said. “But I’m carrying a lot of guilt around.”

He told her about Allison and Abby, and the regret he lived with every day.

“We lost a house,” he said. “I put the mortgage payments up my nose.”

“I’m a sinner, too,” Carrie told him.

He nodded, understanding that her intentions were good, even if what she was saying was pure bullshit—Christian boilerplate designed to make people like him feel a little better, a little less alone.

“You don’t look like a sinner,” he told her, glancing toward the field, where the second heat had just begun. The eleven-year-old Rapp twins, Mark and Matthew, were running in perfect unison, sprinting way ahead of the pack, as if their third leg were the most natural thing in the world. Carrie laughed, a little more loudly than he expected, and touched him lightly on the forearm.

“Doesn’t matter what you look like,” she assured him. If he hadn’t known better, he might’ve thought she was flirting with him. “Matters what you do.”

THEY WERE thrown together a lot in the weeks that followed, way more than could have been accounted for by mere coincidence. Pastor Dennis would invite him to dinner, and Carrie would be there, too, along with a couple of ringers, so it didn’t look too obvious. If he volunteered to paint the sanctuary on Saturday morning, it turned out that she’d signed up for the exact same shift. When he offered his Saturn to the Jesus Jam Festival car pool, she just happened to end up in his passenger seat. He understood exactly what was going on—there weren’t a whole lot of singles in the Tabernacle, and Pastor Dennis regularly warned them of the dangers of dating nonbelievers—so he tried, as politely as he could, to let her know he wasn’t interested.

The thing that baffled him was why a good Christian girl like Carrie would even want to get tangled up with a guy like him. Couldn’t she see he was damaged goods—a divorced father, a recovering addict, a musician who could have qualified for his own episode of Behind the Music, if only anyone had ever heard of him?

The flip side of his inability to see what was in it for Carrie was an all-too-clear awareness of what wasn’t in it for him. Because the sad fact was that, even now, after he’d accepted Jesus into his heart, turned his back on drugs and alcohol, and committed himself to walk in the light of the Lord, he still couldn’t manage to get himself all that excited about good Christian girls. Certain kinds of toothpaste, it turned out, were harder to get back into the tube than others.

Partly it was just habit—at least he hoped it was. The women he’d gone for in the past, Allison included, had been smokers and drinkers and sexual troublemakers, bad girls in tight pants who let you take Polaroids, and laughed about the time they gave that cute stranger a handjob on the Greyhound bus, because it was a long way from Harrisburg to New York, and what else were you going to do to pass the time? It wasn’t that Tim wanted to be attracted to women like that, he just was, and it sometimes seemed to him that his sexuality had gotten so twisted over the years that he’d never be able to straighten it out.

The whole subject was so fraught and muddled that he didn’t even know where to start when Pastor Dennis took him aside after Sunday worship, about a month after the picnic, and asked him why he was being so cool to Carrie, when she’d obviously developed a deep affection for him.

“I—I … don’t know,” he stammered. “I mean, she’s a sweet girl and everything. But she’s just so young. It’s like we’re living on different planets.”

Pastor Dennis didn’t seem too happy with this response.

“You both love Jesus,” he said. “That sounds like the same planet to me.”

THE PASTOR had a point, but it was a lot easier for Tim to mutter about the discrepancy in their ages than it was to tell him the truth, which was that he was involved in a strange and stupid affair with a married woman who was the complete antithesis of Carrie, and, sad to say, a lot more to his liking.

Deanna Phelan was an addiction counselor he’d met a few years earlier in what, for him, at least, turned out to be a spectacularly unsuccessful outpatient rehab program at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. She was his group leader, a cute, foul-mouthed woman who alluded frequently, and with great comic effect, to her own impressive history of chemical dependency and self-destructive behavior. She’d called a couple of times to check up on him after graduation, but he’d been too busy to call back; the day after completing the program, he’d done a triple back somersault off the wagon and embarked on the epic coke binge that ended his marriage and ultimately brought him face-to-face with his Savior.

He didn’t see her again until shortly after he’d turned his life around at the Tabernacle, when they ran into each other at a Jiffy Lube on McLean Road. Tim was reading his Bible in the waiting area when she stepped in through the service bay door, talking on her cell phone so loudly and unself-consciously you would have thought she was alone in her own house.

“I’m not running a fucking restaurant, honey. You want something different, you can cook it yourself.”

Her voice seemed instantly familiar—it had a ragged, slightly belligerent quality that made him look up in spite of himself—but it took him a few seconds to place her. She’d worn her hair in a long ponytail at the hospital; now it was as short as a boy’s, giving her a pixieish look that went well with her lanky figure and tough-girl demeanor.

“Too bad, kiddo. You’re stuck with the mother you got.” She blew a raspberry into the phone. “I love you, too. Now go do your homework.”

She flipped the phone shut and pounded her palm against the side of her head, as if trying to dislodge water from her ear.

“Teenagers,” she told him, by way of explanation.

Tim smiled; her eyes widened in recognition.

“Holy shit,” she said. “It’s Mr. Deadhead.”

Flattered to be remembered, he stood up and shook Deanna’s hand. She gave him a careful once-over as they reintroduced themselves.

“You look a helluva lot better than the last time I saw you.”

“I’ve been clean for a year,” he told her, doing his best not to grin like a kid who’d gotten all A’s on his report card.

“Good for you,” she said. “Twelve-step?”

He showed her his Bible.

“Jesus.”

A familiar look of disappointment passed across her face. People who weren’t saved didn’t want to hear you talk about Jesus. It made them uncomfortable, like you were bragging about a great party they hadn’t been invited to, though of course they had.

“There’s a lot of that going around these days,” she said.

“I wasn’t strong enough to do it on my own,” he explained. “I needed His help.”

She looked like she wanted to say something dismissive, but then thought better of it.

“Hey,” she said, giving him a congratulatory squeeze on the shoulder. “Whatever works. Your wife must be thrilled.”

Tim’s face heated up, the way it always did when the subject of marital status arose.

“We, uh … we’re not together anymore.”

He gave her a capsule version of the saga, stressing that he didn’t blame Allison for leaving him and insisting he was thrilled she’d landed on her feet so quickly, finding a man who could give her the kind of life she’d always dreamed about.

“I’m serious,” he said, detecting a certain amount of skepticism in Deanna’s nods. “The woman deserves a medal.”

“You have a little girl, too, right?”

“Good memory. Only she’s ten now, not so little. I’m playing catch-up. I feel like I missed so much of her childhood.”

“It goes fast,” she said. “Our boys are in high school now. They don’t even know how to talk anymore. It’s all just grunts.”

The Jiffy Lube guy called out, “Blue Saturn,” and Tim went to the register to pay. He stopped on his way out to say good-bye to Deanna.

“It’s really good to see you,” he said.

She slipped a business card into his shirt pocket.

“Drop me a line if you ever need to talk to someone,” she said, surprising him with a hug that lingered longer than he expected. “I’m really proud of you, Tim.”

HE STUCK the card in his wallet—it had Deanna’s work phone number printed on the front and her e-mail address scribbled on the back—and told himself she hadn’t meant anything in particular by giving it to him. She was just a friendly acquaintance, making the usual insincere offer to keep in touch. It was ridiculous to read any hidden meanings into it.

Except that he was lonely—he hadn’t touched a woman in months—and as horny as a high-school sophomore. And a voice in his head—the worldly voice of the corrupt, selfish man he no longer wished to be—kept reminding him that grown women didn’t slip their phone numbers into your pocket if they weren’t interested in hooking up. It didn’t matter if they were married or not. He’d been around the block enough to know that some people were more married than others.

Through sheer willpower, he managed to get through two weeks without contacting her, the business card burning a hole in his wallet the entire time. But then Pastor Dennis gave a sermon on the subject of “Temptation” that made him rethink his strategy.

“You know what temptation is?” he asked. “It’s a fungus. It hides in the dark corners of the soul, those damp cracks and moist crevices we’d prefer not to think about. Well, I’ll tell you what, people. You can’t ignore temptation. Nuh-uh. That’s how it thrives. You pretend it’s not there, and pretty soon this tiny speck of mold turns into a giant poison mushroom with deep, twisted roots. Then see how easy it is to get rid of it! No, the thing to do with temptation is face it head-on at high noon! Right away! The second you realize it’s there! Expose it to the fresh air and sunlight of Jesus Christ! Because you know what, friends? That slimy fungus can’t stand the light of day! It just shrivels up and dies! Amen!”

After the sermon, Tim went home and wrote a long e-mail to Deanna, telling her all about the Tabernacle, what a beautiful positive force it had been in his life, and how compelled he was to share it with his friends. He didn’t know where she stood on the subject of Jesus, but he thought it might be a good idea for her and her family to come visit on Sunday. It might be an especially powerful experience for her sons, who, as teenagers, were exposed to so many evils that they might not be morally equipped to face. He hoped she didn’t mind his being so forward, but he believed that God had brought them back in touch for a reason.

“I know you’re searching for something,” he wrote. “We all are. I’m living proof of God’s mercy. My only job is to praise Him and spread the word.”

“Nice to hear from you,” she wrote back. “I’m sorry to say that I’m not the least bit interested in your religion. But I’d love to meet you for a cup of coffee. Weekdays are good for me.”

IN THE name of facing temptation, Tim met Deanna at Starbucks the following Thursday morning. She wore a skirt, high heels, and a shirt with a plunging neckline, and he couldn’t keep from telling her how good she looked. Even as he paid the compliment, though, he berated himself for setting the wrong tone, which he’d hoped would be cordial but not flirtatious.

“Thanks,” she said, nervously fiddling with a bead bracelet. “I’m glad you approve. I must’ve gone through six fucking outfits before settling on this one. It was hard, ’cause I wasn’t really sure what kind of a date this was.”

“It’s not a date at all,” he assured her. “It’s just … you know, old friends meeting for coffee. Nothing datelike about it.”

“Okay, good,” she said. “I’m glad you cleared that up. We’re old friends meeting for coffee.”

And that’s what it felt like for a while. They talked about kids and jobs and the challenge of staying sober, and swapped war stories from their druggie days. She gave him updates on some of the members of his group at St. Bartholomew’s, including one guy who was in jail and another who died while driving drunk.

“That could’ve been me,” he said. “I did so many stupid things back then. It was only by the grace of God that I didn’t kill myself. Or someone else. You know why the judge ordered me into rehab that time?”

“Some kind of DUI, right?”

“It was after a gig. The guitar player was sleeping in the passenger seat, and I started driving the wrong way down the parkway. Not just driving, speeding. It was four in the morning, but there were a fair number of cars out there, and I thought they were the ones who were confused. I kept honking my horn and flashing my lights and screaming at those stupid idiots to get out of the way, and I guess that’s what saved me. I musta drove a good five miles before the cops showed up. Apparently I was completely indignant when they put on the cuffs. I kept asking why they were picking on me and not those other crazy fools.”

Deanna laughed and shook her head. Without warning, she moved her hand across the table and rested it on top of his. The gesture felt so natural and unpremeditated that he didn’t think to resist.

“It’s so good to see you,” she said. “I know it’s unprofessional to admit this, but I had quite a little crush on you back then.”

“Huh,” he said, flattered and alarmed at the same time. He slid his hand out from under hers. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah. I wanted to ask you out, but you never returned my calls.”

“Ask me out?” he said. “We were both married.”

“I’m not saying it was a smart move.” Her expression grew sheepish. He felt her foot rubbing against his ankle under the table. “I don’t know. I kinda have a problem with monogamy sometimes. I mean, Jack’s a great guy, but twenty years is a long time.”

Tim listened to this confession with equal parts desire and dismay. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of. Or was it exactly what he’d been hoping for?

“Don’t you get like that with food sometimes?” she asked. “You know, you love chicken, chicken’s your favorite, you could eat chicken every day. And then one day it’s like, wham, you don’t even want to look at chicken.”

“I—I’m fine with chicken,” he said, moving his ankle away from her foot.

“I am, too,” she said. “That was just a hypothetical.”

Summoning a panicky sense of resolve, he drained the tepid dregs of his latte and jumped up as if he’d heard a gunshot.

“This was a real treat,” he said. “But I gotta get back to work.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah, I, uh—”

“Did I scare you?”

“Not at all. I have an appointment. I completely forgot about it.”

“All right,” she said, pursing her lips together in a sweet little pout. “Will you call me sometime?”

“Sure,” he said, sticking out his hand as if concluding a business transaction. “Great seeing you.”

“Same here,” she said, mimicking his manly tone as they shook hands. “Great seeing you, too.”

TIM KNEW he’d dodged a bullet, and swore to himself that he wouldn’t let it happen again. Two days later, though, Deanna sent him an e-mail at work asking if he was busy that night. He replied that he had no plans. She asked if it would be okay if she dropped by his place for an hour or so. He saw a perfect opportunity for clearing the air between them.

“NO,” he wrote. “IT WOULD NOT BE OKAY. PLEASE DON’T TEMPT ME LIKE THIS. THIS IS NOT HOW I WANT TO BE CONDUCTING MY LIFE!!!”

He pondered the words on the screen, feeling proud of himself for holding fast to his convictions. But even as he congratulated himself, he felt an exhilarating sensation of surrender spreading through his body. He had been strong for so long. And weakness was such a good old friend. He held down the backspace key until the screen was clear, then typed, “Sure, that would be great!!!”

He spent the rest of the day trying to talk himself out of what he’d just set in motion. He couldn’t eat or concentrate on his work, just kept trying to think of strategies for keeping Deanna at bay. He could leave his apartment, or hide inside with the lights off. He could leave a note on the front door telling her to go away. But he was kidding himself. Eight o’clock found him showered and clean-shaven and trembling with excitement as he opened the door. She stepped inside, wearing sneakers, Lycra shorts, and a pink-and-purple sports bra. She kissed him hard, running her hand down his belly to his belt buckle.

“You better make me sweat,” she told him. “I’m supposed to be at the gym.”

THAT’S ALL the affair ever amounted to—a lot of e-mailing and an hour of illicit sex once or twice a week. And yet it seemed huge, casting a dark shadow on everything else in his life, including—especially—his personal relationship with Jesus. Because how could you love Him the way He deserved to be loved if you couldn’t keep yourself from sinning, or worse, if you looked forward to sinning? And how could you praise Him the way He deserved to be praised when your heartfelt prayers for strength fell on deaf ears?

To his credit, Tim wasn’t going down without a fight. Every time they were together, he swore to her that this was it, that as much he enjoyed her company, he could no longer continue living as a hypocrite, betraying the solemn promises he’d made to himself and to God. She acted like she believed him, nodding sorrowfully and telling him he had to do what he had to do, that she completely understood, and would miss him very much. But then, a few nights later, as if the conversation had never occurred, Deanna would show up unannounced at his doorstep in gym clothes, and the whole farce would repeat itself.

As the weeks went by, their encounters grew increasingly hostile. It seemed to him at times that she delighted in his weakness, deriving some perverse pleasure out of watching him crumble, as if his inability to control himself reflected well on her as a woman. But what really irritated him was the air of innocence that surrounded her, as if he were the only morally compromised person in the bed.

“What happens?” he asked her one night, as she was performing oral sex on him. “Do you go home and kiss your sons good night with that mouth?”

She looked up, more surprised than hurt.

“I brush my teeth first, if it makes you feel better. You think I should gargle, too?”

“I don’t care what you do. I was just curious.”

A few minutes later, when Tim was reciprocating, Deanna suddenly said, “I wonder what Jesus would do.”

He raised his head. “What? What did you say?”

“I wonder if he was going down on me, would he do that swirly thing with his tongue? It’s a pretty fancy move.”

“Leave Him out of it, would you?”

“Do we have to?” she said. “You guys could double-team me.”

That should have been the last straw. He should have gotten up, gathered her clothes, told her to please leave and never come back. But he just lowered his head and went back to work.

Later, when he tried to figure out why he let her get away with insulting the Lord like that, he came up with two explanations. The first, which made him feel a little bit better, wasn’t so much an explanation as an acknowledgment of the fact that he’d asked for it, that she never would have said a word about Jesus if he hadn’t provoked her by raising the subject of her sons. In this version of events, he let her off the hook out of guilt and an instinctive sense of fairness, knowing that he’d crossed the line of decency and that she deserved to retaliate.

The second explanation, on the other hand, didn’t make him feel better at all. Because the more he thought about it, the more he could see that her mockery of his religious beliefs had excited him as much as it offended him, and that it had this effect precisely because part of him—the old Tim, the cynical addict who was hanging on for dear life—agreed with her, or was at least willing to consider the possibility that this Jesus kick had outlived its usefulness. Sure, it had been a great crutch, helping him to finally break his dependence on alcohol and drugs. But maybe that’s all it was. Maybe now that he’d gotten himself clean, he could ditch Jesus and go back to his old ways, stop trying to live up to what was turning out to be a pretty damn rigorous code of conduct, a path so straight and narrow that a lonely forty-year-old man had to beat himself up every time he made love to a pretty woman who came to his door and offered herself to him with an open heart and no strings attached, the kind of windfall that at any other time in his life he would have celebrated as a miraculous gift from above.

WHO KNOWS how much longer it would have lasted, how much lower he would have sunk, if he hadn’t been rescued by a knock on the door one Thursday night. It followed so swiftly upon Deanna’s departure that Tim automatically assumed she’d come back to retrieve something she’d left behind, or to give him one last kiss, which was why he answered the door wearing only sky-blue boxers and a dopey grin that melted away at the sight of his visitor’s grim face.

“Wow,” he said. “I wasn’t, uh …”

Pastor Dennis slipped past him without a word, pausing just inside the door to sniff at the air with canine concentration.

“Lovely,” he said, and though Tim hadn’t noticed it before, he suddenly became aware of the overpowering smell of sex in the apartment, as pervasive and unmistakable as the odor of frying garlic.

Without waiting for an invitation, Pastor Dennis crossed the room and sat down on the couch, as if this were a casual social visit. He was younger than Tim by almost ten years, a wiry guy with thinning blond hair, visible jaw muscles, and unfashionably large eyeglasses. In pressed khakis and a navy polo shirt, he looked exactly like what he used to be—a geek who sold computer equipment at Best Buy—before the Lord tapped him on the shoulder and entrusted him with a new set of responsibilities.

“Nice place you got here,” he said, glancing around the sparsely furnished living room. “A real swinging bachelor pad.”

“It’s a dump,” Tim told him. “But it’s all I can afford right now.”

He’d lived here a full year, but the TV was still resting on a milk crate. The hideous plaid couch and woven synthetic curtains had been left behind by the previous tenant, an elderly man who’d pleaded with Tim to adopt his two trembling, rheumy-eyed dachshunds—they weren’t welcome in the assisted-living complex his kids were forcing him into—then called him “a heartless S.O.B.” when he declined.

Pastor Dennis reached for the Bible Tim kept on the glass-topped coffee table, the one decent piece of furniture in the apartment—someone in Greenwillow Estates had put it out for trash, amazingly enough—and began flipping through the pages. It was something Tim had seen him do numerous times at Addicts 4 Christ meetings, and it rarely took him longer than a couple of seconds to locate something uncannily relevant to the situation at hand.

“Been studying the Good Book?” he inquired.

“Every day,” Tim assured him. “First thing in the morning and right before bed.”

“Impressive.” The Pastor slammed the Bible shut and tossed it back onto the table with a carelessness Tim found disturbing. “Looks like you learned a lot.”

Tim’s face burned with shame. Despite his fig leaf of underwear, he felt naked and damned, like Adam standing before God with a fruity taste in his mouth.

“Maybe you read it more carefully than me,” the Pastor continued. “I never came across the verse that said it was okay to entertain whores in your apartment.”

“She’s not a whore,” Tim said. “Don’t call her that.”

“Whatever.” The Pastor shrugged. “You never told me you had a girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. She just … stops by once in a while.”

“How convenient. You don’t even have to buy her dinner?”

“Look,” Tim muttered. “I’m sorry about this.”

“She’s cute,” the Pastor said. “Have to give her that. I tried to talk to her, but she seemed to be in kind of a hurry. You think someone’s waiting for her at home?”

Guilty as he was, Tim began to bristle at the interrogation. He was an adult, a divorced man who lived alone. He was entitled to a private life, just like anybody else.

“You know what?” he said. “I’m not proud of what I’m doing. But it’s really none of your business.”

“None of my business?” Pastor Dennis looked hurt. “You’re one of my flock. I don’t want you to get lost again.”

“I’m not lost,” Tim insisted. “I just get lonely sometimes. I’m only human, okay?”

The two men stared at each other for a long time before the Pastor finally nodded, conceding the point.

“Fine,” he said. “Do what you want. But I don’t want to see you in church this Sunday. Adulterers aren’t welcome in the Tabernacle.”

“What?” Tim was taken aback. “I can’t come to church?”

“Not mine.” Pastor Dennis rose from the couch. “Take your sin somewhere else. I’m not going to tolerate it.”

“That’s not fair. You can’t just—”

“I’m sorry.” Pastor Dennis’s voice was flat and hard. “We’re trying to set an example. You know that.”

“Wait.” Tim grabbed at the Pastor’s arm as he headed for the door. “Don’t do this to me.”

“You’re doing it to yourself.” The Pastor’s voice faltered, and Tim was startled to see him wipe a tear from his cheek. “I misjudged you. I thought you were one of my warriors.”

“I’m doing my best,” Tim protested.

“No,” Pastor Dennis told him. “I refuse to believe that.”

For a few seconds after the Pastor left, Tim stood stunned and angry in the middle of his living room. Fuck you, he thought. And fuck your church, you sanctimonious asshole. He should’ve known it wasn’t going to work out. There were people who could live within the rules and people who couldn’t, and he had always been one of the ones who couldn’t. It didn’t matter who was spouting them—parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, fellow musicians, women he was sleeping with, and now a minister. It had been crazy for him to imagine that it could have been otherwise.

But then it hit him. No, he thought. No way. This can’t be happening. It was impossible, intolerable, at this point in his life, to just be left with this—lousy job, cruddy apartment, the wasteland of the TV and the computer, the emptiness relieved only by Saturdays with Abby and a visit from Deanna once or twice a week. Sure, there were other churches, churches where the busybody Pastor wouldn’t make a house call to tell you you were going to hell, and wouldn’t cry if you disappointed him. But what would be the point of belonging to one of them?

He was out the door and running barefoot across the still-warm slate of the walkway before he remembered that he wasn’t really dressed for it. Luckily, Hillside Gardens wasn’t the liveliest of places at this time of night. He made it all the way to the parking lot without encountering a neighbor, and saw to his immense relief that Pastor Dennis was standing by the trunk of his Corolla, head bowed in prayer.

“Wait,” Tim called out. “We gotta talk.”

He slowed to a walk as he crossed the nubbly blacktop, trying to catch his breath and compose his thoughts. Before he could speak, though, Pastor Dennis opened his arms and began walking toward him.

“Hallelujah,” he said.

Tim was a little self-conscious at first, embracing another man in a public place while wearing so little clothing, but the embarrassment passed quickly. He closed his eyes and let himself be held.

“I’m right here,” the Pastor whispered, pressing Tim’s head softly against his bony shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”

IN AN effort to get right with God after this fiasco, Tim began attending one-on-one prayer and counseling sessions with Pastor Dennis, in addition to his weekly Men’s Bible Study and Addicts 4 Christ meetings. The Pastor believed that Tim needed to look deep inside his heart and decide once and for all if he was with Jesus or against Him. He also believed it would be an excellent idea if Tim asked a certain young Christian woman on a date.

“Just take her to the movies,” he said. “If you don’t get along, I’ll never mention it again.”

Tim agreed, more out of guilt than enthusiasm, and had a better time than he’d expected (they went to Spider-Man 2, and to the Rustic Barn Diner afterward). Carrie was easygoing and surprisingly non-judgmental. She asked a lot of questions about his life, and he answered them as fully as he could, at one point giving her a detailed explanation of the differences between freebasing and smoking crack that she seemed to find fascinating. At the end of the night, he walked her to the front door of her parents’ house to say good night. He thought about kissing her, but played it safe by sticking out his hand. She giggled and pecked him on the cheek.

“I had fun,” she said.

They went to King Arthur the following Friday, then took a long walk around Blue Lake after Sunday meeting. It was a spectacular day, and he could feel her exerting a subtle gravitational pull, drawing him slowly but irresistibly into her orbit. Halfway around the lake, he worked up the courage to take her hand. She let out another nervous giggle as their fingers intertwined.

There were more movies as the summer slipped away, a couple of dinners, a day trip down the shore, some sweet kisses. But it wasn’t like falling in love, at least not as Tim had experienced it in the past. No physical fireworks or emotional roller coasters, just a calm feeling of acceptance, a surrender to something so obvious it quickly came to seem inevitable. By late September, they’d begun tiptoeing around the subject of marriage.

Not that he was without the occasional misgiving. Unlike most of the women he’d been attracted to over the years, Carrie wasn’t much of a conversationalist; sometimes they had trouble finding things to talk about besides themselves and the Tabernacle. And then there were those jarring moments when she drew a blank on what for him was a shockingly obvious reference—Muddy Waters, R. Crumb, Agent 99. Trivia mostly, but he never failed to suffer a jolt of deep disappointment when it happened, a sense that the distance between them was vaster and more unbridgeable than he’d realized.

In mid-October, Carrie’s parents invited him over for dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Frischknecht were stern, solemn people, old enough to be Carrie’s grandparents. They’d lived overseas for many years, working as missionaries in places like Bolivia and South Korea, but had returned to America in the late seventies, when Mrs. Frischknecht began suffering from debilitating migraines. Carrie had arrived a few years later, long after her parents had resigned themselves to a barren marriage.

The Frischknechts were polite to Tim, but clearly wary. He did his best to put them at ease, speaking truthfully about the troubles in his life, and the astonishing transformation he’d gone through since accepting Jesus. He told them about Abby, too, what a good student and talented athlete she was, wanting them to know that he was a dedicated father, while not sugarcoating the fact that he came with baggage.

“She’s a good kid,” he said. “This year she’s gonna be Hermione for Halloween. You know, the smart girl from Harry Potter?”

Mr. and Mrs. Frischknecht regarded him with studied blankness, and Tim realized that he’d said something wrong.

“I-I guess you guys aren’t big on the Harry Potter stuff. I mean, I know it’s full of witches and magic and that kind of thing, but the kids really love it.”

Mr. Frischknecht nodded curtly and returned to his meal. Carrie looked at Tim.

“We don’t celebrate Halloween,” she told him.

“You don’t?”

She shook her head.

“Not even when you were little?”

“It’s not a Christian holiday,” Mrs. Frischknecht interjected.

“I don’t care to see a child dressed as the Devil,” Mr. Frischknecht added. “That I don’t find amusing.”

“Hmm,” said Tim. “I hadn’t really thought about it like that.”

Mr. Frischknecht explained that some churches had begun using Halloween for the purposes of Christian outreach—they set up truly creepy haunted houses that taught kids about sin and hell.

“You get them good and scared to death,” he said. “And then they’re ready to hear about the alternative.”

“There might be one in the area,” Mrs. Frischknecht told him. “Maybe you could take your daughter.”

On the way home that night, it occurred to Tim that he and Carrie had effectively grown up in different countries. At first this seemed depressing to him, but after a while he came to realize that it was helpful to think about their relationship in this way, and even oddly comforting.

If she’d been a Japanese or Turkish woman, say, he wouldn’t have expected her to know who Bad Company was, or to laugh at a passing mention of the Coneheads. He would have either explained the reference or told her that it wasn’t important enough to worry about. But he wouldn’t have been annoyed or troubled by her ignorance of something she had no reason to know about in the first place. And he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that she’d never dressed up for Halloween or gone trick-or-treating with her friends.

It wasn’t like he was one of those losers sending away for a mail-order bride because he couldn’t get an American woman to give him the time of day. Not at all: he was the immigrant, a tourist who’d gone to a foreign country, met a local woman, and decided to stay. The point wasn’t to make her more like him, to fill her head with the same crap that cluttered his own; it was just the opposite—for him to become more like her, to leave the old country behind so he could create a newer, better version of himself. It was in this spirit of adventure and self-renewal that, a few days later, Tim asked Carrie to be his wife.

THEY WERE married in a simple Christian ceremony at the Tabernacle, with Abby and the rest of Tim’s bewildered family looking on. The uneventful buffet reception at the VFW hall—no drinking, dancing, or secular music—couldn’t have been more different than the debacle that followed his first wedding, at which he’d gotten falling-down drunk, mashed the ceremonial piece of cake into his bride’s face, insulted her father, and had to be dumped into the limo at the end of the night by a couple of groomsmen who were only slightly less tanked than he was. He couldn’t remember anything after that, but had no reason to doubt Allison’s claim that the marriage wasn’t consummated until the following afternoon.

This time the festivities were over by nine. The newlyweds waved good-bye to their guests and walked hand in hand to Tim’s Saturn, which he’d gotten washed and detailed for the occasion. Carrie’s billowy gown seemed comically enormous inside the car; Tim had to tunnel beneath the fabric to release the emergency brake. He kissed her before starting the car.

“How ya doin’?” he asked.

“Pretty good.” She gave him a sweet, slightly distracted smile. “I had a nice time.”

He snuck a sidelong glance at her as they pulled out of the parking lot. She was sitting up straight in the passenger seat, hands folded in her lap, her face calm and watchful. If she was worried about the next phase of their wedding night, she wasn’t letting on.

“I’m glad Abby was there,” he said. “I think she really enjoyed it.”

“She’s so cute,” said Carrie. “I just wish she’d warm up to me.”

“She will. She just needs to get to know you.”

“I hope so.”

It was true that his daughter had been a bit standoffish—Tim had to coax her into giving the bride a good night hug—but that was to be expected. Abby and Carrie had only met a few times before tonight, and neither of them seemed to have any idea of how to communicate with the other. Tim blamed most of this awkwardness on Allison, who had poisoned Abby’s mind about the Tabernacle and the people who worshipped there, and a little bit on Carrie herself, who seemed not to realize that the onus was on the adult to initiate and sustain a conversation with a child. And it certainly hadn’t helped to have his family looking so grim and shell-shocked during the ceremony, and refusing to mingle with the church people at the reception. The sole exception was his father, a retired storm-window salesman who packed a flask in one pocket, a travel-sized bottle of Scope in the other, and prided himself on his ability to “get along with everyone.”

“At least my dad had a good time,” he pointed out.

“He’s funny,” Carrie observed. “He reminds me of you.”

If Allison had heard this, she would’ve cracked up. For years, Tim had told her she had permission to shoot him if he started acting like his father.

“He’s attentive to young women,” Tim said. “I’ll give him that.”

Carrie patted him on the knee.

“Your poor mother, though. She looked like she was at a funeral.”

Tim had considered it a triumph just to have his mother show up. She was bitterly opposed to the marriage and had been threatening to boycott the wedding from the day it had been announced.

“I’m sorry.” Tim squeezed her hand. “She did the best she could.”

“She tried,” Carrie conceded. “She told me I was beautiful.”

TWO DAYS earlier, at Pastor Dennis’s urging, Tim had gone to his parents’ house for dinner, hoping to make one last-ditch effort to change his mother’s mind. Late in the evening, after the dessert plates had been put away and his father had gone to bed, he sat across from her at the kitchen table, and listened yet again to her case against the marriage, impressed by what a forceful and articulate speaker she had become. She’d been a pushover when he was younger, a sad, frightened woman willing to believe whatever outrageous lie he told her if it meant she could continue to pretend that everything was okay, that her favorite son didn’t have a drug problem—the pot belonged to a friend, someone must have slipped LSD into his drink, he honestly knew nothing about the TV and stereo system that had disappeared from the rec room while his parents were away at the family reunion. But years of disappointment and Al-Anon had toughened her up, giving her a clear-eyed, slightly cynical view of his behavior, and a vocabulary with which to express it.

“You’ve got an addictive personality,” she said. “And I’m worried that you’re using Jesus as a substitute for drugs, like methadone or something. And that’s great for now. But eventually you’re going to have to face the world on your own two feet.”

“I understand what you’re saying, Mom. But Jesus isn’t some kind of means to an end. He’s real. And I know what He wants from me.”

His mother grimaced. “Please don’t talk to me about Jesus. I feel like I don’t know you anymore.”

Tim had to bite his tongue to keep from reminding her that she called herself a Presbyterian and allegedly believed in Jesus herself. But they’d had this argument before—she insisted that his Jesus and her Jesus were two totally different things—and there was no reason to rehash it now.

“I want you to know me,” he said. “I want to love and honor you for who you are, and I want you to do the same for me.”

“I do love you. That’s why I’m telling you this is a bad idea.”

“How about if I beg?” he said, making a puppy-dog face. “Would that work?”

Her expression didn’t soften. “You hardly know this girl. You said so yourself.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” he pointed out. “Allison and I were together for five years before we got married. We knew everything about each other. And look how that turned out.”

“Don’t give me that crap,” she said. “You and Allison were perfect together. You never should have let her go.”

“I didn’t let her go. She went on her own.”

“No, honey.” His mother shook her head, as if she pitied him. “You made her go.”

“Whatever,” Tim said. “She’s gone now, and I’m getting married on Saturday. You just have to accept that.”

“I’d be fine with it if I thought it would make you happy. Do you really think it will?”

“I don’t know. I’m leaving it in God’s hands.”

“That’s a pretty big risk.” His mother looked straight at him, and he could feel her pleading with him at a level deeper than words. “Why can’t you postpone the wedding for six months or a year, make sure you know what you’re getting into?”

This was a question Tim had asked himself numerous times in recent weeks; it was also something he’d discussed in a premarital counseling session, when Pastor Dennis first raised the possibility of waiving the usual waiting period for couples who wanted to get married in the Tabernacle. The Pastor firmly believed that it was time for Tim to remove himself from the temptations of bachelorhood, to stop questioning himself and his commitment to Jesus, to bind himself to someone who shared his faith and his priorities, and to get on with his life as a husband, father, and servant of the Lord. He cited 1 Corinthians 7: 1-2: “It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.”

It was a weird verse, Tim thought, encouraging marriage not as a good thing in itself, but simply as the best of bad alternatives. Hardly the stuff of love songs. And yet, like a lot of stuff in the Bible, it possessed a kind of hardheaded wisdom that resonated with his experience of the world and his circumstances at the present moment. From a Christian perspective, to be a forty-year-old bachelor was simply not a spiritually viable condition.

“The wedding’s not gonna be postponed, Ma. And it’ll break my heart if you’re not there.”

His mother let out a defeated breath and slumped back in her chair. She gave him a tired smile that made her look like an old woman.

“It’s late,” she said. “And I haven’t been sleeping very well.”

“Dad still snoring?”

She laughed. “You wouldn’t believe the noises that come out of that man.”

“Why don’t you kick him out? Send him to the guest room?”

“I tried that,” she said, a bit sheepishly. “Got kinda lonely.”

She walked him to the door and gave him the usual motherly peck on the cheek. But then, instead of letting go, she hugged him with all her strength, as if Tim were leaving on a long trip, and she wasn’t sure when she might see him again.

*   *   *

CARRIE SPENT a long time in the bathroom on their wedding night, so long that he started to worry.

“You okay?” he called out.

“Just a minute,” she replied.

He couldn’t blame her for being nervous; he was suffering from a mild case of butterflies himself. Now that they were alone, the minutia of planning and the excitement of the big day behind them, the enormity of what they’d done had finally begun to settle over him. It’s one thing to take a leap of faith, he thought, and another thing to hit the ground.

“Anything I can do?” he said.

“Not right now.”

He wasn’t sure if it helped or hurt to have this thick cloud of sexual suspense hanging over everything, like it was 1955 all over again. He hadn’t been this jittery about getting laid since junior year of high school, when Jenny Rego invited him over on a Friday night, told him that her parents were out of town, and instructed him to bring pot and protection.

Even in his wild days, Tim hadn’t exactly been a Don Juan, but he was a relatively good-looking musician, and there always seemed to be women around who found him charming, especially the ones who shared his enthusiasm for controlled substances. On more than one occasion he’d lived out the rock star fantasy of waking up next to a girl whose name he didn’t know, or at least couldn’t remember.

But he’d been a gentleman with Carrie, and he didn’t regret it. Somehow they’d gotten through their entire courtship without doing anything more than making out like teenagers, even though they could have slipped over to his apartment at any time. After their engagement, Carrie had even hinted a couple of times that she wouldn’t object, but he didn’t take her up on it. They’d both signed contracts with the Tabernacle pledging to refrain from premarital relations, and he was determined not to start things off on the wrong foot.

In addition to not having sex, they’d also managed not to talk about it very much, aside from repeatedly telling each other how much they were looking forward to living together as man and wife. Partly, Tim thought, this was because it was hard for two people whose histories were so different to talk about sex in the abstract, and partly it was because Carrie became visibly embarrassed whenever the subject came up. He just assumed they’d jump in and figure things out as they went along.

But maybe they should have discussed their fears and expectations in greater detail, he thought, when Carrie finally emerged from the hotel bathroom. Wearing a satiny white nightgown that was a gift from her mother, she looked like an old-fashioned pinup girl—curvy and soft and heartbreakingly young—and he would have been thrilled to lie down with her on the conjugal bed, if only her face hadn’t been so pale and terrified, her eyes so raw and puffy from crying.

“Honey,” he said. “What is it?”

She tried to tell him, but the words wouldn’t come. After two or three false starts, she shook her head in frustration and burst into tears. He took her in his arms and held her until she calmed down. He whispered that it was okay to be afraid, that it was natural to be nervous before your first time. He promised to be gentle, or, if she preferred, they could just go to sleep and try again in the morning, that is, if she felt up to it.

“It’s not—” she began, but couldn’t complete the sentence.

“Not what?”

She took a big breath and made a visible effort to get hold of herself.

“My first time,” she said.

Tim was startled, but tried not to show it.

“That’s okay,” he told her. “It’s not mine, either.”

She laughed through her tears. He got her a glass of water.

“Should we talk about it?” he asked.

“I’ve wanted to,” she explained. “It’s just hard.”

She sat beside him on the edge of the bed. In a quiet, quivery voice she told him about the spiritual crisis she’d suffered when she was nineteen, after the death of her grandmother. She lost her faith and ran away from home.

“Where’d you go?”

“Buncha places.”

“On your own?”

“Sometimes,” she said, unable to meet his eyes. “Not always.”

“You met a guy?”

She bit her lip and nodded.

“It’s okay,” he said. “That was a long time ago. It’s over and done with.”

“It wasn’t just one,” she said.

“One, two, whatever. Doesn’t matter.”

She didn’t respond. He started to get a little worried.

“Just out of curiosity,” he said. “How many guys are we talking about?”

“A lot,” she said. “Eight, maybe nine. I lost count.”

“Really? How long were you gone?”

“Couple months.”

“Wow. You kept yourself busy.”

“I strayed,” she said, finally working up the nerve to look into his eyes. “I went a little crazy.”

IN A funny way, Carrie’s confession served to correct an imbalance in their relationship that had nagged at him from the beginning, liberating them both from the rigid script in which he was forced to play the chastened older man seeking redemption from the saintly young girl. It also relieved some of the sexual pressure he’d been feeling in anticipation of the Big Night. He’d never understood the fetish some guys seemed to have for sleeping with virgins. The two times he’d done it—once in high school, the other in college—the experience had been painful for the girls and not much fun for him; it was a weight off his shoulders to know that there would be no deflowering taking place that night in the Honeymoon Suite.

And the sex turned out to be fine, not nearly as delicate or somber an operation as he’d feared. Carrie was enthusiastic enough, if a bit on the quiet side—Tim liked to hear women purr and moan and talk dirty—but somehow completely herself. He looked down at one point and noticed an expression on her face—eyes squeezed shut, a small private smile playing at the corners of her mouth—that he’d seen numerous times at Sunday meeting, when she raised her arms aloft and swayed to the music. When it was over, she laid her head on his chest and let out a sweet sigh.

“Oh Lord,” she said. “I am so happy to be out of that house.”

CARRIE WAS, in many ways, an ideal Christian wife—modest, affectionate, sincerely devoted to his happiness. Tim knew how lucky he was to have found her, so he was baffled by the doubts and second thoughts that began plaguing him almost from the moment they moved into their first apartment, the upstairs unit of a two-family on Baxter Street.

He had a few specific complaints. Carrie wasn’t much of a cook—because of her father’s stomach problems, her family had shunned any spices more exotic than salt and pepper—and Tim found himself mildly depressed by a steady diet of overcooked meat and potatoes. It also bugged him how little interest she had in politics or current events. He made an effort one morning to get her up to speed on the deteriorating situation in Iraq, but he could tell from the glazed look in her eyes once he began tossing around words like Sunni and Shiite that it wasn’t going to stick.

And Carrie’s inability to connect with his daughter was an ongoing source of irritation. Tim normally thought of Abby as a sweet kid, but something about her new stepmother brought out the spoiled brat in her, an eye-rolling snottiness that had only gotten worse despite his repeated requests for her to show a little respect. Carrie responded by hiding her hurt feelings behind a wall of unconvincing endearments and smothering solicitude—What can I get for you, sweetie? Honey, do you need more light?—that grated on Tim as badly as it did on Abby.

Ultimately, though, these were all minor grievances, the inevitable little letdowns that marked the transition between the honeymoon and till death do us part. The thing that really bothered him was bigger and more elusive, but it got closer to the heart of their relationship, his nagging suspicion that some vital ingredient was missing from their marriage.

They never argued.

Carrie was the most agreeable person he’d ever met. Whatever he wanted was fine with her. He controlled the finances, chose the shows they watched on TV, and told her what they would do on the weekends. She followed his instructions happily, without resentment or hesitation, in accordance with the passage from Ephesians, a framed version of which they had received as a wedding gift from Pastor Dennis, and was now hanging on their bedroom wall: “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so the wives to their own husbands in everything.”

He realized that a lot of guys would have envied him; in some ways, it was like living in an I Dream of Jeannie fantasy world. All he could figure was that the years he’d spent with Allison—a moody, demanding woman in the best of times—had warped his view of marriage, made him think of it not as a loving partnership but as an exhausting struggle for the upper hand, relieved by occasional bouts of angry, exhilarating sex. Whatever the reason, he was finding it a bit boring, getting his way all the time, never having to wheedle, compromise, or even engage in the most mundane sort of marital horse-trading. It just seemed a little too easy.

He felt this keenly in the bedroom. Unlike Allison, who was a master of withholding sex—she got real pleasure out of making him beg—Carrie never, ever said no. Their entire love life happened on his timetable, according to his whims. He told her when to take off her nightgown, when to roll onto her stomach, when to use her mouth. It was a powerful feeling at first, to have an obedient young woman so completely at his disposal.

But it got old fast. There was never any resistance, but there was never any suspense, either. Carrie didn’t say no, but she never initiated sex, either, never snuck up on him from behind while he was washing dishes and reached around for his dick, the way Allison had done on a couple of memorable occasions. She wouldn’t have dreamed of waking him in the morning by lowering her nipple into his half-open mouth, or coming home from the video store with Naughty Neighbors 2 instead of Apollo 13 (not that this would have done him any good, now that he’d sworn off porn).

He wondered sometimes if he should talk to her about this, but he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. It seemed like it would kind of defeat the purpose, telling someone to please be more spontaneous, and then providing them with detailed instructions for how to go about it.

PASTOR DENNIS must have sensed something was amiss, because he took Tim aside a few months after the wedding and asked, in a slightly ominous voice, how he and Carrie were making out.

“Fine,” said Tim. “No complaints.”

The Pastor lowered his voice. “What about your love life? Everything working the way it’s supposed to?”

Tim hesitated. This wasn’t really anyone’s business but his and Carrie’s.

“Not bad,” he said. “Still gettin’ acquainted.”

Pastor Dennis pondered this for a moment.

“You know what? I think it would be a good idea if my wife had a chat with your wife.”

“That’s okay,” Tim told him. “It’s really not necessary.”

“Nothing too heavy,” the Pastor assured him. “Just a little girl talk.”

The Pastor’s wife, Emily—a plump, almost alarmingly upbeat woman—dropped by the apartment one Saturday while Tim and Abby were at a soccer game. She brought along a book called Hot Christian Sex: The Godly Way to Spice Up Your Marriage.

“She said we should read this,” Carrie informed him in bed that night. “It supposedly worked wonders for her and Pastor Dennis.”

Considering the somewhat puritanical character of the Tabernacle, the book turned out to be surprisingly racy. The authors, the Rev. Mark D. Finster and his wife, Barbara G. Finster, proclaimed the good news right in the Introduction: “For a Christian married couple, sex is nothing less than a form of worship, a celebration of your love for one another and a glorification of the Heavenly Father who brought you together. So of course God wants you to have better sex! And He wants you to have more of it than you ever had before, in positions you probably didn’t even know existed, with stronger orgasms than you believed were possible!”

Tim was particularly intrigued by Chapter Five, “Is This Okay?” in which the Finsters gave an itemized list of just about every conceivable sexual act—including a few that were unfamiliar to him—along with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, depending upon whether the practice in question was expressly forbidden by Scripture.

According to the Finsters, sex between married Christians was a lot more freewheeling than Tim had realized. Prostitution, adultery, threesomes, orgies, bestiality—basically anything involving a person or animal outside of the marriage—were off-limits, but beyond that there was considerable leeway. Masturbation was fine (especially if the nonmasturbating partner got to watch), as was role playing, just as long as the couple was married within the fantasy scenario, a requirement that struck Tim as a little unwieldy: Okay, you’re the nurse and I’m the patient … and, uh, we got married right before my hernia operation. The Finsters saw no biblical reason why a husband shouldn’t take nude pictures of his wife, or vice versa, just as long as no one else laid eyes on them, and they couldn’t locate anything in the Scriptures that conveyed explicit disapproval of light bondage and/or consensual S&M. Ditto for cross-dressing. Even anal sex, which Tim had assumed fell under the verboten category of “sodomy,” turned out to be okay for heterosexual married couples; only homosexual men were barred from backdoor intercourse, which struck Tim as a little unfair, but he wasn’t the one making the rules. The authors did express a certain amount of ambivalence about “so-called rim jobs”—they didn’t believe in pussyfooting around with euphemisms—but their objections were more bacterial than religious.

The Finsters were generally gung ho about sexy lingerie—the Reverend rhapsodized a couple of times about the sight of Barbara G. in a garter belt and silk stockings—but they warned their readers to be wary of purchasing these items through secular catalogues and websites. The sight of glamorous models in skimpy, deliberately provocative outfits tended to produce sinful feelings of lust in the men who viewed them, while also inspiring unfair comparisons between their wives and the emaciated, surgically enhanced women in the photos. As an alternative, the Finsters recommended a handful of Christian websites that sold lingerie without the assistance of models. Tim showed the list to Carrie.

“What do you think? Should we order a few things?”

“Sure,” she said. “If that’s what you want.”

FOR A while, at least, the book administered a welcome jolt of electricity to their marital bed. Tim ordered a see-through teddy for Carrie, some thigh-high stockings, and even a crotchless mesh bodysuit that rendered her mute with embarrassment (he finally just told her to take it off and toss it in the garbage). For some reason she was less freaked out by the merry widow, and girlishly happy to don the French maid costume, as if it were payback for all the Halloweens she’d been deprived of as a child. The element of dress-up freed them both somehow, made it a bit easier to try out some of the “Fun Activities” outlined in Chapter Seven, “Steamin’ Up the Sheets.”

It would have been great, except that Tim found himself thinking more and more frequently of Allison—she was a total Victoria’s Secret junkie—and the sexy outfits she’d surprised him with back in the day. On a few occasions, he succumbed to the temptation of ordering more or less identical items for Carrie—camouflage thong and tank top, pleated Catholic schoolgirl skirt, lacy red peekaboo bra and matching tap pants—and then attempting to re-create memorable scenarios from his first marriage.

It never really worked, though. Whatever she wore, and however he asked her to behave, Carrie always remained stubbornly herself—sweet, compliant, eager to please. She would talk dirty if he insisted, but her vocabulary was severely limited, and she never managed to put any conviction behind the words. The one time he spanked her was a disappointment as well. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make himself believe, even for a minute or two, that she was a naughty girl who deserved correction. And she didn’t say Ouch the way Allison did, as if she were secretly enjoying the punishment. Carrie just said it like it hurt.

Despite these setbacks, they kept at it, working doggedly through the summer and into the fall to claim their portion of hot Christian sex. Carrie never complained, but recently he’d begun sensing a certain weariness setting in, a desire to just do her part and get it over with. Tim’s own enthusiasm was flagging, too; for the first time in his life, he began suffering from an intermittent failure to perform, a dismal turn of events that made both of them feel inadequate.

There were nights when he felt so trapped that the only thing he could do was get in his car and drive aimlessly around Stonewood Heights, listening to one of the three Grateful Dead CDs—American Beauty, Workingman’s Dead, and a bootleg of a show in Buffalo from the summer of 1988—he hadn’t been able to part with, despite his assurances to Pastor Dennis that he’d cut his ties, not only with the people he’d gotten drunk and high with in the past but with all the books and music and clothes connected to that dark chapter of the past. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he sometimes found himself driving repeatedly past certain bars, thinking of how pleasant it would be just to pop in and have a beer, less for the beer than for the company, and the darkness, and the music—the relief of finally being back home among his own kind. He’d been down this road before, of course, and knew with grim precision what sort of danger he was in.

HE WAS so downhearted about the whole situation that he didn’t bother to conceal the truth when Pastor Dennis walked him out to his car after last week’s Wednesday Night Bible Study and asked how things were going with him and Carrie.

“So-so,” said Tim. “We’re kinda treading water right now.”

“I was wondering,” the Pastor said. “I sort of figured she might be pregnant by now.”

“We’re not quite ready,” said Tim. “You know, money-wise. Buying the townhouse pretty much wiped out our savings.”

“You know how I feel about waiting,” the Pastor reminded him. “You just gotta jump in.”

“She’s young. We’ve got a lot of time.”

“What about that book my wife gave you? Did it help?”

“A little.” Tim gave a puzzled shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve just been feeling … kinda confused lately.”

They were standing in the nearly empty parking lot of the Tabernacle. The night was cool and breezy; papery leaves skittered across the blacktop. The Pastor leaned forward, studying Tim a little more closely.

“Confused? In what way?”

“It’s weird.” Tim paused, taking a moment to wipe an inappropriate smile off his face. “I don’t know why, but I’ve been, uh, having a lot of feelings for my ex-wife lately. Sexual feelings. It’s kinda messed me up with Carrie.”

“Your ex-wife is remarrried,” Pastor Dennis reminded him. “She’s moved on. So have you.”

“I know.” Tim’s voice was barely louder than a murmur. “But some of the time … I mean, I’m not proud of this, but some of the time it’s like I’m using Carrie as a substitute. Like I’m with her, but I’m kind of letting myself pretend she’s Allison.”

Even in the darkness, Tim could see the Pastor’s eyes go cold.

“You’re pathetic,” he said.

“I know,” said Tim. “But what am I supposed to do?”

“Fix yourself,” the Pastor told him. “Ask God to help.”

“I’ve tried that.”

Pastor Dennis looked up at the sky, as if seeking advice. The moon was bright, three-quarters full, its bottom edge obscured by a raggedy cloud.

“Try a little harder,” he said, bringing his gaze back to earth. “In the meantime, keep your unclean hands off your wife. She deserves better.”

Tim hung his head. The Pastor sighed. He sounded beleaguered, like a guy who could use a stiff drink.

“You made promises, Tim. It’s time to start keeping them.”

TIM KNEW exactly what he was supposed to do that Sunday morning as he and Carrie knelt together on the living room rug. According to Pastor Dennis, there was an accepted procedure—it was drawn from I Corinthians 7—by which a husband notified his wife that he would be abstaining from sexual relations with her for a defined period until he purged himself of the lust that was preventing him from being the kind of husband God wanted him to be. Luckily, the husband was under no obligation to inform his wife about the specifics of his sinful desire; all he had to do was reassure her that he was working on the problem and that things would soon return to normal.

Tim smiled at Carrie and took her hands in his. She smiled back, her face sweet and trusting, as always, but shadowed by a watchful anxiety that hadn’t been there on the day Pastor Dennis had brought them together at the church picnic. She still looked terribly young, but there was no denying that marriage had changed her.

“Lord Jesus,” he said, “sometimes we’re not as strong as You want us to be.”

Carrie nodded in agreement, but Tim could see the way her body tensed, as if she were bracing herself for bad news. He wondered sometimes if she wished they’d never met, wished that God had saved her for a younger, kinder, less demanding man, a husband who didn’t come burdened with a snotty daughter, an ex-wife he couldn’t seem to get out of his head, and such puzzling sexual needs.

“That’s why we need Your help,” he said.

“We all do,” Carrie said in a soft voice, and Tim couldn’t tell if this was part of the prayer, or if she was speaking directly to him. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Tim turned his gaze to the ceiling. He understood perfectly well that the throat-clearing was over, and that the moment had come to level with his wife. He even had his lines memorized. He was supposed to look her in the eyes and say, Carrie, I’ve made a decision.

She wouldn’t cry, he thought. She’d bear the news like a trouper. But she’d worry, he thought, and probably blame herself for having done something wrong, even though she’d never done anything wrong. Not to him, and probably not to anyone. The whole mess was his fault, and it seemed heartless to make her suffer for it. It took an effort of will for him to restore eye contact with his wife.

“Oh, Lord,” he said. “I am so grateful to you for bringing this wonderful woman into my life. You know I’m not worthy.”

Carrie shook her head no, but he could see how pleased she was. Tim leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.

“Do me a favor,” he prayed. “Help me to love her the way she deserves.”