Thirteen Crucifixions, 90

Margery and Dwight had just arrived with extra food and folding chairs.  Glen thought that Margery seemed a little thin and haggard, but unusually festive and exuberant.  Almost, she seemed manic.  She had assigned herself to the kitchen, Dwight to the couch where he sat between Stephen and Pierre who were both looking on him with adoring eyes.  Dwight appeared rather saturnine.  Had he aged?  Was he unhappy?  He always seemed a little bit melancholy if not altogether morose.  He had his share to be sad about, and now how he must suffer over living with a wife who didn’t particularly want him.  He wondered about Margery, and how much further she would go in trying to spiritualize their marriage.  Her first husband, Peter, must have given her quite the raw deal.  Though Glen was himself easily and comfortably celibate, he had great empathy for the average male with a healthy sexual appetite.  Even so, he had dealt Timothy a similar blow that Margery must be dealing Dwight.  He had made Timothy suffer.  Or perhaps he was unnecessarily blaming himself.  Dwight, just now, reminded Glen of Timothy, his former lover.  Sombre, solemn and saturnine.  Like Stephen.  Dwight was like Stephen as Stephen was like Timothy?  This was a particular type that Glen attracted.  Brooding, sombre intellectuals whose lives moved at the pace of Hermann Hesse and with the rhythm of a novel by Thomas Mann.  Yet he wasn’t at all like that himself, being all light and will-o’-the-wisp angelic. Or he attracted them?  He couldn’t say.  Everyone in the apartment seemed to him particularly beautiful.  The conversation between Dwight and Stephen and Pierre seemed laboured, slow but not without good will.  He didn’t know what Margery was doing in the kitchen, but she was clearly enjoying herself.  He felt nervous about his mother and sister.  How would they judge his home?  Was it sufficiently clean?  Probably not.  Did it meet the standards by which he’d been raised?  Absolutely not.  They surely wouldn’t approve. Marlene would comment, later.  His mother would maintain her well-mannered reticence.  He didn’t expect either of them to stay long, and he had no idea how his mother would react to Stephen.  Doris was another story.  Never in his life had he felt judged or criticized by her.  He had never known anyone so kind, and he particularly wanted her to be comfortable, to be at home and to offer him through his home her blessing, even if he’d outgrown both his home and his need for Doris’ blessing.  But perhaps altogether they would be for Glen a sending-off party.  Preparing and blessing him for his new journey, whatsoever it might be.  He had a sudden longing to read Richard’s journal, but he wasn’t about to leave, and he didn’t want to send everyone away. Richard’s writings held for him the necessary clue that would lighten his path and lead Glen farther along in his journey.  On his next visit with Margery, Dwight and Carol he would bring the writings and together they would study and decode them.