“You look really handsome Papa-in-Law,” Maia said as she and Paul parked in front of the house on Versailles.”
Paul smiled at his daughter-in-law and said, “How did my son get to lucky? Or marry a girl with such great taste?”
Maia chuckled, but as Paul unbuckled his seat belt and she prepared to get out of the car and then let Nicholas out his car seat, Paul said, “Who’s that across the street?”
“Someone in a car,” Maia said as if this was not an entirely smart question.
“She’s crying.”
“Your sight is better than mine.”
It was cold. She could see her breath and she stood getting ready to open the car door and take out her son when she said, “Paul, if you get him, maybe I’ll see to her.”
“It’s not really our business,” the older man, but his mouth was a little open and his arms were folded over his chest as he looked across the snowy street.
“Take Nicholas in,” Maia said, crossing the street, “I’ll be right back.”
The girl was startled when Maia wrapped on the window and she rolled it down, surprised.
“I know you,” Maia said, but there was a question in her voice.
“Chicago,” the girl said. She was darker than Maia, but not as dark as Layla.
“Alice,” Maia remembered. She’d been surprised and sort of happy that Thackeray had found a Black girl. Maia rounded the car. “Will you let me in?”
“That’s hard,” Maia said. They were about the same age, but Maia had freely chosen to marry Bennett and the child came after.
“What would you do?”
“It’s different for me,” Maia said. “Me and Bennett are different. We make rash decisions and they kind of work out. All of me prejudice says have your baby, but the thing about it is you are the one having the baby.”
“It’s not like a puppy.”
“Or even a goldfish,” Maia said.
“It’s going to change me whole life.”
Maia nodded.
“I loved Bennett and wanted children and still, it changed me whole life. I suppose you have to figure our quickly how much you want your life changed.”
“I need to talk to Thackeray.”
“In the house?” Fenn says.
“Unless you object?”
“Well, you know me better than that,” Fenn says to Dan. “It seems so very novel… so…”
“Outre,” Tom says.
“Outre?”
“It’s a Brian Babcock word,” Todd says.
“It’s a French word,” Tom tells him. “I think I’m going to Saint Agatha’s for tonight’s mass, but by all means, you all do what you wish.”
“I intend to,” Dan says, smiling, his face going into the crinkles of a happy old man.
Dan says:
“But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.”
“What in the world?” Fenn says.
“T.S. Eliot,” Todd says.
“My good man, my excellent man,” Dan says to him. He means it. There was no better man that could have had Fenn. Anyone else but Tom, and Dan could not have forgiven himself for letting him go.
Todd then says:
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,”
“If Tom will not be here what will we do for music?” Dan asked.
“I will sing,” Fenn said. “And Dylan will sing. Dylan will be here. He already took Allen to Mass this morning.”
Paul brings fat old candles to the house. He remembers the lost years in California when there was no winter and not much of God. In those days he came from the East to find something, and the truth is, as he lights the candles and smiles, he realizes, he found it indeed.
“I have heard people say they do not regret the past because without it they would not be where they were,” Paul told the mutual grandfather of his children.
“Yes?” Fenn said. “And?”
“I always thought that was nonsense,” he confessed as, in the dining room, Dan set up the table with his chalice and with his dish. In the kitchen flat bread was baking, and the last of the light dinner dishes had been put away.
“I am starting to believe it now,” Paul said. “I honestly do not know how I would be me, if I had not been him. If I had not been Johnny. I imagine there might have been a better way, but it seems to me imagination is greatly overrated. Even a little out of place.”
“There would have been no Noah, or at least we would never know him. And no Naomi or Chay. You wouldn’t have come here. No Claire and Julian, no Elias. No anything,” Fenn said.
“I think,” Paul was standing there in his black slacks and mauve shirt, sleeves rolled up, looking very handsome and, still sexual, still some shadow of the him he was, “I hated myself a little, and so I couldn’t be glad for who I was. But I don’t feel that way at all now, and so I am glad. I rejoice. In everything. At least right now.”
Dylan sang:
Jesu, joy of man’s desiring,
Holy wisdom, love most bright;
Laurel sang with him.
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light.
Word of God, our flesh that fashioned,
With the fire of life impassioned,
Striving still to truth unknown,
Soaring, dying round Thy throne.
This was like nothing Moshe knew. This was not Catholic. It was Christian, he supposed, but was there something beyond that, something beyond names? Laurel had said, as she put the children away, “The Orthodox celebrate this more than Catholics. Certainly more than Protestants. In the West we like bright lights and answers. At Epiphany we discover, and what it is we discover we are not entirely sure. The Wisemen see the baby in Mary’s arms, but what it all means…. Who can really say?”
Before him all kings shall fall prostrate,
all nations shall serve him.
For he shall save the poor when they cry
and the needy who are helpless.
He will have pity on the weak
and save the lives of the poor.
Dan Malloy is only in a white shirt in the dimly lit dininr room, but the room is chapel and there is just a little bit of burning incense, frankincense and myrrh he has brought with him. For a moment, Moshe imagines the shirt is a white robe. It is like Galahad in the Holy Grail story, as Dan lifts the chalice and the candle light chases the pattern around its circumference, he imagines Dan passing through this plain world into the otherworld, the world of magic and enchantment and power where God is with us and heaven meets the earth and to the sound of the pouring of the wine he knows that this is the world. That is the world. One only has to see it. One cannot always see it, or see it for long. But right now, at this moment he can. They rise to take bread and wine.
Rise up in splendor, O Jerusalem!
Your light has come,
the glory of the Lord shines upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth,
and thick clouds cover the peoples;
But upon you the Lord shines,
and over you appears his glory.
Nations shall walk by your light,
and kings by your shining radiance.
“We can go to that big Mass tonight at Saint Agatha’s,” Sheridan says.
“I would go,” Meredith says.
“But you don’t want to.”
“Don’t be harsh,” she says to Sheridan. “I would go, but I am tired.”
Jonah would have been going to Saint Agatha’s and Meredith would have not been going to the same, but Rob Affren, tall and sturdy, his red hair in his face, comes to the house with Austin, Lance’s brother.
“Come on Meredith. Get up. Don’t be like that. We’re going to be servers.”
“Why are you even going?” Meredith asked Sheridan. “You don’t go to church, and aren’t you Methodist anyway?”
“I’m not anything,” Sheridan says. “And I’m going because Brendan is going.”
“Kenny is going too,” Rob says, and Sheridan wonders how much Rob knows about everything that’s going on.
“Yes,” Sheridan says.
And so they all go to Saint Barbara’s.
“Saint Barbara’s is bigger than I remember it,” Kenny says. Sheridan sits between him and Brendan.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here at all,” Logan says beside Brendan. “Church has never really been my venue.”
“It’s God’s venue,” Sheridan says with mock sobriety.
“Maybe,” Brendan says, and shrugs.
Everything is gold and white and beautiful, the priests and, in their black robes under white surplices and high collars, taking turns swinging the incense, how beautiful is Rob. How beautiful is Austin with the lamplight on his short blond hair, looking so earnest as he holds the crozier, as he holds open the gospel book for the old priest, as he receives the incense from Rob and returns it to him, both boys solemn.
All the usual mocking is gone from Meredith, and when Sheridan looks to Lance he sees Lance looking from Austin to Rob, Austin to Rob, and wonders what he is seeing.
“Sheridan,” Kenny says.
“I have to talk to you,” Sheridan says. “May I see you.”
Kenny frowns as the singing rises with the crowd.
“Agnus Dei!”
“Qui tollis peccata mundi!”
“It’s not about what you think,” Sheridan says, earnestly. “I will come to you,” he says. “Do not turn me away.”
“What in the world?”
“Agnus Dei!”
“Dona nobis pacem!”
“Promise me,” Sheridan demands
Brendan turns from the Mass to look at them, but turns away.
“Of course,” Kenny says as they go to their knees. “I promise.”
They were all together in the house where Dena had grown up, the house, she realized, her mother and her uncle had grown up in as well, sitting in the living room drinking cocoa, some apple cider or coffee or whatever that was Todd had in his mug. School would not begin for another few days, and the holidays were lingering just a little longer.
“Didn’t your brother look handsome?” Nell asked Cara.
“If you say so.”
“I do,” Nell laughed, from her seat in the old chair.
“What about me, Grandma?” Barbara asked.
“No one,” Nell said earnestly to her eleven year old granddaughter, “is as handsome as you.”
“Women aren’t handsome,” Kayla, Meredith’s daughter, informed her cousin, “unless they’re lesbians.”
Maia snorted, but only stood up and went to the kitchen with the baby.
“What are the plans for the night?” Bill Affren asked.
“The plans are bed,” Nell said, “and very soon.”
“Rob and Austin are coming home with us,” Milo said, then turning to Lance, added, “ff you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind,” Lance shrugged. “I don’t think Mom and Dad will either.”
Grandma, give us a song before we go,” Rob said.
“If you will sing it with me,”
“If I can.”
I think you can. My grandmother taught it to me. She learned it in Wales. From her grandmother.”
“She came from Scotland,” Todd insisted.
“She never did,” Nell said. “That’s the same lie you’ve been telling for years.”
“I could have sworn she was Scottish,” Ruthven said as well.
“How would you know?” Nell said. “No, she was Welsh and the whole business about Scotland is a lie.”
“Well, now it wasn’t really a lie…” Todd said.
“It wasn’t true,” Nell said, and she sang:
“Adhraim mo leanbh beag tagth' ar an saol
Codail, a linbh, go sámh
Adhraim a laige, a loime nocht faon
Codail, a linbh, go sámh.”
Rob sat next to his grandmother, and he closed his eyes and sang:
“Inis, a ghrá, liom, id' luí sa mhainséar
Inis cén fath dhuit bheith sínte san fhéar
Is tú coimhde na ngrásta 'gus Íosa, Mac Dé
Codail, a linbh, go sámh”
“I remember that. That’s how Mom sang it,” Todd said. “It was almost like she was here, all over again. Like they were all here.”
Even like Kevin was here, in those good days before things had gone wrong, when Kevin Reardon was Nell’s good looking husband and no one knew what was twisted and wrong deep down inside of him.
But Lance was still watching Rob, impressed by the red headed young man. He watched his cousin Ruthven clap him on the back, and as he put on his suede coat, he watched Rob slip on Austin’s hat and, for a moment, take the back of his hand over his hair. Lance wondered if anyone else noticed.
TOMORROW NIGHT... THE END OF BITS AND PIECES
