Creation: The Conclusion of the Lake Cycle

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! Very sad for Sheridan but well written. I am glad he has his friends and loved ones around. Him and Brendan also seem to be on a journey to finding exactly what they want in life and it’s very interestin. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow! Happy New Year to you too!

 

[ChrisGibson]

WE CONTINUE OUR CHAPTER IN GRIEF, AND CONCLUDE WITH HOPE


The funeral was the next afternoon. Todd said something about it being perfectly fine if it happened the morning after, but Will said no. In the chapel of the funeral home, Todd stood before Sheridan and asked, “Are you sure?”
Sheridan nodded, and Todd took the breast pocket of Sheridan’ good blazer and ripped it. He stood before Will, and Sheridan heard the rip of fabric too
“Baruch atah Hashem Elokeinu melech haolam, dayan ha’emet,” Todd recited.
Both Sheridan and Will murmured, “Amen.”
Later on, Sheridan would ask what that had meant, but right now it hardly mattered.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, the true Judge.

They weren’t a large family, and the cousins they had were not Jewish and lived far away. But Rob Dwyer was there and he had brought Frey. Sheridan remembered something about Frey being partially Jewish. Rob’s little brother was there, and he wanted to protect him. Joshua had seen so much death already, so early in life. Simon Barrow was there, and though they had made love several times, though Simon had stayed in their house, Sheridan broke down and wept in surprise when he saw him, and he and Brendan all held each other. Sheridan didn’t know how to say it meant so much that he was here.

The funeral was short, and the trip to the graveyard quicker, and then they returned to Will and Layla’s house,
“I thought we might stay here tonight,” Brendan said. “Maybe you and Layla would come to us tomorrow.”
“When you sit shiva you don’t leave the house for seven days,” Will said. He added, to be gracious, “We could come to your house if you wanted. Do it there.”
Will and Layla had a much bigger house. To fit Will and Layla and their three kids into the condominium he and Sheridan shared would have been ridiculous.
“We’ll all stay here,” Brendan said. “Like a family.”
Beside Sheridan, Logan Banford whispered to his best friend and one time lover’s ear, “Are you really going do it? The whole thing?”
Sheridan nodded.
“Yes.”
It was a relief. It was a relief to not worry about cooking, to have the children under Layla and Brendan’s care. It was a relief to not only not have to bathe, but be forbidden from it. It was a relief to let the ginger scrag grow on his face, to not try to sleep in a comfortable bed or sit up in a comfortable seat like a normal person, and when the grief that he thought was passing, rose up, and he rose up to lock himself in a bathroom and bawl, it was a relief that no one was there saying, “Feel better.” “Don’t cry.” “Get past this soon.” In the bathroom he washed his face and looked on the shawl that covered the mirror. He wanted to sleep, and he went back to the living room where Will half slept on the floor, and lay down beside his brother. He delighted in the children who knew Grandma was gone and Dad and Unc were sad, and came to lay down as well.
Those were tender days, and it was the first time that, being with his brother and Layla, he saw them take out the heavy candle sticks, light them Friday evening, and begin the Sabbath. Every morning Will, Sheridan, Todd, and several others recited Kaddish, Sheridan stumbling over the words, but Saturday morning, Will got up and went to Temple Beth Shan, and all that morning, Sheridan felt a curious strength and had a curious longing as he watched his brother take out a great, old fringed and striped tallit, don it over his head and over his shoulders, then pull the hood down. The service began. He was hearing an intricate and ancient song. If only he could learn it, and the words of the Kaddish were at last coming to his mouth.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba
b’alma di v’ra chir’utei;
v’yamlich malchutei b’hayeichon
u-v’yomeichon, uv’hayei d’chol
beit yisrael,
ba-agala u-vi-z’man kariv, v’imru amen...





There was a morning when Simon stayed over and he seemed distracted. He slept in their bed, but nothing really happened. Brendan had just recently become a judge and was talking to Simon about coming to work downtown. He was pouring him orange juice and Sheridan had gone to work.
“I think I’m in love,” Simon said.
“What’s this?”
“Nothing’s happened. Nothing new,” Simon said. “But I know I’m in love. We’re supposed to go raspberry picking.”
“You and who?” Brendan poured himself a glass now and corrected himself. “Whom?”
“Donovan.”
“Donovan Donovan? Cade’s Donovan?”
“It’s complicated,” Simon said. “But, yes.”
Brendan frowned in consideration and Simon spoke.
“I have to give this time. I know it’s strange to say I need to be serious about this relationship with a man who’s with another man, but…”
“No,” Brendan shook his head. “No. It’s different. But…. Everything we do is different. I understand.”
It was the right time, for they were all changing, after the last years of license, Brendan was becoming serious about being a Catholic again. He knew, knew, knew the Church was fucked up, and he could never take that religion on face value, but it was his religion. He didn’t know how he’d handle his return, though. Father Dan had been like a second parent to him, but the new priests at Saint Barbara’s meant nothing to Brendan, and the Mass there was tepid. He’d tried out the Episcopal church, and admitted he didn’t really like it. However he handled religion, though, he was religious, and however other people handled religion, having an open marriage where several men tumbled out of their beds and they experimented with drugs while raising a child was not, in the end, what Brendan wanted.
And what was more, Sheridan was through with all of those things too. After his mother’s death, after the year of mourning, he kept going to temple. He had bought his first tallit and now said his prayers every morning at sunrise, Rafe beside him. Even though they were not growing in the same religion, they were growing together, and Brendan liked it.
Things did not change all at once. For the evolution of Cade and Donovan and Simon into a family did not happen all at once. The night shiva had ended for his mother, Sheridan went to Simon. They had furious sex and then as Sheridan came, he burst into tears in Simon’s arms. The morning that Brendan had first learned he was elected as a judge he came into his law office at the old white building in downtown Rossford, across the street from the Holiday Inn and he and Simon had begun kissing, but it ended in them gripping the window sill, and Brendan fucking him against the window while they watched the cars below pass. While Brendan shuttled inside of him, Simon’s eyes opened and closed. He blinked across the street into the blank, grey curtained eyes of the Holiday Inn, then closed his eyes, pushing his ass out, reaching back to pull Brendan, his cock, his hips, and his heat deeper inside. One did not break away from such things over night.
And Logan, Logan who by now was far more than family, they did not break away from so easily either. The very night when Simon and Donovan and Cade had married each other, and they had all come together in Fenn’s house, still laughing and semi drunk, Brendan and Sheridan had traveled home with their old loves and constant friends, Kenny McGrath and Logan Banford.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Sheridan said to aging model who smiled at him, and suddenly looked like a boy of twenty.
“Don’t you know by now?” Logan said, “I’ll always be here.”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion. Sad of course with the funeral and the mourning but a good read nonetheless. The ending did seem more hopeful and I look forward to more tomorrow. Great writing!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Now we're coming to the weekend and it's time for us all to relax into something gentler.

 

[ChrisGibson]

T E N


ELEMENTAL





“You gotta be all in, Baby!”

-Fenn Houghton




“I wonder if he’d take any visitors,” Isaiah Frey said.
“Who’d take any visitors?” Jason Henley asked, coming down the stairs and into the kitchen where he poured himself the last of the coffee.
“Donovan,” Rob said, crunching into a strip of bacon and pushing the plate across the table to where Jason would sit.
“Whaddo you mean?”
Jason scratched his head and poured in cream, sugar, asked, “Why am I always the one who gets the last cup of coffee?”
“Because you’re the one who gets up the latest,” Frey said.
“Why is this house such a mess?” Rob wondered.
“Because you don’t clean it,” Frey said.
“Because,” Jason sat down bearlike. He was not big as a bear, or shaggy as a bear, but he was big and tall and dark haired, and there was something of the bear about him, “we are artists and unlike other people we are to busty doing art to dust and clean and paint the walls.”
Rob looked on the off white walls, now yellow with dust, cooking oil, and cigarette smoke.
“Donovan went to live up in that cabin Cade has.”
“The one near your friend Dan the priest?”
“The one that isn’t a cabin,” Frey said.
“It’s like a cabin,” said Rob.
“And Madonna was like a virgin.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“But it’s funny.”
“It’s sort of funny,” Rob said.
“You’ve become difficult in your old age,” said Frey.
“Have another strip of bacon,” Rob said.
“You should make more coffee,” Frey said.
“So Don and Cade are just up at this cabin-not-cabin,” Jason said.
“Well, Don is up there, and then Cade stays for a bit, and when he’s gone, Simon comes. But basically Don is having a retreat and finding himself.”
“that’s a very white thing to do,” Jason said.
“That is exactly what my mother said,” Frey said, patting the ass of his cigarette pack so that one slid out onto the table.
“I admire it,” Jason said.
“That is NOT what my mother said.”
“Well, no,” Jason allowed. “I’ve known your mother a long time.”
Isaiah Frey had gone to bed thinking he would get up early and make some order of the house, but he hadn’t been writing, and so the choice, when he only had so much energy, was to get to writing, or get to folding laundry. Laundry went unfolded. The choice was to work on those poems that weren’t quite coming together, or to wash those dishes in the sink. The house was not disgusting. It simply looked like something you couldn’t present on American television. It was simply piles of books under the coffee table or spilling out from under the bed. It was simply an ever cluttered bathroom with mens razors all over the place and a tub that could use a bit of scrubbing.
“Maybe we should go on a retreat,” Rob said.
“I think I spent the last twenty years on retreat,” Jason said. “I’m good right here. But maybe you should.”
“I honestly don’t know what I would do by myself in a cabin—” he looked at Isaiah, “that’s not a cabin.”
“That’s why I admire Don,” Frey said.

“Goddamn, this house is a mess,” DJ lamented while picking up pillows from off the floor.
“Mind your language,” Frey said boredly as Josh Dwyer stood behind him, folding blankets and looking mildly disapproving.
“You all really have let this place go,” he said.
“There are no children living here,” Frey did not turn away from his laptop. “It can look however it wants.”
“But does it want to look this way?” Josh said. “Does any house?”
“Do you want a mayor like this?”
“What?” Frey said
“It’s the TV,” DJ turned it up.
A series of clearly old pictures from frat parties and one not so old, showed a very good looking, tall blond man sloshed out of his mind, passed out hugging a keg, slumped over someone in a toga, drunk in a graduation gown, plastered in a two piece suit, shirt off, wrap around shades on, and Mardi Gras beads hanging from his neck in New Orleans.
“Isn’t it bad enough, this young man is already a judge? If Brendan Miller can’t govern himself, how can he possibly govern Rossford?”
“Ouch,” Frey murmured.
“How can you trust a man like this? Vote for the sane alternative, elect—”
“He looks like a good time. I’d totally vote for him,” DJ said.
“That was low,” Frey murmured. “I wished we lived in Rossford so we could vote for him.”
“I wish I looked that good with my shirt off,” Josh said.





“Oh, my God!” Brendan swore in his chambers.

“Bren!”

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”

“Brendan,” Simon said, “It’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad? I’m a justice for God’s sake. I have to go out and judge a case right now—”

“Well, not exactly right now,” Layla Houghton said.

“And when they see me, they’re going to see the party judge! How did they get these photo?”

“You’ve never made much a of a secret of them, Bren. You’re a pretty open person.”

“But…. This didn’t come out when I was running for circuit judge.”

“Cause no one gives a shit about circuit judges,” Layla said before Simon could. “Now, the mayor. That’s big news.”

“What a….. what a….” Brendan pounded his fist in his palm, “What a damn jerkface!”

“And he didn’t really do anything,” Layla said. “That’s the worst part for him.”

“Really, Lay. How do you figure?”

Simon decided to be silent for this one. Layla, Fenn Houghton’s niece, was also Brendan’s oldest friend. Her husband was Sheridan’s older brother, so they were more than family.

“All he’s got on you is some pictures of a very relatable boy in college having a good time, and a very fine grown man with his shirt off drinking a beer at Mardi Gras.”

“You really think I’m fine?” Brendan stood there pleased, with a hand on his hip.

“Bren, that’s not the point,” Layla said. “And besides, imagine all the other things he could have found.”

“Other things?” Simon said.

“Never mind,” Layla and Brendan said together.

Simon thought Layla was right. Even though he and Brendan were friends, he looked up to the older man, and didn’t know how to say this, so he waited for Layla to speak.

“You just feel silly and don’t want people looking at you when you walk down the halls. Just like we’re in high school.”

“You’re not wrong,” Brendan confessed.

“Do what we did back then,” Layla said.

She reached into her purse and approached Brendan, standing up a little on her tip toes—he was taller—and decking him in green Mardi Gras beads, then sticking a pair of shades on his face.

“You can’t run from it,” she said. “So you might as well own it.”





“What are you laughing at?” Sheridan demanded when Rob called him.

“I saw that commercial they did on Bren.”

“He is pissed!” Sheridan said, but he sounded delighted.

“Who’s pissed?” his son demanded.

“Ask your dad,” Sheridan told the boy.

“Are you on your way or what?”

“Yes, shithead, I’m on my way. I had to listen to the husband be infuriated—”

“About some shit that’s nothing.”

“That’s what I told him,” Sheridan said on speakerphone going toward his coat and wondering, “Where’s my gun?”

“You’re wearing it,” Fenn said.

“Is that Fenn?”

“Yeah, I’m leaving the kid with him, and then Bren’s gonna swoop by and pick him up. I’m on my way right….” There was the sound of Sheridan opening and shutting the door, “now.”

“I should have just driven myself to work,” Rob said and Sheridan said, “Quit your bitchin’, I’ll be right there.”



But as he was on Route 94, heading out of Miller, toward Ashby, Sheridan saw a billboard rising out of the trees on the way to the Dunes and gave a small shriek. He put his foot on the gas, and when his phone lit up and he saw BRENDAN, he ignored it.



“He’s not picking up. I know he’s seen it,” Brendan said, scowling, furiously hitting buttons. Simon was driving, and Simon was astonished.

“Layla!” Brendan bawled, “have you seen the sign?”

“No time to talk right now,” she said casually, “I’m at Fenn’s.”

“Well, I’m on my way.”

“I thought you and Simon were going to lunch.”

“I’m too distraught to eat.”

“You’re being dramatic as hell.”




In Ely, Michigan, Donovan Shorter was coming in for lunch and Cade was sitting on the couch watching television.

“You’re not gonna believe this shit,” he called to Don.

“I can’t believe you’re watching TV.”

“It does happen. Shush, come and see this.”

“Judge Brendan Miller is fighting back. Earlier today, Miles Brockheimer, two time mayor of the city of Rossford, came out with this ugly attack ad….”

“Wow,” Donovan said, unwrapping the scarf from around his neck as he watched Brendan in various poses of dishonor.

“But only a few hours later this billboard could be seen throughout Rossford, Willmington and Miller.”

It was the photo, blown up and enhanced, of a suntanned, bare-chested Brendan Miller in wrap around shades looking like a very good time, and written in dull black letters was the phrase: HOW COULD YOU ELECT THIS MAN? But with a red arrow between YOU and ELECT, and in great red letters the word NOT.

“Ingenious!” Donovan said.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Who did it?” Brendan demanded.

“I did,” Fenn said.

“Fenn!”

“You’re welcome,” Fenn continued.

“You have to admit. It was pretty great.”

“How did you do it that quickly?”

“I got friends,” Fenn said.

“It is brilliant,” Simon said. “the next thing we need, though, is fliers and a commercial, but let’s run it on a new theme.”

“Great. Are you going to do a billboard of me passed out in front of a keg?”

“I’m afraid there’s no salvaging that,” Simon said.

“Why the hell are you wearing Mardi Gras beads?” Fenn asked.

Brendan growled between his teeth and took the necklace off.

“The graduation one we could work with though,” Fenn said.

“Right?” Simon agreed. “I mean, it’s your graduating from Notre Dame Law School.”

“The other idea I have,” Fenn said.

“You’re in my campaign, now?” Brendan said.

“I guess so, smart ass. Now, the other idea I have—” Fenn continued while Brendan blinked, “is that same picture. We’re going to just use it cause they gave it to us, and it’s great. And a list of all the serious achievements you’ve made as a judge. The cases you’ve defended, precedents you’ve set. Show them the truth, and then put it right next to that picture and say: Brendan Miller, he’s a good time for us all.”

Brendan looked shy and quiet much like, to Fenn, the little boy Layla had brought home to him thirty years ago.

“I like that idea,” Brendan said. “I don’t like the idea of me being sexualized to win an election, but… “

“This guy sort of sexualized you to not only stop you from being elected, but to ruin your career,” Simon said. “You can’t run from it.”

“You gotta be all in, Baby,” Fenn said, holding out his hand. “You in?”

With something between a laugh and a groan, Brendan looked at the ceiling, and then clasped Fenn’s hand.

“All in,” his son Raphael called.

“Damn right,” Fenn said.

“Fenn,” Brendan gestured to his son.

“Scuse me” Fenn said. “Fuckin right.”

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! More lighthearted as you said which makes a nice change. This whole attack ad thing is a bit funny and I didn’t even think of it when Brendan was considering running. It’s good that he can fight back and his friends can help. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days! Hope you have a great weekend!

 

[ChrisGibson]

That was a great portion! More lighthearted as you said which makes a nice change. This whole attack ad thing is a bit funny and I didn’t even think of it when Brendan was considering running. It’s good that he can fight back and his friends can help. Excellent writing and I look forward to more in a few days! Hope you have a great weekend!

Well, you know Fenn always has something up his sleeve. I hope you had a good weekend.

 

[ChrisGibson]

WELCOME TO A NEW WEEK, FOLKS. AND SO WE CARRY ON WITH OUR TALE
The first day that it reached sixty degrees, Donovan Shorter said, “Let’s go back.”

It was evident that nothing was changing, that neither he nor May had figured anything out. There had been no grand epiphany, and he had waited for one.

“I was the kid who thought that Christmas would change the world,” he said. “I was the one who heard Jesus was about to be born, heard all the songs about peace on earth and good will toward men, and thought, on Christmas that would all begin. Then the day after I was flung into a depression because it didn’t happen, and the world was just the same as ever.”

“Isn’t that every kid?” Cade asked while driving.

It was May who said, “No.”

“Every kid is sad the day after Christmas because he’s tired of toys and all the fun is gone. What Don is talking about is an existential crisis.”

And this, May understood because it was what she was talking about as well.

Even Riley who was working double shifts at Julian’s restaurant was telling her how she needed to get a job while he was talking about living in a communist world and starting a revolution. She and Riley were the same, seemed on the same page, but then a mood overtook him and he left her alone. Meanwhile she hung with Don, not going to school, not working, and when she could, being high and happy. The days blended together for May, and she knew she shouldn’t like it, but she did. She knew it couldn’t last forever, but for now it did.

This morning Cade, May and Don had gone out to the lake and walked the long pier to stand in the midst of grey blue water. A few sixty degree days could not make Michigan’s waters warm, and the air was chill. Gulls swooped above in the grey white sky, screaming, and in either direction the water went on and on, and before them stretched out to the horizon. Cade did not hear mermaids singing anymore. Now he heard the waves and knew their splashing was the tails of watery beings, He heard the whistle of the wind and knew their voices.

Seeing was not believing, for when he had seen these creatures, he could barely believe his eyes, and now that he never saw them, his quiet obsession grew. One night he had come to Don and said:

“Undine.”

And Don, used to his husband, only nodded.

Cade had read”

“Undines are a category of elemental beings associated with water, stemming from the alchemical writings of Paracelsus. Later writers developed the undine into a water nymph in its own right, and it continues to live in modern literature and art through such adaptations as Danish Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" and the Undine of Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué.

“They are undines,” Cade had continued in a measured voice. “That is why no one ever catches them. They are the very spirits of the water. They are the water. They aren’t just like people with fish bodies. That’s how they appear. Sometimes.”

And because Don was Don, Cade continued reading.

“Undines are almost invariably depicted as being female, which is consistent with the ancient Greek idea that water is a female element. They are usually found in forest pools and waterfalls, and their beautiful singing voices are sometimes heard over the sound of water. The group contains many species, including nereids, limnads, naiades, mermaids and potamides.

“Okay, now here’s the part I don’t accept: ‘What undines lack, compared to humans, is a soul. Marriage with a human shortens their lives on Earth, but earns them an immortal human soul.’ That’s stupid.”

Cade read, “‘The offspring of a union between an undine and a man are humans with a soul, but also with some kind of aquatic characteristic, called a watermark. Moses Binswanger, the protagonist in Hansjörg Schneider's Das Wasserzeichen, has a cleft in his throat, for instance, which must be periodically submerged in water to prevent it from becoming painful—’.

“But this is foolish,” Cade declared. “They don’t need a soul. They are soul. They are just spirit. Maybe we’ve seen them because we have the right spirit.”

May was not in a mood to disbelieve things. Cade had said “we saw”. She asked Don, “Did you see this mermaid?”

“I saw one,” Don said. “Once. There isn’t only one.”

He said it just like that.



The day before, she and Don had walked the tough dune grass, and for the last time climbed to the top of the hill to look on the water and watch the two piers stretching out on either side of them.

“What Cade said about those elementals…?”

“Yes?”

“Earth, Air, Fire, Water.”

“Any Wiccan knows that.”

“But the other creatures. The mermaids were the water…”



Late at night, his spectacles on, Cade said: “Paracelsus believed that each of the four classical elements – earth, water, air and fire – is inhabited by different categories of elemental spirits, liminal creatures that share our world: gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders respectively. He describes these elementals as the ‘invisible, spiritual counterparts of visible Nature ... many resembling human beings in shape, and inhabiting worlds of their own, unknown to man because his undeveloped senses were incapable of functioning beyond the limitations of the grosser elements.’”

“So if an undine is a mermaid, then a gnome is dwarf, “May said. “And a sylph… I don’t know what the fuck that is. Salamanders…. Dragons?”

“That sounds about right,” Don said.

“I’d like to think I’m a dragon,” May said. “But I just might be a Gnome.”

“What am I?” Donovan asked.

“You,” May said, “might be all four.”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! I enjoyed learning of Undine’s and I am glad Donovan is getting through his crisis. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

AS WE DRAW NEAR TO THE ENDING OF OUR STORY, EVERYONE COMES TO THE ABBEY OF SAINT CLEW TO REFLECT




”It is good to be home,” Donovan announced as he sits on the huge couch in the living room on the second floor of Pine Street.
“And I want to say this, to both of you.” Don proclaimed while pouring Simon coffee first, and then Cade a cup, “my roving is through. I’m through being weird and being gone. I’m here now. And now we are both here to help Simon help Brendan in his campaign. I am here to help run this house again.”
Donovan privately thought it needed little running. Simon was a paragon of cleanliness and this house was cleaner than it had ever been when Don was occupying it.
“But first we have the matter May brought up,” Don continued, sitting down. “About dividing the house up. And about trying to buy it.”
“I had talked to the owner,” Simon said, “and I looked at city records.”
“Okay,” Donovan said, because Simon was clearly waiting for him to say something.
“It’s about 164, 000 dollars.”
“For this heap of rubble? But then, it is a big heap of rubble.”
“That we’ve done a lot to,” Cade said. “Like, it’s a better heap of rubble than it was before we put work into it.”
“Yes, and Jimmy wouldn’t put any work into it. He said a hundred thousand.”
“Can we Jew him down to Eighty?’
When they looked at Don, he said, “Oh, what? I am Jewish.”
“Don, he’s already talking about 64, 000 dollars less than it’s worth.”
“And yet, that’s 64, 000 that we don’t have, and he doesn’t know about, and 80,000 plus all the rent he’s been paid is more than what he doesn’t have. So go back to him and ask.”
“And if he asks for more?” Simon said. “If he assesses it higher?”
“Then fuck him. This is a shit neighborhood in a shit town.
“Now on to the apartment business.”
“Yes, May said we should let—or sublet to some friends.”
“Rob and Austin,” Don nodded.
“What if the three of them, May too, I mean, divided the first floor and the basement?”
“The basement isn’t fit to be lived in,” Cade said.
“No,” Don agreed. “What if all three of them could have the first floor, and we kept the second and the attic like we’re going and took May’s key, so no little girls walked in and out of our naked spaces?”
“You’d take your goddaughter’s key?”
“For that very reason. She can stay. But she’ll have to knock. The first floor is plenty of room for three teenagers. It’s still more or less divided like two apartments.”
“We can work on the basement when or if we know we can buy the house,” Cade said.

That night they laid in bed, and the window was open. Cade said, “Do you know, I would want one hundred thousand for the house in Ely, and this is bigger than the house in Ely. It doesn’t sit right with me to pay less for this place when it’s so much bigger.”
“Well,” Donovan said, “You and Simon can pay however much sits right with you, but I’ve got ten thousand dollars to contribute and however much I pay into the mortgage isn’t going to change.”

At breakfast that Tuesday, Cade and Simon discussed the affair. Though they sat in the pancake house, whispering, no one there knew them or their business.
“So, I want to pay this guy more, but Don is intent on getting Pine Street as cheap as possible,” Simon said.
“I mean, we have two houses already. Mine and the one in Ely.”
“So really,” Cade pointed out, “You have a house and I have a house. Don sold his parents’ house to take care of his stepfather.”
“But we’re married. I mean, like, legally married and everything. So it’s all of our stuff.”
“I think Don thinks Pine Street is what’s all of our stuff, and he wants Pine Street.”
“I just feel like… I understand going to Ely. I like it. But my house is down the street, and let’s be clear, I have no plans of getting rid of it. I wonder if we should even hold onto Pine Street? We have three homes and most people struggle for one. What if we all just lived at my house?”
“Because you’ve called it your house three times in the last three minutes,” Cade said. “So it’s not going to be our house. Besides, you like it as your house. It’s your retreat. You get alone time there. Like I get it at Ely.”
“Don gets it in Ely too.”
“True. Clearly. But he really gets it at Pine. We need to buy that fucking place. It’s the place that’s all of ours. And if we can buy it, then fucks to just having three teenagers as tenants. We can divide the first two floors into two apartments. It’ll pay for itself in two years. We can do something with that almost carriage house in the back too.”
“You wanna do this, don’t you?”
“I do, Simon. And you know, I felt the same way you do. But I’m poorer than you and Don is poorer than us both right now. He’s thinking like someone who has to think about money, and it makes sense. We’ve paid a lot of money in rent and in sweat. Let’s get that fucking place as cheap as we can, make it ours.”
Simon, who understood that he had tried to buy his way to worth, who knew full well that he had been brain washed into thinking the more you paid, the bigger and better you were, who had gone broke spending the money on jackets and shoes he could not afford, at last bowed his head to the wisdom of poor people.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll try to get it for eighty.”

 

[ChrisGibson]

“Misereris omnium!” they sang.



“Misereris omnium, Domine, et nihil odisti

eorum quae fecisti,”



The deep voices in the choir loft chanted as the priests in white and purple processed, candles like little flickers toward the altar, bare but for a bolt of blue.









“…dissimulans peccata hominum propter

paenitentiam et parcens illis,

quia tu es Dominus Deus noster.”



Anigel Reyes loved Latin, but she was never very good at it. She looked down at the program and read the translation of the introit.



“You are merciful to all, O Lord,
and despise nothing that you have made.
You overlook people's sins, to bring

them to repentance,
and you spare them,

for you are the Lord our God.”



The sun was warm. She was at something like peace, and the chapel was a little too chilly, but the people in it made it good, and today was Ash Wednesday.

The Monastery of Saint Clew had been part of her for nearly half of her life, and where had half of her life gone? She didn’t feel forty-five. Having seen the forty-five that many people she knew here, she didn’t look it either. She remembered feeling old at twenty five and coming to this place, and how she’d realized at twenty-five she was just a girl. She wanted to discover God, yes, but she wanted to discover herself. She wanted to fall in love with Jesus. She had forgotten all of that for a long time. The first time she had come to Saint Clew, when it was called The Convent Abbey of Saint Agnes, she was not even a postulant, just a visitor, and even as a visitor, in the place that was like a little castle wrapped about on three sides by a river, she had felt old, worn out things falling from her, weariness, cloudiness falling from her, forgetfulness falling from her, blindness to life giving way to a sharpening of vision.

Now they were singing Kyrie elieson, kyrie eleison, crying for the mercy of God that became singing for the mercy of God that became,,, yes, singing in the mercy of God. Kyrie, kyrie, kyrie, how very much they were in need of mercy. Mercy cries ringing one off the other. Mercy, that at first hearing one forgot was so necessary. Mercy for all of these people here, mercy for the invasion that had finally begun.





People in Ukraine woke up to a new reality on Thursday, as explosions rocked major cities and prompted many to flee the capital Kyiv. Families in Kyiv told CNN about the decision they faced: leave behind their homes, facing potential danger on the road, or stay? By early morning Thursday, heavy traffic filled roads in Kyiv heading westward, as residents packed up and drove in the opposite direction of the Russian border.

Yaryna Arieva and her partner, Sviatoslav Fursin, rushed to tie the knot with the sound of air raid sirens ringing in their ears.

“That was very scary,” Arieva told CNN Thursday. “It’s the happiest moment of your life, and you go out, and you hear that.”

The couple had planned to get married on May 6 and celebrate at a restaurant with a “very, very cute terrace” overlooking the Dnieper River, said 21-year-old Arieva — “Just us and the river and beautiful lights.”

They don’t know what the future will bring — but they’re determined to stay and fight. After their wedding, the couple prepared to go to the local Territorial Defense Center to join efforts to help defend the country….”





“The specter of war had loomed over Ukraine for years — but residents were still stunned to face their new reality on Thursday as the death toll began to climb.

“It’s hard to believe it’s actually our neighbor doing this, because we never really believed that our neighbor can just come and just grab our land and tell us what to do,” one woman taking shelter in a subway station in the city of Kharkiv told CNN.”



Anigel’s mind strayed to the call from her friend Miriam, sixty-five and mildly terrified, leaving the apartment building she’d been in for years. Everyone was leaving because the old slumlord had sold the building to a shinier more corporate slumlord who was attempting to renovate it at cheap coast and raise all rents. Kyrie elieson! Kyrie eleison! Miriam said more people were camped out, sleeping on the streets than ever. Kyrie elieson, Christe elieson, kyrie elieson. What a world where a few men could decide to turn a profit by turning people out into the streets, thinking human beings were the thing getting in the way of their making money. What a world where one man could send an army into another land and disrupt, destroy, end the lives of others...



“Even now, says the LORD,
return to me with your whole heart,
with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, not your garments,
and return to the LORD, your God.
For gracious and merciful is he,
slow to anger, rich in kindness,
and relenting in punishment.
Perhaps he will again relent…”

MORE IN A FEW DAYS

 

[CharmedFan28]

I am glad Donovan, Cade and Simon are trying to get the place that Donovan feels like will be his forever home. The flash forward to Anigel was also cool. That was some great writing and I look forward to more in a few days.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I am glad Donovan, Cade and Simon are trying to get the place that Donovan feels like will be his forever home. The flash forward to Anigel was also cool. That was some great writing and I look forward to more in a few days.

We did get to talk about this in person, but I'm glad you enjoyed and were prepared for the surprise of Anigel

 

[ChrisGibson]

HERE IS THE VERY SHORT END OF OUR CHAPTER.....


Did she want God to relent? Had God ever not relented? She wanted God to show his face, and occasionally, like sun over Seattle, he had, but the showing seemed short and hard to remember. In her rebellious moments—which were most of her moments--she thought as the atheist she had once been had thought—that the Bible was the friend of the wicked, not just of the sinner. Do not pray for wrath, to not resist evil. Forgive and remember you are forgiven. Do not call for the wrath of God because, surely, that wrath is coming on you. The wickedness of one person does not matter because we’re all wicked before God. Hadn’t Jesus said that God makes the sun to shine on the good and the bad alike, wasn’t that mercy the mercy of a God who saw evil as so absolute that he became careless with it, paying a day’s wages to the laborer who had worked an hour as well as the one who had worked all day?

But Joel was the Old Testament God. And if Catholic school God found everyone so bad that no one was bad, if judgment for one meant damnation for all, the Old Testament God was not so blind or so shy. And Anigel believed in him. She needed him. She needed to believe he was as angry over shit as she was. She needed to believe evil people would have their day, even if there was no sign of it, and yes, she had to believe that everything was not everything, that stealing a loaf of bread was not the same thing as invading a nation. A sin was a sin in God’s eyes she had heard. All straying from imperfection was the same to him, but such a God was surely a stupid one.





“Between the porch and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep,
And say, “Spare, O LORD, your people,
and make not your heritage a reproach….



Spare, your people, spare your people, spare your people.



Bombs were falling over Kyiv today.



Spare your people.



She looked around this crowded chapel, more crowded than any other time of year. Everyone here was quietly saying, just by their presence.



“Spare, O LORD, your people,”



When she was even younger than the girl who had knocked on the door of this convent thinking of becoming a nun, when she was as young or younger than those white girls who were with the Houghtons and Isaiah Frey, she woke up one morning and atheism was like a revelation to her. There was no God. And yet the world was full of a glory that, one day, she would reluctantly call just that. Not long ago she’d gotten a call from Benjamin saying, “I’m a bad atheist. I keep a Bible at my bedside.”

She had been a bad Catholic. For a month she couldn’t find her Bible or her bedside. In the end, when the heart was open, it was the same, the titles did not matter. When the heart was devoted, one thing seemed to be much the other. Her moments of rage and unbelief were greater than they ever had been, and yet here she found herself full of love and belief. The two were one. She could not explain it.



“Working together, then,

we appeal to you not to receive the grace

of God in vain.
For he says:

In an acceptable time I heard you,
and on the day of salvation I helped you.

Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.”



The usual friends were here, Anigel saw. Thoughtful Layla Houghton, the Poet. She had brought her children. There was Kenny the redheaded painter. Frey who had found his way here some years ago with Rob. There was Kenny’s sometimes lover, Logan, who got better looking as he got older. There was that crew of dreamers and half otherworldly folk who had always come to Saint Clew, and there were their friends who had eventually shown up, Frey’s boys, as she called them, Pat and Javon down from Michigan, DJ and Joshua. There were Donovan, and Cade and this Simon who reminded her of Judge Brendan Miller who she knew because of Layla and Kenny, and then really knew once he’d begun taking off his shirt and running for mayor. Many others too were here. Fenn Houghton, that elder statesman who reminded her of a man from back home in Michigan, another soul who could gather people around him and make things happen. Fenn had helped her arrange this coup, the two priests at the altar that made Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday and made this time a true Lent.



They prayed and prayed for God to come into the world, to blaze down, set things on fire and set them to rights and yet, he never had. Here they believed in the Incarnation. There was no God on earth but Jesus, and there was no Jesus unless a woman said yes, and he was born in the flesh. Was that the message? Was that what they were here for, to say yes? Was the God they were waiting for one who could never show up in this world until he showed up through them, in their blood, their flesh and bone? Until they said yes?

BIG PORTION TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

A short but excellent portion! Hearing about Anigel is always thrilling. I am glad she has such supportive friends. Great writing and I look forward to reading more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I'm sorry i missed your comment. This week has been vry exhuasting, and I'm so glad its almost over.

 

[ChrisGibson]

HERE WE ARE WITH THE WEEKEND PORTION

E L E V E N


WITHOUT
SHAPE
OR FORM
















“A haunted man is an interesting find.

-Fenn Houghton





































Donovan does not have time for peeling potatoes. Saint Clew is not as far away from the world as you first think. It’s hard to get away from the world. There is one country road where all you see is fields and then you pass under a long avenue of trees. They rain green and green gold over you in summer, but now they are just a net of branches.
But there is another road that shoots out directly for town and a Walmart and a regular grocery store, and Isaiah comes back from here with the necessary ingredients: chives, salt, pepper, a very little garlic, heavy cream and milk to balance that out, cheddar cheese and cheddar cheese and more cheddar and a little mozzarella, broccoli to ground down.
Isaiah was once a miserable cook until his younger cousin taught him better, and for a long time all he could make was chicken, but he’s learned better now. He bakes the bread, or leads the baking of the bread, for Isaiah has always been good at delegation, and Donovan takes the most important ingredient, canned potatoes, and sets to work.
Before Mass he opens the cans of potatoes and set them out to drip dry freed from their watery prisons and now, unconscious of his all day fast, he begins the quick pounding of them, mixing them with butter and cream and more cream and more butter, the beginning of potato soup.
After Brendan has asked for the thirty seventh time if he is kneading the bread right and this last time Frey has chosen to not answer, the kitchen at Saint Clew falls into s sort of silence, and then they begin to talk about the usual things. An early primary is coming up, and it looks like Brendan will be the next mayor of Rossford because the primary is for the Democrats and there are no Republican candidates.
“Well, now I realize,” Brendan panics, “I don’t even know how to be mayor.”
“You didn’t know how to be a judge either, or a lawyer for that matter,” Sheridan points out sagely. “You’ll figure it out. You’ll be the best mayor Rossford ever had.”
Whatever kind of mayor Brendan’s going to be, Donovan thinks, mayor of Rossford he indeed will be for that other opponent, with his unpronounceable name, has managed to make himself forgettable by the ads which made Brendan far too memorable.
Soon will be the end of two years since Adrienne has been gone, Don reflects. Time to sit up and start a new thing, and yet he has no idea what to do, what to start. He has written more than ever and is grateful, has more of a flow than ever, sculpts his fragile sculptures more than ever and is more than ever in love with the two men who often share his bed. All of this pays as little as it ever did, so he is also poor as ever.
It has crossed his mind to go back to the schools, but only for a little bit. Here, poor and aimless, but taken care of and with a little money in his pockets, he felt freer. More like himself than he ever did. The thought of being back in school buildings putting up with the shit of little children is more than he can bear. Walking outside, on one of the first warm days, he ran into the librarians from his old school and they told him it really was more than he could bear. Half the schools in Wallington were shut down, the remaining ones filled to more than capacity, even the library being used for a classroom now. Fifth graders bigger than their teachers calling them, “Bitch.” Donovan had tried to tell himself, “Maybe that is your call. Maybe you should go back there.”
He could not make himself believe it.

The winds started up during supper and while they ate Don listened to them shaking the windows.
“We’d better start home after this,” some where saying to each other, but Don was staying the night, and so were Simon and Cade. After dinner, they went off to the refectory, but Don and Layla and Kenny as well went with Anigel to Compline.

“Answer me when I call, O God, defender of my cause;
you set me free when I am hard-pressed;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer.”

They sang in the well lit chapel.

“You mortals, how long will you dishonor my glory;

how long will you worship dumb idols
and run after false gods?"

Wind snuck threw the windows and halls and stirred the candles on the altar. As the air and the trees outside trembled, on either side of the hollow chapel, they sang to each other.

“Tremble, then, and do not sin;
speak to your heart in silence upon your bed.”

“Offer the appointed sacrifices
and put your trust in the LORD.”

When they were all departing, Donovan snuck out in the black and green darkness where cold rain pelted, and the black trees shook. It was in the danger of it all that he felt at home, that standing against the wind with rain and cold stinging his face, he peered into the night where he could barely make out the end of the island on which Saint Clew sat, or the bridge that linked it to the land. He felt strong enough to take the wind, and strong enough, almost, to be it. He was startled by the quavering flash of lighting, a giant sized artery for the god of the sky, a camera flash lightening, lighting the land around, electric electrifying him. He knew not to travel too far. After all, no one knew where he was, so no one could worry. He saw to that. But no one knew where he was, so no one could save him.
Who were the nuns who had first built this place? What roughness were the forced to live with, build this courtyard against? Turning to enter the courtyard he stood, feeling less guilty, no longer in danger and therefore no longer endangering, barely visible to those few walking the halls along the cloister this time of night, free to stand under the pelting rain even if it meant sickness tomorrow.
“What element are you?”
“Water. A different kind of water. Water.”



Many had gone by now. Dan Malloy and Keith McDonald had left after Mass, having to be back in Michigan for a celebration there. Fenn and Todd, Brendan and Sheridan, had braved the ride back to Rossford in the storm, Brendan driving, Layla’s husband Will and the children directly behind them, a line of three cars powering through the storm.

“Call,” Layla had commanded, “as soon as you get home. Or if you are in any trouble.” But she felt good about them all traveling because they were traveling together. She would stay here, as she often did, and she would stay with Kenny, the handsome, curly haired painter and Logan, whom Donovan eventually realized was the pornstar Logan Banford. He avoided him, not because he hated porn but because he didn’t wish to embarrass himself in front of someone he’d watched having sex for nearly twenty years.

 

[ChrisGibson]

“You look like my husband when I first met him,” Fenn said. “And not just because you’re partially Arab.”

“How did you—?“ Cade began, and then said, “Whaddo you mean?”

“You look like you have something on your chest. That’s probably why Don fell in love you, these tall men with haunted looks in their eyes.”

“I suppose everyone has something on their chests,” Cade said.

“Yes, but not everyone is haunted by it. Some people grow past their losses.”

“That would be nice.”

“Most people just refuse to acknowledge them,” Fenn said. “A haunted man is an interesting find.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I usually talk to Dan,” Cade said. “But… I feel like he hears so much, all the time, and especially from me.”

“Right.”

“I’d like to talk to someone else. I mean, I suppose that’s what confession is…. Is free therapy.”

“No,” Fenn said with the tartness of an old Catholic, “Confession is confession. That’s the problem. People think it’s a chat session. Priests are not therapists. Most of them aren’t even very bright or terribly honest. Dan is both. Confession is for forgiveness. Therapy…. That’s so you can learn to stop fucking up and forgive yourself.”

Cade had little to say in the face of someone who looked like an older, fiercer version of Donovan, and Fenn said, “Now do you want to tell me or not?”

The room was quiet but for the crackling of the fire, and in a corner, the statue of Mary looked as if she had infinite compassion, and so did Fenn, though his was like the rain pattering hard and insistent on the roof and to the ground.

“Fifteen years ago I had… I paid for my girlfriend to get an abortion. I told her to get one.”

Fenn sipped coffee from the large pewter mug, and nodded.

“And then she got it.”

“I figured that,” Fenn said.

“I’m pro choice,” Cade said. “I’m not a practicing Catholic. I’m not some pro-lifer. Scuse me if you are,” Cade tilted his head. Fenn made no remark.

“I believe in Planned Parenthood,, and a woman’s right to choose and…. All of that.”

Through all of this, Fenn nodded almost imperceptibly.

“But you believe something else,” he said.

“I believe I killed my son. Or my daughter…. But I feel like it would have been a son.”

“You know what hipster Democrats never understand?”

“Are you calling me a hipster Democrat?”

“Do you know what hipster Democrats never understand?” Fenn repeated as if Cade had not spoken.

“What?”

“You are not your politics.”

Fenn did not say anything for a long time. He took another sip of his coffee. He stopped and rolled a cigarette.

“You know what Americans…. Good Christians…. Do not understand?”

“I—“

“I’ll tell you. That there is more than one side to a thing, to a man, to a person. No Catholic now remembers that one of Saint Brigit’s miracles was…. They called it a miracle…. Making one of her nuns… unpregnant… after she had been with a man. Saint Ciaran, I believe, did it after a woman was raped.

“In Japan, they have beautiful temples where people who’ve had abortions come to apologize to the soul of the child who will not be born, and they make amends. Here, we spend our time fighting over if it was a child or not, and then the only way most people can feel okay is by pretending it wasn’t.”

“You said pretending.”

“I said there is another way.”

“I treated her so bad. If I had been better…”

“Maybe.”

“I… don’t think I could have been a parent. I don’t think Ashley and I could have ever done that. Been a family. I don’t think it was meant to be. I don’t think things would have been better. But…”

“Maybe you’re right about all of those things,” Fenn said. “I suspect you are. But maybe the reason it weighs on you is because this is the season for forgiveness and you still have not made amends.”

“In those temples… in Japan…. Do they make amends to God?”

“Come now, I’m sure you no a little bit about Buddhism. They’re not Catholic. A forgiving God is not their issue. You make your amends to those whom you offended. You think you did what you had to do, but you could have done it better. You think you did what was necessary, but you killed your child. If this is how you feel, don’t deny it. Amend it. Make amends to your child.”
HAVE A LOVELY WEEKEND

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! I hope Cade can forgive himself for the abortion in his past and what might have been. I am enjoying this story a lot and look forward to more soon! I hope you are having a lovely weekend too!