The Ends of Rossford

[ChrisGibson]

Fenn heeded his husband. He went to the stage again that summer, but this time around someone saw him and recommended New York.
“I can’t go to Broadway.”
“Why can’t you?” Tom demanded.
So, Fenn shrugged and went to Broadway. He didn’t have a staring role, but he was able to pay his bills. Tom missed him, but from then on Fenn did one show in New York every year and one in Chicago. That equaled up to over twenty weeks of the year or so and the rest of the time he recovered in Rossford.
“Why the hell can’t you come with me?” Fenn demanded.
“I have a job too.”
“Of course you do. I know that. Oh, Tom, I want you to be with me, though. You’re a musician. There’s work in New York.”
“Like what?” Tom asked him while they lay in bed.
“How should I know? When did I become an organist? But you play the piano too. And the violin. I would love it if you came with me. Did some more concerts.”
Tom had a sober look on his face and he said, “I’m worried, though.”
“About?”
“If you are off doing things, and I’m off doing things, how in the world will we ever come together? Will we lose touch?”
“Tom,” Fenn said. “You and I need to be everything that we can. And support each other in it.”
By then Todd was coming out of high school, heading for college, and Layla and Dena were talking and thinking of kindergarten and being big girls. Tom went to do a whirlwind of concerts around the country and Fenn set out for New York, and a tour of the East Coast. Tara went with him, and Adele and Hoot moved into the apartment.
“Don’t upset too much.” Fenn pleaded.
Hoot looked around as if something smelled funny.
“Adele, we need out own house.”
“You’ve been saying that.”
“Well now that big one on Lawrence is for sale.”
“We’ll see,” Adele said.

This mode of life lasted for two years. They were walking in Brooklyn one night when Fenn said, “You thought we needed to go out and do what we needed to do.”
“No, love, I thought you needed to do what you needed to do.”
“I need us to be a couple again,” Fenn said.
“Where do you wanna go?”
“This time it’s your choice.”
“Loretto offered me a permanent teaching position.”
“You never told me.”
“It’s not certain yet,” Tom allowed.
“I will be glad to settle wherever you settle,” Fenn told him.
“You mean that.”
“God!” Fenn kissed him, “Of course I mean that.”
Tom smiled and told him, “The only place I really ever felt at home was Rossford.”
“Then let’s go back to Rossford,” Fenn said.

They were both twenty-eight.









CHRIST THE LORD is risen today, Alleluia!
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia!
Christ has opened paradise, Alleluia!

“They don’t have a very good organist,” Tom whispered.
Fenn just shrugged.
“Well, they don’t,” Tom said, looking around.
They were standing in the fifth row of the great abbey church of Saint Terre and two by two, ranks of white robed priests were entering the church. At the head of the priests, in a plain, cream colored robe—something like what Jesus would wear is how Fenn styled it—was Dan Malloy. He looked so young and so tall and so very dignified. Fenn was surprised when, quickly, the wheat haired young man flashed him a smile before taking his seat in the front aisle next to his mother. Each priest bowed when he reached the altar and then split off, one to the left, the next to the right, to take his seat in the many chairs behind it.
“All I’m saying,” Tom went on, “is that a church of this size could get a much better—”
“Tom?” Fenn looked at him.
“Yes.”
Fenn put a finger to his lips.

King of glory, soul of bliss, Alleluia!
Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!
Thee to know, thy power to prove, Alleluia!
Thus to sing, and thus to love, Alleluia!

Fenn did not know the priest in charge. He hadn’t attended Mass in a very long time. In fact, he was carrying a copy of the Bhagavad Gita in his breast pocket, very surprised to find himself in a suit.
“We begin in the Name of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Peace be with you,” the bishop intoned, and the congregation responded, “and also with you.”
“We gather with great joy and great celebration to celebrate the priestly ordination of Deacon Daniel Malloy on Saturday of the Octave of Easter…”
The bishop welcomed Dan’s mother and father, and his sisters and cousins—not so much his friends, Fenn noted—and then, after a reference to the Disciples in the Upper Room, it was time to ask forgiveness of sins.
“You’d think we would have apologized enough by now,” Fenn murmured as they sang:

Lord have Mercy
Christ have Mercy
Lord have Mercy

And then they launched into the Gloria and while Tom sang, “Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father!” He stopped and whispered, “The choir’s beautiful? What if we went into the choir at Saint Barbara’s?”
Fenn had no desire to go to Saint Barbara’s for anything. He didn’t hate the Church, he was just bored by it.
And then the priest sang, “Let us praaay.”

He wanted Dan to turn back and look at him, and at the same time he hoped Dan had the sense not to. A man in a suit rose to do the first reading, and Fenn took deep breaths to still himself. It had been a while since he’d been in a church, and he had a harder time than he knew sitting through a mass.
A pretentious young man in a suit thundered, “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad!” and the choir sang it back. It all sounded very nice and Tom looked transported in that way that church music often moved him. As they moved from the second reading into the Gospel, Fenn looked around and thought, “How sad for all of these people, on a Saturday in May, stuck in this building, going to church. And then he realized that he was one of those people, and laughed a little to himself.
After the Gospel reading, there was a speech about Dan by some people at the mission he had served in up until a few months ago. Fenn knew about the mission because Dan had written him letters every week charged with a holy faith and a passion for the priesthood. Any passion Fenn felt for the Church was long gone, so reading these letters from Dan had a strange effect. When the people from the mission had spoken, the bishop rose up and declared, “We welcome our brother, Deacon Daniel, into the priesthood,” and everyone clapped, and Fenn clapped too and beside him, ever polite, clapped Tom. Dan rose up in his white robe with the sash over his shoulder and stood before the bishop, very handsome and very sober. The bishop sat in a chair before the altar and a priest was on one side of him, a deacon on the other. They opened up a book and the bishop asked: “Do you resolve with the help of the Holy Spirit to discharge without fail the office of priesthood in the presbytorial rank as a worthy fellow worker with the order of bishops in caring for the Lord’s flock?”
Dan, hands folded before him, responded, “I do.”
There were other questions, but after the length of the first one, Fenn didn’t pay attention. And then Dan came up the altar steps and knelt before the bishop. There were some words about Jesus, but Fenn noted more about “obedience to superiors” and teaching and acting, “in accord with the Church.”
Next the bishop said: “Please stand,” and everyone rose. Dan went back to the floor and the bishop prayed that God would strengthen his humble servant and then, even though Fenn had seen movies where women became nuns or men became priests, he was suddenly shocked to see his tall, handsome friend spread himself face down upon the floor and suddenly the cantor chanted:

Lord Have Mercy!

And the congregation chanted back:

Christ Have Mercy!

And then they began the Canon of Saints.

On Easter, increasingly one of the few times Fenn ever went to church, the Canon was sung, and everyone knew there was only a select number of saints every church chose. The Virgin Mary came first, obviously. The twelve Apostles, with Matthias, not Judas, and Saint Paul followed by Mary Magdalene and then Saint Joseph. But after the old standards and the supporting cast saints like Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Francis and Clare, was a whole strand of extras Fenn rarely or never heard of. While incense burned and Fenn kept looking at his prostrate friend he wondered if they would ever get to “Lord hear us, Christ Jesus hear out prayer!” which, eventually, they did. What was it like to be stretched out on the cold floor through that long list of saints? Did it feel good? Did it feel saintly? Or was it just chilly? Was he just waiting for it to be over? One day Fenn would ask.
The bishop stood up and prayed some more, and then Dan got up off the floor, approached the altar, knelt once more, and the bishop placed his hands on Dan’s head for a long time. After this, one by one, each of the priests came, one after the other, and then the other, to repeat this in various ways while Dan knelt and, in the choir loft a motet was sang that Tom knew the words to, apparently. After this they led Dan down, and one by one, they dressed him in the Easter vestments of a priests, As they placed the alb and the chasuble over him, suddenly Tom touched Fenn’s hand and said, “Are you alright?”
“What?” Fenn looked at him, and then said, “Why wouldn’t I be.”
“Because—” Tom began, but then he smiled, patted Fenn’s hand and said, “Right. Why wouldn’t you be?”
Dan went up, knelt again, and then when he walked around the altar, Fenn whispered, “What happened?” and Tom said: He’s a priest now, Fenn. Now he’s going to sit up with the rest of them.”
“Um,” Fenn said, more emphatically than he meant too. It seemed like a wedding day that had suddenly changed into something else. Tacky people had been taking photos and Tom commented, “I know you’re supposed to be serious and everything, but you’d think after six years he’d look a little happier about getting what he wanted.”
Fenn did not reflect on this. He didn’t allow himself to think about it. He wanted Dan’s happiness or, if not his happiness, his fulfillment. The rest of it was a mass. He knew how a mass went. There was more music, more bells, a trumpet or two. But it was still a mass. When communion came he realized he was going to receive it from Dan. That was too much.
“I have to go to the restroom,” Fenn said.
“What?” said Tom.
“I’ll be back.”
As Dan’s family was filing out of their pew into the communion line, Fenn climbed out of his aisle and went rapidly out of the church. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t receive communion from Dan, and he didn’t know why. The world was just so irrational. No, he was irrational, but he came back as the music was dying and knelt beside Tom.
Tom’s head was bowed and he lifted his eyes and said, “You’re really silly. You know that?”
“I sense that,” Fenn agreed.
Tom reached over and put his hand on Fenn’s back. “I love you anyway, you whack job.”

MORE SUNDAY

 

[CharmedFan28]

Sorry I am replying late, went to a movie this afternoon. I am glad Fenn and Tom are trying to make it work even when their jobs have them in different places. As Tom said Fenn is being a bit silly but I understand losing Dan for sure must be hard on him. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yeah, you don't really have to apologize for having a life. Its Saturday and I was gone most of the night and fading fast as I type. Fenn was sort of silly but there is more silliness to follow.... tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

FENN AND DAN GET TO HAVE A REAL TALK AND TOM MEETS SOMEONE WHO WILL CHANGE ALL OF THEIR LIVES FOREVER

The reception had been going on for near an hour when a woman came up to Fenn.
“Mrs. Malloy!”
“Fenn,” she said, hugging him, “I haven’t seen you in years.”
“This is Tom,” Fenn said, always quick to show his boyfriend to the world.
“Good to meet you, Tom. He’s very handsome,” she said to Fenn.
“And don’t I know it.”
He didn’t know how much Mrs. Malloy knew about him, or about him and her son, but he had no intentions of hiding anything.
“You haven’t gone up to him,” Mrs. Malloy said.
“Well, he’s been busy,” Fenn said. “Everybody wants a piece of him right now.”
He looked to where some woman was shaking Dan’s hand and the young priest was smiling while saying something polite to her.
“You even missed communion,” she said.
“You noticed that?”
“Yes, I noticed that. He probably did too.”
“He’s very busy,” Fenn said again. “I don’t want to crowd him on his day.”
“You’re his best friend,” Mrs. Malloy said, plainly.
Fenn said nothing.
“I don’t know what men tell each other, but Dan loves you. He always talks about you. You are so important to him. You need to go up and speak to him.”
Tom shrugged and said, “I agree.”
Fenn blinked at Tom, and then he nodded, shrugged and said, “Alright. Let’s go.”
“No,” Tom and Mrs. Malloy said.
“This a solo act, kid,” Tom said, touching Fenn on his shoulder.
Wanting to shoot them both, he went to go stand in the line of well wishers waiting for Dan. The old man before him kept talking, and Dan kept saying polite things and then came a young woman and then and old woman, and when she was gone, his face changed, and he put his hands on Fenn’s shoulders.
“I’ve been waiting for you!” Dan stood up. “What happened to you?”
“You know,” Fenn murmured. “Your day. Your space—”
Dan hugged him quickly.
“Why didn’t you take communion?”
“I had to go to the bathroom.”
Dan looked at him suspiciously, and then shrugged.
“Okay, so it’s not your thing.” He had immediately dismissed Fenn’s lie.
“How long are you guys staying?” Dan asked.
“I don’t know.”
Some other people were milling in the background. Dan put an arm around him, jolly and almost inconsistent with his black uniform.
“Look, right now I sort of belong to the public, but could you guys stay a little longer so we can talk? Will Tom be alright with that?”
“Yes,” Fenn said, figuring it served Tom right for sending him up here in the first place. “We’ll just… We can wait.”
“Hey,” Dan said. He reached into his pocket.
“These are my keys. You guys can hang out in the monastery if you want. Crash in one of the guest rooms. I promises I’ll be there as soon as I can. Alright?”
His old friend looked so eager to talk to him, and he had questions for Dan. Fenn nodded.
“Alright.”


“Guys, I’m sorry it took me so long,” Dan came into the common room looking exhausted. “I just basically put my mom to bed and told my sisters where to go for a good time.”
Then Dan rolled his eyes. “As good a time as we have in my family.”
“Is everyone in your family really good?” Tom said.
“We’re a tame bunch,” Dan told him.
Tom stood up and said, “I’m going to let you guys catch up.”
“That’s not necessary,” Dan waved it off.
Tom grabbed his jacket.
“Yes it is,” he said. “Besides, I already agreed to discuss music with your organist. Congrat’s Dan.”
Tom offered his hand, and Dan shook it, saying, “Thanks. That means a lot, Tom.”
Dan watched as Tom left, and Fenn waited, wondering what Dan was about to say, and then he turned to Fenn and said:
“You’re a real son of a bitch.”
“Excuse me,” Fenn said.
Dan grinned and sat down beside his friend.
“Why were you hiding from me all day?”
“It makes me nervous,” Fenn said, frankly. “I don’t know how to handle you, Father Dan.”
“Don’t call me that,” Dan sounded genuinely disturbed.
“I’m sorry.” Then he said, “But that’s what you are.”
“But it sounds like you’re mocking me when you call me that.”
“I’m not.”
Dan said, stubbornly, “I still just wish you wouldn’t do it. It’s enough really old people coming up to me shaking my hand and calling me ‘Father’. They don’t know me. They don’t even see me.”
“They’re not supposed to,” Fenn said.
Dan looked at him.
“Daniel, it’s not about you. Why do you think you’re wearing the same clothes that three hundred other men here are wearing? It stopped being about you the moment you walked into seminary.”
Dan just looked at Fenn.
“You knew that, though,” Fenn said.
“You are the only person who would ever say that to me.”
“I don’t go to church,” Fenn said. “And I don’t really care about priests. To me… you’re just you. That’s probably why you don’t want me to call you Father.”
“I’m enough though, right?”
“Huh?”
“I mean for you,” Dan said. “Me is enough. You don’t need me to be more.”
“That’s a funny question,” Fenn said. “Of course I don’t need you to be more. How could you be more? You and Tara are my dearest friends. I love you, you idiot.”
He looked down and saw that Dan was fiddling with something. He was fiddling with his rosary beads. He looked up at Fenn.
“Of course it’s not about me. Of course it’s about God. It’s about giving up me. It’s about serving. But I need to know that to someone I’m me. Just me. Just Dan.”
Fenn nodded and then stopped nodding. Dan kept looking at his black rosary beads, and Fenn kept looking out of the window.
“You’re thinking something,” Dan said.
“Well… yes.”
“Which is?”
“Daniel,” Fenn said. “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve wanted to be seen as a priest. You’ve wanted to be something more. Today Tom said you didn’t smile at all during your ordination and now that you are, like it or not, Father Daniel Malloy, you don’t want it. You just want to be you.”
Dan shook his head.
“That’s sort of true. I mean it is true.”
“Then what?”
Dan placed a hand on Fenn’s shoulder. He looked, though still very handsome, suddenly a little old.
“Where we are concerned,” Dan said. “no matter what we do, we are always what we are right now. Plain Dan. Plain Fenn. And we love each other.”
“Yes,” Fenn said, nodding as the room darkened and evening began. “Yes, and always.”

He knew who the girls were. They were Dan’s sisters. They waved at Tom, giddy on the day of their brother’s ordination. But they couldn’t have possibly known who he was. He waved back and continued his trot to Overmyer Hall where the organist he had earlier criticized said they would meet.
“So my music could have been improved?” the dark haired young man said, coming down the steps to meet Tom. He was tall and aquiline, dark haired and olive skinned with flashing white teeth. The young musician wore a jaunty fedora and Tom chuckled, reminded of Fenn.
“That’s not what I said.”
“I distinctly heard your friend Fenn say to the newly ordained priest that you said my organ playing could be better.”
Tom blinked.
The dark haired young man chuckled and rubbed his jaw, which was stylishly unshaved.
“He didn’t know I was there.”
“I was feeling rude,” Tom apologized.
“No matter,” the other man shrugged. “You have a little free time?”
“I think,” Tom said, rolling his eyes, “I have all night.”
“Your friend?”
“I might as well put this out there,” Tom said. “Fenn is my partner. We’ve lived together for eight years.”
“Oh,” the organist’s dark eyes rolled. Tom couldn’t tell if he was making fun of him or what.
“Then no need for me to hide, either, but I think we church organists and the like hide in plain sight. Never met a straight one yet. Come on, I’ll treat you to coffee.”
The sun had set. In the distance the noise of the town could be heard, and overhead the sky was a deep, gold filled blue with stars arising. The other young man’s strides were strong and long, and Tom had to catch up with him. When he turned to his side to look at the trim figure beside him, it hit him like lightning that this was the most gorgeous man he’d ever seen.
“By the way,” the other musician turned around, holding a hand out for Tom, “if I’m going to buy you a coffee, I should probably know you’re name.”
“Oh!” Tom began, and then chuckled, feeling foolish.
“Yes. It’s Tom Mesda.”
“Tom Mesda,” the other man said, cocking his fedora so only one gleaming dark eye showed while he shook Tom’s hand.
“It’s good to meet you, Tom.
“I’m Bryant Babcock.”

END OF PART ONE​

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a well done end to part one! I am glad Fenn and Dan had an honest chat. I think their friendship is important to both of them and its good that they can keep it up. So Bryant has entered the story? I think he might be trouble! Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, you know he'll be trouble. It's just the question of how he ends up as trouble. I liked the Bryant reveal, and we will start part two tomorrow night. No need to wait.

 

[ChrisGibson]

PART
TWO

HOUGHTON
AND SONS

FOUR


AN ISLAND OF JOY
​

When Fenn Houghton was closer to sixty than he was to fifty, he took off his sandals and walked over the hot sand of Hartigan Beach. The sand slipped under his feet and squeezed through his toes until he reached the wet, hard packed shore. This was a pebble beach, and under his feet the tiny rocks were purple, blue and pink. He sat on the sand, right before the wetness, and rolled up his trousers.
“Like J. Alfred Prufrock.”
He let the water wash over his feet.
Fenn’s reached into the water and gathered sand and pebbles in his hands.
Closing his eyes and murmuring a prayer, he drained the water from his hands until all that was left was wet pebbles. These he put in a pocket of his cargo pants.
“Dad! Dad!” he heard.
These days the boy was quicker than light or perhaps lighter than quickness. Arms airplaned out like when he was a child, blue jeans rolled up his white legs, Dylan Mesda ran in a polo shirt, sailing toward him, and then crashing at his side, gathering his knees to his chest the same way his father sat.
“Were you ready to leave?” Fenn asked his son.
Dylan shrugged.
“I could stay here all day.”
Fenn yawned.
“I don’t know if I could stay here all day now. But fifty years ago I could. And I did.”
“I don’t believe you did anything fifty years ago,” Dylan Mesda said. “I can’t believe you were around fifty years ago.”
“I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”
Dylan threw an arm around his father, and pointing down the horizon he said, “Tomorrow, we’re going to go there. We’re going to the Sears Tower.”
“Willys Tower now.”
“I’m just going to ignore that. And we’re going to go up and down the Magnificent Mile and look at all the greedy, confused and spaced out people. And then we’re going up State Parkway to see Casey and Chay.
“Or we can just do the north.”
Fenn looked north now, the beach curved in and you could see brick apartment buildings going out to the shore. The north was Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka, Lake Forest, towns sizable but quiet, mansions with lake front property. Once it had been home.
“Right now I’m feeling like the North.”
Dylan placed his head on his father’s shoulder.
“I am twenty-two today.”
“Yes, you are.”
Fenn looked at his son, and Dylan sat up.
“Do you know who was twenty two once?”
“You?” Dylan raised an eyebrow.
“Well, I guess anyone who’s twenty three,” said Fenn. “But the first time I ever went out with your father I told him, I am going to Chicago. Come with me. We took the South Shore and we sat on this beach. And we were both the age you are now.”
Dylan smiled about this, and then said, “Maybe I’ll have those stories to tell one day.”
“You have plenty of stories to tell my son.”
“Most of them are not stories I want to tell to my children.” Dylan added, “Or to my father for that matter.”
“Come now, Hamlet,” Fenn said, “The Prince of the North paints himself a little too black, I think.” Fenn raised an arm. “Help me up, child. I’m old.”
Dylan bounced up, reached down a hand and pulled up his father.
“You are not old,” Dylan said.
“And you are not the person that you feel so bad about,” Fenn said. “I see that look come over your face sometimes. It isn’t right. The past is the past, and who you are is my boy.”
“Fair enough,” Dylan said, a smile coming across his handsome face.
They walked on the edge of the water, watching the afternoon turn to evening. Dylan’s hands were out like someone walking a beam, and Fenn’s were at his side when suddenly the older man gave a shout and fell into the water.
“Dad!”
Fenn bobbed back up, laughing.
“It’s a sand bar.”
Dylan reached for his father, and Fenn reached up. But to pull him in. Dylan fell into the water, spluttering.
“See!” Fenn said. “You’ve been baptized. The past is the past. Every day is a new day. Scratch. New!”


“I thought you all would never get in,” Elias said when Dylan and Fenn reached the apartment.
“We were on the beach longer than we thought we would be,” Dylan said. “What smells so good?”
“It’s lasagna—” Elias started, and then he came out of the kitchen exclaiming: “What the hell happened to the both of you?”
“Baptism,” Fenn said. “I call shower cause I’m the oldest. Where did I put my bag?” He looked around the living room.
“I put it in the guest room,” Elias told him and Fenn nodded, and went down the hall.
The living room was large, especially for an apartment in Rogers Park tenanted by college students. Much of Merilee Anderson’s and Crystal Kirk’s furniture had made its way to their grandson’s apartment. An old rocking chair that once sat on a porch in East Carmel was there as was an old, shallow coffee table with a round vase that once sat in Claire and Julian’s house. A white painted grille over a heat register ran under a series of windows overlooking Magnolia, and Elias had cultivated house plants all along that row, twisted together, setting their little vines to run toward the floor.
As he heard his father turn on the shower water, Dylan said, “We think we’re going up to see Brendan and Sheridan tomorrow. Maybe Casey and Chay the next day.”
“Or you could just sit here and read,” Elias offered.
“Dad’s not going to want to just sit in this apartment and read,” Dylan differed as he took off his clothes and stood in his briefs.
“Given the choice between spending the day with Chay or spending the day with Brendan and that baby, I think I’d stay in the house.”
“You’re just saying that because you see them all the time.”
“Dinner’s going to be ready in about ten minutes. At least wash your hands even if you don’t plan to put on clothes.”
“Oh!” Dylan looked down at himself shocked.
“You really didn’t know you were nine tenths naked?”
“I don’t think about it with you.”
Dylan disappeared through the kitchen, sticking his finger in the pot.
“You make the best spaghetti sauce!”
“That’s all because of Claire.”
“You sure you don’t want to come with us tomorrow?” Dylan shouted from their bedroom.
“To see Sheridan and Bren play with that baby and makes stupid noises at it?”
Dylan came out now in basketball shorts and a tee shirt.
“Stop being so mean, Elias. They never thought they’d have a kid, and now they do.”
“I can just imagine Brendan sitting that boy down in about fifteen years, looking all serious, the way he does—”
“Brendan’s not serious looking—”
“He totally is. Don’t get me wrong. He’s hot as fuck and I’d do him if he asked me—and if you let me,” Elias added at the look on Dylan’s face. “But he reminds me of Ed Sullivan in all those reruns I used to watch with Grand.
“Anyway, stop interrupting me. I can just see him sitting his Mexican son down and saying, ‘I have to tell you something. Me and Officer Sheridan aren’t you’re natural parents. You’re adopted.”
The way he imitated Brendan, the earnestness with which he did it, made Dylan cover his face and laugh. The shower water stopped and Elias passed his laughing boyfriend to wrap on the door and say¸ “Sir Fenn, dinner is in less than ten minutes.
“Dylan, be good to me and put out the plates,” Elias said.
Dylan nodded. Heading to the kitchen.

“Oh, and we went by the ISKCON temple today. We picked up this good incense. It’s like a pack that will last forever, and only seven bucks.”
“Is that what we’re burning now?” Elias gestured to a corner of the living room where an incense burner sending up a tendril of smoke burned on a table before a small bronze image.
“Yup,” Dylan said. “There were two different types and one was burning in the shop. Dad kept asking the shop girl which type she was using, but—”
“She hasn’t really conned onto English,” Fenn explained.
Elias stuck out his bottom lip, looking across the table, and then he smiled.
“What, love?” Dylan said.
“You put out a plate for Lance.”
Dylan blinked, shook his head and laughed.
“I guess I’m ready for him to come home.”
“How soon till he does?” Fenn said.
“Break is eight days off,” Elias said.
Dylan smiled at him.
“Yes,” said Elias. “I miss him too.”

One night, about nine months after the boys had decided on their relationship, they came to Fenn for advice.
“Should we tell Paul and Kirk?”
Fenn resisted the urge to be sarcastic and simply told Dylan: “I don’t think you can,” Fenn said. “Not just yet.
“And not Tom either,” Fenn added to Dylan. “He’d never get it.”
“But you do?” Dylan said.
“If I could have kept your father and Todd, don’t you think I would have?” Fenn said. “Or Dan for that matter? But the men I loved did not love each other, so that wasn’t an option.”
As usual, Dylan had come with a surprise only to be met with a greater surprise by his father.
“I thought… I thought you just stopped loving Dad,” Dylan said. “After what he did.”
“I never stopped loving anyone,” Fenn said. “I just had to learn to love in a different way.”
He was very quiet for a moment, and then he brushed it aside and said, “Enough of that. Back to you.”


THERE WILL BE NO POSTING TOMORROW, BUT I WILL ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS AND ALL STORIES, SO THIS WOULD BE A GRAND TIME TO ASSEMBLE THEM.

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion with some excellent writing. I like that Fenn and Dylan have such a good relationship. I hope you have a good day tomorrow. I only really have one question. Will this Rossford story go between different times in these characters lives often?

 

[ChrisGibson]

I am glad to get back to Dylan and Fenn. To me their relationship is the heart of the final part of the series. This is the longest Rossford story. It is divided into five parts. I believe the first four parts go, past, present, past, present, and in the last part, the chapters althernate and then evnetually come together. You have a good few days as well. Any other questions? Feel free to leave them here.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Dylan spent two years at Loretto College, waiting for Elias to turn eighteen. When dinner was over, Elias made to pick up dishes, but Dylan touched his hand and did it himself. As he took Fenn’s plate and moved into the kitchen, Elias followed him.
“I was going to get the kitchen.”
“You’re my boyfriend, not my slave. Go sit down,” Dylan told him, turning the water on.
“Keep Dad company.”
“I thought you’d want to.”
“We see each other all the time,” Dylan said as he pulled the dishwashing liquid from under the sink. “Go sit down, now.” He kissed Elias on the cheek.
From the dining room, Elias said, “No matter what, if I cook he always cleans. And then even if he cooks, sometimes he sends me out so he can clean. It’s the one time I definitely feel like the younger one. There’s no getting past his will.”
“There never was,” Fenn said with a small smile.
“Not even for his father?”
“The trick to being his father is understanding there’s no getting past Dylan’s will. Not when he’s serious.
“When he was five, he took it into his head to wear this particular suit for Easter. I don’t really even remember the suit. Tom didn’t want him to. He came downstairs. At my house, with his arms folded over his chest. I mean, he was so little and I’d never really seen him determined. I told him Tom didn’t like that suit, and Dylan just stomped his foot and shouted: Noooo!”
“Well, what did you do?”
Fenn looked back to the kitchen, where the grown young man was quietly washing dishes and stacking them in the wooden rack on the counter.
“I shrugged my shoulders and said alright.”
“Maybe I’ll do that when I have kids,” Elias said. “That must have driven him crazy.”
“He didn’t know what to do with himself,” Fenn said. “He was growing up. He wanted a fight. He wanted to stand up for something. Unless it was something important, I generally let him have his way. And I honestly have to say, most things weren’t that important.”
“My parents have never had that philosophy,” Elias said.
“Well,” Fenn shrugged. “Your parents are different.”
Elias admired how that phrase could have meant so many things the way Fenn said it.
“I’m almost done,” Dylan shouted from the kitchen.
“We can see you right here,” Elias told him.
Dylan turned to Elias and cracked him a smile. It reminded Fenn of Todd’s sexy little sideways smiles. He needed to go call him.
“Do you ever miss Dylan’s hair?” Elias said.
“You mean when it was like Tom’s?” Fenn said. “No. I already had one Tom. He shaved it off at thirteen and Tom was distraught—as usual—but I liked it. He did it to be like Todd,” Fenn added with a perverse smile, “and Todd liked that too. Now Elias, you must excuse me because I just realized I have to call my significant other.”
Fenn took his phone out of his pocket and added, “Frankly, just seeing the way you two look at each other reminds me of someone who looks at me that way. I’m actually going to go to the spare bedroom.” Fenn stood up. “We might have to say some nasty things to each other.”
Elias’s eyes flew wide open.
“What?” said Fenn.
“I just hope,” Elias began, and then recovered, “I just hope that me and Dylan are like that in thirty years.”
“Yes,” Fenn said. “I hope me and Todd are too.”


“What time is it?”
“Only nine,” Elias said.
“It feels like ten.”
“That’s because we’ve just been sitting in the apartment,” Elias told Dylan.
“Dad, are you sleepy?”
“A little,” Fenn admitted.
He stretched and looked around the apartment.
“I like what you all have done with the place. It’s a nice place to sleep. Everyone’s home isn’t. Some homes just… make you nervous.”
Dylan pushed himself off of the sofa and went across the room. There was rustling in the semi darkness, and then the light of a pillar candle. The white pillar was golden now and it shone on two brass figures. Dylan knelt down and wrestled with something, and then Fenn smelled incense and Dylan rung a small bell. Elias, whom to Fenn’s knowledge had never been particularly religious, sat up while Dylan, looking mildly reverent, nodded, and then returned to the sofa.
It was very quiet and the incense was burning on the small altar. Elias got up to open one of the great windows that overlooked the street. The small noises outside came into the apartment. Suddenly Dylan began to hum, to sing a little.

Saḿsāra dāvānala līḍha loka
trāṇāya kāruṇya ghanāghanatvam

Fenn turned to his son, and together they sang:

prāptasya kalyāṇa-guṇārṇavasya
vande guroḥ śrī-caraṇāravindam

When Dylan was about fifteen, the same year Todd officially became a bar mitzvah, Dylan had asked Fenn about God and what religion he should choose. Todd obviously cared for Judaism, though Dylan found it rather unamazing, and Tom Mesda was deeply Catholic though, again, Dylan, Catholic educated even now, couldn’t really get into it. He’d thought whatever was inside of Fenn should be inside of him. Fenn had some religion, something deep, though there wasn’t a particular building it belonged to. But Fenn had only told him to find it for himself.
Then Fenn had given him his Bhagavad Gita. It was that and other things, the old picture of Krishna, the music. When Great Grandma had died, Dylan sat his father down, and sang Sri Garuvastakam to him. He had taught himself the song, listening to the George Harrison recording. It was a gentle song that prepared one for death, settled the soul. Dylan, who had a fair voice, needed settling. He changed when he sang that song. His face lightened, his voice became reedy, his body was easy and light. When he had first sung it to his father, un-Fennlike tears came to the man’s eyes. Now the two sang together, their voices rising. Even Elias knew the words. His voice was deeper than theirs. Fenn’s fell into the middle.

mahāprabhoḥ kīrtana nṛtya gīta
vāditra mādyan manaso rasena
romāñca kampāśru tarańga bhājo
vande guroḥ śrī caraṇāravindam

On the altar, small and not like they were in his room, were Radha and Krishna. Dylan found himself—and that was the only way to describe it—singing to them every morning. He did not understand Jesus, and suspected Jesus wouldn’t understand him. There was too much bloodshed turned into self pity turned into atheism and human service in Judaism, and there was too much virginity in Catholicism. Once he read the Gita Govinda. Krishna ravished Radha in the forest, eyes mad with passion. Dylan knew all about that. Elias filled him with a passion, and the most tender moment he ever felt was that afternoon when they had gotten a hotel room and Elias had made him fuck there all afternoon. He and Krishna were rather on the same path, so as they stopped singing, and night set in, Krishna was the only God that Dylan Mesda knew.
After the year of darkness, or rather the nearly two years—but that wasn’t as poetic—in which he had the affair with Ruthven, the foolishness in California, the random affairs, the affair with Rick Ferguson, he needed something. After fooling around with men three times his age in bathrooms and parks, he needed something. After the intense affair with Lance which ended in a shame he couldn’t describe even now, and the death of his great-grandmother something was needed.
When he was barely fourteen, heading to visit Ruthven in California, recently confirmed and indifferent to his father’s Catholicism, someone in class had said that religion was the need for comfort, or that people needed to “believe in something.” He would have agreed to this while still thinking the explanation fell short of the truth. But during those nights when he taught himself Sri Guruvastakam and locked himself in his room with the Bhagavad Gita he knew that was not it. Dylan had no center, and nothing he had seen could be his center. Fenn, in his quiet way, had given him an Upanishads, a Bhagavad Purana and a Dhammapada as well as the album Sri Guruvastakam had come from. To some people the time after Lula’s death was “the time he dated Ruthven” but not to Dylan. For him that was the time of Krishna Das and Ravi Shankar albums.
“If that’s what interests you,” Layla had told him, “you need to go talk to Radha.”
Radha Hatangady, now called Radha Turner, told him, “I grew up in church, my family’s Christian, and I hardly ever go to the Hindu temple around here. But I will take you.”
He watched her and learned to set up altars and sit quietly. The day she and Matt went to the temple with him, looking very much like outsiders, and Fenn had come along, he had felt something for the first time. In the face of these strange staring deities, he felt something, and when the fire, the aarti it was called, swished past them as the bells rang, it was like all the shit dropped away from him.
“I’m going to do this, Dad,” he said, later on.
Fenn nodded.
“You really don’t mind?”
“Did you think I would?”
“Dad won’t be pleased.”
“It’s not about him,” Fenn said.
“Dad gave me the Church, and Todd gave me Sabbath and Rosh Hoshanah,” Dylan said. “But none of that’s me. This is me,” he said, holding up a Ravi Shankar CD. “Even that temple isn’t me. I understand why Radha doesn’t go that often. This is me. Just me and God and sitting on the floor.”
Fenn said nothing while Dylan spoke, and then Dylan said, “I have a favor to ask you?”
“Yes?”
“You went to church with Dad, and you went to temple with Todd, and none of those things helped either one of us. But… really, I learned this from you. You didn’t force it on me. You just showed me.”
Dylan looked very shy, then he said, “Could you do it with me?”
“Yes,” Fenn told him.


“I do wonder how it works, though,” Fenn said when he and Dylan were sitting together, and Elias had gone to bed.
“I mean, you and Elias are such a couple. Where does Lance fit in?”
“He’s not here that often, so I guess one day we’ll figure it out,” Dylan said. “But right now it’s like… I feel the same way about Elias as you do about Todd.”
“What about Lance?”
Dylan thought about it.
“The way you do about Dad, probably. It’s different. Maybe like the way you feel about Dan Malloy.
“And then Elias and Lance have their thing. It’s very different from what I have with Lance, or what I have with Elias. And then we have our family thing. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“I think you’ve described it just fine.”
“I don’t tell anyone else stuff like this because they don’t get it. They don’t really listen. I’ll be honest. I’m not saying stuff doesn’t happen—”
“Dylan.”
“I was just about to say, ‘But I’m also not going to burden you with the details.’”
“I do appreciate that,” Fenn said. “I’m not stupid, or without imagination, and I hope you all do have a good time together, but…”
“Let’s talk about something else?”
“Well, really, let’s talk about anything else.”

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Dylan seems to be growing into a sensible young man. I am enjoying part 2 a lot so far! I don't have much else to say other then great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow! I hope you are having a nice week!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, things do seem to be calm and sensible right now, which is a sure sign things are about to happen. I am having a wonderful week. Thank you. I hope the same for you.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT, FENN AND BRENDAN HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT CONVERSATIONS

Early the next morning, Elias was cooking breakfast.
“Does this mean I have to get up?” Fenn muttered, stifling a yawn.
“Dad, you don’t have to do a thing,” Dylan said. He sat on the side of the bed.
“Eli just really took to cooking this year is all. He’s really good at it, and he does it all the time.”
“And what do you do?” Fenn leaned on his side.
“I’m really good at grocery shopping.”
“Well, then, that is something,” Fenn said.
“You always did the cooking,” said Dylan.
Fenn nodded, “And always despised the grocery store.
“I can get up. I will get up for Elias. Anything else would be impolite.”
Elias Anderson, generally the quieter of the Anderson twins, embraced Fenn and then embraced Dylan when they entered the kitchen.
“I made French toast,” Elias said. “Dylan got the bread from that bakery down the street, so it’s not the soggy type. It’s just like what you get in the restaurant. And then,” Elias added with a pause for effect. “I got crazy and did the fresh cut fruit thing.”
Dylan looked around for something to do and then, putting his hands together, said, “I can set the table.”
“What can I do?” Fenn asked.
“You can sit down,” Elias told him. “And have a cup of coffee.”

Halfway through breakfast, Elias said, “I shouldn’t have waken you. You look like you need to go back to sleep.”
“As a rule Dad doesn’t get up until ten,” Dylan said.
Elias looked shocked.
“Has that always been true?”
Fenn nodded, and so did Dylan.
“Then I really got carried away.”
Dylan got up and kissed the top of Elias’s head.
“The only way you got carried away is in making an awesome breakfast. I remember when you were just a baby, and now you’re a chef.”
He turned around and asked Dylan, “What time are we going to see Brendan and Sheridan?”
“I don’t think I marked out a specific time, but we should probably head out in about fifteen minutes.”
They went to the Morse stop, and took the El to Howard. They got off on Dempster and walked while Elias wondered what life would be like if they had a car.
“Lance wants one,” Dylan noted. But he said, “I like the L. I like just flying over the city looking down at it. That’s the best part of Chicago.”
Elias weighed this: “I’m not sure if it’s the best part of Chicago. But it’s a nice part.”
Fenn announced that they had arrived, pointing to the little house ahead of them.
The door opened quickly, and Sheridan Klasko marched out in jeans, a tee shirt and a vaguely military haircut with a brown baby dangling from his arms.
“Ahhhhh!” Sheridan gave a general greeting noise. “Everybody’s here! Happy Birthday, Dylan. Get on in here, Fenn.”
“Where’s your serious husband?” Elias asked while Sheridan embraced Fenn.
“Oh, shut it,” Sheridan said cuffing the boy on the back of his head. “He’s in his office.”
As they walked up the steps of the porch, Fenn noted the sign that said, Brendan Miller Attorney at Law, and then came through the living room and while Sheridan walked the others about the house, he went into the office where a sharp shouldered, blond, youngish man in a burgundy dress shirt was typing.
Fenn leaned against the wall while Brendan typed on. This was no case. It was a book and Brendan had told him all about it, and then Layla had told him all about what Brendan had told her about it. He waited a while then finally whispered:
“Brendan.”
With a small shriek, Brendan jumped and turned around.
He looked exasperated at first, and then grinned and came toward his old friend.
“When did you get here?”
“Here in your house or here in this city?”
Before Brendan could answer, Fenn said, “In this house, about five minutes. In this city, yesterday afternoon.”
“I thought you were coming this afternoon.”
“I’m a constant surprise.”
Fenn sat down in the chair across from Brendan.
Brendan sat down, straightening his black pants, looking very much like a man of business.
“Have you seen my baby?”
“Yes, Officer Sheridan brought him to the door.”
“My Raphael’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
“Do you always call him yours.”
“You always call Dylan your boy, and he’s twenty-two.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you always say my boy and my Dylan.”
“Um,” Fenn stuck out his bottom lip. “I guess I do.”
“You know what I want to do?” Sheridan said.
“Tell me about your book?”
“Well, sort of,” Brendan said. “Well, no. Definitely. I’m really excited about it. But I want you to see my baby.’
“Bren—”
“I mean, I want to see you seeing the baby. I haven’t seen that yet.”
Fenn was about to protest when Brendan shouted: “Sheridan!”
“Holy crap, Bren!” Sheridan said a few moments later, entering the office followed by Dylan and Elias.
“Alright,” Brendan said. He stood up and put his arm around Sheridan, and then drew Raphael between them.
“Check it out,” Brendan said, “The Miller Klaskos.”
“Actually, we can just be the Millers,” Sheridan said. “I was never that fond of my last name.”
“Neither is Layla,” Fenn said. “But she still married your brother.”
“Shush,” Brendan put a finger to his lip. “Check us out. Daddy, Daddy and baby.”
Brendan’s voice went up at the word baby.
“Should we get a kid?” Elias turned to Dylan, who frowned.
“You don’t just pick up kids at the grocery store.”
“Actually, Fenn sold your dad’s DNA at a grocery store.”
Dylan frowned at him.
“Now, Fenn,” Brendan said, still in his pose, “do me and Sheridan not look hot as a family? With this little man in the middle?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Elias remembered, “I’m you and Lance’s little man in the middle.”
“And we do make a hot little family too,” Dylan nodded.
“How does sex work out with you guys?” Sheridan asked.
“Carefully,” Dylan answered.
“Yes, Brendan,” Fenn said, ignoring it all and offering his finger to Raphael. “You all are a beautiful family.”

“I never thought I would have a kid,” Brendan admitted. “I mean, not when I was with Kenny, and that was a long time.”
“Never?” said Fenn.
“Funny, isn’t it? I don’t know if it’s because I was old or what, but after I’d been with Sheridan a year, the first thing we thought was, let’s have a kid. I wonder what that was about.”
“It was about when he got shot,” Elias said, baldly.
Brendan blinked, looking very troubled as he remembered that.
“That’s right. I’m still scared for him. “That’s one reason we moved to Evanston for good. Seeing him in that hospital bed terrified me.”
“I’m a cop, babe,” Sheridan said, incongruously letting Raphael suck on his finger. “It’s more than wearing that hot black uniform that turns you on so much.”
Brendan gave him a lopsided smile and said, “I just knew I wanted your son.”
He turned to Fenn, “And then Sheridan was with Logan for years. But I feel like he was the one for me, all along, and we just weren’t ready for each other. And then as soon as we were together I knew I wanted a family with him. Funny.”
“Is it as funny as being with Todd for ten years and then having a child with your ex?”
“Well, now Fenn, that was just strange! I mean, it worked out. Clearly it worked out. And when Dylan came along, Tom hadn’t been with Lee that long, so it didn’t really make that much since for Lee to adopt him. But… Yeah… who knew that would work out?”


“So this—what you see me typing—is the last book,” Brendan was saying.
“You did the trilogy? Just that quick?”
Brendan nodded.
“The first one was during that year when me and Kenny split up over Christmas, and when I got with Sheridan. I didn’t think there would be a second one, but then Sheridan had his accident and writing kept my mind off of all of my worry. And now there is a third.”
“The second isn’t out yet, though?” said Fenn.
“Well, the first is hardly out,” Brendan said. “That’s the thing. In my mind we’re at the end, and in the minds of the five people who read it, we’re only in book one.”
“Well, as one of the five people, I’m eager for book two.”
Brendan gave a wry smile and then said, “You know what? And this is not a complaint—well, it sort of is. But you know what? I don’t get people.”
Brendan took the laptop from his knees and set it down on the little foot rest in front of him.
“It’s not that I’m such a great writer—”
“I think you are.”
“Well, thank you, Fenn.
“But it’s not that. It’s that I think I’m an honest writer. I think I’m really serious and really care, and I’m really telling my truth. I mean, I remember what it was like to not be honest, and I don’t ever want to be there again. But nobody wants to read about us. People want to read about New York or LA. Even people who live here—we’re the worst—we don’t want to read about ourselves.
“And gay people? Oh, shit, I mean faggots don’t even read. And I don’t just mean the dumb ones from the outskirts of Rossford who are building meth labs or the stupid ones going to clubs all the time. I mean gay men don’t read. There really a bunch of fucking idiots. But then men are idiots too. But then people as a whole—America is just this one dumb ass country that wants to see anything but itself. It’s like, show me anything that’s not me! It screams it at the top of its lungs, Fenn. Because it hates itself. And then I come along like a dufus and write about my life, about the reality I see. And who wants that?
“You want it. Todd wants it. Five people in the country want it.”
Fenn said nothing, and Brendan sighed and said, “You’re going to get up and go see Chay and Casey and probably Logan when you get back, and the thing is, if I stayed an ambulance chasing lawyer, I’d make more than I make, and if I was doing porn like them I’d be making more still. There is something so wrong, so fucked up about our values, I hardly know why I sit here and write paragraph after paragraph.”
“You write paragraph after paragraph,” Fenn said, “because even while you sit here telling me your very real and honest lament, there is another pat of you that is wondering how to put this diatribe into the mouth of one of your characters in the novel you are writing.”
Brendan looked at him, startled, and then he grinned out of the side of his mouth and burst out laughing.
“Holy shit, you’re right.”
While Brendan clapped his knees and chuckled, Fenn explained:
“I’ve been an actor for over thirty years. I had two writers in my family before you, Bren. If you were being kicked to death by a herd of reindeer, there would always be a part of you saying: this is going to make one hell of a story.”

MORE TOMORROW AFTERNOON

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a well done portion! It was nice to see how Brendan and Sheridan are going with their new family. I am glad Brendan is writing and that people are reading and enjoying it! Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Now that we're in the last story, think back as far as you can and let me know who you're the most surprised by, given how they started out?

 

[CharmedFan28]

Probably Brendan. He started out a confused kid but it seems he has really grown up and matured now.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Well, I think that's fair. The other canditates I might offer would be Paul or Sheridan, but Brendan certainly has gone from being a confused closeted teenager to a confident writer and attorney in his late thirties, so yes.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT IN ROSSFORD....

“Are you going down with us to see the guys?”
“No,” Sheridan said, looking at the crib where Raphael slept. “I got a kid.”
Dylan rolled his eyes and said, “You don’t have to take the baby with you, and it’s only an El ride away. Or a bus. Are we taking the 147?
Elias shook his head.
“We’re taking the Red Line and getting off at Clybourn I think.”
“Well, I’m just going to stay up here with the husband for now,” Sheridan said.
“I think Logan will be there.”
“Then I’m definitely staying.”
“Resentful much?”
“You know what, Dylan,” Sheridan said, folding his arms over his chest. “I don’t think you’d just rush to hang out with Kenny and Ruthven.”
“How fucked up is that?” Elias began.
“Careful,” Sheridan said, running to the cradle. “Baby ears.”
“Baby ears don’t know shit about fuck,” Elias said, tiredly, while Sheridan covered Raphael’s ears and frowned.
“But like I was saying, can you imagine, Dill? Your ex is with Brendan’s ex. How much sense does that make?”
“Actually, it makes more sense than when he was with me. I get your point, Sheridan.”
“I care for Logan, but he’s still in that life. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying it was my life for too long, and I don’t want it anymore, not even a little part of it. For a long time I had a significant other whose bread and butter was made having sex with other people besides me. And then I get Bren, and it changes things. I mean, I’m just a different person with him. It’s hard to really believe in the life I had before.”
“How old is Logan, now?” Dylan said.
Sheridan screwed his face up. “I dunno. At least thirty-five. I thought he’d get past all that, but I guess he’s just a career porn man, now.”
“How would you handle me being a career porn man?” Elias asked Dylan.
“You really think you’re funny sometimes, don’t you?” Dylan said.
“I was just asking.”
“Actually, Dylan, you let him get away with so much,” Sheridan said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Whaddo you mean, let me get away?” Elias said.
“Elias is the prince of the household,” Dylan said. “It’s always been like that.”
“I’m the baby first, and now I’m the prince?” Elias said.
“Shush, baby,” Dylan told him, wrapping his arm around Elias and patting his head while the younger boy frowned. “You know I wuv you.”


“So, in this story Merritt—you probably don’t remember Merritt—”
“I just read the first book, remember?” Fenn said. “Merritt was one of the little boys.”
“Well, he turns into a pretty important character by the second book, and now he’s looking for love.”
“Boy love or girl love?”
“Boy love,” Brendan said. “Because that’s the only kind of love I want to write about. Only he’s not finding it, and the way things are going, I don’t think he will. That sounds sort of selfish. Because I did. But I feel like he won’t.
“I feel like I got lucky, and you got lucky, and people really aren’t that great. I mean, I’ve really become a big ass pessimist since I started writing.
“I struggle between the happy life I have and then what I see with other people. I hope for so much for so many people. And then there’s what I see in these court cases. Or, if I think about it, in our lives. I dunno,” Brendan pushed his hands together. “I feel like in our house things are good and we have to keep them that way, but it’s so easy to fall off into the bad. Even here, it’s like an island of joy. And people aren’t happy. Not really.”
“Dylan tells me he regrets so much,” said Fenn, “And I tell him that I am three times his age. Just wait till he knocks on sixty.”
Brendan shook his head. “Wait till he knocks on thirty-five.”
“You have regrets?”
“Of course. Regrets or wonders. Many of them have to do with Kenny. I wonder if I was good to him. And then I wonder if we just went on too long.”
“Do you ever—”
“Think about getting him back?” Brendan guessed.
Fenn nodded.
“No. We had a long time. Eighteen years. And now he’s with that tool bag Ruthven?”
“I know,” Fenn said. Then he remembered, “Technically, Ruthven is family.”
“No he isn’t,” Bren said impatiently. “He’s Todd’s family. I’m your fucking family, Fenn. Your cousin’s married to my sister.”
“And his first born is Meredith Affren’s son,” Fenn completed in amazed tones. “Too much incest. Another reason to leave Rossford.”
“What?” Brendan sat up.
“If you can leave, then I can leave too.”
“Well, I mean, yeah. I mean… of course you can,” Brendan said. “But… I didn’t know that was in the cards.”
“When I was very young I said I would come back here,” Fenn explained. “And now I am not very young, and I am here. So, I’ve just been thinking.”
“Well,” Brendan thought of it. “Half of us are coming here anyway, and you know I’d love to have you here. You’re like my fairy godfather, no pun intended. I just had no idea you were thinking about coming here for keeps.”
“Oh, I’m thinking of so much,” Fenn told him, pulling his knees to his chest. “Thinking of the past, thinking about how we all got from here to there. You’re thinking your way to the end of your book, and I’m thinking my way to the beginning of the story.
“That’s the funny thing. It’s not that there’s a problem. It’s not that there’s anything bad, and yet I feel like something has to be solved. I blink and everyone’s getting older. You were a little child once. I remember it. Layla’s little friend, and then you were a teenager, looking up to Dan Malloy, and I remember when Dan Malloy was a teenager and now he’s sixty, nearly. Just like me. Things go quicker and quicker and I feel that before they go too quickly forward I have to go backward, remember how it started, where we came from. Remember, and remember accurately.”
Fenn shrugged. “Maybe that’s the real reason I’m here, or think of coming back here. So that I can remember. Maybe that’s why old people so often fall back into the past. But old people lie. They say it was better in the past. They say, remember the good old days. I am like you. I am a creator. I want to remember. And so I have to go back.”


“That’s crazy!”
“But it’s true.”
“Hey,” Dylan said, typing on his laptop as the train raced back to Loyola, “if you say it is, I believe you. I just never heard of that.”
Fenn was half asleep and yawned while Elias said, “I saw it on this National Geographic special last night. They used to—the Incas or the Mayas, I can’t remember which—turn their royal dead bodies into jerky and then march them around once a year.”
“Holy shit!” Dylan said, then covered his mouth. “Sorry, Dad.”
Fenn yawned, turned over a little and shrugged as the train stopped on South Street.
“You found it?”
“Well, at first I just typed in jerky people,” Dylan said. “And all I got was a lot of hillbillies holding sticks of jerky. And then I typed in jerkied people.”
“Did you do dehydrated corpses?” said his father.
“That’s exactly what I did,” Dylan said. “And boy is this gross.”
“I used to think it would be interesting to taxidermy people,” Elias said. “You know, the way they do horses and all. Then instead of going to the cemetery, you could just have Grandma relaxing in her rocking chair, and Grandpa in the kitchen, perpetually standing in front of the fridge thinking about what to eat.”
“You are a boy with a very warped since of humor,” Fenn told him.
“Why thank you,” Elias said, giving a slight bow as the train pulled into the yard at the Howard Street station. “Thank you, very much.”
“Well, while we’re at it,” Dylan said, stepping off the train and closing his laptop, “we could just have whole taxidermy villages instead of cemeteries.”
“Right! With crossing cards and little taxidermy kids crossing the street. Taxidermy dogs barking from the yard.”
“Of course,” Dylan noted, “the whole thing would have to be indoors.”
“I was just about to point that out,” Fenn said, not missing a beat as they stepped onto the Red Line train that would take them home.
Even though there were only two stops between here and home, all three of them yawned the entire ride.
“What should we have for dinner tonight?”
“I can cook,” Fenn said, but in a voice that Dylan felt was more last resort and despairing, than sincere.
“We should just look on Grub Hub and have something delivered,” Dylan decided.
“I wanted to go the beach,” Elias told them, and then he said, “But after I take a nap.”
Walking up Magnolia, toward the apartment, Elias looked up and said, “Did we leave the lights on?”
Dylan shook his head. “We never leave the lights on.”
“Except for this time,” Fenn said.
Walking down the rows of brick three stories, they came to the building and walked up the two flights. But before Elias reached for his key, he cocked his head.
“Wha?” Dylan began. But there was noise from within, and he pushed Elias’s hand away, and then twisted the knob and entered, bellowing, “Who’s here?”
Fenn hadn’t planned for Dylan to put himself in harm’s way like that, and he put out a hand, pulling his son back, and walking into the living room ahead of him. He blinked rapidly at what he saw.
Sitting up straight, and startled more than terrified, was no burglar, but Maia Meradan.

MORE TOMORROW!

 

[CharmedFan28]

I am enjoying this section of the story quite a bit! I wonder what Maia Meradan will want? Things are about to get even more interesting. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Oh, yes, when Maia shows up things are always about to get more interesting. The only thing that culd be more interesting than Fenn having a day with his son and two sons-in-law is Maia showing up. P.S. What do you think of the Dylan Elias Lance thrupple? How did you think it would work out from the end of the last story?