ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I thought you would appreciate an all Brendan and Kenny night! Who are your favorite characters after Brendan and Kenny? By the way, thanks for enjoying the poems. I thought it was finally time to post them.
The Original Gay Porn Community - Free Gay Movies and Photos, Gay Porn Site Reviews and Adult Gay Forums
-
Welcome To Just Us Boys - The World's Largest Gay Message Board Community
In order to comply with recent US Supreme Court rulings regarding adult content, we will be making changes in the future to require that you log into your account to view adult content on the site.
If you do not have an account, please register.
REGISTER HERE - 100% FREE / We Will Never Sell Your InfoTo register, turn off your VPN; you can re-enable the VPN after registration. You must maintain an active email address on your account: disposable email addresses cannot be used to register.
The People in Rossford
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
My favourite characters after Brendan and Kenny are probably Paul, Noah and Danasia. I like all of the characters pretty much but those are my favourites!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER
EIGHT
WE GET TO GO TOGETHER CONTINUED
Layla came into the house through the kitchen and asked her uncle, “Have you seen Todd?”
“Todd!” Fenn shouted up the steps.
Todd came down, humming to himself, and Layla recognized the tune from Will’s synagogue, but could not place it.
“Adon Olom,” Todd told her.
“The Torah scroll I ordered should be here tomorrow,” Todd said.
“You’re serious?” Layla said to him.
“I am,” he said, sitting at the table while Fenn continued to cut vegetables and sweep them into the stew pot. “This is the first time I’ve ever been excited about religion.”
Layla looked at her uncle.
“How do you feel about this?”
“Does it matter?” Fenn said.
“I have never known Todd to be remotely interested in any type of religion, and now he’s buying Shabbos candles and—”
“You’re invited,” Todd said to Layla. “Tonight, be here at sunset or be square.”
“I’m going to have to be square,” she said. “Because Will’s mother request my presence at her Sabbath, excuse me, Shabbos table, and my mother, your sister,” she said to Fenn, “keeps teasing me about a Jewish wedding.” Layla thought about this. “The way things are going, she shouldn’t tease.”
“So how does Will feel about all of this?” Fenn said.
“I don’t really know,” Layla said.
“Because really, if Will isn’t into it, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, not as far as you’re concerned.”
“But I am into it,” Layla discovered, sitting across from Todd.
“I don’t know, I like church well enough. I like Jesus well enough. But I’m sure that’s not enough. When I go with Will, I find myself… more than liking. You know?”
Todd nodded, “Which brings us back to me.”
“That’s right,” Layla remembered. “All right, I did the checking. Every branch of Judaism that I know about, you have to formally convert to.”
“Shit,” Todd said.
Layla said, “You have to go through the mikvah, which is like being baptized. You have to give allegiance to a particular synagogue and attend it for at least a year, and—”
Todd shook his head.
“I don’t want to go to a synagogue. I found a way that I like. I’m not making my peace with a synagogue. I’m making my peace with my God. I don’t like that. I don’t like having to go through people to get through God. And jump through hoops. I spent years going to church and being a Catholic. That’s just the same shit over again.”
While Todd was shaking his head, he stopped, looked at Layla, and prompted her saying: “Is there anything else?”
“What the—Todd, are you circumcised?”
Fenn choked, but Todd said, “God, yes! Who isn’t? I think that shit looks gross.”
Layla shrugged. “Some folks like it.”
“Well, since you’re not circumcised, you will have to be pricked and bled. Though I’m not sure where, and I read one article that said they prick you on your wee wee.”
“Fuck no!” Todd said.
“I think that’s barbaric,” Fenn finally said.
“Then there are three other things,” Layla said. “There are these Russians who practiced Judaism, but did not convert, called Tabotchiks or something like that.”
“Tabotchiniks,” Fenn placidly corrected, adding rice to the soup pot.
“And then there’s another group called the Children of Noah, and they’re just called a Righteous Gentile if you don’t convert.”
“I don’t like it,” Todd murmured, shaking his head and stroking the patch of hair under his lower lip. “If I practice Hinduism, I’m a Hindu. If I practice Christianity I’m a Christian. Right? I might have to be initiated into a particular church, but still, I’m a Christian. It follows if you practice Judaism, you’re a Jew.”
“But they say it doesn’t work that way,” Layla reported.
“No, no,” Todd murmured, distracted. “But it should. I can’t agree to something I think is foolish.”
“Do you want to be a Jew, Todd?” Fenn said, plainly.
Todd looked up at him.
“Do you?”
“I want to do the thing,” Todd said. “To say I practice it, but I’m not it, seems wrong.”
“No one will know if you are or you aren’t,” Fenn said, “You don’t need a certificate of proof, and if you get one it can be revoked, and then not all sects will accept your certificate anyway.”
“You knew all this?” Layla said.
“You didn’t tell me,” Todd said.
“You didn’t ask me. I think you’re right You shouldn’t have to go through anyone,” Fenn said. “If you convert, you’re called a Ger. It’s not the same as being a born Jew. If you convert and become something else or walk away, it’s not treated the same. There is really only one way to ensure that you are a Jew, undeniably.”
Layla and Todd both looked at him.
“You have to be born one.”
“Uh, Fenn… I’ve already been born.”
“Yes, smartass,” Fenn said, dipping the wooden spoon in and stirring the pot. “So you should claim Judaism on the basis that your father or your mother was a Jew.”
“But they weren’t. Dad was half Lebanese, and a Catholic. Mom is German.”
“And both could very well be Jews. As likely as not they are.”
Todd puzzled that out.
“If your mother’s mother’s mother was a Jew, or her mother or her mother… then you are undeniably a Jew according to Orthodoxy. If your father was, which is much less likely, then you are a Jew according to the Reform. Simple as that.”
“Fenn,” Layla said, “by that logic we’re all probably Jews.”
Fenn nodded, “Yes. Probably, so. But we’re not worried about all of us, right now. Right now we’re thinking of Todd.”
That night Todd was downstairs in the living room, with a prayer book, murmuring the Hashkiveinu, which he had done ever since he’d first gone to Will Klasko’s synagogue with Layla, and Fenn was looking out of the window. He did not say, “Look, it’s the first snow,” because he did not want to interrupt the love of his life, who had never had anything like religion before. So he just watched the ice crystals fall to the sidewalk and the strip of yard outside, watched them twirl in the yellowness of the porch light. It would not stick. It could not stick. Thanksgiving wasn’t here yet. Besides, Fenn thought, I am not ready for winter.
Ready for winter? As if winter ever gave a goddamn if you were ready for it or not, and the truth was Thanksgiving was only days away now. Grandma and Mama had been calling over and over again asking, “Should I make the cheesecake, or the cherry pie? I’m already making pecan pie.”
“Buy the pecan pie and save yourself some trouble, and no, always cheesecake. We can have cherry anytime.”
“Macaroni or sweet potato pudding?”
“Both.”
“Chitterlings?”
“Absolutely not. No one in this family even eats those.”
His grandmother said, “We always had them on my table. It was just a staple.
“Lula, do you like chitterlings?”
“Well, no, Fenn. Not really. They look a little like guts, don’t they?”
“They are guts.”
“Well,” his grandmother said: “Yes.”
The snow swirled down thicker now, and even though Fenn was in his house, in the heat, he put his arms around his shoulders thinking about the approach of winter, and jumped when Todd placed his chin on his shoulder and wrapped his arms about him.
“Snow,” he observed. “First snow, Fenn.”
And then the phone rang and Todd said, “I’ll get it.”
“Who in the world would be calling at this time?” Fenn wondered.
They had any amount of friends and family. But on a week night? This close to eleven?”
“Yes,” Todd said. “Yes. All right. Fenn, it’s Barb. She was insistent on speaking to you.”
Fenn came to the phone said, “Barbara?”
Todd watched Fenn’s face change, and then Fenn said, “We’ll be right over. We will. No, yes we do.”
Fenn hung up.
Todd looked at him.
Fenn said: “Bob is dead.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Dan told Keith.
“Well, no,” the other priest agreed. “But I guess I’ll do what I can now, which is stay.”
Keith said nothing while Dan’s fingers fiddled with the pale blue stones of his rosary.
“You know what?” he said. “I feel… cheated. And I feel like I cheated them. Isn’t that stupid?”
Dan looked at him.
“I mean, Bob wasn’t young. Everyone has to go, right? But… I feel like it’s still a tragedy.” Keith spread his hands out. “Is life a tragedy then?”
The doorbell rang and Dan shouted back, “I’ll get it.
“Todd,” he said. “Fenn.”
Todd nodded and entered the house first while Dan said, “Barb is next to Bob waiting for the ambulance, and I think she’s talking to Milo.”
Milo came down the stairs, his head bent, hair obscuring his face and his leather jacket thrown on.
“Where are you going?” Fenn said.
“Oh,” Milo looked up. “Hey, Fenn. I’m going to see, Dena.”
“Todd, take Milo to your sister’s,” Fenn said.
Todd nodded.
“I can drive myself.”
Todd took the keys from Milo’s hand, handed them to Fenn and said, “Come on, Milo.”
Milo didn’t argue anymore. He just went out of the door while Todd said, “We’ll be back. At least, I will,” and closed the door behind him.
While Todd and Milo were leaving, the red lights of the ambulance could be seen through the curtains and now Barb came down. She looked upright and straight faced and she said, “Fenn, I’m glad you’re here.”
She looked at the two priests. “I’m glad you’re all here. Having an audience keeps me from falling apart, and I just can’t afford that shit right now. Someone open the door for the ambulance. Nevermind,” said Barb. “I’m here.”
The paramedics made quick work of their job.
“You know,” Barb said, “if it was life threatening they’d probably be slow as hell. But there’s really no hurry now, is there? And look at ‘em go.
“Milo called his folks,” Barb said. “They wanted to talk to me. His mother, she’s a real piece of work. I can only imagine the stuff she’d have to say. Right off a Hallmark card. I said I couldn’t put up with that right now. So they’re calling their brothers and sisters and whatever, and I guess the whole family knows now. I guess my sister will be here tomorrow. God, that woman. She’s so holy. Prays the chaplet of the Divine Mercy everyday, and always talking about the mercies of Mary…Well,” Barb sighed.
Suddenly, in the living room, bound in cloth and on a stretcher was the alarming sight of Bob Affren’s dead body.
But Barb didn’t seem to be alarmed at all, even though Dan stood with his mouth wide open and Keith, visibly shaken, murmured a prayer and traced the sign of the cross over the vague indication of Bob’s head.
“Fifty-six years,” Barb reflected, “and this is what I have to show for it. Um,” she shook her head.
And then they rolled Bob out of the door.
EIGHT
WE GET TO GO TOGETHER CONTINUED
Layla came into the house through the kitchen and asked her uncle, “Have you seen Todd?”
“Todd!” Fenn shouted up the steps.
Todd came down, humming to himself, and Layla recognized the tune from Will’s synagogue, but could not place it.
“Adon Olom,” Todd told her.
“The Torah scroll I ordered should be here tomorrow,” Todd said.
“You’re serious?” Layla said to him.
“I am,” he said, sitting at the table while Fenn continued to cut vegetables and sweep them into the stew pot. “This is the first time I’ve ever been excited about religion.”
Layla looked at her uncle.
“How do you feel about this?”
“Does it matter?” Fenn said.
“I have never known Todd to be remotely interested in any type of religion, and now he’s buying Shabbos candles and—”
“You’re invited,” Todd said to Layla. “Tonight, be here at sunset or be square.”
“I’m going to have to be square,” she said. “Because Will’s mother request my presence at her Sabbath, excuse me, Shabbos table, and my mother, your sister,” she said to Fenn, “keeps teasing me about a Jewish wedding.” Layla thought about this. “The way things are going, she shouldn’t tease.”
“So how does Will feel about all of this?” Fenn said.
“I don’t really know,” Layla said.
“Because really, if Will isn’t into it, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, not as far as you’re concerned.”
“But I am into it,” Layla discovered, sitting across from Todd.
“I don’t know, I like church well enough. I like Jesus well enough. But I’m sure that’s not enough. When I go with Will, I find myself… more than liking. You know?”
Todd nodded, “Which brings us back to me.”
“That’s right,” Layla remembered. “All right, I did the checking. Every branch of Judaism that I know about, you have to formally convert to.”
“Shit,” Todd said.
Layla said, “You have to go through the mikvah, which is like being baptized. You have to give allegiance to a particular synagogue and attend it for at least a year, and—”
Todd shook his head.
“I don’t want to go to a synagogue. I found a way that I like. I’m not making my peace with a synagogue. I’m making my peace with my God. I don’t like that. I don’t like having to go through people to get through God. And jump through hoops. I spent years going to church and being a Catholic. That’s just the same shit over again.”
While Todd was shaking his head, he stopped, looked at Layla, and prompted her saying: “Is there anything else?”
“What the—Todd, are you circumcised?”
Fenn choked, but Todd said, “God, yes! Who isn’t? I think that shit looks gross.”
Layla shrugged. “Some folks like it.”
“Well, since you’re not circumcised, you will have to be pricked and bled. Though I’m not sure where, and I read one article that said they prick you on your wee wee.”
“Fuck no!” Todd said.
“I think that’s barbaric,” Fenn finally said.
“Then there are three other things,” Layla said. “There are these Russians who practiced Judaism, but did not convert, called Tabotchiks or something like that.”
“Tabotchiniks,” Fenn placidly corrected, adding rice to the soup pot.
“And then there’s another group called the Children of Noah, and they’re just called a Righteous Gentile if you don’t convert.”
“I don’t like it,” Todd murmured, shaking his head and stroking the patch of hair under his lower lip. “If I practice Hinduism, I’m a Hindu. If I practice Christianity I’m a Christian. Right? I might have to be initiated into a particular church, but still, I’m a Christian. It follows if you practice Judaism, you’re a Jew.”
“But they say it doesn’t work that way,” Layla reported.
“No, no,” Todd murmured, distracted. “But it should. I can’t agree to something I think is foolish.”
“Do you want to be a Jew, Todd?” Fenn said, plainly.
Todd looked up at him.
“Do you?”
“I want to do the thing,” Todd said. “To say I practice it, but I’m not it, seems wrong.”
“No one will know if you are or you aren’t,” Fenn said, “You don’t need a certificate of proof, and if you get one it can be revoked, and then not all sects will accept your certificate anyway.”
“You knew all this?” Layla said.
“You didn’t tell me,” Todd said.
“You didn’t ask me. I think you’re right You shouldn’t have to go through anyone,” Fenn said. “If you convert, you’re called a Ger. It’s not the same as being a born Jew. If you convert and become something else or walk away, it’s not treated the same. There is really only one way to ensure that you are a Jew, undeniably.”
Layla and Todd both looked at him.
“You have to be born one.”
“Uh, Fenn… I’ve already been born.”
“Yes, smartass,” Fenn said, dipping the wooden spoon in and stirring the pot. “So you should claim Judaism on the basis that your father or your mother was a Jew.”
“But they weren’t. Dad was half Lebanese, and a Catholic. Mom is German.”
“And both could very well be Jews. As likely as not they are.”
Todd puzzled that out.
“If your mother’s mother’s mother was a Jew, or her mother or her mother… then you are undeniably a Jew according to Orthodoxy. If your father was, which is much less likely, then you are a Jew according to the Reform. Simple as that.”
“Fenn,” Layla said, “by that logic we’re all probably Jews.”
Fenn nodded, “Yes. Probably, so. But we’re not worried about all of us, right now. Right now we’re thinking of Todd.”
That night Todd was downstairs in the living room, with a prayer book, murmuring the Hashkiveinu, which he had done ever since he’d first gone to Will Klasko’s synagogue with Layla, and Fenn was looking out of the window. He did not say, “Look, it’s the first snow,” because he did not want to interrupt the love of his life, who had never had anything like religion before. So he just watched the ice crystals fall to the sidewalk and the strip of yard outside, watched them twirl in the yellowness of the porch light. It would not stick. It could not stick. Thanksgiving wasn’t here yet. Besides, Fenn thought, I am not ready for winter.
Ready for winter? As if winter ever gave a goddamn if you were ready for it or not, and the truth was Thanksgiving was only days away now. Grandma and Mama had been calling over and over again asking, “Should I make the cheesecake, or the cherry pie? I’m already making pecan pie.”
“Buy the pecan pie and save yourself some trouble, and no, always cheesecake. We can have cherry anytime.”
“Macaroni or sweet potato pudding?”
“Both.”
“Chitterlings?”
“Absolutely not. No one in this family even eats those.”
His grandmother said, “We always had them on my table. It was just a staple.
“Lula, do you like chitterlings?”
“Well, no, Fenn. Not really. They look a little like guts, don’t they?”
“They are guts.”
“Well,” his grandmother said: “Yes.”
The snow swirled down thicker now, and even though Fenn was in his house, in the heat, he put his arms around his shoulders thinking about the approach of winter, and jumped when Todd placed his chin on his shoulder and wrapped his arms about him.
“Snow,” he observed. “First snow, Fenn.”
And then the phone rang and Todd said, “I’ll get it.”
“Who in the world would be calling at this time?” Fenn wondered.
They had any amount of friends and family. But on a week night? This close to eleven?”
“Yes,” Todd said. “Yes. All right. Fenn, it’s Barb. She was insistent on speaking to you.”
Fenn came to the phone said, “Barbara?”
Todd watched Fenn’s face change, and then Fenn said, “We’ll be right over. We will. No, yes we do.”
Fenn hung up.
Todd looked at him.
Fenn said: “Bob is dead.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” Dan told Keith.
“Well, no,” the other priest agreed. “But I guess I’ll do what I can now, which is stay.”
Keith said nothing while Dan’s fingers fiddled with the pale blue stones of his rosary.
“You know what?” he said. “I feel… cheated. And I feel like I cheated them. Isn’t that stupid?”
Dan looked at him.
“I mean, Bob wasn’t young. Everyone has to go, right? But… I feel like it’s still a tragedy.” Keith spread his hands out. “Is life a tragedy then?”
The doorbell rang and Dan shouted back, “I’ll get it.
“Todd,” he said. “Fenn.”
Todd nodded and entered the house first while Dan said, “Barb is next to Bob waiting for the ambulance, and I think she’s talking to Milo.”
Milo came down the stairs, his head bent, hair obscuring his face and his leather jacket thrown on.
“Where are you going?” Fenn said.
“Oh,” Milo looked up. “Hey, Fenn. I’m going to see, Dena.”
“Todd, take Milo to your sister’s,” Fenn said.
Todd nodded.
“I can drive myself.”
Todd took the keys from Milo’s hand, handed them to Fenn and said, “Come on, Milo.”
Milo didn’t argue anymore. He just went out of the door while Todd said, “We’ll be back. At least, I will,” and closed the door behind him.
While Todd and Milo were leaving, the red lights of the ambulance could be seen through the curtains and now Barb came down. She looked upright and straight faced and she said, “Fenn, I’m glad you’re here.”
She looked at the two priests. “I’m glad you’re all here. Having an audience keeps me from falling apart, and I just can’t afford that shit right now. Someone open the door for the ambulance. Nevermind,” said Barb. “I’m here.”
The paramedics made quick work of their job.
“You know,” Barb said, “if it was life threatening they’d probably be slow as hell. But there’s really no hurry now, is there? And look at ‘em go.
“Milo called his folks,” Barb said. “They wanted to talk to me. His mother, she’s a real piece of work. I can only imagine the stuff she’d have to say. Right off a Hallmark card. I said I couldn’t put up with that right now. So they’re calling their brothers and sisters and whatever, and I guess the whole family knows now. I guess my sister will be here tomorrow. God, that woman. She’s so holy. Prays the chaplet of the Divine Mercy everyday, and always talking about the mercies of Mary…Well,” Barb sighed.
Suddenly, in the living room, bound in cloth and on a stretcher was the alarming sight of Bob Affren’s dead body.
But Barb didn’t seem to be alarmed at all, even though Dan stood with his mouth wide open and Keith, visibly shaken, murmured a prayer and traced the sign of the cross over the vague indication of Bob’s head.
“Fifty-six years,” Barb reflected, “and this is what I have to show for it. Um,” she shook her head.
And then they rolled Bob out of the door.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
So Todd wants to be a Jew. I hope he follows through with it as that would be interesting. It's sad that Bob died. 
Great writing as usual and I look forward to the next part.
Great writing as usual and I look forward to the next part.ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I'm glad you liked. I do plan to start commenting back on the poem section. You made me think of listing who my favorite characters are. Fenn first and Brendan also. But you know what, there are so many others you haven't met yet, and some of my favorites are yet to be revealed.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER
EIGHT
WE GET TO GO TOGETHER CONTINUED
Dena was in her room when Layla, sitting on the bed, heard the knocking and said, “What’s that?”
Dena shrugged, pulled her housecoat on over her pajamas and opened the door, followed by her friend.
When they came downstairs, Nell and Todd were talking and Milo was coming toward the girls.
“Miles?” Dena said.
“Deen,” Milo said. “Layla.”
“What are you doing here?” She cocked her head. “Nothing’s wrong…. Right?”
Milo shook his head.
“I’ll be back for you later,” Todd said, putting a light hand on Milo’s shoulder.
Milo nodded.
“No,” Nell said. “You might as well stay with us.”
“He just went a few minutes ago,” Milo reported to Dena. “I called my folks, and then I waited for the ambulance to arrive. Todd and Fenn came over. And then Todd brought me here.”
“You know what?” Layla said. “How about you wait a minute, Todd. I’ll get dressed, and go home.”
“No,” Milo said, almost panicked. Then, “No. Please stay. I really just want my friends right now.”
Layla, ever practical, nodded and said: “Todd, skip that. I’m going to get on the phone.”
Will and Brendan arrived together, Brendan in a blue stocking hat with ear flaps. Layla told Dena, “I love Bren, but I don’t know what the hell you saw in him.”
The first thing Brendan did was hug Milo tightly, and then shake him by the shoulders and Layla, shrugging, said, “Okay, now I see.”
A little while later her brother came along with Claire, who gave the night’s second tightest hug along with a twist, and Layla commented: “You’ll be a good mother one day.”
Claire shrugged. “I’ll just be the type of mother who can’t let go.”
“I heard,” Milo said—they were all mingling in the kitchen—“that you pretended to have sex in a closet with some guy at a college party.”
“Yes,” Julian said. “It was the first party of our college career, and I was there.”
“Now everyone thinks I’m crazy. Or a slut. And no one can figure what the hell’s wrong with Julian for tolerating me.”
“And the kid?” Milo said. “The one you boned… or pseudo boned?”
“Well, technically, I was the one being pseudo boned,” Claire said. “Well, I’m sure he’s as gay as he ever was.”
“Are you sure?” Brendan said.
“Bren, honey, what the hell are you wearing?”
“Kenny gave it to me,” Brendan told Claire.
She shrugged and made a noise.
“Yes, Brendan. Chad’s just waiting for a man’s touch. If you have any free time and don’t feel like driving up for Kenny, I’m sure he’d be glad for you to show him the ropes.”
“Not funny,” Brendan said in his small, mellow voice, even though he colored.
“Besides, most gay kids already know the ropes a long time before anyone suspects they do.”
“Where do you think he is?” Milo said when everyone had gone to sleep, except for Julian and Claire who had gone back to campus, and Will was the only one left awake.
“Um?”
“I never thought about death,” Milo said. “Or heaven. Or anything like that. And now I’m thinking about it a lot. Like… where do people go? Where did he go?”
Will Klasko never spoke if he had nothing to say, and he didn’t like saying cute things, so he just let Milo talk.
“I mean, whenever you see pictures of heaven, or hear about it, it’s all these clouds and people with harps or… the Virgin Mary and Jesus sitting around God—who’s this old guy on a throne. And… I don’t know if I believe that. I mean… I don’t know if I would even want that. It seems really…”
“Lame?”
“Yeah.”
Will nodded.
“I never really thought too much about it,” Will said. “I mean, I think whenever I heard all that stuff I just told myself I was Jewish. Mind you, I’d never bothered with going to a synagogue. I mean I never got bar mitzvahed, so I just assumed it meant I didn’t have to believe in anything they told me at Saint Barbara’s. But… Jews do believe in an afterlife.”
“What’s it like?”
“We don’t know,” Will shrugged. “Some believe in reincarnation. Some believe in heaven, but don’t know what it is. Some people believe you won’t be resurrected until Judgment Day, or something like that. All they know is that… you go on, and you go where you want to be. I did some reading, and one rabbi said that when you die its because your soul, your highest soul, wants to leave. It’s ready.”
Milo was quiet a long time. Then he said: “I hope so. I hope he wanted to go.
“What do you believe?” he asked after awhile.
“I believe we go on,” Will said. “I don’t know how, or where. I just believe we go on. And… I just think if there’s a God we get to go on together. I just think that’s true. And I’m not entirely sure that the only reason I feel that is because it sounds good. I mean, I really feel like I’m sure of that. The rest…” Will shook his head, “I don’t know about.”
Milo Affren, looking out into the darkness where white flakes of snow swirled down, nodded considering this, but said nothing.
“Mom you need a rest. You need to sit down.”
“That’s right, Mother Barbara. We’ll take care of all this,” Tina said, taking the casserole dish from Barb’s hands.
“I think, Barbie,” her sister said, “what you really need is prayer. I’ve been looking at the way you look, and I know you’re resistant to the chaplet. But this could be the time when the Lord has softened you up, enough to receive the graces of his Divine Mother.”
“You mean weakened me up enough to listen to your bullshit?” Barb said.
“Barbie!”
“Damnit, don’t you call me Barbie! I haven’t been Barbie in fifty years. Hell, I was never Barbie. And you,” she looked at Tina and Bill, Milo’s uncle, “tell me I need to rest? I need to be left alone. I need you to get a damn hotel, and get from under my feet.”
“Mother Barbara, I’m sure you don’t mean that.”
“Tina,” Barbara demanded in a tight voice, “how many times have I told you not to call me Mother Barbara? I’m not your mother. I’m not a nun. Knock it off.”
“She’s just trying to be helpful,” Bill said.
She cocked her head at her son, and said, “How can she take care of my casserole when she can’t even raise her own kid?”
And then Barbara turned around and headed for the stairs.
“And by the way, unless it’s Fenn, or Dan Malloy, or Keith McDonald who come calling don’t, I repeat DO NOT, tap on my damn door.”
And then, stomping up all twenty stairs and into her room, Barb Affren was gone.
A little while later there was a tapping on her door and Barb, who was sitting in Bob’s old easy chair, smelling of his cigarettes and cigars, rose up and came to the door saying, “I didn’t hear a knock at the door, so I’m guessing whoever’s on the other side of it is someone I said I don’t feel like seeing. Now,” she put her hand on the doorknob, “if you halfway value your life, you’ll go.”
“Mother Barb—” Tina began, on the other side of the door while Barb winced. “Barbara… I need to speak with you. It’s important.”
Barbara gave a loud sigh with gritted teeth in it, and opened the door, ushering her least favorite daughter-in-law in.
“Barbara, I wanted to tell you,” Tina said, “about what you said today… About us not raising Milo…”
Barbara was tempted to apologize for the remark, but given Milo’s history, and how Milo had changed since coming here, she didn’t think an apology would be honest.
“Well,” Tina went on nervously. “We think you’re right. In fact, I always thought you were right and the thing is… we’ve decided it’s time to take Milo back.”
Barbara’s eyes snapped wide open. The blood left her face.
“You can’t…” she said in a whisper. “You can’t just… take Milo.”
“Well, now Papa Bob’s gone, you can’t just care for him by yourself. And, he is our son.”
Barbara drew herself to full height, which was taller than Tina, and she put on the meanest old lady face she could summon, the one her mother had worn in those last days in the nursing home when the nurse brought her a tepid tumbler of water and she had glared at the girl, picked up the heavy glass tumbler and then, with perfect accuracy, hurled it at her head.
“Tina,” she said, calmly, “I have a gun. Right on the table. And if you don’t get out right now, I’m going to shoot you.”
“Mother… Barb…”
“Shoot you,” Barbara repeated. “Dead.”
Shutting up immediately, Tina backed away from the door, and Barb closed it.
She could hear Tina’s feet reaching the stair, and suddenly she got up, opened the door, and bawled down the hallway:
“You fake little bitch! We always hated you! Bob hated you calling him PAPA BOB. You bitch!”
And then she slammed the door.
“The only good thing they ever did,” Barb repeated, trembling, “and they want to take him away from me.”
“They said,” Fenn said, with skepticism in his voice, “that they don’t want you to be burdened?”
“They didn’t even say that,” Barb said. “They said without Bob, how could I take care of Milo.”
“I think you need Milo to take care of you,” Fenn said.
“I don’t,” Barb protested.
“No,” Fenn was firm on this. “He’s a man now. You’ve done right by him. He can support you a little. But they don’t want him to. They’re selfish,” Fenn said, shaking his head. “And ungrateful.”
“I bet they’ll try to put me in a home now.”
“None of that,” Keith McDonald said firmly. “None of that,” he repeated. “You’re putting the cart in front of the horse, and giving up the fight before it starts. And, heck, just about every other metaphor I can think of you’re doing.”
Barb smiled a little at this, but Keith said, “Listen to me. Milo is seventeen years old. Almost eighteen and in the middle of his senior year. They can’t take him if he doesn’t want to go.”
“No?” Barb looked at him.
“No,” Keith said. “They would have to go to court, and by the time the case came up he would be eighteen, and it would be void. Anyway, he could declare emancipation from them if it came to that. And I doubt it will.”
Barbara smiled a little and she said, “I just can’t imagine… not having that boy around. And Dena, and Will. And those kids. They make the house so alive. Without it I really am just Mother Barbara.”
Then she was quiet.
“What?” Keith said, solicitously.
“Thinking about him being taken away…” Barb said. “What if he doesn’t want to be with me? What if he wants them?”
When Danasia showed up at the apartment, Noah and Naomi were there, but not Paul, who was staying with Kirk.
“Everyone’s so sad,” she told them. “This man died, and I don’t even know him. I wish I knew something.” She shook her head and took off her glasses.
“I try to act like I don’t care about how I feel, but sometimes I feel like I’m completely out of place.”
“So you came here.” It was Naomi who spoke swirling around her can of beer while a train of cigarette smoke came from her Bensen and Hedges.
“Where none of us fits,” Noah gave an almost delighted grin.
When it was late Danasia asked Noah: “Tell me a story. Tell me the truest story you can.”
“Why?”
“Cause we’re friends, and I want to know.”
“But that…” Noah shook his head.
“If,” Naomi began, lifting a finger, “You don’t want to tell it cause you don’t think I can handle it… I’ll leave the room.”
Noah, clasping his wide apart knees, said: “If you can handle it, Mama, you can stay.”
“Would you rather I stayed?”
Noah nodded.
“Then I’ll stay.”
EIGHT
WE GET TO GO TOGETHER CONTINUED
Dena was in her room when Layla, sitting on the bed, heard the knocking and said, “What’s that?”
Dena shrugged, pulled her housecoat on over her pajamas and opened the door, followed by her friend.
When they came downstairs, Nell and Todd were talking and Milo was coming toward the girls.
“Miles?” Dena said.
“Deen,” Milo said. “Layla.”
“What are you doing here?” She cocked her head. “Nothing’s wrong…. Right?”
Milo shook his head.
“I’ll be back for you later,” Todd said, putting a light hand on Milo’s shoulder.
Milo nodded.
“No,” Nell said. “You might as well stay with us.”
“He just went a few minutes ago,” Milo reported to Dena. “I called my folks, and then I waited for the ambulance to arrive. Todd and Fenn came over. And then Todd brought me here.”
“You know what?” Layla said. “How about you wait a minute, Todd. I’ll get dressed, and go home.”
“No,” Milo said, almost panicked. Then, “No. Please stay. I really just want my friends right now.”
Layla, ever practical, nodded and said: “Todd, skip that. I’m going to get on the phone.”
Will and Brendan arrived together, Brendan in a blue stocking hat with ear flaps. Layla told Dena, “I love Bren, but I don’t know what the hell you saw in him.”
The first thing Brendan did was hug Milo tightly, and then shake him by the shoulders and Layla, shrugging, said, “Okay, now I see.”
A little while later her brother came along with Claire, who gave the night’s second tightest hug along with a twist, and Layla commented: “You’ll be a good mother one day.”
Claire shrugged. “I’ll just be the type of mother who can’t let go.”
“I heard,” Milo said—they were all mingling in the kitchen—“that you pretended to have sex in a closet with some guy at a college party.”
“Yes,” Julian said. “It was the first party of our college career, and I was there.”
“Now everyone thinks I’m crazy. Or a slut. And no one can figure what the hell’s wrong with Julian for tolerating me.”
“And the kid?” Milo said. “The one you boned… or pseudo boned?”
“Well, technically, I was the one being pseudo boned,” Claire said. “Well, I’m sure he’s as gay as he ever was.”
“Are you sure?” Brendan said.
“Bren, honey, what the hell are you wearing?”
“Kenny gave it to me,” Brendan told Claire.
She shrugged and made a noise.
“Yes, Brendan. Chad’s just waiting for a man’s touch. If you have any free time and don’t feel like driving up for Kenny, I’m sure he’d be glad for you to show him the ropes.”
“Not funny,” Brendan said in his small, mellow voice, even though he colored.
“Besides, most gay kids already know the ropes a long time before anyone suspects they do.”
“Where do you think he is?” Milo said when everyone had gone to sleep, except for Julian and Claire who had gone back to campus, and Will was the only one left awake.
“Um?”
“I never thought about death,” Milo said. “Or heaven. Or anything like that. And now I’m thinking about it a lot. Like… where do people go? Where did he go?”
Will Klasko never spoke if he had nothing to say, and he didn’t like saying cute things, so he just let Milo talk.
“I mean, whenever you see pictures of heaven, or hear about it, it’s all these clouds and people with harps or… the Virgin Mary and Jesus sitting around God—who’s this old guy on a throne. And… I don’t know if I believe that. I mean… I don’t know if I would even want that. It seems really…”
“Lame?”
“Yeah.”
Will nodded.
“I never really thought too much about it,” Will said. “I mean, I think whenever I heard all that stuff I just told myself I was Jewish. Mind you, I’d never bothered with going to a synagogue. I mean I never got bar mitzvahed, so I just assumed it meant I didn’t have to believe in anything they told me at Saint Barbara’s. But… Jews do believe in an afterlife.”
“What’s it like?”
“We don’t know,” Will shrugged. “Some believe in reincarnation. Some believe in heaven, but don’t know what it is. Some people believe you won’t be resurrected until Judgment Day, or something like that. All they know is that… you go on, and you go where you want to be. I did some reading, and one rabbi said that when you die its because your soul, your highest soul, wants to leave. It’s ready.”
Milo was quiet a long time. Then he said: “I hope so. I hope he wanted to go.
“What do you believe?” he asked after awhile.
“I believe we go on,” Will said. “I don’t know how, or where. I just believe we go on. And… I just think if there’s a God we get to go on together. I just think that’s true. And I’m not entirely sure that the only reason I feel that is because it sounds good. I mean, I really feel like I’m sure of that. The rest…” Will shook his head, “I don’t know about.”
Milo Affren, looking out into the darkness where white flakes of snow swirled down, nodded considering this, but said nothing.
“Mom you need a rest. You need to sit down.”
“That’s right, Mother Barbara. We’ll take care of all this,” Tina said, taking the casserole dish from Barb’s hands.
“I think, Barbie,” her sister said, “what you really need is prayer. I’ve been looking at the way you look, and I know you’re resistant to the chaplet. But this could be the time when the Lord has softened you up, enough to receive the graces of his Divine Mother.”
“You mean weakened me up enough to listen to your bullshit?” Barb said.
“Barbie!”
“Damnit, don’t you call me Barbie! I haven’t been Barbie in fifty years. Hell, I was never Barbie. And you,” she looked at Tina and Bill, Milo’s uncle, “tell me I need to rest? I need to be left alone. I need you to get a damn hotel, and get from under my feet.”
“Mother Barbara, I’m sure you don’t mean that.”
“Tina,” Barbara demanded in a tight voice, “how many times have I told you not to call me Mother Barbara? I’m not your mother. I’m not a nun. Knock it off.”
“She’s just trying to be helpful,” Bill said.
She cocked her head at her son, and said, “How can she take care of my casserole when she can’t even raise her own kid?”
And then Barbara turned around and headed for the stairs.
“And by the way, unless it’s Fenn, or Dan Malloy, or Keith McDonald who come calling don’t, I repeat DO NOT, tap on my damn door.”
And then, stomping up all twenty stairs and into her room, Barb Affren was gone.
A little while later there was a tapping on her door and Barb, who was sitting in Bob’s old easy chair, smelling of his cigarettes and cigars, rose up and came to the door saying, “I didn’t hear a knock at the door, so I’m guessing whoever’s on the other side of it is someone I said I don’t feel like seeing. Now,” she put her hand on the doorknob, “if you halfway value your life, you’ll go.”
“Mother Barb—” Tina began, on the other side of the door while Barb winced. “Barbara… I need to speak with you. It’s important.”
Barbara gave a loud sigh with gritted teeth in it, and opened the door, ushering her least favorite daughter-in-law in.
“Barbara, I wanted to tell you,” Tina said, “about what you said today… About us not raising Milo…”
Barbara was tempted to apologize for the remark, but given Milo’s history, and how Milo had changed since coming here, she didn’t think an apology would be honest.
“Well,” Tina went on nervously. “We think you’re right. In fact, I always thought you were right and the thing is… we’ve decided it’s time to take Milo back.”
Barbara’s eyes snapped wide open. The blood left her face.
“You can’t…” she said in a whisper. “You can’t just… take Milo.”
“Well, now Papa Bob’s gone, you can’t just care for him by yourself. And, he is our son.”
Barbara drew herself to full height, which was taller than Tina, and she put on the meanest old lady face she could summon, the one her mother had worn in those last days in the nursing home when the nurse brought her a tepid tumbler of water and she had glared at the girl, picked up the heavy glass tumbler and then, with perfect accuracy, hurled it at her head.
“Tina,” she said, calmly, “I have a gun. Right on the table. And if you don’t get out right now, I’m going to shoot you.”
“Mother… Barb…”
“Shoot you,” Barbara repeated. “Dead.”
Shutting up immediately, Tina backed away from the door, and Barb closed it.
She could hear Tina’s feet reaching the stair, and suddenly she got up, opened the door, and bawled down the hallway:
“You fake little bitch! We always hated you! Bob hated you calling him PAPA BOB. You bitch!”
And then she slammed the door.
“The only good thing they ever did,” Barb repeated, trembling, “and they want to take him away from me.”
“They said,” Fenn said, with skepticism in his voice, “that they don’t want you to be burdened?”
“They didn’t even say that,” Barb said. “They said without Bob, how could I take care of Milo.”
“I think you need Milo to take care of you,” Fenn said.
“I don’t,” Barb protested.
“No,” Fenn was firm on this. “He’s a man now. You’ve done right by him. He can support you a little. But they don’t want him to. They’re selfish,” Fenn said, shaking his head. “And ungrateful.”
“I bet they’ll try to put me in a home now.”
“None of that,” Keith McDonald said firmly. “None of that,” he repeated. “You’re putting the cart in front of the horse, and giving up the fight before it starts. And, heck, just about every other metaphor I can think of you’re doing.”
Barb smiled a little at this, but Keith said, “Listen to me. Milo is seventeen years old. Almost eighteen and in the middle of his senior year. They can’t take him if he doesn’t want to go.”
“No?” Barb looked at him.
“No,” Keith said. “They would have to go to court, and by the time the case came up he would be eighteen, and it would be void. Anyway, he could declare emancipation from them if it came to that. And I doubt it will.”
Barbara smiled a little and she said, “I just can’t imagine… not having that boy around. And Dena, and Will. And those kids. They make the house so alive. Without it I really am just Mother Barbara.”
Then she was quiet.
“What?” Keith said, solicitously.
“Thinking about him being taken away…” Barb said. “What if he doesn’t want to be with me? What if he wants them?”
When Danasia showed up at the apartment, Noah and Naomi were there, but not Paul, who was staying with Kirk.
“Everyone’s so sad,” she told them. “This man died, and I don’t even know him. I wish I knew something.” She shook her head and took off her glasses.
“I try to act like I don’t care about how I feel, but sometimes I feel like I’m completely out of place.”
“So you came here.” It was Naomi who spoke swirling around her can of beer while a train of cigarette smoke came from her Bensen and Hedges.
“Where none of us fits,” Noah gave an almost delighted grin.
When it was late Danasia asked Noah: “Tell me a story. Tell me the truest story you can.”
“Why?”
“Cause we’re friends, and I want to know.”
“But that…” Noah shook his head.
“If,” Naomi began, lifting a finger, “You don’t want to tell it cause you don’t think I can handle it… I’ll leave the room.”
Noah, clasping his wide apart knees, said: “If you can handle it, Mama, you can stay.”
“Would you rather I stayed?”
Noah nodded.
“Then I’ll stay.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Poor Barbara! I hope things work out ok for her and she gets to keep Milo. A sad portion but that is to be expected and it was well written as usual. I look forward to the next part.
I hope things work out ok for her and she gets to keep Milo. A sad portion but that is to be expected and it was well written as usual. I look forward to the next part.ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I'm glad you had fun. Barbara is one of my favorite characters, and the Affren family is a big favorite of mine in total. See you tomorrow night... or I guess I should say afternoon.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER
EIGHT
WE GET TO GO TOGETHER CONTINUED
When he was five Naomi went out for cigarettes and beer. Like many things it seems a thousand years ago and just yesterday, all at the same time. When he sits back and counts he realizes it was seventeen years ago.
She was with Biff at the time. Biff was no different from any of the other men who came later. Biff looked at him and said, “Get here. Come over here.”
Noah couldn’t do anything but obey. There was always a man in the house and in his mother’s bed, and though the name changed he was always the same. He paid the rent, he brought home to food. She was the kind of woman who couldn’t really function without a man, you know? He stood before Biff and Biff played with his zipper, and then out it came.
He brought Noah to him, and then it was in his mouth, heavy and turgid, fleshy and pressed further and further, stretching out the muscles of his lips, blocking his breathing, the only presence he knew, his head, pressed harder, his face in the belly, and then his head being taken back and forth while Biff muttered:
“No teeth now, young’un, no teeth. Ah…”
And then he groaned and came and Noah coughed before the salty fluid was in his mouth, down his throat, filling his mouth. His mouth was his own again, salty as the sea, musty as the basements he would experiment with other little boys in, and Biff was going to the bathroom; water was running. His mouth was empty, still stretched out with the memory of what had been in it when Biff came out, patting him on the top of this head.
“That’s a man secret,” Biff’s voice was in his ears. “You don’t have to tell Naomi about that. Naomi couldn’t handle that.”
“Is that it?” Naomi turned to him. “Is that how you got gay?”
“No,” Noah said. “That’s how I got fucked up.”
Biff did not remain long after that. Noah stayed out of the house as much as possible. He didn’t know how to frame it when he was five, but he felt different from every other child he knew. He always had, but now he knew that no one else had ever had done to them what Biff had done to him. When he was in the house, his large eyes followed Biff around reminding him of what he had done, and the only way Biff responded was to hit him in the face, to hit Naomi in her pretty face, and then at last to leave.
One day, after school, when Noah came in with Jimmy Bartlett, his mother had been in the kitchen face down, sobbing, the trail of cigarette smoke coming up from the ashtray.
“It’s your fault, Noah,” she said. “You’re the reason he’s gone. Biff was the best thing that ever happened to me, and now he’s gone.”
Noah hated his mother for that, and he never really stopped. But he wasn’t afraid of her, which meant there was nothing in this house to dread when he came home now.
Once, years later, in LA, a salt and pepper haired man in a beat up grey suit had offered him money for the simple gift of his cock and Noah, by then long adept at the skill of pushing his mind out of his body, stood in the bathroom stall looking at the fluorescent lights while the son of a bitch sucked him off. Somewhere around this time, around these people, he learned about the Hydra, the many headed monster who grew a new head every time you chopped one off. He didn’t know who had taught him this word, some salt and pepper man, probably. Only that it had made sense to him and reminded him of the men. How when one Biff went away and took the fear away with him, his mother picked up another monster and he was terrified again. There were monsters in his house until the day he left for California, so when he got to the streets, the cold, the dark, the homeless drug addicts, the old, skulking johns… they were all nothing.
I hated you for so long. No, you need to hear this. I wanted you to protect me, and you just kept on bringing in all of these guys who made me afraid.
But they paid the bills, they supported us. Their money kept you in clothes, me in clothes baby. We needed them. I thought we needed them. I didn’t know how not to.
I wanted you to be able to support us. I wanted you to be strong enough. I hated you for so long. It burned in me so bad.
Do you hate me now?
It’s killing me to keep it up. I can’t. And it doesn’t just stay with you. Sometimes it touches everything. It’s like a fire. I don’t know how to get rid of it.
I tried to protect you. I thought they would protect us.
But, Mama, they were the ones who beat us, abused us, gave you a black eye, me a bruised arm… What were they protecting us from?
A woman and a child need to be protected.
What were they protecting us from? What do a woman and a kid need to be protected from?
… other Men.
To depend on a man to protect you from men…. It’s like hiring a wolf to keep you safe in the woods.
Noah…
Yes?
Noah?
What?
Do you…. Hate men?
Jimmy Bartlett followed Noah around wherever he went. He was his only friend, but that didn’t seem like friendship. It was annoyance. There were other boys he wanted to know, and they didn’t want to know him. At five there was no sex, only boy hunger.
But he did not long for Jimmy Bartlett. Jimmy with the wide eyes behind the thick glasses and the stupid look on his face, always following him. In the basement he speaks to him.
“Do you know what Biff did to me?”
Jimmy shakes his head.
“Get on the floor.”
“It’s cold,” Jimmy says. “And it smells funny.”
He is on his back, he says, “Noah… what are you doing, Noah?”
Noah unzips his pants.
And then Jimmy’s body paralyzes with the violation while Noah does it to him.
Three months later Jimmy’s family moves away. Now and again that memory resurfaces in his head, but only now, remembering the past does Noah remember it clearly.
He was five, like me. Can he remember like me? Or did God let him forget what I did to him that day?
Do you hate men?”
When I was afraid I did. When they were hurting me I did, and I wanted to hurt them back. And when all the boys were friends and together and acting like they knew something I didn’t, like they were part of something I couldn’t be part of, yes, I did. I hated them. I didn’t understand them.
Are you still afraid?
No. And I don’t hate them. Not anymore. Not very often.
But I still don’t understand.
I used to think…. I used to think your daddy might come back and rescue us.
That’s your problem, though. You always want to be rescued.
I know. I know.
The cigarette makes a tendriling trail up from the little silver ashtray.
But didn’t you ever wonder? Didn’t you ever wish for your daddy?
No. Biff was like Jim, Jim was like Jeff, Jeff was like Bob. Why would my father be any different? He must have been just like them. The only difference is they paid the light bill. Sometimes. And all he did was give you a baby, and me a last name.
EIGHT
WE GET TO GO TOGETHER CONTINUED
When he was five Naomi went out for cigarettes and beer. Like many things it seems a thousand years ago and just yesterday, all at the same time. When he sits back and counts he realizes it was seventeen years ago.
She was with Biff at the time. Biff was no different from any of the other men who came later. Biff looked at him and said, “Get here. Come over here.”
Noah couldn’t do anything but obey. There was always a man in the house and in his mother’s bed, and though the name changed he was always the same. He paid the rent, he brought home to food. She was the kind of woman who couldn’t really function without a man, you know? He stood before Biff and Biff played with his zipper, and then out it came.
He brought Noah to him, and then it was in his mouth, heavy and turgid, fleshy and pressed further and further, stretching out the muscles of his lips, blocking his breathing, the only presence he knew, his head, pressed harder, his face in the belly, and then his head being taken back and forth while Biff muttered:
“No teeth now, young’un, no teeth. Ah…”
And then he groaned and came and Noah coughed before the salty fluid was in his mouth, down his throat, filling his mouth. His mouth was his own again, salty as the sea, musty as the basements he would experiment with other little boys in, and Biff was going to the bathroom; water was running. His mouth was empty, still stretched out with the memory of what had been in it when Biff came out, patting him on the top of this head.
“That’s a man secret,” Biff’s voice was in his ears. “You don’t have to tell Naomi about that. Naomi couldn’t handle that.”
“Is that it?” Naomi turned to him. “Is that how you got gay?”
“No,” Noah said. “That’s how I got fucked up.”
Biff did not remain long after that. Noah stayed out of the house as much as possible. He didn’t know how to frame it when he was five, but he felt different from every other child he knew. He always had, but now he knew that no one else had ever had done to them what Biff had done to him. When he was in the house, his large eyes followed Biff around reminding him of what he had done, and the only way Biff responded was to hit him in the face, to hit Naomi in her pretty face, and then at last to leave.
One day, after school, when Noah came in with Jimmy Bartlett, his mother had been in the kitchen face down, sobbing, the trail of cigarette smoke coming up from the ashtray.
“It’s your fault, Noah,” she said. “You’re the reason he’s gone. Biff was the best thing that ever happened to me, and now he’s gone.”
Noah hated his mother for that, and he never really stopped. But he wasn’t afraid of her, which meant there was nothing in this house to dread when he came home now.
Once, years later, in LA, a salt and pepper haired man in a beat up grey suit had offered him money for the simple gift of his cock and Noah, by then long adept at the skill of pushing his mind out of his body, stood in the bathroom stall looking at the fluorescent lights while the son of a bitch sucked him off. Somewhere around this time, around these people, he learned about the Hydra, the many headed monster who grew a new head every time you chopped one off. He didn’t know who had taught him this word, some salt and pepper man, probably. Only that it had made sense to him and reminded him of the men. How when one Biff went away and took the fear away with him, his mother picked up another monster and he was terrified again. There were monsters in his house until the day he left for California, so when he got to the streets, the cold, the dark, the homeless drug addicts, the old, skulking johns… they were all nothing.
I hated you for so long. No, you need to hear this. I wanted you to protect me, and you just kept on bringing in all of these guys who made me afraid.
But they paid the bills, they supported us. Their money kept you in clothes, me in clothes baby. We needed them. I thought we needed them. I didn’t know how not to.
I wanted you to be able to support us. I wanted you to be strong enough. I hated you for so long. It burned in me so bad.
Do you hate me now?
It’s killing me to keep it up. I can’t. And it doesn’t just stay with you. Sometimes it touches everything. It’s like a fire. I don’t know how to get rid of it.
I tried to protect you. I thought they would protect us.
But, Mama, they were the ones who beat us, abused us, gave you a black eye, me a bruised arm… What were they protecting us from?
A woman and a child need to be protected.
What were they protecting us from? What do a woman and a kid need to be protected from?
… other Men.
To depend on a man to protect you from men…. It’s like hiring a wolf to keep you safe in the woods.
Noah…
Yes?
Noah?
What?
Do you…. Hate men?
Jimmy Bartlett followed Noah around wherever he went. He was his only friend, but that didn’t seem like friendship. It was annoyance. There were other boys he wanted to know, and they didn’t want to know him. At five there was no sex, only boy hunger.
But he did not long for Jimmy Bartlett. Jimmy with the wide eyes behind the thick glasses and the stupid look on his face, always following him. In the basement he speaks to him.
“Do you know what Biff did to me?”
Jimmy shakes his head.
“Get on the floor.”
“It’s cold,” Jimmy says. “And it smells funny.”
He is on his back, he says, “Noah… what are you doing, Noah?”
Noah unzips his pants.
And then Jimmy’s body paralyzes with the violation while Noah does it to him.
Three months later Jimmy’s family moves away. Now and again that memory resurfaces in his head, but only now, remembering the past does Noah remember it clearly.
He was five, like me. Can he remember like me? Or did God let him forget what I did to him that day?
Do you hate men?”
When I was afraid I did. When they were hurting me I did, and I wanted to hurt them back. And when all the boys were friends and together and acting like they knew something I didn’t, like they were part of something I couldn’t be part of, yes, I did. I hated them. I didn’t understand them.
Are you still afraid?
No. And I don’t hate them. Not anymore. Not very often.
But I still don’t understand.
I used to think…. I used to think your daddy might come back and rescue us.
That’s your problem, though. You always want to be rescued.
I know. I know.
The cigarette makes a tendriling trail up from the little silver ashtray.
But didn’t you ever wonder? Didn’t you ever wish for your daddy?
No. Biff was like Jim, Jim was like Jeff, Jeff was like Bob. Why would my father be any different? He must have been just like them. The only difference is they paid the light bill. Sometimes. And all he did was give you a baby, and me a last name.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Poor Noah. I wish he had a better childhood. Hopefully he and his Mum can have a better relationship now that they are both grown ups. Great section and I look forward to more.
I wish he had a better childhood. Hopefully he and his Mum can have a better relationship now that they are both grown ups. Great section and I look forward to more.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
The more we know about Noah, the less possible it seems that he could have had anything but a miserable youth. All has not been revealed yet. More on Thursday night.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER
EIGHT
WE GET TO GO TOGETHER CONCLUSION
They were all talking outside of the school when Layla pointed out the car that had just swung by, and Milo, turning, realized:
“It’s my mother.”
Before he could say anything, Tina leaned out of the car and said, “Milo, I came to get you.”
Milo pointed across the street in the general direction of his car, coming toward Tina, followed by Dena.
“Mom, I drove here. This is Dena.”
“Hello, charmed,” Tina said. “Milo. I thought I could take you out.”
“Mom,” Milo said, his voice firmer, “this is Dena.”
“I know,” she said.
“My girlfriend.”
“Her name rhymes with mine,” Tina said.
Dena frowned at her.
“Honey, we need to talk.”
“We can talk at the house,” Milo said.
“No we can’t. Your grandmother… she’s listening to everything. It’s really… about your grandmother.”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“Can we discuss this,” Tina said, pointing at Dena, “in private?”
“I don’t like you,” Dena said, suddenly.
Tina opened her mouth, but Milo said, “Most people don’t. Mom, get to the point.”
“The point is…” Tina took a long, dramatic breath, “I think that now that your grandmother is…. Alone. I think it’s time for you to come back with us.”
“Are you nuts!” Dena snapped.
“Excuse me, young lady—”
“You drop your kid off when it’s not convenient for you to take care of him, and then when you hear he has a life, a girlfriend—hell—friends, in the middle of his senior year you just want to take him away?”
“Dena,” Milo began.
“And Barb needs him!” Dena said. “We all need him.”
Layla and Will had arrived now and Brendan was approaching. He touched Dena’s shoulder.
“Denie, c’mon.”
Dena nodded, turned Tina Affren a foul face, and then walked away, pulling a hand through her long, dark hair.
“I can’t imagine,” Tina said, pushing her driving shades into her blond hair, “what you see in a girl like that. She is completely lacking in manners.”
“Yes,” Milo said. “Yes, she is. But she’s never wrong.” Then Milo modified. “She’s rarely wrong.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean when she said there was no way in hell I was leaving grandma to go back with you and Dad, she was totally right.”
CHAPTER
NINE
NO ONE NOTICES THE ORGANIST
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“I mean without the whole, ‘sure’ thing,” Lee said.
Tom put down the book and looked at Lee sharply.
“Exactly how long do you plan to communicate through shrugs, quickly shut doors, frowns and sleeping as close to the edge of the bed as possible?”
Tom replied by continuing to stare at Lee sharply, and then he crossed his arms over his chest.
Lee said, “Fine.” And then he turned around and walked toward the kitchen adding, “By the way, you look really gay right now.”
After ten seconds of debating rising to the bait, Tom said, “You know what, Lee? I will talk. Since you insist.”
“I don’t so much insist as—”
“You’re not even sorry, are you?” Tom demanded coming to the kitchenette.
“Sorry for what? Because I’m certainly not sorry for having a daughter.”
“Do you not think…? Did it never occur to you, to tell me you had a daughter?”
“Well, it was one of those gay adoption things,” Lee said. “I mean, there is something a little less than permanent and written in stone about a lot of what goes on in a gay marriage. Union,” Lee amended, thoughtfully, while he spread mustard onto a piece of bread. “Partnership… whatever.”
“But adoption isn’t one of those things, Lee!” Tom said.
“I know. Lemonade had… made this baby before he came to me. I didn’t even know she existed. She just showed up one day after we’d been together a couple of years, and he told me how he never could commit to a woman, including her crackhead mother. He figured that was because he ended up being gay. Because he could commit to me, he said, which, since we’d been together three years, I thought was true. And it was. At the time.”
“Anyway,” Tom interjected.
“Don’t be rude,” Lee reprimanded him.
“Anyway,” Lee said when he had put his sandwich together, “she stayed with us a lot, and then she had an affection for me. Hell, I liked her myself, and I thought, I’m not going to actually have physical children, and I don’t really want a baby. In fact, if I had my way that’s how all kids would come, halfway grown. Lemonade was so unstable, and her mother was definitely unstable, and the fact was that legally I was nothing to Danasia. I was the only thing regular in her life, and she had already called me daddy. Now, that shit touched me, and she already thought of me as a father. So I thought, let’s do this shit. And we got everything together, and I adopted her.”
“And then you forgot you adopted her?” Tom said.
“You’re really getting on my nerve, you know that?”
“You could have told me!” Tom said louder.
“Well, I didn’t,” Lee said. There was little apologizing in Lee’s world.
“When I left Lemonade, all three of us sort of went our separate ways. Danasia had always been pretty grown and she was going in search of her mother. So I thought that was the end of her. And so there was no point in bringing her up. I never expected her to show up again.
“And now,” Lee bit into the sandwich and chewed for a bit. His mouth was still full when he spoke. “She’s in trouble.”
For the first time Tom looked not pissed off, like the compassionate Tom Lee liked.
“What kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Lee said. “But she didn’t look for Lemonade or her mother. She came here. With very little. So I know it must be the grown up kind. Something only a father can fix.”
Lee moved out of the kitchen with his bottle of water and his sandwich followed by Tom who had the Doritos.
They sat down on the couch together and Tom munched loudly.
“Lee, I wanna help,” he said.
Lee nodded, and reached into the bag of chips.
“I… I don’t care what’s legal or what’s not,” Tom said. “You and Lemonade had a child together. That… Danasia is the sign that what you had was a marriage. Even though I’ve met Lemonade and I have no idea what a marriage like that could have been like.”
“It was just like what you’d think it was,” Lee said. “Strange.”
“And… Me and Fenn. Ten years. That was real. I mean, sometimes I wish I could get married just so I could say I was divorced.”
Lee chuckled.
“It’s something about saying you’re divorced… that makes it real. That says this was something. It was something so real you have to go to court and have papers signed. With me and Fenn it’s the theatre that says we were real. I was partnered. The theatre and the house I signed over to him.”
“He got you good on that one,” Lee noted.
Tom nodded. “Yes… He did.”
“Tom, can I ask you a question?”
Tom responded by leaning on Lee, putting his head of thick hair on Lee’s shoulder.
“Is the reason you want a baby to prove that we’re… real? A sign that we are an us?”
“Partly,” Tom said, after a while. “And to prove that I’m a me. My kid says I was in the world. I did something. I’m leaving something behind.”
Lee nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Then I’m serious now. I wasn’t serious before, but if you want a baby we will do everything to see that we get one.”
“You serious?” Tom sat up.
“Yes.”
“Lee, a baby is work. A child is work.”
“I know that. I’ve done it. Not the baby part, but I know what comes after.”
“I mean…” Tom said, “it means you’re here for the long haul.”
“I am here for the long haul,” Lee said. Then he added, “Idiot.”
“Don’t call me that,” Tom said, softly, a light in his eye. “There’s nothing holding you to me. There’s nothing to keep you with me. If we have a child, then that child is holding us together. It’s…”
“Making me stay?”
“It means you just can’t run off,” Tom said. “And when you agree to it it means you know what, and you don’t want to run off.”
“Thomas,” Lee said, his voice a little stern. “We need to talk.”
He put down the sandwich and said, “A child is a child. It’s not a symbol of anything else. No baby, no anything could hold me to you. You hold me to you. All right?”
When Tom didn’t speak, Lee repeated: “All right?”
Tom nodded. “All right, Lee.”
“I don’t bail. You’re my husband, my wife, my brother. My partner, my spouse. Whatever. You’re all of it, and you’re mine, and we’re together,” Lee patted him on the cheek and went back to eating his sandwich, “No matter how much you get the fuck on my nerve.”
More Sunday night!
EIGHT
WE GET TO GO TOGETHER CONCLUSION
They were all talking outside of the school when Layla pointed out the car that had just swung by, and Milo, turning, realized:
“It’s my mother.”
Before he could say anything, Tina leaned out of the car and said, “Milo, I came to get you.”
Milo pointed across the street in the general direction of his car, coming toward Tina, followed by Dena.
“Mom, I drove here. This is Dena.”
“Hello, charmed,” Tina said. “Milo. I thought I could take you out.”
“Mom,” Milo said, his voice firmer, “this is Dena.”
“I know,” she said.
“My girlfriend.”
“Her name rhymes with mine,” Tina said.
Dena frowned at her.
“Honey, we need to talk.”
“We can talk at the house,” Milo said.
“No we can’t. Your grandmother… she’s listening to everything. It’s really… about your grandmother.”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“Can we discuss this,” Tina said, pointing at Dena, “in private?”
“I don’t like you,” Dena said, suddenly.
Tina opened her mouth, but Milo said, “Most people don’t. Mom, get to the point.”
“The point is…” Tina took a long, dramatic breath, “I think that now that your grandmother is…. Alone. I think it’s time for you to come back with us.”
“Are you nuts!” Dena snapped.
“Excuse me, young lady—”
“You drop your kid off when it’s not convenient for you to take care of him, and then when you hear he has a life, a girlfriend—hell—friends, in the middle of his senior year you just want to take him away?”
“Dena,” Milo began.
“And Barb needs him!” Dena said. “We all need him.”
Layla and Will had arrived now and Brendan was approaching. He touched Dena’s shoulder.
“Denie, c’mon.”
Dena nodded, turned Tina Affren a foul face, and then walked away, pulling a hand through her long, dark hair.
“I can’t imagine,” Tina said, pushing her driving shades into her blond hair, “what you see in a girl like that. She is completely lacking in manners.”
“Yes,” Milo said. “Yes, she is. But she’s never wrong.” Then Milo modified. “She’s rarely wrong.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean when she said there was no way in hell I was leaving grandma to go back with you and Dad, she was totally right.”
CHAPTER
NINE
NO ONE NOTICES THE ORGANIST
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“I mean without the whole, ‘sure’ thing,” Lee said.
Tom put down the book and looked at Lee sharply.
“Exactly how long do you plan to communicate through shrugs, quickly shut doors, frowns and sleeping as close to the edge of the bed as possible?”
Tom replied by continuing to stare at Lee sharply, and then he crossed his arms over his chest.
Lee said, “Fine.” And then he turned around and walked toward the kitchen adding, “By the way, you look really gay right now.”
After ten seconds of debating rising to the bait, Tom said, “You know what, Lee? I will talk. Since you insist.”
“I don’t so much insist as—”
“You’re not even sorry, are you?” Tom demanded coming to the kitchenette.
“Sorry for what? Because I’m certainly not sorry for having a daughter.”
“Do you not think…? Did it never occur to you, to tell me you had a daughter?”
“Well, it was one of those gay adoption things,” Lee said. “I mean, there is something a little less than permanent and written in stone about a lot of what goes on in a gay marriage. Union,” Lee amended, thoughtfully, while he spread mustard onto a piece of bread. “Partnership… whatever.”
“But adoption isn’t one of those things, Lee!” Tom said.
“I know. Lemonade had… made this baby before he came to me. I didn’t even know she existed. She just showed up one day after we’d been together a couple of years, and he told me how he never could commit to a woman, including her crackhead mother. He figured that was because he ended up being gay. Because he could commit to me, he said, which, since we’d been together three years, I thought was true. And it was. At the time.”
“Anyway,” Tom interjected.
“Don’t be rude,” Lee reprimanded him.
“Anyway,” Lee said when he had put his sandwich together, “she stayed with us a lot, and then she had an affection for me. Hell, I liked her myself, and I thought, I’m not going to actually have physical children, and I don’t really want a baby. In fact, if I had my way that’s how all kids would come, halfway grown. Lemonade was so unstable, and her mother was definitely unstable, and the fact was that legally I was nothing to Danasia. I was the only thing regular in her life, and she had already called me daddy. Now, that shit touched me, and she already thought of me as a father. So I thought, let’s do this shit. And we got everything together, and I adopted her.”
“And then you forgot you adopted her?” Tom said.
“You’re really getting on my nerve, you know that?”
“You could have told me!” Tom said louder.
“Well, I didn’t,” Lee said. There was little apologizing in Lee’s world.
“When I left Lemonade, all three of us sort of went our separate ways. Danasia had always been pretty grown and she was going in search of her mother. So I thought that was the end of her. And so there was no point in bringing her up. I never expected her to show up again.
“And now,” Lee bit into the sandwich and chewed for a bit. His mouth was still full when he spoke. “She’s in trouble.”
For the first time Tom looked not pissed off, like the compassionate Tom Lee liked.
“What kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Lee said. “But she didn’t look for Lemonade or her mother. She came here. With very little. So I know it must be the grown up kind. Something only a father can fix.”
Lee moved out of the kitchen with his bottle of water and his sandwich followed by Tom who had the Doritos.
They sat down on the couch together and Tom munched loudly.
“Lee, I wanna help,” he said.
Lee nodded, and reached into the bag of chips.
“I… I don’t care what’s legal or what’s not,” Tom said. “You and Lemonade had a child together. That… Danasia is the sign that what you had was a marriage. Even though I’ve met Lemonade and I have no idea what a marriage like that could have been like.”
“It was just like what you’d think it was,” Lee said. “Strange.”
“And… Me and Fenn. Ten years. That was real. I mean, sometimes I wish I could get married just so I could say I was divorced.”
Lee chuckled.
“It’s something about saying you’re divorced… that makes it real. That says this was something. It was something so real you have to go to court and have papers signed. With me and Fenn it’s the theatre that says we were real. I was partnered. The theatre and the house I signed over to him.”
“He got you good on that one,” Lee noted.
Tom nodded. “Yes… He did.”
“Tom, can I ask you a question?”
Tom responded by leaning on Lee, putting his head of thick hair on Lee’s shoulder.
“Is the reason you want a baby to prove that we’re… real? A sign that we are an us?”
“Partly,” Tom said, after a while. “And to prove that I’m a me. My kid says I was in the world. I did something. I’m leaving something behind.”
Lee nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Then I’m serious now. I wasn’t serious before, but if you want a baby we will do everything to see that we get one.”
“You serious?” Tom sat up.
“Yes.”
“Lee, a baby is work. A child is work.”
“I know that. I’ve done it. Not the baby part, but I know what comes after.”
“I mean…” Tom said, “it means you’re here for the long haul.”
“I am here for the long haul,” Lee said. Then he added, “Idiot.”
“Don’t call me that,” Tom said, softly, a light in his eye. “There’s nothing holding you to me. There’s nothing to keep you with me. If we have a child, then that child is holding us together. It’s…”
“Making me stay?”
“It means you just can’t run off,” Tom said. “And when you agree to it it means you know what, and you don’t want to run off.”
“Thomas,” Lee said, his voice a little stern. “We need to talk.”
He put down the sandwich and said, “A child is a child. It’s not a symbol of anything else. No baby, no anything could hold me to you. You hold me to you. All right?”
When Tom didn’t speak, Lee repeated: “All right?”
Tom nodded. “All right, Lee.”
“I don’t bail. You’re my husband, my wife, my brother. My partner, my spouse. Whatever. You’re all of it, and you’re mine, and we’re together,” Lee patted him on the cheek and went back to eating his sandwich, “No matter how much you get the fuck on my nerve.”
More Sunday night!
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I think Dena is right about Milo's mother. I hope she doesn't get custody. That was an interesting conversation between Lee and Tom. It sounds like they will be together for the long term. Great writing and I look forward to more as usual! (Sorry I am commenting late, I went to the movies and didn't get a chance to go online till now.)
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Hey, you never have to apologize for commenting late. I love your comments. As for Dena, I find that she may be harsh, but she's usually right, and this Tina Affren is a bad deal. As for Tom and Lee.... they've got a few surprises in store, but I guess everyone does... More later!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER
NINE
NO ONE NOTICES THE ORGANIST
“Okay, Chad, you’re really making a lot of progress,” Brian told him.
“Thanks,” Chad said. “Is that all for this week?”
“Did you want more? I mean, you’re ready for your solo?”
“I did want to go over that last piece one more time. I mean, if you have the time.”
Going back to the piano, Brian said, “Of course I have the time.”
“It’s just,..” Chadbegan.
Just what?” Brian said. Chadwas aware for the first time in his life of being coy, of the fact that he was deliberately letting a sentence hang. He wondered if he was always false? Probably.
“You seemed like you were in a hurry,” Chad said.
“There’s a funeral at Saint Barbara’s,” Brian said. “I am playing organ.”
“Ohhh,” Actually, Chad sounded to himself as if he had said, “Awww,” and again he felt like an outrageous phony.
“I wasn’t as close to the man as I should have been, but I do know the family, and it is a sad time.”
“I think I know who he is,” Chad said. “I think some friends I have are going.”
“Julian and Claire?”
Chad nodded.
“Yeah,” said Brian. “It’s Bob Affren.”
Brian began playing. “Take it from the top.”
To Chad, Brian was perfect. As far as he knew, Brian was single. The fact was Chad had no problem with this song. What he believed was that if he stood in Brian’s presence long enough, then he would be seen, then the man with the slight five o’clock shadow, the dark hair and the long legs, the long fingers and the brightness in his dark eyes, who loved music as much as he did would look up and see him and… And what? Would he want to date Brian? Could he see himself as Professor Babcock’s significant other? Well, not really? What could he see? What did he want?
“That was brilliant, Chad,” Brian said.
He had called him Chad, and looked at him with those eyes. For just a moment he had the feeling that those eyes were conspiratorial. Could they possibly know? No? Yes.”
“You’re going to do great at your recital.”
Brian rose up, reaching for his coat. “I need to go to the church. You need a ride anywhere?”
Brian was putting on his overcoat and looking down at him with that eager look in his handsome face, and even though Chad had absolutely no place to go, and no idea how he would get back except for walking, he said, “I was on my way to the Walgreens.”
“All right,” Brian said. “Com’on.”
Brendan opened the door and clapped his hands together, stopping himself from spinning around.
“You’re here!” he said.
“Of course I’m here,” Carol walked into the house. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t let anyone of us miss an Affren funeral. God, I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“And look at you,” she said, putting a hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“What?” said Brendan
Carol shook her head.
“Baby brother, all grown up and handsome. People should die more often. You’re a little hottie in a black suit!”
“Stop,” Brendan ducked his head, and his sister said, “Now you just look silly. Mom!” she shouted down the hall.
“Oh, Carol! I’m glad you’re hear.”
“Hey sweet,” their stepfather came down the hall, straightening his tie.
“Hi Daddy.”
“Are you staying the night?”
“I’m staying period,” Carol said. “Thanksgiving is a few days off.”
“Don’t you have classes next week?” her mother said.
“I told my professors I could make up most of the work and hand it in after break. I didn’t see the point in making two trips back home.” Carol shrugged. “And they said okay.”
“You can do that?” Brendan marveled.
“Your sister can do that,” his father shook his head.
Well, everyone ready?” Carol said.
“I just need my handbag,” Liane Miller said.
“Whose car are we taking?” Brendan said.
“Bren wants to drive,” Mr. Miller told Carol.
“Well, okay, little brother, how’bout you be my chauffeur?”
Brendan grinned and pulled his car coat off of the coat rack.
“Cool,” said Carol. “Everybody ready, now?”
“Here I am.” Liane said, coming from the back bedroom.
Carol nodded and ushered her brother out the door where the lawn was dusted
with snow.
“Then let’s get this party started!”
“THANKS,” CHAD SAID.
“Thanks?” Brian looked at him. “Go get what you need, and I’ll be here waiting.”
“I thought you were in a hurry.”
“Not that much of a hurry,” Brian said. “Besides, Bob Affren’s not going anywhere.”
Chad snorted at this, and Brian said, “I know. I’m bad.”
Chad said, “I’ll be right back,” opened the door and ran into the Walgreens.
He had to get something now. It needed to be cheap. He had his debit card. It could just be a candy bar. It had to be something important, a little sizable. And he couldn’t take too long because Brian Babcock was out there waiting for him and had someplace to be. Chad settled on two bottles of lotion and a small bag of Doritos then went quickly through the line.
He came back and Brian said, needlessly, “Ya ready?”
“Ready,” Chad strapped himself in, and then Brian turned out of the parking lot and they headed back to campus.
“You’re in King Hall, right?” Brian said as they came into campus.
“I didn’t know you knew that.”
“Surprise,” Brian sang. “I’ll pull around to the back lot. Is that good?”
“Bri—Professor, uh…?”
“When have you ever called me professor?”
“It’s just…” Chad said while they pulled up to the back of his dorm, “I mean, I should. And all I wanted to say was…You didn’t have to take me to the store like that. You’re late,” Chad said. “I should go.”
“Chad?” Brian said softly as Chad pushed the car door open.
“Yes?”
“What’s wrong? There’s something going on with you. I can tell. Maybe I can help?”
Chad looked uneasy and then, suddenly, he lunged forward and kissed Brian on the mouth.
“Chad!”
“I’m sorry,” Chad said. “I have to go.”
Chad leapt out the car. Brian called out his name again, but that was all he could do without making a scene.
And then the boy was gone, and there was no way Brian could go after him without embarrassing himself. So he sat in the parking lot letting the car stall until he swore, and remembered he was going to be late for Bob Affren’s funeral.
“I DON’T GET THE COMMERCIAL, you know,” Will was saying, “where you have the cereal people—”
“Cereal people?” Layla said, crossing her leg and readjusting her skirt.
“Yeah, you know. The little mini-wheat people and they’re talking to the kid—whose supposed to eat them by the way. But they’re all happy about it, and they’re proud of him, and they’re walking and talking, and I don’t get that. Just like those talking M and M’s.”
“I like you, Will,” Carol said, ashing her cigarette. “But maybe you think about these things too much?”
With a peculiar mix of love and chiding, Layla said, “In Will’s world there is no such thing.”
They all looked up as Milo approached with Dena, and Brendan stood up to hug him.
“We’ve been chatting with Mrs. Affren,” Dena said, sitting down between Carol and Claire. Everyone was in black, and snow had started to fall.
“Barb?” said Carol.
“No,” Dena shook her head. “The bit—”
“Dena!”
“I mean,” Dena said, looking at her boyfriend, “Milo’s lovely mother.”
“Did you guys know she had told grandma she was going to take me away?” Milo said. “I just had to go and tell grandma I wasn’t going anywhere. You know Barb. She acted like she would have been okay if I’d left. But I doubt it.”
“I do too,” Carol said. “I don’t think anyone would be okay if they were all alone in a house all of a sudden, and the husband they had for… what? Fifty years?… Was gone.”
Layla nodded.
“Will, can you imagine fifty years?”
“No,” he told her. “I cannot.”
“So,” said Milo, “what’s going on with you guys?”
Brendan said: “We were just discussing why animated food looked so happy on TV.”
“You know,” Will expanded. “Talking Mini-Wheats. M and Ms and other stuff that wants you to buy it so you can eat it.”
“Well, I’ve thought about that,” Milo said.
“Have you really?” Dena eyed him.
“The talking food is the genius of the food, you see?”
They looked at him.
“The spirit. Like in Greek mythology. A dryad is a tree spirit. Well, the talking mini-wheat is the spirit off the mini wheats in general, and it wants to be eaten. If you eat the mini-wheats you’re not killing the talking mini-wheats at all. You see? Just like… drinking out a river wouldn’t kill a river God.”
“Or going to communion wouldn’t gobble up Jesus,” Brendan chimed in.
“Etu, Brendu?” his sister said. “Is it always this deep around here?” she asked Claire.
“If you wanna call it deep,” Claire said, shrugging. “Then sure. Always.”
Julian said: “We just like to call it strange.”
NINE
NO ONE NOTICES THE ORGANIST
“Okay, Chad, you’re really making a lot of progress,” Brian told him.
“Thanks,” Chad said. “Is that all for this week?”
“Did you want more? I mean, you’re ready for your solo?”
“I did want to go over that last piece one more time. I mean, if you have the time.”
Going back to the piano, Brian said, “Of course I have the time.”
“It’s just,..” Chadbegan.
Just what?” Brian said. Chadwas aware for the first time in his life of being coy, of the fact that he was deliberately letting a sentence hang. He wondered if he was always false? Probably.
“You seemed like you were in a hurry,” Chad said.
“There’s a funeral at Saint Barbara’s,” Brian said. “I am playing organ.”
“Ohhh,” Actually, Chad sounded to himself as if he had said, “Awww,” and again he felt like an outrageous phony.
“I wasn’t as close to the man as I should have been, but I do know the family, and it is a sad time.”
“I think I know who he is,” Chad said. “I think some friends I have are going.”
“Julian and Claire?”
Chad nodded.
“Yeah,” said Brian. “It’s Bob Affren.”
Brian began playing. “Take it from the top.”
To Chad, Brian was perfect. As far as he knew, Brian was single. The fact was Chad had no problem with this song. What he believed was that if he stood in Brian’s presence long enough, then he would be seen, then the man with the slight five o’clock shadow, the dark hair and the long legs, the long fingers and the brightness in his dark eyes, who loved music as much as he did would look up and see him and… And what? Would he want to date Brian? Could he see himself as Professor Babcock’s significant other? Well, not really? What could he see? What did he want?
“That was brilliant, Chad,” Brian said.
He had called him Chad, and looked at him with those eyes. For just a moment he had the feeling that those eyes were conspiratorial. Could they possibly know? No? Yes.”
“You’re going to do great at your recital.”
Brian rose up, reaching for his coat. “I need to go to the church. You need a ride anywhere?”
Brian was putting on his overcoat and looking down at him with that eager look in his handsome face, and even though Chad had absolutely no place to go, and no idea how he would get back except for walking, he said, “I was on my way to the Walgreens.”
“All right,” Brian said. “Com’on.”
Brendan opened the door and clapped his hands together, stopping himself from spinning around.
“You’re here!” he said.
“Of course I’m here,” Carol walked into the house. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t let anyone of us miss an Affren funeral. God, I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“And look at you,” she said, putting a hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“What?” said Brendan
Carol shook her head.
“Baby brother, all grown up and handsome. People should die more often. You’re a little hottie in a black suit!”
“Stop,” Brendan ducked his head, and his sister said, “Now you just look silly. Mom!” she shouted down the hall.
“Oh, Carol! I’m glad you’re hear.”
“Hey sweet,” their stepfather came down the hall, straightening his tie.
“Hi Daddy.”
“Are you staying the night?”
“I’m staying period,” Carol said. “Thanksgiving is a few days off.”
“Don’t you have classes next week?” her mother said.
“I told my professors I could make up most of the work and hand it in after break. I didn’t see the point in making two trips back home.” Carol shrugged. “And they said okay.”
“You can do that?” Brendan marveled.
“Your sister can do that,” his father shook his head.
Well, everyone ready?” Carol said.
“I just need my handbag,” Liane Miller said.
“Whose car are we taking?” Brendan said.
“Bren wants to drive,” Mr. Miller told Carol.
“Well, okay, little brother, how’bout you be my chauffeur?”
Brendan grinned and pulled his car coat off of the coat rack.
“Cool,” said Carol. “Everybody ready, now?”
“Here I am.” Liane said, coming from the back bedroom.
Carol nodded and ushered her brother out the door where the lawn was dusted
with snow.
“Then let’s get this party started!”
“THANKS,” CHAD SAID.
“Thanks?” Brian looked at him. “Go get what you need, and I’ll be here waiting.”
“I thought you were in a hurry.”
“Not that much of a hurry,” Brian said. “Besides, Bob Affren’s not going anywhere.”
Chad snorted at this, and Brian said, “I know. I’m bad.”
Chad said, “I’ll be right back,” opened the door and ran into the Walgreens.
He had to get something now. It needed to be cheap. He had his debit card. It could just be a candy bar. It had to be something important, a little sizable. And he couldn’t take too long because Brian Babcock was out there waiting for him and had someplace to be. Chad settled on two bottles of lotion and a small bag of Doritos then went quickly through the line.
He came back and Brian said, needlessly, “Ya ready?”
“Ready,” Chad strapped himself in, and then Brian turned out of the parking lot and they headed back to campus.
“You’re in King Hall, right?” Brian said as they came into campus.
“I didn’t know you knew that.”
“Surprise,” Brian sang. “I’ll pull around to the back lot. Is that good?”
“Bri—Professor, uh…?”
“When have you ever called me professor?”
“It’s just…” Chad said while they pulled up to the back of his dorm, “I mean, I should. And all I wanted to say was…You didn’t have to take me to the store like that. You’re late,” Chad said. “I should go.”
“Chad?” Brian said softly as Chad pushed the car door open.
“Yes?”
“What’s wrong? There’s something going on with you. I can tell. Maybe I can help?”
Chad looked uneasy and then, suddenly, he lunged forward and kissed Brian on the mouth.
“Chad!”
“I’m sorry,” Chad said. “I have to go.”
Chad leapt out the car. Brian called out his name again, but that was all he could do without making a scene.
And then the boy was gone, and there was no way Brian could go after him without embarrassing himself. So he sat in the parking lot letting the car stall until he swore, and remembered he was going to be late for Bob Affren’s funeral.
“I DON’T GET THE COMMERCIAL, you know,” Will was saying, “where you have the cereal people—”
“Cereal people?” Layla said, crossing her leg and readjusting her skirt.
“Yeah, you know. The little mini-wheat people and they’re talking to the kid—whose supposed to eat them by the way. But they’re all happy about it, and they’re proud of him, and they’re walking and talking, and I don’t get that. Just like those talking M and M’s.”
“I like you, Will,” Carol said, ashing her cigarette. “But maybe you think about these things too much?”
With a peculiar mix of love and chiding, Layla said, “In Will’s world there is no such thing.”
They all looked up as Milo approached with Dena, and Brendan stood up to hug him.
“We’ve been chatting with Mrs. Affren,” Dena said, sitting down between Carol and Claire. Everyone was in black, and snow had started to fall.
“Barb?” said Carol.
“No,” Dena shook her head. “The bit—”
“Dena!”
“I mean,” Dena said, looking at her boyfriend, “Milo’s lovely mother.”
“Did you guys know she had told grandma she was going to take me away?” Milo said. “I just had to go and tell grandma I wasn’t going anywhere. You know Barb. She acted like she would have been okay if I’d left. But I doubt it.”
“I do too,” Carol said. “I don’t think anyone would be okay if they were all alone in a house all of a sudden, and the husband they had for… what? Fifty years?… Was gone.”
Layla nodded.
“Will, can you imagine fifty years?”
“No,” he told her. “I cannot.”
“So,” said Milo, “what’s going on with you guys?”
Brendan said: “We were just discussing why animated food looked so happy on TV.”
“You know,” Will expanded. “Talking Mini-Wheats. M and Ms and other stuff that wants you to buy it so you can eat it.”
“Well, I’ve thought about that,” Milo said.
“Have you really?” Dena eyed him.
“The talking food is the genius of the food, you see?”
They looked at him.
“The spirit. Like in Greek mythology. A dryad is a tree spirit. Well, the talking mini-wheat is the spirit off the mini wheats in general, and it wants to be eaten. If you eat the mini-wheats you’re not killing the talking mini-wheats at all. You see? Just like… drinking out a river wouldn’t kill a river God.”
“Or going to communion wouldn’t gobble up Jesus,” Brendan chimed in.
“Etu, Brendu?” his sister said. “Is it always this deep around here?” she asked Claire.
“If you wanna call it deep,” Claire said, shrugging. “Then sure. Always.”
Julian said: “We just like to call it strange.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
Chad kissed Brian! I wonder if anything will come of it? I hope so! Sounds like Barb isn't going to be alone which is good, I think she and Milo need each other. (At least I hope that is what happens.) Great section and I look forward to more! 
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
What are you looking forward to? We're in the last third of our story and there is SO much coming, you don't even know! Glad you enjoyed. Have a great day. More tomorrow.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
I am looking forward to just seeing where these characters will all end up. If couples will stay together, and if new couples such as Chad and Brian will happen. If the money Fenn and co found will lead to more trouble. Also the things I don't know about yet are intriguing. So yeah a lot of things too look forward to!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
You're right. And there's a lot coming.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
CHAPTER
NINE
NO ONE NOTICES THE ORGANIST
Brendan was looking out of the large picture window in the Affren’s house when his sister joined him.
“I’m gay,” he told her.
“Hell, yeah you are,” Carol said. “I was starting to think you’d never figure it out.” She shrugged. “It only took you seventeen years though. Well, eighteen almost.”
Brendan looked at her.
“How did you know?”
“Well, if I never knew before, that gay little dance you did when you answered the door today would have told me. But… you are my brother, Bren. I mean, I should know.
“Do they,” Carol gestured in the vague direction of his friends, “know?”
“Yeah,” Brendan said. “They all know. They’re great. My friends are great.”
“You’re friends are likable,” Carol nodded. “I mean, the new ones. The rest of them have always been around. How did Dena take it?”
“She took it eventually,” Brendan said.
Then, because they were talking, Brendan said: “I have a boyfriend.”
“Good for you, Bren! Is he hot?”
“Yeah. Well, he is to me. Kenny. He couldn’t be here.”
Carol nodded.
“He used to work at Kroger with me. But… the thing is, we started something up when I was still with Dena.”
“Oh,” Carol said, frowning.
“Yeah. But I broke it off and went back to Dena. So, me and Dena started up things.”
“You mean you were sleeping with her?” Carol said. And then, “Well, I guess I thought you and this Kenny were just holding hands. I guess you and Dena weren’t holding hands either.”
“We were,” Brendan said, “Until I asked her if we could start sleeping together. I thought it would make me normal.”
“Straighten you out?”
“Yes,” Brendan said, “only it didn’t. And I ended up hurting her really bad.”
“I love you,” Carol said, carefully. “But she should have given you hell.”
“Oh, you weren’t here for the last half year.”
“She gave you hell?”
“Um hum.”
Carol smiled. “Good. I like that girl. I love that girl, Bren. She should have been the one. I mean, if you didn’t turn out the way you are, then she would have been the one.”
Brendan nodded.
“So you and this Kenny are still good?”
“Yeah.” Then Brendan went red. “We’re very good.”
Carol looked at the redness on her brother’s face. “Bren?”
“I just,” Brendan said, quietly, embarrassed. “I really do love him.”
“Well, good. I need to see him. I need to see if he measures up to Dena.”
“They’re apples and oranges.”
“Girls and boys,” Carol corrected, grinning.
“Well, yes,” Bren said with a smile. “But… he’s good to me. And I’m good to him. Only thing … He came back for a visit last week.”
“Um hum?”
“And Mom walked in on us.”
“Walked in on…?”
“I didn’t lock my bedroom door. I thought everyone was gone.”
“Oh, no,” Carol threw her hands together and burst out laughing, and then covered her mouth, looking around.
“Carol, it’s so not funny. It was totally mortifying.”
“I’ll bet,” she said. “And I’ll bet you learn to lock the door.”
Brendan said, “I’ll never do anything in that house again. And that’s how mom found out I was gay.”
Carol kept chucking and said, “Don’t worry. She’ll never tell Dad. Or anyone. Mom keeps it all to herself.”
Carol shook her head, smiling over something, and when she noticed Brendan looking at her she said:
“Well, baby brother, how do you think Mom discovered I was straight?”
Brendan’s eyes went wide.
“Gary Knapp. And I was sixteen. She chased him out of the house with a broom.”
Brendan covered his face and started to laugh.
“Yeah,” his sister said. “At least Kenny didn’t get chased away with a broom. Did he?”
Brendan, still laughing, shook his head.
“See, you’re in better luck than I was,” Carol said. “Man, Bren. We really need to learn to lock our doors.”
Father Keith gestured for Fenn. Fenn came forward, near the coffin, where snow was falling on the mahogany and took the Bible. He cleared his throat and read.
“Seek not death in the error of your life, neither procure ye destruction by the works of your hands. For God made not death, neither hath He pleasure in the destruction of the living. For He created all things that they might be: and he made the nations of the earth for health: and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon the earth.”
He turned to the next red mark, and handed the Bible to Barb’s oldest son, who stood beside him.
In the cold Brendan was shivering and Carol brushed the snow out of his hair. “You should have worn a hat.”
“You all right, buddy?” his father squeezed him, and Brendan nodded.
Kurt Affren read:
“Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise again incorruptible. And we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption: and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death—” Fenn read with him, as he shared the Bible:
“—where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? Now the sting of death is sin: and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmoveable: always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
Dan Malloy prayed:
“O God, by Your mercy rest is given to the souls of the faithful, be pleased to bless this grave. Appoint Your holy angels to guard it and set free from all the chains of sin and the soul of him whose body is buried here, so that with all Thy saints he may rejoice in Thee for ever. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” Barbara whispered, her hands clasped tight together. Her jaw tight. Someone touched her arm, and startled, she looked to see it was Milo, smiling at her. She opened then, her face relaxed, her hand caught her grandson’s.
And then she began to sing, in a slightly cracked voice, lifting her head to the grey sky, swaying a little.
Deus, cujus miseratióne ánimæ
fidélium requiéscunt, hunc túmulum
benedícere dignáre, eíque Angelum
tuum sanctum députa custódem:
et quorum quarúmque córpora hic
sepeliúntur, ánimas eórum ab ómnibus
absólve vínculis delictórum; ut in te
semper cum Sanctis tuis sine fine læténtur.
Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.
Amen.
They all looked at her, surprised. Then, with the usual practicality of Catholics, all of them, including Todd who stood beside Nell and Dena, chanted:
“Amen!”
Barb sang:
“Kyrie elieson!”
They chanted it back.
“Christe elieson!
“Christe elieson!”
“Kyrie elieson!”
Her old voice was clearer now, cool like the air, while Keith and Dan, their hands over Bob’s coffin chanted:
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
“I’m going to cry,” Layla whispered to Will. “I am actually going to cry.”
Dan looked to Keith. Their collars of their coats were turned up against the cold, but they wore their purple stoles. Keith nodded.
He began: “Oh, Lord—” and then he stopped.
Instead he began to sing.
Réquiem æternam dona ei,
Dómine. Eternal
Et lux perpétua lúceat ei.
Requiéscat in pace.
Amen.
He sang it again, and this time Dan joined him in a round. Barb, who remembered the old Latin, and a few of the other joined in. And then, in English, Fenn sang.
Let perpetual light shine upon him, oh Lord!
May he rest in peace.
Amen.
They were all singing, and if not happy, if not warm in the cold, then they were something past that, and as their voices lowered, Keith McDonald prayed:
“May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Amen.”
And as the snow fell softly from the pewter clouds, they all replied: “Amen.”
NINE
NO ONE NOTICES THE ORGANIST
Brendan was looking out of the large picture window in the Affren’s house when his sister joined him.
“I’m gay,” he told her.
“Hell, yeah you are,” Carol said. “I was starting to think you’d never figure it out.” She shrugged. “It only took you seventeen years though. Well, eighteen almost.”
Brendan looked at her.
“How did you know?”
“Well, if I never knew before, that gay little dance you did when you answered the door today would have told me. But… you are my brother, Bren. I mean, I should know.
“Do they,” Carol gestured in the vague direction of his friends, “know?”
“Yeah,” Brendan said. “They all know. They’re great. My friends are great.”
“You’re friends are likable,” Carol nodded. “I mean, the new ones. The rest of them have always been around. How did Dena take it?”
“She took it eventually,” Brendan said.
Then, because they were talking, Brendan said: “I have a boyfriend.”
“Good for you, Bren! Is he hot?”
“Yeah. Well, he is to me. Kenny. He couldn’t be here.”
Carol nodded.
“He used to work at Kroger with me. But… the thing is, we started something up when I was still with Dena.”
“Oh,” Carol said, frowning.
“Yeah. But I broke it off and went back to Dena. So, me and Dena started up things.”
“You mean you were sleeping with her?” Carol said. And then, “Well, I guess I thought you and this Kenny were just holding hands. I guess you and Dena weren’t holding hands either.”
“We were,” Brendan said, “Until I asked her if we could start sleeping together. I thought it would make me normal.”
“Straighten you out?”
“Yes,” Brendan said, “only it didn’t. And I ended up hurting her really bad.”
“I love you,” Carol said, carefully. “But she should have given you hell.”
“Oh, you weren’t here for the last half year.”
“She gave you hell?”
“Um hum.”
Carol smiled. “Good. I like that girl. I love that girl, Bren. She should have been the one. I mean, if you didn’t turn out the way you are, then she would have been the one.”
Brendan nodded.
“So you and this Kenny are still good?”
“Yeah.” Then Brendan went red. “We’re very good.”
Carol looked at the redness on her brother’s face. “Bren?”
“I just,” Brendan said, quietly, embarrassed. “I really do love him.”
“Well, good. I need to see him. I need to see if he measures up to Dena.”
“They’re apples and oranges.”
“Girls and boys,” Carol corrected, grinning.
“Well, yes,” Bren said with a smile. “But… he’s good to me. And I’m good to him. Only thing … He came back for a visit last week.”
“Um hum?”
“And Mom walked in on us.”
“Walked in on…?”
“I didn’t lock my bedroom door. I thought everyone was gone.”
“Oh, no,” Carol threw her hands together and burst out laughing, and then covered her mouth, looking around.
“Carol, it’s so not funny. It was totally mortifying.”
“I’ll bet,” she said. “And I’ll bet you learn to lock the door.”
Brendan said, “I’ll never do anything in that house again. And that’s how mom found out I was gay.”
Carol kept chucking and said, “Don’t worry. She’ll never tell Dad. Or anyone. Mom keeps it all to herself.”
Carol shook her head, smiling over something, and when she noticed Brendan looking at her she said:
“Well, baby brother, how do you think Mom discovered I was straight?”
Brendan’s eyes went wide.
“Gary Knapp. And I was sixteen. She chased him out of the house with a broom.”
Brendan covered his face and started to laugh.
“Yeah,” his sister said. “At least Kenny didn’t get chased away with a broom. Did he?”
Brendan, still laughing, shook his head.
“See, you’re in better luck than I was,” Carol said. “Man, Bren. We really need to learn to lock our doors.”
Father Keith gestured for Fenn. Fenn came forward, near the coffin, where snow was falling on the mahogany and took the Bible. He cleared his throat and read.
“Seek not death in the error of your life, neither procure ye destruction by the works of your hands. For God made not death, neither hath He pleasure in the destruction of the living. For He created all things that they might be: and he made the nations of the earth for health: and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon the earth.”
He turned to the next red mark, and handed the Bible to Barb’s oldest son, who stood beside him.
In the cold Brendan was shivering and Carol brushed the snow out of his hair. “You should have worn a hat.”
“You all right, buddy?” his father squeezed him, and Brendan nodded.
Kurt Affren read:
“Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise again incorruptible. And we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption: and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death—” Fenn read with him, as he shared the Bible:
“—where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? Now the sting of death is sin: and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmoveable: always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
Dan Malloy prayed:
“O God, by Your mercy rest is given to the souls of the faithful, be pleased to bless this grave. Appoint Your holy angels to guard it and set free from all the chains of sin and the soul of him whose body is buried here, so that with all Thy saints he may rejoice in Thee for ever. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
“Amen,” Barbara whispered, her hands clasped tight together. Her jaw tight. Someone touched her arm, and startled, she looked to see it was Milo, smiling at her. She opened then, her face relaxed, her hand caught her grandson’s.
And then she began to sing, in a slightly cracked voice, lifting her head to the grey sky, swaying a little.
Deus, cujus miseratióne ánimæ
fidélium requiéscunt, hunc túmulum
benedícere dignáre, eíque Angelum
tuum sanctum députa custódem:
et quorum quarúmque córpora hic
sepeliúntur, ánimas eórum ab ómnibus
absólve vínculis delictórum; ut in te
semper cum Sanctis tuis sine fine læténtur.
Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.
Amen.
They all looked at her, surprised. Then, with the usual practicality of Catholics, all of them, including Todd who stood beside Nell and Dena, chanted:
“Amen!”
Barb sang:
“Kyrie elieson!”
They chanted it back.
“Christe elieson!
“Christe elieson!”
“Kyrie elieson!”
Her old voice was clearer now, cool like the air, while Keith and Dan, their hands over Bob’s coffin chanted:
“Our Father, who art in heaven…”
“I’m going to cry,” Layla whispered to Will. “I am actually going to cry.”
Dan looked to Keith. Their collars of their coats were turned up against the cold, but they wore their purple stoles. Keith nodded.
He began: “Oh, Lord—” and then he stopped.
Instead he began to sing.
Réquiem æternam dona ei,
Dómine. Eternal
Et lux perpétua lúceat ei.
Requiéscat in pace.
Amen.
He sang it again, and this time Dan joined him in a round. Barb, who remembered the old Latin, and a few of the other joined in. And then, in English, Fenn sang.
Let perpetual light shine upon him, oh Lord!
May he rest in peace.
Amen.
They were all singing, and if not happy, if not warm in the cold, then they were something past that, and as their voices lowered, Keith McDonald prayed:
“May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Amen.”
And as the snow fell softly from the pewter clouds, they all replied: “Amen.”
