The City of Rossford

Epilogue

When the morning comes

FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT, Father Frank Slaughter was at Saint Barbara’s again. He said he was absolutely not taking over. On Ash Wednesday there had been a little bit of snow, but not like that Ash Wednesday some years ago when half the church had been empty and the city of Rossford had been buried a foot or so in wet slush. Right how he felt old. He didn’t feel bad, but he felt old and he felt safe.

Safe as houses… he remembered his mother saying.

Forty years ago, Jeane Slaughter had been the age he was now. She was the grandmother and the great-grandmother of those in the pews, that one in the aisle. What a mess they were. Of Shelley, the less said the better, and how strange that she had come to church this Sunday! Or any Sunday. Then there was Bryant. BJ was always special to him. In the last few years he had, as they said, blossomed. He had turned into a happy man. A good man. Bryant could always be good when he set his mind to it, but Frank knew that it had been hard for his nephew back in Pennsylvania. Chad had provided that necessary love, and now Chad was gone.

The organ music began the hymn. Instrumental today, but he knew the words.

Again we keep this solemn fast

A gift of faith from ages past

This Lent which binds us lovingly

To faith and hope and charity.

Above them Sean was playing the organ, and Frank thought of their conversation the other day.

“And what will you do?” Frank had asked him.

“Do you want me to leave?” Sean demanded.

“Stop being so damn dramatic,” his uncle said to him.

“You don’t think I feel bad, do you?” Sean said.

“You answer my one question with a hundred.”

“Well,” Sean said, “do you think I feel bad?”

The old priest said, “I think you want to feel bad. I think a lot of people want to feel bad. But I think Jesus was right when he said forgive them Father, they know not what they do.”

Sean waited for his uncle to continue.

“One day,” Frank Slaughter continued, “you will understand what you did. The way Bryant came to understand things he had done. I don’t know if I’ll be alive for that day. Right now you want to go to Chad. You’re waiting to see when decency will allow it. How long you have to wait. You’re wondering if he’ll take you. Or if Bryant will take him back.”

Sean looked at his uncle. The old man detected… hope.

“I don’t know,” Frank said. “The only thing I know is one day you’ll wake up, and you’ll realize what you did.”

“I do realize it,” Sean said.

“No,” Frank lifted his finger. “You don’t.”

Then Dan Malloy came from the sacristy to join Father Frank, and as he walked to the pulpit and some of the congregation rose, wondering what was happening, all of them went quiet. The church was hung in heavy purple banners. Dan Malloy was robed in deep purple, his hair gold against it and the white of his collar.

“Family,” he began. “Before Mass starts today, I have to tell you something.”

Even though the old priest knew what Dan Malloy was about to say, even he felt a shudder. He felt it going through all of Saint Barbara’s.

“I’ve had the extreme good fortune to do what many priests never do. I’ve spent the majority of my priesthood at one church. For sixteen years I’ve served this parish, first as a novice priest, then as associate pastor, and now pastor and principal of Saint Barbara’s school. I am so honored to be a part of the Saint Barbara’s family.

“I don’t think that will ever cease, but my role will. I’m not going to be your shepherd anymore. See…”

Dan started over again. His voice became very forceful and Frank Slaughter, who’d had to use a forceful voice on several occasions to say certain things he wasn’t certain he meant, paid close attention to Dan Malloy.

“God has called me to do other work. And this will not only be my last mass as the pastor of Saint Barbara’s, but my last Mass.”

There was sighing, exclamations from the crowd. Dan was quiet while some protests came up from the pews. Frank Slaughter thought, “How could they know? How could any of them understand that all of their groaning and grieving was very small compared to the wailing that had been going on inside of Dan Malloy?

“Well, it’s about time,” Tara Veems pronounced at Fenn’s kitchen table. “He was acting crazy this whole year. Say, Fenn, do you think him and Keith McDonald will get together?”

Fenn was cracking an egg into a bowl, and he said, “I stopped delving into Dan Malloy’s love life when I stopped being part of it. But if you ask me, yes. Actually, if you ask me they already are together.”

“Who’s together?” said Dylan, who was coming into the kitchen with his new cousin Laurel, and had a way of walking into conversations at the most inopportune times.

Fenn reached up into the cabinet, handed his son and his niece a biscuit and said, “Go to the living room.”

“Are you talking about Chay and Sheridan?” Dylan asked.

Fenn looked at him.

“Alright!” Dylan put his hands up. “I’m gone!”

He gestured to his cousin and said, “Let’s go.”

“He’s adorable,” Tara murmured.

“He can be,” Fenn admitted, taking out a mixer.

“And what about you?” he said.

“Am I adorable?”

“Do I have to give you the same look I just gave Dylan? And his mother for that matter? Good Lord, that woman is coming by today. As if we don’t have enough people here.”

“Oh,” Tara said. “You meant me and Miss Melanie.”

“Well, yeah.”

“It’s simple. We’re keeping it simple.”

“So it’s all about the sex right now is what you’re saying?”

“You are very cynical,” his best friend said. “And yet very right.”

Fenn sighed.

“Once upon a very, very long time ago. It was all about the sex for me and Todd.”

“I doubt if that was ever true,” Tara began, but Fenn put down the mixer and said:

“Continue the omelet while I go check on him.”

Fenn went up the back stair.

“Todd! Todd Meradan.”

“Fenn Houghton,” Todd sang.

Fenn followed his voice down the hall and into their bedroom.

“You had just disappeared.”

“I was in here,” Todd said, unnecessarily. “I was just thinking, as I like to do now and again.”

“Okay?”

Todd got up. Todd crossed the room. Todd stood at the doorway with Fenn. Todd moved himself so that he was out of the doorway. This wasn’t good.

“Just hear me out,” Todd said.

Fenn raised an eyebrow and said, cautiously, “Okay?”

“Well… you have a son.”

“Yes?”

“And I have a daughter.”

“We can’t marry them off. It’s not legal in America.”

“Haha, funny. What I was thinking was… why don’t we have a kid together?”

Fenn frowned up at him.

“Just think… I’m the same age you were when you had Dylan.”

“But I didn’t have Dylan. I… that Eileen brought Dylan. And the fact is I was your age then, but I’m my age now! Have you thought of that?”

“I’ve thought of a lot,” Todd said. “Like, for instance, names.”

“Todd,” Fenn said in a much harsher voice. “I’m almost fifty, and I…”

“Forty-seven,” Todd said, backing out of the room.

“I’m too old—”

“Jeffrey,” Todd began, heading down the hall. “Donald. Todd Junior, Saphronia!”

“No!” Fenn shouted.

“Megan, Meglan. Tegan, Dana. Dena, another Dena! Fatimah! Jezebel!”

“I’m serious,” Fenn began, then, honestly worried, he headed after Todd.

“Jemima, Georgia. Fred. Fredricka!”

“No more kids!”

At the base of the steps, Dylan and Laurel looked up.

“Am I getting a brother?” Dylan looked up at Fenn.

Fenn opened his mouth.

“Frank, Todd Junior, Phil,” Todd said quickly, heading into the kitchen.

“We’ll talk about it,” Fenn said.

Todd stuck his head out of the kitchen and said, “Stephanie,” and then disappeared.

Fenn looked sharply at the door, and then at his son.

Laurel said, “Stephanie’s a nice name.”

“Who gave him that idea?” Fenn demanded of the ceiling, sitting down heavily on the old sofa.

“Actually, I may have,” Dylan began.

Fenn looked at his son.

“You’re always hearing people say the more the merrier, and I thought we’re already so merry, how much more merry would we be with a baby!”

Fenn continued looking at him.

“And Dad also says it would rejuvenate you. And I think it would rejuvenate me too.”

The nine year old leaned in and made a face.

“I’m feeling old, Dad. And—”

Dylan stopped at the baleful look on his father’s face.

“I—” the boy began again, and then said, “Am I grounded?”

Fenn Houghton sat up, and opened his mouth, But before he could tell Dylan anything, the boy said, “I know, I know. Go play outside.”

Here ends The City of Rossford.
We will return to Rossford, but we have a couple of other stops first...