The Families in Rossford

As the bus lurched up Meridian, Laurel Houghton wondered, “Am I wrong for not applying to Loretto?”

Laurel was small and caramel brown, very pretty, and beside her was a lighter, slightly taller girl with equally black hair who ticked off her fingers a response.

“Firstly, you are wrong for even asking that question in the middle of December when you know Loretto takes applications damn near to the day of enrollment and secondly, there is nothing wrong with wanting to leave home especially if—and this is the  most important part—it involves taking your cousin Maia with you the day after Christmas to tour universities.”

Laurel made a noise.

“I guess you’re right, Maia.”

“Guess, I’m right? Damn, you know I’m right. I just wish we could tour in the middle of the year. Think of all the parties we could get up too.”

“I wish Dylan was coming,” Laurel said.

“I don’t,” Maia said bluntly. “He’d probably fuck everybody.”

“Mai!”

“There wouldn’t be any men left for us. He’d turn ‘em all out.”

“There would be straight men left for us—”

“With him it really doesn’t seem to matter.”

Laurel shook her head disapprovingly at her cousin. “That’s unkind.”

“I’m not big on kindness,” Maia admitted. “I’m more into truth.”

“Can we get off the subject of Dylan and how you think—”

“That he’s a ho,” Maia said flatly.

“I mean, I love him. I really do. I thought I was going to marry him. But girl, he let the cat out the bag—or the dick out his pants, whatever—and he just went wild.”

“I can’t believe we’re discussing this,” Laurel murmured as other people on the bus, who could hear Maia’s diatribe began laughing.

“Good, cause we’re at the mall now. End of the line. And what we need to discuss now, is what you’re gon buy me!”

Negotiating the ice bumps and the lumps of snow, Elias and Bennett Anderson wheeled their bikes off of Deering Street and onto the sidewalk.

“Ey! Rob!” Bennett shouted. “What the hell is that?”

Rob Affren, and two other boys along with Cara, who was rolling something in the snow, all turned to the boys.

“They’re snow women!” Rob’s friend announced.

Elias, who was dark haired and blue eyed turned to his red headed twin and whispered, “Holy shit, Ben. They’re making snow tits.”

“That,” Bennett decided, “is awesome.”

Cara came walking toward them, and Elias got off his bike and said, “Stay in the yard,” but Dena was already on it, and opening the door she called, “Caramae, get back in the yard.”

“I was just showing him my boob!” Cara said, emphasizing the word boob as she held forth a round ball of snow.

While Elias chuckled to himself, the green eyed Bennett Anderson said, “What are you and Milo teaching these children?”

“Are you going to sit out their being sarcastic or come in for cocoa?”

“Well, it’s really no contest, is it Twin?” Ben said to Elias. “Let’s roll our bikes on in and get cocoa.”

“Yeah, we got Birth Mom some nice earrings,” Bennett was saying.

“Do you always call her that?” Dena said. Her brow furrowed as she poured the hot milk over the cocoa powder.

“Well, that is what she is.”

“I guess, but isn’t she like your real mother too?”

“No. Just the carrier,” Elias informed her in a business like way.

“All mom’s aren’t like you, Dena,” Bennett said merrily while he rubbed his hands together.

 “You have babies and raise them and make sure they don’t play in traffic and all of that stuff.”

“That’s more like Kirk,” Elias said, and it was the first time he had spoken. “He’s more like a mom. But so is Paul. I mean, they’re both like Mom.”

“And Birth Mom is Birth Mom,” Bennett elaborated. “She comes around now and again and she gave us life so we give her earrings.”

As Bennett took the cocoa from Dena and handed it to his brother he said, “Look, Eli, Dena’s sad.”

“I’m not sad,” Dena said. “And I’m not judging.”

She sat down across from the twins. “It’s just now that I have kids, I can’t imagine giving them up.”

“Dylan’s mom gave him up,” Elias said.

Dena shrugged. But then so did Bennett.

Nearly sixteen years ago, a helpful young college student—who was paid a lot of money—said that she would be glad to carry two eggs from one unknown woman—a woman who did not wish to be known. One egg was fertilized by Paul and the other by Kirk. The plan was that Paul would have a son and so would Kirk, and these two boys would be linked to each other not only as brothers, but twins. Fifteen years later the result was the quiet dark haired and blue eyed Elias Hanley-Anderson, who looked like his biological father Kirk, and the red haired Bennett Hanley-Anderson who looked like every other red headed Anderson, and talked so much it gave his Aunt Claire a run for her money. Shortly after them, with much less biological complications, had come Matthew, who was at home reading a book.

“Besides,” Bennett continued, “between you and Aunt Claire we’ve got more than enough mothers.”

“And Aunt Shelley,” Elias added.

Bennett seemed to be thinking this over. “I guess. She’s hot—”

“Ben!” Dena said, one eye still on the children outside.

“She is,” Bennett insisted.

“I mean, she’s not biologically related to me. Not like Aunt Claire. Anyway, I was going to say Shelley’s hot, but shes not that maternal.”

“She’s got kids,” Elias said.

“Our moms have children,” Bennett said. “Well, there you go. And then Laurel’s grandma. The one who is Claire’s mother-in-law…. Well, what about her? So you see, all mom’s aren’t momlike. And Shelley. Well…”

Dena decided it was time to bring the children in, or at least Cara. She went to the door and clapped for her attention and then, turning back to the boys said, “Well, Shelley Anderson’s a Babcock.”

“I am just not a very good cook,” Shelley decided.

Merilee Anderson eyed the outcome of the cake her daughter-in-law had made and settled on, “It needs work.”

“It needs,” Claire decided, looking it over and then going toward her foyer, “for me to go down to the bakery and pick up a new one.”

“Oh, Claire, how can you say that?”

‘It’s honesty, Mama. That’s all I got. Come on ladies, let’s shake a leg and get down there.”

Shelley gave her cake one last regretful look, and Claire called up the steps.

Matthew the Second, which distinquished him from Matty even if it made his name too long, came down the steps bookmarking his copy of Treasure Island with one finger.

“Can you be a wonderful nephew and watch the kids while we go and pick up a new cake for tonight?”

“Sure. But what’s so big about tonight? Christmas is a few days off.”

“What is so big about tonight?” Merilee wondered, turning to Shelley.

“I can’t tell you yet,” the dark haired woman said. “It’s a surprise really.”

“Is it a good one or a bad one?” Matthew began.

“It’s a good one, of course.”

“Cause you’ve had some not so good ones in the past, Aunt Shell.”

“Matthew Two!” Claire said, and then, while he went back up the stairs, Claire led them out, whispering to her mother, “Actually, he’s sort of right,” while Shelley went to start the car.

“I love a white Christmas,” Claire was saying. “But I gotta tell you, this isn’t bad either. A little bit of residual snow. Some chill in the air. I could get use to this.”

“Shelley,” Merilee began, “This surprise of yours?”

“Yes,” Shelley said with a nervous smile.

“It’s just that sometimes your surprises… They’re not always the greatest.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, there was the one time you surprised Elias and Bennett with their biological mother.”

“And the time when you dug up Laurel Houghton’s father,” Merilee chimed in.

“Not to mention when you walked into Bennett’s room with a birthday cake and he was in the middle of—”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“He’s a boy,” Claire offered.

“He’s fifteen,” Merilee added.

“He uses up a lot Kleenex.”

“Well, I told him it was perfectly natural,” Shelley said as they stopped at a red light. “I even told him that it was better than sleeping around and that everyone should learn how to pleasure themselves. He was a step ahead of the game.”

While Merilee put a hand over her face to stifle the laughter, Claire said, “I bet he loved that talk.”

“Not so much.”

Shelley cleared her throat.

“But that’s not the thing that matters. The new surprise is definitely going to rock everyone’s socks.”

“See,” said Claire, as they pulled into the parking spaces before the bakery, “that is just what I am afraid of.”

“You know that my Uncle Sean has been like… gone from the face of the earth for years?”

“I knew something like that,” Merilee said.

“Well, tonight, when your family and my family come together, Uncle Sean’s going to be there! I’ve brought him. Uncle Brian’s going to be so surprised!”

Shelley hopped out of the car wide eyed and delighted, but Claire looked horrified.

“Claire,” her mother said. “Do you know something I don’t?”

“Yes,” Claire Lawden said, flatly.

“So… is her Uncle Brian going to be surprised?”

Claire remembered that Merilee had never really known Brian. A very long time ago, Brian had made a DVD and sent it to Claire and Merilee and the contents of that video would have surprised the hell out of Merilee then. Ironic. If you lived long enough, life was ironic.

“Yes, Mother,” Claire said, remembering what Chad had told her about his affair with Sean, “I think Brian will be very surprised.”

When Will entered his house, Fenn was there.

“Well, wow, he’s back,” Fenn said standing up as Will came toward him. “But shouldn’t you all have brought him to his parents, first?”

“Well, we knew you’d be here,” Will hugged him quickly. “And Kenny had to get back home.

“Bren!” Will went to hug his old friend.

“How was Austria?”

“It was alright,” Will said, clapping Brendan on the back, then separating from him.

“But Europe makes it easier to appreciate showers everyday.”

“So it’s true?” Layla said.

“It is.”

“White folks are so nasty,” Fenn commented, but they had all learned to ignore him by now, except for Milo who said, “There’s some truth in that.”

“Well, in the ancestral home of White Folks, there’s animal shit and piss on the street and uber bad fashion,” Will reported. “It was interesting, but I’m glad to be home.”

“I’m glad to have you,” Layla said, catching his hand. “The older I get the less I like us being apart.”

“Speaking of being apart,” Fenn said, “I have a Todd to get to.”

“He’s at home?”

“No,” Fenn said to Sheridan, “he’s at the theatre.”

“We’ll run you there,” Sheridan volunteered.

“I got it,” Brendan said. “Besides, I’m leaving in a bit.”

“Well, as long as somebody takes me,” Fenn said. He turned to his neice. “It’s nice to be fought over. It makes you feel wanted.”

He coughed and rubbed his shoulder.

“And that makes me feel old.”

“They say fifty’s the new forty,” Kenny noted.

“Forty must have been a motherfucker then,” observed Fenn.

But it was Sheridan and Logan who took Fenn back even though he had walked here from Versailles Street, and when Will went upstairs to the rest room, Layla and Milo sat looking at Brendan and Kenneth.

“So, what’s going on?” Layla demanded.

“Whaddo you mean?” Brendan looked at her.

“She’s been doing this all morning,” Kenny told him.

“Layla said we were the cat who ate the canary only the canary tasted bad.”

“That’s funny,” Brendan thought about it. “I’m not exactly sure what it means, but it is funny.”

Layla opened her mouth to say something, but then thought it would achieve nothing, so decided on, “I’m going to the kitchen to get something to drink.”

Brendan followed her into the kitchen and he said, “Hey, Lay, what’s up?”

“I don’t know,” Layla said.

She went to the cupboard and pulled down a glass.

“It’s just Kenny and Milo looked like they had been having some bizarre discussion when they came for me, and I want to know what it is.”

Before Brendan could say something, Layla waved it off.

“Don’t mind me. I know myself pretty well by now. I’m sure it’s none of my damn business, and I’m just putting my nose where it damn doesn’t belong.”

She poured the juice while Brendan nodded and when she had finished, she said, fluidly:

“Is Kenny having an affair?”

“No! And if he was, I mean, he’d be bad at it for me not to know.”

“I think you would know. Part of you.”

While Brendan thought this over, Layla said, “Well, are you having an affair?”

“What? No! You know better than that!”

“Have you found somebody else?”

“No.”

“Do you want to find somebody else?”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Kenny!” Layla shouted.

A moment later, Kenny entered the kitchen with Milo and Will. Kenny and Brendan looked at each other as if they were terrified at the prospect of what Layla might do.

She looked at Kenny, and then at Brendan. She sighed.

“Will, Milo, get out,” she said.

The shaggy haired man and the long haired man looked at each other and then, without asking why, left.

“So, it finally happened,” Layla said.

“What final—” Kenny began.

“You all are finally breaking up.”

“We are NOT breaking up!” Brendan said.

“No,” Kenny murmured. “We’re already broken up.”

Brendan looked at him, and Kenny continued, “We’ve been broken up. It wasn’t even a bad break up or anything. We’ve just become…”

“Friends,” Brendan supplied.

“Yeah,” Kenny went on. Then in a lighter voice he said, “But you’re my best friend. What’s wrong with friends?”

Brendan looked at Layla and said, “That’s the talk I was having with your uncle this morning.”

“You told Fenn that?” Kenny said.

“Why not?” Layla said, her voice as subdued as Brendan’s. “Did you tell the same thing to Milo.”

“It’s just,” Kenny said, “what we have isn’t bad. It really isn’t. It’s better than most marriages, but…”

“Ey, Layla?” Brendan said. “I think me and Kenny are working well as a couple, even if we’re not working well as a couple of lovers. I would appreciate if you—”

“I’m not a blabbermouth,” she said. “Have I ever been a blabbermouth?”

“Thanks,” Brendan said, sighing.

“Milo! Will!” Layla called. “You can come back in.”

The first time he’d gone off to Chicago by himself, he planned to leave for only a few hours and he’d lingered in Millenium Station and arrived at the platform as the train was heading out of the station. He’d run after it to no avail, and pounded on the side. The ticket collector woman, whatever the hell she was, saw him and just shook her head as the train disappeared on its way back to Miller. He’d had no phone to call his father, and, breathless and sweaty. Dylan had sat down on the bench in the darkness of the platforms, and then decided that the only thing to do was turn around, catch an El and travel around the city until the next train.

Fenn had never believed in cell phones or technology, and so there had been no calling him until Dylan had bummed a phone from someone riding the return train home that evening.

“I won’t be in until seven o’clock. I missed the first train,” he said. “I wanted to call you, but I couldn’t until now.”

When Dylan arrived at the platform in Miller, Tom and Fenn were there and Fenn had quietly handed Dylan a new cell phone while Tom smirked, triumphantly.

“Told you so,” Tom said, and Fenn had turned around, ignoring him, and headed for the car.

On their way back Fenn said, “So it turns out it is true.”

“What’s true?” Dylan said from the backseat.

“Umm Kulthum used to say you must wait for that which will not wait for you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well,” Fenn explained as the evening drew on, “she learned it because her mother used to bring her to the train station hours early and her whole life she showed up early for the train. I didn’t understand until I missed a train myself. Then I understood.”

Dylan thought of that because he was driving to reach a plane, and while it was true that he wasn’t going to catch the plane, only waiting for it to land, he still thought of the concept of not being late. True, Lance would wait for him, but Lance should not have to.

Now, as he drove south on Dorr, he thought how Lance had spent years waiting for him and being second fiddle to others, and he thought of their talks on the phone now that Lance was off at college. Things had gone so cosmically bad between the two of them, and if Dylan hadn’t called an end to it, the badness would still be going on. He’d had to let Lance go. They could move in the same sick circles over and over again.

The letting go had proven fortuitous. Dylan was in love with Ruthven and Ruthven had come back to Rossford for him. At the time Dylan was fifteen and Ruthven eighteen. The relationship was full of sex and passion. Sex and passion, removed from his relationship with Lance, they moved like two friendly planets, in similar orbit but not touching, often very much apart. They had been friends since childhood, and more than it since early adolescence. Dylan felt so old, and he had made himself older than he should have been. He knew that if either one of them was to have anything like a happy teenage life they needed to split up. The claustrophobic friendship where best friends became brothers became abusive lovers was too much. In the end Lance, crazy with love, had commited the main abuse, but that killed him more than it did Dylan. Lance was sixteen when he and Dylan split up, and when he it was over, Lance had put himself into sports the way Dylan did into school. By senior year Lance led Saint Barbara’s to the championship against Saint Mary’s in Michigan City, and now Dylan was arriving at the airport to pick his best friend up from college.

“Am I late?” Dylan shouted as he squealed into the pick-up-and-drop-off before the bus shelter and in front of the line of taxi cabs.

“Am I sitting here on the curb?” Lance said, rising up.

Dylan stoped the car and rounded it to take a bag from Lance before stopping to look at him.

“What?” Lance Bishop grinned at him.

“You’re just so damn tall.”

“And you’re so ripped.”

“I am not,” Dylan said. He blushed, and Lance bent down and hugged him. They held on to each other a long time and then Dylan separated from him and said, “Com’on, let’s get back into town.”

“My flight came early,” Lance said. “So you weren’t really late at all.”

“Well, I had to make all these stops this morning, and then Dad had the car,”

“Tom or Fenn?”

Dylan frowned at Lance.

“Since when does Fenn drive?”

Lance shrugged and looked around the inside of the sports car before saying, “Or drive something like this.”

“Right,” Dylan said, nodding.

“How is Fenn?”

Dylan shook his head, “He’s the same.”

Lance chuckled over this. “And he’s cool with me staying tonight?”

“I guess. I mean, yeah. I mean….” Dylan looked at Lance. “Dad says yes and no and sometimes when he says it, you have no idea what’s going on in his head. So…” Dylan shrugged.

“But no one’s home right now, anyway, so,” Dylan shrugged. One hand was on the wheel and the other one was open, palm up, fingers fidgeting.

Looking out of the window at the motels, the occasional liquor store and the snowblown grown grass of Airport Road, Lance put his hand in Dylan’s.

Dylan looked to Lance a moment. He had always been not only taller than Dylan, but tall. It was hard to remember just how tall. He was slender now and his chest was broader. He had a serious face, square and handsome with a high forehead, and when he wore a tight tee shirt, he really wore it. Only a few years ago he’d just been a weedy boy with big hands and feet and now there was mass to him. Dylan knew that. Dylan wondered, if Lance had been what he was now, would they have broken up?

Lance was doing that scowl thing at him.

“What?”

“I was just thinking,” Dylan said.

“You were checking me out.”

“You are a deeply conceited man.”

Lance chuckled, but his fingers tickled the inside of Dylan’s hand.

“You look good too,” Lance told him.

“Well…” Dylan said. “Thanks.”

“Oh, come off it,” Lance said. “It’s not an accident.”

“My Dad is into exercising and all of that stuff, and so it kind of rubs off.”

“Now I know you’re talking about Tom.”

“Yes, I am. Fenn is into eating donuts and chain smoking.”

“I bet you’re nailing half of Rossford.”

“Are you asking cause you’re jealous?” Dylan said as they turned up the northern reach of Dorr Road coming closer to Versailles.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me, playing football with a scholarship?” Lance said. “What about me with tons of girls who want to crawl into bed with me and I’m checking out their brothers?”

Dylan chuckled.

“Yeah,” Lance said. “That’s what about me.”

They were quiet then and Dylan turned into Versailles, and then they were at the house and Lance said, “I miss this place.”

“Do you remember,” Dylan began rolling into the driveway and turning off the car, “when Dad caught us and you tripped down the stairs?”

“Dylan, that wasn’t funny.”

“Not then, but it’s funny now.”

“Um,” Lance opened the car door and rounding the trunk, pulled out a bag, “I still haven’t gotten to that place, yet.”

Dylan took out the last bag and went ahead of Lance, opening the door to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Dylan began, “I kind of get what you mean.”

They caught hands for a moment, and then while Dylan ran his hands over Lance’s stomach, they went up the stairs, catching hands now and again.

They went through the dark hallway to the front bedroom, Dylan’s room and dropped their bags.

“I haven’t seen you since—”

“Thanksgiving three weeks ago,” Dylan said turning around to him.

 Lance caught his hands.

“Yeah, but that’s three weeks plus finals.”

“And now…?” Dylan murmured.

“Now we can really reacquaint properly.”

“Like best friends,” Dylan said, while Lance shrugged off his coat and pulled Dylan into his arms. “Like brothers.”

Dylan chuckled while Lance kissed him.

He held onto Lance’s face while Lance kissed him, and he pulled Lance to the bed.

“Yeah,” Lance whispered, running his hands under Dylan’s shirt, “Just like that.”