The Families in Rossford

“What are we going to do?” Elias said, finally.

“I don’t know,” Bennett said, wiping his eyes.

“I can’t raise a kid. I don’t know how. And… our parents will be so pissed. They’ll be so disappointed.”

Elias chose not to bring up something else, but just then Bennett brought it up himself.

“And Maia! That’s over.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do,” Bennett said, shaking his head.

Suddenly, Bennett looked at his brother.

“You’re thinking of something.”

“I’m glad to see you have faith in me like that.”

“But what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking Maris is lying, and I’m thinking that bitch Maggie has something to do with it.”

“She couldn’t be lying,” Bennett said. “I had sex with her. I remember that.”

“You think you’re the first person she was with? She’s a slut,” Elias said, heartlessly. “And everyone knows she was fucking Hunter Matthews. If he was the father of my kid, I’d pass it off on you too.”

“You don’t know that,” Bennett said.

“I don’t know it,” Elias allowed, “but I wouldn’t be so quick to believe her.”

Elias sighed and touched his brother on the cheek.

“You know why I love you?”

“Cause you’re my brother and you have to?”

“Uh... part of that. But, I love you because you trust so much. You don’t suspect people. That’s why Maris seduced you. Don’t get too excited, I dunno. Maybe it is your baby, but you better get some proof, and before you ruin your reputation, you better not tell everyone you’re going to be a father. Just… wait.”

“You’re a good brother.”

“Thanks.”

Bennett sniffed and said, “We should… eat or something. Not worry too much.”

Now Elias nodded and Bennett said, “How are things with Dylan?”

“He dropped me off.”

“I know that.”

“I’m in love with him.”

“I knew that too.”

“No,” Elias shook his head. “Before I loved him. And I wanted him. And I did have him. And I didn’t know how he really felt about me.”

“I did. And I do now,” Bennett said. “He’s like Brendan with Sheridan. He didn’t think it was right to feel the way he did, but now he just… he’s totally in love with you.”

“You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for,” Elias said, wryly.

“What happens when I talk to Lance again? What happens with Lance when he’s back this summer?”

“You think Dylan would go back to him?”

“I don’t know,” Elias said, shaking his head. “I almost wish he would. I don’t want to be the one to fuck up his life. Or Lance’s. I love Lance. Lance loves me. I don’t know if that’s being in love. Lance is in love with Dylan, but afraid to be anything more than casual, and Dylan is in love with him and me, but I’m the one who’s here and…”

“Neither one of them knows you had sex with both of them,” Bennett said in a small voice.

Elias shook his head.

“Dylan knows he was my first, but he doesn’t know I was with Lance after that and… I don’t know what Lance thinks. He can’t believe I was a virgin. But if they knew that I’d been with them both, like back to back…” Elias shook his head.

Bennett sighed, and touching his brother on the shoulder said, “We’re both deep in it, aren’t we?”

“Yup,” Elias agreed, blowing out his cheeks. “Yes, we are.”

“I want to be close to you,” Brian said.

They sat in the spare room that was supposed to be Matty’s office one day, but that had never reached that point.

“It’s my fault we aren’t,” Brian told him. “For so long I wasn’t close with anyone. That’s what it is. When you were growing up I was already sealed off. Our troubles started a long time before Chad.

“And Chad is just embarrassed,” Brian said. “He doesn’t hate you, but he doesn’t know how to deal with you. We never got past that place. You know, it took five years to get me and him back together anyway. I wasn’t ready. I was so angry, and so hurt.”

“I know and I’m—”

“Wait,” Brian said, gently. “I’m not finished, yet.”

Sean nodded.

“But we’re not getting any younger, and Uncle Frank is gone. He’s been gone so long and it still feels like yesterday and now Grandma and Aunt Josephine don’t have a brother. And… And I am fifty years old. We don’t have forever. We can’t hold grudges.

“I think I was just afraid to spend time with you because I didn’t know if we could hit it off, if it could work. But we need to try. And you need to understand that I’m a much worse man than you’ll ever be.”

“What?”

“You—” Brian stopped. “I didn’t deceive you, but I never got to tell you much about me. Before I met Chad, before he accepted me, I was a really broken person. I did the same thing you did. I fell in love with someone and I went after him when he was in a relationship.”

“He wasn’t your brother.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Brian said. “And anyway, now the person I hurt is family to me. A best friend.”

“Not Todd?”

“No.”

“Fenn Houghton?”

“Yes,” Brian said.

“I loved Tom. When I was twenty-five I thought he had no business with Fenn and I started up something with him. They ended because of that, but it didn’t make me penitent. I was sleeping with Tom for a good ten years after that and then, when Matty’s brother first came to town—”

“Paul. Claire’s brother?”

“Right. I started sleeping with him. I knew he’d started something with Kirk, but it didn’t matter. Until it did. I got so angry I really took revenge. It was something I almost didn’t come back from.”

“That’s why Claire couldn’t stand you!”

“For a long time,” Brian nodded. “I couldn’t stand myself either, and what I’m saying is you didn’t know that. I can’t have you apologizing and feeling lower than me if you don’t know me, the things I did, the lows I hit. I once drove out to a Walmart and let a trucker ram me against his steering wheel because I wanted to feel something. The truth was he wasn’t a bad person. He was sort of beautiful. There was a lot of sadness in him, And loneliness. He wanted me to stay, but I got the hell out because being with him was like looking in a mirror. I started an affair with a married man who taught at my school, and once I even went into the old Video Store on Dorr and had sex with the boy behind the counter. Even though I know he was probably underage.”

Sean looked at his brother, while Brian continued.

“I’m just… I’m not telling you this because confession’s good for the soul. I have no idea if it’s good for the soul. But I’m telling you because if you feel out of control, I know what it is to be out of control, to have no love for yourself. To be angry all the time, and have it burst out in crazy things you don’t understand and regret doing. And you need to know that I’m not angry at you, Sean. That I love you. Because you’re family, but also because I understand you. And that it’s time to be a family again.

“I have noticed that white, gay men, of a certain type,” Jonah began, “always look at me in this strange way. Like I might bite them. Like I’m about to strike.”

He looked at Chad, his face almost expressionless.

“It’s almost like they can’t decide if they want me to or not.”

“A gay white man of a certain type?” Chad said, trying to sound more courageous than he felt.

“Yes,” Jonah continued. “A type like you.”

Chad opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Jonah said:

“You want to ask how I can possibly know what a type like you is? People always want to be so like each other, until you tell one, you’re just like everyone else, and then all of a sudden they want to be original.”

“I really don’t know why you’re saying these things to me.”

“Because I don’t like the way you and your stuck up husband look at me,” Jonah said simply.

Chad looked like he was thinking of something to say but Jonah said, “You can’t think of anything to say. Well, I’ll tell you something. No matter how embarrassed you are about what happened with Sean, you can’t act like what happened is all his fault.”

“I don’t.”

“You do,” Jonah said. “Once you had your husband back, the two of you became a neat little unit against Sean.”

Jonah saw a fire flash through the other little man’s eyes.

“What am I supposed to do?” Chad demanded. “Open up my arms to the man I betrayed Brian with? Say, oh, Brian, let’s love him. Even though I cheated with him.”

“Yes,” Jonah said with the closest thing to heat that had come into his voice yet.

“That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.”

Jonah got up and headed for the kitchen saying, “I guess that was what was on my mind.”

“Jonah,” Chad called before he left.

“Yes?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“You seem a lot older. I’m thirty five.”

Jonah nodded.

“You don’t look a lot older,” Chad clarified. “You look like a kid. I just meant.”:

Then he said, “If I’m like Brian and Brian’s like Sean, then isn’t Sean the same type of person you say I am?”

“No, and if he was the same type of person as Brian, would you ever have been seduced by him?”

Chad swallowed.

“Sean’s the dark prince,” Jonah said simply. “He was your age when I was twenty. You want to know how he got me?”

“Yes.”

“He was so sweet to me, and there was something in him that was in me. He was the same as me. There had been others, but there was something about him.”

“He got me the same way he got you,” Jonah said, at last.

“He seduced me.”

 

—HOW ARE YOU?

—I’m great. What about you?

—Good. Happy.

—How did whatever you had to go to last night turn out?

—It turned out great. Everything’s really great right now.

—Are you in class right now?

—I am between classes. I am heading to Eighteenth Century British lit in a moment.

—Oh, that’s good. I should have gotten more lit in my system.

—I really enjoyed yesterday. I’m glad it happened—Jonah typed quickly—We should get that out of the way, if you were wondering. I’ve actually been thinking it since it happened.

—Me too.

Then, a moment later:

—I haven’t been that free with someone in a long time. I keep thinking about it too.

—How much longer are you in town?

—I don’t know. I shouldn’t have been in town, anyway. I was headed to Pennsylvania.

—For?

—It’s a long story. I could tell it if you wanted to hear it.

—Do you want to get together again?

—Yes—Sean said—Only, I wasn’t sure if you would. Or how to ask. Or anything. But yes.

—When? And, I mean, you can’t go paying for hotel rooms all the time.

—Well, I’m staying with a friend, and he might not be here, but—

—No, I do know—Jonah wrote.

—My home. 

—You don’t live alone. You can’t.

—No. I live with my father. But he should be keeping the store. And if anything unexpected happens, well then I’ll just have to make you climb out the window. You aren’t the first to do that, and you wouldn’t be the last.