The Houses in Rossford

Rain

“I was thinking we could run through the music one more time,” Brian said.

Tom Mesda looked at him.

“I mean, now that the show is going to go on. Now that Fenn says he found a new star. We might as well just give this another run through.”

“Well…” Tom said, looking distracted, “You can give it another run through if you want. I’ve gotta go, though.”

“Where?”

“Didn’t you hear? Didn’t I tell you? Fenn’s grandmother is in the hospital.”

“Yes, I know that,” Brian said, a little impatiently. “But she’s not your grandmother.”

“I want to be with Fenn. Is that the strangest thing to understand?”

“A little. Yes. When Fenn must have Todd and his sister and half of that family. I’m not sure why you think you have to show up too.”

“Brian,” Tom said, slipping on his jacket, “I’m gone.”

Brian Babcock was tall, and dark haired, with high, defined cheek bones and a dark complexion. When Tom thought of him, the old time word swarthy came to mind. Brian rose from the piano and stepped across the bench, toward Tom, in one, easy stride.

“You love him,” he said.

Tom made a noise and turned around.

“Of course I love him. Fenn’s my best friend.”

“No, you love him,” Brian went on. “Just like you always did.  And that’s too bad because it’s over. It’s been over for years only you can’t see it. You think one day he’ll come back to you.”

“And you think one day I’ll come back to you,” Tom returned.

The two of them looked hard at each other a long time, and then Tom turned around and left.

It had rained all last night. The splashing, constant rain of early spring. All through the night it had grown colder and colder, but Tom had resisted using the furnace. He woke up freezing, and the phone was ringing. While goose bumps rose all over his body, Fenn told him that he had just come back from the hospital and was going to rest a little while.

“I’ll go back there later,” he had said. “After breakfast or something. Sit with Mama. She sounds mean as ever, so that’s a good sign.”

“Yeah,” Tom had said, halfheartedly, trying to laugh. “I’ll be over.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to,” Tom said, twisting the phone cord around his finger. This was one of those times he was glad he didn’t have a cell phone. “But I want to be there. For you.”

“All right, Tom,” Fenn said in that voice as if he were pushing Tom aside.

Tom turned on the heat, giving in, comforted by the snick snack and the whir that prophesied heat in the middle of a cold night. He went back to bed thinking they could do read throughs with Tom in Chris’s old parts until this new actor came in, and then he would do music with Brian for a while. When he woke up he realized he’d had one of those half dreams where the more you tried to recall it, the more it slipped away. He still felt Fenn’s presence and knew he’d been dreaming about their time together.

Tom poured coffee and sat on the edge of the bed. He wished he had a cigarette but he’d never been a real smoker. He resisted the urge for a little while before getting up and going to the cupboard he transformed into a sort of graveyard for retired knick knacks. He tucked his head behind a box and pulled out the picture of Fenn. They had no pictures together. All of those pictures turned out bad. And Fenn was not photogenic. He always moved around. He hated having his picture taken, as if he were one of those primitive people who feared their soul might be stolen. But then that made sense, for there was something utterly primitive about Fenn.

Tom held the picture for a long time, not really looking at it. It was a good one. The fact was they fought so often over little things, over the theatre, that Tom forgot that Fenn was his best friend. No, that old phrase his dearest friend was more appropriate. It hurt. It was a sweet sort of ache. Right now in this bedroom, hours before Brian had hurled it at him like an accusation, he knew he still loved Fenn.

WILL KLASKO FOUND LAYLA before lunch. She hadn’t been herself through history class and he hadn’t dared to pass her a note.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Oh,” she blinked. “Oh, hey, Will.”

Before she could open her mouth, Dena was coming down the hall with Brendan tagging beside her.

“Do you wanna use Brendan’s cell to call the hospital?” Dena said.

“Hospital?” Will began.

“Oh, yeah,” Layla said, turning to Will. “My great-grandmother had a heart attack. They took her to Saint Mary’s last night.”

“Oh, no,” Will began.

“I don’t see a point in calling,” Layla said. “It’ll just bother everyone, and they’re jumpy enough.”

“You mean your mom and your grandma,” Dena said.

Layla nodded.

“You could call Fenn. He never gets jumpy about anything.”

“Fenn doesn’t believe in cell phones,” Layla was saying, but Dena had reached into Brendan’s grey trouser pocket, and was dialing a number.

“Todd? How are things over there?”

Dena nodded and nodded, murmured, “Uh uh,” and then told Layla, “She’s fine. She’s asking for a cigarette.”

Layla covered her mouth and chuckled.

“She’s not getting it,” Dena added, unnecessarily. Then she said to Todd, “Um hum, Um hum. All right. Thanks, Todd,” and hung up the phone.

Will looked at all three of them, and Dena explained, “Me and Layla’s family are pretty tight, and my uncle is actually with her uncle.”

“With?” Will said.

“They’re a couple,” said Brendan.

“Oh,” said Will.

“They always knew each other, but Fenn is older than Todd,” Layla explained, finding solace in storytelling. “One day, years ago at a barbecue, after they had both left someone else, they sort of looked across the table at each other or something like that. And then they fell in love, and the rest is history.”

“Wow,” Will said.

“Well, it’s a little more to it than that,” Dena said. “But that pretty much is the story. Or I guess it is. I don’t really remember how the whole thing happening, or at least, I didn’t really understand it. I just thought they were roommates. I mean, I was about ten or eleven. Not twelve, right?”

Layla nodded, counting on her fingers.”

“I still don’t get it,” Will said. “I mean… I don’t know anything about it. I’ve never known a gay person.”

“No,” Layla said. “You only think you’ve never known a gay person.”

“It’s not like it’s that simple,” Brendan said all of a sudden. “People are just people.  And I don’t think you should categorize them by the way they feel.”

“Amen,” Layla said.

“And,” Brendan added, “just because you feel… that way, one day, doesn’t mean you’ll feel that way all the time. So… anyone could be gay at any time.”

“Could you be gay?” Will said.

“What’s that supposed to mean!” Brendan snapped.

“Hey, ease up. I was just saying… You said anyone.”

“Well, then maybe you could be too,” Brendan said.

“Maybe,” Will agreed, fearing the return of Brendan’s wrath.

“I was just saying—” Brendan said, straightening the strap of his book bag.

“And I was just saying,” Dena cut in, “or I was about to, that we should all go over to the hospital after school. Or, at least, we should take Layla over there.”

“Which means we should take my car?” said Brendan.

“Is that a problem, Mr. Miller?” Layla asked him.  

Brendan cocked her a smile.

“Not at all, Miss Lawden.”

“Oh, Will it was terrible when I heard about it last night.”

“You could have called me,” he said.

Layla looked at him.

“I could have?”

“Of course. I mean,” Will folded and unfolded his hands, “I know we’re not… a couple yet… But I’d like to think we will be. And… I’d like to think we’re friends. I hate that I’m the last person to know. I hate that I’m not any help.”

“You are help,” she told him. “You’re help now.

“But you know, she’s old. She’s in good health, but she can’t last forever. And apparently she’d passed out in the house and was unconscious for a while. A neighbor just happened to stop by. I was so scared, Will. And I know my grandmother was too.”

“Does she live by herself?”

“Well, she used to. But now that she and my grandmother can stand each other, they live together. Only my grandmother was out that night. And I guess it must be hard to be old enough to be a grandmother and still have your own mother to take care of. I can’t imagine what that would be like. I’d be so afraid she’d die. Isn’t that horrible? When I think about my grandmother or my great-grandmother, I think about how horrible it is to get old and die, to lose someone you’ve always had.

“Sometimes I stop in the chapel and I pray that my mother won’t go until I don’t need her. Until I can let her go. And I hope that’s not until I’m at least my grandmother’s age.”

DAN MALLOY HAD a religion class he taught in the middle of the day that was dismally disappointing and constantly made him shake his head over the academic and eternal fates of students. After this he took a little lunch and retired to the church for a while. At a young age—for a priest—he had been made assistant pastor of Saint Barbara’s, and now he ran the parish outright. One of his privileges, and a necessity due to the lack of priest and mounting responsibilities, was stealing as much time as possible to sit quietly in the church, collecting himself in its silence.

He was doing just that when Brian Babcock arrived to practice organ. He played at the evening mass. Maybe today he was giving organ lessons, or maybe he was practicing with a soloist for Sunday. Sometimes he had kids over from the university where he was doing some teaching now. It was nice. And Dan would hum to the song if he knew it. That was his form of prayer.

Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus

Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free

Rolling as a mighty ocean

In its fullness over me

Underneath me, all around me

Is the current of Thy love

Leading onward, leading homeward

To Thy glorious rest above

The truth was Dan did not understand God. He always felt he should understand him or talk to him better. But really he just felt sort of stupid around him. He felt like he half got whatever the stain glass windows meant, whatever the Stations of the Cross were trying to tell him. Saint Cecelia, smiling pacifically from the window above him, with the western light coming through her, and painting the stone floor, surely knew something. If he could learn it, maybe one day he could wear that smile too.

Oh the deep, deep love
All I need and trust
Is the deep, deep love of Jesus
Oh the deep, deep love of Jesus
Spread His praise from shore to shore
How He came to pay our ransom
Through the saving cross He bore
How He watches o’er His loved ones
Those He died to make His own
How for them He’s interceding
Pleading now before the throne

The music had stopped for sometime and Ban stirred when he heard the hard soles of Brian’s feet walking closer to him. Brian was a man in charge, a man Dan wished he could have been, handsome with dark eyes and a planed face, possibly Portuguese, curly dark hair, a commanding walk, always impressive clothes.

“Brian, that was wonderful music. You always make the church such a nice place.”

“Thank you, Father,” that short tight bow, the one Brian always gave. Brian was so in control. “Do you have time for a confession?”

Confession always shocked Dan because Dan, who was always sure of his own incompetence and personal sin, could never believe that other people felt the same way.

“Of course,” he said, nodding quickly. “Do you want the confessional?”

“I think so. Today, I’d like tradition.”

Dan nodded.

“Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

“I bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” Dan made the sign of the cross through the lattice.

 “It has been… six months since my last confession.”

“What do you have to confess?”

“Hatred, Father. Evil…” Brian said. “Deep inside of me.”

Dan remembered saying something like this, long ago, and the priest saying, “Surely not, child.” Dan resisted the urge to repeat that to a man his age and said, “I can’t believe that.”

“I hate someone,” Brian said. “And I hate myself for doing it. It’s not always there. But it comes up, and it’s so ugly. And then… I hate myself.”

“You know… in the Bible it says God hates nothing he has made. That includes you. You should try to love yourself.”

“What does that mean?” Brian demanded sharply, through the lattice. “How do you… try to love yourself? How do you love yourself when you see such meanness in you? How do you get the meanness out? God! I mean… Lord… I want to… get rid of that. I used to be a good man. I think I was. But now… I don’t like the man I am, the man I see sometimes.”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on. A little more specifically. So I can be more helpful.”

Brian took a long breath and rocked back in his seat.

“Father… Dan… I, I fell in love with someone. I fell in love with someone who belonged to someone else, and I told myself it didn’t matter. And I waited for the first crack in the relationship and when it was there, I jumped right in. I broke up someone’s relationship. I started having an affair.”

Dan knew all this. It was ancient history. Did Brian imagine that Fenn hadn’t told him? Dan supposed he hadn’t. He took the professional tone.

The priest said: “But it’s over now?”

“It’s been over a long time. I was told, I was told by the person I was… having this relationship with that we would never be anything; that they were very much in love with the person they were cheating on. And… what we were doing was just… lust.”

Dan could tell it was hard for Brian to say these things. It came out very slowly.

“I said that I was fine with it. I didn’t care. But when we were caught that ended the relationship. And even though I stayed away from this person for a while, in the end we kept at it and I kept hoping that one day… It would be serious. I really would be loved. It’s been a long time. Years, really. And… I try to move on. The person who I wronged has moved on, found someone else now. But we—the—”

“Brian, I know you’re gay so you can drop the pronouns. They make this story a lot harder for you to tell.”

Brian breathed out a long sigh.

“You’re right. You’re right. I thought he would love me. I keep hoping he’ll love me. This guy whose relationship I destroyed. And occasionally I go back to him. We… occasionally fall into the old routine and I can’t stop hoping, and he won’t stop loving his ex. He’s over at the hospital with him right now. And… even though I wronged him, and he’s in a really bad away… I can’t stop hating him.”

AT LAST PERIOD, Will stopped by Brendan’s locker. Brendan had been talking to Stanley Kirkpatrick, and Stanley nodded and left and then Brendan said, “What’s up, Will?”

“It’s just,” Will said.

“It’s just what?” Brendan laughed. “You ready to go to the hospital? Isn’t that a strange question? You are going with us? I thought you were?”

“Yes,” Will said, “of course.”

“Cool. You can ride shotgun.”

“I just wanted to say I was sorry about this morning. I wasn’t calling you gay. I don’t know what I was doing. But I wasn’t trying to—”

“Will,” Brendan put a hand on his shoulder, “it’s cool. Shut up and let’s go.”

“You know, before I found out what was going on, and Layla was all quiet this morning, I thought it was me. I thought it was my fault cause I did something wrong on the date. When she told me the truth I actually felt relieved. Isn’t that horrible? As long as it wasn’t my fault, I was relieved.”

Brendan turned Will a half exhausted smile and said, “You worry too much, Klasko, you know that?”