F O U R
There’s no such thing as too much choice.”
-Dylan Houghton Mesda
That Sunday before Christmas, Brendan and Sheridan watched Elias leaving with Rob and taking Rafe by the hand. The letters Brendan had not looked at were in the dresser, and now that they were less tempting, he felt more able to read them. When it was only the two of them, Brendan looked at Sheridan a long time.
“We’re alone right now,” Brendan said. “At last.”
And because nothing was rushed, suddenly nothing was rush, and he was filled with this desire for Sheridan and yet, they stood there, simply touching hands, simply looking at each other as they had not in so long.
“Elias saw it,” Brendan said. “He saw the change.”
Sheridan reddened and said, “I hope he didn’t see everything.”
“He saw that I love you,” Brendan said. “He saw that I got my spirit back—a horrible term.”
“We got our spirit back,” Sheridan corrected, “and it doesn’t matter how cliché it sounds, or how it happened.”
Only weeks ago, Brendan had been blackout tired, so tired that in the middle of thinking of going to bed, he passed out for a moment, blinking and wondering where he was. He was that tired where you went to pre make the coffee for the morning, and in the middle of the kitchen, in front of the island, you fell asleep. Sheridan, God bless him, had pre made the coffee tonight, and so that was just an example. But it was not an example that Brendan fell asleep on the toilet twice. So when the letter came from Kenny McGrath, though he was intrigued, he did not open it until four-thirty in the morning.
Kenneth was in the past. So much was in the past. Most of Rossford was in the past, old loves were in the past. From the time he was seventeen until the time he was thirty-five, long enough for Dylan Mesda to start as a baby and become a man, Brendan had been with Kenneth. There were a few bumps, a few interruptions, on both their sides, brief interim lovers, but for eighteen years it had been the two of them until they had staggered into entropy and finally, Kenny had had the sense to end it. Brendan still reflected on how very real the ending had been, Bren, still wanting to hang on, coming back to their house, to their bed, hoping to rekindle some romance on Christmas night, only to find Kenneth making love to Ruthven Meradan.
Sheridan had happened almost immediately after that and now, in Brendan’s thirty-ninth year, when he saw the other man, thin, reddish brown haired, still freckle faced, in his bed he thought, “We are going into entropy too. We are becoming ho hum.” The two of them with their little house, and his little practice, Sheridan’s steady job, their son, were dull.
“Bren, are you coming to bed?”
“Yes.”
No, Brendan reflected. We are not dull. I am dull.
This weirdness he had been feeling was boredom, was more than boredom, was close to unhappiness.
I am dull. I turn everything dull. I am turning our marriage dull.
Brendan came into the bedroom.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Nine o clock. Too late for Rafe, two early for us.”
Sheridan stretched and yawned.
“But what can you do?” he said, surrendering to it, going deep into the covers and patting the space beside him so Brendan could climb in.
“We’re getting old,” Sheridan said.
“You’re twenty-eight.”
God! What luck had he had to snag this kid, Brendan wondered as he stripped to his trunks. What did he see in him, standing here on the edge of forty?
“Well, then you’re getting old,” Sheridan told him as Brendan climbed into bed beside him. “and I’m getting boring.”
Oh God. He feels it too.
A week later, another crisp square letter came in the mail. It’s clean whiteness shone against the drabness of a day when Brendan could no longer ignore the approach of winter. The broad leaves from the sycamore trees fell like crunchy brown carapaces out of the grey sky and Brendan read:
And promptly put the letter away.
A week later, when the snow came there was another letter, but this wasn’t from Kenneth at all, He found that out on the verge of pitching it in the trash. It was addressed to.
Brendan Miller
And
Sheridan Klasko
Esquires
From
Your Noble Graces
Chay Lewis-Riley and
Casey Williams
Again, Brendan was seized with a desire to throw the invitation—for it must have been an invitation—in the trash and go on about his day. That was foolish though. Chay would just call Sheridan and make sure he’d gotten it. Or Logan would call, for surely whatever they were invited to, Logan was as well. Brendan closed the door, realizing he was letting out the heat, and put the envelope on the kitchen table, upright, under the little white vase of fake flowers.
Later, when Sheridan, in his policeman’s uniform, came with Rafe, whom he had picked up from nursery school, he went straight to the letter, opened it, and cackled.
“Casey’s throwing a Christmas party. I mean, he usually does. But it’s always business one.”
Brendan was about to say, “Porn business?” But then he knew Sheridan would eye him and say, “What other business is Casey in?” and then this would lead to Sheridan calling him a snob and a prude, and of course he would be right and…. Why the fuck go into it?
“But he never invites us,” Sheridan reflected. “I wonder what that’s all about?”
“Us and a bunch of porn stars?”
“The invite,” Sheridan flashed a card with several naked men wearing Santa hats, “says leaves the kid at home.”
“I don’t know how I feel about this.”
“Brendan,” Sheridan said, “are you as bored with yourself as I am with myself?”
For a moment, Brendan had thought Sheridan would say, “Brendan, are you as bored with yourself as I have become bored with yourself?”
Brendan nodded.
“We need some spice,” Sheridan said, slapping his lover’s shoulder with the invite.
“This little party with some of our naughty friends—who we don’t see anymore—could be our spice.”
When they went down to Rossford that weekend, Brendan was already exhausted with the thought of having to see family, having to listen to his mother, his stepfather, visit Carol and Mathan, see his nephews and nieces. Even as he got on the train, cradling Rafe, and closed his eyes, he dreamed of climbing into a bed, sleeping and turning the whole business off. The only thing he really wanted to do was sit in Layla’s house, or possibly in Fenn’s, and talk. Life was so exhausting.
“And I just can’t figure out why.”
Sheridan seemed blissfully unaffected by what so exhausted Brendan. He was so young, not even thirty, when Brendan was on his way out of his thirties. After the South Shore stopped at Van Buren, the sky opened up, and though the clouds they rode past, that were high over high rises, were white with morning light and the sky was a sharp blue, Brendan thought, “Why can’t I feel it?”
And he thought, what had happened? Where did the time go? Wasn’t I twenty and not that long ago? In my twenties, a little younger than Sheridan is now, and a lawyer? Remember when none of it had been done, and all of it was possible? Everything was possible. We could do anything. What could be done now? Half the time Brendan could barely get out of bed.
He thought of that movie, The Hours. It was a book, but he didn’t have time for the book. He thought of that one character, Julianne Moore’s character, who one day got up and just left her kids and husband. Never came back. More and more Brendan could understand it. He could understand getting in his car and leaving and never coming back.
Rafe squirmed on his lap and placed his cheek against Bren’s chest.
And leave this little one? Parents loved their children. Married people loved marriage and their children. And hadn’t gay people fought to live just like ordinary people? Did he really fantasize about getting up and leaving this little guy? He tried to imagine getting in the car, but putting Rafe in the childseat. But then this meant taking Sheridan too. And… no… if he left he would have to leave it all. It’s what his father had done after all. Many fathers had. Now, as the train pulled into Hyde Park and he was acutely aware of his desolate feelings, he understood why.
“It shouldn’t be this hard,” Brendan said as Fenn moved about his kitchen, deftly slicing the loaf of bread and then putting the slices in the microwave while he came to the table with a pitcher of orange juice and butter, then turned around and pulled out the bread.
“I know,” Fenn said.
“No,” Brendan said. “I literally mean there is no reason it should be this hard. I don’t do enough for it to be hard, Fenn. I saw this woman over near downtown, who had set up a tent under a bridge for herself and her kids. She had a gas stove and everything. I see people with hard lives everyday. This is not hard. Why the fuck can’t I do it?
“Holy fuck, this bread is delicious.”
“Cigarette?”
“Sheridan would kill me if he found out,” Brendan said, but Fenn handed him a cigarette anyway.
As he lit the cigarette, Brendan said, “And you know what? Here’s the thing. Church doesn’t help.”
Fenn Houghton, who felt that speaking was greatly overrated, only blinked.
“It’s really no help. I feel exhausted trying to be this good Christian, and it…. Well, I just feel bored and exhausted.
“Fenn?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever want to leave? Leave your kids? Leave Todd?”
“Well, I did leave them. I left a lot,” Fenn said. “You have to understand, I was older than you are now when Dylan came, and Dylan was always split custody. So was Thack. Maybe what you need is space. Or even adventure.”
“Adventure,” Brendan said. “Me and Sheridan got an invite to Casey and Chay’s Christmas party.”
“Well, that seems like just the adventure.”
Brendan was silent for a moment. He tore a piece of warm bread, then reached for the butter.
“I’ve always kept them at a distance.”
“You didn’t want to be polluted?” Fenn gave him a hooked grin.
“I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to be like them? Maybe I didn’t want to be around Sheridan’s old life. I don’t know.”
“Maybe the reason you’re so bored and so frustrated is because you’re away from everyone,” Fenn suggested. “You’ve made a world with you and Sheridan and Rafe and nobody else, and no unpredictability. Maybe it’s time to expand.”
The first Sunday of Advent it was sunny outside and forty-eight degrees, but the church was swathed in purple with purple candles in the wreath relieved by one pink. And Brendan felt hope. He took Rafe to church and Sheridan came too, one of the few times he did.
Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
Oh, come, our Wisdom from on high,
Who ordered all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
As the organ roared above them, and the priest, in purple, came up the aisle, swinging incense, Brendan felt a thrill of hope. The weary world rejoices, he sang in his head and laughed at the pun. The church was full as it was every advent. Something was happening, the world was moving toward what it should be. The normalcy of church, the ordinariness of ordinary time was shifting again.
Father Lennahan sprinkled the Advent wreath before praying:
Bestir, O Lord, Thy might, we pray thee and come; that, defended by Thee, we may deserve rescue from approaching dangers brought on by our sins, and being set free by Thee, obtain our salvation. Who livest and reignest, with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
“I almost thought,” Brendan said, as they moved down the little wooden boardwalk, “ that you would say it’s too cold to go to the beach.”
“It is too cold,” Sheridan said. “It’s December. But…. It’s weird and we’re weird, and now that we’ve been a here a while let’s go.”
“Are we weird?” Brendan said as Sheridan made sure Rafe’s jacket was buttoned, pulled his hat down and bound his little scarf around his neck till only the little boy’s eyes blinked out at them.
He held out his hand and Rafe’soft, warm little fingers linked with his. There was strength in the boy’s hand and as they walked across the packed sand, Bren still in his Sunday clothes, sand going into his loafers, it was as if Rafe was saying, “I have you, Papa. I won’t let you go.”
Don’t ever let me go. Even when I feel like I want to leave.
Beside him, suddenly Sheridan, his nose pink, his winter hat pulled over his head and peaking up like a condom, kissed him. There was a little bit of ginger colored beard because he had forgotten to shave.
Don’t either of you ever let me go.
They stood on the edge of the water, and it stretched out grey blue with hints of green, milky and clear at the same time, leaving lank, spinach dark sea weed (Lake weed Brendan wondered) on the gold grey beach shore. To their left water swirled into the eddies of the rocks piled under the little park behind the apartment building next door.
“Hold Rafe’s hand while I do this.”
“Are you about to do something crazy?”
“A little,” Bren said.
As Sheridan took their son’s hand, Brendan went to the rocks and climbed them, taking from the pocket of his black coat, a holy water vial. It was empty and plastic with a faded gold cross, and as the water came in every few seconds, sometimes making his shoes wet, now his socks, sometimes swirling in depressingly low, swirling amidst shining bits of mica, Brendan dipped the vial into the cold water, freezing his hands.
At the altar, under the artificial yellow light of Saint Jerome’s the priest intones.
“Almighty God, grant us the will to greet our Savior with our good works when He comes, so that we may be worthy to be on His right hand and possess the kingdom of heaven.”
Amen, Brendan says, lifting the water and capping it, seeing grains like glass and bits of pearl swirl to the bottom of the holy water bottle.
The hem of his stylish pants, the fine pants he came to Chicago in years ago, when he wished to be a real lawyer but couldn’t keep Kenny because…. He didn’t love him enough…. is wet. Now Brendan climbs down to join his son and his husband.
He is remembering Kenny McGrath’s signature on that envelope.
Did I love him enough? He wonders as he joins his family. Do I love anyone enough? I was a good Catholic. But hell, I was a gay Catholic, having sex with a man, maybe one man, though there were occasionally others. And when I was a kid, I was having sex with Dena and lying to my friends to be a good Catholic.
The water swirls in the vial in his pocket.
Maybe being a good Catholic has nothing to do with goodness.
The wind lifts the back of his hair and touches his neck.
“It’s cold,” Bren says.
He forgot his ear muffs. He rarely wears his hat. Once people noted how golden his hair was, how the older he got the more it went from being brown to bronze to brass to golden and the older he gets, in a way he feels he’ll take whatever praise he can get. It’s so fucking vain.
“I love you,” Bren says to his son and his husband.
