A few days after the dinner party, Dylan showed up at the house looking for his father. The kitchen had that strange emptiness that told him Fenn wasn’t here, and when he went upstairs he could smell Todd’s cigarette and called to him from his office.
“He went to Mass,” Todd said. “You just missed him by five. But he should be back soon.”
Tom, Dylan’s biological father, was a church organist. Actually he was a great world class musician, but he was permanent organist for Saint Barbara’s Church, and Dylan had been educated from Kindergarten through high school at Saint Barbara’s School. All those years he’d worn the blue pants, white shirt and tie, when he’d gone through Confirmation even, he’d had little understanding or care for Catholicism. It was all background to him. Fenn was Catholic as well. In the house there was a crucifix and an icon of Mary, candles. But Fenn had always seemed to hang on the fringes of the Church, and as Dylan grew away up, Fenn didn’t seem much to care.
Dylan was fifteen the year his father caught him in bed with Lance. So many things could have happened then. That was the year his world went crashing down around him, and all the foolish things he had been doing were found out. His father put him on a train and they rode to Chicago together, and Fenn, knowing Dylan had little use for the Bible or the religion Tom had raised him with, gave him an old, battered copy of the Bhagavad Gita and later a Dhammapada. Hinduism spoke to Dylan in a way Christianity could not and when, shyly, he asked his father to go with him to the Krishna temple in Chicago, Fenn had said yes. For the sake of his son Fenn would be the greatest Hindu in the world.
But Dylan knew his father’s relationship to God was, if not without labels, not completely Hindu, and in the years when Dylan was doing what he needed to do, living away at Loyola, living with both of the men he loved in a family that others found difficult to understand, Fenn began to do what he needed to do. He never made an announcement about it. He just began to attend Mass at Saint Barbara’s again.
Dylan parked outside, then entered the church reverently. He dipped his fingers in holy water left the vestibule to enter the natural light of Saint Barbara’s noon Mass. He had remembered the simple church being so small, but it wasn’t small at all, and light shone through the long stain glass windows onto the pews and the natural wood floor. Up on the altar the new priest who Dylan didn’t know was sitting in his chair, dressed in green, and the old lector was reading:
…I went to see some doctors for a cure
but the more they anointed my eyes with various salves,
the worse the cataracts became,
until I could see no more.
For four years I was deprived of eyesight, and
all my kinsmen were grieved at my condition.
Ahiqar, however, took care of me for two years,
until he left for Elymais.
Pillars made arcades on either side of the church, and by one of these pillars, in the nave, toward the center of Saint Barbara, his father was sitting. Dylan came into the pew, bumping knees with the older man and Fenn squeezed his fingers and kissed him on the cheek. Fenn said nothing while they went into the psalm, and when it came to the response, Dylan said, with him:
“The heart of the just one is firm, trusting in the Lord.”
“Blessed the man who fears the LORD,
who greatly delights in his commands.
His posterity shall be mighty upon the earth;
the upright generation shall be blessed.”
“The heart of the just one is firm, trusting in the Lord.”
They rose for the gospel and sat for the sermon. When it came time, Dylan did not go to Communion, and Fenn did not invite him. Once, Dylan had gone to the Episcopal church downtown, and they had invited “All baptized Christians to come forth.” Fenn had said that he thought this was a bad idea. Later Dan Malloy and Brian McCormick, two old friends of the family who had been Catholic priests until they became lovers and then became Episcopal lamented, “The one thing about that church is it doesn’t know when to put its foot down.”
When the priest dismissed them, even though, Fenn only bowed his head toward the altar, Dylan did a full genuflection. He had not been here in so long, in the end becoming uncomfortable even with the midnight mass where his father played. His eyes lingered on the old fashioned marble altar pressed against the wall, gold tabernacle deep in it, at the woebegone Jesus suspended from the cross.
Out in the vestibule some old people were talking, and Fenn was courteous to them as he doffed his hat, but he did not really speak, believing that even in the vestibule where bulletins and magazines hung, this was still the house of God. Dylan dipped his fingers in the holy water and followed his father out into the sun.
“That was a surprise,” Fenn said.
“I came to the house looking for you. Todd said you were here. So I came.”
Fenn grinned, “Did you think you had to keep track of such an old man?”
“I think I wanted to go to church, or at least see you in one. I knew you were back, but I hadn’t been back with you.”
Fenn nodded and Dylan said, “Did you walk?”
“I did.”
“Well, I drove,” Dylan caught his father’s hand and led him to the car.
Fenn was not someone who said or listened to silly things, and Dylan had never been one to say foolish things either. He had thought of saying, “That was really nice.” Or something passé. But the real things that came to Dylan were the memories of being an altar boy when Dan Malloy was still priest over there, of friends of Brendan, Sheridan and Chay, all who had seriously differing views about Catholicism in specific and Christianity in generally, straightening his white robe and telling him about how they had been altar boys here.
This memory he had to reach back far for, because the first memory he’d had was of sitting in the church with Lance, putting his hands in his pants during school masses and jacking him off, going down on him in the bathroom, sneaking in here to have sex with Ruthven. There was a part of him that had always thought this was hot, that, when he had gotten drunk, relayed these stories to intimate friends and been delighted by their shock. Now as he put his key in the ignition he remembered for the first time in a while, what shame felt like. No, this was different. This was fear too. He had never much believed in blasphemy, but now he thought he couldn’t have been much more blasphemous than when he’d been running around doing all of those things.
“You’ve got that very serious look on your face,” Fenn said, touching Dylan’s cheek.
“Didn’t you know, Pops?” Dylan squeezed his father’s shoulder, “I’m a serious man.”
“You guys are a really good looking family,” Todd told them.
That night Lance and Elias had come to dinner with Dylan. Despite their differences in size, the three of them were dark haired and blue eyed, fair of skin and in a way looked as much like brothers as they did lovers. They set down the plates, the silverware, and the drinks with grace, moving around each other like dancers after years of living together.
Dylan’s actual brother was messy haired and bespectacled, and sitting at the table finishing his homework while the boys moved about him. One would have to throw off the glasses, chop off the mop of dark hair and then buzz it to make Thackeray look like Dylan.
“So you know what I’ve been thinking about?” Dylan said.
“How many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Toostie Pop?” his brother said.
“No.”
“Starting an abortion clinic staffed by circus clowns?”
“What the fuck? No!” Dylan said as Elias snorted and Fenn coughed.
“He really is yours,” Todd muttered.
“Opening a—”
“Shut up,” Dylan said. “Professionally, you know what I’ve been thinking of?”
“Being a underwear model?”
Dylan raised a tired eyebrow.
“Just a guess,” Thackeray said.
Thackeray, wrapped up in books and virginity, loved his older brother, but realized the difference between the two of them was Dylan’s obvious care for his appearance. Dylan, Elias and Lance were a beautiful family, but that was because they ate vegetables, exercised, were athletic and, at least Lance and Dylan, lifted weights. The eighteen year old Thackeray never lifted a weight he didn’t have to and didn’t seem to care for his looks.
“Are you through being cute?” Dylan asked his brother.
Thackeray shrugged.
“Sure.”
“I was thinking about going into seminary.”
There would have been silence except that Thackeray said, “How are you gonna be a priest?”
“Well, not seminary,” Dylan said. “I mispoke. A theology program.”
“Cool,” Lance said, after blinking.
Fenn said nothing, and neither did Elias.
“McCormick has a theology program,” Todd said. “You could see about that.”
“Yeah,” Thackeray said. “But don’t go into seminary.”
“Why not?” Dylan asked his brother, earnestly.
“Because it’s too many priests who are looking for God. I think before you try to run a congregation, you ought to have found him.”
“Yeah,” Todd was saying as Dylan, Elias and Lance were heading out for the night. “The program’s in Chicago and I could look into it for you.”
“If you’re not tired of Chicago,” Elias said.
“I’m tired of not seeing my family,” Dylan returned. Then, before anyone could say anything, he added, “I know we’re not that far away. I know technically the border of Chicago is like an hour away, but when you live on the north side that’s another hour, and as much as I love Rogers Park…”
“I know,” Lance said, “I wanna be home too.”
Elias, who had two years left at DePaul, said nothing.
“We can work it out,” Dylan said. “We always do.”
“You would just take the South Shore up to McCormick a few days a week,” Todd said.
None of them pointed out that this wouldn’t do for Elias.
“I could do my last two years at Loretto,” he volunteered.
“No,” Dylan said. “I’m not going to have it said that you sacrificed DePaul for me.”
“Or,” Elias added, “the same way that for two years Lance had to be away from us, maybe this time I am the one who has to be away.”
“How can you even say that?” Dylan’s voice rose. Lance’s voice didn’t rise, he just frowned.
“It might be what I have to do.”
“I could go to DePaul,” Thackeray said now. “I got accepted.”
Dylan looked at his little brother.
“I could move in with Eli to you guyses old place, or some place near it. That way he wouldn’t be alone. You know? And I’m not you,” he said to Dylan, “I’m not even like you, but I am your brother.”
Dylan was still looking at his brother and Thackeray said, “What?”
“Can I talk to you?”
Thackeray raised an eyebrow and said, “Sure.”
In the library, door closed, Dylan said, “I wanted to punch you so bad tonight.”
“What?”
“For what you said about me going into seminary. And the stuff about being an underwear model.”
“Well, if you’re going to the theology program, you probably should get some jeans that fit.”
“See, that’s what I mean!”
Thackeray shrugged.
“And then you do this for me,” Dylan said. “You… You would stay with Eli for me?”
“You and Lance can’t be traveling between here and Chicago every day, and it’s time for you to come home. And it’s time for me to leave it. Of course I’d do it.”
Dylan clapped his hands around his brother and held him. Thackeray could smell his cologne and he kept speaking.
“You would try to go between here and Chicago everyday. Or you would finish class and then go up to Roger’s Park, and you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to exhaust yourself. You take too much on. Just go up there, and get a job down here, and me and Eli can come back on the weekends. If he’ll have that.”
Dylan let Thackeray go.
“He would have left DePaul for me.”
“I know,” Thackeray said, “and that’s stupid.”
