Eden

The night Jason told Isaiah Frey everything, Frey was wrapped in an old afghan and they were both sitting in the dark across from each other.

“Yes, I understand now,” Frey said at length. “No wonder you didn’t tell.”

“I should have told you,” Jason said.

“You couldn’t,” Frey dismissed it. “It’s like you just said. You could hardly tell it to yourself. Let alone me.”

“I… And now to be stuck with her.”

“You’re not stuck with her,” Frey said quickly, he reaching across to touch Jason’s hand.

“What happened with her made this child. I’m this baby’s father for the rest of my life. A baby I made with her. And when I think of how I made it...”

“It didn’t necessarily have to have happened then. The second time.”

“Then it happened the first, which isn’t much better.

“That’s why I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t face it. I hated that kid. I really did. Walking around, well, crawling around for a whole year before I even knew it existed.

“And not baptized either. Which, maybe that’s not a big deal to you, and I probably sound like a hypocrite saying it’s a big deal for me, but… I want him baptized, and Mom insisted when she found out about him that he get baptized, and it’s gonna happen in June. He’ll be three. God, how ignorant is that?”

“I was baptized when I was five.”

“Your parents converted. Anyway,” Jason said, “I thought about this even before last night. I want you to godfather him.”

Frey looked straight at Jason.

“I know when you see him you see what I did to you, how I lied to you,” Jason told him.

“But for a long time I could only see what Elle did to me, and that’s not his fault. He’s a good kid who didn’t do any of this. And he’s mine, and you love me, right—?”

“Jason—”

“I know it’s a lot to put on you, but I’ve thought about it, and between you and me that’s a lot of love for a baby. And… It’s our love, so—”

“Jason.”

Jason stopped.

“You haven’t given me a chance to say yes.”

“You were gonna say yes?”

“I was just knocked over by the whole thing, but… Yes.”

Jason was quiet. He nodded, attempting to restrain a smile.

Isaiah entered the church with Evan Barclay and Burt Haarlem. Jason had gone over a little earlier, and he was there in a suit and tie, looking very nervous. But unlike that first time when Frey had done the play and Jason had shown up to take him out, not silly at all. No hair part, just that slightly tousled, shining, dark wavy hair.

And all around him, or all around the baptismal font was family. Donald, Jason’s brother, who looked pretty much like him only shorter, Jason’s slope shouldered, prematurely greying father; and his blond from a bottle—God bless the bottle because she was a good woman—mother.

And there were others. The other family. And in the midst of them was a girl with a kid. That must be her, and that must be him. That was Elle. He’d never thought of her in a real way, never wondered what she looked like. There would be no baptismal mass. This was an old but well kept church, and the midday sun shone on the marble floors and on the pillars. At the altar, Jason gestured for the three of them to come up. Frey came up, trying not to look like he was looking at Elle, who was thin and thin faced, fox faced almost, sullen looking. Frey looked at Elle and then look at Jason.

But there is nothing between them.

But then there was something between them. They were here for the something.

The Something was not held in its mother’s arms, that was a revelation. No, the boy had long ceased to be a baby anywhere except in Frey’s mind, held in the arms of his faceless mother. But this was a busy, brown haired child who kept trying to walk away and, in irritation, Elle kept jerking his hand. There didn’t seem to be much love in her for this boy, but then she even didn’t want to be here. That was all at the insistence of Mrs. Henley. When they got to the altar, Frey could tell, because he could sense it after so many years of being Jason’s best friend, his sometimes enemy, his bedmate, that Jason was sending desperate glances to him, wishing for him to stand next to him. Outness was not a big idea in those days, and since it wasn’t floating in the world like a cliché, it was subtle and honest. Jason would have never said, “This is my boyfriend, Frey.” And Frey wouldn’t have seriously thought of him doing it, but right now Jason wanted Frey to stand next to him so everyone would know what they were, know that Jason wasn’t alone.

“Look at you,” Jason murmured. It was the first time Frey had been in a suit.

“I think I look silly.”

“I assure you, you don’t. You look very... You make me very proud,” Jason murmured.

His hand was on the small of Frey’s back. Whatever they were or had been or would be again, they belonged to each other, and Jason wanted Elle to know it. She had a mean face, and she was so close that Frey, on impulse, felt free to whisper: “Do you know who I am?”

Elle looked at him. She must have discarded instantly the idea that the appropriate answer was, “The godfather.”

Instead she said, in a small voice, “Yes.”

“Good,” said Frey.

Not caring what anyone thought about it, surely everyone had to know something, must have known it long ago, Jason hugged Frey’s waist quickly.

If the priest noticed, and looking back Frey was sure he did, he said nothing. Part of Catholicism was noticing all things, and then ignoring most of them. The priest said:

“Are you the godfather?”

And Frey said, “Yes.”

Elle’s family, though Catholic, was not heavily invested in the rituals of the Church, and so they had no godmother to offer.

The priest frowned over this, but only briefly, and then said to the mother, “The child’s name is?”

The child in question threw up his hands and clapped. He was in a little black blazer with black shorts, and he was laughing, and Mrs. Henley clapped and laughed in response before remembering where she was. But it was Elle who spoke sullenly.

“His name is Donatus Jeremiah after my grandfather.”

“What an awful name,” Frey whispered. Jason covered his mouth, but nodded, grinning. Mrs. Henley, who had heard of Frey for years, and liked him now that she’d met him, nodded her head in agreement.

“Don—” the priest opened his mouth.

“Stop that,” Elle told the boy, who was tugging on her skirt.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told the priest. “We just call him DJ.”

“But this wasn’t when you did the book.?"

“No….” Isaiah covered his mouth and coughed. “Do you hear anything about a book?’

“No, but—”

“People need to listen,” Isaiah said, reaching for his cup of tea and taking a sip. “You have to go back to work soon. So for now you need to listen. This is not when the book was made. But this was when DJ was made, and maybe when me and Jason were unmade. This is how I was made. Without a me, there could be no book. So, are you listening?”

“Shit,” said Rob. Then, “Yes.”

“So can I go on?”

“Go on, already,” Rob said, half feigning irritation.. “Sorry I interrupted.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Isaiah said. “Just stop interrupting.”

Isaiah stayed one after Evan and Jason had graduated. He had a semester left. And he and Melanie bore that last semester out, the reward for this party. Melanie was going off to the East Coast for a while to visit family.

“Okay,” she said. “Beyond that I don’t know what else I’m going to be, but at least I’m being honest about that.”

“Well, I’ve got to get my masters,” Isaiah said. “I’d like to get it on time, you know? I started college a semester late. I’d like to catch up by just going through grad school and getting it done, becoming a respectable person.”

Melanie looked at him doubtfully.

“I’m serious,” Isaiah said. “I’m tired of being strange.”

Let’s have a round for these freaks and these soldiers
A round for these friends of mine
Let’s have another round for the bright red devil
Who keeps me in this tourist town

Come on, Carey, get out your cane
I’ll put on some silver
Oh you’re a mean old Daddy, but I like you!

“But...” Melanie said, after awhile, after singing to Joni, while she lit one of the Bensen and Hedges she’d stolen from her mother, “Do you think it’s possible?”

“For me to be normal?”

“Exactly!”

“Normal or something like it. I’ve got to settle down.”

Melanie still seemed doubtful of this. If Isaiah had known himself better, then he might have been doubtful of it too.

Come on, Carey, get out your cane
I’ll put on some silver
Oh you’re a mean old Daddy, but I like you!

Isaiah looked up from where they sat, to the middle of the room where the long limbed guy with marmalade hair and an unshaven face was playing guitar.

“Maybe that’s what I need. Something like him.”

“Graduate school, or something like him?” Melanie scoffed. “He’s not graduate school. He’s... on the road.”

“He’s wishing he was on the road, but he’ll end up in graduate school anyway.”

“You know what I think?” Melanie said.

“Hum?”

“I think that’s you. Or really, you’re the opposite. You’re... You wish you were in graduate school. But instead you’re on the road.”

Melanie shrugged and said, “I just think you’re too weird to ever fit in.”

She did not ask what had become of Jason. Melanie knew about Isaiah going up north for the baptism, and then staying with Jason after Mike and Evan had come back. Jason she was used to. It wasn’t so much that she liked him, but that he appeared to care for Isaiah, even be obsessed with Isaiah. It wasn’t everyday you found someone who could consistently be enthralled by you or be eternally in love with you. Jason was with Isaiah. Melanie had never found a man that dependable.

Exactly what the nature of Jason and Isaiah’s relationship was now, she didn’t ask. And Isaiah didn’t offer. Clearly they were un-together enough for Isaiah to muse on other people, and Isaiah did date. But Jason called every day, and Isaiah called Jason all the time as well. Jason had come down with the boy, DJ, whom he apparently had some form of custody over, and DJ was in love with Isaiah too. This summer, after the baptism when Isaiah had stayed for about three weeks with Jason, were they together then? Did they sleep in the same bed? What about now when Jason came to visit? It was no use saying she shouldn’t be obsessed with questions like this, after all, it was interesting as hell, and she didn’t have a love life of her own, so why not think on someone else’s?