The Families in Rossford
SOMETHING KIND
OF
PURE AND SWEET
(CONCLUSION)
“And then you let him kiss you?”
“Well, it’s not like I let him,” Maia said. “He just did.
“And you let Moshe Fromm kiss you! And right in his mama’s house!”
Laurel shrugged.
“Has he called yet?”
“No, and how did this become about me?”
“Cause I didn’t want it to be about me,” Maia told her.
Then Maia put her sandwich down and said, reflectively, “Um… Bennett.”
“Well,” Laurel returned as they sat in the empty classroom, eating lunch, “I guess that means you’re a couple.”
“I don’t know what it means,” Maia said.
“But what do you think it should mean. Or?” Laurel said, “as my mother would say, ‘what do you want it to mean?’”
Maia was still for a moment before she smiled and said, “I think it means I want that son of a bitch to be my boyfriend.”
They saw Dylan walk down the hall, then he must have seen them too, because he turned around and bounced into the class room his jacket in the crook of his arm.
“What’s up?” Maia asked. “Where you off to?”
“Off campus lunch.”
“He said that,” Maia turned to her cousin, “like it was none of our damn business.”
“Well, I guess it isn’t,” Laurel smiled.
“I’m going over to Rossford High’s library!” Dylan said, shaking his head. “Elias agreed to be my tutor.”
“In math or science I suppose,” Laurel said.
“Clearly you know me.”
“Well, while he’s helping you,” Maia said, “you should give him a little help in—”
“Lit and history.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m already on it,” Dylan told her. “Anything you want me to say to Bennett if I see him?”
Maia raised an eyebrow.
“Or give? A lock of hair, a ribbon, a token of affection?”
“A foot up the ass?” Maia said.
“Ouch! Ladies, I am out of here!”
Dylan kissed them both on the cheek and then, putting his coat on over his blue pants and blazer, he left the classroom.
“Now you tell me,” Maia said, after Dylan was gone, “that he and Elias wouldn’t be cute together?”
“So, when are you getting her a ring?” Meredith asked Will.
Will looked at her stupidly, and she moaned, “Lord, Will!”
“Well, I don’t really need a ring,” Layla said.
“Oh my God, yes you do,” Meredith disagreed, and Dena nodded.
They were in the Meradan house and Meredith continued, “I still have Max’s ring.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Sell it,” Meredith said simply. “He’s right, I didn’t love him enough. And if I didn’t love him enough back then, I damn sure don’t love him now.”
“We’re having a little get together tonight,” Layla said.
“That’s right,” Will added. “Just to say, we love you to all of our friends and sort of make the engagement public.”
“But what I was about to say,” Layla said to Meredith, “is don’t worry about coming.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just that—”
“Look,” Meredith said, “I can’t be in mourning forever. I mean, I can be sad, but I don’t want to be devastated forever. So devastated I can’t go out. And I don’t want people always saying poor Meredith. No, I’ll be there.”
“Good,” Will said. “That makes me happy.”
“It makes me happy too,” Dena told her sister.
“And this is a big moment,” Layla said. “Not just because of the wedding. I thought I would never have a child. I didn’t think I cared until I knew it wasn’t possible. And now Liam’s coming into our family, and he’s someone who never thought he’d have a father or a mother. We’re going to be parents. It’s all so much.”
“It is,” Meredith agreed. And then she said to Will, “And that’s why you have to get her a ring!”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Chay said, shutting off his phone as they sat in the restaurant on Devon Avenue.
“What’s that?” Logan muttered, only half attentive as he answered his own phone.
“Meredith just called.”
“How is she?”
“Alright, and she says hey. But she called to say Will and Layla are getting married.”
“Well, it’s fucking about time,” Logan said. “All these faggots crying about how they can’t get married, and these two straight bitches have been playing house for damn near ten years.”
“And you’ll never guess why they’re finally getting married.”
“See, I’d assumed it was love.”
“What’s love got to do with it?” Chay sang.
“They’re adopting a kid.”
“Get out.”
“To hear Meredith tell it they picked it up like a handbag when they were in England. I need to call her back or talk to Dad. Get the story straightened out.”
Logan lifted his finger for quiet, and spoke.
“Hello, I’m sorry I missed your call. I will call around three-thirty and if that’s not a good time, then let me know when I can get back to you. Have a good day, Logan.”
“You could call him back now if you want,” Chay said. “I wouldn’t be offended.”
Logan frowned and shook his head. “It’s lunch time, and if they’re serious, that can wait. When you’re working for yourself you have to weed out the serious ones.”
“So that guy, Billy?”
“Yes?” Logan said in a tone Chay couldn’t quite decipher.
“Is he serious?”
“Billy is Billy,” Logan said. “Billy is in a class by himself.”
Chay nodded in politic fashion, privately thinking that he would have had to be. Billy was one of the homeliest men he had ever seen.
“This library is so much nicer than ours!” Elias heard, and turned around.
“Hey!”
“It’s lunch. I came,” Dylan announced himself.
The library of Rossford High School had a great round window that looked over the residential neighborhood then toward downtown.
“They redid it a few years ago, I think,” Elias said.
“So, did you eat yet?”
“I skipped,” said Dylan.
“Awww.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not hungry. So whaddo you want to cover first.”
“Well, you’re the math dunce.”
“But when’s your English class?’
“This afternoon.”
“Then it seems like your matters are a little more urgent.”
“Miss Ruffallo always looks so disappointed in me,” Elias confessed as they rose from the table.
“Where are we going?” asked Dylan.
“To the stacks. I feel smarter in the stacks, and no one will tell us to shut up.”
The second level of the library was a mezzanine and looked down on the old woman who ran the library as well as the little computer lab and the students coming in and out. All in all, it was a pretty together place, Dylan thought, different from the old, one story affair they had at Saint Barbara’s.
“Dad told me I could come here after eighth grade,” Dylan commented.
“Are you beginning to regret not doing it?”
“A little bit,” Dylan admitted as he followed Elias and sat down in front of a row of old leather bound, gold gilt books.
“Well look at this shit,” he said, reverently, reaching up to run a finger over the spine of one. “That is a seriously old copy of the medieval passion plays.”
“There’s more than one?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said. “Passio means drama. The Passion play on Palm Sunday is the most famous one, but you used to have all sorts of Bible plays all year.”
“See, that’s why I need you.”
“And now, Wuthering Heights,” Dylan said, taking a red, clothbound book out of his bag.
“You take your Wuthering Heights seriously,” Elias commented, taking out his paperback.
“It’s a Bible,” Dylan said. “That’s what Bible means. Book.”
“Well, I knew that—”
“But the point is, what are you all covering today?”
“I’m not sure! Let me see. I’m so stupid.”
“That,” Dylan told him, “is the one thing you are not.”
“When it comes to this I am. Oh… it’s after the first Cathy dies.”
“Alright,” Dylan nodded, quietly. “So… did you read it? The next chapters?”
“Of course I read it.”
“Alright,” Dylan told him. “I’ve tutored before and some people don’t even read it.”
“It’s just… everyone is very odd. And I want the story to make sense. I want these people to make sense so I can… Well, like the sister. The sister of the guy married to Cathy.”
“Linton’s sister, Isabella.”
“Right!” Elias said.
“Why is she all crazy and covered in blood. I feel like I didn’t read it carefully enough.”
Dylan seemed to be thinking, and then he said, “You know what you need?”
“Huh?”
“To watch the movie.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” Dylan nodded. “I am. When you watch it, you’ll know the story, and it’s a very weird one. You just need it brought to life.
“See,” Dylan reshifted, turning to him, “you have to understand that Isabella is on her last end, cause Wuthering Heights is this wild, grazy, forboding—never used that word before—place, run by Heathcliff, and everyone is mad there. And she comes from Thrushcross Grange and all the softness there. She’s in love with this man who doesn’t love her. But, see, she thinks one day he will love her. He hates her. She can’t leave cause she’s disgraced, so she sits in that house putting up with Joseph, that servant, and with this husband who hates her, and with Hareton, and when she finally sees her chance, she just… bolts. She’s crazy because she is fleeing for her life.”
“But she doesn’t even like the baby. The new Cathy. She just says ‘take the child away.’”
“Cause Isabella lives in her head!” Dylan said, excitedly. “All she can think about is her feelings, and herself, and her suffering. The only person who really sees anything is Nelly, and that’s why she’s telling the story.”
“Is that why Heathcliff is the way he is?’
“That’s right!” Dylan whispered, clapping his knees. “He can’t love anything cause he can’t be interested in anything. The only thing he’s interested in is his suffering.”
“And the first Cathy.”
“But she’s dead. And she was only interested in herself. It’s about this devouring passion, but it’s not love!” Dylan pounded his fist. “Devouring passion isn’t love. It’s selfish. It just looks at itself and the other person, but it’s not—”
Suddenly, Elias had kissed Dylan.
Dylan sat back, looking at Elias strangely.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” Dylan whispered.
Elias shrugged.
“The way you looked. So excited.”
Dylan kept looking at Elias who now said, “Well, you don’t look excited any more.”
“It’s just… We have a book to study,” Dylan sat back down.
“You’re right,” Elias said.
“And so Heathcliff is consumed by his obsession.”
“And so is Isabella. So is everyone. Isabella is obsessed with her fantasy of Heathcliff.” Elias bumped his knee with Dylan’s.
“Exactly.”
Elias turned to Dylan and said, “I think that’ll get me through class.”
He touched his cheek, turned his face and kissed Dylan again. This time Dylan pushed into the kiss. It lasted a while, Elias feeling Dylan’s hands touch his hair, and then the older boy pulled away.
“You know me,” Dylan said, slightly breathless. “Once you get me started it’s hard to stop me. You know that.”
“Have you ever done it on school property.”
“Yes, and not with you,” Dylan said. “I just came out of something.”
“I know. So?”
“I would like to have something kind of sweet and pure. I’m tired of hopping in the sack with people.”
“Dylan,” Elias whispered, “you can hardly hop in the sack with me in the stacks.”
“You just said—”
“I was just asking a question,” Elias said.
“Oh.”
Elias laughed.
“What?”
“I’ve never seen the great Dylan Mesda look confused.”
“Who says I’m so great.”
“I do. Look up there.”
“Uh-kay,”
A flight of metal steps disappeared into the ceiling, and Elias said, “That leads to a little landing in front of the boiler room. We’re teenagers so… whaddo you say we make out like teenagers?”
Dylan half grinned at him and said, “Elias, did you tell me all of this shit about needing help just so we could make out?”
“No,” Elias said, standing up, and holding his hand out to Dylan, “But I did say let’s sit in the stacks so I could kiss you.”
Dylan smiled, and then lightly placed Elias between himself and the books. He kissed him and Elias’s hands went up to his shoulders, to the back of his head and held him.
“Just kissing!” Dylan said, raising a finger.
“For fuck’s sake what else?”
“You did ask me about the whole public property thing.”
Elias grabbed Dylan’s hand and pulled him toward the steps.
“Just shut up and come on,” he said.
“Oh, by the way,” Dylan added as they went up the steps, their feet making the metal stair ring, “Maia says hey to your brother.”