The Families in Rossford

THE LAW OF LOVE

PART TWO

Later that afternoon, when they wheeled into Saint Barbara’s parking lot, Dylan was sitting on the steps patiently, and in the car, Elias kept quiet the way he felt, as he sat in the passenger seat beside Bennett. Dylan in dark blue pants and a blazer, his white shirt, his short dark hair, the serious face, was so soaringly handsome to him, if soaring was a word. Maybe he’d picked it up from Wuthering Heights. The young man got up, messenger bag over his shoulder, and came to him as Maia and Bennett got out of the car.

“Okay, so how about I drive all of you wherever you’re going?” Dylan said as he slid in and touched Elias on the leg. He hadn’t looked at him, but there was that touch.

“I thought I’d just go with Laurel,” Maia said. “She’ll want to know everything anyway.”

“And you’re going to tell her everything?” Bennett said, plaintively.

Maia only smiled.

“Well, you guys can give me a ride home,” Bennett said, climbing into the back.

“Walking is good for you,” Elias told him.

“Not in February.”

“Where’s Matthew?” Elias added. “We should give him a ride, too?”

“He went home with Riley. They’re taking Rob back to Dena’s on the way.”

“Alright. Then we’re off.” Dylan pulled his seat belt across him.

“And I’m off too,” Maia said, heading toward the school. “Good bye.”

On the way to Paul and Kirk’s house, Bennett decided he wanted to be dropped off at the arcade, and when Elias asked him how he’d get home, he said, “I’ll take the bus home.”

Then they continued to drive until they arrived at Lee and Tom’s modern house, so different from where Fenn and Todd lived.

“There’s cookies and milk in the kitchen,” Lee said, turning from working at his desk in the raised office area that overlooked the snowy side yard.

“You made milk and cookies?” Dylan said.

“Don’t be simple. Danny did. Hello, Elias.”

“Hey, Mr. Phillips.”

“I’m as surprised at Danny doing it as you,” Dylan noted.

“Who all lives here?” Elias asked as they walked through the large living room toward the kitchen.

“Well, technically just Dad and Lee. But usually Danny and Ron and then their kids even though they have a place on the north end. And then Mathan and Carol and their kids are here a lot.”

In the kitchen, Danny was scraping cookies onto a plate and she cried, “Hey, short man!”

“Danny!” Dylan said.

“Elias Anderson,” Danny acknowledged. “Why don’t yawl get some milk. I’m learning how to be a housewife. I figure I better try it out here, first.”

“Chocolate chip,” said Dylan and then, “ouch.”

“You know better than to just bite into a cookie thirty seconds out the oven,” Danny told him. “Elias, why don’t you go and get some milk.

“Layla was over here, earlier.”

“Talking about the wedding?” Dylan’s mouth was full.

“Yes,” Danny said. “And mad because the rabbi said they won’t marry her unless their both Jewish.”

“I’d say screw it and do it at city hall,” Dylan decided, pouring Elias’s glass and then his own.

“And I thought Will would too. She’s not going to get married at Saint Barbara’s. She doesn’t know the priest, and doesn’t really want to be Catholic anymore. But,” Danny added, “here’s the kicker, Will wants the Jewish wedding.”

“Will’s like… hardly Jewish at all,” Elias said.

“Well, that’s what Layla said, so,” Danny shrugged. “We’ll see what happens.”

Upstairs Elias said. “This room is huge.”

“It’s bigger than the one at Fenn and Todd’s.”

“But Fenn and Todd’s is your real home.”

“Why would you say that?” Dylan said.

“I didn’t mean to offend.”

“You didn’t,” Dylan brushed it off.

“Yeah, I did,” Elias told him. “A little.”

Dylan thought, and then he said, “It’s cause you’re right. A little. I dunno. This is my home too. I like being both places, but it’s like this is vacation and Fenn and Todd are… not vacation. I know I’m probably there more. Sometimes I forget to come here and then I feel bad because I love both my dads, like, I really, really love Tom and he’s my biological father, and I have his hair and his eyes and… unfortunately, his lack of height. And music. We’ve got that. But it’s different with Fenn.” Dylan shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“It’s like I feel that Paul is like my mom and Kirk is what a father’s supposed to be. And I care for both of them a lot,” Elias explained. “But there’s just something about Paul.”

“Right.”

“And really, I have a mother. She’s the same woman that gave birth to Bennett, but I don’t know her. And Kirk is my biological father, but in some ways I feel… not closer to Paul, but… like I said, sort of like he gave birth to me. Which is funny. And then Bennett’s so different from me, and he’s Paul’s real son, and he’s my real brother, but I feel like Matthew’s more related to me cause he looks like me and he’s quiet like me and he’s my baby brother. I feel protective about him and then the worse thing is this, I know he doesn’t believe it, because he feels like he’s this outsider cause me and Bennett are blood related and he isn’t related to any of us. It’s like he doesn’t get that it doesn’t matter.”

“I love Lee and I love Todd. Actually I love Todd more,” Dylan said. “But sometimes when it’s just me and both of my Dads and I can see what they had a long time ago, I don’t know, I almost—not quite and not really—but almost wish they were together. They almost make since together but I know Fenn Houghton, and really, he and Tom make more sense apart.”

“That’s it?”

“Whaddo you mean that’s it?” Maia said as the bus crossed Main Street and headed into Laurel’s neighborhood of old and unrenovated Victorian houses.

“If there had been more you would call me a slut!”

Laurel pulled the cord for their stop and laughed.

“I would never say that.”

“But you’d think it, you dirty bitch,” Maia accused.

The girls hefted their backpacks and left the bus, thanking the driver and then headed up the block.

“All we did was go to lunch, and he kissed me, and he’s good at it, and I’ll tell you what,” Maia said, “I’m surprised because I like it, and I like him.”

“But you always had something for Bennett.”

“Right,” Maia agreed. “But it was something. Only something. And now it’s a real thing. He’s my boyfriend, and I’m surprised that I like it.”

Laurel thought about it and then said, “I know. I saw Dylan have so much trouble in that department that when Alex came a long I—”

“What?” Maia said.

“What’s that?”

Caroline didn’t drive, but there was a car in front of their house. True, it could have just been a neighbor, but they needed to park in front of their own damn house, then.

“Illinois plates,” Maia said, and lifted the gate latch, going up the path to the large porch of Caroline’s house.

Caroline opened the door before Maia could knock.

“Your mojo scares me sometimes,” Maia said.

“It’s not mojo,” Caroline told her. “It’s just lots of glass windows to see you all coming down street. Laurel, you’ve got a surprise visitor,”

“Huh?” Laurel said, coming into the house and then putting her bag down in the hall beside Maia’s. But as she was taking off her coat, he came out of the living room and stood there before her. It took her a moment to know him because she’d never seen him in jeans and a high end sweat jacket. He was wearing a ball cap.

“Moshe?” she said.

He gave her a side grin.

“Laurel, I’m glad you’re finally home.”

“Mommy, are we going back to school?” Elijah asked her.

Meredith had been thinking about this, too, and now she said, “Do you want to?”

“Yes, Mommy!”

“I mean, if you were to go to school here, if we didn’t go back to Evanston, would you be alright?”

Elijah climbed up onto his mother’s lap and he looked at her, laughing. He didn’t really look like Mathan at all. He didn’t look like anyone but himself.

“Mommy, you so pretty,” he told her, clapping her face in his little hands. “You want to stay here? We stay here.”

He kissed her on the chin, and she said, “Elijah, do you worry about your daddy?”

“Daddy’s gone,” Elijah said, simply.

Daddy had always been gone, Meredith realzied. She had to talk to Cayla about that. After all, Cayla really was Max’s daughter.

Elijah said, “Mommy, you been so sad.”

She smiled at him now and suddenly her eyes hurt.

“I tell you what?” Meredith said, lifting her son up, “I’m not going to be sad anymore. Do you and Cay want to come to the store with me?”

Elijah looked cautious about this.

“Cay’s a baby.”

Meredith wondered if Elijah was trying to say that Cayla didn’t really want anything.

“Help me get your sister ready,” she said to the little boy. “We’ve got to make a trip to the store.”

Meredith reflected that maybe the reason baby Dru had not lived was because, after all, Meredith was having too many children. Elijah was barely three with a baby sister. Meredith had been pregnant for the last three years. She was wearing a dress because her ass didn’t feel right in pants. She had been good looking. No, she had been beautiful. She hated meeting a fat ugly woman who told her that once she had been thin and beautiful. No, ugly when you were fat meant ugly when you were thin. Meredith wasn’t fat yet, but she was getting there, and she was still pretty because, once, she had been glorious. She really had.

But I wasted that time running around worrying and crying and chasing after Mathan, then chasing after Kip and finally Max.

She was twenty-five. She ought to be at the apex of her beauty. Zumba classes, more running, water and V-8. No, she couldn’t even take that seriously. Maybe just not driving all over the fucking place. Maybe saying no to that third slice of pizza. Maybe not laying on her back getting knocked up all the time. Jesus!

“And now we’re ready!” Meredith told her bundled up children.

Cayla clapped her hands in delight and screamed.

“Cay,” Meredith picked her daughter up, and held her hand out to Elijah, “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

As she was leaving, Bill came in through the front door.

“Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m feeling great, Dad. We’re about to go to the store.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Going to the store? No, Dad, I got this.”

“I mean, I just… I know you’ve gone through so much, and we are here for you.”

“Dad,” Meredith said. “Relax, I am not one of those psycho bitches who straps their kids into the backseat of the car and then drives into the lake with them. Anyway, we don’t even have a lake I could do that in. The beach is closed and the lake at Loretto college is really a reflecting pool.”

Meredith kissed her father on the cheek. “Relax. I’ll be back.”

“Should I leave?” Maia asked.

“No!” Laurel said, louder than necessary, and her mother looked at her.

Moshe had said no as well, and he said, “I was in the area, and I thought I should come see you.”

“You drove from North Chicago to Rossford because it was in the area?”

“Well,” Moshe said, his olive skin turning very red, “You see, there is a large Jewish community around here.”

“That you were going to visit?” Laurel said.

Moshe nodded.

“But Munster’s in the other direction,” Caroline told him.

“You know what?” Maia said, “I feel like this is an A and B moment and I need to C myself back home.”

Maia walked out of the living room and then told Caroline, “You too.”

“Oh, right,” Caroline said, remembering herself, and she exited the room.

When Laurel was sure that they were gone, she said, “So you came for me?”

Leaning from his seat he said, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“That’s,” Laurel looked for the right word and settled on, “Nuts.

“You know that, right? It’s straight up nuts.”

Moshe chuckled, and Laurel said, “I’m so glad you find me funny.”

“If you read the phone book I would laugh, Laurel.  You make me smile.”

“Well, you make me smile too.”

“Then we should see each other more.”

“I’ve got a boyfriend and—”

“So you say,” Moshe said. “But I never see him.”

“Well, you just got here. And you’re Jewish.”

“You don’t like Jews?”

“That’s not the point. Where do you expect this to go? My Aunt, she’s getting married to her boyfriend and she’s not Jewish and the rabbi won’t marry her unless she converts—”

“Is he Orthodox?”

“No,” Laurel said. “He’s Will’s mother’s rabbi, so I know he isn’t.”

“Conservative or Reform?” Moshe was suddenly very businesslike.

“Conservative.”

“He’s being a putz. He could do it if he wanted to. He just wants to get another member for his synagogue. But are we talking about our relationship, or about your aunt right now?” Moshe said.

“My aunt, because out of those two things, she’s the one that actually exists.”

“Ouch.”

“And Layla knows that this conversion and the one at the Reform synagogue won’t even count in a lot of places, so she doesn’t see the point, and she just thinks the man is an ass, and what’s more he wants her to take this class that cost hundreds of dollars, and she wouldn’t even be able to do it until near the end of the year—”

“No!” Moshe snapped his fingers fiercely. “She is marrying a Jew, right?”

“Right.” Laurel didn’t think this was the time to make snide remarks about Will’s lack of religion.

“I will talk to my father,” Moshe said. “I will talk to him about her getting an Orthodox beis din.”

“Shit!”

“That wasn’t the word I was looking for.”

“I could kiss you,” Laurel clapped his knee.

Moshe smiled at her stupidly.

“What?”

“You said,” Moshe told her, “that you could kiss me.”

“Oh, hell,” Laurel rolled her eyes.

She kissed him.