The Families in Rossford

SUNDAY, ELIAS ENTERED the coffee shop, got a table in the back with a notebook, and ordered a drink and a tall glass of water. Then he just sat there all afternoon. Somewhere after two o’ clock, Elijah Layton came in with some friends he must have made since moving here, and one of them, a long haired girl, began reading her poems in a low voice. They were not aiming for an audience, only a few people were here. She read:

 

how long has it been since

you lay long beside me?

how long has it been

since the time you were

before me?

how long must i dream?

and why can’t i love?

 

I go on praying

over and over again

making songs of

lust and longing

 

And then Jonah read:

 

i am dizzied with the need to stumble off

this roller coaster, stomach still

reeling with the feeling not,

that the earth is moving,

but that i am commanded to move

and you are standing still.

i believe that all of this talk of

god's will and of your destiny

and of my purpose is all

foolish.

 

God put you on this earth to,

God put me on this earth to,

this is meant to be.

no, see

we are placed, hurled, tossed,

spewed out in blood onto this

world's realm to breathe it,

and grasp it and take it

and make of it what we will.

 

He read some more, and then Sean Babcock entered, and Elias watched Sean stoop and kiss him Elijah. Even though Sean was significantly older than Jonah Layton, not only a two or three years difference, it reminded Elias of Dylan and of Lance, and of how it felt when Dylan held him, or when Lance stooped down and touched him.

“I want to hear you read,” Sean said, and Jonah shook his head and said, “This time, I want to hear Mariel again.”

And Mariel did read again, and then Jonah read one more, but while Elias was observing him, he heard a laugh and blinked.

Mariel was pointing at him.

“I think we have an audience.”

Elias stammered, but Sean said, “It’s Elias. Kirk and Paul’s son. Come on over.”

“Don’t be strange,” Jonah echoed. “Come on over.”

And because Fenn also said, “Don’t be strange,” Elias smiled and he did come over.

“You all are just so good!” he said.

“Well, he may be young,” Mariel allowed, “but at least he has discerning taste.”

“You were here a little while ago when I was here with my…”

“You were here with that boy,” Jonah said.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Elias tried the word out. He had never actually had one before.

“I love young love,” Jonah commented and Sean swatted him on the head:

“You are young love.”

“To you,” Jonah corrected.

“Did you drive over?” Sean asked.

“No, I rode over on my bike.”

“That’s a distance.”

“It’s only three miles or so,” Elias shook his head. He told Jonah, “Your poems made me feel so… like someone was talking to me. I came back because I hoped you might be here. And you were. I needed my mood lifted, and you did.”

“Mood lifted?” Mariel commented. “But you are in the midst of a young love!”

“He left for the weekend.”

“It’s Sunday afternoon,” Mariel reminded him.

“Yes,” Elias said. “But I got a call from someone yesterday.”

“A love triangle?” Jonah looked excited.

Elias debated telling them this. He didn’t really know these people. But then, that was what was good about it. And he realized that in some ways he didn’t really know anyone. He was very isolated from others.

“I loved him once. We had a relationship once. And he is also my boyfriend’s ex boyfriend.”

“Wow,” Jonah said.

“Yes. And now he is coming back for spring break.”

“All this drama for a young college student,” Mariel said.

Elias looked at her, confused, and then said, “Oh, I’m not in college. I’m sixteen.”

“Wow,” Jonah said again.

“And,” Elias rushed on, not wanting them to get lost in this, “it would be one thing if I was over Lance, but the fact is I am pretty sure I am deeply in love with him. And Dylan too. And that Dylan is in love with me, and loves Lance, and that they both love me, and that I love them, and it’s a real mess.”

“Yes, it is,” Jonah said, shaking his head.

“Jonah,” Sean reminded him, “it’s not so unlike…”

Elias looked at them, and Jonah said to Sean, “It’s not unlike us at all, actually.”

“Is there a story coming?” Mariel said.

Jonah looked at Sean and Sean looked at Jonah.

“For the sake of our new young friend,” Jonah said, “I think there had better be.”

PHANARIOT WAS SOUTH of Washington D.C. The main road through it went into the Pennsylvania border, and there Keith’s family maintained one of the large houses over the bay, looking across to Carthage. Maryland. When Dr. Redmond wasn’t in the sun room criticizing his son, it was a restful place and, as far as Dr. Redmond was concerned, Jonah could do no wrong. Jonah wasn’t sure how he felt about this, because he thought that as far as Dr. Redmond was concerned, his son could do no right.

The fifteen hour trip had landed them in Phanariot around three in the morning, and the Redmonds saw no reason this meant Sean and Keith shouldn’t go to Mass. Jonah pled Islam, ignoring his mother’s Catholicism and his years of Catholic education.  Being a guest he slept in. Monday was the day they recovered, but Tuesday was the day Keith needed to get out.

“Take Sean,” Jonah told him. As they were parting, both in khakis, Keith in a blue knit shirt, and Brian in a black one. The two of them looked so beautiful to him. He thought of a strange world with two husbands, and then he thought of the one they lived in and chose Keith again. As the men departed, looking so much like a couple, so much like lovers who would do things together out of his presence, Jonah wondered why he had bowed out of going with them, and then he retired to the solarium to read and write his poems. It was so strange. After meeting with Sean last Thursday, he had squirmed all day and gone home and masturbated out all of his fantasies. Keith was in his mind now, and how he and Keith had not slept together since Friday. After the day’s outing Keith came to him eagerly and whispered, “Come to me tonight, alright? I miss you.”

Jonah wasn’t entirely sure how much Keith’s parents knew, but he knew he couldn’t kiss his boyfrtiend on the mouth in front of them, and he knew he deeply wanted to. He looked at his smiling face and nodded.

“Alright,” he said. “I will.”

Sean Babcock got up out of his bed, and the only way he could describe how he felt was primal. He knew what he had to do. If there was a God, and he strongly sensed there was, he was not in the sky, keeping a polite and Victorian record of how things were done on earth. He was driving this need. There was only one law and the law was do as his balls dictated.

He was almost itching as he pulled on his sweat pants and tee shirt, and in the darkness of the large house the Redmonds kept, went down the hall. He went into Keith’s room, and he shut the door. He wondered why they had not locked it. It must have been a sign.

In the darkness only colored by the blue light of a moonlit night, a streak of moonlight coming across them, Sean looked down at them: Keith dozing on his back, mouth opened, Jonah on his side.

Take me in!

Take me in!

Room for me?

Room!

 

Sean began stripping slowly until he was naked, and his erect penis bobbed up to the moonlight. Then he crawled into the bed between them.

Jonah stirred but did not look. Keith went on sleeping, murmuring a little to himself until Sean scrabbled tighter into the bed, tight between them. Then Keith opened his eyes and blinked. He looked only mildly surprised.

Sean looked at him but said nothing, and the look on his face was unreadable. And then Keith felt Sean’s arm tighten around him, pull him closer. He felt his penis stretching, going hard, though he was soft and yielding everywhere else. Sean pulled him closer with one arm, gently waking Jonah with the other. For a moment Jonah awakened. He looked at them both, and then put his head into the heat of Sean’s chest, and Keith pressed his body to Sean’s back, his sex pressed to him, his chest in his spine, his arms around the warmth of Sean until he touched Jonah who was already sleeping again.

In the morning they packed in near silence, not silence from each other but a united silence against the Redmonds, against Dr. Redmond who had so clearly stated his disapproval of his son and of Sean Babcock.

“Let Sean take shotgun,” Jonah said. “I am going to sleep in the back.”

“Is it possible for us all to be in the front of the car?” Sean asked.

“It’s possible,” Keith allowed. “But it’s not legal.”

“Let’s be illegal,” Sean said.

They drove off with Jonah beside Keith, Keith’s hand on his thigh contentedly, and Jonah’s hand in Sean’s. Sean patted it. He looked, at last, satisfied and happy.

“We’ve got four days left till we get back,” Keith announced as they drove through the streets of Phanariot, the windows down, letting the air blow full on them.

Keith’s hand on his thigh felt so good. Sean’s hand in his felt so wonderful. He switched his weighr from Keith, driving, to Sean’s chest and felt Sean’s kiss on his head.

“You two, how long do you think we can keep this up?” Sean said.

“We are free human beings in the free world,” Jonah replied, with solemnity, “and that means we can do whatever we want, as long as we want, in order to love each other.”

“That’s right,” Keith said, patting Jonah on the leg again as they drove into the sun. “So just shut up, Sean. And let me drive.”

“THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A BICYCLE,” Fenn declared as they braked on the path along the park that ran by the beach. “Except maybe flying.”

He dismounted and straddled his bike, and Dylan did the same.

Fenn said, “When I was much younger, I used to follow my uncle up and down through the city. This was a biking place. It still is. We could see the city in a whole afternoon. Your Aunt Adele and your grandmother and I would walk or catch the bus to the store every Saturday. We used to stop in all the shops, especially on Sheridan. Rug shops, just bunches and bunches of rug shops. We would go down Foster, cross Ridge. Take a bus back because that was uphill with groceries.”

“It must have been neat to grow up here,” Dylan imagined, looking from the beach, through the trees, to the large old houses across the street. Now and again a car came up or down Sheridan, but it was mostly quiet.

“It was,” Fenn said. “And now, as I grow older, the memories are sharper.”

“You’re not old, Dad.”

“I didn’t say I was old,” Fenn said. “I said I was older. And, however it may be, the truth is, if I’m not old, I’m certainly not young. I like to bring you here so you can see where I came from. It’s part of where you come from. You come from other places, obviously, but you come from me.”

Dylan looked pleased at this, and then Fenn said, “What if we ride through Northwestern, and then to the L stop to catch the Purple back into Downtown?”

“Right in time for the train ride home.”

Dylan jumped on his bike.

“I’ll race you.”

“I will not race you,” Fenn said. “And not just because I‘m old, but because if we run over a student on campus, I’ll feel really bad.”

As the train went south slowly, passing Morse, and then Jarvis, coming toward Loyola, Fenn, his voice taking on the incantory tone of the wheels on train tracks, said, “In eighteen hundred Madeleine was born in Haiti. This is the story I know, though it was a long time before I ever heard it. Her mother was a slave, and the story goes that she was told not to go out at night. But she did and French soldiers caught her. A whole troop of them. They did what powerful white men did to slave girls. All night. Amazing that Madeliene’s mother survived—”

“Is this true?”

“Yes,” Fenn said, looking over the modern city of Chicago. The day was sunny. It was warm for early Spring.

“Did her mother have a name?”

“She must have. Of course she did. But the worst part of history is everything save the rape is forgotten. But from that horrible thing came Madeleine, and when she was a girl, during one of the many revolts, she and her family fled Haiti for Louisiana. They lived there for years until our branch of the family, the DuFresnes and the Sandavauls, moved to Ohio. There are many descendants of Madeleine. There are many Dufresnes. My grandmother Lula’s grandmother was another woman called Madeleine. It is a family name.”

“It’s a nice name.”

“It’s a witch’s name,” Fenn said.

He said it with such seriousness, that Dylan blinked.

“The first Madeleine was reputed to be a voodoo queen, and so was this one. One of her sons was Lula’s father. Lula’s mother brought her up to Chicago as a little girl to be raised in Jewtown—what they call Maxwell street now—which is where my mother, Anne, was born and where Lee’s parents were born.”

“How did you get to Rossford?”

“Long ago, the mafia did liquor and drug runs between South Bend, Detroit and Chicago.  Toledo as well, the whole Turnpike. That was one of the reasons the highways existed. Rossford was a good stopping point.”

“Does it always go back to the mafia for us?” Dylan lamented.

“You are mildly upset because you’ve just learned who your grandfather was,” Fenn said. “But for us it is not simply crime. It is a manner of flying.”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“Listen, and you will.

“Lula’s brother worked with the mafia in running liquor, and he bought that house, your grandmother’s house now, the one I was eventually raised in, to run and distill liquor from.”

“He was never caught?”

“He was Catholic,” Fenn said, as if this was everything. “You have to understand something about white people. Though, especially in the past, they could be deeply, violently racist, even to co-religionists, Polish Catholics against Italian and what the not, for some reason, if your skin was black, but your religion was theirs, they took you in. The whole police force in Rossford was Irish and Italian. They helped my great-uncle. One of his biggest helpers was Clive Affren.”

“Affren?”

“He was chief of police, sheriff and eventually mayor, second generation Irish. You never new Bob Affren: Meredith and Milo’s grandfather. But Clive was Bob’s father, Barb’s father-in-law. So Houghtons have known Affrens forever.”

Now they were rolling closer to Wrigleyville, and the skyline of the Loop was growing large.

“But I came to Rossford when, lovely as Evanston was, Mama could no longer afford it since Leroy was no help. She came back to live with her mother and uncle in that house. That is how we came to live in Rossford.”

“Because of liquor runs.”

“And because we were in a family of flyers.”

“Now, you’re going to explain that to me.”

Fenn nodded.

“I have told you the story of the flying Africans.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you already know. And you read Song of Solomon. You know.”

“The old story; that some of the African slaves could fly.  One day they got tred of being slaves and they just said, ‘It’s time to go.’ So they flew back to Africa.”

“Yes,” Fenn sad.

“And that there are still people who can fly.”

“Yes, but had you ever asked yourself why they didn’t fly right away? Why it took so long for them to remember they could fly? Why it took so long to get tired of being slaves? How long does it take to get tired of that?”

“Or,” Dylan said, “why they would want to go back to a place from which they were sold?”

“See,” Fenn told his son, as the train slowed at Addison, and apartment buildings topped by bleachers overlooked Wrigley Field, “there are many ways of flying, and some of them may even be by flapping your arms. But the magic of our family is that we knew that flying means leaving boundaries other people have set for you. We transgress the norm. We step on the wild side to find our freedom and happiness. And we have always been expert at that. Because you are mine, and this is your heritage, you will be expert at it too.”