The People in Rossford

“Layla,” Todd said when she came by the house that night. “You said something about Will being Jewish.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Layla nodded. “Surprise, surprise, all this time I thought he was Methodist. His mom’s Jewish and she’s getting religion. Which means he’s getting religion. Which means I am. At least for High Holidays.

Todd was strangely quiet, and she raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.

“When is Yom Kippur?”

“Rosh Hoshanah was yesterday,” Layla counted off her fingers. “So Yom Kippur must be next week. I think next Wednesday.”

“Are you going?”

“You’re asking a lot of questions, Todd Meradan.”

“Well, I just want to know what it’s like,” he said. “I mean, the truth is that I’ve been curious about that synagogue. And with you going and everything…”

Layla cocked her head and smiled a little. “I have never known you to be religious.”

“You’ve never known me to care about being a good Catholic is what you mean.”

“That’s right,” Layla corrected herself. “That’s what I should have said.”

“I can’t… get with it. And you know what?” Todd said, “it’s not even the whole gay thing. I could care less, the same way Fenn could. It’s the… Have you ever sat in church, on Christmas, listened to the Mass? You’re hearing how the birth of this baby, two thousand years ago, renewed things, changed the whole world, sanctified everyone. And then you look outside your door, and it’s really the same fucking world it always was. You keep on being told that Jesus is the King and now all trouble is gone, Except it’s not. Everything’s just as bad as it ever was.

“Same thing with Good Friday. They tell you that you were born evil, born in sin. Because of something Adam and Eve did in a garden. God has a son, he sent his son to the world to get offed in a bloody, painful way. Because God is so holy he can’t forgive you unless someone’s offed, and how does it go? He needs a perfect sacrifice, so he sends his son because his son is the only thing perfect enough? Or have they changed that part yet?”

“No,” Layla said. “It’s still the same.”

“All right,” Todd looked as if he was trying to remember something. He snapped his fingers quickly and said. “Yeah, and then, on Good Friday you spend all your time sad that you killed Jesus, and you are told that because he has died, now God has forgiven you. And… And that the world is now redeemed.”

“You actually did pay attention in Catholic school,” Layla said.

“Yes,” Todd said. “About a thousand years ago, before a lot changed, I really believed it. Did you know I used to want to be a priest?”

Layla shook her head.

“But,” Todd said, you look out your window and the world is not redeemed. Not at all. And things are not perfect. But then the priest tells you, no, they really are perfect, only you can’t see it. Everything is redeemed. You just can’t tell. And I wonder, damn, for all that effort, you’d think the result would have turned out better.”

Not meaning to, Layla burst out laughing.

“So, you know,” Todd said, with a gentle smile. “It is not that I don’t believe. It’s really that I need something better to believe in. And I had read up on this Yom Kippur and everything and I wondered if it would be too much like an old man tagging along if I went.”

“Todd,” Layla told him. “You are nothing like an old man. I’m sure Will’ll think the more the merrier. Plus, everyone there is really great.”

“What are they like? What is it like?”

“You’ve seen it before, the synagogue?”

“From the outside. Red brick.”

“From the inside it’s beautiful. They have a chapel and then they have the main… hall, I guess you call it. For big days. And the walls are this cream color with gold flecks, and there are all these mosaics of, you know, Old Testament stuff. Moses, David. Other things I don’t know cause I don’t read the Bible like I should. And these lanterns. Brass, I think, swinging from this high ceiling. Stainglass windows with beautiful pictures. It’s beautiful. You’ll like it. When I think of it I think of the light. I think of this beautiful, golden light.”

They were both quiet, Layla remembering, Todd picturing. And then Layla said, “If you wanted to be a priest and everything, what changed that?”

Todd said, baldly, “Right after I got confirmed, Dena’s father molested me.”

When Layla said nothing, very Fenn like, Todd explained, “It wasn’t just the, oh, poor me, I’ve been raped. It was the fact that I had been raped, and enjoyed it. That I was being abused, but a willing party. Even when I was afraid. It opened me up to new parts of me, and the more parts of me it opened up, the more parts of the world it opened up. I saw me in all the world, and I could see that… it wasn’t that there was no God—though there were times I said there wasn’t, just to piss people off—and it wasn’t even that there was no salvation, or redemption. See, I think I am saved, and saved from a horrible thing. But I just felt that all those religious things couldn’t have been like the way I was taught. So… I knew I needed to find a better teaching.”

Brian stopped playing the piano and said, “Okay, then what do you believe?”

“Well, whaddo you believe?”

“I’m the church organist,” Brian said. “I go to Mass. I’m a Catholic.”

“But what do you believe?” Todd said. “I mean, when you sit really quietly by yourself and think about stuff, do you really believe in it?”

A discordant note sounded as Brian’s long fingers rested in on the keys.

“I don’t live like it. Do I? I mean, I don’t know a lot of people who do. But I don’t really live like a Catholic. I screw up lives.”

“You screwed up lives,” Todd corrected. “Past tense.”

“I fuck around. I’ve always fucked around. I don’t know my way around a Bible, or… I’m not really a very holy person at all. But I do believe. I’ve got to. I mean it’s all how Jesus saved us, right? We were bad, and Jesus died and… if you just trust in that…” Brian shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m thirty-five. I should know. But, I just have to trust in that. I do.”

“Well, I don’t,” Todd said. “The whole thing’s botched. I don’t believe I was born in sin, and I don’t believe that I’m so… bad, that something someone else did saved me. I can’t believe anything anyone else does saves you.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re a better person than me,” Brian said. “Or maybe because you’re a better person, you can afford to believe that.”

“But do you feel saved?” Todd said. “I mean, do you feel… redeemed, or whatever?”

“I just have to believe that I am,” Brian said with a deeper insistence.

“You mean hope that you are.”

“Okay, I wasn’t an English major, Hope.”

Brian’s hands had been paused over the keys a long time, as if he were getting ready to play.

“Look, Todd, I’m taking you seriously, and you’re one of my only real friends. I don’t really ever talk about this stuff. Or think about it to tell you the truth. But, man, I do things I don’t feel good about. I do things I’m not sure about. I believe in God, I have to believe…. You don’t believe you can be… you know, saved?”

“I believe I am saved,” Todd said. “I know I am.”

“Well, then,” Brian began sounding, not clever, but off guard and more real than most people ever caught him, “how? If you just said… How? How are you saved?”

“Well, first you have to say saved from what, right?” Todd said, putting his fingers together. “You have to really be at a place where you need saving. You’ve got to see the black hole. I was saved by you. You saved me. Remember, all those years ago? You were pretending to be so cool and cold, but you opened up to me and you wanted to be touched and loved and I wanted to be touched and loved and we knew it wouldn’t be forever, but you took me home, and I saw love, and softness and goodness where… where I didn’t expected it. Like God in the Burning Bush. Or a baby in a manger. Up until then, everytime I’d been with a guy it was just a fuck. There wasn’t any respect, any kindness in it. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like myself. The only time there was feeling was with Kevin, and he abused me, so I decided I wouldn’t feel again. That saved me. My sister saved me. All of my friends saved me. Fenn saved me. Being able to love. I was so selfish, and lying, and posing, and afraid and… drowning. And I went after Fenn, and loved him, I risked shit for him, and he made me work at it, and then he gave me… us. And when I look back on what I was, on that kid who hated life and wanted to die, I know I’ve been saved.”

Brian’s hands fell gently and the piano made a gentle music.

“In that case,” Brian said. “I don’t know that I’ve begun to be saved until now.”

FENN ARRIVED AT the Meradan house long after everyone had come. The truth was he was feeling resentful, though he’d never admitted this to himself, not even at this moment. Today it seemed stupid to have a party the very day Todd was being shipped off to Germany. No, it wasn’t some far off dangerous war, but it was a far off place.

When Fenn arrived, Todd was in his fatigues, which Fenn thought looked ridiculous. He was tall and all in the camouflage, looking like America’s finest, and what Fenn wanted to do was be angry. He was betrayed by the way he felt, and by the desire the uniform put in him.

“There really is something about a man in uniform. If he were dressed like a bag boy, I’d probably feel the same way. Todd had been in the middle of talking to a little Layla, a young Dena, when he immediately looked at Fenn. Adele approached her brother.

“He’s been waiting for you,” she said reproachfully. “He hasn’t said anything, but every five minutes he’s been looking to the front door, or when we were in the backyard just all distracted, waiting for you.”

Fenn gave his sister a look that said he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Are you with him?” she said.

“Hum?”

“I know, I know, he’s liked you for a while now. Are you with him?”

“Adele,” Fenn said, resentfully, “how can I possibly be with someone who is about to go three thousand miles away? For a year?”

Adele was about to rephrase the question. She could have rephrased it all day. She wasn’t her daughter, and she would never ask, baldly, “Are you sleeping with him.”

“Fenn,” Todd said, looking uncertain, pressing his fingertips together. He’d gone after Fenn for three years before this year making it into his bed, and though he spent whole nights there, and days, it had been only resently that he’d extracted an admission of love from him, an idea that they were something like a couple. They had never formally been any place though. Todd was nervous about what his sister and Adele would think. Fenn may have not been nervous, but since Tom he had never publicly admitted a relationship.

It’ll have to be going on for a while before I announce it to the world, he said.

“Todd,” Fenn said levelly.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

There was nothing in Fenn’s face. Even as a child he had held his own council. Now, past thirty, he wasn’t revealing anything. But Todd was twenty-three and anyone in the room could see the light in his eyes.

“I think,” Nell said, approaching them, Hoot Lawden beside her, “Todd wants to talk to you, Fenn.”

Todd seemed oblivious of his sister, Fenn’s eyes landed on her coolly. He nodded.

“The library,” Todd said. He turned back to them: “I’ve said bye to everyone, and we’ve got to leave for the airport in an hour and a half.”

“I waited and I waited and you didn’t come,” Todd said. There was no accusation in his voice, but something like worry.

“You look good in fatigues,” Fenn said. “You look strange shaved. But good.”

“I thought you weren’t coming.”

“For a while I thought I wasn’t either.”

“Why are you like this?” Todd said.

Fenn didn’t say, “Like what?” so Todd continued:

“Cool. Close mouthed? Difficult?” Todd shook his head.

“Were you always like this?”

“Probably,” Fenn said. “Mostly likely. Yes. I imagine it makes me difficult to love.”

Todd shook his head and rubbed his neck.

“No,” he said. “It just makes you difficult.”

“How could you expect me to show up and be happy, hanging off to the sides at a party filled with balloons that celebrates that you are leaving?” Fenn said. “It took me a very long time to decide to come. I thought I’d feel like a… I thought I’d regret the hell out of my life if I didn’t come. Like I would just be punishing myself.”

“You weren’t like this when I went to Fort Bragg. I’ve been gone before.”

“You weren’t in another goddamned country before,” Fenn said. “And in all fairness, I wasn’t sleeping with you then.”

“Well in all fairness, you knew I was in the Army when you started sleeping with me.”

Fenn sighed, and looked out the window.

“Are we having our first fight?” He said, coming behind Fenn and putting his chin on Fenn’s shoulder.

“It all depends on what we are?”

“We are,” Todd said, his chin still on Fenn’s shoulders. “Lovers. Intense real lovers like Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Henry.”

“Am I Eleanor?”

“Well, she was a beautiful treacherous slut who was older than Henry, so sure.”

“Thank you.”

“And I would like to think,” Todd continued, his arms around Fenn, “that you are my beautiful, treacherous slut.”

“I am,” Fenn said regally, reaching behind him, to scratch Todd’s head.

“We have over an hour,” Todd said.

Fenn parted from him to turn around.

“Are you suggesting,” Fenn said, “you want a goodbye fuck?”

Todd spread his hands out.

“Everyone else came with a present. You came emptyhanded, so…” he shrugged and blew out his cheeks. “I assumed. I assumed you had the present,” Todd hands went to Fenn’s belt buckle, “Right here.”

“Don’t be a bastard,” Todd said as Fenn inhaled his cigarette. “Share with me.”

“I wasn’t being a bastard,” Fenn passed it to Todd. “But you gotta inhale first to keep it lit.” He passed it to Todd. “This is for you.”

He rolled out of bed and rolled another cigarette. While smoke went out of Todd’s nostrils, where he lay on his back in his bed, Fenn took his cigarette and lit it to his, “This is for me.”

“So,” Todd said as the smoke rolled out of his mouth, “we are these great lovers. When I get back from Germany, what?”

Fenn turned to him, “What do you want?”

“I want us to be like you and Tom were. When I had to look on from a distance and thought you all would be forever, and you all were buying that house, like a real couple.”

“We can never be like me and Tom,” Fenn said, shaking his head and exhaling. “For starters I’m a totally different me. And… you’re much cooler than Tom. We would have to be you and me.”

“Do you want us to live together?”

Fenn put down his cigarette while Todd held his at an angle.

“In all honesty we can live together or not,” Fenn said. “But we are us, and us is completely different from what I was with Tom. Tom looked like it would last forever. We will last forever.”

A childlike happiness came over Todd’s face at this, and Fenn leaned in and kissed him.

“We are Todd and Fenn,” Fenn said. “Soon it’ll be one word. A name brand.”

Fenn lay on his back.

“And now,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Um hum.”

“The quickest way to put the breaks on us is to put up impossible rules.”

Todd waited for him to continue.

“I think that since you are young and virile, and I am… still somewhat young and virile, until you come back we shouldn’t even talk about fidelity. I mean, fidelity in the bedroom.”

“Hum?”

“Whaddo you mean ‘hum’?” Fenn said. “I mean, we’re both used to sleeping with who we want to. If you’re off in Germany then why should I ask you not to sleep with, or stand with or, whatever with anyone else? And why should I pretend to be a monk for a year? No, do what you like, and I’ll do what I like, and we just won’t tell each other.”

Fenn lay on his back but Todd said, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“I can be faithful. I can wait.”

“Look,” Fenn said. “I don’t equate celibacy with faithfulness or sex with betrayal. Tom betrayed me when he sneaked around and lied, not when he had sex.”

“Well…” Todd folded his hands behind his back. “If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure,” Fenn told him, running a hand over his side. “But when you get back, you’re mine.”