The People in Rossford

“I DON’T GET THE COMMERCIAL, you know,” Will was saying, “where you have the cerealpeople”

“Cereal people?” Layla said, crossing her leg and readjusting her skirt.

“Yeah, you know. The little mini-wheat people and they’re talking to the kid—whose supposed to eat them by the way. But they’re all happy about it, and they’re proud of him, and they’re walking and talking, and I don’t get that. Just like those talking M and M’s.”

“I like you, Will,” Carol said, ashing her cigarette. “But maybe you think about these things too much?”

With a peculiar mix of love and chiding, Layla said, “In Will’s world there is no such thing.”

They all looked up as Milo approached with Dena, and Brendan stood up to hug him.

“We’ve been chatting with Mrs. Affren,” Dena said, sitting down between Carol and Claire. Everyone was in black, and snow had started to fall.

“Barb?” said Carol.

“No,” Dena shook her head. “The bit—”

“Dena!”

“I mean,” Dena said, looking at her boyfriend, “Milo’s lovely mother.”

“Did you guys know she had told grandma she was going to take me away?” Milo said. “I just had to go and tell grandma I wasn’t going anywhere. You know Barb. She acted like she would have been okay if I’d left. But I doubt it.”

“I do too,” Carol said. “Idon’t think anyone would be okay if they were all alone in a house all of a sudden, and the husband they had for… what? Fifty years?… Was gone.”

Layla nodded.

“Will, can you imagine fifty years?”

“No,” he told her. “I cannot.”

“So,” said Milo, “what’s going on with you guys?”

Brendan said: “We were just discussing why animated food looked so happy on TV.”

“You know,” Will expanded. “Talking Mini-Wheats. M and Ms and other stuff that wants you to buy it so you can eat it.”

“Well, I’ve thought about that,” Milo said.

“Have you really?” Dena eyed him.

“The talking food is the genius of the food, you see?”

They looked at him.

“The spirit. Like in Greek mythology. A dryad is a tree spirit. Well, the talking mini-wheat is the spirit off the mini wheats in general, and it wants to be eaten. If you eat the mini-wheats you’re not killing the talking mini-wheats at all. You see? Just like… drinking out a river wouldn’t kill a river God.”

“Or going to communion wouldn’t gobble up Jesus,” Brendan chimed in.

“Etu, Brendu?” his sister said. “Is it always this deep around here?” she asked Claire.

“If you wanna call it deep,” Claire said, shrugging. “Then sure. Always.”

Julian said: “We just like to call it strange.”

Brendan was looking out of the large picture window in the Affren’s house when his sister joined him.

“I’m gay,” he told her.

“Hell, yeah you are,” Carol said. “I was starting to think you’d never figure it out.” She shrugged. “It only took you seventeen years though. Well, eighteen almost.”

Brendan looked at her.

“How did you know?”

“Well, if I never knew before, that gay little dance you did when you answered the door today would have told me. But… you are my brother, Bren. I mean, I should know.

“Do they,” Carol gestured in the vague direction of his friends, “know?”

“Yeah,” Brendan said. “They all know. They’re great. My friends are great.”

“You’re friends are likable,” Carol nodded. “I mean, the new ones. The rest of them have always been around. How did Dena take it?”

“She took it eventually,” Brendan said.

Then, because they were talking, Brendan said: “I have a boyfriend.”

“Good for you, Bren! Is he hot?”

“Yeah. Well, he is to me. Kenny. He couldn’t be here.”

Carol nodded.

“He used to work at Martin's with me. But… the thing is, we started something up when I was still with Dena.”

“Oh,” Carol said, frowning.

“Yeah. But I broke it off and went back to Dena. So, me and Dena started up things.”

“You mean you were sleeping with her?” Carol said. And then, “Well, I guess I thought you and this Kenny were just holding hands. I guess you and Dena weren’t holding hands either.”

“We were,” Brendan said, “Until I asked her if we could start sleeping together. I thought it would make me normal.”

“Straighten you out?”

“Yes,” Brendan said, “only it didn’t. And I ended up hurting her really bad.”

“I love you,” Carol said, carefully. “But she should have given you hell.”

“Oh, you weren’t here for the last half year.”

“She gave you hell?”

“Um hum.”

Carol smiled. “Good. I like that girl. I love that girl, Bren. She should have been the one. I mean, if you didn’t turn out the way you are, then she would have been the one.”

Brendan nodded.

“So you and this Kenny are still good?”

“Yeah.” Then Brendan went red. “We’re very good.”

Carol looked at the redness on her brother’s face. “Bren?”

“I just,” Brendan said, quietly, embarrassed. “I really do love him.”

“Well, good. I need to see him. I need to see if he measures up to Dena.”

“They’re apples and oranges.”

“Girls and boys,” Carol corrected, grinning.

“Well, yes,” Bren said with a smile. “But… he’s good to me. And I’m good to him. Only thing … He came back for a visit last week.”

“Um hum?”

“And Mom walked in on us.”

“Walked in on…?”

“I didn’t lock my bedroom door. I thought everyone was gone.”

“Oh, no,” Carol threw her hands together and burst out laughing, and then covered her mouth, looking around.

“Carol, it’s so not funny. It was totally mortifying.”

“I’ll bet,” she said. “And I’ll bet you learn to lock the door.”

Brendan said, “I’ll never do anything in that house again. And that’s how mom found out I was gay.”

Carol kept chucking and said, “Don’t worry. She’ll never tell Dad. Or anyone. Mom keeps it all to herself.”

Carol shook her head, smiling over something, and when she noticed Brendan looking at her she said:

“Well, baby brother, how do you think Mom discovered I was straight?”

Brendan’s eyes went wide.

“Gary Knapp. And I was sixteen. She chased him out of the house with a broom.”

Brendan covered his face and started to laugh.

“Yeah,” his sister said. “At least Kenny didn’t get chased away with a broom. Did he?”

Brendan, still laughing, shook his head.

“See, you’re in better luck than I was,” Carol said. “Man, Bren. We really need to learn to lock our doors.”

Father Keith gestured for Fenn. Fenn came forward, near the coffin, where snow was falling on the mahogany and took the Bible. He cleared his throat and read.

“Seek not death in the error of your life, neither procure ye destruction by the works of your hands. For God made not death, neither hath He pleasure in the destruction of the living. For He created all things that they might be: and he made the nations of the earth for health: and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor kingdom of hell upon the earth.”

He turned to the next red mark, and handed the Bible to Barb’s oldest son, who stood beside him.

In the cold Brendan was shivering and Carol brushed the snow out of his hair. “You should have worn a hat.”

“You all right, buddy?” his father squeezed him, and Brendan nodded.

Kurt Affren read:

“Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall all indeed rise again: but we shall not all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall rise again incorruptible. And we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption: and this mortal must put on immortality. And when this mortal hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death—” Fenn read with him, as he shared the Bible:

“—where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? Now the sting of death is sin: and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmoveable: always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”

Dan Malloy prayed:

“O God, by Your mercy rest is given to the souls of the faithful, be pleased to bless this grave. Appoint Your holy angels to guard it and set free from all the chains of sin and the soul of himwhose body is buried here, so that with all Thy saints he may rejoice in Thee for ever. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen,” Barbara whispered, her hands clasped tight together. Her jaw tight. Someone touched her arm, and startled, she looked to see it was Milo, smiling at her. She opened then, her face relaxed, her hand caught her grandson’s.

And then she began to sing, in a slightly cracked voice, lifting her head to the grey sky, swaying a little.

Deus, cujus miseratióne ánimæ

fidélium requiéscunt, hunc túmulum

benedícere dignáre, eíque Angelum

tuum sanctum députa custódem:

et quorum quarúmque córpora hic

sepeliúntur, ánimas eórum ab ómnibus

absólve vínculis delictórum; ut in te

semper cum Sanctis tuis sine fine læténtur.

Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.

Amen.

They all looked at her, surprised. Then, with the usual practicality of Catholics, all of them, including Todd who stood beside Nell and Dena, chanted:

“Amen!”

Barb sang:

“Kyrie elieson!”

They chanted it back.

“Christe elieson!

“Christe elieson!”

“Kyrie elieson!”

Her old voice was clearer now, cool like the air, while Keith and Dan, their hands over Bob’s coffin chanted:

“Our Father, who art in heaven…”

“I’m going to cry,” Layla whispered to Will. “I am actually going to cry.”

Dan looked to Keith. Their collars of their coats were turned up against the cold, but they wore their purple stoles. Keith nodded.

He began: “Oh, Lord—” and then he stopped.

Instead he began to sing.

Réquiem æternam dona ei,

Dómine. Eternal

Et lux perpétua lúceat ei.

Requiéscat in pace.

Amen.

He sang it again, and this time Dan joined him in a round. Barb, who remembered the old Latin, and a few of the other joined in. And then, in English, Fenn sang.

Let perpetual light shine upon him, oh Lord!

May he rest in peace.

Amen.

They were all singing, and if not happy, if not warm in the cold, then they were something past that, and as their voices lowered, Keith McDonald prayed:

“May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God rest in peace.

Amen.”

And as the snow fell softly from the pewter clouds, they all replied:“Amen.”

“I don’t really like funerals,” Naomi said, fiddling with the sleeves of her navy dress, and pulling at the hem.

“I don’t think anyone does, Mom,” Noah noted. “We’re about to leave. I just gotta run to the little boy’s room. Can you hold tight?”

Naomi nodded and Noah threaded through the living room, looking for Danasia while he looked for the bathroom.

Instead he found Paul.

“Have you seen her?”

“No,” Paul told him. “But the bathroom is upstairs.”

Noah nodded and headed up the stairs. He nearly bumped into Father Keith who was coming down them.

“Excuse me,” Noah said.

He had always imagined that he would be bold and daring, and call Keith out if he ran into him. Instead he was terrified that Keith would recognize him, that they would see each other in this public world. It was all too like those old days when he would do boys favors in the darkness of basements and coat rooms, under the bridge, but if he betrayed recognition or tried to gain their attention in the light of day risked a bloody nose.

Keith McDonald frowned at him instead. Not a cruel frown, just something perplexed. He said:

“I know you.” And then he said, “You know me. You keep looking at me.”

Noah looked behind him and above Keith. No one was there. He said, “We did movies together. You and me, and I think you know it. And that guy downstairs, the red headed one. We did movies.”

Keith’s eyes narrowed, considering. He said nothing for a moment and then he said: “I would appreciate it if you didn’t bring it up again.”

“Then I’m not crazy,” Noah said with some relief.

Keith did not look relieved, but he didn’t look shocked and terrified. He looked perfectly in control, and he said: “I would appreciate you not mentioning that again. Like I just said.” He nodded, moved past Noah and said, “Thank you.”

Noah was so floored he forgot he had to go to the bathroom. But now he remembered. He went very quickly, came back down and found Danasia with Paul.

“Here she is,” Paul pecked her on the shoulder.

“Here I am,” Danasia repeated.

He pulled them both closer.

“He just admitted it,” Noah said.

“Admitted…?”

“Father Keith just admitted he did those movies with us.”

“Pornos!”

“Shush!” Paul and Noah said together. Then Noah said, “Yes, Danny. Pornos.”

“Well,” Paul said, “I just admitted it to myself. It is him.”

Danasia whistled, “Get the hell out.”

“What are we getting the hell out of?”

They turned around to see Claire had showed up with Naomi.

“Danny,” Noah said to Danasia, “it’s time you met Claire.”

They shook hands, Claire looking at her curiously, with a sideways smile.

“Claire is my little sister,” Paul said. “And Julian’s girlfriend for that matter.”

“Julian,” Danasia said. “That’s the nephew Fenn never knew he had.”

“Right.” Claire nodded.

“Well, then hell, girl,” Danasia said, “We’re practically family.”

“I would like to think,” Claire said, “that we’re all practically family, and just haven’t figured it out yet.”