The People in Rossford
Mixing It up With Me
Conclusion
When Chad came to dinner he looked in considerably lighter spirits, which Jesse commented on.
Chad shrugged. “I just needed to have a chat with Dr. Babcock.”
“I never thought I’d like that class,” Radha said. “I’m looking at the one on world music next year. I mean in the spring. Claire, you might want to take it.”
Claire looked at Radha said, “That is not going to happen.”
“I forgot,” Radha remembered, “you’ve got this history with him.”
“I wish I knew what that was about,” Jesse said.
“It’s not even personal. It’s just that everyone we know,” she incorporated Julian in the gesture, “knows him, and it would be awkward.”
“What was awkward,” Jesse said, gesturing to Chad with a chicken finger, “was watching the fight between Chad and Dr. Babcock today.”
“We didn’t fight,” Chad said, readjusting his chicken fingers and reaching for the salt.
“You fought a little bit,” Radha disagreed. “A wee bit.”
Chad shrugged.
“They’re doing the student film show tonight in the Little Theatre,” Julian said.
“I’m definitely on for that,” Radha told them.
“Layla is bringing Will.”
“That’s cool. Are they coming here next year?”
“I don’t know yet,” Claire said. “I don’t want to pressure her.”
“Oh, hell, do pressure her. Pressure the hell out of her. Jess, you coming?”
“I have a boatload of work,” Jesse said.
“And you can do a boatload of work after the student films,” Julian said. “They’ll be food and everything. And we can meet new people and… all of that.”
“And I can keep seeing that football player from the first party of the year,” Claire said with a grin. “Remember, the one where I pretended to shag Chad?”
Chad nodded, but looked awkward.
“I think,” Claire said, “that he thinks if he shows up enough places I’ll screw him too.”
“You have to admire his persistence,” Julian said.
“You don’t,” Claire swatted him in the chest. “You should be offended.”
“Well, it’s too late,” Jesse said. “Julian already gave him that line about, ‘The girl’s amorous, what’s a guy to do?’ He probably thinks you all are swingers.”
“All right guys, so we meet up at the Theatre at eight,” said Julian. “That means we should leave now. Or I should leave now. I want to finish this essay.”
“Count me out,” Chad said.
“Why?” Julian said.
“I got stuff,” Chad told him.
“Stuff? What kind of stuff?”
“My stuff,” Chad said.
“Well, how long is it going to take?” Claire asked.
“It’ll take all night,” Chad told her.
“And you can’t come with us?”
“I just said no,” Chad said a little exasperated.
Claire shook her head, and eyed Julian. Julian shrugged and said, “Whatever. I gotta go.”
“You could have given him an answer,” Radha said after Julian left.
“Why do I always have to give an answer?” Chad replied, irritable. “Why am I always having to give answers?”
“You’re not,” Radha said. “You never do.”
Then she said, “You know what? I’m sorry, Jess. I know you and Chad have been friends for years and I guess you don’t mind all the secrets. But… I want to know what your deal is, Chad? Why is your life so special that none of us is important enough to get into it?”
“I never said that,” Chad said, folding up his napkin. “I never fucking said that.”
Radha turned her head away in disgust.
Stiffly Chad folded his napkin and said, “When I think about it, I have to do stuff right now.”
“Chad,” Jesse started.
“I have to go too. Good night. I’ll see you later.”
Chad got up and left. Radha looked to Claire.
“I only feel a little sorry,” Radha said.
“He just…” Jesse said, “He’s private.”
“Well, I’m all about private,” Claire said. “But he’s closed up shut.”
Lying on his stomach, Brian turned his head and looked at him. He reached out and stroked his hair.
“Do you wanna stay tonight?”
“I don’t know if someone’s going to tap on my door,” Chad said. He was sitting up, his hands on his lap.
“Actually, what I mean is I don’t know if Jesse will tap on my door. Well… It doesn’t matter. All he’ll do is ask me where I’ve been. All I’ll do is not tell him,” Chad smiled gently. He sank back in the covers, and Brian’s hand moved to his chest.
“Yes,” Chad said. “I’d like that. Finals are next week, and then I’ve got to get back home.” He examined Brian’s hand, moving his fingers over it. “It’s going to be a long three weeks.”
“Maybe you can find someone else,” Brian said. “Someone to have an affair with or something. If the itch gets too bad.”
“You want me to do that?” Chad said.
At length Brian shook his head. “Not really. But I don’t have the right to ask you to be faithful to me.”
“Ask me,” Chad said, a little eagerly, turning over.
“No,” Brian said. “I won’t. You’re young and eager and you’re free as far as I’m concerned.”
“Or do you want to be free?” Chad said. “To go back to your boy at the Video Watch?”
Brian frowned at Chad, and Chad said, “I was only joking… I shouldn’t have joked about that.”
“It was a confidence,” Brian said. “I don’t want to force you into some type of relationship. We said it wasn’t, right?” Brian said.
“Well if two people care for each other it’s a relationship,” Chad’s voice was small. “And I think we cared for each other even before the whole thing started. I mean, it wouldn’t have started if I wasn’t crazy for you.”
Brian leaned over and kissed Chad on the cheek, and then he folded his arms around him and pressed his body to him.
“I hated today,” Brian said. “You were so upset with me. And these last days, trying to decide what to do, how to be fair. How you would react…”
“You actually care how I react?”
Brian pressed himself sharply into Chad and squeezed him. “Of course I care how you react,” he said in his ear. “And if you could have seen the way you looked to me… In those pants, in that shirt… that brown color, the way it fits you so close, and how I wish…” Brian shook his head and breathed into Chad’s throat. “If you knew…”
And then Chad turned and kissed him and they kissed for a long time, and Brian moved himself under Chad, and hooked his legs around him, his thighs drawing him in, pulling Chad into him. Silently they moved together, Chad shuttling rapidly, Brian holding to his shoulders, his mouth opened, whispering, “Yes… that’s it.”
He pulled his face down, pushing his dark hair back to whisper into the sea shell of his ear, “Let it go, come inside of me, spill in me, Yes. Let go. That’s it… baby… that’s it,” until sharply, and by surprise, Chad struggled and groaned, and spilled, his body rigid. And then, slowly, he collapsed in Brian’s arms.
“I didn’t…” Chad started. “That wasn’t tender at all.”
“It was tender for me,” Brian said. Chad went to his side, his arms over Brian, his head on Brian’s arm.
“I usually don’t do that. You usually do it to me. And… you’re so tender.”
“Not always. I thought you needed it.”
Chad didn’t say that he did. Instead he said:
“I’ve never had friends before, Brian. My whole life I never had real friends, and I was always on guard. Always keeping secrets.”
Brian nodded, squeezing himself, still feeling Chad in him, touching Chad’s hair.
“And now,” Chad said, “for the first time I have a secret I have to keep, and I do have friends. I have people who want to be my friends, and they don’t understand… They think I’m a jerk, and I guess I am. They think I’m keeping secrets just because I want to… be better, or be apart. And maybe that was true. Once. For a long time I acted like I was better because no one wanted me to be a part of them. But they do, and I really want them.”
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Brian said. “I never had friends either. Well, that’s not true. I mean, I do have friends now. But… I know what it is like, at the beginning, when you first have to start trusting them. And how good it feels when you do.”
“You want me to tell them?” Chad said, shocked.
“I didn’t say that,” Brian said. “I said…”
“Besides,” Chad continued. “One of them. I like her a lot. She… we’d be real friends I bet. She has something against you. I don’t know what it is, but… And her boyfriend too.”
“Claire Anderson.”
“Yes!” Chad said. “How did you…?”
“She gave me the business end of her hand once,” Brian said.
“She slapped you.”
“Yes. I… I was with her brother.”
“That Paul guy?”
“Yes.”
“Did you break his heart or something?”
“No, he broke mine,” Brian said, sitting up.
“This is sitting up talk,” Brian said. “I did another stupid thing. He was seeing someone and he was afraid that the relationship was… Well, he was afraid so he did what frightened people do. He slept with someone else. Me. And when he got his act together and left me it hurt. To be fair to me, he wasn’t exactly nice about it. I did something really horrible, and… I think it should stay a mystery for now. If you don’t mind, and since Claire apparently hasn’t told you—”
“Was it really bad?”
“Yes. And Julian… her boyfriend. I’m not his family’s favorite person either.”
“Why?”
Brian debated telling this, and then said, “I jumped into another relationship and broke it up. I was a lot younger. A little older than you, though. I didn’t care. I thought my happiness mattered more than anyone else’s, and I thought I could make the guy love me. I couldn’t. I just helped destroy a relationship. So you see, I’m a pretty bad guy to get mixed up with, and I don’t know why you’re here mixing it up with me.”
“Cause I don’t know that guy,” Chad said. “I don’t even see him in you. I see someone who is smart… And sexy and compassionate. And sweet and who,” Chad stopped, and pushed himself into Brian, linking his body with him.
“Who I can do this with, who I can trust being with I… I feel really… open with you. I mean, like I’m safe, like…”
“I have—my whole life—wanted to have someone that I could put my arms around. That’s how I feel with you,” Brian said, holding him close. “And I shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Can’t we just do this,” Chad turned around, facing him, “and not worry about the rightness or the wrongness? Can’t we just feel this?”
Chad kissed him.
“Even if it doesn’t last forever?” Brian said.
“Brian, the Grand Canyon won’t last forever.”
Brian grinned at him, and then pushed himself on top of Chad.
“Is it my turn?” he said, as Brian moved against him, growling a little, his mouth on his chest.
“If you want it to be,” Brian said, moving to kiss his belly, moving back up.
Chad hooked his legs around him, and as Brian sat up, placing Chad on his lap, kissing his shoulders and his throat, he held up the boy’s face and said, “Tell Claire, and Julian and all of them whatever you want to.”
“But—”
Brian lowered Chad onto him, and Chad gasped.
“Tell them,” Brian said, as their bodies moved together, and a low moan came from between Chad’s lips, “whatever you need to keep yourself from being dishonest.”
The light was grey and Brian squinted in it. He climbed out of bed, and then went to pull the dark curtains over the insufficient blinds. He padded down the hall to the restroom, and when he’d come back, he lay on the edge of the bed for a bit, looking at Chad, curled under the covers. In his sleep, the boy pulled the comforter high over himself. Brian thought of kissing him, but he didn’t want to wake him. He wrote a note:
GONE FOR A FEW MINUTES. WILL BE BACK,
BRY
Brian turned around with a start.
“No, don’t mind me,” Keith Mc.Donald said. “I was just coming to set up for the A.M. Mass.”
Brian crossed himself and rose from the little niche, red lit with votives under the Virgin.
“I was finished anyway. I was just…”
“Praying,” Keith said. He was holding two brass candlesticks in his hands. He smiled. “It’s alright to say it. It’s what folks come in here to do.”
Keith put down the candlesticks and sat in the chair by the entrance to the grotto.
“You look like someone who needs to talk.” Keith held his hands up and added, “No pressure, of course.”
Brian laughed quietly and shook his head.
“Well, I guess only someone who needs to talk would show up to church at six-thirty in the morning on a weekday.”
“That,” Keith lifted a finger, “is an excellent point.”
“Talking to God,” Brian said. “Or maybe about God…I… It has been a very long time since I prayed, and I don’t even know if I know how to. All I say is… please… please.” He shrugged. “And then it all unravels.
“Maybe God is saying, serves you right for thinking of me only when you’re in trouble. Now I’m not going to be there.”
“God isn’t like that,” Keith said.
“No?” Brian smiled. “I wonder. I mean, I think he is. Why shouldn’t he be? If you stay away from God a long time, why shouldn’t it take a long time for him to get back to you?”
“In seminary,” Keith spoke after a moment. “We were taught that if you turned to God he would always take you back. Right away.”
“But were you ever taught how to pray? Once you’d forgotten how to? How to listen to God if you’d never really tried.” Brian stretched and muttered in the direction of the red lights under Mary, “And I never tried. Not really. Probably afraid. I am afraid. Of everything.”
Keith sat down and, gesturing with his candlestick he said, “I bet that’s true, Brian. But I bet it was true yesterday. And you’re here now.”
“Yes,” Brian said. “I’m here. Right now.”
“Have you ever—?” And then Brian said: “Never mind.”
“Well, you can’t just start with that and then say never mind,” Keith slapped his thigh.
“All right,” Brian nodded.
“I’m just… Well, I don’t know how to say this. I was going to ask if you’d ever been in love. But that’s not my business.”
“Don’t let the collar fool you,” Keith tapped the white band. “I am no stranger to being in love.”
“Well, I am,” Brian sat down now. “It crept up on me. I didn’t expect to be in love and now—see—I have a tendency to hurt people.”
“Maybe you think you’re more harmful than you really are.”
“No,” Brian shook his head. “That’s not possible. I know exactly how harmful I am. Or can be. And I do not want to hurt another person. Especially not this one. I want to be very careful of… them.”
“Of him?” Keith said.
Brian looked at him.
Keith said, “I’m sorry. That’s not my business. I shouldn’t have—”
“Of him,” Brian said, nodding. “I don’t ever want to hurt this person—this—him.”
Brian gave an awkward smile and clapped his hands together.
“So… what is a priest’s advice about this?”
“My advice,” Keith pressed his lips together, “the advice of this particular priest?
“Love is never wrong. But it is…. Rare. Especially mutual love. I think if you’re always careful of each other, and always loving, you shouldn’t worry too much.”
Brian wanted to say: “But he’s so much younger than me!” He wanted to say, “But I got seduced and I shouldn’t have, and what we’re doing is so…not protocol.”
He said none of these things.
Instead he said: “But it’s in my nature to screw things up.”
“I don’t believe its in anyone’s nature to screw things up,” Keith said. “I think we do it out of fear. And out of ignorance. But you already know what you can do.
“Can I ask you a question. Brian?”
“Yes.”
“You keep saying,” Keith said, taking up the candlesticks again, “that you’re so harmful, that you hurt people. Have you ever really damaged anyone before?”
“Yes,” Brian said, wondering if Keith doubted him, doubted his ability to wreak havoc.
But, instead, Keith nodded. He said.
“Well, once you’ve really done it in a big way you’ll know just how horrible it is. I don’t think you’d anymore go back to your old ways than you would touch a red hot stove.”
WHEN WE RETURN WE WILL BEGIN THE FINAL PART OF THIS STORY