The Prayers in Rossford

“Let me see that,” Radha said. “Give it here.”

Layla shrugged and handed over the brochure.

“What is this?”

“It’s a college application. You know, what folks about to go to college fill out.”

“It should have been filled out in November,” Will told her.

She gave him a very evil eye.

“I mean, if you wanted a good school. Those are supposed to be filled out pretty early.”

“A good school will be taking applications till June,” Radha told Will in a weary voice. “And this one takes them almost till September. Maybe it’s not the greatest school. But it ain’t bad.”

“I can’t go here,” Layla said. “For you it’s fine. You come from Chicago. For me it would be like not even trying.”

“Thanks,” Julian said.

“I didn’t mean it that way, and you know it,” Layla said, though she realized she must have meant it that way. “But I have been in Rossford my entire life. I should get out. I need to go somewhere.”

“What about Holy Name?” Brendan said.

“Are you going there?”

“Thinking of it.”

“You and Kenny, together?” Will said.

“I just think it might make things easier.”

“It might,” Will said, doubtfully.

“Why shouldn’t it? Everyone acts like it’s really mature to leave your family and go far away, or it’s progressive to go to school far away from your boyfriend. But to me that just sounds like the powers that be trying to split up the herd. I mean, aren’t you the most vulnerable when you’re alone?”

“That,” Radha began, “is more depth than I was ready for this early in the morning on my free day.”

“But true,” Will said. “Definitely true.”

Layla looked at him, “then what about us?”

“What about you?” Claire asked, as she entered Radha’s suite.

“We’re looking at applications for school,” Layla said. “Or rather, I am looking at applications for school. Will’s already filled his out.”

“Oh, so you guys aren’t going to be with us,” Claire said. “That is too bad.”

“And they’re not going to be with each other,” Julian pointed out.

“Well, that’s kind of stupid.”

“I just think,” Will explained, “that you shouldn’t base your educational choices on… things like relationships and trying to stay together.” While Will was talking, Julian noticed his sister giving him a dangerous look. “I mean, most people think that if a relationship is real, then it will survive distance. You shouldn’t cater to your significant other. If something’s going to last, it’s going to last.”

Claire’s brow furrowed and she said, doubtfully, “I bet most of the people who say that are single.”

When Kevin Reardon opened the door to his hotel room, he looked slightly disconcerted to see his daughter.

“Dena?”

“You rang, right?” she said, coming in. “Oh, Dad,” she said, surveying the hotel room, “this is what’s become of you?”

“It’s good to see you, Dena.”

“Thanks.”

She sat on the bed.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Dena continued. “I don’t. I don’t know what you could say to me.”

“I just wanted to see you, sweetheart,” Kevin said weakly. “And… you’re beautiful. You really are.”

“Did you know I lost my virginity?” Dena said, shrugging. “I can’t really share that with Mom. But I can tell you.”

Kevin looked at her strangely.

“Mom may have told you, if you all talk, that I’m not with Brendan anymore. I’m with Milo. Great guy, wonderful. His mother… she’s not so wonderful, but…”

“Dena,” Kevin said. “Dena.”

“Oh, right. The sex bit. It was Brendan. It was Brendan Miller. He asked if he could start having sex with me, and I—foolishly—said yes. Three weeks into it he told me he was really gay and he was in love with someone else and the only reason we were doing it was because he thought it would make him straight. Oh, but wait,” she said in the same level voice, “there’s more. Because he was screwing—excuse me—sleeping with this boy long before he ever asked to go to bed with me. I’m not… angry anymore. I’m certainly not asking you to go after him because… you’re one to talk, right? But I wondered was it like that for you? Was that why you went to Mom? And, was it because of you that I was so stupid I couldn’t see Bren doing the same thing to me?”

Kevin stood over the bed, looking at his daughter, somewhat stupidly. She thought He really is stupid. He really is… what is he?

She didn’t know what she expected him to say, but what he said was:

“This is not a talk for here. Or now. I’ll take you out tomorrow night. At about seven?”

“Uh…”

“Seven, I’ll come by the house. Stay outside of it for your mother’s sake, and you’ll just meet me, okay?”

“Are you throwing me out?” Dena stood up.

“Yeah,” Kevin said, sadly, sounding a little distracted. “For now. Yes. Yeah.”

Dena blinked and said, “Fine. Dad. Fine.”

“Tomorrow night?”

Dena didn’t completely understand why she nodded yes, as she left.”

Kevin Reardon’s head was spinning. It had already been spinning before Dena came, but now she set it twirling even more. He sat down on the edge of the bed, put his head as far between his legs as he could. This was a mess. His whole life had been one disorganized mess, and the more he tried to make it—

There was a knock at the door and Kevin got up to answer it. He opened it.

The man came in swiftly and Kevin shut the door behind him. The other man took off his ball cap and Kevin said, appreciatively: “You look just like your picture.”

“And you look better than yours,” Keith McDonald told him.

Suddenly, feeling strength instead of the usual weakness, Kevin pulled Keith’s face to him and kissed him hard on the mouth, instantly stirred by the firmness with which Keith returned his attention. Their hands were on each other’s hips, undoing each other’s belts, and Kevin felt himself thick and hard in his underwear.

“Let’s not waste any time,” he muttered kissing all over Keith’s face and neck, “Let’s not waste any fucking time at all.”

“What’s this?” James tilted Noah’s chin up. “None of that sadness. I’ll be back.

“Besides, I’ve got to visit my folks sooner or later.”

“You could visit them and come back here.”

“Are you serious?”

“I was,” Noah said. “A little.”

“I have a home.”

“You haven’t talked about it,” Noah said. “You’ve been here for a couple of weeks, so what’s another week?”

“Well, I would have to find someplace to live. It’s too many people in that apartment anyway. Besides, your Mom’s house has been empty a long time. I’m going there for a few days.”

“Well, let me come with you.”

James looked at him.

“Let me come with you.”

James opened his mouth.

“We’ve never even had the talk,” Noah said.

“The—?”

“About you, about me. I just decided that you were for me, and we should be together. No matter how we’re together,” Noah told him. “And… I have to be with you. All right?”

“Well, all right,” James said. He touched Noah’s hair. “I don’t really want to be without you, either.”

Dena sat in the kitchen looking at Milo’s uncle in his ski jacket and the turban of a knit hat.

“Where are you all going anyway?” Milo asked.

“Your uncle,” Nell said, zipping and rezipping her coat, “is going to teach me to ski.”

“Not real skiing,” Bill explained. “As real as we can get. The one good thing about this crappy weather is the dunes are great for Midwestern snowbunnies.”

Nell told them: “You guys are perfectly free to come and watch me make a fool out of myself.”

“You won’t make a fool out of yourself,” Bill told her, turning around. Dena paid attention to the look Bill gave her mother. “Besides, we’re an hour away, and you’re dressing like we’re about to hit the slopes as soon as we get out the door.”

“It feels like you’re hitting the slopes as soon as you walk out the door,” Milo said, hugging himself. Talking about it made him cold already.

“Maybe I will go,” Dena said, standing up.

“It’s not like you have anything better to do,” Nell said.

“Actually…” Milo began. Nell looked at him.

“Milo!” Dena said.

“Milo?” said Nell. “Actually what?”

Milo looked at Dena and Dena looked at her mother.

“Dad wanted me to go to dinner with him tonight. He’s coming at seven or eight. Not inside this house—” Dena added quickly. “He said he’d wait outside. But I could cancel.”

“We might be back by seven,” Nell suggested.

Bill shook his head. “We’ll still be on the road, probably.”

“I would gladly cancel,” Dena said.

“He’s your father,” Bill said.

Dena was about to tell Bill Affren that he didn’t know her father, but she realized that she didn’t, either. She sighed. Dena was surprised to hear her mother sigh as well.

“All right, already,” Dena said. “I’ll go and eat with him.”

Nell said, more as if she were willing to give Bill’s point consideration, than as if she actually believed and knew it, “I guess he is your father.”

“Ajax, my lord, the doom given by fate is the

Hardest of evils among men,

I was the daughter of a free born sire,

Wealthy and mithy if any Phrygian was; and

Now I am a slave, for the gods ordained, I suppose,

And chiefly your strong hand.

And so since wedlock has made me yours, I wish you well.

I entreat you by the Zeus of our hearth,

By the marriage that has made us one,

Do not doom me to the cruel rumor of your foes, do not

Abandon me to the hands of a stranger!”

“I like that,” Fenn said.

“Are taking a part?” Melanie asked him.

“I’m not a very Ajaxy person,” he said, rising from the stool.

“This is our first play that’s going out on the road. We’re going to Chicago with this! I don’t wanna screw this shit up.”

“And you got me?” Melanie said.

“When I got you, I got the best there is,” Fenn said. “So enough of that false modesty bullshit. And where’s Tara?”

“Tara’s here,” she shouted from above. “Where I always am, fixing these lights. We’re going to the Arie next week, and those lights have just about the same set up. Hold on—step back.”

Fenn and Melanie did, and then Tara vaulted from the ceiling and Melanie gasped.

“That was very…” Melanie began, as Tara rose up, flexing her knees.

“That was very stupid,” Fenn said, mercilessly. “I bet your knees feel that shit, don’t they? Not young like you used to be.”

“I’m young enough,” she told him.

Fenn shrugged. “Well, now that we’ve found you, I’m gone.”

“Gone?” they both said.

“I have business to attend to,” he told them, exiting stage left.

When she was sure Fenn was gone, Melanie told Tara: “I believe that he just wanted us to be alone.”

“Fenn thinks it’s his job to supervise my love life,” Tara said.

“Well, I guess I’m your love life then. I was wondering. I mean, I was going to ask how you wanted to do this? I didn’t know if I should call. Or if I should call right away. Or what. I didn’t want to be one of those girls who brings a suitcase on the second date.”

“Well, a phone call isn’t even close to a suitcase. What if,” Tara said, “I call you?”

“Is my number still in your cleavage?”

“I haven’t taken it out since you put it there.”

“Well, all right then,” Melanie winked. She swatted Tara’s ass and bounced off stage, heading up the aisle to the entrance of the theatre.

“She’s something else, isn’t she?” Fenn shouted from the dark.

Tara jumped.

“Don’t you have anything else better to do?” she said.

“No,” Fenn confessed. “Not really.”