The Prayers in Rossford

On the Saturday that her daughter was graduating high school, Nell Reardon climbed out of bed kissing Charlie over and over again on the mouth and he said, “Climb in the shower and I’ll drop you off.”

“I told you I didn’t need you to.”

“And I told you I would. Now go shower.”

So Nell did. She used the hotel shampoos and thought about stealing the conditioner. She thought about how good it was to be this wicked woman who was having an affair with a sexy twenty something. Well, okay, a cute twenty-something, but certainly a something better than she’d ever had before. And then she came out of the shower and dressed. And Charlie told her how good she looked. The sun was high outside and the weather was that perfect early June weather, not too hot at all, still with some spring in it. The sky was so blue and the sun was so yellow it was easy to think nothing bad, not even bad weather, could ever happen again.

“You still want me to drop you off at the house?” Charlie said as they turned off of Dorr and came down Bridge Street to the large old houses built up on their little hills.

“Yes,” Nell said, as they rolled up to her house with three cars in front of it. “Fenn and Todd are going to come. And then me and Dena’ll go off with them. Thank you Charlie. This was wonderful, Charlie.”

She leaned into the car to kiss him, and he was so perfect and cute, and smiling, so good, such a great gift. God isn’t nearly the prude Catholic school made him out to be.

“What?” Charlie said.

“Nothing,” she kissed him quickly. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, Nell. I’ll call you.” He made the little phone gesture with his hand, shaking his thumb.

She ran up the red brick steps to the white house. As far as Dena knew, Mom had gone out for breakfast with Charlie.

She came in through the large glass door and shouted, “I’m here, guys,” heading to the kitchen, hating walking on heels, and when she entered the kitchen she stopped, surprised, put off guard.

There was Dena, but there was Milo. But there was his uncle, Bill Affren, and beside Billy was some vague woman that Dena supposed must have been his wife.

“Nell,” said Bill, with a hopeful smile on his face. “It’s so good to see you.”

“He’s what?”

“He’s, right here with his wife,” Nell whispered into the phone,

“What the fuck for—Fenn, listen to this!”

Nell was upstairs, in her room, and Adele was at Fenn’s house.

“He… uh, came with Milo. He wanted to introduce me to his wife.”

“Wait a minute,” said Adele. “He came into your house, with his wife.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then that brings me back to: what the fuck for?”

“Oh, Adele!”

“No, no ‘Oh, Adele!’ You are a strong woman, Nell. You don’t have to say oh well, or take anyone’s shit.”

“Well, I don’t know what to do.”

“You throw his ass out. That’s what you do.”

Nell was quiet for a moment, then Adele said, again, “Throw his ass out.”

Dena had just come into the room.

“Mom, I’m sorry. I’m gonna go tell Milo to get his uncle out of here.”

“It doesn’t matter—” Nell began.

On the phone, Adele shouted, “What the fuck do you mean it doesn’t matter? It matters. If you don’t throw his ass out, I’ll come over right now and throw his ass out—”

“I,” Dena said, stepping away from her mother, and the telephone, “I’m gonna throw him out.”

“Dena,” Nell said.

“Hum?”

“Be nice about it.”

Her daughter smiled at her, tilting her lovely head and said, “Of course.”

“Look at you,” her mother said.

“I had to argue with the woman at the robe store just to get a decent one.”

Adele smiled.

“My daughter. My girl, grown up.” She touched her daughter’s hair.

“Are you ready?”

“For graduation, or for life?”

Adele touched Layla under the chin.

“I think you’ve been ready for life,” she said, reaching for Layla’s mortarboard. She placed it on her daughter’s head and readjusted the tassel.

“Let’s just get through this afternoon.”

JESUS SEND ME! Jesus send me
Thuma Mina somandia!
Jesus lead me, Jesus lead me
Thuma Mina, somandia,
Jesus lead me!

“I really hate this song,” Dan said, beside Keith. “You know that Brian didn’t choose it.”

They stood in the vestibule of Saint Barbara’s, waiting for the commencement mass to begin.

“We should have had Brian. Or Tom. A real organist. A real mass. This piano playing and Glory and Praisesinging is so…”

“Eighth grade graduation,” Keith supplied.

“Yeah!”

Then Dan said, “You all right? You look preoccupied.”

“Oh, I just… It seems like I saw someone.”

“Well, then go say, hi,” Dan nudged him away.

Smoothing his robes, Keith crossed the vestibule. Standing at the door, a little uncertain looking, was Kevin Reardon.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” Kevin Reardon put on a smile. Or was it real? It seemed real, and relieved. He shook his hand.

“Nerves,” Kevin said. “You know? Coming to your estranged daughter’s graduation.”

“Well, she’s a wonderful girl,” Keith said. “In every way.”

They looked through the doors, to the class. From the back it was hard to tell Dena from everyone else, but Kevin swore he knew which one was her.

“Yes, she is,” he said.

“Don’t be afraid to go to her.”

Kevin nodded, and then he said, in a low voice, “I didn’t know you were a priest. Before.”

Keith shrugged, and preparing to depart said, “I may not be for long.”

“Oh.”

Kevin touched the hem of his robe.

“Yes?”

Kevin approached him.

“I’m in town tonight. Later on. If?”

Kevin let it hang. Keith felt himself rising. Felt himself pleasantly hot. And then there was a blast of organ music, and the fact that Tom had arrived to make everything right for some reason made him feel good and loose and longing for this and he said, in a happy whisper, “Yes. Yes.”

AFTER A MOMENT OF comparative silence, James finally said, “Out with it Noah.”

“Out with what?” said Noah. “Out with nothing. If you can be private, I can be private too.”

“Noah.”

“Don’t!” Noah said suddenly. “I don’t want to be Noahed. I don’t want… You really get on my nerves sometimes, you know that?”

“MY DAUGHTER USED TO love me,” Kevin said. “Until she found out too much.”

“She didn’t know about this?” Keith and Kevin were stretched out together in the bed.

“She knew, but she didn’t know everything,” Kevin told him. “She found out too much.”

“Do you have a lover?” Keith said. “You should.”

“I don’t. I have this. Every once in a while. When I can. That’s why I’m so hungry when I get it.”

“You should have a lover,” Keith said. “You’re so solid. And real.”

Kevin looked at him.

“Maybe it’s your Irishness. I don’t know. Irishmen are so solid.”

Keith was looking up at the ceiling, but his hand was going up and down Kevin’s chest, the hair along his thigh, back up again.

“McDonald.” Kevin said.

“It’s Scottish.”

“That’s the same thing only Protestant. And you’re a priest, so it makes you the same thing.”

Keith turned on his side and the bed moved with the weight of his body.

“I tried to give up men, you know? I tried to give up men and sex and found out I couldn’t and I didn’t want to.”

Kevin just looked at him, not knowing what to say.

“Say something,” Keith said. “What’s on your mind?”

Disappointingly, Kevin shrugged. “Just… I was thinking how bad it will be for you if you get caught. If you get caught by someone else beside Dena.”

“The getting caught doesn’t seem to matter. It doesn’t seem to stop anything.”

“No,” Kevin sat up again.

Kevin appeared to be thinking. He was frowning. Keith paid attention to the cleft in his chin.

“Do you want to do it again? I’d like to do it as much as possible before we have to go.”

“Yes,” Keith said. Then he said, “You’re not the one, are you?”

Kevin looked at him.

“I like it,” Keith said. “I like sex. Though it’s taken me a long time just to be able to say the word. When I was staying at the monastery, and this one monk, yes a monk, about my age, maybe a little older, came in, and he took off his clothes and his body was heavenly, no pun intended, from what I could see in the dark. I opened for him, there in the visitor’s bed. My legs were all around him and I was… open. And as he was fucking me I was looking up at his face. It was… stupid. So brutal sort of. And I knew it then. That maybe every time I’ve gone to bed with a man, no matter how much a part of me needed sex, another part of me hoped he was it. That he was the one. That’s why I knew I couldn’t be celibate, because I wanted the One. And as he shuddered, and his face changed, and I could feel him coming inside of me, I wondered if I had ever risked my life just in searching of the One.”

Kevin Reardon was looking at him the whole time becoming more and more visibly something like terrified.

He said, quickly, “No. I’m not the one.”

And then he added: “Do you still want me to fuck you?”

And Keith, having no time for resentment, said, “Yes.”