The Prayers in Rossford

There was a sharp pounding on Barb Affren’s door, and when she got up to answer it, she muttered, “Who the hell is that?”

“I’ll get it,” said Bill

“No,” Barb waved him away. “I got it.”

She opened the door, and was about to bless the woman out, but saw that it was: “Nell.”

Nell looked at Barbara who was smiling broadly at her.

“Come in, NELL,” she said loudly. “It’s NELL, everyone.”

Nell came in and said, “Is Bill here?”

But Bill was right there. Next to Milo and Dena.

“Mom,” Dena said.

“I need to talk to Bill,” Nell said. “I need to talk to him, alone.”

Bill opened his mouth, and Barb said, “Why don’t you all go to the parlor.”

As they were leaving, Barbara touched her sleeve and said, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“I’m glad you’re here too,” Bill said quietly, as he walked Nell back.

And then, in Bob’s old office, she closed the door.

“Nell,” Bill began. “It’s so good to see—”

But she cut him off and hissed: “Bill Affren, you are one son of a bitch!”

* * *

Back in the living room, Barb said, “This should be good.”

“You walk out on me—”

“I was married, Nell.”

“You were always married,” she said. “You just don’t… run away.”

“I didn’t run—”

“You ran,” Nell said, flatly. “You kissed me, and then you ran. You closed off, you dropped me off and then you left. And then you had… the nerve to show up with your wife.”

“She was my wife. It was Milo’s—”

“No, Bill,” she cut him off. “You don’t do that. You just don’t do that. It’s not even right.”

“Look,” said Bill. “I wanted to see you.”

“You brought your wife to my house. You threw your wife in my face, at my house because… you wanted to see me?”

“I wanted to see you. But I wanted to remind myself that I was married.”

“And you wanted to remind me too.”

Bill was silent a moment, and then he said, “Yes.”

Nell didn’t say anything for a while, and then she threw up her hands and said, “Well, I don’t know what the hell you want me to say.”

“I guess I don’t know. All I can say is… I was trying to remember I was married.”

“You should have remembered before we even started anything.”

Then Nell said, “I’m sleeping with someone.”

“Oh,” Bill said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“You keep talking about your wife in the past tense,” Nell said. “I know you didn’t like her. Did you finally kill her?”

“No,” Bill said. “But I am divorcing her.”

“Well,” Nell paused. “Welcome to the club.”

“I missed you, Nell.”

“Bill!”

“I want you.”

She looked at him.

“What, Nell?”

She said: “Shit.”

* * *

“Wow, so a priest,” Casey said, snuggling up to Keith.

“Yeah,” Keith said, at a loss for anything else. “And a priest who is really ticking off his friend, the other priest he’s living with.”

“He knows about you?”

“He knows more than any other priest. He knows I’m struggling with stuff.”

“Like?”

Keith looked at Casey, incredulously.

“Aside from the fact that I’m in bed with you?”

“Yeah,” Casey said. “I’m not religious, but… If a serious priest is falling in love with another man then it’s not just you wanting to get off. I’ve been with guys like that before. There’s more to it.”

“I am a serious priest. I mean, I think I am. I… I don’t know that you really want to hear all this.”

“Look, I used to think… when I would see a religious person, when I would hear someone talk about heaven, about… say, if your kid died. Someone would say, Well, Jesus just had to have one more flower in his garden. He wanted that baby so bad he just couldn’t wait. Or if something really shitty happened, someone would say, Well, God has a purpose for everything. Or… my grandma used to say this: God never closes a door without opening a window. And then I’d think, ‘Great, who the fuck wants to crawl out a window?’“

Keith laughed.

“Seriously,” Casey said. “And I decided I hated religion. I hated how my body was telling me all these things about myself and religion was saying it was wrong. I was wrong. I didn’t even exist. Religion was like six thousand times smaller than my world. And so I just felt like, religious people are real idiots.

“But then I was around people who were not. Not religious I mean. They were always going on about how they didn’t believe in anything. How religion was a crutch and… all of that, and I started to think that maybe what they said, how they acted, was just as much bullshit as anything else so… Now I just respect people who stand by… whatever is real to them. And try to be good. Plus,” Casey shrugged. “In the end the only people who ever did me good were people who believed in God. They never forced anything on me, they… never judged. So, I’ve stopped judging.”

“It’s deep down,” Keith said. “Deep down, past everything I want to keep being a priest.”

“I heard about this one gay priest. I mean, he wasn’t Catholic. He was something else.”

“Episcopal?”

“That’s it. Could you do that?”

“I… I don’t know. I think I should look. I’ve been afraid to look. But it doesn’t seem like there’s anything else. I love being a priest. And I love you.”

Keith blinked, and shut his mouth hard.

But Casey said, “What?”

“I meant to say I love being gay. Which I do.”

Now Casey looked troubled.

“Then you don’t love me?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I want to. I… I’m confused. You can’t just love some guy you meet in a club and sleep with. I haven’t even known you forty-eight hours. How can I say I love you?”

Casey didn’t agree. And then he wasn’t offended either. He said, “You’ve been hurt? You’ve been real hurt by horrible people.”

Keith kept looking at him.

“You thought you were in love. You would have given your love to so many people, but all they wanted was your ass or your cock. They were afraid. They were useless. So they turned it down. They didn’t deserve you.

“I’m not afraid,” Casey said. “I’ve got a lot to be afraid of, but I’m not. Not right now. And I’m not useless. I do deserve something good. I think I deserve you.”

Under the dim yellow light of the old lamp, in the bed they sat up side by side. Casey slipped his hand under the thin motel sheet and placed it on Keith’s thigh.

“I won’t turn you down.”

The end of this chapter and the end of this part. When we return we will go into the third and final part of The prayers in rossford