The Prayers in Rossford

At the end of Keith McDonald’s last Mass, Dan hung back, letting everyone hug and hold onto Keith. Keith was the better priest. Despite everything.

“I don’t care what you do,” Barb told him. “You cannot stay a stranger.”

“I won’t.”

“No, I’m serious,” Barb went on. “You’ve been too much to me. I have to be there for you.”

“Barb,” Keith said, “you have. You don’t know how much you have.”

When it came Dena’s turn she just stood there beside Milo, her hands folded across her chest. She blinked and put a hand to her surprised face.

“Tears,” she said, at last. “Who would have expected it?”

Dan was surprised by Brendan, who tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, Father.”

“I was hanging back,” Dan explained. “Letting everyone say goodbye.”

“Well,” Brendan shrugged. “I never really knew Father Keith. I knew you. I’ve known you most of my life.”

“Yes,” Dan said.

“I’m going to college next week. You know that, right?”

Dan sighed.

“I knew it,” he admitted. “I just thought it was later. I mean, I really hoped it was later.”

Brendan realized they had crossed over into real territory here, not manufactured emotions.

“I’ve known you since you were a little kid, Bren.”

“I know. I’ll be back. I’ll just… I’m gonna miss you, Father.”

Dan frowned and said, “You know I’ll be here, right? You know you can always ask me anything. Anything.”

Brendan smiled and turned red.

“I know, Father.”

“Bren?”

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t ask you this if the word ‘father’ didn’t sound funny coming out of your mouth. But… you’re grown now, and you could start calling me Dan if you wanted to.”

Brendan made a comic face, and then he said, “They’re both awkward. Father doesn’t seem right, and Dan seems too… We’ll have to work something out, won’t we?”

“Yes, Brendan,” Dan said. “We will.”

“YOU LIKE THAT? You like that? How do you like that?” Charlie shouted as he fucked her against the wall.

“Is that good?” he whispered into her ear.

Nell said nothing.

“Is that? You like it,” he thrust into her. “When, I…”

But she wasn’t responding.

He stopped.

Nell looked at him, and she was heavy to him now. He lowered her and he said, “You’re not into this, are you?”

Nell said nothing.

Charlie was sweaty against Nell, and she was a mess.

“This is over?” Charlie said. “Isn’t it?”

Nell suddenly felt so bad. She looked at him. Not that he wasn’t real to her, but right now he was especially real to her, and so young. And so pretty.

She nodded.

“I think it is,” she said.

“IT WAS… I DON’T know. Sad,”Dena said when she came into the house.

“I thought about going,” Nell said. “But… I haven’t been to church in a while. And I didn’t really know him that well.”

“He was good,” Dena said. “And I didn’t know it until he was gone. I mean, I guess he’s still around, but—” Then she stopped.

“What?”

“Mom? Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Nell’s voice was falsely bright. And then she said, “No. I guess not.”

Nell tilted her head, waiting for her mother to speak.

“I think me and Charlie are broken up.”

Dena waited for her mother to continue.

“Okay,” Nell said. “I know we are over.”

“Aw, Mom,” Dena came to put a hand around her mother. “Well, you know he was too young for you.”

“Dena!”

“Oh, God, Mom, he totally was. But you’ve got a great guy waiting for you at the Affrens.”

“Dena—”

“You’ve really gotta stop saying my name every three seconds. Bill is there. Bill is waiting for you. Bill loves you. And… what’s more—he’s your age.”

Having said what she had to say, Dena headed off to the kitchen.

“By the way,” she said. “Me and Layla are leaving next week for California. You remember that, right?”

“Of course I remember it.

“Dena,” Nell came into the kitchen as Dena was cracking ice cubes out of the tray.

“I sort of had something earlier with Bill.”

“Yeah, I remember. I was there.”

“It’s just… I think I had to think about going back to him. You know?”

“Sure,” Dena said. “Think about it.”

Nell nodded.

Dena concluded: “And then go to the Affrens and get him.”

“I thought we were gone have to close,” the Black girl said when Charlie came into the roadside restaurant on the south end of town. “You’re the first business we’ve had all day.”

“Look at you,” a woman who reminded him of Nell came out from the kitchen, “You look just like my son.”

This made Charlie wince.

“He’s a real good looker. He could be a model. He’s gay, though,” she said. “Are you gay?”

The Black girl said, “Stay out of that man’s business.”

“Uh, no,” Charlie said. Then, “I’m not gay.”

“Well, what can we get you?”

“I uh… a menu?”

“Oh, yeah,” Naomi said. “That was foolish. Danny?”

“I can tell you what we have now,” Danny said. “Hot dogs, burgers, a hot dog burger dog. Onion rings, fries. A variation of what I just mentioned.”

Charlie nodded, and then a voice from the kitchen said, “Now, that’s not true at all.”

A new girl stepped out.

“There’s someone else?” Charlie began.

“I know,” Danny said. “If the economy’s going to hell—and it is—”

“You don’t know that,” Naomi said.

“Trust me, I know it. And the question is, if the economy is going to hell, then why we got three bitches working here on one customer?”

Charlie blinked at the new girl.

“I know you,” he said.

She looked at him. She was dark haired and dark eyed.

“You…. At the bar?”

“That’s right. You wanted that drink.”

“And it’s Sunday again. And we’re here in Indiana, not able to drink.”

Charlie nodded, blinking, and wondering why he felt this way.

“Look,” Meg Callan continued, leaning over the counter. “I can make falafel. We got a new chicken dish. I got—”

“See, falafel!” Danny said. “What the fuck do we need falafel for?”

“I’m going to try the falafel.”

“And hummus with lamb,” Liz continued.

Charlie nodded and smiled. “I’ll take all of that.

“Well, she’ll make it,” Naomi said. “Cause I don’t know what the hell that is.”

“And I,” Danny offered, “will get you some water.”

By the time Meg was finished cooking, there were two truckers waiting for them.

“You’re gonna love it. I’ve been making this since I was fourteen. And here’s cucumber sauce,” Meg sat down across from Charlie.

“I’m going eat some of this,” she said, dipping it.

“Are you sitting down on the job?” Danny said at the counter.

“Uh,” Meg said, “Yeah.” She turned back to Charlie. “So what have you been up to?”

“I’ve just been up to… Well, let’s see, I just got off work. I guess you didn’t see the news?”

“No. How’ll the weather be?”

Charlie pointed out of the window at the dried grass and the August sun, and said, smiling, “Hot.”

Meg laughed.

“How’s the search for your dad?”

“I haven’t even asked anyone about him, yet. You know, I don’t even know if I want to find him? The truth is we never really got on. I just… I thought it was time to do something different. So here I am—” Meg put her hands to her chest, “a short order cook making Mediterranean food at an Indiana truck stop.”

“Sounds like a movie.”

“Really?” Meg took another bit of falafel. “Well, that’s a movie I don’t much want to see.”

“These are good. They’re like hush puppies.”

“Yes,” Meg acknowledged. “Only they’re called falafel, and they’re foreign so you had better not call them hush puppies.”

“I stand corrected,” Charlie put up a hand. Then he said, “I broke up with someone I was seeing.”

“Oh,” Meg said, sounding as if she didn’t know what to make of it.

“It wasn’t going anywhere anyway. It couldn’t have gone anywhere.”

Meg nodded.

“Ever been in anything like that?” he asked her.

“Uh… no.”

Charlie grinned. Meg put a hand on his and said, “But maybe the reason it ended was to make way for something better?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, tearing a bit of the lamb and placing it on flatbread. “Maybe so.”

Will was driving Milo over to the large house where Dena’s family had lived for fifty years. He looked at his friend and said:

“What are you so fucking zany about?”

“What?” Milo said, coming back to himself, and looking at Will like he was crazy.

“I said, what are you so—”

“Where the hell did you get that from?”

Will blushed and then said, “Annelise likes when I use movie phrases.”

“So this is from a movie?”

“Yeah.”

Milo shook his head, “Must have not been a very good movie.”

“No, but Annie says it’s worth it just to see Christian Bayle naked. I don’t know how I feel about that,” Will frowned. “I wish she hadn’t told me that.”

“Well, maybe she’ll just have to see you naked,” Milo suggested. “Ah,” he cried. “Here we are!”

“So,” Will said, as he stopped the car and looked up at the walkway to Dena’s house, “why are you so fucking zany?”

Coming out of the car, and leaning into the window once he’d closed the door, Milo gave him a very long look, and then he said, “I’ll see you later, Will,” skipped around the car and danced up the steps.

Will looked after him for a moment, and then murmured, “Fucking zany,” and drove slowly away.

He didn’t knock. He just walked in. She knew it was him and shouted, “Hey, Miles,” from the old library.

When he found her there she was reading a book, and the TV was on with the volume off.

“I think my Mom went to see your uncle.”

“Really?”

“Um hum.”

Dena was eating oatmeal because, even though it was summer she liked oatmeal. “She broke up with Charlie today.”

Milo sat down on the other side of the couch.

“You think they were sleeping together?” he asked Dena.

Dena rolled her eyes, stabbed her oatmeal and said, “I sure in the fuck hope so.”

They were silent a little longer, and Milo pressed his knees together. He smoothed his dark hair back and then said, surprised and embarrassed by how his voice rose an octave on her name: “Dena.”

“Um hum?” She was still paying more attention to the oatmeal—which is insane, quit fucking eating oatmeal in the middle of August.

“Dena,” he said again. “Let’s have intercourse.”

“What?”

“I said sex, Dena. Fucking,” Milo said, as if he wanted to make sure she could not possibly mistake him. “We should fuck.”

“We should fuck! Is that how you talk to me? We should fuck?”

“We’ve been together for... well over a year.”

“I’m a lady. I’m a fucking lady. And you just walk into my house while I’m eating oatmeal, and you say we should fuck.”

“And I brought condoms and… Everything. It’ll be totally safe and responsible.”

“I’m your fucking girlfriend, and you just talk to me like I’m some slut, saying, we should fuck, we should fuck—”

“And I love you. I always have and—”

“And you walk in my fucking house, uninvited, smelling all like the sun, and… and wearing those tight faded jeans even though it’s too hot to wear jeans, wearing those jeans that make your ass look so nice, where I can see your bulge—”

“I shouldn’t have asked. Not like that, I realize—”

“And with no one in the house,” Dena continued, “no one coming back for a long time, you just walk up here and say, let’s fuck. Like that’s not going to do something to me!”

“I’m really fucking sorry, Deen.”

“Like that’s not going to send a fucking jolt through me.”

“I’m totally sorry.”

Dena stood up, put the oatmeal down and held out her hand imperiously.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“I’m going now,” Milo said, shaking his head and clasping his knees. Then he looked up at her strangely.

“What?” he said.

“I said let’s go,” she told him.

“Let’s go upstairs, Milo,” Dena said. “And fuck.”