The Prayers in Rossford

On christmas night

“Put that baby to bed, Thomas. Danasia, take your coat off and come into the living room. We’re going to open presents.”

“All of them?”

Lee looked at her.

“When did we ever open all of them on Christmas night? Don’t be simple. Just take off your coat.”

“Do I have to go to bed?” Tom squeaked in what must have been his baby voice, as he dandled Dylan, “I wanna stay up on Cwistmas too!”

Danasia and Lee both looked at Tom.

“Okay,” he said in his normal voice. “I’ll put the baby away.”

“That was disturbing in so many ways,” Danasia commented to her father, as Tom headed to the bedroom to put the baby to sleep.

“He’s a good man, though,” said Lee. “Go get undressed and come back out here.”

Tom, being Tom, had immediately gone to a store and purchased a crib. Lee didn’t have a mechanical bone in his body, and even though he tried to be helpful, in the end Tom had just asked him to go into the kitchen and “make cookies or something.” The only person Tom knew who was really mechanical was Brian, and he was afraid to call him. But Tom was also paranoid, and he weighed spending time building a crib with an ex lover against the life of a baby in a down come cradle and all situation, and chose Brian. Lee said nothing over this, but shook his head in wonder, and when the two men had finished building the crib, Lee commented, “Civility, at last.”

Brian shrugged, rubbing his hands, and said, “There really hasn’t been much civility between us, has there?”

Tom opened his mouth, but looked at Lee.

Lee said, “Don’t look at me. I’m just the niggah in the kitchen who makes the cocoa.”

“Did he really just…?” Brian began as Lee opened the refrigerator to, indeed, prepare the cocoa.

“Yeah,” Tom said. “Ever since Lee’s moved in things have gotten… a little more thick skinned. And a little more R rated.”

Brian shrugged and grinned.

“Lee,” he said, into the kitchen, “to get some cocoa, do I have to refer to you as… a nig—”

“Only if you have a deep need to get hit in the face. One cup coming up.”

Tom looked to Brian, who was still handsome, and remembered that at one time, this man who he often despised and distrusted, he had been so attracted to. He’d ruined a relationship to climb into bed with him. When he’d met Brian he had thought, here is someone so like me. He had honestly thought, as he always did, Fenn and I are nothing alike. Here is someone, a musician, like me, who will understand me. The attraction had been instant. The lovemaking had been staggering, and not staggering the way it was in books and movies. It had been, for lack of a better word, revelatory, almost frightening. In the past all there was had been Fenn. Now, here was another man with whom he had that connection. Fenn was a trickster, perhaps always a step ahead of him. Look into Fenn’s eyes and you learned very little, or only what they wanted to show you. Brian, who always pretended, was always so suave, changed when you looked into his eyes. His eyes told everything behind them. Back then they revealed that they were intensely in love, and that the two of them were connected.

Back in the present, on Christmas night, Tom still thought of that as he returned to the living room the same time Danasia did, and Lee said, “Get that big box under the Christmas tree. That’s you, girl.”

Like a child, Danasia put her hands together, stood up with a bright smile, pushing all of her troubles out of her head, and then went to the tree and the big box. After a few moments of her fiddling around, Lee said, “Just open the damn thing.”

She ripped the paper off, uncovered the box and began tearing away the tissue paper, a little dismayed the further she tore. From the mess of paper came another box.

“What the hell is this?” she murmured, opening it and tearing away more paper.

“Language, language, young lady.”

Out of the second box came still another box, and then Danasia lifted this lid, raising an eyebrow toward her father.

“Open it.”

She lifted the lid, and pulled up a sheet of paper, and then read it.

“Oh… my…”

Danasia covered her mouth, not completely able to talk or understand, caught in that place of sudden and unbelievable rescue.

“Thank Noah,” Tom said.

“He told us what you wouldn’t.”

“But… where?” she looked at the check, shaking her head. “I mean, how did you…?”

“That’s something you don’t even need to worry about,” Lee said.

“I’m so…”

“And if you notice,” Tom said, “there’s more than enough for you to have a little something for yourself. That was my idea, I’d like to say.”

“Yes, it was, Tom,” Lee said, slitting his eyes.

“That was,” Tom went on proudly, “so that you don’t have to get in trouble like this again.”

“I…” Danasia was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know what to say.”

Lee, being Lee, suggested, “You might try saying thank you.”

They sat on the sofa, Fenn yawning, Todd taking another sip from his mug of cider before putting his head back on Fenn’s lap.

“The house is quiet again,” Fenn said, looking around the large living room, at the winking Christmas tree, to the waxed over menorah that needed cleaning. Todd surveyed the presents under the tree and said, “You want one?”

Fenn covered his mouth as he yawned again and shook his head.

“I’m good till morning. I mean, unless you want to open one.”

Todd grinned at him, put his head on his chest again and snuggled up.

“I’m good too.

“Imagine, pretty soon we’ll have a little baby around here sometimes. If all goes right.”

“All will go right,” Fenn said. “It will go right.”

Todd looked at him.

“I was just remembering,” Fenn said. “Especially with it being Christmas and Dan saying the Mass and all… How I used to be. I used to be afraid all the time.”

“Of?”

“Everything,” Fenn said. “Scared of that money, scared it would run out. Scared that I couldn’t manage things. And I forgot things are simply not mine to manage. My whole life, almost forty years, I have thought that being courageous, being fearless, meant overcoming your fear. I thought it meant that I was courageous because I had overcome all the terror in me, the anxiety. And now… I think that being fearless means being fearless. Means having no fear.”

Todd sat up and said, “Baby, you didn’t tell me anything about this.”

“I thought it was just part of life,” Fenn said. “But you know, I take care of things. That’s what Fenn does. He takes care of them fearlessly, calls the shots. Most people like it that way.”

“You’re who I rely on,” Todd said. “Because… when we were afraid we couldn’t make the mortgage, or when I was afraid we’d get caught with the money… you weren’t. And now you’re telling me…”

“I’ve always been afraid,” Fenn sat up. “I think of all the times I thought I was depressed. It was low grade fear. It was exhaustion from fear. It’s so… I don’t know what I’d do without fear. It makes me a good actor. It makes me a good schemer. That’s what I found myself thinking when I skipped out after Communion tonight. And… I was sort of having a moment because it was like I was really seeing myself, who I had become. You made your decision to be a Jew. I made mine to stay a Christian. We both decided to be godly. You know? And that means having some fucking faith.”

Todd nodded.

“I had been thinking about last Lent. I was really, really, pissed off with God. I think I hated God. You’re discovering you were full of fear and I’m discovering I was full of fear and resentment and… this is the first Christmas I feel like something’s happening. This is the first time I feel like I’m breathing.”

“Yeah,” Fenn discovered. “That’s what it’s like, isn’t it?”

On the stereo, the choir was singing.

Fenn and Todd waited, half grinning, fingers pointed at each other. Todd opened his mouth, but Fenn shook his head and said, “Wait for it… wait… wait…”

And then with the choir they sang at each other:

“Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas,

Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas,

On on they send,

on without end,

their joyful tone to every home

Dong…. Ding…

Dong… Ding…

Dong

And Todd sang: “Bong!”

“There is no one I would rather grow old with than you,” Fenn told him.

“Oh, see I felt that way the day we got married at Saint James,” Todd said. “You thought it was silly. I knew it was right.”

Fenn pushed himself into Todd’s chest so that their positions were reversed now, and he said, “Todd Meradan, just because I complained all the way down the aisle doesn’t mean I didn’t always know it was right.”

“WE THOUGHT YOU’D NEVER get back!” Naomi said, rising from the couch and pushing her washed out blond hair behind her head.

“I thought you all would be asleep,” Noah said.

“None of that,” Paul told him. Claire rose up, lugging a bag, and they were both in winter caps, Paul’s sky blue to match his jacket. “We had to say goodbye before we left.”

“Left?” said Noah. “Leaving?”

“Family dinner in East Carmel,” Claire. “We’re about to head out now.”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“That’s what I said,” Naomi told them.

“Did Danny go, yet?”

“Danasia left and hour ago,” James said.

“And now,” Paul said chewing his ever present gum, “we’re about to do the same.”

He handed Noah a present and said, “See, I even wrapped it.”

“Thanks Paul,” Noah said, turning red. “I’m an ass. I didn’t get you anything.”

Paul shrugged. “That’s not what it’s about. Hey! Don’t shake it.”

“And put it down,” Claire said. “For now. Here’s mine.”

“You got me—”

“Yes,” Claire said. “And here it is.”

“This is a long one. And wrapped, and… it looks professional.”

“It is professional,” Claire said. “I can’t wrap to save me life. Or anyone else’s for that matter.”

“Can I open it?”

“You sure can,” Claire said. “On Christmas morning.

“I mean, it,” she said at the expression on Noah’s face.

“And believe me,” James said, “I’ve only known her for about two hours, but I’m pretty sure she means what she says.”

Claire nodded approvingly at James.

“Now hug us,” she commanded. “And let us go.”

They embraced, and then Noah hugged Paul. From the couch Naomi said, “And call us when you get in, to let us know you’re safe.”

Paul smiled at Noah, but Noah said, “Actually, that’s not such a bad idea.”

“It’s just East Carmel. It’s just a little over an hour away on a country road.”

“Good,” Naomi said, reaching for her Newports. “Then you won’t have any problem calling when you get in.”

After Claire and Paul had gone with the promise to call exacted from them, Noah looked out of the window, down below to the departing Jeep, and then he turned around and that was when Naomi said, “Now, I can go to bed, and you all can sit up and talk.”

“Mom,” Noah said, “I’m sure James is too tired to talk.”

“No, I’m not,” James said. “Besides, we need to do something while we’re waiting for Claire and Paul to get home