The Prayers in Rossford

Old is new again

When he returned from Pittsburgh it was early in the morning and he’d driven all night. Brian smelled, to himself, like the cold and like musty clothing. He parked in one of the large car ports behind the apartment building and then, once he’d made it to his place, made an almost beeline for the shower and stayed under its heat for the better part of a half hour. His neck and his face and his chin itched, but he was too tired to shave. Christmas seemed to have lasted forever. In his head danced his brother, his sisters and his nieces and nephews, his aunts and uncles and his impossible father. Pictures of himself smiling, dandling babies, laughing along with his brothers and cousins rained down on him. As he toweled off and climbed into joggers and sweatshirts he thought:

“They’re so much better before I get there.”

He wouldn’t see them again until Easter. He wasn’t ready to admit he could afford not to.

Once he woke up to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet. For some reason being in your own home loosened the orifices. He was there half asleep for a long time, and then, yawning, went back to bed.

In his dreams there was a steady thumping. Thump, thump, thump, thump.

“Go away, Rabbit,” Brian murmured and turned around rubbing his unshaved face into the pillow.

Thump thump, thump thump.

“Ummmmm,” Brian mumbled.

“I know you’re there! I saw your car.”

Brian woke up. He jumped out of bed and ran to the door.He threw it open and pulled in Chad by his face, kissing him.

“I missed you,” Brian breathed through kisses. “I almost forgot I was alive,” he said, bringing Chad into the house. “I almost thought you were a dream.”

Chad, hands ivied in Brian’s hair said, “No, I’m real enough,” and kissed him again.

Brian lifted him up, and Chad’s legs went around his waist.

“Let me get my coat off!”

“I’ll get your coat off,” Brian said. Putting the boy on the coffee table, he unpeeled the car coat from Chad, and kissed his throat, unwrapping the scarf from around his neck. Chad pulled off the stocking hat and Brian said, “How was your Christmas?”

“Weird,” Chad said. “Everyone I wanted to be with was here. Unless you count Radha and Jesse.”

“Um,” Brian said, trying to sound sympathetic. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

He shimmied out of his jogging pants and they made love like that, Chad’s thighs wrapped around him, Brian’s hands planted on the base of the table, fucking him, a look of exhilaration on his face, nostrils, flared, drops of sweat forming under his tee shirt, on the small of his back.

“Uh… ahh…”Chad groaned, and he pulled Brian in harder, and they didn’t say much of anything, just occasional gasped and cried out in pleasure until it was over. Brian was bent over him. Chad’s fingers were loosely resting on his back and in his hair.

“We can go to bed for awhile,” Brian whispered.

“Yes,” Chad said, half dazed. “I think I’d like that.”

“I kept thinking about calling you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“The last thing you’d want is this old man harassing you all the way from Pittsburgh.”

Chad rolled over on his side to look at Brian, to run his hands over Brian’s cheekbones, and brush the back of his hand against his neck.

“Do you just say that so I can reassure you and say, no, no, you’re not old at all?”

“Compared to you, I am.”

Chad took his hand away and placed it on the pillows.

“Yes. I suppose you are.”

At the frown of Brian’s face, Chad laughed.

“See,” he said, sitting up. “I got you!”

Still on his side, Brian looked up at him with a little smile.

“The whole time I was back home I kept wanting to come back. I felt like Christmas was twice as unbearable as before, and I wondered if you were a dream. Or what we had was a dream. I wondered,” Chad said, running a hand over one of Brian’s long hands, down the long arm dusted with dark hair, “if you’d found another boy.”

“No you didn’t,” Brian said.

Chad shrugged. “You’re so beautiful. You can have anyone you want. Of course I thought it.”

“I thought that you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Brian told him. “All I’ve been able to think about is you coming back. That’s the truth.”

Chad smiled down at him, and then Brian sat up so that they were side by side. He stretched out his arm against Chad’s and said, “We’re so alike….”He took Chad’s hand and twisted it with his own. He stretched out their arms, “But not. All at the same time.”

“I’m littler than you.”

“And smoother, and not at hairy,” Brian told him.

“I think you have the most beautiful hands.”

“You’re screwing me for my hands are you?” Brian flashed him a grin.

Chad shrugged again. “You were my piano teacher. It’s the first part of you I saw.”

Brian shook his head, and with a hooked grin he reached around Chad and held him to him.

“I’m so glad I’m not your teacher anymore.”

“Yeah, that was getting a little difficult.

“You’re still gonna write me a letter of recommendation for grad school, right?”

Brian spread out his arms and said, “Chad North is an accomplished musician, has a wonderful mind where musical history and theory are concerned, and is the fuck of the century.”

“That sounds about right,” Chad said. “As long as you put fuck of the century in bold print.”

“Well but, of course.”

“Every time we come back here, I never know quite how I feel,” Radha said from the passenger seat.

“Like Chicago. Well, it’s Chicago, and that’s what it’s got going for it. But as soon as we cross that Mile High Bridge and we’re coming back into Indiana, even when we’re passing through Gary, and you can smell it, I think, ‘We’re almost back in Rossford.’ Almost back at school.”

“And you like that?” Jesse didn’t take his eyes off the road. He didn’t believe in people who multitasked too much in anything while driving.

“I didn’t before,” Radha admitted. “I used to hate it, last year. But this year we’ve got friends.”

“I had Chad last year, and didn’t feel that great about going back to tell you the truth.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know anything about him last year.”

“I can’t believe he’s gay.”

“I can’t believe you can’t believe it,” Radha said. “How stupid are men?”

“Men aren’t stupid. We just don’t feel the need to know everything.”

“Then men are ignorant?”

“I’m going to pay attention to the road now, Radha.”

Radha shrugged and said, “I can’t wait to see what Claire got for Christmas. Actually, I can’t wait to find out what kind of dirt she might have learned.”

Jesse said nothing.

“But really,” Radha said, “this is the semester I’m going to get laid by lots of guys. I can feel it.”

She looked at Jesse. No reaction.

Radha pouted a little.

“You hear what I just said?”

“I believe you just declared you were going to be a slut.”

“I said—”

Jesse sighed, “Since you’re obviously not going to let this be a quiet ride, what you said was, ‘This is the year I’m going to get laid by a bunch of guys. I can feel it.’”

Radha curled up in as much of a ball as one can when she’s in a seat belt, and played with a strand of her dark hair.

“What I meant is... I can feel it in my snatch.”

“Oh, God!”

“Or I will feel it in my snatch. I mean, I’m going to feel it, and feel it and feel it as much as I possibly can in my snatch this year.”

“You’re really…. You know? What the hell is wrong with you? You’re a really whacked out baby sister.”

Radha shoved out her bottom lip.

“I wish I could get high right now,” she said, wistfully. “I wish we had a jay.”

“That,” Jesse told her, as they approached the first of the toll stations, stretching across the highway, “is the first smart thing you’ve said all day.”

When the door opened, Nell Reardon blinked.

The man standing in Barb Affren’s door smiled and tilted his head:

“Nell Meradan?”

“Nell Reardon… Who is Meradan again…”

She stared at him. He was a little taller than she, in glasses with wavy, short blond hair.

“Bill…?”

“Yes. Yeah. Come in. Don’t stand there in the cold. Mom, we’ve got a visitor.”

Nell heard no response from Barb as she walked into the living room, but Bill said, “What brings you here?”

“Well, I was looking for my daughter,” she said. Then, when Bill seemed confused, “Dena. She’s dating Milo.”

“Wait a minute?” Bill snapped his fingers. “You’re… Oh, this is too much. We haven’t seen each other since... Sit down. You just sit right down, and I’ll be right back. Hey, can I get you something?”

“Uh… just my daughter?”

“Oh—she’s a beautiful girl. She and Milo went out. How about egg nog? We got some from New Year.”

Nell realized that Bill was not going to let her go.

“Great,” she said with a forced smile, and Bill said, “I’ll be right back.”

He returned with two tumblers of egg nog and said, “What about a shot of bourbon?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m driving.”

“Oh, well,” said Bill. “Well, then I’ll refrain myself. This is great. Nell Meradan! And you had a little brother.”

“Todd. He’s a… big brother now.”

Bill grinned and said, “What are you up to now?”

Nell opened her mouth, and then she said, “You know what? This is just very strange for me.”

“I’m sorry,” Bill said.

“No, it’s just… I haven’t seen you in… Wow, almost thirty years. Not quite thirty. But….And here you are. And…”

“I know,” Bill said. “Actually, when you think about it, it’s strange that it’s been that long. And… we haven’t seen each other since.”

“I heard,” Nell said, “that you did really well for yourself. Actually, a friend of mine—do you remember Adele Houghton?”

“Of course! And Fenn. Mom talks about Fenn a lot.”

“Yeah, well, my little brother is Fenn’s partner.”

“Wha? Like, life partner?”

“Life partner, partner in crime. All of it.”

“So he’s that Todd,” Bill marveled. “I’ve heard about him a while, and Dena. I’ve seen her since I got back here. But I never imagined…”Bill sat on the sofa, his legs wide apart, and rubbed his considerable chin in appreciation of life’s many surprises.

“Well, anyway,” Nell said, taking a sip from the egg nog, and liking it, “Adele told me you had gone off to….UCLA, I think it was.”

“That was a while ago,” Bill nodded.

“And then Wharton was it? The business school. And you were insanely rich.”

“Well, I remember the insanity part better than the rich part,” Bill said, and Nell said, “You know what? I will take a shot of that bourbon.”

Bill nodded at her. “One shot coming up. And I will too.”

As he poured the bourbon from the bureau on the far side of the room, Bill said, “And what else do they say about me? I mean… how insanely rich did they tell you I was?”

“Frankly?” Dena said.

“Oh, very frankly, please.”

“That you’re a millionaire.”

Bill came back with the bourbon, hit her glass first, and then said, as he touched his and closed the bottle.

“Can I share a secret with you?”

“I’m waiting.”

“If,” Bill said, “you find yourself in the position of being a millionaire, you might find yourself buying million dollar houses and million dollar cars, and sending your kids to million dollar schools. You may not ask yourself why you need a million dollar house. You may not ask yourself why your children need a million dollar pre-school. You just do it, and then you realize that… you don’t feel very much like a millionaire.”

Nell nodded. “I never thought of it that way,” she said.

“I went to business school to get one of those jobs that started at a hundred thousand a year.”

“And you got it?”

“And lost it. And now most people are going to have a very hard time getting those kinds of jobs again. What with what’s happened and all. Back on Long Island it’s a lot of people with heavily mortgaged houses, very long faces and a lot of stress about right now.”

“Are you going to tell me,” Nell began, “that you look back and wish that you had seen the simpler things in life, stayed in Rossford and not been seduced into working for Lehman Brothers?”

“It was Merrill Lynch, actually, and no I wasn’t,” Bill told her. “Because right now I don’t know what I wished I had done. I don’t really know much of anything.

“I… have had a very good life, but I don’t know if it is an important one. I mean, I do have a sense I could have had another one. And I think I made mistakes, only I don’t know what they are. I… There are a lot of people I know who I think feel the same way.”

“All of those people,” Nell said, sipping her egg nog, “think that people like me, in Rossford, don’t understand that, right?”

Bill looked at her.

“Or you do, right?”

Bill said, “You are not like my wife at all.”

She blinked.

“You’re like I remember you,” Bill said. “You’re… to the point. I… No,” he sat up. “I did not think that ‘the common man,’” he made quote marks with his fingers, “would be unable to understand my rich white guy problems. I thought, which is why I am talking to you, that Nell Meradan wouldn’t understand. Because… Nell Meradan knew who she was. You haven’t changed in that respect at all.”

Nell nodded and said, “Nell Meradan fell in love when she was eighteen with the man of her dreams who still thinks, Bill, that one day he will be what you’ve already been. He uh… had to have the finest of everything, had to trot me out to every party. Had about as much of a sense of humor as… a billy goat—”

“And not one of those funny billy goats, either.”

Nell raised an eyebrow and said, “Hardly. And… in the end he decided to molest my younger brother, and when Todd was barely sixteen and Dena was a baby, I found the two of them in bed together.”

Bill sucked his breath in.

“On top of that, William, I am so messed up that I have spent the intervening fifteen year, yes count them, living like a nun, untouched, not even thinking dating a man is a possibility because I have convinced myself there is nothing to me but a woman who is Dena’s mother, past love and long past her prime.”

Bill laughed out loud here and Nell looked at him sharply.

“I’m baring myself to you.”

“I see that.”

“I don’t bare myself to anyone.”

“And I respect that,” Bill told her.

“But you are not even close to being past your prime.”