“Wake up you assholes, wake up!” Nehru commanded as he sat on the edge of the loveseat where Gilead and Mark were huddled together.
“I hate you,” Gilead declared without opening his eyes.
Nehru placed a heavy warm bag of breakfast on his cousin’s lap, and while Mark blinked, yawning and making an exclamation of happiness, Nehru said:
“Do you still hate me?”
“Is there sausage biscuit with egg?”
“Four of them, two for each of you with hash browns and orange juice.”
Cameron was already quietly eating and lifted her orange juice to toast them.
“Right now,” Gilead said, “I almost love you.”
“Get your black ass up and come to the roof with me.”
“I will not argue with you,” Gilead said.
On the second floor, Russell was drinking coffee and Cody was halfway into a breakfast sandwich.
“Morning guys,” Russell said.
“Is that… a smile on your face?”
“Yes, and go to hell,” Russell said.
Sense had told him to get up, but love could not, and it was lying naked, curled with Cody, that Nehru and Rob had found them. Embarrassment had passed through Russell but dissolved when Nehru said, “I have breakfast for you guys. Get dressed,” and left it at that.
Rob just said, “Thank God we all got to be ourselves last night, right?” and left the room good naturedly.
“Yes,” Nehru said, meeting Russell and Cody’s eyes, with the understanding that in this little room, they must have heard him and Brad having sex with Joshua, “we all needed something, and we were all given it.”
Brad Long stood on the roof of the clubhouse, holding Marissa Long’s hand, and the two of them smiled at each other so intensely that when Cameron looked at them, something in her melted. Anigel was sitting beside her and listening to Rob and Doug.
“Going with me?” Doug said.
“I think I’d better,” Rob said.
“Great. We’ll leave when all this is over.
“Rob?” Doug said after a moment.
“Yeah?”
“I’m looking really forward to it.”
Rob nodded.
“I’ll call Chayne and let him know I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Anigel Reyes and Rob sat on the roof eating, and there were stragglers from the Purim party, everyone yawning. This was the most beautiful and most troublesome time of the day, when the night was past and day was on its way, but when heavy questions settled on the mind that the mind was too tired to put down. That’s why you needed this daylight, this silvering of sky, the gentle effusion of pink through the grey blue. As the first hints of yellow touched the sky and the silver air began to turn blue, she heard Nehru singing:
“Ma tovu
ohalekha Ya'akov,
mishk'notekha
Yisra'el.”
Others joined him. Over and over they were singing it, and now Rob was rising, so Anigel did too, and she put her hand out to help up Marissa. Rob looked from the sun to Doug Norris who was tall and smiling, rocking back on his heels. He ignored the humming in his loins and the nerves he felt thinking of what might happen when they’d traveled even a half hour from here. As day took the sky, Nehru and Mark sang:
“Va'ani b'rov hasd'kha, avo veytekha, eshtahaveh el heikhal kodsh'kha b'yir'atekha.
Adonai, ahavti m'on beitekha um'kom mishkan k'vodekha.
Va'ani eshtakhaveh ve'ekhra'ah, avar'kha lifnei Adonai osi.
Va'ani t'filati l'kha Adonai et ratzon, Elohim b'rov hasdekha aneini be'emet yish'ekha.”
As they stood in the March morning, wrapped in coats and tallits over coats to greet the yellow orange sun and the rose colored day, they chanted:
“Elohai neshama shenatata bi t’horah hi.
“Elohai neshama shenatata bi t’horah hi.
“Elohai neshama shenatata bi t’horah hi.
Often the night was what you needed, but the day was what you had, where the challenges of the future would be met, where what had to be faced would be faced. Day was where the living could be done, and for some of them the living had been hard, but there they were now, in the morning chill singing.
“Elohai neshama shenatata bi t’horah hi.
Ata b’ratah, ata y’tzartah, ata n’fachtah bi [v’ata m’shamrah b’kirbi v’ata atid litelah mimeni ulehachazirah bi leatid lavo. Kol z’man shehaneshaman b’kirbi modeh/ah ani lefaneicha, Adonai Elohai v’lohei avotai, Ribon kol hamasim, Adon kol haneshamot. Baruch ata Adonai, hamachazir neshamot lifgarim metim.”
That morning they drove out past even the Blue Jewell to have breakfast at “the best little rest area in Lothrop County.” Ted had biscuits with gravy, and Chayne had chicken and waffles. Chayne didn’t say anything when he woke in the room with Ted and felt the sun on his neck and back and ass, and turned sleepily to see Ted on his back, mouth open, looking like an angel in the sunrise. They brushed their teeth and drank coffee made with the little coffee machine in the hotel room, and then surprised themselves by making love hard and quick as the promise of daylight became an orange jewel of a sun in the pale blue sky, and the heat of love made them damp with sweat.
He didn’t say much while they ate together, because everything that Ted was about to say was all there was to say:
“I think things just got more complicated. Not easier.”
“Things were complicated when you showed up last night at my door.”
“Things were complicated when I left,” Ted said.
When he smiled he looked sorry about everything and heartbroken, and Chayne took his hand across the table.
“I’m sorry for making things worse,” Ted said. “I think in my head I wanted us to take care of unfinished business.”
“And we seem to have made even more business.”
“Did we?” Ted said, letting Chayne’s hand go.
“Yes, it seems we did. I thought I was done with you, Theodore, and then you show up and… you’re leaving, but I don’t feel done with you. I’m not leaving Rob, but… I don’t feel done with us. I don’t know what that means now, and maybe it doesn’t do to think about it. But when I do think about it, I understand that last night couldn’t have happened if I was over you.”
“I have never been over you,” Ted said frankly. “I am less over you than I ever was.”
“Well, you’re still going to be gone for another year and a half or something, right?”
“True.”
“Then our not being over each other doesn’t really have to get in the way of us living our lives.”
Ted turned from Chayne and laughed, shaking his head.
“You were always a practical one.”
“Well, yes,” Chayne said, going back to his waffles.
“Someone has to be.”
The van thrummed under her while Brad drove south, back to Geschichte Falls, Nehru slept in the passenger seat. Behind them, Cameron dozed, head against Marissa’s shoulder. Marissa stroked her hair and wondered Is this what a daughter feels like? Poor beautiful girl cursed with a mother who was cursed with lovelessness.
She remembered Hale waking her up, so gently, smiling down at her when nearly no one else was awake.
“Hey pretty!”
“Pretty wretched!”
“Pretty lovely,” the black haired Potowatami corrected.
“You wanna get married today?”
“Of course I want to get married—what, today?”
Hale had nodded.
On the roof of the clubhouse she’d said, “What about everyone else? What about all the invitations? What about…?”
And Hale had said, “Marry me. Today.”
And she had said yes.
Now, Hale on one side and a sleeping Cameron on the other, Marissa Gregg was aware of the life growing in her, received his arm about her waist. When Brad looked back and grinned, she didn’t scold him for not paying enough attention to the road, but leaned forward and swatted the tall man on his spiky head, and because she still had the prayer book from the synagogue, she now opened it to read the English of what they had been singing on the roof of the clubhouse in Hebrew:
“My God, the soul You have given me is pure. You created it, You formed it, and You breathed it into me. and You guard it while it is within me, and one day You will take it from me, and restore it to me in the time to come. As long as the soul is within me, I will thank You, Adonai, my God and God of my ancestors, Master of all works, Lord of all souls. Blessed are You, LORD, who restores souls to lifeless bodies.”
They sang a last time:
“Elohai neshama shenatata bi t’horah hi.
And Marissa whispered: “Amen.”
Here ends Part Two. Part Three will be the conclusion of this book, and the conclusion of our trilogy, where consequences will be faced, meetings and final partings will occur and things will reach their resolution.
