EIGHTEEN
THE
END
OF IT
Faye Matthison could not imagine leaving out anyone and there was not enough stationary for all of Lothrop County, so no invitations were mailed. It happened during the season of Easter, on one of those high spring days where the trees were blossoming and the air smelled of lilac and magnolia. The sun stayed up longr now with its gentle, welcome heat, and everyone was feeling kind of hopeful.
“Kind of under a cloud,” Anigel said, “but kind of hopeful all at the same time.”
Gilead Story was there with Sharonda and Mark Young, and Chris Knapp had come with Cameron Dwyer. Earlier that morning, Cameron looked at her father and said, “Does that Lynn make you happy?”
“Does Chris make you happy?”
“I see,” Cameron said. “Well played.”
She said, “Whatever the reason, our first family hasn’t worked out so well, so whaddo you say the four of us sit down and get to know one another? You know Chris and you know how good he is, and if Lynn makes you feel good, then, we need to know each other too.”
Bill kissed his daughter on her forehead.
“You are the sweetest, wisest, cleverest, most beautiful girl in the world,” he told Cameron.
And when her father said it, she believed it.
In the end, Chuck Shrader’s court consisted of Jeff Cordino, Bill Dwyer, Dave Armstrong and Thom. Faye threw in Patti with Anigel and Shannon, Sharon, her sister Valerie, Rob, Jill and Jewell, and Chayne brought her down the aisle of Saint Adjeanet’s while Russell bore the rings, and then the two of them promptly went up to the choir loft to sing for the rest of the Mass.
Faye had played with all sorts of riffs on marriage, thinking she might wear the green dress and red rebozo like Frida Kahlo, or a top hat with her wedding dress, but in the end she decided that when you’re almost forty you only get married once, and there’s no reason to fuck it up, so she wore Sharon’s white gown that Chayne’s mother had married Graham in long ago, and when she came to Chuck, he pushed back her veil and her copper hair was penny bright, and she looked girlish and gentle, and he kissed her forehead and took her hand, his eyes full of adoration.
As Anigel stood watching she said, “I never knew how beautiful it could be to give yourself to someone.”
“You’re thinking about marriage now?” Shannon said in surprise.
And Anigel turned her head in surprise and said, “I’m thinking about being a nun.”
Rob’s head was on his lap, and while Chayne stroked his hair, he read to all in the room.
“'He quite deserted! We separated!' she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. 'Who is to separate us, pray? They'll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff. Oh, that's not what I intend - that's not what I mean! I shouldn't be Mrs. Linton were such a price demanded! He'll be as much to me as he has been all his lifetime. Edgar must shake off his antipathy, and tolerate him, at least. He will, when he learns my true feelings towards him. Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars? whereas, if I marry Linton I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother's power.'”
“I like this,” mouthed Cody.
Anigel nodded, and Russell, who had never read Wuthering Heights, let alone heard it, felt as if he was hearing some truth he’d needed but never known.
This was what there was of Faye’s famed literary society. It was fine and quiet, but Chayne thought that in the future they might shake it up again.
Chayne continued:
“‘With your husband's money, Miss Catherine?' I asked. 'You'll find him not so pliable as you calculate upon: and, though I'm hardly a judge, I think that's the worst motive you've given yet for being the wife of young Linton.'
“'It is not,' retorted she; 'it is the best! The others were the satisfaction of my whims: and for Edgar's sake, too, to satisfy him. This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself. I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you….’”
“Yes,” Russell heard Brad murmur beside Cody, “that’s exactly it.”
Russell was afraid to look at Cody, to see those brown trousers stretched over firm legs, that chocolate hair, its bronze tips touching the collar of the almost comical cardigan, to gaze upon those hands which had been in his, held his own. Above all he could not look into those eyes.
“What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and HE remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. - My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable; and - '
He looked to Cody and saw Cody looking at him. They stared into each other’s eyes for so long Russell wondered if anyone saw, and then realized he did not care.
The tip of Nehru’s cigarette glowed as he inhaled deeply and, half smiling, rubbed his hands on the thighs of his snug and faded jeans.
“Only a couple of more days, right?”
“I still can’t believe you and Cameron were the only people at Hale and Marissa’s wedding,” Cody said.
“It was a spur of the moment thing,” Hale said, “Cameron was in the car.”
And of course, though no one had to say it, everyone knew Hale would never have been married without Brad and Nehru at his side.
Returning to the original subject, Brad said, “So, when do the test results come back?”
“In a couple of days, I think.”
Then Cody said, resting his guitar on his lap. “You don’t think it’s stupid?”
“No,” Nehru shook his head. “I think it’s brilliant. I hope it works out. I more than hope it works out.”
He looked from Russell, sitting at one of the booths with his friends, to Cody.
“You will always have a place with us.”
Brad nodded in agreement.
“We have more than enough love and more than enough room for you. But you and him have a thing. You have a real thing. I don’t know what you’ll do if things turn out, but I know you need to do it, whatever it is.”
They were sitting on the stage of Noble Red, but not playing tonight. Now Brad took his guitar and began strumming. While he watched Hale’s new wife, pregnant with his child, sitting with Cameron and Chris Knapp he sang.
“Omaha, somewhere in middle America
If you're right to the heart of matters
It's the heart that matters more
I think you better turn your ticket in
And get your money back at the door
Oh yeah…”
“Snow again,” Gilead observed, looking out of the large picture window of the Noble Red.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mark said. “This has got to be the last snow of the year.
“Where’s Anigel?”
Mark’s eyes roved the room.
“Ross is in town,” Russell said. “So are my cousins Jimmy and Macy. They showed up and she disappeared with them. I think they’ll be back tomorrow. You know, I like that synagogue, but not as much as the one we went to up north.”
It was Friday night, and properly dark now, but as evening had set in, Nehru, Mark and Gilead had arrived and taken Russell with them to the synagogue downtown which Russell had only seen but never entered.
“Well, I agree,” Mark said, “but the drawback of that pretty synagogue is—”
“It’s up north and we’re here,” Gilead finished.
Mark nodded.
“Well,” Russell said, “the good thing is for an hour I didn’t feel like a crazy heathen who had lost all his senses. And I didn’t feel like I do now.”
Mark looked at him, but Gilead said, “And how do you feel?”
“I’m so nervous,” Russell’s hands clasped and he shivered.
“Look,” Gilead said, “No matter what the test says, I think you should just love who you love.”
“You’d support that?” Russell raised an eyebrow.
“Of course I would,” Gilead said. “You used to be at peace, and when you don’t have Cody, you aren’t at peace.”
“There… there’s always Flipper.”
“You’re a busy man,” Mark shook his head.
Gilead ignored this.
“When you don’t have Cody,” he repeated, “you aren’t at peace.”
Marissa had left the table where Cameron and Chris sat and when she did, Cam touched her hand affectionately, and Russell saw that none of them was without love, that no matter what that horrible Dena Dwyer was, there was love enough here for Cameron who leaned into Chris’s arms, and as the young man smiled, holding her, Cameron and Russell’s eyes met and they were both filled with light.
From their window seat they could see, across the field, the shadow of a great brick building.
“We can go tomorrow,” Ross said, “but how strange, considering everything.”
“That was the synagogue where I caught something,” Anigel shook her head, turning from the window, “in this little town. I caught it back at the monastery too, and I guess I caught it at Saint Adjeanet’s on Christmas. Later on Easter.”
“Caught something?” Jimmy grinned at her, his eyes like little beads as he pulled on his cigarette.
“Caught God,” Macy said.
“You make him sound like a disease,” Jimmy laughed so hard he hacked on his cigarette smoke and Ross clapped him on the back.
“He sort of feels like it,” Anigel said.
“Do you really, really think that you might be a nun?” Macy asked.
“I really, really think that when I see happy couples, when I see people in love, I don’t envy them,” Anigel said.
“And I don’t want to be them either. I remember that line in Shakespeare, ‘Get thee to a nunnery.’ In Hamlet, right? And I know that’s not what he meant, but that’s where I want to be. I want to be silent and private with what I’ve found, and if what I’ve found is God, well then so be it.”
“We’ll leave next week,” Ross said.
“If it’s you too, how is it private?”
“Jimmy, shut up,” Macy said.
“It’s us and an entire community,” Ross said, needlessly.
“How long?” Macy asked.
Anigel smiled, clasping her hands and shaking her black hair behind her head.
“The rest of Easter. Till Pentecost.”
Cody entered 1421 solemn as a storm cloud, and Russell was already there. Chayne was trying to look together and untroubled, but Rob was looking grimmer than ever.
Rob handed Cody the envelope.
Cody looked to Russell, whose face was as white as his eyes were large.
“I feel like we already know,” Cody said. “I feel like we’re just being plain desperate.”
“Open it,” Chayne said, his voice flat, but his tapping fingers betraying his impatience.
“Or I will.”
Cody nodded, and he was suddenly sorrowful beyond sad because he knew that all of this was useless, and as he opened the envelope and unfolding the paper he read and read to the end, and then looked up again and was silent.
“Well?”
It was Rob who prompted him.
Cody looked to Russell and handed him the paper.
It was not straightforward, Russell understood why Cody had to look at it more than once, but he came to the end and then came to the end again and finally said:
“I am not your brother.”
Chayne let out a great breath between his teeth and almost sank into his chair. Rob burst into a smile.
“We…” Russell said, “are not related.”
Cody shook his head over and over again, and Russell put his face in his hands and wanted to cry.
“Justine Barnard…” Cody almost swore.
“She wasn’t lying,” Rob said. “An easy mistake. Sad to move away. A night with some other boy. Her intentions were good. She never sought Thom out.”
Cody was sniffling and nodding his head.
“I’m just afraid to believe it,” he said. “But it’s true. It’s true, isn’t it?”
Russell was wiping his face with his hands, and so it was Chayne who said, “Yes, it’s true.”
Rob insisted there be a fire in the hearth, and after a while he realized Chayne wasn’t much good for things like that.
“You sit back. Let me do this.”
“Where did a rich kid like you learn to make fires?”
“In camp. Rich kids go to camp.”
“That is true,” Chayne reflected.
“How do you think we make fires at the ski lodge?” Rob said.
“Don’t worry. As long as you keep cooking, I’ll keep making the fires.”
Rob looked natural out there in his red and black checked jacket, his blond hair peeking from his grey skull cap, and as he brought in wood, Chayne prepared cider and took blankets out. The sky was darkening now as the fire rose and Rob joined him on the sofa, kissing Chayne gently, and then with growing passion.
“You’re sure no one’s coming home tonight?” Rob raised an eyebrow.
Chayne chuckled and said, “Anigel’s at her retreat with Ross.”
“I wonder if she’ll be the same.”
“None of us is the same for very long,” Chayne said. “I imagine she’ll be just what she is. Only moreso.”
