“What time is it?”
“Only nine,” Elias said.
“It feels like ten.”
“That’s because we’ve just been sitting in the apartment,” Elias told Dylan.
“Dad, are you sleepy?”
“A little,” Fenn admitted.
He stretched and looked around the apartment.
“I like what you all have done with the place. It’s a nice place to sleep. Everyone’s home isn’t. Some homes just… make you nervous.”
Dylan pushed himself off of the sofa and went across the room. There was rustling in the semi darkness, and then the light of a pillar candle. The white pillar was golden now and it shone on two brass figures. Dylan knelt down and wrestled with something, and then Fenn smelled incense and Dylan rung a small bell. Elias, whom to Fenn’s knowledge had never been particularly religious, sat up while Dylan, looking mildly reverent, nodded, and then returned to the sofa.
It was very quiet and the incense was burning on the small altar. Elias got up to open one of the great windows that overlooked the street. The small noises outside came into the apartment. Suddenly Dylan began to hum, to sing a little.
Saḿsāra dāvānala līḍha loka
trāṇāya kāruṇya ghanāghanatvam
Fenn turned to his son, and together they sang:
prāptasya kalyāṇa-guṇārṇavasya
vande guroḥ śrī-caraṇāravindam
When Dylan was about fifteen, the same year Todd officially became a bar mitzvah, Dylan had asked Fenn about God and what religion he should choose. Todd obviously cared for Judaism, though Dylan found it rather unamazing, and Tom Mesda was deeply Catholic though, again, Dylan, Catholic educated even now, couldn’t really get into it. He’d thought whatever was inside of Fenn should be inside of him. Fenn had some religion, something deep, though there wasn’t a particular building it belonged to. But Fenn had only told him to find it for himself.
Then Fenn had given him his Bhagavad Gita. It was that and other things, the old picture of Krishna, the music. When Great Grandma had died, Dylan sat his father down, and sang Sri Garuvastakam to him. He had taught himself the song, listening to the George Harrison recording. It was a gentle song that prepared one for death, settled the soul. Dylan, who had a fair voice, needed settling. He changed when he sang that song. His face lightened, his voice became reedy, his body was easy and light. When he had first sung it to his father, un-Fennlike tears came to the man’s eyes. Now the two sang together, their voices rising. Even Elias knew the words. His voice was deeper than theirs. Fenn’s fell into the middle.
mahāprabhoḥ kīrtana nṛtya gīta
vāditra mādyan manaso rasena
romāñca kampāśru tarańga bhājo
vande guroḥ śrī caraṇāravindam
On the altar, small and not like they were in his room, were Radha and Krishna. Dylan found himself—and that was the only way to describe it—singing to them every morning. He did not understand Jesus, and suspected Jesus wouldn’t understand him. There was too much bloodshed turned into self pity turned into atheism and human service in Judaism, and there was too much virginity in Catholicism. Once he read the Gita Govinda. Krishna ravished Radha in the forest, eyes mad with passion. Dylan knew all about that. Elias filled him with a passion, and the most tender moment he ever felt was that day when they had gotten a hotel room and Elias had made him fuck there all afternoon. He and Krishna were rather on the same path, so as they stopped singing, and night set in, Krishna was the only God that Dylan Mesda knew.
After the year of darkness, or rather the nearly two years—but that wasn’t as poetic—in which he had the affair with Ruthven, the foolishness in California, the random affairs, the affair with Rick Ferguson, he needed something. After fooling around with men three times his age in bathrooms and parks, he needed something. After the intense affair with Lance which ended in a shame he couldn’t describe even now, and the death of his great-grandmother something was needed.
When he was barely fourteen, heading to visit Ruthven in California, recently confirmed and indifferent to his father’s Catholicism, someone in class had said that religion was the need for comfort, or that people needed to “believe in something.” He would have agreed to this while still thinking the explanation fell short of the truth. But during those nights when he taught himself Sri Guruvastakam and locked himself in his room with the Bhagavad Gita he knew that was not it. Dylan had no center, and nothing he had seen could be his center. Fenn, in his quiet way, had given him an Upanishads, a Bhagavad Purana and a Dhammapada as well as the album Sri Guruvastakam had come from. To some people the time after Lula’s death was “the time he dated Ruthven” but not to Dylan. For him that was the time of Krishna Das and Ravi Shankar albums.
“If that’s what interests you,” Layla had told him, “you need to go talk to Radha.”
Radha Hatangady, now called Radha Turner, told him, “I grew up in church, my family’s Christian, and I hardly ever go to the Hindu temple around here. But I will take you.”
He watched her and learned to set up altars and sit quietly. The day she and Matt went to the temple with him, looking very much like outsiders, and Fenn had come along, he had felt something for the first time. In the face of these strange staring deities, he felt something, and when the fire, the aarti it was called, swished past them as the bells rang, it was like all the shit dropped away from him.
“I’m going to do this, Dad,” he said, later on.
Fenn nodded.
“You really don’t mind?”
“Did you think I would?”
“Dad won’t be pleased.”
“It’s not about him,” Fenn said.
“Dad gave me the Church, and Todd gave me Sabbath and Rosh Hoshanah,” Dylan said. “But none of that’s me. This is me,” he said, holding up a Ravi Shankar CD. “Even that temple isn’t me. I understand why Radha doesn’t go that often. This is me. Just me and God and sitting on the floor.”
Fenn said nothing while Dylan spoke, and then Dylan said, “I have a favor to ask you?”
“Yes?”
“You went to church with Dad, and you went to temple with Todd, and none of those things helped either one of us. But… really, I learned this from you. You didn’t force it on me. You just showed me.”
Dylan looked very shy, then he said, “Could you do it with me?”
“Yes,” Fenn told him.
“I do wonder how it works, though,” Fenn said when he and Dylan were sitting together, and Elias had gone to bed.
“I mean, you and Elias are such a couple. Where does Lance fit in?”
“He’s not here that often, so I guess one day we’ll figure it out,” Dylan said. “But right now it’s like… I feel the same way about Elias as you do about Todd.”
“What about Lance?”
Dylan thought about it.
“The way you do about Dad, probably. It’s different. Maybe like the way you feel about Dan Malloy.
“And then Elias and Lance have their thing. It’s very different from what I have with Lance, or what I have with Elias. And then we have our family thing. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“I think you’ve described it just fine.”
“I don’t tell anyone else stuff like this because they don’t get it. They don’t really listen. I’ll be honest. I’m not saying stuff doesn’t happen—”
“Dylan.”
“I was just about to say, ‘But I’m also not going to burden you with the details.’”
“I do appreciate that,” Fenn said. “I’m not stupid, or without imagination, and I hope you all do have a good time together, but…”
“Let’s talk about something else?”
“Well, really, let’s talk about anything else.”
Early the next morning, Elias was cooking breakfast.
“Does this mean I have to get up?” Fenn muttered, stifling a yawn.
“Dad, you don’t have to do a thing,” Dylan said. He sat on the side of the bed.
“Eli just really took to cooking this year is all. He’s really good at it, and he does it all the time.”
“And what do you do?” Fenn leaned on his side.
“I’m really good at grocery shopping.”
“Well, then, that is something,” Fenn said.
“You always did the cooking,” said Dylan.
Fenn nodded, “And always despised the grocery store.
“I can get up. I will get up for Elias. Anything else would be impolite.”
Elias Anderson, generally the quieter of the Anderson twins, embraced Fenn and then embraced Dylan when they entered the kitchen.
“I made French toast,” Elias said. “Dylan got the bread from that bakery down the street, so it’s not the soggy type. It’s just like what you get in the restaurant. And then,” Elias added with a pause for effect. “I got crazy and did the fresh cut fruit thing.”
Dylan looked around for something to do and then, putting his hands together, said, “I can set the table.”
“What can I do?” Fenn asked.
“You can sit down,” Elias told him. “And have a cup of coffee.”
Halfway through breakfast, Elias said, “I shouldn’t have waken you. You look like you need to go back to sleep.”
“As a rule Dad doesn’t get up until ten,” Dylan said.
Elias looked shocked.
“Has that always been true?”
Fenn nodded, and so did Dylan.
“Then I really got carried away.”
Fenn got up and kissed the top of Elias’s head.
“The only way you got carried away is in making an awesome breakfast. I remember when you were just a baby, and now you’re a chef.”
He turned around and asked Dylan, “What time are we going to see Brendan and Sheridan?”
“I don’t think I marked out a specific time, but we should probably head out in about fifteen minutes.”
They went to the Morse stop, and took the El to Howard. They got off on Dempster and walked while Elias wondered what life would be like if they had a car.
“Lance wants one,” Dylan noted. But he said, “I like the El. I like just flying over the city looking down at it. That’s the best part of Chicago.”
Elias weighed this: “I’m not sure if it’s the best part of Chicago. But it’s a nice part.”
Fenn announced that they had arrived, pointing to the little house ahead of them.
The door opened quickly, and Sheridan Klasko marched out in jeans, a tee shirt and a vaguely military haircut with a brown baby dangling from his arms.
“Ahhhhh!” Sheridan gave a general greeting noise. “Everybody’s here! Happy Birthday, Dylan. Get on in here, Fenn.”
“Where’s your serious husband?” Elias asked while Sheridan embraced Fenn.
“Oh, shut it,” Sheridan said cuffing the boy on the back of his head. “He’s in his office.”
As they walked up the porch steps, Fenn noted the sign that said, Brendan Miller Attorney at Law, and then came through the living room, and while Sheridan walked the others about the house, he went into the office where a sharp shouldered, blond, youngish man in a burgundy dress shirt was typing.
Fenn leaned against the wall while Brendan typed on. This was no case. It was a book and Brendan had told him all about it, and then Layla had told him all about what Brendan had told her about it. He waited a while then finally whispered:
“Brendan.”
With a small shriek, Brendan jumped and turned around.
He looked exasperated at first, and then grinned and came toward his old friend.
“When did you get here?”
“Here in your house or here in this city?”
Before Brendan could answer, Fenn said, “In this house, about five minutes. In this city, yesterday afternoon.”
“I thought you were coming this afternoon.”
“I’m a constant surprise.”
Fenn sat down in the chair across from Brendan.
Brendan sat down, straightening his black pants, looking very much like a man of business.
“Have you seen my baby?”
“Yes, Officer Sheridan brought him to the door.”
“My Raphael’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
“Do you always call him yours.”
“You always call Dylan your boy, and he’s twenty-two.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you always say my boy and my Dylan.”
“Um,” Fenn stuck out his bottom lip. “I guess I do.”
“You know what I want to do?” Sheridan said.
“Tell me about your book?”
“Well, sort of,” Brendan said. “Well, no. Definitely. I’m really excited about it. But I want you to see my baby.’
“Bren—”
“I mean, I want to see you seeing the baby. I haven’t seen that yet.”
Fenn was about to protest when Brendan shouted: “Sheridan!”
“Holy crap, Bren!” Sheridan said a few moments later, entering the office followed by Dylan and Elias.
“Alright,” Brendan said. He stood up and put his arm around Sheridan, and then drew Raphael between them.
“Check it out,” Brendan said, “The Miller Klaskos.”
“Actually, we can just be the Millers,” Sheridan said. “I was never that fond of my last name.”
“Neither is Layla,” Fenn said. “But she still married your brother.”
“Shush,” Brendan put a finger to his lip. “Check us out. Daddy, Daddy and baby.”
Brendan’s voice went up at the word baby.
“Should we get a kid?” Elias turned to Dylan, who frowned.
“You don’t just pick up kids at the grocery store.”
“Actually, Fenn sold your dad’s DNA at a grocery store.”
Dylan frowned at him.
“Now, Fenn,” Brendan said, still in his pose, “do me and Sheridan not look hot as a family? With this little man in the middle?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Elias remembered, “I’m you and Lance’s little man in the middle.”
“And we do make a hot little family too,” Dylan nodded.
“How does sex work out with you guys?” Sheridan asked.
“Carefully,” Dylan answered.
“Yes, Brendan,” Fenn said, ignoring it all and offering his finger to Raphael. “You all are a beautiful family.”
“I never thought I would have a kid,” Brendan admitted. “I mean, not when I was with Kenny, and that was a long time.”
“Never?” said Fenn.
“Funny, isn’t it? I don’t know if it’s because I was old or what, but after I’d been with Sheridan a year, the first thing we thought was, let’s have a kid. I wonder what that was about.”
“It was about when he got shot,” Elias said, baldly.
Brendan blinked, looking very troubled as he remembered that.
“That’s right. I’m still scared for him. That’s one reason we moved to Evanston for good. Seeing him in that hospital bed terrified me.”
“I’m a cop, babe,” Sheridan said, incongruously letting Raphael suck on his finger. “It’s more than wearing that hot black uniform that turns you on so much.”
Brendan gave him a lopsided smile and said, “I just knew I wanted your son.”
He turned to Fenn, “And then Sheridan was with Logan for years. But I feel like he was the one for me, all along, and we just weren’t ready for each other. And then as soon as we were together I knew I wanted a family with him. Funny.”
“Is it as funny as being with Todd for ten years and then having a child with your ex?” Fenn quipped.
“Well, now Fenn, that was just strange! I mean, it worked out. Clearly it worked out. And when Dylan came along, Tom hadn’t been with Lee that long, so it didn’t really make that much since for Lee to adopt him. But… Yeah… who knew that would work out?”
“So this—what you see me typing—is the last book,” Brendan was saying.
“You did the trilogy? Just that quick?”
Brendan nodded.
“The first one was during that year when me and Kenny split up over Christmas, and when I got with Sheridan. I didn’t think there would be a second one, but then Sheridan had his accident and writing kept my mind off of all of my worry. And now there is a third.”
“The second isn’t out yet, though?” said Fenn.
“Well, the first is hardly out,” Brendan said. “That’s the thing. In my mind we’re at the end, and in the minds of the five people who read it, we’re only in book one.”
“Well, as one of the five people, I’m eager for book two.”
Brendan gave a wry smile and then said, “You know what? And this is not a complaint—well, it sort of is. But you know what? I don’t get people.”
Brendan took the laptop from his knees and set it down on the little foot rest in front of him.
“It’s not that I’m such a great writer—”
“I think you are.”
“Well, thank you, Fenn.
“But it’s not that. It’s that I think I’m an honest writer. I think I’m really serious and really care, and I’m really telling my truth. I mean, I remember what it was like to not be honest, and I don’t ever want to be there again. But nobody wants to read about us. People want to read about New York or LA. Even people who live here—we’re the worst—we don’t want to read about ourselves.
“And gay people? Oh, shit, I mean faggots don’t even read. And I don’t just mean the dumb ones from the outskirts of Rossford who are building meth labs or the stupid ones going to clubs all the time. I mean gay men don’t read. They’re really a bunch of fucking idiots. But then men are idiots too. But then people as a whole—America is just this one dumb ass country that wants to see anything but itself. It’s like, show me anything that’s not me! It screams it at the top of its lungs, Fenn. Because it hates itself. And then I come along like a dufus and write about my life, about the reality I see. And who wants that?
“You want it. Todd wants it. Five people in the country want it.”
Fenn said nothing, and Brendan sighed and said, “You’re going to get up and go see Chay and Casey and probably Logan when you get back, and the thing is, if I stayed an ambulance chasing lawyer, I’d make more than I make, and if I was doing porn like them I’d be making more still. There is something so wrong, so fucked up about our values, I hardly know why I sit here and write paragraph after paragraph.”
“You write paragraph after paragraph,” Fenn said, “because even while you sit here telling me your very real and honest lament, there is another part of you that is wondering how to put this diatribe into the mouth of one of your characters in the novel you’re writing.”
Brendan looked at him, startled, and then he grinned out of the side of his mouth and burst out laughing.
“Holy shit, you’re right.”
While Brendan clapped his knees and chuckled, Fenn explained:
“I’ve been an actor for over thirty years. I had two writers in my family before you, Bren. If you were being kicked to death by a herd of reindeer, there would always be a part of you saying: this is going to make one hell of a story.”
