CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER FOUR
“Are you going down with us to see the guys?”
“No,” Sheridan said, looking at the crib where Raphael slept. “I got a kid.”
Dylan rolled his eyes and said, “You don’t have to take the baby with you, and it’s only an El ride away. Or a bus. Are we taking the 147?
Elias shook his head.
“We’re taking the Red Line and getting off at Clybourn I think.”
“Well, I’m just going to stay up here with the husband for now,” Sheridan said.
“I think Logan will be there.”
“Then I’m definitely staying.”
“Resentful much?”
“You know what, Dylan,” Sheridan said, folding his arms over his chest. “I don’t think you’d just rush to hang out with Kenny and Ruthven.”
“How fucked up is that?” Elias began.
“Careful,” Sheridan said, running to the cradle. “Baby ears.”
“Baby ears don’t know shit about fuck,” Elias said, tiredly, while Sheridan covered Raphael’s ears and frowned.
“But like I was saying, can you imagine, Dill? Your ex is with Brendan’s ex. How much sense does that make?”
“Actually, it makes more sense than when he was with me. I get your point, Sheridan.”
“I care for Logan, but he’s still in that life. And I’m not judging, I’m just saying it was my life for too long, and I don’t want it anymore, not even a little part of it. For a long time I had a significant other whose bread and butter was made,” here Sheridan mouthed, “having sex” then continued, “with other people besides me. And then I get Bren, and it changes things. I mean, I’m just a different person with him. It’s hard to really believe in the life I had before.”
“How old is Logan, now?” Dylan said.
Sheridan screwed his face up. “I dunno. At least thirty-five. I thought he’d get past all that, but I guess he’s just a career porn man, now.”
“How would you handle me being a career porn man?” Elias asked Dylan.
“You really think you’re funny sometimes, don’t you?” Dylan said.
“I was just asking.”
“Actually, Dylan, you let him get away with so much,” Sheridan said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Whaddo you mean, let me get away?” Elias said.
“Elias is the prince of the household,” Dylan said. “It’s always been like that.”
“I’m the baby first, and now I’m the prince?” Elias said.
“Shush, baby,” Dylan told him, wrapping his arm around Elias and patting his head while the younger boy frowned. “You know I wuv you.”
“So, in this story Merritt—you probably don’t remember Merritt—”
“I just read the first book, remember?” Fenn said. “Merritt was one of the little boys.”
“Well, he turns into a pretty important character by the second book, and now he’s looking for love.”
“Boy love or girl love?”
“Boy love,” Brendan said. “Because that’s the only kind of love I want to write about. Only he’s not finding it, and the way things are going, I don’t think he will. That sounds sort of selfish. Because I did. But I feel like he won’t.
“I feel like I got lucky, and you got lucky, and people really aren’t that great. I mean, I’ve really become a big ass pessimist since I started writing.
“I struggle between the happy life I have and then what I see with other people. I hope for so much for so many people. And then there’s what I see in these court cases. Or, if I think about it, in our lives. I dunno,” Brendan pushed his hands together. “I feel like in our house things are good and we have to keep them that way, but it’s so easy to fall off into the bad. Even here, it’s like an island of joy. And people on the outside aren’t happy. Not really.”
“Dylan tells me he regrets so much,” said Fenn, “And I tell him that I am three times his age. Just wait till he knocks on sixty.”
Brendan shook his head. “Wait till he knocks on thirty-five.”
“You have regrets?”
“Of course. Regrets or wonders. Many of them have to do with Kenny. I wonder if I was good to him. And then I wonder if we just went on too long.”
“Do you ever—”
“Think about getting him back?” Brendan guessed.
Fenn nodded.
“No. We had a long time. Eighteen years. And now he’s with that tool bag Ruthven?”
“I know,” Fenn said. Then he remembered, “Technically, Ruthven is family.”
“No he isn’t,” Bren said impatiently. “He’s Todd’s family. I’m your fucking family, Fenn. Your cousin’s married to my sister.”
“And his first born is Meredith Affren’s son,” Fenn completed in amazed tones. “Too much incest. Another reason to leave Rossford.”
“What?” Brendan sat up.
“If you can leave, then I can leave too.”
“Well, I mean, yeah. I mean… of course you can,” Brendan said. “But… I didn’t know that was in the cards.”
“When I was very young I said I would come back here,” Fenn explained. “And now I am not very young, and I am here. So, I’ve just been thinking.”
“Well,” Brendan thought of it. “Half of us are coming here anyway, and you know I’d love to have you here. You’re like my fairy godfather, no pun intended. I just had no idea you were thinking about coming here for keeps.”
“Oh, I’m thinking of so much,” Fenn told him, pulling his knees to his chest. “Thinking of the past, thinking about how we all got from here to there. You’re thinking your way to the end of your book, and I’m thinking my way to the beginning of the story.
“That’s the funny thing. It’s not that there’s a problem. It’s not that there’s anything bad, and yet I feel like something has to be solved. I blink and everyone’s getting older. You were a little child once. I remember it. Layla’s little friend, and then you were a teenager, looking up to Dan Malloy, and I remember when Dan Malloy was a teenager and now he’s sixty, nearly. Just like me. Things go quicker and quicker and I feel that before they go too quickly forward I have to go backward, remember how it started, where we came from. Remember, and remember accurately.”
Fenn shrugged. “Maybe that’s the real reason I’m here, or think of coming back here. So that I can remember. Maybe that’s why old people so often fall back into the past. But old people lie. They say it was better in the past. They say, remember the good old days. I am like you. I am a creator. I want to remember. And so I have to go back.”
“That’s crazy!”
“But it’s true.”
“Hey,” Dylan said, typing on his laptop as the train raced back to Loyola, “if you say it is, I believe you. I just never heard of that.”
Fenn was half asleep and yawned while Elias said, “I saw it on this National Geographic special last night. They used to—the Incas or the Mayas, I can’t remember which—turn their royal dead bodies into jerky and then march them around once a year.”
“Holy shit!” Dylan said, then covered his mouth. “Sorry, Dad.”
Fenn yawned, turned over a little and shrugged as the train stopped on South Street.
“You found it?”
“Well, at first I just typed in jerky people,” Dylan said. “And all I got was a lot of hillbillies holding sticks of jerky. And then I typed in jerkied people.”
“Did you do dehydrated corpses?” said his father.
“That’s exactly what I did,” Dylan said. “And boy is this gross.”
“I used to think it would be interesting to taxidermy people,” Elias said. “You know, the way they do horses and all. Then instead of going to the cemetery, you could just have Grandma relaxing in her rocking chair, and Grandpa in the kitchen, perpetually standing in front of the fridge thinking about what to eat.”
“You are a boy with a very warped since of humor,” Fenn told him.
“Why thank you,” Elias said, giving a slight bow as the train pulled into the yard at the Howard Street station. “Thank you, very much.”
“Well, while we’re at it,” Dylan said, stepping off the train and closing his laptop, “we could just have whole taxidermy villages instead of cemeteries.”
“Right! With crossing guards and little taxidermy kids crossing the street. Taxidermy dogs barking from the yard.”
“Of course,” Dylan noted, “the whole thing would have to be indoors.”
“I was just about to point that out,” Fenn said, not missing a beat as they stepped onto the Red Line train that would take them home.
Even though there were only two stops between here and home, all three of them yawned the entire ride.
“What should we have for dinner tonight?”
“I can cook,” Fenn said, but in a voice that Dylan felt was more last resort and despairing, than sincere.
“We should just look on Grub Hub and have something delivered,” Dylan decided.
“I wanted to go to the beach,” Elias told them, and then he said, “But after I take a nap.”
Walking up Magnolia, toward the apartment, Elias looked up and said, “Did we leave the lights on?”
Dylan shook his head. “We never leave the lights on.”
“Except for this time,” Fenn said.
Walking down the rows of brick three storeys, they came to their building and walked up the two flights. But before Elias reached for his key, he cocked his head.
“Wha?” Dylan began. But there was noise from within, and he pushed Elias’s hand away, and then twisted the knob and entered, bellowing, “Who’s here?”
Fenn hadn’t planned for Dylan to put himself in harm’s way like that, and he put out a hand, pulling his son back, and walking into the living room ahead of him. He blinked rapidly at what he saw.
Sitting up straight, and startled more than terrified, was no burglar, but Maia Meradan.
Maia Meradan was of a height with Dylan and Fenn, with the same light skin as her mother and wide, mildly offended green eyes, under a clear forehead and crinkly black hair that was tied in a ponytail.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Dylan demanded.
“What kind of greeting is that for family?” Maia murmured. Then she turned to Fenn and said, “Am I right? Am I not the closest thing both of these bastards have to a sister?”
Dylan took a long breath.
“Excuse me, Maia. I should have said: ‘What in the world are you doing in my apartment?’”
“Well, that’s better,” Maia decided, sitting back down, and crossing one leg over the other. “Not much better, mind you, but better.”
And then she said, “I’m fleeing.
“Elias,” she turned to the younger, dark haired man. “I’ve left your brother. Me and Bennett are through.”
