“Do you have any facial expression?” Layla whispered to her uncle, over the phone.
“I’m sure I do.”
“Whatever it is, hold it,” she said. “And then listen.”
Fenn realized he was frozen in a grin, and then said, “Alright.”
“I just got a call from Meredith’s stepson.”
“Uh huh. Meg Callan’s son.”
“Right. He tells me Eileen Wehlan is in a hospital in South Bend. She’s dying, Fenn.”
Fenn said nothing, and Layla said, “Your expression? Right now? How is it?”
“The same,” Fenn said through a grin.
“Will you tell Dylan?”
Fenn lifted a finger because Dylan was signaling him. He said, “I’m taking this outside.”
In the hall that smelled of cooking and carpet and, in some way he couldn’t explain, Chicago, Fenn continued as he went down the steps.
“He doesn’t love her. Or if he does the love is covered in hate from the time she left. He certainly doesn’t know her.”
“I know. But doesn’t he need to know? And how would he feel if he wasn’t told?”
“Especially with so much of his blood family in the city.”
“Right,” Layla said.
“Well… And you want me to tell him?”
“Ed does.”
“I think that’s a mistake. I think Ed should tell him. Ed is his family.”
“He’s actually a little afraid of Dylan.”
Fenn sat down on the little stone bench in the courtyard of the apartment building. A way off, he could hear the rattle of the El train. Students were walking down the street.
“Fine,” said Fenn. “Fine. I’ll let him know. I’ll tell him now.”
When he was off the phone with Layla, when he was feeling that it was already a very long night, Fenn made another call.
“Hello,” Dylan said.
“Come down here,” Fenn said.
Above, the curtain opened and Dylan looked down. Fenn waved to him.
“Um, alright,” his son said.
A couple of minutes later, Dylan was there and Fenn touched the seat.
“That was a call from Layla that came from your cousin Ed who called our house.”
“Alright?” Dylan sat up, his senses tingling.
“Your mother is dying, and she wants to see you,” Fenn told him.
“I don’t even know her,” Dylan said. “She’s been dead to me for years. She was dead to me when she walked out of my life.”
Fenn said nothing.
“I don’t know what to do with her. I… You were the only mother I ever had. And then she came along.”
Dylan shook his head.
“And she sure in the hell wasn’t you.”
“Who is?” Fenn tried to make a joke of it.
“And now she really is dying. And now she…”
Dylan bit his lower lip, and his hands turned into light fists.
“You don’t have to do anything,” Fenn told him. “You don’t really owe her anything.”
“How could she do this?” Dylan wondered. “She hasn’t been a part of my life. She gave me away. She left me with Dad, and then walked away for ten years.”
“But she did come back.”
Dylan looked at his father, angry.
“What the hell are you trying to do, Fenn?”
“Be fair to her,” he said.
“Well, don’t be.”
“I have to be,” Fenn said.
“Tom is your father and that’s all there is to it. He’s your blood, and even if he never met this woman, she and he are your natural parents. Everything in me wants to tell you to forget Eileen Wehlan. I want you to hate her. A little bit. That’s not right.”
They were both very quiet and Dylan said, “There’s no way you could possibly think she means more to me than you.”
“Parents ought to be above such things.”
“Dad,” Dylan looked up at Fenn and repeated, “there’s no way you could possibly think she means more to me than you?”
Fenn paused and then, while Dylan held his hand, he said, “No.”
“Good.”
After a while Dylan said, “What would you do?”
“I can’t imagine,” Fenn told him.
“What—”
“You want me to tell you what you should do.”
“Yes!” Dylan said, urgently.
“You know I rarely do that.”
“I wish you would.”
Dylan stood up. He stood over his father, his hands clasped.
“Tell me. For once just tell me.”
That was all Fenn needed. He nodded.
He told Dylan: “Go see your mother before it’s too late.”
Elias was half asleep next to Dylan while he talked on the phone in the middle of the night.
“I don’t want you to go see her, Baby,” Lance said.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better,” said Dylan, “I don’t want to go see her, either.”
“Good, then don’t.”
“Seriously, Lance?” Dylan said. “Could you not see your mother if she was on her death bed?”
“But my mother…” there was a pause on the other end of the line while Lance sought a better way to answer, “actually was a mother. Is a mother.”
“I’m going, Lance,” Dylan said, finally. “I had the biggest battle, and that was with myself.”
“Well…” Lance was looking for something to say. “If you’re going to go—”
“I am.”
“Then could you at least wait for me to get back? I’ll go with you.”
“Lance, I get the feeling that there isn’t a lot of time to spare. I don’t want to go at all. I’m leaving in the morning. Eli’s coming with me.”
“What about Fenn?”
“No, he’s going back to Rossford. Or maybe he’s staying here and waiting till I get back.” Dylan shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
“Well, if I can’t change your mind…”
“You can’t, Lance.”
“In that case… I love you. Put Elias on the phone.”
“Elias, wake up—” Dylan began.
“I didn’t know he was asleep.”
“Lance?” Elias said into the phone.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, kid.”
“It’s alright. I’m not really asleep.”
“Are you letting him do this?”
“Letting him?” Elias murmured.
“Elias, don’t play.”
“Well, in that case, yes I am. I am allowing it.”
“But, you’re going with him?”
“Of course. Hold on.”
Elias climbed out of bed and took the phone down the hall to the bathroom.
“Look,” he whispered, “Dylan has a ton of regrets already, and if his mother dies and he doesn’t go to her, he’s going to regret that forever. So, yes, he’s going. And what’s more, Fenn told him to.”
“He what?”
“Because you know what? Fenn’s no fool, either.”
Lance said nothing, and Elias knew his brow was furrowed and he was playing with his fingers, opening up one then the other then closing them back.
“We’re going there. We’re coming back, and we’ll be at Union Station to pick you up on Sunday. Alright?”
After a long pause Lance said, “Alright.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“We’re going to bed.”
“Alright.”
“By the way,” Elias said.
“Yeah?”
“Maia’s living with us.”
And then Elias closed the phone, shut it off for the night and headed to bed.
“So, the other day, while I was in the middle of sucking Keith’s dick, he bust out with, ‘I think I’d like to go to church again.’”
Keith Redmond gave Jonah Layton a disgusted look while Maggie gave him an amazed one and Jonah said, “That is exactly the look that was on my face. Well, actually, a combination of both of yours.”
“How did you get so foul, and when did you think it was appropriate to bring that up in public?” Keith demanded.
“We’re not in public,” Jonah said. “We’re at home, and Maggie’s not public. She’s Maggie.
“Besides,” he looked at her, “who in the hell has a religious experience in the middle of a blowjob?”
“I’m getting up,” Keith said. “I have to go to work. And by the way, you really do make me mad sometimes, Lije.”
“Are you not going to kiss me goodbye?”
“I’ll think about it,” Keith said, heading toward the bathroom to finish dressing.
“Um, maybe I did step a little too far with that one,” Jonah said.
“Can’t admit it, though. Keith’ll smell the blood and never stop bitching.”
“Did he really?” Maggie got up and came to the couch where her friend sat. “Just like that?”
“Does Ed ever do strange things in the middle of?”
“Truthfully, I did convince him to ruin Dena and Milo’s house by repeatedly fellating him, but no, Ed never had a come to Jesus moment in the middle of a blowjob. That is distinctly weird.”
“Speaking of the coming to Jesus business, what about Ed’s aunt and all of that?”
“He called over to Fenn’s house for Dylan’s number. In the end it was Fenn who told Dylan about his mom.”
“That’s a rough one.”
“Your mother left you too,” Maggie said. She wasn’t trying to be painful, but she didn’t want to soft soap it.
Jonah nodded.
“What would you have done? If she was dying, what would you do?”
“A long time ago me and Keith and Sean went to visit my mother,” Jonah said. “I went to find her, long after she left me and my father. That was my goodbye to her.”
“So you wouldn’t go see her?”
“My experience is different,” Jonah Layton said. “Dylan never said goodbye to his mother. I already have.”
“I am more in love with you than I have ever been,” Keith Redmond had said the other day.
“Well, you never rubbed my feet before, so I believe you,” Jonah told him. “Don’t stop.”
“I’m not stopping,” Keith said. “I’m pausing.
“Look out there. Look at that sun. This is going to be a good autumn. We should take a walk.”
“You were rubbing my feet.”
“Well, then how about I finish that, and we’ll drive to the park and you can sit on the hood of the car with your newly rubbed feet and watch me walk?”
“Marriage is compromise,” Jonah said with a slightly theatrical sigh.
Keith kissed his big toe and continued rubbing.
“That’s it. That is just it, right there. Ahhh. Right there.” Jonah murmured.
“Jonah,” Keith’s voice changed.
“And now that’s the end of the rub,” Jonah sat up. “I’m not complaining, you know? It couldn’t last forever.”
“Jonah, make love to me,” Keith said.
“You just said—”
“I changed my mind.”
Keith got up and moved to the couch to be next to Jonah.
“Be with me,” he said. “Be with me right now.”
Jonah nodded rapidly, and took him by the hand.
“Alright,” he said. “I can do that.”
They went back to his room.
They undressed quickly. Keith just wanted to be with him. They pressed their bodies together and hardly moved. They kissed gently, and held each other, and then Keith moved up and down Jonah’s body. In the end, quietly, noiseless, they sucked each other at the same time, sixty-nine, Keith heaven and Jonah earth. Jonah’s hands ran up and down Keith’s back, to his hips, to his ass. Keith, his mouth full of Jonah, felt Jonah’s mouth sucking him in, pulling him out to lick the shaft of his cock, lick his balls, felt now Jonah’s fingers in his ass, moving up and down, striking the fire to life by rubbing along his asshole. He moaned, but his mouth was full of Jonah. They weren’t separate. Jonah’s fingers in him sent up shock after shock.
He opened his mouth suddenly and cried out and then, in his surprise, he melted. His body rocked with total acceptance and he ejaculated, his seed spurting over into Jonah’s mouth, his voice high, light like the wind as he came and then lay on his side.
Wearily, Keith turned himself around. He was conscious of how long and tall he was, and he moved to lay face to face with Jonah. Jonah looked like a Black Buddha, face mischievous and impassive all at once.
“What are you thinking?” he asked Jonah.
Instead of answering, Jonah blinked, closed his eyes and, murmuring, asked Keith:
“What are you thinking?”
Half asleep, his voice a sort of purr, Keith said, “I’m thinking I’d like to go back to church.”
“Well, maybe not church,” Keith said a little later that evening while he was washing dishes, sleeves rolled up, and Jonah was drying them.
“In fact, I know I don’t want that. The day I decided I didn’t believe in that was the freest day of my life. The guilt was gone. The guilt about not believing, about not being able to measure up, about being out of touch with this God. So I don’t miss that. I don’t want that back.”
Jonah did not talk. He only stacked. He rarely talked about religion, which is what made his relationship with Keith so successful.
“But there is something. I believe in Something. You know? And I don’t believe in those people who sidle up to you on the bus like salesmen—they really are salesmen, you know—trying to sell you their version God, trying to give you their insecurity. They’ll say: you know there’s something. Would you like me to tell you about it? They don’t know. People who know… they’d never be on the bus trying to tell you they know.”
“So are you saying that you don’t think I’m an idiot anymore?”
“I never called you an idiot,” Keith sounded shocked.
“You kind of did. You kind of imply by being an atheists that the rest of us are deceived morons. There’s nothing. There’s nothing. Look at all those people praying to a God who isn’t there? Oh, if only they knew what I know.”
“You make me sound sort of like an ass.”
“Well, truthfully,” Jonah said, taking the cups and putting them away, “sometimes you are.”
IN THEIR FIRST INCARNATION, Jonah wasn’t sure he actually had loved Keith. He respected him. The passion of his life had been Jason, and that had ended badly. He had left home to get over Jason, and then come back to town to get over the getting over of Jason. That’s how he met Keith. Keith was already a graduate student on his way to becoming a professor when he and Jonah had begun seeing each other. Looking back on it, Jonah wondered if they ought to have simply been friends. Friends who slept together, but friends nonetheless. Their relationship had none of the force of deep romance.
Sean had come along at the same time. What Jonah did not know: Sean was old friends and occasional lovers with Keith. What he also did not know: before he and Keith became serious, Keith was having sex with Jason. Sean was just a handsome man he saw online, but so handsome, so winning that within the hour they met they were making love in the hotel room across the street. Jonah met Keith one day, and thought of him wistfully, but the next day he had fucked Sean and couldn’t get him out of his mind. The entire time Sean had been in town that first time, Jonah snuck him home, opened the window for him, filled his bed with him. Sean put him in a passion to this day. At the time, Jonah had been barely twenty and Sean, lost and confused after his own passionate affairs, was already thirty-five.
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