Thanksgiving is approaching in the States, and I am thankful to so many of you. You need to know that. Bjorn, for your encouragement, Geoffrey, Dano, all who gave what you could, and also you who can give nothing because we are, frankly, living in difficult times. I am thankful for your reading and for your silent companionship. And now, on with our tale.
“ARE YOU FINALLY AWAKE?” Elias said.
Dylan, who was on his side, face nearly pressed to the wall, nodded without opening his eyes.
“You’re about to bang your head,” Elias told him.
They were in Dylan’s room, at Tom and Lee’s house. They’d arrived late last night, too tired to eat, too tired to shower or talk, just awake enough to go upstairs, put on pajama bottoms and pile into bed with a thick old comforter over them.
Dylan moved away from the wall and into Elias’s arms.
“I have the biggest boner,” Dylan said, frankly.
“There was a time I would have taken that as an offer.”
“There was a time,” Dylan said, sitting up with an old man groan, “that it would have been one. Now it’s just information. Plus, I have to pee. I never understood those morning sex pornos where the first thing people do is start going at it.”
Dylan climbed over Elias, pulling a tee shirt on, and headed out the door presumably toward the restroom. Elias lay on his back and waited for Dylan to return. This house was more lavish than Fenn and Todd’s. Dylan’s room here was bigger, virtually an apartment. Elias always thought of it as Frank Lloyd Wright-ish. The door opened and Dylan returned, climbing into bed.
“My head hurts and I’m really, really fucking tired. I cannot face the world right now.”
He turned around and faced the wall instead.
“By the way,” he added, “don’t go in that bathroom for a while.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
“No true friend would do otherwise.”
Elias put his arms back around Dylan and said, “So what are we going to so?”
“About what?”
“About Thackeray?”
“We,” Dylan punched his pillow and resituated himself, “are not going to do anything.”
“Eileen Wehlan can’t just drop dead and then say, ‘Oh by the way, you have a brother. Please raise him.’”
“This is weird.”
“The whole thing is weird.”
Dylan gave up on trying to sleep, and lay on his back.
“So let’s see,” Elias began, “it turns out the story we thought we knew isn’t quite true.”
“Yes,” Dylan said.
“Eileen deep froze Tom for years, and then used a little bit of him to make a little you. That much is true.”
“You put it so eloquently.”
“But when she fertilized her egg it split?”
“Seems to be the case.”
“But she could only have one, so she froze the other and then you were born and she gave you to Tom and Fenn.”
“Yes.”
“And then she put Thackeray on ice, had him later, couldn’t handle it again—”
“Do you see a pattern developing?”
“But all those years ago, when she came back for you, she planned to get you and Thackeray and raise you together.”
“And that!” Dylan said, clapping his hands, “is the bullet I fucking dodged!”
“But not Thackeray,” Elias said.
Dylan, who was dealing with his own anger, stopped and looked at Elias, sitting in bed next to him.
“What?”
“Me and Ben have the same mom and we always had each other. And Matthew, even though he doesn’t talk about it, always felt a little left out. No one even knows who his birth parents are. But all the same, he’s our brother. He’s got two parents and two brothers who love him. But Thackeray never had anyone.”
Dylan turned away from Elias.
“I know it’s not fair to you,” Elias said, “what Eileen did. But it’s really not fair to Thackeray. It’s weird as hell, and something out of a sick soap opera, but he is your twin brother—”
“Could we drop the twin thing and just concentrate on the brother part?”
“Well, then he’s your baby brother, Dylan. Right now he’s over at Liz Callan’s and that’s fine. But you have to look after him. Which means I do, too. Alright?”
“Are you serious?” Lee demanded, taking out a cigarette.
It wasn’t Dylan, but Elias who nodded.
Tom sat at the kitchen table, half gripping his coffee mug, his brow furrowed.
“This crazy woman—excuse me—” Lee said, realizing that the crazy woman was, after all, Dylan’s mother and currently dead, “went ahead and had another baby and gave it away?”
“I think she thought that since the egg was already fertilized she should give it a chance to become a person.”
“Unbelievable,” Lee murmured, sitting down beside Tom. “And yet, it makes a strange sort of sense.”
“I have another son,” Tom said, blinking. Then he looked up at Dylan.
“You have a brother.”
“It appears so.”
“I…” Tom stood up. “I guess I ought to go see him.”
“Yeah, you should,” Lee said.
“We,” Tom said to Dylan, “need to go see him.”
“I need a cup of coffee first,” Dylan told him.
Elias pushed Dylan down into his chair, and went to make it for him.
Tom was standing there looking a mess, his hair sticking up in a sort of Beethoven wildness.
“And then I need to call Fenn.”
“What the fuck for?” Lee said.
Tom didn’t answer. He just sat back down and then suddenly began to laugh.
They all looked at him but for Elias. Finally, by the time Elias had returned to the table with a cup of coffee for Dylan and one for himself, Tom’s wild laugh had ascended into a slightly mad cackle.
“Baby, you alright?” Lee said, touching Tom’s shoulder.
“I got another kid,” Tom said. He began slapping his forehead rhythmically with both hands, and then took them through his thick, mostly dark hair.
“Holy fuck! We got another kid.”
The first thing that happened was Bennett arrived.
“Fenn, I have to speak to Maia.”
Perhaps Bennett expected some resistance. He was so gallant in how he spoke. But Fenn was indifferent. He opened the door, and pointed to the sofa where Todd’s daughter was sleeping.
“Maia,” Bennett whispered, shaking her awake, “we need to talk.”
“You’re damn straight we do,” she said. She stretched, then said, “Excuse me, Fenn.”
Fenn just went back to the kitchen to make coffee.
“You exasperate me!” he heard Maia saying. “You do the stupidest things without thinking. You probably didn’t even really think about coming here, did you? You just came.”
“He who hesitates—?”
“Has time to think things out,” Maia finished. “And you still haven’t paid my father back that three hundred dollars. Oh, you’re such an idiot!”
“I know I’m an idiot,” Bennett agreed. “I’m an idiot, and I’m crazy and I’m crazy for you.”
“That’s a good one,” Fenn noted, sitting back down beside Maia.
“Did you bring clothes with you?” Bennett asked Maia.
“I brought some.”
“Well, then… pack them up.”
“I’m not going back to Rossford.”
“No,” Bennett said. “Don’t go back to Rossford. Come with me. We’ll take a little trip. Sort things out. How’s that sound?”
“It sounds terrible,” Maia said, stubbornly. “You screw so much up.”
“Well maybe we can make them better. Together.
“By going on a trip?”
“Yes!” Bennett clapped his hands.
“We need to be back before term starts.”
“Of course.”
Maia looked doubtful, but she stood up, anyway.
“Fenn, will you tell Dad me and Bennett are gone?”
Fenn nodded.
“I can do that.”
“Thank you.
“I need to shower.”
“No you don’t,” Bennett told her.
“I’m going to shower,” Maia said. “And then I’m going to call my mother.”
Maia dressed and Fenn was afflicted with Bennett Anderson’s conversation. While Fenn loved all of Paul and Kirk’s children, he realized he had no patience, especially this early in the morning, for Bennett’s chatter and at last he said, “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to hit you.”
This shut Bennett up. Fenn took out another cigarette and smoked it, then Maia was dressed and ready with a bag over her shoulder, and after kissing Fenn, she and Bennett were gone.
They weren’t gone five minutes when the phone rang and Fenn picked up saying: “Elias and Dylan’s”
“Fenn, it’s me?”
“Tom?” Fenn sounded doubtful, because Tom sounded crazy.
“Yeah! Guess what?”
“I’m not in the mood for guessing. Bennett just left, so it’s been a long morning.”
Reflecting on his times alone with the red headed boy, Tom agreed: “That could make for a long morning. Why was he there? Never mind. Guess what? You don’t want to guess. Never mind. I’ll tell you. We have a son!”
“We’ve had one for years.”
“No! Another one! “
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“It turns out Dylan is a twin! Isn’t that absolutely wild? Eileen Wehlan had Dylan, but put the other twin on ice and had it later and now she’s dead—which is too bad, but I never knew her—”
“Eileen’s dead?”
“Focus, Fenn. And this other boy: his name is Thackeray, and he’s in town and me and Dylan are going over to see him, and look, now we’ve got two kids!”
“No, Tom,” Fenn said, carefully. “Now you have two kids. From what I’m gathering.”
“Look,” Tom said, “if Dylan’s our son, then his twin is our son too. If you had a hand in him, you had a hand in Thackeray. Simple as that. I’m going over to meet our son. I suggest you come home so you can do the same.”
Tom was serious.
Tom hung up the phone and left Fenn sitting in the empty apartment dumbfound.
All Fenn could say was:
“Fuck.”
When Logan woke, George was gone. This had happened before, so Logan simply rolled over and went back to sleep. On the television, people always woke up with the sun coming through their curtains to the singing of birds. In real life, as far as he knew, people got up before the sun, yawning, and struggled to work. It was one of the reasons he stayed in this life. He had never, in his life—well, maybe one or two times—gotten up early to get some place early. But he had rarely done it in a bedroom the size of an apartment, in a bed the size of a small boat. He rolled over, luxuriating in comfort.
When he finally got up, the first thing Logan felt was that someone besides himself was in the house.
“George?” he called, going back to find his underwear. He pulled on his briefs and went back out calling, “George?”
Out of the kitchen came a tall, dark haired boy with glasses and a round face.
“George is gone,” the boy said. Well, now he really wasn’t a boy. And he seemed like he might be about six feet tall.
“Who are you?” Logan said.
“More to the point,” the boy sat on the huge leather sofa overlooking the city, and crossed one leg over the other, “who are you?”
Logan opened his mouth, but the boy said, “Actually, I’m not stupid. I know who you are. So,” he tilted his head. Some of his black hair stuck up, “you’re what money can buy? Nice.”
Logan liked the boy a little bit less then, and said, “But I still don’t know who you are.”
“I am Jonathan. And George is my dear old dad. He had the luxury of divorcing, moving into a penthouse and doing whatever he wants. When I came out—because I actually had to come out—” Jonathan shrugged, “it wasn’t so easy.”
Jonathan kept talking, which was just as well because Logan didn’t really know what to say.
“Please stay. You don’t come from here and the South Shore leaves in an hour, but you seem more like an Amtrak kind of person. That doesn’t leave until tonight. Or did you drive?”
“George—your father—actually arranged to bring me here last night.”
Jonathan nodded. “Then I guess I can arrange to have you sent back when the time comes. Fair enough? Or did you already have it planned out?”
“I was taking the morning train.”
Jonathan shrugged. “Well, as we’ve already discussed, you missed it. Go help yourself to some food. I just made it. Sit with me,” Jonathan charged. “We can talk.”
Logan was mystified by the man-boy He’d never known George to have a son, let alone a gay one. What he did know was that he was hungry, so he went to the kitchen.
“Oh, and do you have name?”
“I’m Logan,” Logan said, still nonplussed.
“Okay,” Jonathan said. “Well, Logan, I’m not saying you have to put clothes on. I mean, it’s a great view. But I was just thinking you might have forgotten you’re not actually wearing any.”
