Good news. Thanks to your generosity, I am now only 200 short of my monthly goal at https://gofund.me/a9be72fc You cannot conceive of how overwhelmed I am with gratitude because of your help in a very rough time. Happy Thanksgiving (almost) to all of you regardless if you are in the States or not.
Liz was surprised by the arrival of Tom and Dylan, though she wasn’t sure why she should have been.
“You’re here for Thackeray?”
“I’m here to meet him,” Tom said.
“Of course,” Liz said. Her brow furrowed. Dylan thought she had the look of someone who had never considered that Tom would want to see the boy.
“Come in.”
Tom nodded and followed Dylan, asking Liz, “How long have you known about him?”
“I’ve known about Thackeray for a few months.”
“A few months!” Dylan started.
Tom put a hand on his son’s shoulder.
“It was her secret and…” Liz said.
“Well, that’s one reason he has a hard time thinking of you as family,” Tom said.
Liz looked at him, and he said, “Let me meet my son.”
She thought of saying something else, but whatever it was, she went back into the house calling, “Thackeray.”
“If Lee was here,” Tom murmured, finding his way to the living room sofa and gesturing for Dylan to follow, “he’d say ‘Bitch didn’t even offer us a chair.’”
“Well, Lee did kill her father.”
Instead of raising an eyebrow over something Tom thought Dylan hadn’t known, he only chuckled.
“Lee killed her father. She covered up my son’s existence. Tit for tat.”
“She didn’t even think about him being your son,” Dylan said.
“That’s what pisses me off more.” Then he said, “Do you think about Ed Callan being your grandfather?”
Dylan opened his mouth to reply, but just then the boy came into the room with Tom.
“Holy shit!” Dylan said.
Tom was staring at the boy.
Dylan was so wrapped up in the boy being his brother, he’d paid little attention to what he really looked like. The whole twin aspect just had to be taken on faith. They were years apart and didn’t look very much alike. But, unlike Dylan, this boy didn’t cut his hair, and maybe because of that, it was easy to see in him the image of Tom Mesda.
“You’re my Dad,” Thackeray said, frankly.
Tom looked at the boy, biting his lower lip. The way Thackeray had said it was… He wasn’t excited. He wasn’t bored either. Tom was trying so hard to figure it out, that it was a while before he nodded.
“Yes, Thackeray, I am.”
“You didn’t know about me.”
“No. I just knew about Dylan. I mean, you know I never knew your mother.”
“Yeah,” Thackeray said.
“I explained the whole donation thing to him,” Liz said.
Tom looked up at Liz, a little irritated with her, and then turned back to Thackeray.
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Tom said.
“I had a feeling it would be,” the boy said, gravely.
Tom just kept looking at the boy, and finally Thackeray said:
“If you want to touch me or hug me you can.”
Tom laughed out loud and said to Dylan, “You hear that? He’s a lot like you. I bet there’s some of Fenn in you too.”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard of him. He’s Dylan’s Dad?”
Dylan nodded.
Tom held Thackeray’s hands in his, looking up at the boy.
“Dad, you look like you’re about to cry.”
Tom admitted, “I kind of am.”
“We’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” Dylan said to his brother. “You’ve come into this story so late.”
This was the first time Thackeray laughed. His hands still in Tom’s he said, “That’s not my fault.”
And then he said to Tom, “Can I come home with you? Right now?”
Before Liz could say anything, Tom said, “Yes. Get your stuff. We’re going home right now. You should have come home fifteen years ago. Get your stuff, we’re going home.”
“I’ll help,” Dylan said, following Thackeray, and he nodded to his aunt.
“Dylan,” Thackeray said, as they went to the room where he’d been staying. Dylan looked around. This was Ed’s room.
“Yeah?”
“Who’s Fenn?”
“He’s my Dad. And… he’s your dad too.”
“How?”
“You know our Dad’s gay, right?”
“Well, since you have two dads I kind of figured. He doesn’t seem very gay. But…” Thackeray shrugged. “I guess I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Well, we are their kids. Eileen was… the surrogate. We didn’t know about you. But Eileen brought me to my Dads. They weren’t together by then, but they both raised me, and they both love me and they love each other a lot, and maybe you think it’s weird, but you’re my twin and well… you don’t have a mom either anymore, so it just makes sense that we have the same parents. If you’re cool with that.”
“I’m cool with it,” Thackeray handed Dylan one of his bags. “It’s just yesterday I had a mother I didn’t know—who I didn’t like that much—and she told me I was going to get two dads and a brother. And today I met one, and the other one…”
“Just roll with it,” Dylan said. He put an arm around his brother’s shoulder and was warmed by the way the other boy looked up at him.
“Can you do that?” Dylan asked him.
“Yes,” Thackeray decided, “I think I can.”
After Tom’s last bizarre phone call, Fenn only had to look around the empty apartment to realize there was no point in staying here. All the action was in Rossford. The next train left at twelve-thirty, and so he gathered his things, brushed his teeth, left some money under the cookie jar and, making sure the apartment was locked and all electric off, all candles blown out, he headed out onto Magnolia. He rolled his little suitcase to the station at Loyola, and then took the El downtown. The train was slower than ever, and when he had the chance to get off on Belmont and take another he resisted, remembering the last time. At last he reached downtown, crossed Monroe, went down Wabash, crossed it heading for the station and heard someone calling out, “Fenn!”
There must be hundreds of Fenns, but he looked anyway, and saw someone shouting from a limousine. He blinked and, improbably, it was Logan Banford.
What killed Fenn about Chicago was that he could actually almost leisurely roll his suitcase across the street, a thing he would never attempt on a Rossford street.
He approached the limousine.
“What the hell is going on?”
“I’m going back to Rossford,” Logan, said. “Need a ride?”
“Well, holy Hell,” Fenn remarked as a car passed beside him. “I think I do.”
Another young voice said, “Sanders, open the trunk for our friend.”
A man in black came out of the driver’s seat and moved around Fenn to open the trunk. Fenn was about to lift the bag when the man said, “No, Sir, allow me.”
Fenn did, and then the man guided him around the car and opened the door for him, ushering him to step in.
The door closed, and Logan smiled at him saying, “It’s good to see you, Fenn.”
“It’s good to see you too.”
“You have to have some of this cheese,” Logan said as the limousine went down Randolph and turned onto South Michigan. “How the hell have you been?”
“Flabbergasted,” Fenn said, paying more attention to the bottle of wine. “Absolutely flabbergasted.”
Elias entered his parents’ house uneventfully through the kitchen door, and went straight to the refrigerator. Kirk was coming downstairs, and Elias said, “‘Ey, Dad.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Is it allowed?”
Elias poured a glass of orange juice.
“Of course it’s allowed,” Kirk said.
Like Elias, Kirk Stanley was compact and dark haired. But his hair was always buzzed and he wore glasses.
“But I thought you were in Chicago and Fenn was staying with you.”
“He was. I mean, I suppose he still is. But Dylan got the call that his mother was dying. And well, she’s dead now.”
“What? You didn’t tell me.”
Elias checked the smart ass urge to say, “I’m telling you now”, realizing that he, in fact, had not told his parents much of anything lately.
“I’ve been so tired,” is what he said. “I’m really sort of a shitty son.”
“Not shitty,” Kirk said, taking the juice from him and pouring himself a glass, “just not as communicative as you could be.”
“It’s the whole Dylan thing. Dad didn’t react well to that.”
“Well, could you blame him? I didn’t either.”
“No, I can’t blame either of you,” Elias said, sitting at the table. “But it also doesn’t make me as quick to talk as I used to be. You’ve got to understand that.”
Kirk nodded. He did. His gay life was a great secret from his family. Even when he was out, he wasn’t truly out because there were some things he just could not discuss. But he had never expected that his children would feel the same way about telling him things.
“And you know Bennett went to Chicago last night, chasing after Maia?”
“I knew he wasn’t home when I called this morning. My children don’t tell me anything, anymore.”
“Well,” Elias said, seriously. “I’m going to amend that. Actually, I’m going to start by telling you something else.”
“Yes?”
“Dylan has a brother.”
Kirk looked at his son.
“Apparently the real reason Eileen wanted to see him was because she gave birth to another kid. It’s Tom’s. His name is Thackeray.”
“Really? And how old is he?”
“Fifteen. Looks like he’s twelve. But he’s Dylan’s twin.”
“Wha?”
“I’ll explain it later. Anyway, they’re all at Tom’s house right now and….” Elias shook his head, “I needed a break.”
“Are you staying here the night?”
“I’m pretty sure I am.”
“Great. Matthew and your father will be thrilled to see you.”
“Um,” Elias looked around the house. “Speaking of Dad and Matthew, where are they?”
“I feel like you spend half of your life under that garbage disposal,” Matthew Anderson remarked, looking at Todd Meradan’s long, denimed legs jutting from under the sink.
“Less talking and more hand-me-the wrench,” Todd said.
Matthew obeyed. Paul came back into the kitchen with the snake.
“You still need this?”
“If it’s the snake,” Todd’s voice echoed from under the sink, “then I definitely need it. Lay it over here, man.”
Paul did so, and said, “I feel kind of useless.”
“Well, you would be even more useless down on the floor in your pretty clothes.”
Paul was in fawn colored pants and a white dress shirt, more or less the middle class way he dressed now, gold watch, short trimmed auburn hair. He looked like a more refined version of Bennett or, for that matter, of himself, far different from the Johnny Mellow who had stumbled into this house half drunk and high twenty years earlier.
“Besides, you are here to offer entertainment.”
“Oh, well,” Paul sat down, “I think I can do that.
“Like, how do you feel about this Tom having a kid thing?”
“There really isn’t much of a way to feel—holy shit, I think I’ve done it.”
They heard Todd fiddling around, and then the long tall man came from under the sink, turned the faucet on, flipped a switch and as the disposal growled he said, “Jesus goddamn alrighty then!”
When Todd flipped off the disposal, Paul said, “What I meant is how do you feel about the fact that Tom and Dylan expect Fenn to adopt some kid he’s never seen?”
Todd began washing his hands in the sink and said, “Look, I’ve given up on trying to control things.”
Paul shrugged dubiously.
“Maybe it’s a good rule for you to learn with Elias,” Matthew said.
Paul frowned at his son but Matthew only shrugged.
“It’s really a question of how Fenn feels,” Todd said.
The phone rang and Todd said, “Well, maybe that’s him now.”
Paul and Matthew looked at him, and when Todd broke into a smile and said, “Hey, baby, what’s up?” they knew that it, indeed, was Fenn.
“Uh, they’re all at Tom’s,” Todd said, after a while. “Stop there first? I was going to pick you up. What? Well, okay. I love you too.”
Todd hung up the phone, frowning a little bit.
“What was all of that about?” said Paul.
“I don’t know,” Todd said. “But I don’t think Fenn really does, either.”
Dena Affren entered her sister’s house with her daughter running ahead of her to find the mass of little children known as “the cousins”. Meredith took the bottle of wine from Dena and said, “I may just need two of these. Where is Layla?”
“She’s with Jonah, planning and plotting something literary,” Dena said, putting a satchel of food on the counter. “Claire is off with Radha and Shelley, and someone needs to show up here, or the two of us will be fat as houses.”
“Or drunk as bitches,” Meredith countered.
She hadn’t even stopped for a glass.
“Thank God for screw tops,” she took a quick swig.
“Seriously?” Dena eyed her. “Do we need to talk?”
“About AA? No. About my family? Yes.”
Dena poured herself a glass, nodded, and said, “Alright, then.”
While Dena poured Meredith a similar glass, the younger sister spoke.
“Okay, Meg is great. Especially when you consider she is the first wife and everything But, goddamn, when she gets going! And she’s really got going this time.”
“Does this have anything to do with that whole Dylan’s mother thing?’
On her way to the living room with their glasses, Meredith stopped and said, “How much do you know about that shit?”
“Not much at all. I heard something from Layla this morning.”
“Well, yeah. Apparently Dylan’s mom had this fifteen year old, and she picked him up from the orphanage, and he was staying with Meg, not that Meg needs any more kids, and then Tom just showed up this morning and said wanna go with me. The kid said yeah. Dylan packed his bags and they’re off.”
“So what’s her problem?” Dena sat down while Meredith’s children, sandy haired and brown skinned, ran behind Cara while the little girl led them in whatever game six year olds played.
“She feels slighted and unappreciated.”
“Does she want custody? Cause that could get ugly.”
Meredith shook her head. “Would you want custody of Maggie?”
“There’s a lot I want for her, but that’s not part of it.”
“Still not forgiven?”
“Forgiveness was always the Christian virtue that gave me trouble,” Dena confessed, knocking back the last of the glass of wine, and then pouring some more.
“And in answer to your question—” Meredith continued, folding her legs up on the couch, “—no. She does not want custody.”
“Um,” Dena suggested, “if that’s true, then next time she comes over you should probably tell her to shut the fuck up.”
As Cara began giggling, and the other children clapped their hands, Dena ruefully reflected: “I need to stop cussing in front of babies.”
