Tom noticed that Thackeray had been looking across the living room for some time and finally he asked, “What is it?”
The boy pointed across the room and said, “Is that a Bosendorf?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “They don’t teach piano brands in school. How did you know that?”
Instead of answering, Thackeray said, “Can I play it?”
“Of course you can,” Tom told him. “You can play anything you want. You can play the pots and pans if you want.”
Thackeray smiled at Tom and said, “For now I’ll stick with the piano.”
“What’s going on?” Dylan called, coming downstairs.
But Thackeray had rounded the piano and lifted the lid.
Tom thought that what he would hear was something like Chopsticks. Or maybe Heart and Soul. But Thackeray’s fingers fell to the keys instantly, and Dylan’s mouth opened, then he looked at his father.
Tom sat there watching the boy with the mess of dark hair play, bent over the piano. This wasn’t Amazing Grace, or even really lovely church music coming out.
“He can play Beethoven?” Dylan said.
Tom didn’t say anything.
The boy sat at the piano playing Beethoven’s Fourteenth Piano Sonata, the music turning and turning like urgent wheels, like falling rain, rising and falling. And he wasn’t just playing a little bit. He played all the way through, without stopping. Lee came out from his study and looked to the piano thinking it was Tom, and then turned back and saw Tom sitting right there. Quietly, Lee came and sat down beside him.
When it was over, they heard a contented sigh from the other side of the piano.
“You can play Beethoven?” Dylan said in a tone that implied, “What the fuck?”
“Not like that,” Thackeray said. “Never like that. I’ve only used rinky dink pianos before. This one is no joke.”
“How did you learn that?” Tom said. “Where did you learn it?”
“I lived with a church pianist for a while,” Thackeray said. “And then every orphanage has a piano. Not always a good one. But they have them. And schools have them. My teacher, Mrs. Arquette, was like, ‘Thackeray, you have a gift’, and she gave me Schubert and Hayden and a lot of different music, and then I just learned what I could.”
He shrugged and looked at his father.
“The music gets everything out, you know?”
Tom was nodding in amazement and then Lee said, “Now what the…?”
They all followed his gaze to the picture window facing the street.
“Dylan?” Thackeray said, “What is that?”
A black Cadillac stretch limousine came down the street, and then pulled up as close to the house as it could. Next came a chauffer who rounded the vehicle and pulled out a carry on bag, and then he rounded it and opened the door. Out stepped, in a fedora, a bespectacled medium brown man of medium height, seemingly in middle years, and then the chauffer waved him off and he was rolling his bag up to the door.
“That,” Dylan told Thackeray, “is my father: Fenn Houghton.”
“And you have my old room,” Dylan was saying.
“But there’s an extra room here,” Tom said.
“Well I meant at Fenn’s house,” Dylan said.
Fenn looked at his son.
Dylan seemed not to have noticed, and Tom said, “Yeah, and we can swap days, or do like you used to do,” he told Dylan. “Three days here, three days there. Whatever. We’ll make it work.”
“What about the whole religion bit?” said Dylan. He told Thackeray, “You know Todd’s Jewish. I used to go to synagogue all the time.”
“But what are we?” Fenn noticed that Thackeray had included him in the we.
“I am Catholic,” Tom said. “And somewhere along the line, Fenn carried my son off into Hinduism.”
“That’s a bit dramatic,” Fenn said.
“That sounds cool,” Thackeray continued. “I don’t like church.”
“Who brought you home in that limo?” Tom said.
“Logan Banford.”
“Logan Ban—” Dylan began. “What the F?”
“And speaking of what the F,” Fenn said, “We need to talk about this whole odd arrangement.”
The three of them, Tom and his two sons, so similar, looked up at him.
“Are we agreed that it was bizarre for Tom to ask me to adopt his firstborn son ten years after we had broken up?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “We established that a long time ago.”
“Then are we not even more agreed that my adopting a fifteen year old from a man I haven’t been in a relationship with for thirty years is even stranger?”
“You don’t want me,” Thackeray said.
Fenn blinked at the boy.
“That’s neither here nor there. The question is why in the world would you want me? You haven’t met me. We’re not genetically related.”
“Look,” Dylan said to his father, “of course it’s weird, the whole thing’s weird. We’re a weird family. But it’s not as weird as you’re making it. You love Dad. Don’t you?”
“Don’t you love me, Fenn?” said Tom.
“Shut up,” Fenn said.
“And no matter how weird you thought it was then, I’m your son now, right?”
“Of course you are,” Fenn said. “You know I didn’t mean—”
“Well, then, Thackeray is the same as me. The exact same thing as me, Dad. We’re genetically linked. You say it doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense for you not to adopt my brother.”
Fenn was about to suggest Lee, but he knew that wasn’t an option. Lee scarcely had parental skill or will for Danny.
“Don’t you think every child deserves two loving parents?” Dylan said.
Fenn cocked his head, and said, “Really, Dyl? Seriously?”
The three Mesdas sat looking at him, and Thackeray’s look was the strangest of all. He couldn’t say he felt a pull of ownership on the boy. After all, he hadn’t know he existed forty-eight hours ago. But there was something. There was something, for that matter, in the fact that Tom and Dylan asked this of him.
“After all,” Thackeray continued, “you and Dad gave us to Eileen so that she could give you a family.”
Fenn looked at Tom and Dylan, unfamiliar with this version of the truth.
Tom stared daggers at Fenn who said, “I guess you could say that.”
“Then that’s taken care of,” Thackeray said, happily.
This strange Tom like-Dylan like boy assumed that Fenn was his father, and that was what made Fenn’s decision.
“Fine,” Fenn said, as graciously as he could feel at being presented with a second son.
“You all draw up things and… We’ll make it official.”
“Great!” Thackeray leapt up and embraced Fenn while, over the boy’s shoulder, Fenn stared out at Dylan and Tom and wondered what he had gotten himself into.
Fenn’s motto for getting used to things was, “This is the way it is,” and so this was how he came to be Thackeray’s father. Two decades ago, when he had agreed to take on a squalling, shitting white baby—his words—with little or no parental instinct, there had been the internal worry about if love would ever come, if he would ever be a fit parent, if he could possibly feel like this baby’s father. This was so long in the past, and Dylan was so much a part of him, his favorite person on the planet—again, his words—that when Thackeray came along, Fenn just operated as if he had always been there.
Dylan’s room would cease to be the shrine lived in only when the boy came home. From now on Dylan could take the apartment in the basement. At first Todd volunteered to take it, but Fenn said, “No, I like having your studio right down the hall from me when I go to bed. I like being able to hear you.” Besides, now that Dylan was permanently involved not only with one man, but two, it was almost inappropriate for them to be staying down the hall from him.
“How did sex down the hall from your father work?” Laurel asked Dylan once.
“Very quietly.”
So Dylan’s room became Thackeray’s and while Thackeray put on new bed spreads, Dylan thought about all the sex he’d had on that bed and wondered if it was right for his innocent little brother to be sleeping there.
“I like that shelf right there,” Thackeray was telling Dylan.
“You know, Thack,” Dylan sat down in a chair beside the bed. “You don’t have to keep all of that on the shelf. Those are my music books that I don’t need. You can start to make the room your own, now. Put all your stuff in here. Get rid of mine.”
Thackeray stopped, and he looked very thoughtful. A little embarrassed.
“What, buddy?”
“Dylan, I don’t have stuff. This is it.”
Now it was Dylan who felt embarrassed. He felt more than embarrassed.
“That was real dumb of me.”
How lucky he was that when Eileen had dumped him off, Tom had wanted him. Tom had wanted him before he knew that Dylan was his son. He had believed Dylan was a gift from God. And how lucky that Lee, who was not his father and not interested in being his father, had stayed with Tom instead of leaving once a baby showed up. Or that Fenn had put two and two together and remembered where Dylan had come from—Eileen never told Tom or him—and that when Tom had said Fenn was responsible too, and should be the parent, Fenn had agreed, and so they were sitting in this house right now. How blessed he had been, and how hard done Thackeray had been until now.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Dylan told him. “I’m glad we’ve found you.”
Suddenly Thackeray hugged Dylan and Dylan had never had a younger brother. He’d never had a boy who looked up to him and loved him like this.
“I’m glad you turned out to be cool,” Thackeray told him.
“Well… I’m glad you’re cool too. Dinner’s going to be ready soon.”
“What is it?” Thackeray sniffed the air.
“I don’t know, but I think it’s Cajun or something.”
“I’ve never had Cajun or anything,” Thackeray said.
Despite the fact that Thackeray was just a little smaller than him, Dylan had a great urge to piggy back him down the stairs. Suddenly he said, “Get on my back.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Try it.”
Thackeray shrugged and a few moments later the two of them came lumbering down to the kitchen where the skillet was sizzling and at the table Fenn was sitting with Todd and Adele, smoking a cigarette.
“Really?” he said as Thackeray climbed off of Dylan and they both sat on the floor laughing. “Is this what I have to look forward to?”
He didn’t mean it. He exhaled. Dylan looked happier than Fenn had ever seen him, and this boy, Fenn imagined, hadn’t had much happiness in his life until now.
“Thackeray, say hello to your aunt,” Fenn told him.
Thackeray blinked at the stout, pretty woman with gold earrings, and she got up and hugged him.
“I’m Adele.”
“Hi, Aunt Adele.”
“If it makes you feel better you can just go with Adele,” she told him.
“Layla and Will’ll be over later,” Dylan told Thackeray, grabbing his brother’s shoulder, “You’ll love them.”
“Layla?” Thackeray said.
“She’s my daughter,” Adele said.
“Oh,” Thackeray turned to Dylan. “She’s our age then.”
“Bless you, how old do you think I am?”
“You look like you might be thirty.”
Adele bent down and squeezed him to death, kissing him on both of his cheeks.
“You are my favorite nephew!”
“Layla is thirty and plus,” Fenn said, impatiently, “with a half grown son. Adele hasn’t been thirty in—”
“Don’t make me kick you, Fenn,” his sister said, sitting down. “If Thackeray says I’m thirty I’m thirty.”
“Thirty my… Go wash your hands,” he told his sons.
“Are they funny like that all the time?” Thackeray whispered as they disappeared into the bathroom while Dylan said, “Pretty much.”
Elias showed up soon after, and Fenn commandeered all of the boys to help Todd unfold the dining room table and set the plates.
“It’s Sunday and we’re going to have lots of people,” Fenn said, standing up to turn off the stove. And Thackeray?”
The boy came back.
“Are you staying here, tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“You are. You’ve been with Tom since you got here. He’s not going to teach you anything practical. I’m going to start teaching you how to cook. You should have learned years ago.”
“I’m only fifteen.”
Fenn just stood by the stove, looking at him.
“Do not argue with him,” Dylan said, taking his little brother’s hand and leading him into the dining room.
Will and Layla arrived with Liam, whom, Elias noted to Thackeray, was also adopted, and then Tom came with Lee, and eventually Claire and Julian arrived with Riley and the other children. Lastly arrived Caroline, who embraced Adele, and then immediately began talking with Layla.
“Is this my whole family?” Thackeray whispered to Dylan.
“Nope,” Dylan told him with a smile. “Just some of them.”
Dylan was taking plates away, and Thackeray was helping. Simon had arrived and was talking to Julian in a corner and Adele had gotten up to prepare dessert when the front door opened.
Because no one ever used the front door, everyone immediately turned to look through the dining room and living room to the entrance of the house.
Todd, glass of wine in hand, squinted and stood up.
“Maia?” he and Tara said.
Beside Maia Meradan stood Bennett, which is why Elias stood up.
Coming back in, Dylan cocked his head and Thackeray thought it was best not to ask.
“Everyone,” Bennett told them, grasping Maia’s hand. “We have an announcement to make.
“Honey?” he turned to Maia.
“What’s going on?” Thackeray whispered.
“Nothing good,” Fenn murmured.
But as Maia came forward, she looked at Todd and then at Tara on the other side of the table.
“Mom, Dad,” she told them. “Me and Bennett just got married.”
