Tom’s problems had to take a backseat to the trouble that befell the Meradans. Fenn heard about it from Brendan Miller first.
“We should go pray for Mrs. Meradan,” Brendan said, soberly. He asked the eight year old why, and Brendan told him that Dena’s grandma was really, really sick.
The really, really was enough to make him take the two children from his apartment and whisk them straight to the house. Dena was there with Nell and Todd as well as their aunt and uncle and Adele.
“Kevin came earlier,” Aunt Mary said, “but I asked him to leave. For Nadine’s sake.”
“A little for mine too,” Nell admitted.
She smiled, but she looked fragile. Fenn didn’t want to hug her or show any of the warmth that would make her fall apart. She was trying to hold it together right now. He understood that.
Brendan didn’t quite understand it though. And the boy went up to Nell, gave her a dandelion, and then wrapped his arms around her waist. Throwing her arms over Brendan she began to cry. Then Dena began crying too and went to them, and then Layla looked at Fenn with a question in her face before joining them in the embrace.
Fenn went to Todd.
“How sick?” he whispered.
“Renal failure brought on by a bone cancer.”
“Oh, my God.”
Fenn sat down right beside Todd, so close they were touching sides. But he wouldn’t touch his hand or coddle him. He knew Todd would hate that. Or at least hate it in public.
“I was so worried when my mother went on dialysis,” is what Fenn said instead. “We wore brave faces, but—”
“She didn’t have cancer, Fenn. Anne made it. We all knew she would.”
“I didn’t.”
After a moment, Todd said, “Then I was an asshole right then.”
“Well, you’ve been an asshole your whole life.”
Todd chuckled at this, shaking his head.
Fenn looked at Todd looking at him. They held each other’s gazes a while and then Fenn broke it off, namely because it looked like Todd was going to try to kiss him again, and Fenn realized he kind of wanted that.
“I can’t go back to school in the fall.”
“Don’t be an ass, of course you can,” Fenn said.
“Fenn.”
“How is you not getting your degree going to make your mother any better? Well, it might make Nadine get out of bed and cross the state to kick your ass.”
“I want to stay here and watch her.”
“Nell’s here. We’re all here. I’ll stay here and watch her.”
“I love you, Fenn,” Todd said.
“I love you too.”
“And I don’t mean in a sexual way. Well…” Todd put out his hand and screwed up his face, “not in a totally sexual way. Sort of in a three fourths—”
Fenn looked at him.
“Am I pressing my luck?”
“Yes.”
Todd and Nell went to the hospital with Dena. When they left, Todd said he wanted to drive around on his own. What he needed was his mother in a time like this, but her illness, her sitting up in this sterile place, was why he was feeling this way. So he drove in circles that wound up and down town and led to the Day’s Inn. He sat in the parking lot for some time before getting up and going in. He asked the girl at the desk for a certain room, and she told him. She probably shouldn’t have, but she was tired and didn’t give a damn. Todd went up the stairs and down the hall. He knocked.
“I was expecting you,” Kevin said without a trace of emotion.
He held the door open for Todd, and then when Todd was in, he went to the bureau and poured him a Scotch. Todd could see that half the bottle was already gone. He didn’t mention it. The closest thing he’d ever had to a father was Kevin, and they didn’t have the type of relationship where he could call him out.
Kevin sipped the Scotch with his usual steadied calm. Todd tried to copy it, though the taste was bitter and the booze burned his mouth. Neither one of them said anything. They just kept drinking. Todd didn’t even look at him, but Kevin Reardon was a heavy presence he couldn’t stay away from.
Finally Kevin got up. He sat on the edge of the bed. He patted it, signaling Todd to come over.
“You’re as tall as me now,” he said.
The liquor was burning on Kevin’s breath. It burned in Todd too, and made his head swim. Suddenly Kevin’s hand was between his legs, rubbing his dick, massaging his balls.
“Don’t act shocked,” Kevin said in a mellow voice. “It’s what you’re here for.”
So Todd opened his legs a little wider and let Kevin continue. Kevin was the same height, but he was still bigger. He reached over and pulled Todd’s hands to his crotch. He loosened his pants and Todd’s as well and in silence they stroked each other.
“You in love with Fenn Houghton?” Kevin said.
Todd didn’t answer.
“Well, you don’t have to answer,” Kevin said. “You can pretend I’m him if you want.” Kevin laughed and said, “I don’t know how you could confuse us, but you can try.”
Kevin laughed a little and then stood up, quickly taking off his clothes. He had a magnificent body. His penis was rigid and thick before Todd. Todd leaned forward hungrily and took it in his mouth. He gagged himself until the thick head of Kevin’s penis was touching his tonsils. He fit his whole mouth around it. He was instantly soothed.
“That’s right,” Kevin murmured, stroking Todd’s hair and fucking his mouth.
Kevin was right. This is what he needed. This is what he’d come for. No more coolness, no wittiness, no sunlight. Just this. Just this basic use. Kevin’s hand roughly grabbed his hair as he fucked Todd’s mouth. Todd almost gagged, but just then the musty, salty flood filled his mouth. Taste before texture, the slick thickness of Kevin’s semen filling his mouth. He drank it like mother’s milk while Kevin’s body arched back and, hands planted on Todd’s shoulders, he moaned. That had been his first contact with a man. Age fourteen, so in love with his brother-in-law, so in rapture, called into the library, made to cup his ass while Kevin’s hands pushed down hard, bracing his shoulders as they did now, while Kevin spurted in his mouth, like he did now. And it felt so horrible, and it felt so scary, and it felt so good. Both then and now, when it was over, Todd was discombobulated, not knowing what to do with himself. But back then Kevin had patted him on his head, smoothed his hair and said, “That’s a good little brother. That’s what brothers do to help each other out. Soon, I’ll do it to you, too.”
This time, Kevin licked his own hand, and then reached down and started pulling at Todd’s dick.
“You’ve got a big ole cock,” he said. “You didn’t have that when you were a kid.”
Todd’s mouth was open. He wasn’t in a place where he could speak. His mouth was filled with the taste of Kevin and his dick was hard in Kevin’s hand.
“You’ve got a lot in you,” Kevin was saying. “I’ve got a lot in me. We’ll both feel better if we fuck it out. I want you to fuck me, Todd. Alright?”
So Todd did. There was lust and fear and sadness and hatred, a great deal of hatred for Kevin and the place he was in with Kevin, and he spent it all riding Kevin’s ass while the older man shouted for more. When Todd came, with a desperate, violent scream, shooting and shooting a hot slick, tormented river, he bucked up and down and convulsed for an age before he found himself, breathless, hair up, sticky and cold astride Kevin.
The magic of lust gone, he was himself again. He was in this hotel room with someone he feared and hated. His mother was dying.
“Stay here tonight?” Kevin said weakly from underneath him.
Todd, still astride him, looked at the ugly reprint on the beige wall in front of him. He didn’t want to be alone tonight. He didn’t want to be in the present. Anything was better than being alone.
Nadine Meradan went on dialysis that summer and was under heavy cancer treatment, but as summer ended and the weather cooled there were signs of her improvement. They began to hear the word “remission”.
“It’ll make it easier to go back to school,” Todd told Fenn.
“So you’ve given up that crack pot idea of dropping out?”
“Mom would have killed me,” said Todd. “And then I have a feeling that if she hadn’t, you would have.”
“I might have been tempted in that direction,” Fenn allowed.
“You’re a good man.”
“Let’s not start that again.” Fenn said.
Dan called Fenn one evening and said, “Do you think you’ll go to church anytime soon?”
“I doubt it. My religious life has pretty much been sitting on the floor chanting, and reading the Bhagavad Gita.”
“But do you ever feel inclined to go to church?”
“You know I don’t. I thought we’d had this discussion.”
“We have. More or less. But…”
“Is something getting at you? Have you been reading Angel City again?”
“No,” Dan said, stifling a laugh. “Just… Tom goes, right?”
“Tom is the organist.”
“Alright,” Dan said. “Great. Well, then, for his sake I want you to go to Mass the Sunday after next. I would say the ten o’clock.”
“Do you have some weird surprise planned for me, Dan? Did you talk to one of your priest friends and set them up to do something?”
“Just… Look, I gotta go already,” Dan said, impatiently. “Just be there.”
When Fenn came to church on Sunday morning, Saint Barbara’s seemed over crowded, and overly stuffy. There were all the happy nuclear families, wives and husbands and children, all caught up in themselves. And there was Saint Barbara in her niche, looking quite lovely for a girl who had been killed. There, in their familiar places along the wall were the lugubrious stations of the Cross.
“Fenn!” he heard someone whisper.
Beside Maisy Baird were her parents, Barb and Bob Affren. Fenn came to their row, genuflected, and slid in.
“Long time no see, Stranger.” Barb slapped him on the knee.
“Has hell frozen over?” Bob whispered. But now the organ was playing.
“Tom,” Fenn murmured.
It was a big brassy organ fantasy full of blaring notes, and a few people were walking up and down the aisles as if a show was about to start. Fenn was startled to see Nell come into the church with Dena. Well, Nell did not startle him, but the fact that Todd, in a suit, hair combed down, accompanied her did. He winked at Fenn, and they all sat down in the row behind Fenn and the Affrens.
“Didn’t expect to see you here?” Todd whispered.
“What? And this is your popular hang out?”
Todd shrugged, “We’ve had a hell of a summer. Nell says we should thank the Guy in the Sky.”
“I’m sure I didn’t say it that way,” Nell said, primly.
“And besides, Nell dragged me here.”
“Good morning!” a voice greeted from the podium. “Welcome to Saint Barbara’s. This morning we will begin with Hymn number 578, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say. I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say, number 578.”
There was much rustling through the red hymnals, and then the organ began and everyone rose. From the loft, the choir cried:
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto me and rest;
lay down, thou weary one, lay down
thy head upon my breast.”
I came to Jesus as I was,
so weary, worn, and sad;
I found in him a resting place,
and he has made me glad.
Up came the familiar procession, the lector with the jeweled lectionary, the altars boys, the altar girls—though they weren’t called that anymore. The priests…
There, in white surplice and gold collar, was Father Collum—as he should be. But next to him was a new priest.
“Holy…” Fenn’s jaw dropped while the hymn continued.
The new priest, flaxen haired, jovial faced, came forward, hands joined and then, raising them, he declared in a voice that was welcoming and gentle, but firm, the voice of a young priest:
“We begin this Mass in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
He opened his hands, happy and generous, and said, “Hello. You may notice I am new here. I hope that in time I will be old here, and we will be old and beloved to each other. I’ve been ordained for a little over a year now. I recently did some missionary work, but now I’m here. I hope to know each and every one of your names very soon. You can know mine right now. I’m Dan Malloy.”
We've broadened our scope for Christmas time around my downtown. Those of you who have avoided contributing till now, it's time to open your hearts, then open your purse strings. Give what you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/Fundraisingforhousing
