“She’s dead!” Anne crowed.
“Who?” Fenn asked his mother, sitting up on his bed and folding his legs beneath him.
“Your grandmother!”
This was Leroy’s mother, Ada Meriwether, who had abandoned her son to be raised by the Houghtons and then returned years later to make everyone’s life a misery.
“How did she die?”
“You’re going to love this,” Anne said, not even disguising her pleasure.
“Do you remember how she came to live with us when I was still married to your father?”
“Of course I do. It’s one of the reasons I moved out of the house and went away to college.”
“And how she called me “Girl” all the time. Girl do this! Girl do that!”
“Um hum. Um hum.”
“And then she left… with your father’s first wife. She left with that witch, and now you know what happened?”
“Hum?”
“Samantha left her in this old nursing home. In a ghetto. And you know how much she hated Black people.”
“They reminded her she was one.”
“Well,” Anne said, “there she was, with more niggahs than you can shake a stick at, and she was eating a piece of fried chicken—a chicken leg with, and I am not lying, I swear I am not—a piece of watermelon when, you know what happens?”
Fenn’s door was open and just then he was annoyed to see several young soccer players—he could tell because they were in shorts and tee shirts with too much hair and ball caps and the soccer boys had a look to them.
“What, Mama?”
“She chokes on a chicken bone.”
“Biblical!”
“Isn’t it?” Anne agreed, triumphantly.
While his mother went on laughing at the fall of her foe, Fenn saw more of the boys bringing up boxes. They were opening up the room next door. They were moving a friend in and suddenly Fenn recognized one.
“Here you go, Tommy,” one of the boys said.
“Hold on, Mama, something else biblical just happened.”
“Alright,” Anne said. “Well, are you coming to dinner tomorrow night?”
“Of course.”
“Good, cause Adele has news for us. Do you like Hoot?”
“Not really?”
“Me neither,” Anne confessed, “and I feel bad about that.”
“Mama, there’s so much in this world to feel bad about, why feel bad about not liking people?”
“Well, that does make sense,” Anne agreed.
“I love you, Mother,” Fenn said by way of leaving.
“Love you too.”
Fenn hung up the phone and moved to the door. Sitting there with his door open, watching soccer players move Tom Mesda in didn’t seem right, and closing his door on them wasn’t desirable. So he went out into the hall, frankly hanging from his door frame. One of the soccer players waved. Fenn was surprised that Barry Sanderson knew his name. Tom was hairy knees and soccer shorts, open wind breaker and a ball cap over a head full of curls. He had the sweetest face Fenn had ever seen. He’d forgotten about that. He came right up to Fenn, and Fenn sensed that this took a lot for him.
“I’m your new neighbor. I’m Tom,” he said.
Fenn offered his hand.
“Fenn Houghton,” he said.
Tom’s smile didn’t make any sense. It was like no one should be that happy to meet someone. He shook his hand rapidly and then they stood looking at each other.
“You…” Fenn said, “should probably help your friends finish helping you move in?’
Tom seemed to remember himself and he chuckled.
“Ah, right.”
But he still didn’t move.
So Fenn said, “I’ll see you later,” nodded and went back into his room, closing his door while Tom said, “Yeah… later.”
That night they sat in Grandma Lula’s large house on Prince Street, the one where, after her divorce from Leroy, Anne had come to live.
“I need someone to take care of me and you need someone to take care of you, so what’s the problem?” her had mother demanded.
Tonight they sat around the too large table in the seldom used dining room. Fenn found himself beside Hoot, and across from his sister with Nell Meradan—that’s right, Reardon, now--on the other side of her. Beside Adele sat Nell’s husband, Kevin. Grandma and Mama made eight.
“That was a lovely dinner, Grandma Houghton,” Hoot told her.
Lula Houghton ignored him. Fenn looked across to his sister who had the usual look of trepidation when she brought her husband around her family.
“Didn’t you have some news?” the boy on the far end of the table demanded.
He was tall for his age, pale and all angles with a thatch of wild, spiky, black hair. His green eyes were ringed in shadows.
“Why did you bring him?” Adele asked Nell.
“Mom couldn’t watch him.”
“I don’t need to be watched,” the boy said.
“Mom thinks you do, Todd,” Nell said, and there was an end of it.
Todd was nearly fourteen, and he did not think this was the end of it, so he lay back lower and lower in his chair until Adele yelped. Then he sat up quickly.
“You kicked me!” Adele said.
“I didn’t mean to!” Todd looked terrified. “I was trying to kick Nell.”
Hoot had a protective bulldog look on his face and Fenn, who at twenty-one was the same height as Todd, thought that leaning over and smacking the boy on the head would suffice.
“See,” Fenn told them, “now everything’s taken care of.”
“Hitting boys isn’t the answer, Fenn,” Kevin chided.
“No?” said Fenn. “What about hitting men?”
Fenn liked Kevin Reardon even less than he liked his own brother-in-law. Kevin was tall and bespectacled with a dimple in his chin. He would have been good looking, but there was something wrong about him that Fenn could never put his finger on.
“And now for the news,” Adele said.
Anne put her hands together as Lula came in with a large chocolate pie she had made that afternoon.
“Great,” Nell said, “and then I have news too.”
“I’m pregnant,” Adele spat it out, not wanting to risk any more interruption.
“You got a bun in the over!” Todd exclaimed.
Fenn drew in a weary breath and vowed to never have children.
“Sis,” he said, reaching across the table to touch her hand while her mother hugged her. Kevin immediately reached across the table to shake Hoot’s hand, something Fenn had never thought of doing. After all, Hoot’s part had been minimal. But Fenn came around and shook his hand and then so did Todd, and Fenn noted that Todd had hung back from doing it, waiting for Fenn.
“It’s going to be Fenn if it’s a boy,” Adele said, conspiratorially, touching her brother’s hand.
He smiled, but said, “And what if it’s a girl?”
“We took a class on Arab lit,” Adele said, “and I sort of fell in love with Fatimah, Aliyah or Zoraya.”
“I don’t like Zoraya,” Fenn said.
“I don’t like any of them,” Todd said, frankly.
Adele prepared something to say to this boy, but Todd continued, tapping a skinny finger on the table while Fenn noticed Kevin looking at him with approval.
“There’s a better name, and it’s from an Arabian story too,” Todd said.
“If it’s a girl, name her Layla.”
“His name is Thomas Mesda,” Trisha began.
“We already knew that,” Tara said.
Trisha gave her a withering glance, then said, “If you would let me continue…”
“Certainly,” Tara smiled.
“Anyway, he graduated from Notre Dame about a year ago.”
“Then what the fuck is he doing here?” Fenn said.
“And why does he look twelve?” Tara added.
Fenn, who was not fond of sleeping with twelve year olds, said, “He does not.”
“Well, that’s because you never see him when he’s shaved.”
Fenn was still not satisfied with that answer and Trisha took a breath, and then continued:
“He’s in charge of liturgical music at Loretto,” Trisha continued.
“Then why is he playing soccer?”
“Do you have any idea what the liturgical music budget is? There isn’t even really an ordinary music department here.”
Fenn waited for Trisha to make her point.
“He’s supplementing his income by living in a dorm and being the soccer coach.”
“Well that sucks,” Tara muttered.
“Yeah,” Fenn agreed. “That is pretty crappy for a first job.”
“Well,” Trisha said as if this explained everything, “his degree is in musicology.”
Fenn generally kept his door closed, but whenever he heard the door in the neighboring room open, he was intrigued by the prospect of Tom. He realized without Tara having to tell him, that there wasn’t much chance of meeting Tom if he didn’t open the door. After that the door was always cracked, and the easy chair he and Chris Bertrand had taken from the refuse of graduating students the year before was positioned just so that when Tom came walking by, Fenn could affect nonchalance, just sitting there with a book or a dignified cup of coffee, and politely waving.
By the end of the week, Tom not only waved back but nervously stood at the threshold of the door.
“Come on in,” Fenn invited him.
Tom was in dress pants, white shirt and tie.
“I just got off work.”
“I see.”
“I work in the music department.”
“Oh?” Fenn said.
Tom told him everything Trisha had, and Fenn pretended he hadn’t heard it before.
“You’re a good listener,” Tom said.
“Thank you. Wanna juice?”
“Hum?”
“There’s some in the mini fridge.”
“No,” Tom put up a manly hand. “I’m more of a beer guy.”
That sounded like bullshit, but Fenn didn’t remark on it.
“Would you—?” Tom began, and then he lifted a finger. He was still in his leather jacket and he looked very good. He had shaven today, but he didn’t look like a twelve year old to Fenn at all.
A few minutes later he returned with two beers. He used the bottle opener on one, handing it to Fenn, and then he opened the second one for himself before taking a swig and toasting Fenn with a slightly nervous smile.
“Cheers!” he said.
With the same grace he’d used to welcome him, Fenn leaned forward, clinked bottles and echoed, “Cheers, Tom.”
“So, whaddo you like to do?” Tom asked him.
“I sit here, drink coffee, and watch people go by,” Fenn said.
Tom didn’t know how to take that.
“And I’m an actor. I mean… I want to be an actor.” Fenn seemed to be thinking this over, and then he said, “No. I am an actor. A good one. If you go to this semester’s play, you’ll see that.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” Tom said. “I’m an actor too.”
“You’re a musician, a soccer player and an actor?”
Tom blushed and shrugged.
“I’m not great at acting,” Tom said. “My family is a show family. We’re all actors. I memorized most of Shakespeare before I was in high school.”
“Seriously?”
Tom sat up straight, put his beer down and began:
“That will never be
Who can impress the forest, bid the tree
Unfix his earthbound root?
Sweet bodements! good!
Rebellion’s head, rise never till the wood
Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth
Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath
To time and mortal custom.
Yet my heart
Throbs to know one thing: tell me, if your art
Can tell so much: shall Banquo’s issue ever
Reign in this kingdom?”
And Fenn, leaning forward replied: “Seek to know no more.”
Tom, holding his beer bottle loosely, smiled, and then continued with Macbeth’s lines:
“I will be satisfied: deny me this,
And an eternal curse fall on you!
Let me know.
Why sinks that cauldron?
and what noise is this?”
So Fenn hissed, in three voices, for the three witches:
“Show!
Show!
Show!”
The two of them sat in Fenn’s room, both grinning foolishly and Tom reached forward and clinked his bottle with Fenn’s.
“I can do all of Romeo and Juliet,” Tom told Fenn. “We have a balcony back home, and I used to run up and down the steps being one and then the other.”
“Now that is a talent.”
“Really?” Tom said, taking a quick swig. “Cause I think it’s really weird.”
Fenn shook his head:
“I have no interest in anything that isn’t weird. Or anyone."
Tom came by twice a week or so with a beer, or accepting a beer. He often hung at the lentil of the door waiting for Fenn to say something, and one afternoon Fenn was sitting in the old easy chair facing the door, his face buried in a book, when he lowered it and looked at Tom.
He stood up and crossed the room.
“Hello, Tom.”
“Hi, Fenn.”
Because Tom still seemed to be waiting for something, Fenn said, “Tomorrow I’m going to Chicago. Because I grew up there, and I need to go back from time to time. To get away from all of this. I am going to the beach. I’m going to stick my feet in the water. Do you want to come with me?”
“Don’t you have class?”
“I’ll skip.”
“I have work.”
“Call in sick.”
“I can’t.”
“Why? Is what you do really that important? You can’t skip one day?”
Tom considered this, and then Fenn went back to his chair saying, “I never travel on weekends, so don’t think that one Saturday or Sunday we’ll do this. Come or don’t. Last chance.”
“Let’s go!” Tom decided, becoming excited.
“Great,” Fenn replied, sitting back down and attending to his reading.
“By the way,” he added as Tom turned to leave.
“You’re driving.”
They rose early the next morning and drove for about half an hour up to Miller where they caught a crowded train. Tom walked up and down the car looking for a seat. Fenn found one, caught Tom by the wrist, and directed him to a sit across from him.
“What could be worse than looking for a seat?” Tom wondered.
“Having to ride this motherfucker all the way from South Bend, I suppose,” answered Fenn.
“Amen,” said a woman who looked like she had, indeed, been riding this motherfucker all the way from South Bend.
The train went from Miller, through Gary, and then took it’s time on the way to East Chicago, Hammond and Hegewisch.
As they crossed a long prairie land and went over a stretch of highway, Fenn noted, “Technically, we are in Chicago now, but this is the part that doesn’t count.”
As far as Fenn was concerned, nothing counted until they reached the Loop, and though Tom was dizzied by downtown, Fenn steadily walked him up Randolph, across Wabash, to State and then down into the Subway.
“We ride up to Howard,” Fenn said. “Actually we ride the Howard as far as Loyola.”
“Loyola’s a nice place.”
“I guess,” Fenn said. “The kids are a little snooty. Not as snooty as the ones at Northwestern though.”
“They remind me of people at Notre Dame,” Tom said.
“Exactly.”
“Hey!” Tom said. “I went to Notre Dame.”
“Forgiven,” Fenn shouted as the El roared toward them.
He pulled Tom into the car after him.
“Should we sit down?” Tom whispered, looking around.
“Why wouldn’t we?”
Tom looked at Fenn plaintively, and in the middle of the crowded train, Fenn said, “If you are lucky enough to find a seat, then it is perfectly safe to sit down. Cooties won’t get you.”
