“Life started getting a little more bearable when I allowed myself to bitch about it,” Jonah said, reaching for the box of crackers in the middle of the table.
“Mind you,” he said, as he spread the cheese onto it, “It didn’t get good. It just got better. I don’t know that it ever gets good.”
“That’s really pessimistic,” Kenny said.
“I didn’t know you were participating in the conversation,” Maggie turned to him.
“I didn’t know I was either. Until Jonah said that.”
“I’m not trying to sell you anything,” Jonah told Kenneth. “So, I’m not going to argue with you about that.”
“I do want to argue about it,” Kenny said. “I mean, I really want to have this out.”
“Have what out?” Keith Redmond said, coming to sit on the couch beside Jonah.
“We’re talking about the meaning of life,” Maggie said, only half joking.
“And how I’m not sure it has any meaning at all,” Jonah said, not joking at all.
“You sound like me in my atheist phase,” Keith said.
“And what phase are you in now?”
“The phase where I hope there’s a meaning.”
“Of course there is,” Kenneth said. “There’s meaning and love, and purpose and God. And all that stuff.”
“But do you say that because it’s true,” Jonah asked him. “Or because you wish it was true?”
“I say that because I’m a Catholic.”
“That’s a terrible answer,” Jonah said, witheringly. “That is a tedious answer you give to get out of asking questions. Just ask yourself if you have been more happy than sad.”
“This is cutting close,” Kenny said.
“Whaddo you mean?” It was Maggie who spoke.
“All of this talk about… is life worth living and all that. That’s close. Especially in a town like this.”
“Kenneth,” Maggie said, “None of us knows what you’re talking about.”
“Are you close to Meredith?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Well,” Kenny said. “I had a cousin. Her name was Robin. She was best friends with Meredith, and with Sheridan Klasko too. This was when they were in high school.”
“I can’t imagine Meredith in high school,” Maggie murmured.
“It wasn’t that long ago,” Kenny said.
“Anyway, Robin went out with this guy it probably wasn’t such a good idea to go out with. He took her out with his friends one night, and they all raped her.”
Jonah’s jaw dropped, and he put a hand over his mouth.
“This was like… ten years ago.
“One of them got a conscience and called the cops. So when an ambulance finally arrived, Robin was just naked and bleeding and there was a coat over her. She was on the ground, on the blacktop outside of Rossford High school.
“They took her to the hospital. This was around Thanksgiving that year. There was an all night vigil at Saint Agatha’s for her. Everything.”
“She was alright?” Maggie said. “I mean… not alright, but… they didn’t kill her?”
“She lived,” Kenny said. “She lived and she healed. Physically. She went home. But life was over for her. She hung on a few weeks and then, right before Christmas, she just went to the train tracks and waited for the night train. She said goodbye and everything. Left a letter. She was seventeen.”
No one said anything, and then Kenny continued.
“Now, I know Jonah knows Radha Turner. She’s friends with Chad and Bryant. Best friends with Claire and Layla Lawden. Anyway, her brother-in-law… well, he never became her brother-in-law, he was Matt Turner’s younger brother…. He had been involved in the gang rape. He was going to go to trial and all of that, but he’d been cracking up already. Anyway, he went to the same tracks a few nights later. Two other people did it, too. It was like people understood how easy it was to get a ticket out of life, and now that they knew it was easy, everyone was doing it.
“See, that’s why I have to hold onto life being… sacred. I have to believe it’s worth holding onto. That you just can’t walk out to the train tracks and get rid of it.”
“But do you think she was wrong?” Jonah wanted to know.
“Do you think your cousin was wrong for doing what she did?”
“I was mad at her,” Kenny said.
“I was mad and upset with her, and the funny thing…”
They all waited for the funny thing.
“I thought she was weak. We all said oh, she got weak. Oh, she couldn’t handle it. Oh, she just couldn’t take it. She should have waited. She should have relied on God.
“No one ever said that life was terrible and God wasn’t there. No one could say that. No one could say that they understood why she did it. Only Meredith Affren. She got it. Even after all that happened to Robin, the rest of us blamed her.
“Maybe we blamed her because what she did was like this big ugly light. She flashed it on the world and showed us what it was. And then she said she had better things to do. She did the one thing you’re just not allowed to even think of doing.”
“She checked out,” Jonah said.
“She checked out,” Kenny said. “She let everyone in town who followed her day after day to the tracks know that they could do it too. It was like all the hardship in my life, all the hoping that it would get better, all the clinging to the good stuff in the face of the disappointment was bullshit when she walked onto those tracks.”
No one spoke for a time. Jonah did not speak until he felt it was necessary.
“Kenny, she wasn’t trying to insult you. She was getting out of something that was too painful to bear anymore.”
Beside Jonah, Keith nodded, but it was Maggie who said: “Do you still think it’s bullshit? Life? Hanging on. Going through it despite… everything.”
“What I hate to say,” Kenny said, “because it makes me look so bad, is that sometimes I don’t know.”
Paul was in the kitchen when Elias got to the house. The two of them looked at each other and Elias said:
“I just wanted to tell you goodbye before I left again. I just wanted to see you.”
“Are you really going away? Right now?”
“Dylan’s in the car. We came here because of his brother. And everything.”
Paul nodded.
“Dad,” Elias came toward him, “I know you think we’ve let you down.”
“No one’s let me down,” Paul said, shaking his head. “I just… I’ve gotten old, I think. I don’t understand what’s going on anymore. Bennett runs off and gets married. And…”
“You’ve never really accepted the relationship I have with Dylan and Lance.”
“You didn’t tell me up front.”
“You couldn’t have handled it up front,” Elias said. “If I hadn’t told you now we’d be better off. In fact I bet you would have liked it better if I was straight.”
Paul gave his son a frustrated look and then, taking a deep breath and shaking his head he murmured, “I just want you to be safe. If being ordinary is safe, then yes, I would have preferred it.
“And I wanted you to be something I understood.”
“You ran away from Grandma and Aunt Claire for ten years because you thought you were something they wouldn’t understand. And now…”
“Well, you’ve kind of been running away from me,” Paul told him.
“I know,” Elias admitted. “I’m sorry. I’m back now. At least for the moment.”
“It’s just…” Paul continued, “you were always the one with the sense.”
“I’m still the one with the sense,” Elias said.
“True,” Paul admitted. “But I thought sense would keep you safe.”
“I am perfectly safe. And perfectly cared for.”
Elias stepped forward and kissed his father on the cheek.
“Do you want to see Dylan before we go?”
“No,” Paul said. “Not just yet.”
“Alright.” Elias lifted his bag, and putting it over his shoulder he headed for the door.
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you too.”
When Maggie arrived at the house she was startled to see Dena.
“We need to talk,” Dena said with an urgency Maggie had never known in her stepmother, and the younger girl nodded expectantly.
“Where’s Ed?” Maggie looked around.
“I sent him out for fish and chips.”
“Good diversion.”
Maggie loosed the portfolio strapped over her shoulder, and gently laid it on the apartment floor.
“We can’t go on like this,” Dena said.
“No,” Maggie agreed.
“And since I’m the oldest, I need to be the bigger person.”
“Dena,” Maggie put up a hand.
Dena looked at her.
“Look, I’ve been talking to Kenny McGrath and I am a megabitch. This whole thing started because of how I came to this town. And then I never said that I was sorry. To anyone.”
“But why did I make you so angry?” Dena said. “Was it because Milo is married, and you thought—”
“It’s because I was always an angry person, and then I began watching you all from the car. And the way you came out to me, when you told me to go away… I couldn’t just say hey, I’m your stepdaughter or anything. I just had to hate you instead. And so I did.”
“I… think I remember that,” Dena said. “I could be more courteous. All the time.”
“Layla says that the reason we can’t stand each other is because we are alike.”
“Maybe,” Dena allowed. “I think it is because we have both been hurt, and don’t want to be hurt again.”
“Who hurt you?” Maggie said.
Dena was surprised by the concern in her stepdaughter’s voice.
“I think I am still getting over my shitty, crazy father.”
“Did he leave?”
“He had to,” Dena said with faint bitterness. “The story almost isn’t mine to tell. He was faithless. And he was selfish and… I shouldn’t tell it. But… fuck it all, I will tell it.
“Do you drink?”
“I’m only eighteen.”
“But do you drink?”
“I… have been known to drink.”
Dena nodded. “Give me your phone.”
Maggie obeyed
A moment later, Dena said, “Ed? Edward. Go to your father and Meredith’s. You’re staying with them tonight. Me and Maggie are in the middle of a serious discussion. What’s that…?” Dena made a sizzling noise and tapped on the surface of the phone. “I’m losing the connection…” she shouted before making a loud sizzling noise into the phone. “See you tomorrow.”
Dena closed the phone and handed it back to Maggie.
“Come on. Let’s go get some booze before the liquor store closes.”
“I was thinking I shouldn’t tell you,” Dena poured the last of the large bottle of wine into Maggie’s glass, “but everybody in town knows anyway.”
“Your dad was having sex with Todd? Maia’s father, Todd? His brother-in-law?”
“Yes!” Dena declared, drunkenly, slamming the little table in Maggie’s apartment. “He started fucking around with him when he was fourteen and was sleeping with him till he was sixteen even though my dad must have been about… tick, tick, tick, thirty.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yer telling me. And then speaking of holy shit, when I was your age, we used to have this priest at Saint Barbara’s. Now, this was about the same time that Elias and Bennett’s father came to town.”
“Kirk?”
“No. Kirk always lived here. I mean Paul. And then Claire came a year later. Any way, we got this priest. He was hot, But sort of shmarmy. Your great-grandmother Barb loved him. Still does. Anyway, there’s a lot of shit about him that’ll make a very interesting story, but it’s all off the point. The point is—one day my father said he wanted to make things right with me. He wanted me to come visit him. Now, I had only recently found out about how he abused Todd and everything and didn’t want to deal with him.”
“What did you do?” Maggie wondered, eyes wide with intoxicated amazement as she put her hand to her mouth.
“I went to the motel—You know the one on Meridian—where he was staying, and I just went in the room to say hello and… HE WAS FUCKING THE PRIEST!”
“Your father!”
“Yes! Goddamnit, Yes! My father was fucking the priest!”
“That’s so gross!”
“I know!”
“He’s so gross!”
“I know!”
“And then my father,” Maggie realized, “he cheated on you!”
“He did,” Dena admitted, forlornly. “I left him for so long, and then, before that, I had fucked Brendan Miller.”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. He must have been very different.”
“No. He was the same. He’s very hot.”
“Yes,” Maggie allowed. “But he’s also very gay.”
“It was a different time. He wasn’t out yet. He really wanted to be straight. I really wanted him to be mine.”
“So you ended up doing the same thing your mother did.”
“Yes,” Dena’s voice cleared now.
“And then my father…”
“In all fairness he was eighteen. It happened once, and I wasn’t anywhere around.”
“Fuck fair!” Maggie slammed the table. “It wasn’t right. He was wrong. And… Never knew I existed. All the years he never knew. I…. Dena, your life was ass.”
Dena suddenly began crying.
“It was! It really was.”
Maggie rounded the table and embraced her stepmother.
“My life was ass too.”
The two drunk women began to wail and then Maggie said, “Your father was a real dick.”
“I know!” Dena agreed.
“And my mother’s a real cunt.”
Dena stopped and looked at her, sober faced.
“She and my dad would have been a perfect fit, then.”
“Yeah, too bad he was gay.”
Dena nodded, wiping her face with the back of her hand.
“I feel like we need to drink some more,” Maggie said, leaning over her stepmother, and picking up a new bottle of wine.
Dena nodded, sagely.
“I think you’re right.”
“Is it true—well—I know it’s true,” Maggie clarified, “that Meredith had a friend who committed suicide?”
“Yes,” Dena, more sober than earlier, said. “It was about ten years ago, and everybody pretended to be more moved that they were. But Meredith has a strength inside of her. It’s something I’ve rarely seen. The way she moved into life, the way she moved past all of that. Well, it wasn’t really moving past. It was moving into. It was like she was going to a place no one could follow. When Robin died, Meredith didn’t get weaker. She just became more herself. But then,” Dena thought about it, “when Robin died, it was like Robin didn’t get weaker either. I could never say it out loud, I didn’t know who I could say it to, but I just kept thinking—this bitch stepped out in front of a train! That was like the ultimate hell no, the final ‘No I won’t.’”
“And then,” Dena continued. She did not speak right away. Maggie waited for her.
“And then part of me kept remembering how I blamed her for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, thinking how she ought to have known better, and wondering how she could have been so silly.”
“I would have thought the same thing too,” Maggie admitted.
“Maybe,” Dena allowed. “But when she stepped out in front of that train… it was like the ultimate shut the fuck up. Any criticism I had was gone. Anything I had to say was blown out of my mouth.”
“We were talking about if life was worth it,” Maggie confessed. “That’s how we got to the whole discussion about you and Brendan. Jonah said life was cruel. He said that… it was full of injustices and cruelties that didn’t have any meaning. That there were times when he thought you had to give up belief and faith, when you had to admit what was really going on in your head, and that what was going on in it was doubt.
“That was when Kenny brought Robin up. He said he couldn’t believe in nothing. He couldn’t believe life didn’t have meaning because… well, I guess because he couldn’t let Robin be right.”
“Allow me to wax reflective,” said Dena. “I may be turning to Layla in my old age.”
Maggie waited for Dena to continue.
“I think Robin did what she had to do. I think she took the journey she could take, and that doesn’t effect your choices or mine.”
Dena thumped a hand on her knee.
“People are cruel. They are. And silly. And they inflict harm easier than they inflict good. My grandmother used to say this is a graceless time. It is a graceless time, Maggie. But it is in graceless times that we need to be the most graceful. Everything else I’m not sure about. Belief might not be that important. Keeping the rules is definitely not what matters. Endurance? Rocks endure. The old and the senile endure. The just barely there endure. What’s so great about that? Some of the greatest people never endured. They cracked up, gassed themselves. Hell, Jesus couldn’t make it to thirty-five. But grace! That’s it. That’s really where it’s at. And you are only as graceful as you are in the most ungracious moments, in the dark moments. I used to say love is all that matters. But now I think it’s grace.”
“Here we are, Mrs. Anderson.”
Bennett scooped up his wife and sat her on his lap.
“The other day this was our apartment, and now it’s our home. How do you like that?”
“The real question is how do our families like it?”
“No,” Bennett said, doggedly, looking very much like Elias.
“The only question, Wife, is how do you feel about it?”
“Well, a few days ago I was Maia Veems Meradan.”
Bennett nodded.
“And now I am Maia Veems Meradan Anderson-Stanley.”
“You could just be Maia Anderson.” Bennett shrugged.
“No. That’s not what my wedding license says.”
“Or you could be Maia Meradan. You’ll always be Miss Meradan to me.”
Maia leaned into Bennett and she stroked his ginger hair.
“Look, I could have a thousand names. But either way, I’m your wife. And I like it.”
After Fenn had come out of the water, and when he was half dry, he took the Vaseline and the lotion and the bit of olive oil and smoothed them in the palms of his hands. Then he began to run them over his arms and over his shoulders, to the backs of his hands where he knuckled it down the hard to reach parts of his back. He ran his hands over his hips, over his ass, down his thighs. He rubbed more oil onto himself. He went over his whole flesh while Todd spoke, or while Todd stopped and watched. And then, laying the towel under him, he sat down and began to rub the mango oil into his hands and then into his hair.
“You don’t need to cry about it,” Fenn said, “you have a son-in-law. Maybe now that Bennett’s absconded with Maia, it will set things straight between our two houses. Paul still hasn’t forgiven me for Dylan taking Elias into a life of polygamy.”
“Paul isn’t angry at you.”
“He’s angry at Dylan, and that amounts to the same thing. It’s a strain between us,” Fenn said. “Hopefully we can set it straight one day.”
Todd opened his mouth, but Fenn said, “Anyway, my love, this isn’t about me. Or Dylan.” Fenn chuckled a little and stopped the comb in his hair. “It’s about your new son-in-law.”
“I need to go talk to that boy.”
“Yes,” Fenn said. “You do. I always said the reason I was with you is because you were the best man I knew. Be the better man than Paul—”
“It’s not a contest.”
“It is to me,” Fenn said, suddenly, getting up and pulling on a pair of shorts.
“Be the best man I know, and go welcome Bennett into the family.”
“I can do this in the morning, right?”
“Well, I didn’t mean go over tonight.”
“Good,” Todd touched his shoulders, and he wrapped his arms around Fenn’s neck, “because I had other plans for tonight.”
“Do you ever get tired?” Fenn asked.
“Not of you.”
“That’s very smooth, Mr. Meradan.”
“You know you don’t look a day over twenty?”
Fenn laughed at this and said, “Even you don’t look twenty!”
“What if I say you don’t look a day over twenty-five?”
Fenn ran a finger down Todd’s nose and then, by the collar of his tee shirt, pulled him onto the bed.
“I can’t respect myself and even begin to believe that,” he said while Todd began kissing his throat.
