Dylan did not talk while they walked through Loyola and then up the little streets threading north. There was clearly a beach in sight, but Laurel supposed Dylan had his reasons for not going there. It was a few blocks later they went west, toward the water, and this beach had an entirely different quality. They went to the end of a quiet street that dead ended in a park. They walked across a little asphalt path running north and south and, across that they approached the sand, and another path, a cement walk pockmarked and half covered in sand. Across this stretched the beach. The sand was hard packed because of the drizzle and then they went toward the shore. Dylan knelt down and put his white hands to the edge where the water ran over them as they sank into the sand.
“Do you ever think about my sex life?” he said, at last.
“Do you think about mine?” Laurel said.
For good measure she elaborated, “Do you think about what a tremendous lover Moshe can be when he’s between my legs, way down deep inside of me—”
“Oh, gross—”
“And how he sucks on my titty—only my right one—until I moan—”
“Laurel please!”
“Dylan, please!” She knelt down beside him in the water. It went from grey to grey blue and stretched to the very horizon, so much water, primeval water under endless, ancient sky.
“Don’t you think I have better things to think about than your bedroom?”
“When people know about the three of us that’s the first thing they think. That’s why Paul Anderson doesn’t talk to me anymore.”
“Is that what you’re so upset about?”
It didn’t really seem that upsetting to Laurel, who hardly knew Paul Anderson.
“I’m upset when it does happen the way people think it happens.”
“Are you about to tell me things I don’t ask about and don’t really want to know?”
“Probably,” Dylan said.
“We work really well as a family. But my life with Eli is private and my life with Lance is private. And that’s the way it is with all of us. Sometimes we sleep in the same bad, but sometimes we do have three ways and stuff. Because Elias likes it, usually.”
“Well, you must like it a little,” his cousin said with her unmerciful logic.
“I like everything I’ve ever done,” Dylan said, “when I’m doing it. Some things are harder to live with after they’re done. And for some reason, me and Lance don’t do well with that kind of thing. It makes things really weird and awkward. Elias? He figures why not? He loves it.”
“But you don’t?”
“I don’t and I wish I did, because really, he’s right. We are a family, so why not?”
“Give me your jacket,” Laurel said, “I need to sit down, and I don’t want to have a wet ass.”
Dylan obeyed and Laurel folded both jackets under her and then sat down, stretching out her legs so that they almost touched the water.
“What exactly is it that you don’t like about it?”
“Oh, com’on. Are we playing therapist?”
“Yes, and keep in mind, one day I’ll be a real one.”
Dylan sighed, sat down heedless of the sand and said, “I’ve done a lot of stuff. I’ve done three ways. I did my first one when I was,” he thought of telling Laurel the whole truth and then settled on, “when I was much too young. I didn’t hate it. I loved it. I was doing all sorts of things with people I would never see again. But Lance and Elias are my family. They’re my boyfriend. I mean, I don’t even think about in the plural. We’re married, and when we do that stuff I feel—this is the way I feel—like we’re doing something sort of cheap and animal. When I’m with Lance I want to be with Lance. When I’m with Elias I want to be with him. When I’m… when I’m fucking one of them in front of the other or… stuff like that, it’s very hot, and then when it’s over I feel a little sick about it. I feel like I’m that same out of control kid who has to do any old thing to get off, and Lance was never that type of person so… that’s why he looks the way he does today. He’s still that good Catholic, and quite frankly being gay and being married to two men is a hell of a stretch for a good Irish Catholic boy. This is one stretch too many. He can’t take it. We can’t take it.”
Laurel thought for a moment.
“My life is much less complicated,” she said, at last. “You need to talk to Elias.”
“He’s not like us. He’s stronger than us.”
“You’re pretty strong yourself.”
“He’s the reason we’re even together. He was the one that said we should be a family. He organizes everything. He’s always right.
“And I know why he wants us at the same time,” Dylan said. “For him it’s totally different. He… for him if one of us isn’t there something is missing. He never wants anyone to be left out. But for me… it’s just very different.”
“Do you want me to talk to him,” Laurel stood up casually.
“Huh, what?” Dylan shot up, his face red. “Hell, no!”
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t say anything, Lor!”
“Alright, already.” She shrugged.
“So,” Laurel said, after a while, “what else do you want to do today?”
“I think I’d like to walk to the Krishna temple. Sort of get my self back in line. It’s a really cool place provided you don’t talk to anyone.”
Laurel snorted.
“It’s like… I don’t know what it’s like. Maybe going to a Catholic church when you’re Episcopalian. Except Hare Krishnas aren’t really Hindus at all. If you just buy their incense and their music, maybe go to pray and be quiet, it’s a nice place. If you start reading their books and shit, you might get a little freaked out.”
They began to walk away from the beach. A little north of them was a clump of seagulls, opening and closing their mouths, minding their business. As they passed the square green lump of a public restroom, there was a bum smoking a cigarette who gave them a thumbs up.
“That bum’s got the right idea,” Dylan said. “I know they say you shouldn’t call them bums, but… I think it sounds better than homeless.”
The cousins walked back up the street holding hands, looking to the unknowledgeable eye like a couple. Laurel put her head on Dylan’s shoulder for a moment.
“I’ve always felt secure with you,” she said.
“I have no idea why.”
“Because you never do anything wrong.”
Dylan gave a bitter chuckle.”
“You spend so much time being guilty over things in the past,” Laurel said, “that didn’t really happen for very long. But everybody loves you because you love them. I don’t think you’ve ever hurt anyone. At least not on purpose. And if you did I’m sure you made it right. I can’t say that about too many other people.”
Dylan did not respond. He just kept walking up Morse, hearing the sound of his cousin’s voice, for if he was her security—what a strange idea!—then she had certainly always been his.
By the time they reached the apartment on Magnolia, the place had attained a peace it had lacked that morning. In the corner over the window there was a light burning before Radha and Krishna, and a stick of incense like the sweet rosy stuff they’d bought at the Krishna Temple. Lance would never touch that altar, so it must have been Elias who’d done this. The house was quiet and clean and there was no sign of either of the other boys.
Laurel went to the refrigerator, saying, “I can’t stay much longer. I need to go pick up Moshe from his parents.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re in West Ridge.”
“I meant Lance and Elias.”
“Probably in Elias’s bedroom, cause that’s the one with the shut door.”
It was while the coffee was percolating that the bedroom door opened and Elias came out.
“Lance is asleep,” he said, simply. “I’d say don’t wake him, but you already know that. And once he’s out, he’s out. You know that too.”
Elias went back down the hall. Laurel, still in the kitchen, watched Dylan follow him. The two of them were looking into the room on Lance.
“It’s amazing. He looks like a baby that way, and who would ever think of Lance Bishop as a baby?” Elias said. He put his finger to his lip and closed the door.
“Everything is alright,” he said. “Everything will be alright.”
He took Dylan’s hand and brought him back to the kitchen.
Laurel was taking coffee mugs from the cupboard, and Elias said, “I look over you when you sleep, too. Sometimes when you’re both asleep, I look over you and think how I would do anything to keep you all alright. I do not like this creamer. I’m going to get the other.” Elias said this all in one breath.
“Things were not alright this morning,” he continued. “That was my fault.”
“Nothing’s your fault.”
“If I ask you to do things I know you don’t want to do, then that’s my fault.”
“Am I even supposed to be hearing this?” Laurel asked.
Elias only shrugged.
“I assume you already know most of it. Dylan tells you everything.”
There was no rancor in Elias’s voice.
After a pot of coffee, Laurel got up, and left. It took a while to leave because it was hard to say goodbye to Dylan, especially after a summer in New York, and then she drove the short distance to West Ridge and had dinner with the Fromms. It was good but heavy, and full of starch, and Laurel was already full of coffee. The whole meal, Moshe kept catching her hand and smiling, and she kept thinking of what Maia had said:
“But I’ll never be a Jew. It’s not quite the same. Especially since I’ll never be white.”
“The Fromms aren’t like that.”
“The Fromms are not the totality of American Judaism.
For the first time there was doubt in Laurel. Maia was a twenty year old who had run off with her disaffected boyfriend and returned to Rossford married, and yet Laurel could not dismiss her best friend’s words.
“We could stay here tonight?” Moshe said.
They could. Laurel could have her room, and then when the family was asleep, Moshe could sneak in. Even now, even as full as she was there was a part of her that savored the idea of reaching up to touch his face in the dark, making room for the length of his body in the bed.
“She wants to go back home,” Marta pointed out, though, reading Laurel well. “And there’s still light enough for it. Make sure you drive, Moshe. She’s been driving all day.”
And so they left West Ridge. They drove up Devon until they reached Sheridan, and then down Sheridan till they came to the Outer Drive. The lake passed them on one side and the tall buildings of the city on the other. It took longer to drive through the city than it would to get from the southern most border of Chicago to home. Laurel grew tired of Chicago and fell asleep by the time they’d reached Hyde Park.
The darkness of evening had settled in when they reached Rossford. Laurel stopped at Fenn’s house before she went on to her mother’s. She had a sense everyone would be there and thought Thackeray would like to hear about his brother.
Everyone, Fenn first, was glad to see her. He embraced his niece very tightly and said, with what appeared to be a forced smile, “You snuck in and out of the city this morning without coming over.”
“Well, I did spend the day with Dylan. And this must be Thackeray.”
“Hi,” Thackeray nodded, and his hair bobbed up and down.
Layla was in the kitchen, and she kissed Laurel too.
“Welcome, Moshe,” she said.
“Everyone’s glad to see me,” Laurel said, parting from her aunt. “But everything’s not right… Something’s happened.”
Todd and Dena were in the house, too, and so was Riley. They’d been speaking in low voices and now Fenn said, “Well, it is because of Barb Affren.”
“What?” Laurel started.
“She was old,” Layla allowed.
Laurel knew Barb. Not well, she admitted. She was Meredith’s grandmother.
“She died this morning,” Fenn said, simply. “It is a funny thing. No one really expects death in the morning.”
