“And then he showed up. Well, not showed up so much as broke into Adele’s house and nearly gave her the shock of her life.”
“Who broke into Adele’s house?” Tom cried, walking into the lounge.
“See,” said Tara, turning away from the old Formica table in the lounge. “That’s what happens when you jump in on grown folks business.”
Tom frowned and Fenn said, “Lee came back yesterday.”
“Your cousin, Lee?”
“You don’t have to sound so horny,” Tara said.
Again the frown. Again Tara’s shrug.
“You do sound a little bit like a panting dog,” Fenn admitted.
“I just… I… well, we only talked once. And then he went back.”
“What about Brian?” Tara said.
“What about him?” Tom’s nostrils flared. “And… why don’t you try minding your own business?”
Tara rolled her eyes, humphed and went back to her coffee.
“Well, he’s going to come around here, right? I mean, he’s a playwright and, well, this is a playhouse. By the way, we’re having try outs for As You Like It. I sent the casting call out as far as South Bend.”
“Are people from The Bend really going to come to our playhouse?” Tara said.
“Well, not if we don’t ask, Tara. And by the way, South Bend may be a little bigger—”
“Try about three times.”
“Yeah, maybe. But they don’t have any more culture than we do.”
Fenn nodded, “Good call, Tom. And the only thing South Bend has on us is an abortion clinic.”
“We don’t have an abortion clinic in Rossford?”
“No, Tara. Did you need one?”
“No, smart ass. I just thought a swinging town like Rossy had to have a Planned Parenthood and a baby snuffer joint.”
Tom eyed her and sniffed. “Do you really call them baby snuffer joints?”
“Not to Gloria Steinem’s face.”
“Yes...” Fenn drew the word out, eyeing his old friend. “Well back to... what were we talking about it?”
Tara said “Casting calls,” at the same time Tom said, “Lee.”
“Brian will be so sad,” Tara commented, “when he finds out that Tom can’t stay away from chocolate bars.”
“What are you—?” he began, then frowned. “You are so crude, you know that?”
“He’s cute when he’s all white and snippity,” Tara commented. “Isn’t he?”
“Is it true?” Fenn said in mock solicitude, stroking Tom’s shoulder. “You know, once you’ve had Black...”
“And he never really did turn back did he?” Tara said, clinically.
“I got an idea, how bout the both of you have a nice cup of—”
“Is he about to say ‘cup of shut the fuck up?’” Tara said.
“Oh, I don’t think he is,” Fenn murmured as Tom rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t think he has that in him.”
Tom opened his mouth, but Fenn said, “You know what? I have an idea. How about the both of you come to dinner tonight?”
“In your kitchen?” said Tom.
“Nope, ass. At Layla’s. I’ll sit you right next to Lee.”
“Fenn, you are not a fair man,” Tara said. “You need to get some dyke cousins so I can have some fun too.”
“Tara Veems, you do too well on your own as it is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tom smiled, and walking out the room he sang: “It means you’re a slut.”
In the busy hallway of Saint Barbara’s, Kenny McGrath shouted Dena’s name before she could reply to Milo’s question.
“Hey, Kenny, what’s up?”
Milo nodded in greeting, and Kenny nodded back.
“You seen your not so better half?”
“No,” Dena said. “Brendan is tutoring some kid in math, I think. He usually doesn’t come with us to lunch on Tuesdays.”
“Well, all right. Thanks. I guess I’ll see him at work. They’re moving me up to cashier.”
“Congratulations.”
“Well, I guess,” Kenny said. “The pay is better.”
“Yeah. Brendan says he likes it.”
“Brendan has a knack for it. He can talk to people and remember all the codes.”
“Codes?” Milo raised an eyebrow.
“Every fruit and vegetable has a four digit code you have to type in as you scan it.”
“Fuck!”
“You can say that again. I tried to be a cashier once,” Dena confessed. “ I didn’t make it,”
“I hope I make it.”
“Relax, Kenny, I’m sure you will. You were meant for Martins and Martins was meant for you..”
“You’re being facetious, right?”
“You were meant for Martins and it was meant for you until you graduate, and then you have to move the fuck on. How’s that?”
“Much better. I’ll see you guys, later.”
“Yeah,” Then: “And Kenny?”
“Yup?”
Dena closed her locker and came to him; Milo remained behind.
“Brendan’s always had… you know, buddies. But, until you he never really had friends. I mean, you and Will.”
“Yeah, Will’s great.”
“Yeah. Well, I just wanted to say… I like it. You know. Brendan having someone he can… I know this sounds really grown up and pretentious, but…. You should just hear the way he talks about you. He’s so glad to have you and…”
“What’s going on guys?” Dena heard from down the hall, and Brendan was coming toward both of them.
“I thought you were tutoring that kid?”
“I was,” Brendan said. “Between you me and the Dean’s List, I think he’ll fail.”
Dena was just telling me how glad you were to have me,” Kenny batted his eyelashes.
“You glad to have me, Miller?”
Brendan went pink and scowled at Kenny.
“Not, right now, McGrath.”
“So you would be Jack’s boy,” Lee said to Milo over dinner that night.
“Right,” Milo said. “I can’t believe you know my dad.”
“Well, it’s not so much your dad. It’s your grandparents.”
“Do you remember,” Adele pointed across the table at Nell, “when that one woman pissed Barb off because she kept running after Bob? This was when we were real little, and Barb told my mother about it, and she said don’t take it seriously—”
“But she did take it seriously,” Nell said. “As I remember, that woman owned a hat shop.”
“Right. It’s where that Sonic burger place is now.”
“You know your grandmother took her Cadillac and drove right through the window!” Adele said to Milo.
Layla burst out laughing, and Milo and Dena looked at each other.
“My grandma?”
“She’s a wild one,” Fenn said. “I mean, even now she’s a wild one.”
“That priest down in Florida—” Paul began.
“You were in Florida?” said Milo.
Fenn looked at Paul.
“Yes,” Paul amended. “Checking out a few things. Went with Father Dan.”
“I didn’t even knew you knew Dan,” Adele said.
“Yeah,” Paul told her, waving his fork nonchalant while Tom exchanged glances with Fenn and Lee.
“Anyway,” Paul said, “this old abbot knew Barb and said that there wasn’t a thing the thought of her couldn’t make him do. I’ve seen her now. I can’t imagine what she was like fifty years ago.”
“I guess my grandparents are alright,” Milo said.
“Your grandparents,” Paul told him, “are far more than all right.”
“Did you guys know,” Todd said, “that Paul has convinced Fenn to go down to East Carmel with him on the weekend?”
“What the fuck for!” Adele and Lee said together, and then looked at each other.
“My family lives down there.”
“Really?” Lee said. The news that Paul was a former pornstar was nothing, compared to this.
“What’s wrong with East Carmel?” said Milo.
“What’s wrong with a Klan rally?” Lee said. “Tom, pass me a roll.”
Tom did while Dena said, “East Carmel is just… sort of the place Black people don’t go.”
“East Carmel is the place Black people, brown people, gay people, purple people and, last time I checked, anyone whose last name ends in ski doesn’t go,” Lee added.
“It’s not that bad,” Paul said, a little defensive. “At least… I don’t remember it being that bad.”
“Well, in all honesty,” Tara said, “you wouldn’t really know.” She bit into a roll. “You know?”
Tom looked at Lee and said, “Is he gonna be safe down there?”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Lee admitted. “Provided he doesn’t just go wandering all around by himself. I mean, I was just in Texas, and it’s full of places like that.”
“I thought you were in Kansas.”
“I was, but after Kansas I went to Texas. Incidentally, Kansas has the same shit too. Lot’s of white folks would just love to string them a nigger.” Lee said, affecting an accent.
Tom grinned out of the side of his mouth.
“So, why’d you go to Texas?” he whispered to Lee.
“Because they say everything’s bigger there.”
Tom thought for a minute, and then choked on his food.
“And I wanted to find out if it was.”
Tom took a sip of water, and then said, face expressionless, “And was it?”
Lee murmured, behind his hand: “For the most part, yes.”
Across the table Tara asked Layla, “What’s Tom laughing at?”
“I can’t guess. But knowing Lee, it’s probably inappropriate.”
“So,” Lee, was saying to Tom, “there’s this new play called The Uppity Knight, by this man with an unpronounceable name—”
“Ripley Bogart! Yeah, I know. Terrible name. Great play. I’m reading it right now. Someone sent it to me. I’d love to get the rights to do it. Do you know him?”
“I’ve met him,” Lee said. “Perhaps after dinner we could go out somewhere and talk about an arrangement.
“Oh, don’t look at me all shocked like that, Tom. I’m not stupid.”
“No,” Tom said, turning back to his food. “Far from it, I’d say.”
“I’d say,” Lee murmured with a wry smile.
“It’s a shame Brendan couldn’t be here,” Will said.
“He’s always working.” Dena said.
Lee, who heard, said, “Dena, you ought to tell your man all work and no play—”
“Makes a dull boy, Lee?”
“No, Tara. Makes a single boy.”
“You know, this is one of my favorite places,” Tom said.
“This lake?”
“Um hum. See, right across it you can see the college chapel. And that’s the old dorm where Fenn lived.”
“Did you ever hang out there?”
“Hang out there? I practically lived there. We were the same age, more or less. But I had just graduated from Notre Dame and, you know, Fenn had taken the year off so he was still a student while I was working my first little job. I felt so independent. I wasn’t. My uncle got me the job. But I felt independent.”
Lee smiled.
“Everyone knows how things ended with you and Fenn,” he said. “But what I want to know is how they began? That’s what I would like to know.”
“They began…” Tom did something between a smile and a frown, squinting.
“The first time I met Fenn, well, that was after Mass, on a Sunday night. Evening, at the beginning of the school year. I was feeling very sedate and grown up and not paying attention, and all of a sudden this very expensive twenty-one speed bicycle nearly hit me. It just squealed, and I blinked and shouted and there was Fenn looking down at me and grinning.
“You know, I don’t think he apologized or anything.”
“You should have been paying attention.”
Tom laughed out loud and said, “That’s exactly what he said… Later, you know, when I told him about that.
“But I’d seen him before. It was his… smile, I guess. I always wondered about him. And then came the day he almost ran me over. It seems like we just kept running into each other all the time after that. And then one day he says, rubbing his chin like this, you know the way he does, ‘So, are we gonna be friends or what?’ And that’s how it started.
“I love thinking about that, remembering all of that. How it started. But sometimes it hurts.”
“Because remembering how it started reminds you how it ended?”
Tom nodded.
“But it didn’t end,” Lee said. “It changed. But it didn’t end.”
