Meredith Affren could feel the grease in her hair. She was yawning and tired, and her back hurt from the sharp springs of the motel bed. Here the roads were pebbly, and as she approached the first real house at the end of the procession of trailers, she turned onto the noisy driveway, and then sat in the car a while.
“If I don’t get my ass up,” Meredith Affren murmured to herself, “he’s going to come out of there, or someone’s going to come out of there, and wonder why the hell I’m just sitting in this driveway.”
So putting her purse over her shoulder, she opened the car door, stepped out and, looking around at the open sky and the wide branched tree in front of the old white house, thought, “This is a long way from Long Island.”
She had hardly knocked on the door when he answered. “Meredith.”
“Kip!”
“You look like the surprised one.” He pushed open the door. “Come on in.”
“It’s just that you look so different,” Meredith was explaining as she entered the comparative darkness of the living room.
“Well, five years do that. And I’m not doing the hair gel thing anymore.”
“As soon as you were free, I had to come see you,” Meredith told him.
“Yeah,” Kip Danley chuckled, and waved his hand around the living room that looked, somehow, exhausted, “This is what freedom looks like.
“So, how’s your life?”
“Good. College is going well.”
“Great,” Kip said. “All that small talk out of the way. And Mathan?”
Meredith blinked.
“Did I hit a sore note?”
“I broke up with Mathan.”
“What for?” Kip sounded truly upset, and this upset Meredith.
“Because, Kip,” she said, “since you’ve gotten out, every time I’m supposed to be thinking about Mathan Alexander, I think about you. Now,” she frowned, “why the hell do you think that is?”
“And so Lee says, ‘I just don’t understand this city anymore,’” “Which is when Fenn admits he never understood it in the first place.”
“Well, I don’t understand why my damn water bill keeps going up, and the water’s not any better,” Fenn agreed. “Not to mention the quality of education’s going down, and going down at Saint Barbara’s as much as at Rossford Public.”
“As much?” Chay said, doubtfully.
“Well, at the same rate,” Fenn amended, rising to head upstairs.
“Last time when we went up to the city,” Will said, “what was half comforting, and half sad to know was that things are just as bad there.”
“I know,” Fenn acknowledged from the foot of the stair. “What you want to hear is that it’s better some place else. And what you dread hearing is that it is better some place else.”
“Well, now,” Layla said, “in my world, I guess I’ll be opening up the new poetry room at the theatre?”
“Right,” her uncle agreed. “Right.”
“That sounds duller than it really is,” Layla noted. “Maybe I can do something in Chicago. Are you still going up to see Brendan and Kenny?”
“In a few days. Right after Rosh Hoshanah,” Fenn said.
“And what about—” Layla put a hand to her mouth and whispered, “Ruthven?”
“I don’t even know anything about that,” Fenn said. “And what about me finally going upstairs.”
Fenn turned and went up to look for the old comforter he was going to stick in the washer, and when he’d come out of his and Todd’s room with it, he heard a sharp grunt and a moan.
Eyebrows up, he went out of his room and down the hall. But now he heard it again. It came frantic and painful from Dylan’s room and he remembered once, when a bookshelf had fallen on his foot and Mama wasn’t home and Adele wasn’t home and he remembered times when he had cried and no one had heard him, and so he went immediately to open his boy’s bedroom door.
Everything stopped. Fenn Houghton stood dry mouthed with the blanket in his hands. On the bed, sweaty, hair sticking up and legs wrapped around a naked Lance who stopped in mid twist on top of him, was Dylan, mouth open, face aghast, looking up at him.
Smoothly, Fenn picked up the comforter, gathered it to his stomach and, turning his back, walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
End of Part One
We'll return to Rossford, but we're going to stop off in Geshichte Falls for a few days.
