PART ONE
THE BEGINNINGS
OF
LOVE
SATURDAY NIGHT
When the package arrived at the house on Saturday, Layla Lawden examined the parcel on the doorstep a long time before picking it up. She looked down the block a little where her longtime neighbors, Paul Anderson and Kirk Hanley lived with their sons, and knew that if she didn’t do something, someone would ask questions, and she just couldn’t be asked any questions right now.
Will had left town to visit Brendan and Kenny. She had never quite forgiven Bren for moving to Chicago, but today she was glad of it. They were having one of the first temperate days of that summer, a day when Layla, in a housecoat, her arms crossed over her chest, could stare at the little package before her.
“Well this is just foolish,” she told herself at last.
Layla bent down, picked the package up, and examined it.
Ms. Layla Lawden,
2821 N. Linden Avenue, Rossford, Indiana
Veil Books
She closed the door with her back, put the package on the dining room table, and then, looking at it with mild curiosity, walked back into the living room and turned the television back on.
When the phone rang, Layla was grateful to pick it up. “I’ve been asked out on a date, should I go?” “Laurel?”
“Yes, Aunt Layla?”
“You’ve been asked on a date?” “That’s right,” Laurel said.
“You’ve gone over this with your mother?” “I haven’t said anything to her.”
“Don’t you think you should?”
“Well, I thought you could give me a more objective idea.” “Object…”
Surely when she was fifteen she hadn’t been like this? She didn’t even think about boys back then. Right? She’d met Will when they were sixteen, and that relationship had started out tame enough.
“Laurel, your mother will put her objective foot in my objective ass if I give you any advice without you consulting her.”
“You just need to… Didn’t you tell me that Uncle Fenn gave you all sorts of advice Adele wouldn’t give when you were growing up?”
“Well, now there is that,” Layla agreed, taking a breath and gathering her feet under her. “So now it’s time for me to be Aunt Layla, hum?”
“I’d appreciate it.” “Do you like the boy?” “Not really?”
“Then why the hell are you calling me about him?” “If I wait for a boy I like, I may never find anyone.” “Don’t you like any of the boys at your school?” “As a matter of fact,” Laurel Houghton said, “No.”
“Well, then as a matter of fact, you should just leave them alone.”
“That’s your advice?”
“Kid, that’s all I got for you.” “I’m coming over, all right?” “Did you even have to ask?’ “Is Will still out of town?” “Yes.”
“I’m putting on my coat right now,” Laurel told her aunt. “I might bring Dylan over. I’m calling him. But we haven’t talked in a few days. He’s getting more and more secretive.”
“Boys do that.”
“I thought girls were supposed to do that.”
“Well,” Layla thought, “in Dylan’s case it’s boys. He’s got a lot of sh—stuff on his plate.”
“I guess,” Laurel said, “Well, I’d be glad to share it with him. But I guess that’s not happening. All right, I’m on my way. Have you ever thought…?”
“Ever thought what?”
“What if—? I saw this thing on Jerry Springer, where this woman had two gay friends and every time her husband was gone she thought he was just visiting them, but it turns out he was in a three way romance with them.”
“Uh.” “Uh?’
“What am I supposed to say to that?” Layla asked her niece.
“It’s just… what if Will and Brendan and Kenny?”
“I would slap him, then I’d slap then, then I’d slap you because you thought of it,” Layla said. “I’m getting off the phone and you can think all the stupid thoughts you want on your way here.”
“Don’t touch that, Rob,” Dena told the boy as she and Layla sat on opposite ends of the couch sipping beers, Laurel in the middle of them.
“I think I’ll just get up and move that temptation,” Layla said, but her oldest friend held up a hand.
“No, Lay, this is what we call a teaching moment.”
“If he breaks that vase it’s about to be a beating moment,” Layla told Dena. “For you and your son.”
The five year old understood all about beating moments, and the dark haired boy pulled his hand back and said, sullenly, to his mother, “You were supposed to give me a brother.”
“Honey, you don’t just go to the store and pick em up,” his mother said.
Rob Affren pointed at Dena’s flat stomach and told her, “Daddy said you had to bake the baby in there.”
“True,” Dena allowed taking a sip of her beer. “Why won’t you bake one?”
“Out of yeast,” Dena replied while Laurel put a hand over her mouth.
“You should get some.”
“Robert, you’re starting to ruin Mommy’s good time. Why don’t you go across the street and play with Matty or Bennett or Eli?”
Rob frowned, but Dena was impervious to it. “Are they really my uncles anyway?”
Dena was about to glibly say yes when she realized, “I think they are. I’m just not quite sure how. “
She turned to Layla.
“Paul’s sister is my sister-in-law and my uncle is married to your great uncle Todd so….” Layla decided, “yes.”
Rob seemed to be satisfied with this. He nodded and went out the door while Layla said: “And Meredith is with Mathan and Meredith is his aunt and Mathan is Fenn’s cousin and Fenn is Claire’s uncle-in-law, and…”
“Gay marriage makes everything complicated,” Dena commented. “Well, gay marriage and three beers.
“You know,” she added, swigging the beer around, “I love my husband, but…”
“You’re glad he’s gone?” “Oh, I’m real glad.”
Laurel laughed and Dena said, “One day you’ll understand.” And then, as if the beer bottle pointed in that direction had revealed it to her, Dena said, slowly, “Well… what… the fuck… is that?”
“Dena?”
Dena Affren stood up, crossed the room and picked up the little box.
“Is this…?”
“Is this what?” Laurel and Layla said together.
Dena gave a wicked grin and, holding the box out to her friend said, “Open this.”
“I was waiting for the right moment.” “The moment is now, bitch.”
As if that was all there was to be said on the matter, Layla shrugged.
“Get my keys,” she said to her niece, who stood up, went to the little table under the front window where she saw Robert, across the street, running behind three children, and Kirk Hanley shouting something to them.
“Here you go.”
Layla used the keys to cut through the plastic, and then opened the box. She pulled away the paper and lifted up a small glossy book.
“Ah…” Laurel said, but it was Dena who took up the book, gave it a satisfied look and then, without giving it back to Layla, kissed her friend on the cheek.
“I feel so proud to know you right now,” Dena said. “Prouder than usual?” Layla said, trying to sound merry
“If you can imagine that, yes.” To her surprise and embarrassment, Dena was blinking back tears.
Laurel looked from her aunt to Dena and finally Dena gave her the little book and said, “Look at it and be really proud of your family… Again.”
Laurel looked at the cover. She read to herself.
The Life I Know
Poems
by
Lane Brown reminded herself that it wouldn’t be Christian to think of shooting her nephew. And then she remembered that she wasn’t a Christian anymore. Downstairs Danny was blowing, very long and loud, the ram’s horn. When she had asked her husband if the boy could knock it off, for just a little bit, Eric Brown had responded that the boy had to practice. It was nearly Elul. He would be blowing the shofar on the high holidays.
“They’re over a month off,” Lane Brown said. But she said it in a low voice and to herself remembering to pick her battles carefully. Eric had become more and more Orthodox over the years, and she would save up her marriage points for when it came to putting a ham on the table at Thanksgiving. Or for Christmas. Depending upon how her family felt, they might be having Christmas here.
Eric Brown had been the rabbi of Temple Beth Sharon for five years, and the things that had gone on in the house before were increasingly frowned upon when he said, “But I’m the rabbi now.”
“But it’s Reform,” Lane responded.
They had gone to a rabbi’s retreat last year. Lane hadn’t cared for it. There were a few rabbis whose wives were cantors. The Rosenfelds were a bubbly couple, and Amy had shared with her how much joy they found in being a rabbinic couple. Her husband was charismatic, and she was the cantor so they did the whole service together, Mutt and Jeff, Frick and Frack, so damned happy. Shanah Tovahing and Mazel Toving all over the place.
“I think it’s nice, though,” Amy Rosenfeld had told her, “how you and Eric have such separate lives.”
Lane couldn’t help thinking, “What a bitch.”
She felt distinctly unrabbinic, and in a way she felt lied to. All the passion that had come out of Eric, all his love of being a rabbi, was something she hadn’t known when she’d met him, and it was so very strong in him now that she felt certain he’d hidden this part of himself from her. Why hadn’t she known it when they were dating?
Her cell phone rang. “Are you busy?” “Melanie?”
“It’s me.”
“Thank God. Some normalcy.”
“This may be the first time in history,” Melanie Fromm said, “that a rabbi’s wife said her lesbian best friend calling was a moment of normalcy.”
“Well, it’s my normalcy.” “How was that rabbi camp?” “Don’t ask.”
“Ouch. How painful.”
“So painful I almost said don’t fucking ask. And Danny’s downstairs blowing that damn shofar.”
“I love the shofar.”
“Shut up. You don’t live with the shofar.” Melanie chuckled.
“Was that me being rude?” Lane asked. “Almost time to repent for it, anyway.”
“Well,” Melanie shrugged. And then she said, “I did call for a purpose.”
“Purposes are okay, sometimes,” Lane said. “It’s about A bar mitzvah.”
“What are you calling me for about a bar mitzvah?” “Because it’s weird,” Melanie said.
“Well, is the boy weird?”
“Yeah. A little bit. And he’s sort of not even a boy.” “Okay,” Lane shook her head. “Now I don’t even know
what the hell you’re talking about.” “It’s Todd Meradan.”
“Are you serious?” Lane put a hand to her mouth. “Very much so,” Melanie told her.
“I gotta tell you, you guys never make Temple boring.” “Todd wasn’t even the one who told me,” Melanie said. “I
was over at the house and Fenn told me that Todd keeps going
on about how he never made bar mitzvah and he really wants one.”
“Well, I’d think a brit malah was enough,” Lane shook her head. “I have to tell you, if I’d had to do that, I’d still be a Baptist.”
“When did you convert, anyway?”
“Uh, when Eric’s bitch of a mother kept saying she’d never accept our marriage if I wasn’t a Jew.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, she’s gotten a lot better than she used to be.” “Mellowed with age?”
“Sort of. She died.”
Melanie coughed on her coffee, and Lane Brown said, “Ya alright, sister?”
“Uh…” Melanie was regaining her voice. “Yeah… There’s something evil about you, Mrs. Brown.”
“Yeah,” Lane agreed. “Well, you tell Todd—no, I’ll call Fenn, and we’ll talk about all of this.”
“We might see a forty year old gay man get bar mitzvahed in the new year.”
“That’s the beautiful thing about Reform,” Lane chimed. “I still think you’re evil,” Melanie told her.
“Um,” Lane reflected as Danny blew on the shofar again and she meditated on a painful fate for her sister-in-law’s son. “I think you might be right.”
