PART
THREE
EXPLOSION
NINE
TRAIN RIDES
“Well, the whole thing excites me,” Caroline Houghton said.
“Layla’s poetry reading?”
“No,” Caroline said.
“I mean yes. I mean, that’s not what I was talking about. I was talking about you going out with Alex.”
“Well, I’m not going out until I get back from this thing with Layla,” Laurel said, straightening her top.
“But going out nonetheless. And not with that Jack Warren.”
“You’re not bringing him up again?”
“I guess I was,” Caroline reflected. “But I guess I’ll stop.”
“Thank you, Mom.”
“You know,” Caroline followed her daughter out of the bedroom, “that’s how I met your father. In a dream.”
Laurel turned around. “Mom, that didn’t work out.”
“It worked out for a while. It worked out long enough for you to come into the world.”
“I’m not even going to look for the flaw in that logic.”
Downstairs there was a knock at the door and Laurel said, “That must be Layla.”
Laurel and her mother went downstairs together, and Laurel opened the door for her aunt. Claire and Dena were with her.
“I can’t believe I’m being snubbed by my own sister,” Layla said.
“I’m not snubbing you,” Caroline told her. “I’m snubbing WomanFest.”
“Is it really that bad?” Claire cringed.
“Well, it is called WomanFest.”
“How did you know about it?” Dena asked her.
“I did card readings there one year.”
Beyond that Caroline wouldn’t say.
“Do you have any prediction for how Layla’s going to do?” Claire said.
“I don’t really need to predict. All I need to know is, it’s WomanFest and please, if you ever want to be invited back, learn how to wear a poker face.”
“That,” Laurel noted, reaching for her coat, “seems like the beginning to a story I need to hear.”
“Later,” Caroline said. “I promise.”
They went down the long steps to Claire’s van below, and as they were climbing into it, Laurel’s phone rang.
“Who is it?” Layla said. Laurel checked it.
“It’s Dylan.”
“Give it here,” Layla said from the shotgun seat.
Laurel handed it to Layla as Claire began driving, and Layla turned the phone off and then stuck it in her purse.
“Layla!”
“You,” her aunt told her, “are off duty today. It’s WomanFest time!”
“Well, now I understand that you don’t like Ron,” Danasia told Noah, “But you should have gone to him a long time ago.”
“It’s not that I don’t like Ron,” Noah said. “And he doesn’t really like me either.”
“Or even Casey.”
“I’m not going to Casey.”
“See,” Danasia said, leaning across the table, “that’s your problem. You want to be proud and respectable, and then do all the things that proud, respectable people just can’t get away with. You’ve got a past, and this very minute that past has a hundred videos more shocking than you sitting on a dildo and riding a bicycle that would get you drummed out of this school system.
“And that’s a shame, it really is, because Rossford City Schools isn’t that great, and if they were more concerned with what teachers were doing now than what they did ten years ago, the schools would be better places.”
“That’s exactly what Chay said.”
“Well, he’s a wise boy.
“But my point is,” Danasia continued, “you’re being too proud.
“I wouldn’t dare have you surrender your pride to Ron. I know the two of you have had bad history, and I’ve told him about that shit. I told him, Baby, Noah Riley was in my life years before you, and you keep up this shit and he’ll be in it years after you. No, don’t laugh. I’m dead serious. You and me, for life.
“But I will go and see if he’s in touch with anything. You need to go talk to Casey.”
Noah’s face went stony, and crossing his arms over his chest, he sank a little into his chair.
“I know you have bad history, but you were friends once.”
“Bad history? He had sex with my son! He did it when Chay was fifteen for Christ’s sake.”
“All the more reason he owes you,” Danasia said. “And you can put it like that. And you better.”
Noah nodded.
“That teaching job was bullshit, anyway,” Danasia told him.
“I loved being a teacher, though.”
“You loved tutoring at home,” she corrected him. “And there’s more than one way to teach.”
“Other stuff? Not that shit about Chay and Sheridan?”
“Believe it or not, no.”
“Well, good,” Danasia decided. “It’s not good to always be hung up on your children.”
“It’s more about Paul.”
“Is something wrong with him?”
“No, nothing’s wrong with him. That’s the problem. We were watching that old video, the one the dean found. I said I couldn’t watch it by myself, and we laughed at it a while, but when it got to the sex part…”
“Did it make you hot?”
“It was us years ago. but… I mean, I know we don’t look the same—”
“You look the same to me.”
“Well, that’s nice, but when I take off my shirt, I know I’m not quite the same, and neither is Paul. But we watched the whole thing and we were looking at each other, and then we snapped out of it, and I said I had to go home.
“We’ve been friends for so long, but we used to do movies together. I can still remember it. Pauley broke me in. I used to get weak in the knees with that man. Doing stuff with him was just so easy cause I just loved being with him. And then when we left that, when we first came to Rossford, we were sleeping together. We were lovers. I left and he found Kirk, and then James came into my life. But me and Paul were something, and I was feeling it again. And I’ve been feeling it.”
“Do you want to leave James for Paul?” Danasia said, only half sarcastically.
“No,” Noah said after a while. “But I do want to sleep with Paul, and that’s fucking me up real bad.”
“Okay, so we’ve been friends for a long time and I’m just going to get this off of my chest.”
“All right,” Fenn said, sitting up on the couch.
“You remember this couch?” Paul said.
“Yes, it’s my couch, I’ve remembered it for twenty years, but I bet that’s not what you wanted to talk about.”
“That is the most maudlin thing you’ve ever said.”
“Well, now I’m officially old enough to be maudlin,” Paul said. “I’m the same age you were when we met.”
“Get out,” Fenn murmured.
“Yeah, I’m not a boy anymore.”
“Well,” Fenn told him, “Now that we’re both old, what were you about to get off your chest.”
“I never said you were old—”
“That’s hardly the point,” Fenn shrugged. “So why don’t you tell me the point.”
“I want to fuck Noah.”
If Fenn had a drink in his hand, he would have dropped it.
“We watched that video the dean found. It just brought back feelings. He was so hot back then. So sweet. We used to be lovers! I couldn’t stop thinking about how it was with him. The whole time we just kept looking at each other and… you know, in the past it could never have worked out for several reasons.”
“I can think of several reasons why it wouldn’t work out now.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Paul waved that away. “I’m not saying run off and make a life with Noah. I’m just saying I really, really, want to have sex with him. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. We’ve been friends for so long, and you know we used to be lovers.”
“You just said that.”
“In this house. In Dylan’s bedroom—”
“There’s more than enough sex that’s been going on in Dylan’s bedroom.”
“Oh, yeah,” Paul said, sadly. “I’m glad he finally decided to tell you about that.”
Paul instantly realized what he had said, but before he could rephrase it, Fenn said:
“Whaddo you mean, finally?”
Paul looked frozen and stupid, and he was trying to figure what tact to take before he came down on honesty.
Fenn said nothing.
After a space of silence, Fenn said, “He’s been having sex with Lance Bishop for two years?”
Paul opened his mouth and closed it, but Fenn distinctly saw the word, “Who?” on Paul’s mouth.
“It wasn’t Lance Bishop?” Fenn said standing up.
“I… don’t… think so.” Paul wished he’d never spoken.
“Well, then who? And how many?”
“I don’t know, Fenn. And I don’t know.”
“You knew that my only son was running around with half the city, and you didn’t think you should tell me?”
“Tell you what?” Paul threw his hands up. “What were you going to do but what you’re doing now?”
Fenn ignored Paul.
“I don’t know him,” he said. “I don’t know that boy at all.”
“I want to talk about peace,” Secily said as she released Layla’s hand and threaded through the women.
“Yes,” one said.
“Yes,” said another.
“I want to talk about the idea of peace warriors,” Secily continued.
“They say that Gandhi was a warrior of peace. They speak of peace warriors!”
Secily’s voice rose up as she stepped onto the stage.
“How do you feel about peace warriors?”
When the women seemed to be thinking of the answer, Secily screamed out, “Whaddo you think of peace warriors?”
Some women, cued by this, began clapping.
“Well, you know how I feel about peace warriors?” Secily demanded.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on?” Claire whispered behind her hand to Laurel, and Laurel, about to laugh, saw one woman with long grey hair frown.
“I’ll tell you what I think about peace warriors,” Secily continued.
“FUCK,” she spoke in a low voice, “Peace warriors.”
At once there was a bursting of applause and Layla looked at Dena, thinking that mostly the eruption of handclapping was relief at knowing what they were supposed to applaud.
“Because,” Secily cried out. “You can’t fight a war for peace! Now can you? Let’s think about that shit. A war for peace? You can’t fight for peace. You fight for fighting. Peace is the opposite of war. It’s the opposite of fighting. Fighting for peace is like… pissing for shit!”
Someone whistled so shrilly behind Dena, that she nearly jumped up in the air.
“I was right with her until that,” Layla said.
“Until the whistle or until the shit for piss?” Laurel said.
“Yes,” said Layla.
“So what do you do for peace? You can’t fight the war for peace. I was thinking to myself… I was at my cottage on Lake Neil... Now, we don’t keep furniture there. It’s very Zen. The only thing we use for a bed is a pallet, to return to simplicity. And as I sat meditating I thought, No… not fighting the war for peace, but fighting the PEACE for peace.”
“Yes,” Laurel said, earnestly, putting her hands together, and when her aunt looked at her, Laurel smirked and said, “Don’t fight it. Join it.”
“And then I thought even more… not fighting the peace for peace. No, well what is the opposite of fighting. Peaceing!”
“You gotta be kidding me,” Claire muttered.
Again, the woman beside her cleared her throat and Claire said, “Honey, you really gotta knock that shit off.”
“So, I will be peacing the peace for peace!” Secily declared quietly as her audience applauded her once more, and then Secily took a strip of paper from her cleavage and declared:
“And here is a paean I’ve composed about that peace:
i
on my bed
flat as a cracker
now know what matters i will get up and take
a shit
and this shit will expel all war
all the guns, the bombs the nails that put together engines of patriarchy
because i am no longer fighting here, my only duty is to be shitting
all of this mess that’s missing and i
am peaceing the peace for peace putting the piece together with denise
and putting my face in her cinnamon scented box
and at last— flox?
“Flox?” said Dena.
Claire shrugged. “It rhymes with box.”
Secily concluded: “I will be peaceing the peace for peace!”
