Chapter Two
Sunday
“Are you sure you guys don’t want to stay a little longer?” Kenny said. They were in the little alleyway parking lot under the shadow of the three story apartment building.
In the distance, Milo Affren could hear the rumble of the El and he said, “We gotta get back home. Will got that call from Layla, and you know how they are. He can hardly stay away.”
“Yeah,” Will closed the trunk but raised an eyebrow. “That’s why Milo’s in such a hurry. It has nothing to do with getting back to his wife and son or anything.”
Brendan was sitting on the base of the winding steps that connected the back porches of each of the three floors and he said, “Kenny, this is what it’s like to have whipped friends.”
“Whipped my ass,” Milo said. “You guys need to come back home.”
“Yeah,” Brendan replied. “I’ll just pack up, cancel the lease and come right back to Rossford. Cause there’re so many job opportunities for me in Northwest Indiana.”
Milo looked at Kenny, who just happened to be paying a great deal of attention to an old Ford rumbling down the gravel alleyway.
“We’ll be back to visit soon.”
“But you gotta come back here more often,” Brendan told them.
“That’s for sure,” Will agreed. “You guys are hardly an hour away and there’s all of this… life.”
“Yes, Will,” said Brendan. “The word is life. Cause we’re in an actual city.”
“You don’t have to make Rossford sound so podunk,” Will protested.
“Hey, I don’t believe I said anything like that. I’m just saying,” Bren shut his mouth as the El squealed by. “Well, the El just said that.”
“How do you sleep with that thing?”
Brendan shrugged. “I don’t know how I could sleep without it.”
Will looked at Kenny, broad shouldered, boyish, with his dark red hair, and then he looked at blond Brendan with his long features, and fine boned face. Kenny was in a sweatshirt and baggy jeans looking much younger than he would have dressed for work, and Brendan was in snug jeans and a tee shirt. They were a twenty-first century, happening, hot big city couple.
“Yes?” Brendan said.
“You guys just look so hot together.”
“Is it weird for you?” Milo wondered to Kenny, “when Will says shit like that?”
Kenny brushed it aside. “After all these years you get used to him. Come here, man,” Kenny gestured for Milo to hug him.
“Look, Miles, I’m serious,” he said, releasing his friend. “You’ve been away too fucking long, and I got a godson I never see. Bring him and Dena up real soon, and you, Will, next time Layla pulls that shit, you tell her to put her ass on the South Shore and ride up here with her news.”
“Ooh,” Bren put a hand to his mouth in his famous worried look.
They all looked to him.
“Oh, never mind,” Brendan said.
“You’re so annoying when you do that,” Milo told him.
“I was just thinking, what if she’s pregnant?”
“She’s not pregnant,” Will said.
“No,” Brendan made to dismiss it, breezily. “Of course not.”
“No,” Will said.
“That couldn’t be it.”
When Kenneth looked at Will suspiciously, Will said, quickly, “She would have told me. We’re not married, that’s not something you say the way she said what she said.”
“Right,” Brendan said, thinking Will’s protests were strangely adamant.
“No,” Will murmured while Milo pushed the other long haired young man into the passenger’s seat, “that isn’t it.”
A half hour later on Lake Shore Drive, Milo said, “I need to make a phone call.”
“You know you shouldn’t talk while driving.”
“Well, that’s why you’re making the call.”
“All right,” Will said, and then a moment later he asked, “Who am I calling?”
“My wife.”
Will dialed Dena’s cell number, and a moment later, Dena cried, “Milo!”
“Sorry to disappoint,” Will said. He held the phone to Milo’s ear.
“Ey, babe,” Milo said, keeping one eye on the road ahead. The high form of the Sears Tower and downtown Chicago unwound to the southwest, “Can you tell me if Layla is knocked up?”
Will sputtered and nearly dropped the phone, but Milo caught it.
“What?” his wife said.
“Layla called with some cryptic shit last night and Brendan put it in our heads that she might be pregnant.”
In the passenger seat, Will could hear Dena laughing out loud.
Will took the phone from Milo.
“I know she’s not pregnant,” Will said, darkly.
“No, Will. We both know that’s not possible. It’s something else altogether. Rob is making a mess. Robert!” Dena broke off. “Will, let me have Milo again.”
“Can you pick up that Chicago mix popcorn?”
“Yeah.”
“And you know it only tastes right if it really is from that one place. You know that right?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Promise me you won’t skimp and pick up some crap in Gary.”
“I promise, and I’m getting off the phone because we’re headed into traffic.”
“Alright, love you Miles. See you in a bit.”
“Love you too,” Milo closed the phone and handed it back to Will.
“Well, don’t you feel better?” Milo asked him.
“That was embarrassing. And I bet she’ll tell Layla before the day is out.”
“True. But don’t you feel better?”
Will said nothing.
“And now we can enjoy this lovely ride. And it is a lovely ride. I do love Chicago. It’s not Rossford, but it’s close.”
Will shook his head and looked out of the window. Now they were coming into Lincoln Park and he thought how, in a richer world, it would be a wonderful place to live.
“Dena’s popcorn?” Will said.
“What about it?”
“You’re going to stop and get cheese and caramel corn in Gary, aren’t you?”
“Nope,” Milo said. “I’m going to get it the same place I always do. At the Walgreen’s across from Loretto.”
When the phone rang, Lee’s first thought was that it would be Tom. He had to admit that after all these years he still always thought it was Tom, which made no sense because at eleven in the morning he would be playing organ for Mass at Saint Barbara’s And it wasn’t Tom. It was Adele.
“Guess what?”
“What?”
“Guess.”
“You’re pregnant.”
“No, that’s almost impossible.”
“It’s more than almost impossible.”
“Why is that?” Adele’s voice effected offense.
“Cause you’re too damn old.”
“I’m not that old.”
“For having a baby you are. But that’s not your point, remember?”
In fact, his cousin had forgotten, and she said, again, “Guess.”
“No more guessing. I’m tired of that.”
“Well, your cousin, my daughter, is a poet.”
“She’s been a poet.”
“But now she’s a published poet with her own book.”
“Well… I’ll be goddamned.”
Adele joined in with her delight as well, and then she stopped.
“What?” Lee said to the dead silence.
“Just… Did you really mean that?”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“Were you really surprised? Cause you didn’t sound surprised.”
Lee had always relied on his “I’ll be goddamned” to effect maximum surprise, and he said, “Of course I was surprised. Not surprised because she did it, of course. The blood of poets and playwrights is in her veins.” Lee was sitting at his desk, waiting to get off the phone with his cousin, so he could, in fact, get back to his new manuscript. “But surprised that it happened today. That you called me with it this morning.”
“Well, it actually happened yesterday, but Layla didn’t open the package up till this morning, and learn it was her book.”
Oh, so that was the lie she was telling?
“Well, I’m just proud as anything to hear about our Layla.”
“Yes. I was afraid for a moment she’d told you before she told me.”
“Well, of course not. You’re her mother.”
This much was true, Lee reflected after he got off the phone and walked around the living room, and then up the shallow steps to the dining room, the kitchen and the rest of the house. He didn’t like lying to Adele, but telling the truth might have been worse. Lee had heard from Fenn, last night, after they’d been having a celebration dinner. Lee had been yawning and getting ready to turn off the light, right beside his sleeping Tom. He’d been completely re-energized when he heard, though. He’d wanted to go over and talk to his younger cousin right then and there. He wanted to be her mentor, sit up and write with her. He wanted to shake Tom awake.
“No,” Lee reflected in the night, as his hand was over Tom’s shoulder. It wasn’t right that Tom should know when Adele didn’t. So he decided he’d tell Tom later on, when he came back from church.
That later on should have been now.
Lee Philips thought that writing was making him fatter and fatter. Every time someone or something interrupted him he made a walk around the house that often ended at the refrigerator. He was just about to open it again when, through the entrance to the kitchen, out of the long window in front of the living room, he saw Todd’s Cherokee parking, and then Todd was coming up the walk with Dylan.
“Hey goddad!” Dylan greeted him, walking in the house. He stood in front of the desk. “Abandoned writing, light on in the kitchen…. It’s a good thing I’m here to push you.”
“It just may be, Dylan.”
“And have you heard about the newest writer in the family?”
“Your father called me last night,” Lee said.
“Oh,” Dylan told him. “I woke up to get a glass of water and heard him on the phone, but I thought he was talking about me.”
“Well, Dylan, it can’t be all about you,” Lee said.
“I didn’t mean it in a vain way. I’m just turning into a problem child,” he said with quote marks in his voice.
“Go upstairs,” Lee said.
“Are you sending me to my room?”
“Yes, and play something pretty while you’re up there. I like to hear your horn. Lance called by the way. He’s coming over in an hour. I told him that’s when you’d be back.”
“Great.”
“Then, see, that provides me with the perfect excuse to send you away,” he said, approaching his desk.
Dylan looked at Lee and Todd, but when Lee said, “Now,” Dylan went.
“Well?” Lee said.
“Well, what?” said Todd.
“Is he a problem child?”
“He’s a teenager. And Ruthven called last night.”
“Ummm,” Lee sucked in his breath.
“Yeah…” Todd let it hang.
“Now that was a problem child.”
“I don’t know why everyone says that.”
“He wasn’t bad. He was good, well behaved. But damaged,” Lee reflected. “And I think you forget, Dylan is someone whose mother handed him to someone else, came back ten years later promising to always be there, and then virtually disappeared all over again. There’s damage there too.”
Lee looked up the steps. Now he heard water running.
“You think Dylan’s got problems?” Todd said
Lee turned back coolly and said, “You think he doesn’t?”
