“Hey, do you know Kenny McGrath?”
“Not, really,” Dena said, “Why?”
“Well, you know who he is?”
“Yeah. Plays on the Lacrosse team. I think Layla had a semi thing for him but didn’t want to admit it.”
“Because he played Lacrosse?”
“No,” Dena smirked, as if the answer was obvious. “Because he was white.”
Brendan opened his mouth and closed it.
“Well, what about Kenny?”
“I wanted to know if he could come to the party.”
“I guess so. Everyone else is.”
“Oh, cool, because I already told him he could come.”
“Brendan!”
“And like you said, everyone is coming, anyway.”
“That new guy, Milo, will be here.”
“I don’t know him,” Brendan said. “Well, none of us does. You know, cause he’s new. I’m thinking we ought to ask him to lunch, but he just doesn’t seem like a lunchy type of guy.
“I heard,” Brendan said, “that back home—where he comes from—he stole a car. And that’s why he’s with the Affrens now.”
“Well, I don’t know about all that, but I do know he’ll be at the party this afternoon.
“Bren, I didn’t even know you knew Kenny.”
“We work together. At Martins. Neither one of us can get enough hours. We’ll be to the party after our shift is over.”
“That’s about five, right?”
“No, it’s about seven. I know—” Brendan said, “But I can’t complain. I’ve been complaining about not getting enough hours. And it’s almost summer so the sun’s up longer.”
“True, but this is the first year I’ve had a real boyfriend. It’ll be weird waiting and waiting for him, and then he shows up in a Martins apron.”
“Well, just think about this: me and Kenny’ll be in matching uniforms, and then you can tell everyone you’re dating both of us.”
Dena looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“You know,” he said, “Ménage a bagboy.”
I USED TO go out to parties
And stand around
'Cause I was too nervous
To really get down
And my body
yearned
to be free
So I got up on the floor and found
Someone to choose me
No more standin' along the side walls…
“How’s my girl?”
“Good, Daddy? It’s a great party.”
“Well,” Kevin hugged her tightly, “nothing but the best sweet seventeen for my Dena.”
“Okay, Dad. Really, it’s supposed to be a sweet sixteen.”
“I know that. I see TV too, believe it or not. But it’s too late for that, so you get a sweet seventeen. Fair enough?”
I'm gonna make romance
With your body,
Ooo baby, you dance all night
Get down and prove it, feel all right….
Dena grinned at her father. “Fair enough.”
“Happy Birthday, Dena,” Fenn said, as he and Todd came near.
“Fenn,” said Kevin. “Todd.”
“Scuse me,” Dena said, suddenly. “Brendan’s here! Bren!” she waved across the crowded lawn.
“You look good, Kevin,” Fenn said. When Dena had gone to greet Brendan and Kenny, he added, “Who are you sleeping with?”
“What?”
“I mean, right now you look so good I’d sleep with you myself if I weren’t already with Stretch over here,” He squeezed a bewildered Todd around the waist.
Kevin tried to smile politely, and pushed up his stylish spectacles.
“Thank you… Fenn.”
“Remember back before I knew which way you swung? Remember all those years ago? At this house? At your wedding when we met and you made that crack.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Oh, Kev, I’m sure there are lots of things you can’t remember, but-”
There was a tap on Fenn’s shoulder.
“Wha? Adele?”
“Fenn, can I talk to you?”
“Yes,” Fenn said. “Give me one second.”
Adele nodded.
“You know, how you went on about the perversities of homosexuality before you turned out to be… well… you know.”
Fenn turned around, “Was that a good one, sis?”
“It was a rough one,” she acknowledged.
“Well, I have to talk to my sister right now,” Fenn told Kevin. “I’m just going to let you sit on that little irony. By the way, Kevin, you really do look fucking delicious.”
Fenn went away with his sister, leaving Todd. The two tall men stood dumbfounded, looking at each other, and then Todd said, “I can’t talk to you. You know that.”
He turned away and left as quickly as possible, bumping into his sister.
“Todd,” Nell tried to get a hold of him.
“How could you?” Todd said, suddenly.
“What?”
“How could you ask for me to be here, and have him here?”
“We talked about this.”
“No,” Todd said. “It’s not worse for you. It’s worse for me. You don’t understand anything.”
“Todd—”
He grasped her by the wrists so hard that it hurt her.
“Todd!”
His face went red and then green and white. He shook her.
“No!” he growled.
Then he pushed Nell away, and pushed through the crowd to go back into the house.
“You were right,” Adele told her brother. “I need to know. I need to know tonight. I feel… I feel like I can’t breathe. The center of my head hurt just thinking about it. I have to know, Fenn.”
Fenn nodded.
“And I need you and Todd to go with me.”
“We’ll, do it,” Fenn told her. “If Todd’s awake and—”
Suddenly, the backdoor flew open and Todd half marched, half ran through the kitchen.
“Todd!” Fenn called, and then held a finger up to Adele and went after Todd.
Todd had disappeared into the library, and Fenn rapped on the door a long while before Todd unlocked it and rolled the doors open.
“I love you, all right?” Todd said. “But I need you to get the fuck away from me. All right? I need to be left alone. Now clear out, Fenn.”
He shut the doors, and Fenn heard the click of the lock as Adele and Nell came down the hall.
He put a finger to his lips and came closer to them.
“If you’re wise, you’ll leave him alone,” Fenn said. “For the time being.”
Nell put a hand to her mouth.
“I’m such a fool,” she said. “I’m a fool.”
“So, where are you from?”
“I’m from Pennsylvania,” Milo said, pushing a hand through his hair. “Outside of Philadelphia.”
“Good ole Philly,” Kenny intoned.
“You’ve been?”
Kenny turned red and said, “No. It just seemed cool to say.”
“Is it cool in Pennsylvania?” Brendan asked, grinning at Kenny, who rolled his eyes.
“It’s alright.”
“Is it… different than here?” Will Klasko asked.
“Will, of course it’s different,” Layla said.
“Actually, it isn’t,” said Milo. “I mean, it’s a little busier. But… you know, it’s a little grey too. More East Coasty. But, otherwise, it’s not different from here at all.”
“I think,” Layla said, “what everyone really wants to know is did you steal a car?”
Milo’s eyes bugged out.
“Layla!” said Dena, but Milo had burst out laughing.
“No,” Milo shook his head. “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”
“Hell, no.”
“Well, then yeah, just cause you had the balls to ask I’ll tell you. I did steal a car.”
“Why?” Will said. But Kenny leaned forward, pressed a hand to his dark curls and said, “Sweet!”
“Cause… I was bored. Cause I wanted to know if I could—”
“You need to leave!”
They all turned to the back patio.
“I just got here, Nell, this isn’t your party. It’s Dena’s.”
“You’ve been here too long, Kevin! It’s causing too much pain. You have to go.”
In a circle, Dena’s friends sat with variations of hunched shoulders trying to pretend they didn’t hear.
“You told me, you know what you told me over the phone?” she demanded. “You told me that the one thing you promised was you would always be there for your daughter. Well, that’s great.”
The whole yard was silent now.
“But what about me? THE FIRST THING YOU PROMISED WAS YOU WOULD ALWAYS BE THERE FOR ME!”
Dena’s skin was cold and prickly. She felt a hand on hers, and was surprised to see it wasn’t Layla’s. Or even Brendan’s. It was Milo’s.
“It’s no use pretending you don’t hear,” he whispered to her. “Go on up there.”
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“GET THE FUCK OUT!”
“There’s nothing for you to be embarrassed about,” Milo said, looking around the circle. “Everyone here… is your friend.”
They all nodded, and Layla stood up and motioned for Dena to come with her.
At the sliding door, Adele and Fenn were standing, and Dena said, “Mom, Dad, could we take it inside. You all split up along time ago.”
“It’s not about us,” Nell said.
“It’s about what I am,” Kevin said.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Todd had now come to screen door too.
“It’s about what you did. What you did that I thought was just... something wrong and silly and a little harmful. It’s about what you did to Todd.”
Dena knew that. It was history. It was legend. When Todd was a high schooler, her age, Nell had found him in bed with Kevin. It was one of those mildly shocking, but in time halfway funny stories mentioned ruefully in passing.
“It’s old news,” Dena said. “We all… we already know about it.”
“No you don’t, Dena.” She turned and heard her uncle through the screen.
“It’s time you did.”
“It is time,” Fenn spoke now, “for everyone to stop making a scene. Dena, you need to go and talk to your uncle—”
“I don’t know what he’s going to tell her—” Kevin began.
“Kevin, you gotta go,” Adele said. “Com’on, you gotta go.”
Kevin opened his mouth, and then closed it.
“Nell,” Fenn told her, “you gotta go out and keep this party going.”
Nell opened her mouth, too. But Kevin was already being led out the door by Adele, and Nell went to the stereo.
Fenn followed her.
“It’s not so bad,” he said, “Maybe now you all can start to recover from a wreck that’s twenty years old.”
When they needed an intramural football coach, Kevin was there. Back then Saint Barbara’s was a girl’s school and, before it shut down, Saint Carmine was the boy’s school. Todd was going there, and they had planned a camping trip but needed a chaperone. Right around the time Nell was born, Kevin stepped up and volunteered.
“He’s like a little boy,” Nell marveled.
“Right now he reminds me,” Todd’s mother said, “of how he was when I first met him. He hasn’t been that way in a long time.”
They went to Duncan Shores Park, about two hours northwest, a wood by the lake. Now and again, years later, Todd went there by himself, though in their first year together he had talked Fenn into going too. The trees were so high you forgot everything and lost yourself in green and gold. They had four tents. Kenny and Reese stayed in one. Parker and Will in another, Bertram and Derrick in the third and Todd shared one with Kevin. They stayed up all night and retired to bed after smothering the fire.
In the night, half asleep, Todd awoke filled, pressed into. He murmured, coming into wakefulness, processing it all.
“Just be quiet,” Kevin said gently, on top of him, pressing into him. “Just be quiet, and breathe… Next time you can do it to me. Just…”
Kevin stopped talking, his firm hands on Todd’s shoulders as he fucked him.
“Oh…” Kevin breathed. “Oh… Gaw—”
With a sucking sensation, Kevin pulled out of him and then, on his back, on his buttocks, Todd felt the slick heat of Kevin’s semen.
“Oh… oh…” Kevin muttered, his voice catching.
In the darkness Kevin was breathing hard and Todd squeezed himself from the inside. He’d never really had a consciousness that there was something inside, a place he could be entered. Now it throbbed with awareness. It didn’t hurt, not really.
“Did you like it?” Kevin whispered solicitously, wiping Todd’s back and buttocks carefully. Kissing him at the cleft of his behind. “Did you? I hoped you would.” He stroked Todd’s hair.
“I guess,” he said.
But then he didn’t really know what else to say.
That’s how it all began. The next two years of his life, sex and love and affection were confusing for him. He didn’t hate Kevin. He didn’t hate Kevin’s touch. In fact, he hated when Kevin didn’t do things to him, if Kevin stayed away too long. He stayed awake at night, longing for the time when Kevin would turn the door of his bedroom, come in, take off his clothes and cover him like the shower of gold on Danae. And it wasn’t one sided. Whatever Kevin did to him, he instructed Todd in. The rules were simple. When Kevin wanted it, that was when they had it, and if Kevin wanted to fuck him that was what they did, and when Kevin wanted to be fucked, they did that too. And no one was to know, but this was just common sense. Kevin never said it.
But once, Kevin wanted it in the day. He wanted it while Nell was supposed to be out with Mom getting new little baby clothes for Dena. But she came home. She left Dena downstairs. She went to her room, which is where Kevin said he wanted it that day, and what happened was a confusion of sensations and feelings. Kevin shuttling down on top of him, slack jawed and red faced, the screaming, the stumbling, the bedcovers and Kevin’s body covering him like a shelter, barring him from his sister’s wide eyed gaze. Too much light, too much screaming, too much reality.
“Is that true?” Dena said. “Is it all true?”
“I,” Nell pronounced, “am a stupid, stupid bitch.”
Todd looked at her for a long while, as if he were puzzled.
“Nell?”
She looked up at him.
“You didn’t know. You didn’t know anything but that one day. What you walked into.”
“I didn’t ask,” Nell said. “I didn’t want to know.”
“It’s true?” Dena said.
“All of it,” said Todd.
“He’s my dad,” said Dena.
“I—” she opened her mouth, then she turned around and left the study.
“Someone should go after her,” Adele said.
Fenn sat down beside Todd and said, “You sit still, Nell. That’s what her friends are for.”
Todd turned to Fenn.
“For a long time I thought it was Kevin… that turned me gay. That’s why I had a hard time with it. Now, I know Kevin just took advantage of that fact. That that’s who I was all along. It really screwed me up. For a long while. With love. With sex. You wouldn’t have known. I’d gotten through it all when I finally got with you.”
“I don’t know, Meraden,” Fenn smiled gently, and pulled his tall boyfriend over in a rough hook, knuckling his head. “You’re still pretty screwed up to me.”
The Land Rover pulled up to 15264 Troyer, and Todd looked back at Adele, his expression asking, Are you sure you want to do this?
Beside Nell, she nodded, opening the back door, climbed out, and rounded the car. Fenn watched his sister go up the walk. Adele looked at the two cars ahead of the Land Rover, one red car she didn’t know, and Hoot’s Saturn. She rang the doorbell.
It took a while. Probably everyone was wondering who would arrive at night. But then the door was answered by a boy taller than she was, blinking back at Adele with her husband’s eyes.
“Hello, Ma’am… Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Hoot Lawden.”
The boy screwed up his face, and then said, “Hold on.” He closed the door a little, leaving her out on the stoop.
Where she belonged.
But no, wasn’t she the aggrieved one? Wasn’t she the one who had been cheated on? Shouldn’t she just march up into that house? Ah, but she couldn’t if she wanted to.
In the car, Nell, putting her fist in her mouth murmured over her knuckles, “We both married assholes.”
Hoot came to the door, tired, irritated.
“Adele, what is this?”
“That boy,” Adele said.
“Julian.”
“Is that your son?”
“Adele!”
“Don’t…
“Look, Hoot, you got me out on this stoop, in the middle of the night without so much as a come in or a fuck you, and I just want to know… is that boy yours?”
“Shh!” Hoot closed the door behind him and stepped onto the stoop.
“Keep your voice down, Dell.”
“Is he, Hoot? Goddamn, give me some truth. Just a little fucking truth.”
“Yes.”
“Yes? Yes, he’s your son? Yes, you’ve been fucking this woman basically the whole time we were married? Yes, you have a second family you got up and left me for?”
“Yes,” Hoot said.
“Shit.”
“And I didn’t get up. You told me to get up.”
“Cause you fucked up.”
Hoot said nothing. There was just the chirruping of crickets outside, and now Hoot noticed the Land Rover by its absence of noise, because, Todd had just turned off the engine.
“Gas is expensive,” he whispered to Fenn.
“Adele.” Hoot said.
She put a hand up and turned around.