I beheld her, beautiful as a dove, rising above the waterbrooks;
and her raiment was filled with perfume beyond all price.
Even as the springtime was she girded with rosebuds and lilies of the valley...

- The Song of Songs






SINCE CHILDHOOD, MACKENZIE HAS MADE fun of me for using big words and reading all the time, for just being plain strange. It’s not a bad funmaking. He just shakes his head or rushes up and hugs me and calls me a nut. And I am. I am.
But so is he.
I wonder if I’m not the least nutty. In Catholic school they always said I was obsessed. I was obsessed with God was the problem, that and the fact that I had read the Bible cover to cover, King James and then Saint Joseph’s by the time I was twelve and could quote back chapter and verse.
But it seems that if we are not obsessed about God we end up being obsessed about something, much sillier. Everyone picks a devotion sooner or later and I think most of them are unworthy.
My father will never marry again. He told me once and never again--Cedric Fitzgerald is not a man to repeat himself--that he was going to be a monk once. He had turned himself into the monastery and was chanting the psalms one day. It was one of them talking about manna falling from the sky. Now Dad is a poet, and a good one, and after the office they were singing he prayed, “Lord, if this is not your will, then let your will fall from the sky.” And at that moment, my mother, who was visiting the monastery, slipped and fell through the sunroof onto my father’s head.
They were engaged by the end of the day.
People always asked if he would ever marry again and he has always said no. I never asked. I could never conceive of Cedric being married to anyone. My mother died they day I was born, and so I couldn’t even conceive of Cedric with her. I’d never seen them together except in wedding photographs. And they’d been married along time before me or Maddy came along, so that Cedric is a lot younger than the one I know anything about.
One day I was home sick from school, and he had come back from daily Mass. The light was hitting the black beads of his rosary that dangled from the work pants he always wore. He had just made me breakfast, and I was looking at his left hand, looking at the gold band.
“You see this ring?” he said.
I nodded. “It’s your wedding ring.”
“People think I wear it because I haven’t let your mother go,” he said. He shook his head and smiled gently. Sometimes he can be gentle. “But she is gone and I had to let her go immediately. Shall I tell you the truth, son?”
I waited, a piece of toast in my hand, my mouth half open.
“Eat your toast,” he instructed, and spoke on.
That was when he told me about the monastery and meeting Mother, and then he said, “I returned from the funeral and I was in my room, all in black, and Aileen Foster and your grandmother were looking after you and Maddy. I was about to twist the ring off when I stopped, and I looked at myself, black as a monk and I decided I would never marry another woman, but that I would do what I originally intended and from now on my soul would be married to Jesus. And so this is his ring.”
I watched the sun glint off of it, and it was that moment that I knew there was a God.
I had said that thing about reading a lot, and I guess that was to lead to this, how I once read a comment where a man said the moment he knew there was a God he could never conceive of not living for him.
Neither could I, though I didn’t know how to tell anybody. It was like I knew what was meant for me the same terrible way Kenzie must have known what was meant for him. That’s why I understand him, how he feels. I never told anybody, but I started to read saint’s lives. Not the silly stories, but the stories about real saints. I could understand Clare of Assisi chopping her hair off, putting a crown of thorns on her head and walking barefoot, sleeping on wooden boards. I could get people--for the love of Jesus--locking themselves away from the world to be with no one but him. After all, in school I fell in love with Jesus. I didn’t know how you could not wish to give him... everything.
So it was most Christians I didn’t understand. As soon as you know there is a God, how can’t you be a fanatic? And these are the words I can write, but that I cannot say, that I don’t know how. As soon as you know, how can you be content just to go to religious meetings, or pray once a day or go to church maybe once a week. I don’t get other Christians.
Unless.... maybe they just don’t know yet.

.
Slipping on his jacket, Cedric went out to the porch, and then ran back in the house shouting: “Ralph! Ralph!”
“I’m coming!” Ralph came out of the bathroom.
Cedric tugged his friend out of the living room.
“I didn’t lock the--”
Cedric brought the priest to the porch. “Look,” he said in a tone of wonder.
Down the middle of Michael Street, barefoot as ever, in a brown robe dusty with travel and a rope tied about his narrow waist, grey bearded, tonsured and peaceful, came the Wandering Franciscan.

“I THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD,” Ralph cried, as they entered Our Lady of Jamnia.
“Me too.”
“I haven’t seen him since high school,” Ralph was telling Cedric as they genuflected, and dipped their fingers in the holy water. They sat down in the back pew, waiting.
“I saw him after Marilyn’s funeral,” Cedric said.
“Really?”
Cedric nodded, and turning toward his friend so that for a moment his eyes were obscured by the glare of light on his glasses, added, “He floated then.”
“He did not.”
“I swear before God he did,” Cedric said.
Ralph looked at his friend, swallowed, and then nodded.
They heard a thump behind them, but turned around to see that it was only Dick Morissey coming in to pray for a bit. And then they heard the side door open. A stream of eastern light went across the terrazzo floor of the old church.
“Here she is,” Ralph muttered.
They heard the light rustling of her robe. The woman came in all in white, a white veil on her head, a blue belt tied about her waist. a Rosary was dangling from her hands. She stood before the altar, bowed, and then walked up the steps to the sanctuary, turned, and looked at them with hands stretched out.
A few seconds later, Dick Morissey with his wooden Medjugorje rosary crossed the church to whisper to Ralph, “Father, she’s been doing that for days now. It’s giving us the creeps.”
Cedric looked at Ralph. His old friend got up, and walked up the aisle to look up at the woman.
She was a not unpretty young woman. Wisps of dark hair came from under her veil. She had large Irish features. When the priest looked up at her, she looked down eagerly.
“Excuse me... miss,” he said to her.
She waited.
“Who are you?”
She smiled beatifically and said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Ralph took in a deep breath, and trying to smile himself, said, “Oh,” and then turned around to sit down.


Tina was already late for class, so when she heard someone call, “Ms. Foster,” she knew she was in trouble.
It was Mr. Stearne though.
“Sir?” she said. He was living up to his name, looking stern as ever.
“Auditions for Barefoot in the Park are this Tuesday,” he told her. “I hope you’ll be there.”
“Oh,” said Tina, again taken off guard by her usually prickly teacher. “Thank you, sir.”
“No problem,” Mr. Stearne said. He raised an eyebrow. Tina waited for him to speak.
“I assume you’re late for class, again?”
Tina nodded.
“Then I don’t know why on earth you’re standing here staring at me. Go.”
Tina turned and headed for calculus, strangely comforted by the return of the fascist Mr. Stearne that she had come to know, if not love, in the course of the last two years.

“He turns me on,” Madeleine said, finishing her milk.
“What?” Tina turned to her, outraged.
Beside Vaughan and across from Mackenzie, Ian sniggered.
“What?” Madeleine said.
“For God’s sake, it’s Stearne.” Tina told her. “It’s like saying you get turned on by my dad.”
“Your dad’s not bad looking,” Madeleine said. “But Stearne’s our age.”
“He is not,” Roy protested.
“He may not be your age,” Madeleine told the weedy boy. “But he’s only twenty-four.”
“Is that all?” Vaughan said.
“That’s right,” Tina cocked her head. “It’s just that... he’s a teacher, we’re students, and he’s so...”
“Stern?” Madeleine suggested, and they both laughed.
“Can you imagine having sex with him?” Madeleine asked. She set her brow and pouted her lips, “Harder, Ms. Foster. Now move counter clockwise, Ms. Foster. Please, Ms. Foster, you’re not emoting enough.”
“Please stop!” Tina said putting a hand up.
Suddenly Luke was on one end of the table, and Rodder on the other with their trays.
“Really,” Vaughan murmured with a smile, “Please stop.”
“Can a lowly serf like me sit with you all?” Luke asked. Rodder didn’t ask, he just pulled over a chair and sat beside Madeleine.
“Just this once,” Tina told Luke, feeling a little guilty for having kissed him, yet actually being turned on by the ideas of Mr. Stearne saying, “Harder, Ms. Foster. Harder.”

Roy turned around when Kevin Foster called his name after gym class. He must have done something wrong. No, everything. Gym class was awful. Even someone as nice as Coach Foster couldn’t overlook what a disastrous athlete Roy was turning out to be.
“Can I talk to you a second?” Coach Foster said.
Roy nodded and came forward.
“Are... is high school alright for you?”
“Yessir.”
“And classes? Gym’s not.... too bad?”
“No, sir -- Mr. Foster.”
“Good,” Kevin nodded.
Roy waited to be dismissed by his gym teacher. Kevin finally must have realized this. So he told him to go get changed.
“And Roy?”
Roy turned around on his way to the locker room.
“Is there... anything you need?”
“No, Mr. Foster.”
Kevin nodded. “That’s good. Don’t forget to study.”

THAT AFTERNOON CEDRIC DIDN’T FEEL LIKE DOING ANYTHING. The first thing he’d learned about being an artist is that it was like being anything else. It could get old, and often the work required discipline. He’d have to do it when he didn’t feel like it as much as when he did feel like it.
But not today.
He was heading out of the house when there was a ring at the door bell.
“Is this the house of Cedric Fitzgerald?”
“Yes?” he said.
“Package for you.” The boy, who should have been in school, Cedric thought, handed it to him along with a pen. “Please sign.”
“Cedric Fitzgerald,” the boy said as he handed the package over and took back the notepad. “I’ve heard that name before”.
“I’m the playwright laureate of Ohio. Does that ring a bell?”
The boy looked at him strangely.
“No,” he said at last.
“Please go away,” Cedric told him.


Later Cedric drove west, down Michael, past the school, all the way to where Michael Street merged with the other train tracks and became King Highway and the houses distanced themselves from the road. He drove south until King’s Highway looked over the large expanse of Lake Cherokee, and then turned north on the state route. He was far out of town driving past Lake Clare and Holy Spirit monastery when he arrived at the cemetery. He passed the Friars’ burial ground and the low length of Holy Spirit to enter through a black metal gated place of shade trees. The leaves were turning colors, the sun shone through them as Cedric found the little stone that read:


MARILYN ALEXANDER FITZGERALD

1950-1985

Talitha cumi


As Cedric took out his cigarettes he reflected that it was strange to be a widow, keeping peaceful company with the dead.

i i

The first time it crossed Cedric’s mind that Marilyn might not always be around was over eighteen years ago. For extra income as well as a little something to do after the last show in New York had flopped, Cedric had taken on the drama class and the English class at Jamnia High School. His friend Greg Stearne had told him about the position, then referred Cedric to the school while he took a bit of vacation.
“Actually,” Margaret Stearne told Cedric the night he and Madeleine had come by the house to visit the family, “he’s going loopy and the principal told him to rest for a while. Jamnia’s like that.” By this she meant the high school, and not the town. “It will drive you loopy,” Margaret insisted.
Jamnia was a new school. Up until then there had been no high school in Jamnia. The white kids had gone to the high school in Uz, to the north, and the the Black kids had gone south to Bashan. The Catholics usually crossed the river into Indiana and went to Saint Mary’s or Saint Xavier’s. The rest scrambled to find an identity and send their kids to the right place. All of that changed in a heartbeat when suddenly, across the field from where Cedric and Marilyn lived in the large white house they could barely maintain, the city tore down the old asylum, and built Jamnia High School.
When Cedric began teaching English, he knew it couldn’t last. The school was ugly for one thing, and for another he was tired of splitting up fights between different groups of kids used to being educated in different places and not ready to get along just yet. Cedric had never cared for school much when he’d been a student, and didn’t care for it now that he was teaching. There were other ways, he was deciding that day, to pay for their life style. He and Marilyn didn’t have to go in for such high living. They had no business living high anyway. And while they wouldn’t sell the house, renting it out wasn’t a bad idea. Whatever, whatever, but get out of this high school business.
Kevin Foster was looking stranger than ever that day. He had turned out to be a smart boy despite Cedric’s doubts. Kevin was the Colonel’s son, and Cedric had never had anything good to say about Colonel Foster. Kevin was a football player, and Cedric had never had anything good to say about that either. but he was smart, very smart and what was far more important; Kevin was good. Most of the time the boy was quiet. If someone said something to him, two or three minutes might pass before he stopped his staring off into space and to say, “What’s that?” Grin and nod.
So there were times that Cedric thought he might keep the job just for the sake of the drama of it all. He got involved in the lives of his students. Margaret Stearne was going to star in the play this year, and before and after practice she would tell him all the school gossip. And then Ida’s daughter was in high school now, the head cheerleader and everything. If Aileen wasn’t as bookish as she was attractive, she might turn into a vamp. Already she had stolen someone’s man.
That’s where the whole situation with Race Cane came in. And why was he going over the lives of these little people? Well, they weren’t little, some were bigger than him. They were big people and he’d had a life at their age too.
Race was not unattractive, but she might as well have been. She had pigtails and glasses and she wasn’t a cheerleader. She was in band like her brother. And Cedric knew all about their personal business because Margaret told him. The Canes, like the Stearnes, had lived on Tenth Street for years, were Lebanese Catholics, and had probably come over from Beirut on the same boat.
“Kevin quit her,” Margaret said indelicately. “You know what a bastard he must be to do that? He’s the quarterback. Do you know what status she had? And now she’s the mousy girl dropped by the quarterback for that bitch Aileen Lawry.”
Aileen wasn’t really a bitch. she was just pretty and a cheerleader and it just wasn’t fair that now she should get the guy too. She was also younger than Race. So it was Margaret who felt perfectly satisfied in telling Cedric, “I think she dropped the bomb on Kevin.”
“What are you talking about?” Cedric said. Margaret had come over to the house. Marilyn was getting bigger by the day as Madeleine grew in her body.
“I think she’s knocked up,” Margaret declared.
“That would be horrible,” Marilyn said.
And then Margaret paused and suddenly the senior’s face fell.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “You’re right, Maryl. It would be.”

So Cedric was thinking about all of these things when Principal Croft came into his room and stood at the doorway. Cedric got up and came to the door.
“Cedric,” Croft murmured. “You better go to the hospital. In fact, Nadeen said she wants to give you a ride?”
“What are you -- ?”
“It’s Marilyn,” Croft said. “She’s hemorrhaging. They think she’ll lose the baby.”













“I’M FINE,” MARILYN DECLARED.
“Except for that whole bleeding all over the floor thing,” Cedric said.
“Well, except for that,” Marilyn nodded. “Honey, hand me my make up bag.”
“Aren’t you about to go to sleep?”
“As soon as you leave,” Marilyn said.
“Then what’s the point?”
“Because I want to look good for whoever should stroll in here. Now please quit being difficult, Ced, and hand me the damn makeup bag.”
While Marilyn did a rush job blushing her cheeks with streaks of lipstick, she said, “Your mama was here already. I suspect she’ll be at the house to comfort you. I love her, but she was getting on my nerves. I told her, ‘Gladys, you gotta go.‘ It’s bad enough my mama’s coming tomorrow.”
“She is?”
“Um, hum,” Marilyn nodded, taking out her compact mirror to check how she was doing and then getting out eyeshadow. “and bringing Daddy too. I can’t remember the last time I saw that son of a bitch. He’ll probably tell me to have an abortion. You know one of the doctors already suggested it.”
“An abortion?” Cedric left his voice neutral. Marilyn nodded.
“I told him I’ve been waiting over thirty years for this baby. It’s no way in hell it’s not coming now - -at least not because of me. They just don’t understand. Besides... we’re Catholic. We’d go to hell, and then it wouldn’t matter that having an abortion had saved my life, now would it?”
Cedric relaxed and, docile, shook his head.
“You’re silent as hell, Ced,” Marilyn commented. But she kept on talking.
“However, the doctor looked at me and said, ‘You probably shouldn’t have another baby.’ I laughed in his face. I’m thirty-three on my first child. I certainly wasn’t planning on having another. Hell,” Marilyn clicked the compact shut, “I wasn’t planning on this one.”

WHEN CEDRIC AND RALPH GOT HOME, Gladys was standing in the living room smoking a cigarette hand on her hip.
“Is Marilyn alright?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Good. Some white boy is walking all around the kitchen looking like a tiger in a cage. He said he needed to see you. I told him you has shit to deal with. But...” Gladys grew quiet, and came up closer to Ralph and Cedric, “I think he has shit to deal with too.”
The followed Cedric to the kitchen where he found little Kevin Foster pacing back and forth. He looked up, the blue eyes sophomore girls went wild about, now themselves wild with worry.
“Mr. Fitzgerald!” he said in his usual, quiet voice that had a hint of a southern accent.
“Kevin?”
“How’s your wife?”
Cedric could tell Kevin was being decent before going on to his own problems.
“She’s good. She’ll be home tomorrow.”
“Good,” Kevin said, nodding manfully. “Sir, I need to talk to you.” His eyes scanned Gladys and the priest. He added, “In private?”
Gladys threw back her head, barked a laugh, reached into the old refrigerator, handed a beer to Ralph, took one for herself and said, “Come on, priest, let’s go to the sittin’ room.”
When they had gone., Cedric gestured for Kevin to sit down, and then he sat down across from him.
“Mr. Fitzgerald,” Kevin said, playing with his hands. “I gotta problem, and I don’t know what to do about it. Well, I do know what to do about it, but I don’t know how.”
Cedric just stared at the miserable boy who was looking at the table. The boy looked up.
“See... I got Aileen in a bit of trouble.”
“She’s pregnant?”
Pricks like porcupine quills were popping out all over Cedric’s face and his arms. This was his best friend’s daughter.
“Yes sir.”
A child was growing inside of Aileen, Ida’s grandbaby, or granddaughter. And the seed had been planted by this boy right here.
“And the Colonel,” Kevin went on, “My Daddy. He doesn’t want her to have it. He told me that. He told me about my career and my future and said I couldn’t let some Ohio girl screw it up. That’s what he called her, ‘Some Ohio girl!’ ”
Cedric was about to open his mouth when Kevin went on.
“But I screwed it up, Mr. Fitzgerald. And now my Daddy doesn’t want me to -- he wants to give me the money and take Aileen to have.... He doesn’t want Aily to have it.”
Cedric said nothing. He let Kevin ramble on and find his own words. He thought, Twice in one day... Same circumstances and yet.... the complete other side.
“But... we did this, right? And when I was in school... at Our Lady, they told us about responsibility and... And I’m a Catholic. I mean, really. I’m not good, but I was an altar boy. I know I made mistakes, but I can’t have Aileen kill our baby. I just... but I don’t know what to do.”
Kevin was beside himself with misery.
“So you came to me?”
Kevin stopped, paused, and swallowed.
“So I came to you, sir.”
“Why don’t you eat something, calm yourself down, Kevin, and then go home. I’ll take care of it.”
Kevin looked up at him with so much trust and relief Cedric thought he’d laugh.
“Really?” said Kevin.
Cedric nodded.
He got up to find soup and a can and called for Gladys.
“Yeah?”
“Mama, help me make some dinner, alright?”
Gladys nodded. She looked at Kevin, “You alright, baby?” she drawled.
He nodded, shyly.
Cedric was glad that Kevin hadn’t asked what he planned to do. Because he had absolutely no idea.










FOR ANYONE WHO HAD GROWN UP IN Jamnia and knew anything about Colonel Foster, to look on one’s class roster and find the name Foster was to hold one’s breath and call on the name of Jesus... or Allah or Krishna. Pick your deity of choice, please. The night before Cedric’s first class, he had annoyed Marilyn by spending the dark hours talking to the ceiling, imagining just how he would tell the Colonel’s son off. When he learned the boy was quarterback as well as son of the infamous Colonel, it was all over. There would be no end to his conceit.
But the first thing anyone noticed about Kevin was his tendency toward unconceit. He made a science of something that had not, hitherto, been a word. On the field there was no one who could throw a tighter spiral, catch a quicker pass, run more touchdowns. He was at the center of every conversation when the football team was gathered together. But he was always a quiet center. He was always nodding his head and grinning generously when told a joke. He didn’t often make them. When he did, it was in a mumble and he looked surprised that anyone had thought him funny.
His teachers, Cedric included, were impressed by the simple fact that he liked to put his hand up and actually answer questions. That his answers were usually right was icing on the cake. He always grinned when he got the right answer or when someone said he’d made a good point. As if he’d never done this before and was at once pleased and ashamed.
Cedric believed that Kevin lived in his own head more than most kids. True enough, everyone possessed their own private universe, but usually it was incomplete and shaped by whatever other people told them about themselves. It begged permission of the general population to live and survived on the ideas of main concensus. If you were fat to everyone else then you were fat. If you were stupid to the people around you, you were a moron and that was that. If you were thought cool then you were cool.
Kevin seemed to have no idea of what he was to other people. He wore shorts often and they showed his long legs with their short down of brown hair. He had strong hands that were murmured about in front of mirrors in the girls’ bathroom and very, very blue eyes, wide like lakes and tilted like an elf’s. His ears were a little pointed. He had Indian blood like ninety percent of the white population and it gave him sharp features. Kevin was generally one of those people whose face was so striking that you either thought he was ugly or irresistible. Usually people who thought he was ugly came around and this was because of the eyes. When he looked at someone he smiled, and when he looked at someone, he really looked at someone. Some girls could not forgive his hair - -which was spiky and brown and ordinary. But then he would pick up a pencil, say something and look into her eyes and the hair was forgiven as well.
Then there was the matter of Race Cane. Race was short for some Arab name, at least this is what was told. She could have been pretty. The fact that she was in band could have been forgiven. Her hair was too straight, though this was all anyone could say. She didn’t have good posture. That might have been another thing that kept her from being pretty. And she wore those thick, ugly, ugly glasses. But since the end of freshman year it hadn’t mattered, because Kevin of the glorious eyes, the slightly swaggering walk and the low, mellow voice (that some people would call a mumble and ask him to speak up with) had set his affections on her. They could, as it were, read books and wear their glasses (Kevin was very near sighted, and hated his glasses, which he carried with him, but hardly ever wore) and in general be dorks together. At heart Kevin was a huge dork who happened to have marvelous (though myopic) eyes, and be able to play football. Race would hang out of the band stand with her drums at the Saturday football games, and Kevin would run across the field after passes and mouth, “I love you!”
It was all very sweet up until sophomore year.
Then Aileen Lawry entered the picture.

AILEEN LAWRY WAS A BITCH and for a long time this was simply all that Race had to say on the matter. It was years later when Race had gotten her own strange revenge that she realized Aileen had not been quite as conniving or victorious as she had appeared. But throughout high school, and in the years that followed, Race hated her like angels hate hell. Yes, she was pretty. She was very pretty and head cheerleader. On top of that, not a bad brain. She wasn’t one of those stupid cheerleaders. Or, for that matter, one of those annoying trailer sluts who thought she was funny when she was just mean. Aileen had an acid tongue, but she didn’t often employ it, and usually not at other girls. Never at a girl who was down and unpopular. Hence never at Race. Race would like to have thought that she and Aileen could have been friends... in another life, in another place if, maybe, they had other bodies... if not for Kevin.
Aileen Lawry lived in a house with her divorced mother wh was reputed to have been a nut job, and a bit of a slut and her mother’s two crazy sisters, one who told fortunes and lived in the garage with her no count husband, and another who may or may not have been a dyke. That part wasn’t clear. What was clear was that her home life wasn’t right, and she had no business sticking her nose in the air, and letting those glorious gold and brown tresses shake behind her as she tossed them through the halls Jamnia High School. Aileen acted as if she was royalty instead of descended on one side from a bunch of drunken Irish off of 11th Street and trailer trash blown out of West Virginia on the other.
On a day when Race wasn’t around, Aileen had caught Kevin Foster’s eye. This was the day the lights went out in Cane - land.
Actually what had happened was that Aileen, to kill a stereotype, had a phenomenal head for English. She loved Shakespeare half way by accident. Aside from her mother and Cedric driving books and plays into her head, over the course of time living on Windham Street, Aileen learned to identify with drama, sensing that she lived in one. English was Kevin’s blind spot, however. He was a brilliant analytical thinker - -which mean calculus would be no problem for him. For Aileen it was an impossible class.
So one day, walking out of Shakespeare, Kevin had cleared his throat and ventured to speak to her.
Aileen had told him to come on over. She would help him.
The first night as he was leaving, placing his books in his bookbag, the eyes came up.
”If you ever need any help in any subject.”
“She’s awful at math,” Ida said. “You sure you don’t wanna stay for dinner?”
“No ma’am. I gotta be home.” Kevin said to Ida. Then to Aileen. “You should have told me. I’ll come over...”
“Come over Wednesday,” Ida had said, stirring the pot.
And that was all that was to be said.
Mondays and Wednesdays English. Tuesdays and Thursdays were math.
“He’s cute,” Aunt Meghan said.
“Cuter than me?” Uncle Harv demanded.
“No one’s cuter than you, baby,” Meghan told her husband. But she didn’t sound very convincing, and Uncle Harv didn’t look convinced either.
Kevin had been coming by the house about a month when Aileen said.
“Why d’ you squint so much?”
“I wear glasses.”
“No you don’t.”
“I should,” he said.
“Why don’t you get some.”
“I have some.”
“Where?” Aileen cocked her head, pulling one leg under her.
“With me,” Kevin told her. “Right here.”
“Then put ‘em on.” And because Aileen was Aileen, she added, “Ninny.”
He did, and she threw back her head and laughed.
“See,” Kevin protested moving to take them off.
“No!” Aileen almost shouted. “No,” she touched his face. “They make you look... dignified.”
Her hand stayed on Kevin’s cheek. He leaned in to kiss her. She held his whole face and pulled it toward her, and his hands hooked into her hair.
Still, this business was not commitment. And Kevin saw no reason to bring it up to Race.
Neither did Aileen. But then, she didn’t really know Race existed.

Here began a time when two young, not unattractive, and -- in truth - -quite horny people began to do everything they could short of sex. Ida had said that Mondays and Wednesdays were English, Tuesdays and Thursdays were math, but really there was a little sex ed thrown in at the end of each session, and Fridays were completely devoted to it.
There were too many people at the house on Windham Street for the kids to carry on and so they ended up messing around at Kevin’s house.
“My daddy would kill us if he knew,” Kevin told her, hot with desire. The way his eyes glowed it seemed he was gloating rather than confessing a frightening truth.
One day they were making out. He was on top of her when suddenly Kevin groan - murmured, “Aily!”, worked down his pants, and then, before she could orient herself, pulled down her panties.
“No, Kev,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, as if he truly were. And then he started fucking her.
She took it like a woman. She bit down and maintained a quiet while Kevin shuttled on top of her and hit her again and again, his face taking on an almost angelic look. Then -- suddenly -- his body tensed, his eyes flew open, with a groan like someone who’d been hit in the chest, he collapsed on her.


When she came home that Tuesday night the kitchen on Windham Street was full of the smells of onions and meat and seasonings. Cedric and Marilyn were sitting at the table sipping glasses of dark wine.
“What happened today?” Ida asked.
“Nothing, Mama,” Aileen replied, and ran upstairs to shower, convinced that her mother would smell the loss of her virginity if it was not washed away as soon as possible.

AFTER THIS, RACE FOUND OUT FAIRLY QUICKLY that things had changed.
Kevin, having gotten some for the first time, told no one, but he planned to get it again. He would sneak up on Aileen in the bushes and wrap his arms around her. There were public displays of affection, Him wrapping his arms around her, kissing her on the cheek. giving her his ring - -it was a Confirmation ring, class rings didn’t come out until next year. Him, deep kissing her. The ease with which he had publicly dismissed Race was amazing. He would pay for it. But not today.
And he loved fucking Aileen. He loved hearing her make noise. That was how he got good at it. He paid attention to her. He asked her what felt good, what did not, where he should put his hands, where he wanted her to place his hands on him. And he talked dirty. He hardly talked at all in public, but he was the youngest of five kids, none of them living at home, and most days the Colonel was gone and his wife was passed out with a glass of wine in the den. So they could make love loudly. All of this was heaven until the day Aileen did not come to school. She didn’t come the next day. Kevin came over to Windham Street, concerned. Aileen was in her room. When Kevin moved to touch her cheek she slapped the shit out of him.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
She slapped him again.
Kevin, approaching his sixteenth birthday, thought Aileen looked marvelous angry. The more she slapped him the harder his dick was getting. He envisioned himself asking her again and become so excited he threw her down on the bed and fucked her.
So he grinned not only because the whole thing turned him on, but also because he knew it would piss her off.
“What’s wrong?”
She slapped him. He threw her down and they fucked hard. She was quiet. He tried not to be loud. When it was over Aileen pushed him away. Kevin reached for her.
“You goddamned fool,” she told him. “I’m pregnant.”
Kevin just stared at her waiting for the punchline.
At last she said sat up naked and said, “You’re the punchline. Asshole.”


Cedric was in a quandary as to what to do. When Marilyn came home the next day, he wanted to let her rest, but she picked up on his mood immediately.
“What’s the problem, Ced?” she demanded from her bed. “I can tell it’s not me.”
Cedric told her about Kevin and Aileen, and then Marilyn said, “Well, I thought...” then she amended. “No, I never thought anything was going on at all. Well, I still don’t see what the problem is.”
“But--”
“Cedric, you think through stuff too much. You think everything is one of your plays,” Marilyn accused him. “The Colonel can’t make Aileen have an abortion. He doesn’t know her.”
“But he can tell Kevin to --”
“Then you just tell Ida! Ida would shoot the Colonel, Kevin, and Aileen before she ever let that happen.”
Cedric stood before the bed feeling quite stupid. That’s what he told Marilyn.
“And you should feel stupid,” his wife told him. “Now turn off the light and let me go to sleep. And when I wake up, make me some of that good tomato soup. You gotta treat me right, Ced. You know I can’t get out of bed for at least four days.”
“Do you need a bedpan?”
“Ha. Ha. Go away, Ced.”

WINONA FOSTER WAS NEVER BIG on words. She said nothing now, either. The Colonel seemed more disgusted by Kevin’s refusal to “get rid of the evidence” than the creation of the evidence in the first place. The boy stood in the large living room of the white house on East Crawford Street and held back tears as his fat old father berated him. It’s very likely that if Aileen had not been under the close surveillance of her mother then the pregnancy would have ended. but Kevin bore his father’s rage with courage because he had to. The matter was blessedly out of his hands.
“And what are you gonna do?” the Colonel demanded.
“I’m gonna marry Aily.”
“And what else? What kind of job will you have?”
Winona spoke up to say, “We’ll support him.”
“Like hell!” the Colonel roared.
Kevin did not know what to do. Sex had made him feel like a man. Now the results of it left him feeling like a little child, and he did not know where to go to. He ran out of the house, jumped on his bike and rode around and around. His friends couldn’t help him. He rode to Michael Street and finally he ended up at the Fitzgerald house. It was windy that night. He pushed open the iron gate. It creaked. He pushed his bike through and rested it inside of the bushes. Then he climbed on to the porch and hid between its side rail and then end of the swing.
The next morning, Marilyn--who did not really know the boy--was the first up. She opened the door, woke him up and asked him what the hell he was doing.
Kevin scrambled for words. Marilyn just shook her head and offered her hand. He took it.
“I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m pregnant, you know?”
“I know, ma’am,”
“Don’t call me ma’am. I’m not dead yet. You the Colonel’s son?”
“Yes, ma --. Yes.”
“You can call me Maryl.”
“Yes, Maryl.”
“I’ll make you some breakfast,” Marilyn said. “My husband’s not up yet. He’ll take you to school. In fact, take off those clothes. We got a housecoat. I’ll wash those for you, The draws too. You smell like cat piss,” she told him.
Kevin changed in the first floor bathroom, and balled up his clothes while changing into the housecoat. The sky was just turning grey with the new day.
“Yep,” Marilyn said conversationally as she went downstairs to the laundry room, followed by the boy, “You’re daddy’s a real asshole. Your mama’s not much either. Pardon me for saying.”

WELL, NATURALLY HE’LL LIVE WITH us or Ida,” Marilyn said over breakfast. “Makes all the sense for him to be with Aily. They will be together. You love her?” Marilyn looked squarely at Kevin. “This just wasn’t a roll in the hay? Or the bed? Or whatever?”
“I do love her.”
“Then the two of you’ll be together,” Marilyn said. “Cedric, drop him off at Ida’s tonight.”
They didn’t hear from the Colonel for some time. It took three days for him to get up and leave the white house on East Crawford Street, and cross town to come to the white house on Windham. He walked up to the little stoop and banged on the black door until finally it flew open that evening.
Colonel was about to shout, “Where’s my son -- ?” when the sentence died on his lips and first Ida, and then Meghan and then Harv and lastly, young Alice, came out with eye- brows raised and shotguns cocked.
“You crazy Irish mother - -!” Colonel began.
Ida licked her lips and clicked back the lock.
Colonel turned red, sputtered, and then walked down the path. Climbing into his car he drove away.
Upstairs Kevin and Aileen were holding each other and looking out of her window.
“We’ll make this work, won’t we, Kev?” it was the first time Kevin had ever heard Aileen sound doubtful.
He kissed her on the forehead.
“Sure will. Sure will.”
“I won’t ask how?” she placed her head on his chest.
“Good,” he said, kissing the top of her head again. “Because I don’t know.”

i i i

When the bell rings, Tina is the first out of Rafferty’s door, waiting for Luke. All through class he has been tapping his foot and sending looks toward her, so she knows he wants something.
“What?” she says, a smile on her face as she comes out of the classroom. He is leaned against a locker.
“Let’s skip.”
“Right now? The day’s half over.”
“Then we skip the last two hours.” Luke takes out a short, unfiltered Lucky Strike. “I didn’t think I’d have to talk you into it.”
“You don’t,” she says, offering her arm. “Let’s roll kemosabe.”
Going down the crowded hall, Tina sees her sister hanging on Bone’s shoulder. Ashley sends a look of pure nastiness Tina’s way.
“Ouch,” says Tina, turning her face to Luke who laughs and bends down to kiss her.
“You’ve got to stop that,” Tina says, as Luke turns left and takes her down the wide hallway with the trophy cases and the auditorium and gymnasium across from them.
“And why?” he says. They come to the glass doors and the smoker’s porch.
“Because it’ll make people think I’m pretty and shit.”
“But you are pretty,” Luke tells her, and kisses her again before adding, “And shit.”
“Where you guys going?” Ian shouts, and it’s then that they see him.
Tina turns around and comes up the few steps. “Man, I’m sorry. I didn’t even you.”
“It’s cool,” Ian shrugs, his lips tightening, his eyes narrowing as he sucks in the last of the cigarette. He exhales.
“We’re skipping,” Luke says, then adds, “Wanna come?”
“No, three’s a crowd.”
“It’s not even like that,” Tina shakes her head. “Well, not yet.”
Luke smacks Tina on the ass, and she shouts.
“Well,” Ian says, “if it’s not big deal, then you could get Roy. I think if I skip out I’d better wait for Vaughan and Kenzie. But Roy would feel like a million bucks if the two of you took him out.”
Tina looks up at Luke.
“That’s a cool idea. Then we can swing by the Factory and get Coconut. People’ll think we’re a family.”
“A dysfunctional family,” Tina murmurs. “Where’s Roy?” she says to Ian.
“In your dad’s gym class.”
Tina nods and heads back into the school.
“Every family is dysfucntional,” Luke murmurs to her departing back. Tina sneaks through the side door of the gym closest to the parking lot. She looks all around the wide fluorescent lit structure. This morning her father is teaching a bunch of pimply faced kids to juggle. Tina looks around them for Roy, and then finds him sitting alone, up in the bleachers. Tina climbs up the bleachers to join him.
“Tina,” the boy says, startled. He reminds her of a cross between Ian and her youngest brother, Ryan, without the affliction and without her father’s pronounced face.
“Me and Luke wanted to know how you felt about skipping for the rest of the day?”
The boy’s blue eyes light up and Tina touches the crucifix hanging from the rosary around her neck. She’s glad she’s come here.
“Where are we going?” Roy says.
“Does it matter?” Tina asks.
Roy grins and shakes his head.
Down below, Kevin is standing in the midst of boys, juggling. His legs are planted wide apart and he is wearing those red shorts and his white tee shirt, the whistle hanging from his neck, the red baseball cap he always wears on his head.
“See, guys,” he tells them. “It’s like this: Toss, toss. Catch. Catch.”
He smiles vacantly to the rhythm of the balls.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Tina says. “This is so pathetic I can hardly watch.”
“I think I’d die,” Roy says seriously, “if I knew I was destined to be a gym teacher.”
Then he is instantly sorry, because Mr. Foster is such a nice man, and he is -- after all -- Tina’s father.

IDA, CEDRIC AND MARILYN SIT AROUND the table drinking ginseng and passing back and fourth Kevin’s transcripts. He looks eagerly at them, looking critically over his grades.
“Do any of the schools you’ve applied to know about the kids?” Ida says.
Kevin nods.
“I don’t know why you shouldn’t get in,” she says. And then, “and when they know about the kids and still these grades and everything.”
“But what about Aily?”
Ida dismisses her daughter, “Oh, she’s a smart girl.”
“And the kids,” Kevin says.
Finally, in irritation. Cedric looks at the boy. Madeleine begins to cry, and Marilyn, rounding out with a new pregnancy rises to take her daughter out of the cradle.
“Do you want to go to school?” Cedric snaps, and at the look in the boy’s eyes is instantly sorry. This is all Kevin needs, another Colonel. His voice softens. “I mean... every time we look at schools you have a reason not to go.”
“Aily’s pregnant again,” Kevin says.
“Well, we know that,” Marilyn murmurs, sticking a teething ring in her daughter’s mouth. “Now knock that shit off, Mad,” she murmurs.
“It’s twins,” Kevin says. “Again.”
“It’s the Colonel’s fault,” Ida said.
“Everything cannot be blamed on the Colonel,” Cedric tells his friend as Madeleine climbs onto his lap.
“The Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and the gas shortage can be blamed on the Colonel,” Ida differs, getting up to get a beer from the refrigerator. “If he hadn’t insisted you all get married right away,” Ida said, slamming a beer in front of her son-in-law, “Would you all be getting ready to have your third and fourth child before high school graduation? I don’t think so.” She shook her head, broke open the beer, and swilled down half of it in one gulp. “And him a damn Presbyterian too!” she said, though none of them knew what this had to do with anything.
Ida belched for emphasis.
“Now I was thinking,” Cedric said, ”that a school like Citeaux or Mc.Cleiss has married student housing. So’s Notre Dame, I think.”
“I could live there? With the kids?” Kevin looked dubious.
“Yes.”
“Even Saint Clare’s,” Ida said, and Cedric and Marilyn nodded, partial to their alma mater. “The apartments around there are cheap and so are the boarding houses. They might as well be married student housing.”
Kevin looked overwhelmed by it all. They shut up.
The door came open and there was the noise of Meghan, Harv, Meghan’s boy shouting and running around the house like a hooligan, and the baby’s crying as Aileen, fat and tired looking pushed the girls ahead in their a twin stroller. Kevin went to her. They were a knot of conversation and then Kevin walked Aileen up the stairs and put her to bed.
When he had come down, Ida said, “I don’t want you and all them kids going back to the apartment tonight. It’s too small anyway. Why don’t you stay here tonight?”
Kevin nodded.
“I don’t know about studying... Being a college student and all and being a father. It’s... It’s a lot of work.”
Cedric, looking over Kevin’s grades and accomplishments, tried to hide the dismay on his face. Marilyn was a little more blunt.
“If you can play football, go to school, maintain a job at the gas station and still find time to make two more babies, surely you can handle school.”
Kevin was upset. “It’s easy for you to talk about having babies. You all were twice my age when Madeleine was born,” he gestured to the little caramel skinned girl.
Kevin was sorry for saying that, and so kept on talking to cover it up, to save himself. “I’ll go down the road to Belmont. Take classes there. When I can.” He looked around them, a little hurt. “What?” he said. “You think if I go to Belmont I’ll just end up being some dumb old gym teacher at Jamnia high school, don’t you?”
None of them said a word.
Suddenly there was a screaming from upstairs. They all looked up. No one moved. It seemed like an eternity later Meghan came downstairs looking like hell, her coat dishevel- ed, her son hanging on her left hip.
“Hurry the hell up, Harv!” she shouted.
“Ida,” Meghan said, “that girl’s in labor again.”

THIS PLACE IS THE COOLEST!” ROY insisted, following Luke and Tina past the second curtain, and swinging himself on a rail that hung above the ramp they were walking. Coconut padded behind them, her feet making the steel walkway clatter.
“And no one ever comes to visit you?” Roy marveled as he caught up with Luke, walking beside Tina.
“Tina comes to visit,” Luke said. They made a turn and were walking down a long hall with locked, overly varnished old doors.
“But not until a few weeks ago,” she said.
“And you can come and visit me,” Luke said.
“I can?”
Luke was overwhelmed by the gratitude in the boy’s eyes.
“Your home can’t be that bad,” said Luke Madeary, “that you could possibly think of this as a treat.”
They headed down a long flight of stairs and into a concrete floored warehouse, stacked with boxes, large frosted and cardboarded glass windows filling the space above so that it resembled some industrial church.
“Mom’s nice. But home sucks sometimes,” Roy said.
Tina and Roy followed Luke to a large metal door that looked like the opening to a metal cooler, but Luke shook his head when they came to it and said, “Tina, you and Roy get on one side, and I’ll get on the other. I’ll push. You pull. Best as you can.”
They agreed and struggled for a little bit before finally, with a groan, the door gave way and Tina and Roy had to hop back.
Tina was shocked by a blast of early autumn air, and Roy stood at the opening onto the old train yard, wrapping his arms about his skinny frame.
“Wow,” he said.
“Everything impresses you, kid,” Luke noted, not unimpressed at Roy’s ability to be impressed.
“It’s so... Look at all the boxcars,” Roy said.
“And none of them go anywhere,” Luke told him.
There were four tracks full of old boxcars, Union Pacific, Moo and Oink, CSF, trains hooked together, some abandoned, many rusted, others graffitied. Spaces of weed popped up between them and beyond them were weeds and small bushes. To their left the noise of the traffic of Michael Street whizzed on, but that wasn’t too much traffic in the middle of the day in a small town on the Ohio border. Beyond the bushes, Easerly Street threaded its humble way with small, spaced out, out of luck houses.
“It would be so cool to live here,” Roy said.
“I wouldn’t advice it,” Luke told him.
Coconut barked as if in sharp agreement.
“How do you do it?” Roy looked up at Luke.
Luke was about to say Luck when he caught Tina’s expression and said, “People are good to me a lot.”
Roy was about to ask if he ever wanted a home where he wouldn’t have to be afraid, and wouldn’t have to live with just Coconut, but he sensed that this was asking too much, and that maybe there really wasn’t such a home after all.
“I used to look out at those trains,” Luke said, “and want to go some place. But they don’t go anywhere anymore.”
Tina wanted to say, “Let’s go some place,” but she didn’t know where they could go and be home in time for dinner.
Suddenly Roy said, earnestly, “I hate Jamnia.”

That night when Tina and Mackenzie came home together, Ashley was humming some nonsense song in a pleased voice that told Tina something was right for her and wrong for the rest of them. Aileen was standing over the stove, stirring her perpetual pot. Tonight the smell from it was chili. Tina came behind her mother and was about to talk when Aileen put up a hand -- she was still in her work clothes -- and said, “Don’t talk to me, Martina. I’ve had to deal with your father, and he’s very upset with you right now.”
Tina had that old familiar sinking in her stomach just in time for Kevin to come downstairs with a look of disgust on his face. Tina looked to Mackenzie, who looked equally doubtful.
“You are in such trouble, young lady,” Kevin told her. “You are grounded for a week, and I don’t want you using the phone or going anywhere.”
Before Tina could open her mouth to say, “Not even the Fitzgeralds?” Kevin repeated, ”Anywhere.”
Tina was about to ask what this was all about when suddenly she knew.
“I can’t believe you walked into my class and took one of my students out of it,” he said.
“Can I at least try out for the play this week. After school?”
“No,” Kevin told her.
“Oh, what’s the big deal?” Tina said suddenly. “It’s just a stupid gym class anyway.”
Before Kevin could open his mouth to protest or Aileen could turn around and demand that Tina respect her father, Tina imitated Kevin juggling, and said in a voice like a goon: “Toss! Toss! Catch! Catch!” And then, “Never mind! You don’t have to tell me to go to my room. It’s where I was going anyway.”


“I DON’T KNOW WHY PEOPLE say they can’t tell ‘em apart,” Marilyn shook her head, looking at the three toddlers racing around the floor of the waiting room. “Tina’s the trouble. See. Look at her. Trouble all over.”
Ida came from around a corner and said, with a brightness that, if it wasn’t false, was at least, amplified after hours with her laboring daughter.
“Do my girls want to see their new brother and sister.”
“Yeah!” Ashley said at the same time, Tina shouted, “No!” and Madeleine collapsed on the floor in giggles. Cedric looked at his wife, then bent down and picked up the little laughing girl. Tina, seeing that she was so funny, fell on the floor and began to laugh as well. Ashley came to her grandmother. Ida held out one hand for her and the other for Tina, who stopped laughing, raised herself up and caught on, swinging and singing as she went to the room.
“Now you might have to be a little quiet,” Ida advised Tina.
“Yeah,” Ashley said, placing a hand on her hip.
“Mommy,” Madeleine said from Cedric’s arms, “Are you having twins too?”
“No,” she said.
For no apparent reason Madeleine said, rather decisively, “Good.”

There was an anxious nurse on one side, and an anxious Kevin on the other. Aileen looked horrid, with bags under her eyes and they knew that she wouldn’t be with the babies too much longer. She’d have to rest and they’d have to go back to the nursery.
Kevin lifted up Ashley, and Ida lifted up Tina to look down on the sleeping babies.
“Who’s who?” Tina demanded. Each child was identically small, and identically solemn, eyes rolling under the thin shells of their eyelids.
“Blue blanket is the boy. The yellow one’s the girl.”
“I like the way they smell,” Tina decided. “But I don’t like her.” Tina pointed at the baby in yellow.
Ida laughed. Aileen, exhausted, laughed deeply too.
“Martina!” Kevin’s voice was sharp.
“She’s your sister,” Aileen said. “This one’ll be Lindsay. Like Ashley.” Ashley smiled, pleased. “You’ll like her one day.”
“No,” Tina shook her head clinically.
Aileen ignored this and said, “And this one is an M. The way you’re an M. Martina, Mackenzie. Like his grandfather.”
“I don’t like Grandfather,” Tina told her mother, “but I do like Mackenzie,”
Much to her credit, she never had a hard time pronouncing his name, and she had never gotten tired of him. Not even sixteen years later.