Motherland,cradle me
hold my hand
lullaby me to sleep
keep me safe, lie with me
stay beside me don’t go, don’t you go

--Natalie Merchant

























C H A P T E R

T E N




DURING THE SPRING SEMESTER OF 1974 at Saint Clare’s College in Rhodes, Ohio, Cedric Fitzgerald was the most popular thing around. He was editing the poetry magazine, and the literary magazine. He had been reviewed in Black Who’s Who in American Colleges, and gone from starring in school productions to directing them. This spring, right after Easter, he was directing the first one he’d written. Any professor he had would be willing to write him a letter of recommendation for graduate programs-- which should have made him feel good.
They loved him at Mc. Cleiss.
Now people of Saint Clare’s were of two minds about Mc.Cleiss University.
Mc.Cleiss was the large Catholic university on the other side of Rhodes with its rich kids, and the large new seminary sprawled out overlooking Lake Erie. McCleiss students never came from the lower economic ranks like Saint Clare’s kids. Or if they did they didn’t show it. Mc.Cleiss kids were not townies-- which Saint Clare’s kids were suspected of being. In fact, Mc. Cleiss kids were not kids. They were students and they were academes. They went to a university which meant that in the sixties Saint Clare kids had looked on with envy while their Catholic brethren down the street had gotten to stretch out on that street and protest. (Some of the priests had even come out in their cassocks-- yes, they still wore cassocks-- to protests with them.)
And being a University also meant they had more programs. Mc.Cleiss was highly selective unlike Saint Clare’s which was... not so selective. Oh, hell, they took anybody. If you wanted to get into the really good engineering program, or biology department you’d better transfer to Mc.Cleiss, and if you wanted any sort of graduate program, well then Saint Clare’s was definitely out.
So Mc.Cleiss, invisible from the east end of town where Saint Clare’s sat, cast a long shadow on the little red brick school.
And Cedric knew that he should want to go to Mc.Cleiss. If he were ambitious enough he would go. He never understood other people his age or older who tended to deny their age, who didn’t want to admit that yes-- at twenty four, five, six and above, they probably should have been out of school a long time ago. They were not as young as the others. Some people were good at shouting down invisible name callers. Shirley, who would probably be valedictorian, was approaching thirty, and one day Cedric had heard her shouting at vending machine, “I’m NOT that old.”
But Cedric knew that he was that old, and for all the world could not see getting excited about going to get his Masters or anything else at Mc.Cleiss. College had been good to him. It had been really good. But he had to move on now.
Where on was he could not say.
Graduation came. Evelyn was there. Gladys was there. Ida came. Ralph did not. Almost thirty years later, Cedric remembered Louise, ten years old standing before him, looking horrible, say, “Mama thought you’d never gradu-- ouch!”,
And then Gladys hissing, “Louise!”

His grandmother had been present as well, but if Estelle had done anything, said anything or was even in the position to say anything given her advanced years, Cedric could no longer remember.
He did remember the days after graduation, sitting up in bum-fucking-Jamnia which seemed more like nothing than it ever had before, smoking cigarettes and watching all his opportunities dry up and flake away like roses. Because, when an opportunity is an opportunity for something you don’t want... Then what the hell is it good for? And Cedric certainly didn’t want anything that came his way.
He played a lot of poker with Cousin Letmee, who wanted to know what had happened to the gun. This made Cedric think of Marilyn, and this only made him sadder. He never slept past eight o’clock. It would have just been giving into despair, and he still dressed well, and went to daily Mass though Mass was starting to be a strain since he was having a hard time believing in anything.
In the middle of that incredibly stifling summer they got a new priest. James Brumbaugh had said little except that he had been born in New York, and came from Holy Spirit monastery up the hill.
Surely this time must have been more insufferable than he remembered. After all he was only twenty-four, and could compare it to none of his future tragedies. And then, at the time, he did not have the comfort of knowing that time really does make one forget, compact those things that seem so long. So it must have been horrible at twenty-four to be this depressed.
“It could be so much worse,” he told Ida when he was finally willing to tell anyone how he was feeling. “I could be in Viet Nam,”
But this only made him feel worse because he felt guilty for not feeling as bad as the men coming home from Viet Nam.

The last thing Estelle did was walk into the living room of Evelyn’s apartment where Cedric was finishing the last of a pack of cigarettes.
“Look at him,” his grandmother complained.
“God, Estelle. He’s getting his life together.”
“Doesn’t look like he’s getting his life together. Looks like he’ll turn into another DuFresne, Sandavaul drunk. Looks like he’ll be just like his father.”
“Looks like you should shut your mouth, Estelle,” Evelyn said.
“That’s what comes of bringing bastards into the world,” Estelle concluded.
Cedric stood up, a little unsteady from the liquor, and looked at his grandmother. He said something that had started out, “Now, look you old bitch-- ”
And where it had ended, no one could say.
Estelle had, somewhere in the midst of her tirade, clutched her chest, and fallen to the ground. When Evelyn went to her knees to check her sister’s breathing, she looked up at her nephew and said without any note of accusation, “Well, damn, Ced. You killed her.”




At the funeral the news soon went about first through Estelle’s children, and then her other grandchildren as well as Evelyn’s wayward brood, that Cedric had killed Estelle with a word. No one accused him. Everyone seemed to revere him a little. Gladys told him he could probably sit around on 1133 Crawford writing stories and plays for the rest of his life, and never work. In families that large a patriarch just had to be there, and Cedric had certainly made himself patriarch. There were few women as proud of their of their sons for murdering their mothers as Evelyn DuFresne was of Cedric.
But Cedric did not settle down to write in the back of 1133. He did not want to write or act. He wanted to get a new life. So the day after the funeral he loaded up a Samsonite suitcase, and without warning caught a cross town bus that shot out to Holy Spirit Monastery.

Julian Brown had not been ordained long, and he still had hair when he answered the door. In 1974 one did not knock and enter into a hall. Instead there was a cord outside, and when the visitor-- this time around Cedric-- pulled on it, a great boom came from the inside, and then a monk would come to answer the door.
“I’m here for privacy and thought,” Cedric said. “I just can’t be bothered with questions. I came to put my life together... Or take it apart. I don’t know which.”
Julian, to his credit, smiled and said, “Come right on in.”
“I’m sure we have a spare room somewhere around here,” Julian was telling Cedric. He led him upstairs, and they began the long hunt around the rectangular monastery while Julian gave a history of the house, of the Poor Clares who had come long ago, but not remained. And Cedric told of how his school had once been part of a poor Clare convent.
“She’s all over the place isn’t she?” Julian said.
When Cedric cocked his head, Julian explained, “Clare.
“Ah,” Julian jiggled a doorknob, opened it. It smelled musty. The smell of musty. “Here is a spare room. I’ll let the abbot know you’re here.”
Marion was abbot then. He was already impossibly old, and he made no sound when he walked so Cedric nearly hit the ceiling at seeing the ancient monk appear his room.
“We’ve been expecting you,” the abbot said cryptically.
“Really?” said Cedric.
Then the monk threw back his head and laughed.
“Of course not, but didn’t it sound ethereal?” He waved his fingers around.
It was not hard to talk to Dom Marion, and it was later that evening that he found himself telling the man, “So the last straw was: I killed my grandmother.”
Dom Marion looked at Cedric quizzically.
“I shouted at her, and she dropped dead.”
A great gush of air came out of Dom Marion, so great that Cedric feared that he might have killed another person. And then the old abbot said, “You must feel terrible about that.”
Cedric shrugged and said, honestly, “Oh, not really. She did have it coming.”

Julian and Mario were in their thirties, but they explained to Cedric, “Monasticism has a way of keeping you younger.” So the three of them had a ball in the most monastic sense of the word. Holy Spirit was outside of Jamnia city limits. It was like being in a different world. Things went on peaceably, no one asking Cedric if he would join the community or not.
One day Brother Crysoganus told Cedric, “We have a visitor. From New York. Staying in the old nun’s room.”
Everyone was curious, but with the curiosity of monks, so not a word was mentioned about the new visitor. And no one saw him. Cedric was preoccupied with the matter of prayer. He spent a great deal of his free time before the Blessed Sacrament first asking God for what he wanted, and then asking God to tell him what He wanted, and then asking God to just do whatever was supposed to be done.
Julian came looking for him, and the two of them were heading toward the lake by way of the chapel’s back exit.
“I don’t know, Julian,” Cedric told his friend. “It’s like I say, God, give me patience--”
“But give it to me right now!”
“Exactly!” Cedric laughed. “I don’t know what I expect. I suppose I want God to drop his will down from the sky onto my head!”
And that was when a woman fell through the window and crushed Cedric beneath her.
He groaned on the chapel floor while Julian looked up at the hole in the roof, and then the woman looked down at him and smiled while Cedric muttered, “Marilyn Alexander, what the hell are you doing here?”

WELL, I HAD BEEN WORKING in Atlanta a while,” Marilyn explained between mouthfuls of food, “Ever been?”
“No.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Too damned hot. And what’s more, nothing but drag queens. Most depressing part? Some of them looked better than me.”
Marilyn finished her water. They were in the dining hall of the monastery, and Julian had said Marilyn was the first woman to ever sit here.
“So I swallowed my pride, and went to New York,”
“New York’s nice,” Mario said.
“Not if your father lives there,” Marilyn told the monk. “And he’s the lousiest son of a bitch I ever met. Scuse the language.”
“You can say lousy whenever you want,” Mario excused her with a grin.
“I was doing this show I really didn’t want to do, Ced. Feeling all useless and everything. Sometimes I would look at the gun you have me, and just smile.”
“Gun?” Julian raised an eyebrow.
“Long story,” Cedric and Marilyn both said.
Julian shrugged.
“I needed to find you,” Marilyn said. “You were unlisted at Saint Clare’s. And then when I finally found out where you were--”
“I was staying in a boarding house,”
“I know that now,” said Marilyn. “You were never home.”
“I never got the message.”
“I should strangle that woman,” Marilyn said. “But anyway, after a while, I figured you had to be graduated. So then I had to start trying to remember where you lived. Then I had to dig up Saint Clare’s records.”
“How?”
“Oh, I drove to Ohio?”
“Really?”
“Really, Cedric.”
“Just for me,” Cedric murmured, feeling a little pleased.
“And for my sanity,” Marilyn told him. “I thought I might lose my mind if I didn’t find you. Can’t explain it. Just thought that it might happen that way. So I finally found out you were here... in Jamnia. Which I remembered the town name once I saw it in print. But you know, it’s sort of a hard place to remember. And then I called up all over town and found out you were here.”
“So you chose to fall on my head?”
“No, no,” Marilyn shook her head rapidly. “Having come here I had to decide why it was so pressing for me to find you or find anyone. I had to get my life together, you see? Reflect. Think. So I came here for that. I just reflect best out in the sun, and the sky was so beautiful today. It really is Cedric. We should take a walk. I was going along the roof tiles.”
“Why the roof tiles?” Mario asked Marilyn.
“Because no one can see you on the roof,” she explained. “With the little parapet and all. Real private, you know? So I was going along them when I fell through it... Onto you.”
“Now that,” Julian commented. “Is romance.”


SEE, I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU guys never tried this,” Marilyn told them, walking along the parapet. They looked over the balcony and the deep green of the trees, the blue of Lake Clare, and the clearer, pearl blue of the sky and its clouds. In the distance the city was small. Nearly invisible.
“I feel sorry for anyone who couldn’t feel at home in the world on a day like this,” Marilyn said, clasping her hands. “It’s a good world. That the Lord made.”
“You and Cedric could stay with us forever,” Dom Marion suggested. “And keep us all young.” He pointed to Mario and Julian, then amended, “younger.”
“What a joke,” Marilyn murmured.
Dom Marion gave a hooked grin, and said, “You thought I was joking?”
They rounded the whole of the parapet, taking in the fields to the northwest nearly ready for harvest, and then the long slope veiled in trees which overlooked the highway.
“Oh my,” said Marilyn, excitedly grabbing Cedric’s wrist.
“Hum?”
She pointed below to where the road from the highway emerged from the green trees. Someone who appeared to be-- from the size of his Afro-- Jimi Hendrix was coming up to the monastery. No, he was a little too light complexioned from Jimi. Besides, Jimi was dead.
Cedric stood, scrutinizing the fellow who was about to pull the cord of the main door, and then suddenly he called out, “You cheap son of a bitch!”
And taking off his shoe, Cedric Fitzgerald launched it at Ralph Hanley’s head and knocked him cold.

“Well, now we’re all together,” Abbot Marion said cheerfully, clapping his hands as Ralph stirred from sleep.
“Cedric, one day you will explain to me why you did that,” Marilyn told him.
“How do you know him?” Cedric demanded.
“Ralph is the one who told me you were here,”
Ralph, with a considerable dark lump over his right eye, was looking at both of them.
“What’s going on?” Ralph said.
“What’s going on is I’m considering giving you another knot of your head, nig--”
“Cedric,” Marilyn warned.
Cedric shut his mouth and fumed.
“Was it you?” Ralph said, “who threw that thing at my head?”
“It wasn’t a thing. It was a Florsheim. I paid thirty-eight dollars for those. Cedric lifted his foot, and began to polish the shoe he’d hit Ralph with.
Ralph opened his mouth.
“And before you ask me why I did it,” Cedric beat him to the punch, “I’ll tell you it’s for missing my graduation, adopting a holier than thou attitude when you decided to be a priest, and not bothering to call or show your face since I’ve been back in Jamnia. And not necessarily in that order.”
Ralph sat up, and looked at Cedric, his green eyes sharp bottle chips.
Not giving a damn, Cedric continued: “Not to mention the completely bitchy attitude you took when I came to Notre Dame, the prompt decision to go out of your way not to attend Saint Clare’s with me-- not that you had to. Obviously you didn’t have to. And about a million other things I can’t think of right now.”
“I brought Marilyn to you,” Ralph said.
“Well now that’s the one good thing you did do.”
Ralph sighed, and laid back down on the cot, placing a hand over his bruise before wincing at the pressure of said hand.
“Can we start all over again?” Ralph demanded.
“Hell no-- ” Cedric began.
But Marilyn cuffed him in the head. There was such a look in her eyes that Cedric, sulking, said, “Okay...But just for her sake.”
Ralph put out a hand, cocked his head in Cedric’s direction, and stuck it out.
“I’m Ralph Hanley.”
“I’m Cedric Fitzgerald,” said Cedric.
“See how new that was?” Ralph said. “The first time we met, you didn’t even have the same name.”
“What?” said Marilyn.
“It’s a long story,” Cedric explained.
The three Black people, and the three black monks sat around in the infirmary for a few moments longer, and then Abbot Marion clapped his hands together again in his brisk manner, and turning to Marilyn and Cedric said, “So when will you kids be getting married?”


GEORGE STEARNE HAD ALWAYS BELIEVED that eventually everything had to be paid for. He still believed it. Only what now was taking shape in his mind was the idea that maybe all the payments might not be as cruel as he was previously certain they would be.
As he searched for his jacket--wondering if he’d even need one, and then deciding he would-- George admitted that he had been embarrassed, was still embarrassed about Ashley. The odd thing was that he wanted to talk to Tina about it. He vowed that one day, in the future, when the six years age difference didn’t matter, and it wasn’t a student/teacher thing he would talk to Tina as a friend. She was younger, yes, but George recalled seeing Kevin Foster’s mother-in-law and Cedric Fitzgerald together. There was certainly an age gap between Ida Lawry and Cedric, yet they were the best of friends.
There was a knock on the door. George wondered if it was the forceful Tina, and the thought made him grin. She was a hell of a person, and when she realized that one day,
“Watch out world,” George was saying as he opened the door, and prepared to zip his jacket.
“You fucked her!” was what Mick Rafferty said as he walked through the door.
For a moment George was confused.
“You fucked her. Didn’t you, George?” Mick demanded. “That was why you were always shaking your finger, and disapproving, and warning me. You’d been with her along time ago.”
George sucked in his breath, then sighed and said, “Mick, in case you didn’t notice, everyone’s been with Ashley Foster a long time ago.”
Mick stood before his friend, silent. He shoved his hands in his pockets, and then said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You didn’t tell me?” George said.
Mick didn’t respond to that. He just looked out of the sliding patio door, the little lake glinted darkly in the evening, almost invisible.
“I am so fucking embarrassed,” Mick said.
“That would make two of us,” said Stearne. “I tried to tell you.... without telling you.”
There was nothing to be said. Stearne took his hands through his black hair, and then said, “Hey, listen. Tina invited me... -and you too... out with her and Luke and I think Madeleine Fitzgerald. I gave in and said yes. Graduation’s not that far off. I’ll buy ‘em a round of drinks, and lose to Tina in pool.”
“Is she that good?”
Stearne nodded and said, “It’s the only thing she inherited from Colonel Foster. Why don’t you come along.” When Mick didn’t answer, Stearne said, “Alright? Com’ on, Mick.”
Mick Rafferty blew out his cheeks and said, “Well, I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
“That’s the spirit,” Stearne said. “Kind of.”

“Are you gonna kiss her?” Ian teased his cousin. The two of them along with Mackenzie and Ryan were sitting on the floor of Mackenzie’s long unused bedroom while Mackenzie lay on his back on the bed, looking upside down at them.
“At a funeral?” Roy said, contemptuously, to his cousin.
“Well, you’re not going to be at the funeral the whole time, Mackenzie pointed out.
“Roy’s gonna get kissed,” Ryan reflected.
“How do you know Roy hasn’t already been kissed?” Ian asked Mackenzie’s younger brother.
Ryan looked quizzically at Roy.
“Stop it already,” Roy said, going red.
“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” Mackenzie, upside down, simpered.
Roy took a pillow and plopped Mackenzie in the face.
“Attacked,” Mackenzie lamented, “in my own room!”
“I love your own room,” Ian said, “but I’m ready to go. You think Vaughan’s ready, now?”
“Probably,” Mackenzie rolled off the bed.
“What’s he doing?” demanded Roy.
It was Ryan who said, “Talking to his mom.”
“What?” Roy looked at his friend.
Ian and Mackenzie looked at each other, trying to figure a way to explain this one anomaly about a friend who was-- if not normal-- at least one of the more stable things in their life.
“I thought his mom was dead,” Roy said. “In fact I know his mom is dead.”
“It doesn’t seem to stop matters,” Ryan said while the two older boys said nothing.
“He’s always talked to her. About three times a week. And sometimes when he’s asleep she comes to watch.”
Roy looked at Ian and Mackenzie.
Mackenzie nodded.
“That’s cracked,” Roy said.
“Vaughan’s not crazy,” Mackenzie said. “And if he says he talks to her... Well, he used to say it, he just doesn’t bring it up. But I know he still does it. So I beleive him.”
Roy looked at Ian.
“Vaughan’s not nuts,” Ian said. “If he says he’s got a unicorn under his bed, then he does.”
Roy sighed, and Ryan went on.
“She’s real pretty. Most of the time she’s got a white dress. She looks like Madeleine, only her hair is longer. And she has green eyes.”
“What?” Mackenzie turned to his little brother.
“Vaughan told you all this?” Ian said. It was new to him that Vaughan and Ryan even talked that often.
“Why would he have to?” Ryan wondered, innocently. “You can see her for yourself. When ever Vaughan’s here. She always shakes her head at Mom and Dad like she wants to scold them.”
Ian and Mackenzie’s eyes looked like they were about to fall out. Roy just stared blankly at his friend.
Suddenly Ryan realized something, and began clapping his hands, laughing like a madman.
“Ry, stop that,” Mackenzie said, a little bothered by his youngest brother spazzing out and confessing to apparitions.
“This is too sweet!” Ryan exulted. “You all can’t see her!”

It was nearly midnight when Vaughan led his friends into the kitchen. He was surprised but only a little by his father, Uncle Ralph and Ida sitting up drinking coffee and smoking the last of their cigarettes. Cedric spooned the remnants of melted ice cream and pie from an apple green bowl.
“I came to check in,” Vaughan told his father.
“Check in as in go to bed?”
“No,” Ian spoke before Vaughan could open his mouth. “Check in as in let you know we’re all alright before we go to Windham Street.” He turned to Ida. Cigarette smoldering, the older woman nodded at Ian.
“Kirk Berghen’s throwing the biggest party over there!” Roy said.
“Kirk Berghen’s always throwing the biggest party over there,” said Cedric. “I thought that’s where you all came from.”
“No we were at a bar,” Vaughan said. “The restaurant part.”
Cedric cocked his head.
“Madeleine vouched for us,” Vaughan explained.
Cedric took a drag from his cigarette.
“And now,” said Vaughan, “we wanna go back out.”
Ida looked at her youngest grandchild, and said to Ryan, “You... are going out?”
Ryan nodded.
“You went to a bar?” she said to the fourteen year old.
Ryan began to redden and stammer.
“Grandma, it was the restaurant part.”
“What’s the world coming to?” Ralph murmured in a tone that could not take itself seriously.
“I don’t know what the world’s coming to, but it’s about time Ryan snuck into his first bar. And you led him?” she said to Mackenzie.
Mackenzie nodded his head.
Ida shook her own and murmured, “Aileen always thought you’d be the soft one.”

A little before two in the morning, Vaughan knew they would not be going back to Logan Street or Michael Street tonight. He walked out of the garage, across the weed grown garden into the kitchen of Windham Street, and went up the stairs to the spare room where Ryan and Roy had already given in to the Sandman. Ian and Mackenzie were not long for this world either, Vaughan was sure, as he climbed onto the bed that was usually Ryan’s, and pulled a thin coverlet over himself. Ryan slept on the floor beside Roy.
“Vaughan?” he heard his name in the dark. He was not sure if it was Ryan or Roy.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Do you think Roy could kill someone?”
So it was Ryan.
“Where’d you come up with an oddball question like that?”
“He was telling me... that he had to do something. Say something really important tomorrow. And I thought.... he’s gonna kill somebody.”
“Roy won’t kill anybody,” Vaughan said. “Now go back to sleep. We’ve all got a funeral tomorrow.”
Just then the door flew open, and light filled the room.
“Ahhhhshitttt!” Roy muttered from the floor.
“Come on down right now!” Tina was shouting. “Mr. Stearne’s doing a keg stand!”

The morning light cut through George Stearne’s eyelids like a knife. He looked around, and the price he paid was a stabbing pain in his head. But the price was worth it. Yes. He had made it home last night. What would have been unbearable would be to learn that he had passed out in view of many of his students on Windham Street.
Next George Stearne caused himself a great deal of pain by turning to look at the clock on his bed. It was 8:30 in the morning. This meant he could sleep a little longer before the funeral. Part of him debated missing it, but if he did his sister would never let him hear the end of it. Never mind he hadn’t really known the priest.
A half hour later George stumbled to the kitchen. From the cut out window looking out onto the half dining room George saw that he had left Mick passed out on the living room floor, and sunlight was shining on the back of the other man’s head.
George decided it would be best to make enough coffee for the both of them.
As he began spooning coffee into a basket he had-- thankfully-- cleaned yesterday, the phone rang so shrilly he swore, and from the floor Mick Rafferty swore too.
“Hello?” George groaned. Mick went right back to sleep.
“Yes... unh huh... Yes... Yes... Thank you.”
Shit,” said George Stearne. He filled the pot with what he hoped was the right amount of water, and prepared to go back to bed.
He didn’t need this. He did not need this. He bypassed the bedroom for the bathroom.
He didn’t need to know right now, after a night of celebration, after being a savior and a drinking god, that he had been wrong, and Luke Madeary could in fact-- NOT go to Europe.


This was not the first time Luke Madeary had woken up in Kirk Berghen’s garage. Money Caroll was asleep on one side of him, drool hanging from her mouth, her white-woman dreadlocks fuzzy as hell. Tina was asleep, looking peaceful, on the other.
She meant to dye her hair for that funeral she’s got to go to today, Luke thought, looking at the girl’s black hair. She’s gonna be pissed when she wakes up and remembers.
He hoped that he had left food out for Old Coconut. Maybe the dog could fend for himself, but he shouldn’t have to, should he?
Luke grinned in a giddy way.
“I wonder,” he murmured.
“Wonder what?” said Tina, emerging into consciousness. She caught a strand of her still black hair and said, “Fuck! I need to get some Clairol-- and pronto.”
Luke grinned at Tina stupidly, and said, “Wonder who’ll watch Coconut when we’re in Europe this fall!”

Ian did not knock on the bathroom door because Roy had left it open. In the manner of someone who is more asleep than awake, Ian briefly noticed his cousin patting his own face and staring at his reflection in the mirror. Ian closed the door, opened his boxers, and pissed loudly while Roy, heedless of it, kept examining himself. While the toilet flushed, Ian came toward the face bowl, shooting the water on, and began washing his hands.
“What are you looking at?” said Ian. But of course when he looked in the mirror he only saw his haggard reflection. The two of them looked a like, but not completely.
“I’m just checking out things,” Roy said.
Ian grinned at his cousin as he shut off the water, shook out his hands, and grabbed a bath towel.
“Rachel will think you’re beautiful,” Ian said, grinning.
Roy grinned back at his cousin, but said, “That’s not what I meant.”



Ida showed up at the house a little before noon, wrapping and unwrapping her red beaded rosary around her fingers. She and Cedric drove to the church, and she said, “Who’s gonna take the kids?”
Cedric, who was not driving, shrugged and played with his tie. “I don’t know. I just thought somebody would work it out.”
At Our Lady of Jamnia Brother Mario and Julian and Paul were sitting in the living room. The house smelled like old coffee, and Cedric said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen any of you out of habit,” because they were all in black pants and jackets with Roman collars, like priests.
“It’s a shame,” Ida murmured, taking out her cigarettes as she sat down in the battered old chair under the large picture window that looked down on Lyman Street. “I think a bunch of monks in hoods and habits processing into church would have put the fear of God into Our Lady of Jamnia.”
Paul, who looked goofier than ever, smiled and, shrugging, said, “Father Abbot thinks it’s not appropriate for us to wear it outside the house.”
“Now if I was abbot--” started Mario.
“Good God, we’ve been hearing this for the last fifteen years,” Julian waved it away, and crinkled his red face.
“You know the only reason I didn’t get elected abbot--” Mario started.
“Is because your name is too close to the last abbot’s,” Julian said, shutting him up.
Ida, cocking her head, and taking a drag from her cigarette, noted, “I see you’ve heard this story before.”
“Did you vote for me?” Mario asked Julian. “After Marion died?”
“No,” Julian said.
“Well to hell with you,” the other monk told him, “I didn’t vote for you either.”
Ralph Hanley came trundling down the stairs and said, “Should we rehearse again.”
“Damnit, Ralph, it’s a funeral, not a fashion show,” Mario said, stamping his cane. “We’re all dressed, Brumbaugh’s still dead. Everything’s the way it should be.”
“It’s lack of planning,” the green eyed priest said, “that can ruin so many ceremonies.”
“Whatever happens,” Mario noted, “he probably won’t care too much.”
“Do we have a Gloria?” Julian asked.
“We always have a Gloria at a funeral,” Ralph said.
“We didn’t have one for Abbot Marion when he died.”
“Yes, we did,” Ralph said.
“No, we didn’t.”
“We did,” Ralph Hanley said flatly.
“Give a man a Roman collar,” Mario told no one in particular, “and he thinks he knows everything.”

Ralph Hanley never knew he was unhappy until he woke up with a bruise on his head from Cedric’s shoe. Cedric, who for years had been his best friend, and then his worst uneasiness and finally his friend all over again, had made a point. Most people were unhappy and, never having tasted happiness, didn’t know how unhappy they were. People were good at forgetting, changing or forsaking their histories as they moved through their present. So even when they tasted happiness by accident, often they forgot the taste, and moved on without it. But sometimes someone was unfortunate enough to be truly, memorably happy, and then that was just no good because, from then on, you knew happiness was out there, and you would do anything to get it back.
Cedric had said this many years into his marriage. But many years still before Vaughan and Madeleine were born.
Years after the kids had been born, Cedric noted, “It’s not happiness you find. It’s you. It’s reality. It’s the one real thing. It’s God. All in one. All at the same time. It’s things the way they really are. From then on everything else is just dull as hell in comparison. Nothing else matters more than getting back to what you found... Because what you found is all there really is.”
Well Ralph had found all there was when he spent those days in the monastery. Weddings were not the norm at Holy Spirit, so all the monks were in high excitement. Cedric and Marilyn were married in style less than a month after she arrived. Her family came down from Michigan and northern Ohio. Alexanders and LaBeaufs flew out from Virginia and New York. The DuFresnes and the Sandavauls came from as far away as Metarie and New Orleans. Some from Oklahoma. The Fitzgeralds, who up until that time had scarcely dealt with Cedric Fitzgerald Senior’s son by Gladys, came to the wedding as well.

And then, quick as that, Cedric and Madeleine were gone. They were twenty somethings with wanderlust and no children, and they did as they pleased. Living in Jamnia did not please them. They would come back for holidays.
Ralph went back to seminary. Those years were the unhappiest of his life because he remembered Holy Spirit and how happy he had been. Even when Cedric and Marilyn came to visit-- and they did so frequently-- he was unhappy because he knew they would leave.
They were at his ordination along with the Hanleys from all over the country, and then Ralph went to work at his first parish, preaching sermons he didn’t mean because those sermons implied that there was some happiness in serving God, and he certainly wasn’t getting so much as a bit of happiness out of the enterprise.
This is what he had told Marilyn when she and Cedric had come to visit Ralph during the Christmas of 1979.
“Well how do you know you’re serving God?” Marilyn said.
Ralph had not even dared to speak this to Cedric. He was expecting Marilyn to be comforting. Instead she said, “When did God come down and tell you to go to a seminary you didn’t want and take a job you didn’t like?”
Ralph remained dumbfounded before the beautiful woman’s logic.
“The question wasn’t rhetorical,” Marilyn said.
“You’re as bad as your husband.”
“Thank you,” Marilyn smiled at Ralph. “I’m sure he’d tell you what I’m about to tell you. Do what makes you happy.”
“I haven’t been happy since I was at the monastery.”
“Holy Spirit?”
Ralph nodded.
“Then maybe you should be a monk?” Marilyn suggested. “Maybe?”
As was his way, Ralph hadn’t taken Marilyn seriously until he was miserable beyond belief. He came to visit his mother that Easter, and stopped to stay at the monastery a few days. The day before it was time to leave, Ralph had looked out of his window onto Lake Clare, sobbing, embarrassed to be a thirty year old Black man, a priest no less, bawling alone in a room. He sucked up his misery, washed his face, and prepared to leave for the bus that would take him to the plane that would take him back to his parish.
Abbot Marion, who was now blind as a bat, and couldn’t have heard a thundercloud if it walked up behind him and rumbled, “Boo!” knew sadness, and bobbling on his little staff behind Ralph he asked the young man who was about to leave, “Why are you so sad?”
“I don’t want to leave,” Ralph told him.
Abbot Marion cocked his head and smiled pitifully. Ralph thought the old man was going to say, “Sometimes duty is difficult.”
But what he said is, “Well then why on earth don’t you stay?”
Ralph looked at the old monk in surprise.
Abbot Marion murmured, dotingly, “You silly, silly boy.”
“But... duty. I have a duty to perform, and... a sacred task.”
Abbot Marion chuckled, “How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Thirty... “ Marion murmured, “I can’t even remember forty.... You think you know everything. Don’t you?”
“No, Father Abbot.”
“Liar,” the abbot fingered Ralph’s throat, “Your collar.... I was ordained too. Long ago. I remember. Give a man a Roman collar, and he thinks he knows everything.”


They came back to Michael Street in Ian’s car.
“We can’t be late for the funeral,” Mackenzie said. But Vaughan pointed out that the guest of honor would still be there no matter when they came.
“We’re pall bearers,” Mackenzie reminded Vaughan.
“I was trying to forget.”
Vaughan showered first and then, in his housecoat, went rummaging through his closet for something nice. Ian and Mackenzie showered together.
“Not nearly as sexy as you might think, when both of us have hangovers and we’re in a rush,” Mackenzie pointed out, prosaic. “And no one can agree to the water temperature.”
Before they left, Ian came pelting up the steps.
“Look at me!” he demanded, turning around quickly, and standing still.
“You look nice,” Vaughan said, tying his tie.
“I look better than nice!” Ian exalted. “Kenzie got me this shirt.”
It was almost neon green, and he was in dark forest green slacks with a black tie. “I look.... I kind of look like I could pass for someone handsome.”
“Ian, no one said you were bad looking.”
“I’m not like Mackenzie.”
“Well, no. He’s blond, and blue eyed. And you have dark hair, and--”
“You know what I mean,” Ian told him.
“I know what you mean,” Vaughan said, reaching for his own blazer. “But that’s because Mackenzie gets dressed up almost everyday, and you just started bathing and shaving on a regular basis since you got with him. For you dress up is jeans and a tee shirt and a change of underwear every three days.”
Ian was studying himself in the floor length mirror.
“You just never knew what you looked like until now,” Vaughan told him.
“You think this is what Mackenzie sees when he looks at me?”
“It will be today.”
“You know what I mean,” Ian said. “I always thought Roy would grow up nice looking, but the genes had sort of passed over me. But actually me and Roy look pretty much alike, and I think I’m not bad looking. I mean, I think I never tried cause I never thought there was any use. But, do you think that Mackenzie sees someone... nice looking? When he sees me?”
“If Mackenzie saw anyone nicer looking he’d be barfing up hearts and flowers,” Vaughan said. “He’s in love with you. Listening to him talk about your black eyes and your little beard and crap is like listening to the Song of Solomon.”
“I don’t know the Song of Solomon.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Vaughan said. And then he said, “And I’m so glad you finally did something with your hair.”
“It’s still wild,” Ian said. “It pops up.”
“There’s a difference between having wild hair,” Vaughan noted, “and just abandoning all hope.”

Margaret Stearne had taken her seat right beside the Foster’s. Aileen was surprised that the woman had not spoken a word the entire funeral. Ever since high school, George Stearne’s oldest sister had known everyone’s business, and never thought twice about discussing it anywhere. This ought to have been a field day for her. Nearly everyone in town was present for the old priest’s funeral, and so this was an occasion that should have elicited more chatter than ever.
Aileen herself was looking around. Her mother and Cedric were sitting right in front of her, in the first row, looking as if they weren’t looking around. Aileen knew better. Race Cane and Roy were a few seats behind and Roy was with... yes, a Black girl.. This must have been his date. But the boy looked distracted, as if he had a mission. And very grownup in his dark blue suit.
Aileen looked at Kevin, who was distractedly tapping his tooth, and realized that her husband had on a dark blue suit too.
The greatest satisfaction Aileen got was at the end of the funeral when Vaughan, Mackenzie, Ian, Rodder and a few others carried out the polished oak casket, and Margaret Stearne said, “I know that one is Cedric Fitzgerald’s son, but who’s that attractive boy in the green on the other side of Kenzie.”
“Oh,” Aileen said carelessly, “That’s my son’s boyfriend.”

“I’m really glad you came,” Roy told Rachel.
She could tell he meant it. His voice was full of appreciation, and his hand caught hers. Then he let go and dropped his eyes. When he did Rachel DuFresne, in the living room of the parish house, realized how much she’d liked looking into them.
“I don’t even know you that well,” he said.
“Well, shit, Roy, you just grabbed my hand. It’s not like you asked to have sex with me.”
He chuckled, then turned away, looking sharp like an animal who had caught a scent and turned back to her. He was still smiling, but to Rachel he looked a little distracted.
“Is there something wrong?” Rachel asked.
“No,” Roy shook his head. “No. I just think I wanna get some punch. I’ll get some for you.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“You can stay right here.”
“I thank you for your gallantry, Roy. But I think I can be troubled to walk across the room.”
So things were going well, and they were deciding what to do after the funeral when Roy said, “Could I be excused?”
“Did you break wind?” Rachel asked him.
“No,” Roy went red. “I just wanted to... relieve myself.”
“I wish you’d talk normal.”
“I’m trying to be decent. Like a date.”
“It’s just me.”
“I have to pee.”
“I know what ‘relieve yourself’ means,” Rachel told him.
“Then why did you make me say I have to pee?”
“No one made you say anything, Roy,” Rachel told him. “Now go pee. And when you get finished let me know so I can too.”
“Would you like to go first?”
“No, Roy, that’s quite alright. Why don’t you?”
So Roy went off to go pee, and the bathroom door opened, and Kevin Foster came up. Roy looked up, Kevin looked down.
“How are you Roy?” Kevin asked him.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” Kevin said directly. “You look like you just stumbled into the dead, and I might not be the most alive thing in western Ohio, but I’m not dead yet.”
And then Kevin broke into a smile, which for some reason disconcerted Roy even more.
“Now, what’s up?” Kevin said.
Roy opened his mouth, swallowed, and then said, feeling his bladder tingling. “I decided. That I was going to say something to you... ask you something.”
“Alright?” Kevin said.
Roy realized by the look on Kevin’s face he was about to hit the man from left field.
“If I’m wrong,” Roy began, “then I’m sorry. I’m out of line, but, I don’t think I’m wrong and if I am, like I said, then I am sorry. I’m not trying to say anything by it. It’s just--”
“Roy,” Kevin said simply, “spit it out.”
“Are you my Dad?”
Kevin did look as if he’d been hit between the eyes, and then he said, “Well, yes, Roy. I am.”


IAN, VAUGHAN, AND MACKENZIE WERE talking in a small circle when they heard Rachel DuFresne shout out, “Roy!” and then Roy nearly knocked them over.
“Roy, what’s up?” Ian said, grabbing his cousin by the shoulders. But the smaller boy shook him off, and headed out the door.
Rachel looked at Vaughan, and her cousin looked back at her about to ask if they’d fought when they saw Kevin Foster pushing his way through the room, looking shocked, and Ian looked up at Mackenzie’s father, and said, “Sir, what’s going on.”
Race Cane was right behind her nephew, looking from Kevin, to the door. Aileen, her mother, and her aunts had stopped talking and now joined the small knot of people. Aileen and Race both looked at each other, and then they looked at Kevin.
“You told him,” Race said.
“He found out,” Kevin said, confused.
“Well it had to happen sooner or later,” Aileen murmured.
“Please,” Ian said, sounding a little desperate while Mackenzie and Vaughan tried to say nothing, “Found out what?”

“WHAT?” SAID TINA, IN THE midst of a Blackjack game with Father Julian, Kirk Berghen, Luke and Money Carroll.
Mackenzie nodded his head.
“You’ve got to be fucking me,” Tina said, and then turned to Father Julian. “Excuse the language.”
“Excused,” he told her.
“Good, because: ” she looked at her cards, and threw one down, “Blackjack. Pay up, padre.” Now, while she held her hand out for the money, she said, “Where is he?”
Ian was coming up behind Mackenzie.
“Ian, where is Roy?” Tina demanded.
“I don’t know, Tina.”
“Thank you, Father,” she said. Julian. Kirk and Money set to playing a new hand while Tina strategized other matters.
“Luke,” she said, “we gotta go. Roy Cane is missing.”
Rachel DuFresne came up with her cousins and said, “Excuse me, but what is going. Did I do something?”
“You didn’t do anything,” Tina told her, slipping into her leather jacket. “My dad did.”
Rachel looked confused.
“See,” Tina explained, reaching into her pocket for her car keys, “it turns out Roy’s not an only child after all. He’s our brother.”
“Well, I’ll be fucked!” Kirk Berghen cried, looking up from his game with Julian and Money. Then at the look of embarrassment on Money’s face, added, “Excuse the language, Father.”
“Excused,” Julian said.
“Good-- ”
“Because,” Julian continued, “Blackjack!”

George Stearne and his sister saw Luke and Tina pelting out the door, and George cried out: “What’s going on?”
“I gotta go get my brother,” Tina said.
“Mackenzie’s right over there.”
“It is so much more to explain,” Tina told him. “And I will. But not right now. I have to go.”
Luke headed out the door, and then said, daring to hug George Stearne quickly, “I want to thank you so much for that whole Europe thing. I didn’t think I had any hope until that. I just told the gas station I’d be quitting at the end of May!”
And then he was gone.
Margaret turned to her brother, and said, “George, you look horrible, what’s wrong?”

What Ashley had managed to gather before leaving the funeral was that Ian Cane’s little cousin was her father’s illegitimate son. It was strange, a little farfetched, but, as she knew, not something entirely out of the pale in a town this small. People fucked everywhere, but in a town like Jamnia, where your choice was so limited, your fucking always came back to you.
Like take this funeral which she had to leave. Thank God Rodder was in Chicago, because so far she saw Bone Mc.Arthur, George Stearne, and Mick Rafferty, and the more she looked around the more she saw the majority of men who had fucked her. She had to get out. The nastiest clencher was walking out the door while Mick was on one side and George Stearne was on the other, the certainty that they were both sneering at each other over her. Of all the things she could do she took the bus across town to Willow Park Mall. When she felt like this, which was beginning to be all the time, she’d walk through the mall and look at people, make up stories about them. She left her money at home though, wisely.
The days were getting longer, but it was still chilly when she left through the J.C. Penney’s where the bus stopped after dipping off of the incline of Willow Park Road and into the parking lot.
One bus had just roared off. Ashley shrugged, and sat down on an old, paint chipped bench.
A car came by playing some crap off one of the pop stations, and as the window rolled down Ashley saw the half handsome, half silly face of Derrick Todd.
“Hey, Ash! Get in!”
Ashley stood up and, coming to the window said, “It’s alright. I’ll just wait for the bus. Thanks.”
“You mean the bus that just left about ten minutes ago?” Derrick said, and then told her, “I didn’t always have a car. I know the schedule.”
“The next one’ll be here in a few minutes,” Ashley told him.
Derrick shook his head. “It’s the weekend. They only come once an hour.” He reached across the passenger seat and opened the door, “Get in.”
Ashley did, and fastened her seat belt.
“I ‘m not really listening to this,” Derrick told her. “So you can switch stations.”
“This is fine,” said Ashley. Then, “You know all the stations are bad around here anyway.”
Derrick chuckled, and nodded as they rose up out of the lot and headed south, down the slope of Willow Park Road, “You’re right about that.
“So am I taking you home or do you have some hot place to go?” Derrick said as they reached the intersection with Michael Street.
“Someplace hot?” Ashley said.
“You know. You’re Ashley Foster and everything.”
She laughed and said, “And this is Jamnia and nothing. I’m going home is all.”
“Alright,” Derrick said. The light changed, and he turned a broad left. “All aboard for Michael Street.”
When they came to the plum colored house on Logan, Ashley said, “Would you like to come in for a second? I see Tina’s here. Luke probably is too.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“You’d be the first,“ Ashley said. Then, at the look on his face, explained, “The first who didn’t want to impose. Come on in.”
When they did come through the side door, Tina was standing at the counter with a cigarette, and Luke was sitting at the kitchen table.
Tina looked from Ashley to Derrick, and said, “What’s wrong with this picture?”
“Don’t be rude all the time,” Ashley said.
Tina made a face.
“Any luck with Roy?” Ashley said.
“What?” said Derrick. So Tina told him everything.
“Roy Cane is your little brother. That’s wild.”
“Um hum,” Tina noted, blandly.
“I guess,” Ashley said. “I got enough brothers as it is. Ross is going to have a heart attack. Or kill somebody.”
“Why?” said Derrick.
“First, because he and Roy got into a fight along time ago,” Ashley said. “And he hates Roy. And then because-- I don’t know Roy’s birthday exactly, but apparently Race Cane was pregnant the same time Mom was pregnant with Ross.”
“Oh, shit!” Tina said. “Damnit, that’s right. They’re practically twins.”
“Ross is going to shit when he finds out.”
“Ross is going to shit when he finds out what?” Ross said coming down the stairs behind Ryan.
Ashley stammered. Derrick and Luke looked to each other. Tina, who had always wished she had another brother in place of Ross just said, “We finally found out who Roy Cane’s father is.”
“That’s right,” Ross grinned at the same time Ryan did. Tina noted that two smiles could not have been more different. “The little fucker’s a bastard.”
“Wash your mouth,” Ashley said wearily.
“Wash your snatch,” Ross muttered. Lindsay was coming down the stairs, and Ross turned around and told her about Roy.
“Great,” she said. And then, seeing Derrick, she sneered and added, “Let’s throw a party.”
“I don’t know if you want to throw a party,” Derrick said, and the way he said it made both Ashley and Tina laugh. Luke snorted.
“What?” Ross said, suddenly sounding pissed. “What’s up?”
“Smile, Ross,” Tina said, dropping the laugh. “You got a new brother.”
“What?” Ross said, not catching on.
But Ryan caught on, and judging by the horror in Lindsay’s eyes, both of her sisters knew she did too.
“I should have known!” Ryan exulted in all of his innocence. “I should have known!” His voice was high. “His eyes. And he walks like Dad too! I should have known!”
“Oh, fuck this!” Ross declared, taking the other extreme.
“Roy’s my brother!” Ryan went on.
“Shut up!” Ross said.,
Ryan turned to his older brother grinning, “and his birthday’s the same as yours!” Ryan said. “That means Dad and his mom were together at the same time mom was pregnant with you!”
Ryan knew that had to hurt.
Tina stepped between the two of them sensing that Ross might attempt something, and then she told her youngest brother, earnestly, “Roy isn’t so thrilled. He’s ashamed, and he left the funeral. And no one knows where he is.”
“Oh, I do,” Ross said confidently. “I’ll go get my jacket, and bring him back. Hold on.”
“I’ll be in the car,” Tina said.
“No,” Ryan said, cheerfully. “You’d better let me do this. He’ll come back if it’s just me.”


Ryan hopped on his bike and rode up Logan until he made a right turn on Michael, and sped up the street, legs pumping until he got to South Logan and, ironically, rode north to the juncture of town where South Logan met Main, and Windmill Cereal Plant where his mom worked stood across from the Hasty Tasty Diner where Roy’s mom worked. And then the pink bricked, columned, public library lay on Main across from Hasty Tasty.
Ryan did not lock his bike. He propped it in the bushes, and went into the building. The air conditioning was already on though summer was months away.
Roy knew where to go. He went to the end of the library until he had found the chivalry section, and then went down the aisle, looked to his left and to his right, and there founrd Roy, sitting under a low shelf of books.
“I found you,” Ryan announced triumphantly.
Roy looked less than pleased.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“It’s a public library,” Ryan said, pretending to be a lot denser than he really was. “I thought that I was the public, and I think I can be here if I want.”
“Oh, God, Ryan!” Roy shut the book. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know anything that’s happened.”
“Yes, I do,” Ryan said, simply. “Tina told me. She’s told everyone.”
“Great! Fucking great!” Roy moaned. “This fucks everything up.”
“Why?”
“Ryan, you’re so stupid!” Roy calmed down. He hissed. No wonder you don’t have any friends. No wonder everyone says your’re such a spaz. You don’t get anything. Don’t you know what all this means!”
But Roy’s mouth had gotten a head of himself, and he saw tears spring up in the same blue eyes that belonged to him. At the sight Roy’s throat constricted. He was so sorry. He wanted nothing more than to break down and cry too. He wanted to take all his words away.
“It means you’re my brother,” Ryan said simply. “I’m sorry if that upsets you. I’m sorry for being a spaz and an idiot. I’m sorry I’m not popular enough and good enough for you and-- ”
“Ryan, I’m sorry,” Roy stood up.
“Fuck off!” Ryan told him, fiercely, and turned around.
Roy shot up and caught him by the wrist.
“Let me go.”
“No,” Roy said gently. “I’m sorry. There’s been a enough running around today. Look at me, Ry. Look at me,” he said again.
Ryan turned to him.
“I’m a idiot and a spaz. And I’m the one who doesn’t have anyone but you. And... and I’m this disgrace. That’s what I meant. I’m like this little bit of fun that your dad was having on the side. That’s what I meant.”
Ryan was looking at him, paying attention.
“How would you feel,” Roy said, “if you finally had friends for the first time, and then it turned out they were your family. Only they were better than you because your mom was whoring around behind their mom’s back and you were... the product? God, do you know what that makes me?”
“It makes you my brother.” Ryan repeated..

George Stearne watched a man down at the other end of the bar inhale, and let out in a swift gush of cigarette smoke.
“God, I need a cigarette about now!” he told Mick Rafferty.
“Why?” said Mick. “Out of everyone in Jamnia, you’re probably the one furthest removed from a difficult problem. Did I catch all that right, or is Roy Cane-- ”
“Roy Cane,” George Stearne said, “turns out to be Roy Foster.”
“Poor kid.”
Stearne shrugged. “He’s known all his life he was illegitimate. He had to suspect his dad lived in town. It wasn’t that much of a stretch. People suspected.”
“Like who?”
“Like my sister. Like everyone,” Stearne said. “But what no one gets about small cities is... unlike small towns everyone doesn’t really know everyone. You know someone who knows someone. That’s one difference. And then we’re more polite. Half the town might know a secret, and just be too polite to say anything.”
“Until now,” Mick Rafferty said.
“Until now,” Stearne agreed. “And here I am talking abut Kevin Foster’s shit because its easier than talking about mine.”
“Ashley?”
Stearne dismissed that. “She’s everyone’s shit. My shit is that I told Luke Madeary he was going to to Europe with Tina.”
“Yeah, the whole trip thing.”
“And now the son of a bitch who told me we had room for him tells me they don’t. He can’t go. And Luke has already tendered his resignation at the gas station, and is the hap- piest kid on earth.”
“Shit,” Mick said. “That’s bad.”
Stearne took a sip from his beer mug, and nodded.
“Yes, that’s real bad.”

KEVIN WAS THE FIRST PERSON to the side door when Roy and Ryan stepped in. He looked down at both of them, and then held them together by their shoulders.
He looked at Roy.
“Are you all right?”
Roy didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.
“Ryan, I’m proud of you,” Kevin said to his other son. “I promise, Roy, I’ll tell you everything. Make everything clear. Come on in. Both of you. Come inside.”
Roy felt a strange case of stage fright. It seemed that everyone was in the kitchen. Derrick Todd was here, and Ross stood back looking venomous. His mother was beside Ryan’s mother, and Mackenzie and Ian were there. Oddly enough, not only was Mackenzie’s grandmother there, but so was Cedric Fitzgerald who never set foot in the house on Logan Street. Not for reasons of personal grudge, but just because he didn’t.
“Roy, please, don’t run off like that again,” Aileen said. “I may not be your mother, but I’m a little something close to it. I think.”
“You are not!” Ross snapped. Aileen turned a sharp glance on her son. Ross swallowed, but continued to speak.
“I don’t believe all of you. It’s like this is the prodigal son or something instead of what he is. Which is a bastard.”
Kevin roared at him the same time Aileen did and Roy went pale.
“I didn’t like Roy Cane when I got out of bed this morning, and I’m not going to like him when I go to bed tonight. And I’m definitely not going to call him my brother just because Dad couldn’t keep his pants up sixteen years ago.”
“That’s enough,” Aileen’s hand slammed down on the table.
“You’ll never be part of this family,” Ross continued. “And, Mom, you’re the one who should be madder than anyone else instead of accepting all of this. Are you gonna start having him over to dinner every night?”
“Roy does come to dinner every night,” Aileen pointed out.
“Throw him a birthday party too.”
“I had planned to,” Aileen said.
“I can’t believe you,” Ross went on. “What’s next?” he turned to Ida. “Is grandma gonna start sending him big ole presents every Christmas, and saving up money for him?” Ross turned to Roy who was standing there pale. No one had broken Ross’s tirade. “That’s right, Roy. Some of us have a family that cares for us. I’ve got five thousand dollars in a trust fund because when you have a real family in real families grandparents and aunts and uncles save up for you, and you know you’re part of something. What are you part of, Roy?”
Here Ida began clearing her throat, and it was a little while before everyone realized that she was trying to call attention to herself.
“Actually,” Ida told her grandson, “I’ve heard that Roy’s trust fund has about a thousand more dollars in it than yours.”
This was news to Roy, and Ross looked a little confused, then said, “How would you know?” He wasn’t disrespectful. He wouldn’t shout at his grandmother.
“I’d know the same way I know about Tina’s, and Ashley’s, and Lindsay’s, and Ryan’s and Kenzie’s, and yours,” Ida said, simply. “Because I’m the one who built it.”
“What?”
“Grandma?” Mackenzie turned to Ida, “How long have you known?”
“I’ve always known,” she shrugged.
“Mom?” Tina said.
“I accepted things quickly,” Aileen said. “And moved on.”
“You...” Roy said to Aileen. “You knew?”
Aileen nodded. Then she felt there was a need to speak. “When you showed up at the door as Ryan’s new friend I thought... this must be providence. You all getting along so well. He never really had an older brother before. Now, I’m sorry Kenzie. I don’t mean to say you were a bad older brother, but you always had Vaughan, and then you were so busy being Tina’s younger brother. In a house of six kids that’s the way it is. All Ryan ever had was Ross and well...” Aileen put a hand out to gesture toward her second son, “we see what Ross is like.”
“Open your mouth, Ross,” Kevin said, “And I’ll hit you.”
“When I was pregnant,” Race said, “my parents disowned me.”
Ian made a small noise here, surprised.
“Ida came to me and she told me she would help me out. That she wasn’t buying me off. That she would help me no matter what happened--”
“You mean if Dad left Mom for you?” Ross said.
Race thought about smacking the boy, but only said, “Yes, that’s what I meant.”
“You’re a creep, you know that?” Ian interjected toward Ross.
“Ian, please,” Race said. “Ida told me she would help me out no matter, and that was great because my parents, your grandparents,” she said to Ian, “had cut me off, and at the time Kevin already had four kids. He couldn’t possibly support this new one. And Ida said that one day Roy would have to know the truth, and when that day came he shouldn’t feel like an outcast. He should have the same things as his brothers and sisters. The same little privileges and presents--”
“Every year,” Roy broke in, turning to Ida, “the presents. Every Christmas.”
Ida nodded simply.
“I need to sit down,” Roy said. Tina shifted in her chair, and Roy sat down next to her.
“But you didn’t have to do all that,” he told Ida.
“In a way I did,” Ida said. “Just decency, just looking out for my family. And Roy, one thing you may not understand is how closely most of us in this room are related. You see, your grandfather-- not Samir, but the Colonel, was with my mother. And my youngest sister, Alice, is also Kevin’s sister.”
“What?” Tina said.
“We never really talk about it,” Aileen said. “But I remember when Colonel came with the gun all those years ago.”
“The gun?” Mackenize said.
“When I was pregnant with Tina and Ashley. And how the thing that turned him away from harassing me and Kev was that Alice came out to fight him... His own daughter.”
Nodding, Ida continued, “So you, Roy, may not be blood, and I’m not sure that this matters, but my sister is your aunt, my grandchildren are your siblings, and my daughter’s your stepmother, and regardless of how anyone feels about it,” her eyes roved the room, “my grandson is something more than a friend to your cousin. So that makes me owe a little something to you... I think.”
Roy nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Vaughan looked at his father, “Did you know? You must have.”
“This,” Cedric said, “was the one thing Ida never told me--”
“I’m sorry, Ced,” said Ida. “I didn’t think it was my place--”
“--No matter how many years I wondered if she would. Sometimes I thought she didn’t know at all, herself, and wondered if I should tell her.”
Kevin looked straight at Cedric and said, “How did you know?”
“You confessed it to Ralph. Most of it. Ralph didn’t know it was you, Kevin. But he told me about it. However I had just seen you leaving the church looking distracted. And then Ida had said some things. So I put two and two together. And I remembered you and Race had had a history. And then I heard she was mysteriously pregnant with no father in sight. It was really easy enough to forget the whole story until Ian popped up, and then I realized he was too old to be the child. Then Roy showed up and I was pretty sure he had to be yours.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?” said Ida.
“Well, neither did you,” said Cedric. “Besides, believe it or not, I didn’t really think it was that big of a deal. I figured everything would come out when it needed to. If it needed to.”
“Dad, you’re a marvel,” Vaughan declared.
Roy just kept shaking his head and saying, “I’m sorry I ran out. I was just... there’s so much to take in. So much to do.”
“Yes,” Vaughan told him. “Starting with calling up my cousin, and apologizing for ditching her in the middle of the funeral.”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m awful!” Roy cried. “I need to call her now. She should hit me in the face. No, I need to see her. Mom,“ he turned to Kevin, not knowing what to call him. “Does anyone mind if I’m excused for a while? Ian, could you give me a ride down to Rachel’s to say I’m sorry?”
Ian looked at Mackenzie for a second, and then nodded and said, “Let’s roll.”

“It’s cool,” Rachel said. She came to the door in jeans and a tee shirt. “Especially under the circumstances, and with you coming to say you’re sorry. But next time, I will beat you bony little white ass.”
“Understood,” Roy told her.
“Oh,” Rachel said, “Understand this, too.”
He was still dressed up, and Rachel grabbed him by the tie, pulled him into the house, and kissed him full on the lips. Then she pushed him out, and slammed the door.
Roy stood, dazed. The door opened again.
“I’ll see you on Monday,” Rachel said. “Bye.”
And that was the end of that.