Gossamer Axe (21 page)

Jeanine had grown from a shy girl into a strapping woman. Since the Church reforms of the sixties, her order had abandoned its habit, but Kevin was still surprised to see her in slacks and a blouse. A crucifix on a gold chain glinted oddly against the soft bare flesh of her throat.

She sighed when she met her brother, but she was smiling. “Well, Kevin, your hair is still longer than mine.” And then she hugged him. He noticed, though, as she chattered to Martin and Donna about the family and about him, that she did not ask about Danny.

He left the matter dead until their parents had gone to bed, when he and Jeanine were sitting up for a few minutes after the eleven o’clock news, alone in the living room.

“I’m being wicked,” said Jeanine as she stretched her legs. “We’re usually in bed by ten.”

“Orders from On High?”

She looked at him as though unsure whether he was making fun of her. “No,” she said. “Our day starts early.”

For the last quarter hour, Kevin had been turning the pages of a magazine without seeing anything of it. Now he tossed it onto the coffee table. “Sounds like we’re having the whole family in tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Dear God, yes. It’ll be wonderful. You’ve made ma and da so happy, Kevin, coming home like this.”

“I thought it was about time. But…” He stole a glance at her. “But it doesn’t sound like the whole family will be here after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Where’s Danny?”

“He… won’t be here.”

“What happened to him?”

Silence. Then: “What did ma and da say?”

“Da said the matter’s done. You know that tone of voice he gets.”

“Well then, I can hardly disobey him.”

Kevin stood up. “Dammit, Jeannie, you’re going on forty years old. Don’t give me this crap about disobedience. You’re an adult.”

She regarded him for some time, not eye to eye and freely like Christa, but with her head lowered, as though brooding over something. “Danny decided that certain things were more important to him than his family and the Church.”

He snorted. “Goddam. He had some balls after all.”

Jeanine rose. “I don’t have to stay here for this, Kevin. Good night.”

Kevin listened to the sound of her steps in the carpeted hall, heard her brush her teeth and crawl into bed in the spare room. He too had decided that certain things were more important than family and religion, and as a result he had absented himself from both for twenty years.

But his own pictures had never been removed from the photo album, and his single yearbook was still on the shelf. His family had obviously hoped that he might, someday, return. But not Danny. Danny was gone. Forever. And they wanted it that way.

Jeanine said nothing about Kevin’s questions the next morning. She appeared to have forgotten the entire discussion. The matter was done. She and Martin and Donna readied themselves for Christmas Mass as though Danny were far from their minds. Kevin knew better.

He had not brought a suit, but he dressed in a sweater and clean slacks for church, and as the sun rose over the eastern plains, he climbed into the family car with the others.

Jeanine looked at him with mock distaste. “Well,” she said, “at least your hair’s combed.”

“Aw, sis, you’re just jealous.” But his eyes threw the question at her again.
Where the fuck is Danny
?

Jeanine looked away quickly.

The priest who celebrated Mass that morning was a young man, blond and slight like Danny had always been. He wore the satin and gilt vestments as though new to them, and Kevin was not surprised at his voice: a thin tenor.

But Kevin noticed more than the priest, for having been so long away from the trappings of Catholicism, the Mass was for him not so much a sacrament as an environment. He was acutely conscious of the men and women and children who surrounded him, and in spite of his past denials he felt unwillingly subsumed into the congregation. It was as if, by his mere presence, he were repudiating his life, returning, humble and repentant, to the fold.

But in his mind he was scrambling away from the church, away from the people, away from Cheyenne. The sermon spoke of love and redemption, but what was all that beside a page of childish handwriting from a vanished brother? Danny’s birth had been as real as that of any Savior. Why then did the Larkins commemorate Christmas while they methodically erased his memory?

Kevin wanted Christa. He wanted her in his arms, wanted her eyes and her face before him, wanted her voice in his ears. Even though her comments were frequently obscure, sometimes frightening, he would rather hear honest words that he could not understand because of his own stupidity than equivocations deliberately constructed to hide the truth.

You have to listen, Kevin.

Yes, he could listen, but what was he hearing?
The matter’s done
. But that was foolish: nothing was ever done. The lead break finished so that the guitar could return to rhythm playing and leave room for the vocals. A twelve-bar blues progression ended with a dominant-seventh chord that pulled the music back to its beginnings.

And the evening before he had left for Cheyenne, over dinner, Christa had told him about the Solstice, told him that the seasons worked the same way. Of course they did: it was obvious to him now. Like music, like the blues, winter led to spring, which turned to summer, then to autumn, and then back to winter and the beginning again.

The atmosphere of the church was stifling, but Kevin smiled. Christa was close, for her words and her thoughts lived within him. He could not lose them, nor could another’s tacit assumption take them from him. He remained aloof, apart, separate. His heritage was a snare, but it could not claim him.

But why, then, he wondered, had he come home?

He looked to Christmas dinner for some answer to his questions. As the plates of ham and roast beef made their way down the length of the dining-room table— Jeanine’s pale white hands yielding the platters to her sisters’ ruddy ones, the children’s grubby fingers clutching at each morsel—he examined the food earnestly, as though he could find in sliced meat and mashed potatoes some intangible validation of his homecoming.

In truth, he was not hungry. And the fact that Martin and Donna referred constantly to the assembled family as though it were whole and complete soured his stomach with anger. The Larkin clan lived a lie. He had come home, certainly, but it occurred to him that salmon also returned to their birthplace… to die.

“So glad you came back, Kevin,” Marie was saying. “I’m sure you’re finding everything quite strange after so long.”

“Yeah… you might say that…” Jeanine caught his tone, and so did his parents. Marie, though, took no notice. She seemed dull and frayed from the stress of marriage and children, and was content to allow her husband—whose name, like that of Teresa’s mate, Kevin had forgotten in five minutes—to tell her what to do. Tall, with a braying laugh and a red face, Marie’s man had shaken Kevin’s hand, but had remained distant and suspicious. A musician? Well, everyone knew about that kind.

“Da says you’re courting a girl down in Denver.”

The comment sat in his belly like a lead brick. “I’m not courting her,” he said flatly. “Christa’s a friend. A good friend. She’s a harper.”

A chuckle went round the table. Kevin kept back his words with clenched teeth.

“Mmm,” Marie went on. “I’m glad she keeps herself busy. You might have brought her with you.”

He had wished many times during this week that he had done just that, for her presence would have been of infinite comfort to him. But for now, he was glad that she was safely in Denver. Better he be alone and confused than Christa find herself trivialized and sullied by the complacent ignorance of his family.

And whether he liked it or not, this was indeed his family. All the frustrations, all the denials, all the rebellion came swarming back to him, and he was fifteen again, and angry, and looking for the person who had hurt his brother.

Never forget you’re a Larkin
. …

And what about Danny? He was a Larkin, too.

“Maybe next year,” said Teresa.

“Probably not,” said Kevin. “probably never.” He noticed that his mother looked up at him, eyes wide and frightened. She shook her head slightly, pleading.

“Come on, Kevin,” said Martin. “We’re trying to patch things up. It’s been a long time, and you’ve been hanging around some strange people. Don’t look down your nose at us.” The words ended with a bitter twist.

Kevin set down his knife and fork. Martin picked at his food. Donna had given up. The others rattled on through the meal.

Mouth dry, Kevin framed the question he had already asked. But this time, he was resolved that he would have an answer.

“Where’s Danny?”

His father looked up, flushed. “I think I told you that—”

“I know what you told me. Where’s Danny? He was the family saint when I left, and now you don’t even want to hear his name.”

Martin’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right. So do what I say.”

A silence like a chill fog had fallen on the table. Even the children had quieted at the tone of the exchange. “No, I won’t,” said Kevin. “That’s why I left twenty years ago, remember? I didn’t come back to tell you that I’d toe the line. I came back because…” He stopped short. Heritage? He had no heritage here. Religion? His faith play as dead as Father Lynch.

Marie’s husband spoke up. “Why the hell did you bother?” His tone was ugly, an attempt to put the city boy in his place.

The challenge only increased Kevin’s bravado. “I came back for a lot of reasons. Maybe one of them was to find Danny.” He turned to Martin. “Where is he, da? What happened?”

Donna Larkin shoved back her chair and fled to her bedroom, hands pressed to her face. “Jeanine, go help your mother,” said Martin without looking.

“Aw, look at yourself, you spoiled brat,” said Marie’s husband. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Ken,” said Marie, “take the children out of here.”

He stared at her. “What are you telling me?”

Her eyes flashed, and for a moment Kevin saw behind the dutiful mask his sister had assumed. “Take them out. This is Larkin business.” She herded the rest of the others through the door, then followed.

Kevin and his father remained at the table, alone, glaring at one another across half-finished plates. “Okay, da,” said Kevin. “I asked a question.”

“I ought to take you outside and give you a thrashing.”

“I’m too big for that, now. It looks like Danny was, too.”

Martin’s jaw trembled for an instant, then squared itself. “We had to send him away, Kevin. He couldn’t stay here.”

“He left the seminary?”

“He… he left everything. The seminary, the Church, his family, God…”

“What did he do?”

Martin struggled. “He’s queer, Kevin. It makes me sick to say it, but that’s the truth.” The words dribbled out of him in a muddy stream. “He was sleeping with men in the seminary, and he came to doubt his vocation.”

“He’s got his own life to lead, da,” said Kevin. “And I left the Church myself. So he’s gay. So what’s the big deal?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Kevin rose, smashed the dishes and glassware from the table, leaned toward his father. “
Tell me
!”

Martin ignored the wreckage. His eyes were unflinching. “It goes back a long way.”

“So do I.”

“What would
you
do with a son who was so selfish that he’d sooner condemn his parents than forgo his vice?”

The words left Kevin confused. “Da, Danny’s gay. That’s Danny’s business. It has nothing to do with you and ma.”

“It has everything to do with us.” His father had opened up finally, and he seemed to be wielding the words like clubs. “When Danny was born, your ma almost died. The doctors said another child would kill her for sure. We didn’t know what to do.” He silenced Kevin’s words with a lifted hand. “So Father Lynch gave us permission to live as brother and sister on the condition that Danny be given to God.”

Kevin was baffled. “Permission? What did he have to do with it?”

“He was our priest.”

“Goddammit, da, there’s such a thing as birth control!”

“It’s not allowed. You’ve lapsed so far in your faith that you don’t remember what’s a sin and what’s not.”

“And dumping your own son isn’t a sin? What kind of shit did Lynch give you, da?”

“He gave us the word of God.”

“Fuck that bullshit. I’d just as soon go piss on his grave.”

Something that looked like fear flashed across Martin’s face. “Don’t talk like that, Kevin. You’ll only suffer for it. Danny did. He’s caught that disease that queers get. He’s beyond saving.”

Worse and worse. “AIDS? He’s dying? For crissakes, da, he needs us!”

“It’s…” Behind Martin’s words, Kevin sensed the words of a dead priest, words that now could never be unsaid. “It’s the justice of God.”

Faced with the utter starkness of his father’s statement, struck with the full weight of his futile homecoming, Kevin swayed on his feet. “If that’s your God, da, then you can keep him.” He felt empty. His hopes had disintegrated.

“Kevin…”

“You threw me out twenty years ago. I gave the whole schmeer one last chance, but you haven’t done anything except make me remember why I hadn’t come back. Now it’s final. Satisfied?”

“Get out.”

“Me and Danny both: the rocker and the queer.”

“Get out!” Martin’s fear was a white face pressed against his eyes. “For God’s sake, get out!”

Kevin went to his old bedroom and stuffed his clothes into his suitcase. The house was silent. It might have been deserted.

He loaded his bag and the harp into the Beetle, climbed in, slammed the door. The house stood against the afternoon light. Windows were dark, curtains pale and ghostly and rustling in wayward drafts.

His family was dead. All of them. Lynch had buried them, tamping the dirt down firmly on their hearts, their love, and whatever shreds of Ireland had remained after the centuries of defeat.

The highway was deserted and lonely, arrow-straight and southbound. He could not weep. Tears demanded something more than numb shock. Tears demanded a past.