Page 308 - Some Dance to Remember
P. 308

278                                                Jack Fritscher

            that tell me?” Thom was not yet in the ground. “My brother betrayed me.”
            He harbored that thought accompanying Thom’s body all the way back to
            Peoria. By the time the plane landed on the bone-hot runway, Thom had
            died of natural causes.
               “Remember that.” Ryan towered over Sandy and the triplets in their
            seats.
               “Who decided that?” Sandy was indignant.
               “Kweenie and I decided that,” he said. “Only Annie Laurie knows
            what really happened.”
               Sandy Gully smirked. “Except for me,” she said. “I’m the one who
            knows what really happened.”
               “Shut up,” Ryan said. “Just shut up!”
               “He killed himself because you made him think he was a fag!”
               “He killed himself,” Ryan said, “because you never made him feel
            like a man.”
               They deplaned in silent detente. Annie Laurie greeted them all with
            hugs and kisses. Holding her arm was their own priest, her brother-in-law,
            Ryan’s uncle, the Reverend Leslie O’Hara. Father Les had held his good
            looks, but he was older. They all were suddenly older. From Les’s smile
            and warm handshake, Ryan was sure his uncle remembered their summer
            mornings of sex in the sacristy.
               “I’d like to talk,” Ryan told his uncle. He wanted to ask how he could
            remain a priest in a Church that despised homosexuals, but the chance
            never came, because neither took it. What was to say? Was the priesthood
            no more than a good living and a better cover? Ryan guessed that Father
            Les was the same kind of priest he would have become himself. We do
            what we must and call it by the best name possible. Ryan could not have
            known then that Death’s long slow march would claim the Reverend Les-
            lie Michael O’Hara two weeks after his fifty-first birthday. He was Ryan’s
            uncle and godfather, and when he died, Ryan said, “The men in my family
            don’t seem to be survivors. They may be lucky.” He looked distressed. “As
            God is my witness, I predict I’ll probably live too long.”
               The mortuary drove Thom’s body from the Peoria airport to the
            funeral home where he lay in an open coffin for two days. Sandy bitched
            he was rouged and powdered all wrong. She wanted to touch him up with
            Mary Kay. Ryan threatened to break her fingers. The family pasted smiles
            on their faces. They all stayed with Thom, standing on aching feet, greet-
            ing relatives and old friends arriving with their condolences. One, if not
            all of them, said, “Thank God, Charley didn’t live to see his own son die.”
               His own son!

                      ©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
                 HOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK
   303   304   305   306   307   308   309   310   311   312   313