Page 46 of Mornings By the Linden Tree
“And this is our neighbor Mr. Maynard. He’s kind of the adopted grandfather of my boys. Arthur, this is Lennon’s boyfriend Wesley. He’s a lawyer.” I bent down to shake hands with the old gent. His grip was firm still, even though he was quite aged. Lean as a pole he was, with no hair and cheeks freckled with hyperpigmentation. A sure sign he had probably worked outdoors all his life with no sunscreen.
“Oh, a lawyer. That’s nice. I have a question,” he said, his voice as craggy as his face. “Can I sue the jerk across the street for using spotlights on his nativity?”
I peeked at Lennon plastered to my side as there was no room for anyone to move without stepping on someone else’s toes.
“Mr. Maynard, Wes isn’t here to dispense free legal advice,” Lennon kindly said as Valeria held out her arms for me. I lifted her from Lennon. She buried her face in my shoulder. I wished I could do the same to Lennon. This kind of crush always made me uneasy. How did a person even breathe with so many siblings crammed into a row home? “Besides, he’s a divorce lawyer, so unless you want advice on how to get another divorce…”
“Hell no, I don’t want no other women. The three I had were enough to last a lifetime,” Mr. Maynard huffed.
I nodded and was then pulled along to the dining room where somehow Mrs. Cole had managed to fit a table for twenty into a room that should have held maybe a dozen. “Now this is where the guests sit.” She beamed up at me while directing me to a chair at the end. Next to my seat was an old-fashioned highchair. Valeria would protest sitting in that, I was sure, but amazingly, when I placed her in it, she merely sat there, deep brown eyes wide, staring at the people filing in.
“And the newly engaged couple!” Mrs. Cole yelled when a handsome young man, bulkier than Lennon but possessing his nose and chin, entered with a buxom miss on his arm. Everyone clapped loudly, and a few of the Cole boys hooted. “We’re going to have a sippy! Lane, Lawson, come with me. Everyone else, sit down and get to know each other.”
I looked around at the sea of curious White faces and forced a smile. “It’s a pleasure to be here. Congratulations to the soon-to-be married couple.”
Lennon rubbed my thigh under the table, then jumped into the fray of loud voices and hockey talk. Seemed the Cole family were huge sports fans. I made the appropriate rah-rah talk when someone asked me what I thought of the Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics, or Patriots. Mrs. Cole and two of the boys returned with some bottles of Cold Duck and the two elegant bottles of Dom. The new couple popped the corks with a shout of glee and walked around the table to pour each of us a polite sip. The champagne was a tad warmer than it should be, but we’d gotten stuck in traffic crossing the Charles River—a pastry truck had lost its goods all over the Longfellow Bridge—but it was still delicious.
Valeria took a taste of her apple juice with an ice cube, with the wariness of a stray cat who found itself locked in a room filled with yappy Pomeranians.
We toasted the happy couple. I made polite but dry small talk. I was good at that since I had been forced to attend all manner of bar association functions, firm events, client appreciation gatherings, and other small dinner parties with other law professionals. I’d become rather proficient at tiddling about on any manner of inane discussions.
The Cole family was not the typical upper-class attorneys who frequented such events. They were boisterous, rowdy, and not averse to calling each other names when a point was beingargued. Mrs. Cole, bless her, seemed to be on cloud nine. She was happily serving bowls of a thick beef and lentil soup as the youngest boys plunked baskets of buns on the table while still keeping up on the sports talk.
Valeria was nibbling on a bun, having flatly refused to try the soup. I could smell something garlic-heavy in the air. Probably the lasagna Lennon had mentioned his mother was making as we sat on the bridge watching the BPD picking up croissants and muffins to get traffic moving again.
It was then, during the soup portion of the feast, that all manner of hell broke loose in another room. I glanced around Valeria in time to see two dogs appear, feet muddy, snouts working the air, tails wagging.
“They has dogs!” Valeria screamed in joy and held down her roll for the dirty canines. People leaped to their feet as the dogs dove at the bun, wresting it from Valeria’s fingers, then darting under the table to fight over it. I sat back as one dog sat on my freshly polished shoe to chew his bite of buttered bun. Both dogs were curly-coated, one had no tail, and the other had an ear that was shorter than the other. “They ate my bun!! I want more buns. Doggy! Doggy!”
“Damn mutts,” Lennon muttered as he slid under the table with one of his brothers to pluck the tiny dogs from the floor, then pass them over to other brothers who carted them back outside.
“Ma, Rufus broke the latch on the doggie door,” Levi called from the kitchen. Or I think it was Levi. Maybe it was Louis. Or Leigh. Well, it was a burly blond boy with a distinct West End pronunciation.
“He’s a little turd!” Mrs. Cole shouted back. “Push the step stool in front of it for now. I’ll get Lane to fix it after the party.”
Lennon gave me a measly little half-chuckle. “So yeah, this is home.”
“Where is the dogs? I want to see the dogs,” Valeria began to chant. The din of a new discussion over who should be captain of the Boston hockey team erupted, drowning out the child’s demands. I simply pulled back into myself a bit as I had learned to do as a child when confronted with a new place with rambunctious people.
The meal then raced forward with no further dog interruptions. They could be heard in the postage stamp backyard yipping at something, but they never broke through the stepstool barricade. The lasagna was just as delicious as Lennon had promised. Valeria ate well as she was fond of pasta, and then she dove into a small bowl of vanilla ice cream while the rest of us had a slice of tiramisu topped with a scoop of ice cream.
“This is delightful,” I told Mrs. Cole, who was seated across the table from me. She glowed at the praise.
“How sweet of you to say. That was always my husband’s favorite dessert, so we have it every time we get together as a way to remember him. Not that we need sweets to do so.” She placed her napkin on her lap to protect her pretty floral dress from melted ice cream drips. If only Valeria had left a napkin on her lap…
“He had marvelous taste in desserts and wives. This was a fine meal. Just fine!” I gushed as much as I was able to gush. I was not a gusher, but I did know how to be kind.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. Care to help me clean up?” she asked of the table. Several strapping young men rose instantly to tote dirty dishes off, Lennon included. The girlfriends also joined in the clearing of the table. Soon coffee was served in small blue mugs, some chipped, I noted, and set in front of our places. Valeria was ready to be free, so I wiped her hands with a napkin, cleaned her chin of ice cream, and then placed her on the carpet.
“I has to pee,” she said, and so I was told where to take her on the second floor. The chatter of the Cole clan softened as we climbed the stairs, pausing just momentarily to admire the photographs of a large family of boys and two proud parents. Mrs. Cole was in the bloom of youth, holding an infant in her arms, and Mr. Cole—a handsome fellow with bright blue eyes—in his Boston Police Department uniform—stood behind his passel of boys, smiling widely. What a pity the man never got to see his sons grow up. They all seemed to be good young men. Loud, yes, and a little troublesome according to Lennon, but good, honest working souls. Well, the ones that were working. The youngest were still in high school, so Mrs. Cole was still working double shifts at the Market Shopper as a cashier.
The upstairs was a study in small home chaos. Two bedrooms and one bath packed to capacity.
“They has a sunny bathroom,” Valeria commented as we opened the door to a bright yellow bathroom.
“That they do. Would you like me to come in and help you?” I asked as my sight touched on a bath that was sparkling clean but so thin I doubted two people could fit in without elbowing the other in the nose.
“No, I can do it.” She released my hand and shut the door in my face. Okay then. I waited outside the door while she sang her pee song. This was something new she had learned from Lennon. A potty song. If it kept her panties dry, I’d sing along with her. We do what we must to keep panties clean. The stairs creaked as someone climbed up them. Lennon’s gold head appeared. I couldn’t help but smile. The man made me happy. I’d never had a person in my life that stirred up so many emotions. I’d spent most of my adult life thinking I was unable to form a strong romantic bond with anyone. Many a time I wrestled with the terminology of what Wesley Barlowe was and came up with a mishmash of little boxes that didn’t feel quiteright. Was I asexual. Gray asexual. Demisexual. Demiromantic. A mixture of all seemed right with a dash of reserved thrown on top as a garnish. Many would say reserved was too kind of a term for a cold-hearted fop such as me. But this man had shown up to tilt my perceptions of myself. Did it matter what boxes I ticked on the LGBTQIA roster of letters, or was it more important that I just check the squares beside happy, contented, and possibly enamored?
