Nobody's Hero

by Katey Hawthorne

  I don't know why, but it surprised me. "Cleveland. Shaker Heights."

  "Knew some folks up there. Who are your people?"

  I wasn't entirely sure what this question meant, but the best I could do was, "Our name's Monday."

  This seemed to satisfy him. "What do your parents do?"

  "My dad was a doctor, and my mom just retired from Cuyahoga Power."

  "You're a college man?"

  "Yes, sir, Case Western Reserve." I paused. If this was a business meeting, he would've told me about friends he had who went there, or how he'd heard it was so wonderful, or maybe asked me if I was an engineer. But instead he just nodded, so I said, "I work with Kellan at Humphries now, though. He said you were in the mill?"

  He smiled, though it was a little grim. "Thirty-five years. Couldn't retire soon enough. Need a beer?"

  Relief flooded into my limbs, which I hadn't realized were extraordinarily stiff until that moment. "Love one, thanks. Just point me in the right direction."

  "That's what grandkids are for. Mags." He waved his hand at the little girl chattering up at Kellan. "Leave Uncle Kelly be and get Jamie here a beer."

  This tiny fairy of a creature looked up at me, cocked her head, and asked with extreme seriousness, "Killian's, Coors, Fox, or Guinness?"

  That dissolved most of the remaining mystery around Kellan right there. I laughed. That said, I was not entirely comfortable with the idea of a three-year-old getting me a beer. "Tough decision. How about you show me where it is, and I'll take what's on top?"

  She pursed her lips but relented.

  Kellan went with me. "Sorry. Dad doesn't know how else to treat you, so he treats you like he would one of my sisters' boyfriends. The third degree, making sure you're a nice boy, all that."

  "That what that was?"

  "Yeah. Nice work, though."

  "Hey, I got nothing to fear. I am a nice boy."

  "Right." He bumped his shoulder into mine and grinned so brightly, I had to look away, lest I be forced to make out with him in the middle of a Shea family picnic.

  *~*~*

  A flag football game took about an hour to get organized, during which Kellan distributed more hugs, one for each sibling, and I was introduced all around. I found myself sitting between Tara's boyfriend—a bewildered college boy who started every sentence with "uh…"—and Erin, who was holding the youngest of the Shea rug rats, baby Bernadette.

  It was sweltering, as all Independence Days ought to be, so there were O'Shea crests on display everywhere. Tara had her shirt tucked up into her bra, showing hers was a tramp stamp, and all the brothers had their shirts off but Kennedy, the oldest, whose stocky frame supported a slight beer belly. The guy didn't strike me as particularly vain, but the one just younger than him, Finn, did. Tall and fit like Kellan but with high cheekbones and bright blue eyes to contrast with the dark hair, Finn clearly—and mistakenly—considered himself the good-looking one. Ryan, the otherwise soft-spoken baby of the family, started the game by throwing his sweaty shirt at Finn's head and pulling a Charles Atlas pose. He pointed downward to his own tattoo with both thumbs, causing the kids to send up a cheer, and they were all off.

  "I should've waited till I had my girls before getting mine," Erin confided. She was petite, with a sweet, round face like their mother. The pretty baby in her arms sucked on a pacifier. "Pregnancy is hell on tattoos."

  "So I hear," I said.

  "Kelly said Morgan likes you better than him."

  I laughed. "I think he gets jealous sometimes."

  "Of you or Morgan?"

  "Yes."

  "Erin!" Kellan waved at us as he trotted down the field after the ball. "Get out here, you chickenshit. And bring Jamie!"

  She stuck out her tongue.

  Though normally I would've been all about it, it didn't seem like the best way to familiarize myself with the boyfriend's family, if you know what I mean. I said, "No, thanks. I need to get to know someone before I start grabbing flags out of their pants."

  She snorted, and the college kid on the other side of me showed signs of life and laughed. Erin said, "How you feel about babies?"

  "Great. Got a goddaughter that exact size, even."

  I found myself with a bundle of little girl in my arms that fast. Erin said, "I need to go show these boys who's boss. If Kyle ever comes back, you can dump Bernie on him."

  "We're good," I assured her.

  The baby took one of my fingers in a death grip as if to prove the point. Kellan rolled his eyes at me. I shrugged, displaying my beautiful excuse for sitting there, watching him run around shirtless.

  Tough life.

  Erin stomped onto the field, announcing, "Right, I'm in, but if anyone squashes my boobs, I swear to Jesus Christ Almighty, you'll lose a limb. I'm nursing, people."

  College Boy said, "Uh, guess they're all like that, huh?"

  "Explains a lot, doesn't it?"

  "For real, man."

  *~*~*

  Following this game—which had no discernible winner as far as anyone knew—we were stuffed full of Carolina Gold-style brisket and even more beer.

  Everyone talked all at once, yet everyone seemed to actually understand what was going on all the time too. There was a kind of Venn diagram to it, where there were maybe four separate conversations at any given time between children, adults, and elders, and then there were spots where we were all magically discussing the same thing without having veered off topic.

  I say we, but I mostly just listened for once in my life. Every one of Kellan's siblings made it a point to ask me my opinion or draw me in, so it wasn't that I felt like an outsider. Just, there were so many of them. And they talked so much, about everything. Personal lives to politics, nothing was sacred except Jesus, Mary, and God, and they got their names thrown around a lot too. It wasn't scary, just a little overwhelming. And fucking fascinating.

  Eventually Kellan pulled me away on the pretext of a walking tour. When we were wandering by the pond, listening to the splashing of the little-boy clique, he said, "You okay?"

  "Great, yeah."

  "You're not usually this quiet."

  "I'm not usually surrounded by people who like each other this much."

  He gave me a sideways look, then took a big gulp of his beer. He had replaced his shirt before eating, much to my disappointment but probably for the best, in the circumstances.

  A sudden fear gripped me. "Shit, I don't seem like I'm sulking, do I?"

  "No, you've been smiling the whole time. Just didn't know if it was fake or not."

  "You can't tell when my smile is fake?"

  "Well, yeah, most of the time." He paused. "But you're easy to misread."

  "I'm, like, the shallowest person in the world. How is that even possible?"

  Another sideways look. "That's your story, huh?"

  I laughed. I almost asked him if he thought I was harboring some horrible dark secret. Then stopped. Because I was.

  And here he was, laying his entire life out in front of me, inviting me into it.

  "This is what sincere looks like," I said, taking his hand. "For future reference."

  He accepted this with a smile, and we continued our walk in silence. Once we neared the barn again, we were hailed by a picnic table full of beer bottles—or rather, one of its occupants. Finn sat, listing slightly to one side, across the table from a ruddy-cheeked Kennedy.

  "Kelly, Kelly, c'mere!" Finn beckoned.

  Kellan raised an eyebrow at me.

  I waggled mine in reply, and we took up residence with his brothers. As I tucked in next to Finn, he asked, "Do you want to get married?"

  Kellan shot me a what the fuck? look. "Finn, we've been dating, like, two months."

  "No, I just mean, you know. In general. Do you want to get married someday to someone?"

  Kellan turned the WTF look on his brother. "That sort of depends on the someone, doesn't it?"

  Ken elbowed him. "Just say yes, Kelly."

  K
ellan scrubbed at his face with both hands. "You guys just met Jamie. Could you please not—"

  I interrupted with, "Just say yes, Kelly."

  All three pairs of eyes fixed on me, two in amusement, one in annoyance.

  I shrugged and tried to look innocent. "What, like it takes more than two months to figure that out?"

  Kellan flipped me off, but he was still looking at his brother. "Sweet bleeding Jesus on a stick. Look, Finn, just because you had the ugliest divorce ever, it doesn't mean no one else should get married."

  Kennedy chuckled. "Just that some of us should've thought twice. Not me, but some of us."

  Finn made a face. "Fuck you, Ken."

  Kellan elbowed Ken. "He's getting belligerent already. The night is young, brother."

  "Seriously, Kelly." Finn leaned forward on the table unsteadily, poking one finger in Kellan's direction. "If anyone's gonna back me up, it should be you."

  "I never back you up. Even if I agree with you, I don't back you up, just on principle." Kennedy clapped Kellan on the back. Kellan asked, "Why the hell would this time be different?"

  Finn rolled his eyes. "'Cause you're gay, dumbass."

  Kellan puffed out his cheeks in a sigh. "You are far too fucking stupid to have lived this long."

  "Fuck you."

  "You just think the only reason people get married is because they get knocked up."

  Once more, Kennedy the Spectator laughed out loud.

  "Fuck you both." Finn jabbed his finger first at Kennedy, then Kellan. "I mean, you're lucky, Kelly."

  "Agreed, for a lot of reasons. Which one were you talking about?"

  Kennedy said exactly what I was thinking. "'Cause you can't put a baby in Jamie."

  In this limited company, I felt confident piping up with, "Could have fun trying, though."

  Kennedy smacked the table and laughed harder than ever. Kellan made an exasperated face at me.

  But Finn was all drunken seriousness. "No, that's exactly why he's lucky. And I mean, look at this guy. Jamie, you'll back me up."

  Now there was an extraordinary belief. "You think so, huh?"

  "Come on. Dude, you're like me. I can tell."

  I gave Finn a once-over, trying to figure out how, exactly, I was like him. I had to mentally step back, stop thinking of him as Kellan's older brother, and just imagine meeting him at a party or in the club.

  And then it was all clear. He was charming—when sober—quick-tongued, handsome, and, at least on the surface, confident. I'm not saying I was any of those things, but I definitely had certain similar qualities that had allowed me to survive my mother's society parties and coast through adolescence—and later, nightclubs—with relative ease and success.

  I also happened to know he had tanked his marriage by cheating on his wife with her best friend, and several others, and nearly lost shared custody of his daughter because of it. Which, after meeting him, made perfect sense.

  Couldn't help but notice his designer girlfriend wasn't in on the conversation either. Just saying, man.

  I said, "If you mean I'm a slut, okay. But I just said that I know Kellan is the marrying kind. And I'm still dating him. So wouldn't you infer that I was just his slut?"

  Kellan was scrubbing at his face again and grumbling.

  Kennedy reached across him and the table to high-five me. "That's way too complicated for him right now."

  Kellan asked, "Why are we talking about this, again?"

  Kennedy grinned like an evil garden gnome. "'Cause gays don't need to get married. That only works for a man and a woman."

  I laughed out loud, watching Kellan's and Finn's faces change as he spoke—one turning red, the other filling with trepidation. This Kennedy was one hell of a wind-up artist.

  I was starting to like him.

  Finn said, "That's not what I mean. I just mean you can spend your life with someone without—"

  Kellan interrupted with, "Shut the fuck up, or I will take you around the back of the barn and kick your ass again."

  "Fuck you. That was not fair."

  "Because you were stoned? Yeah." Kellan flattened his hands on the table and leaned over it, glaring hard at his brother. "Fucking try me, you bigoted prick. I'd love a rematch."

  "Dude, I am not a bigot. I defended you to Dad, even." Finn looked from Kellan to me, baby blues clouded with confusion. "I think you guys make a great couple. Seriously."

  Kellan obviously did not see the humor in the situation, and Kennedy looked like he was about to start winding them up again, so I cut in before someone could get murdered. In as light and conversational a tone as I could, I said, "Oh, no, I get it. It's cool if we live together forever; we just don't deserve the rights and privileges granted to other, legally recognized families."

  Finn blinked at me, his mouth working open and closed.

  "Like, if we live together forever and I die, it's totally cool if all the stuff and our house gets bogarted by my mother, leaving Kellan totally fucked and destitute, right? And if I lose my job and get some degenerative disease, it's awesome if Kellan's insurance doesn't have to cover me. Oh, or if he loses his job and I end up supporting us, we should definitely not be allowed to declare him my dependent on a tax return. Because one of us doesn't have a magical, civil-rights-granting vagina."

  "One per relationship!" Kennedy was howling.

  "Exactly. Anyhow, us queers just want to fuck everything in sight." I smacked Finn on the shoulder companionably. "Not suited for marriage like you breeders."

  Kellan was smiling by then, if slowly.

  Warmed me up just to see it. And though all my bullshit had just been a hypothetical constructed to poke holes in Finn and leave him leaking for our amusement, I actually meant what I was saying. Not just the whole human-rights thing—I mean, that's a given. But that I could see it being…you know, us.

  Finn looked across the table. "Oh my God. You actually found someone as smartass as you, Kelly."

  "Apparently."

  Finn's mouth worked some more, like he was having one last go at coming up with something to say. And then he did it. "You gotta admit, though, you can't get married in the Church."

  Kellan turned pink again, but he was using that scary controlled voice. "No, I can't. Because I'll be in prison for murdering my raging fuck-hole of a brother."

  Finn turned to me. "Jamie—"

  I held up my hands. "You're on your own, man."

  Ken was still rolling. "But we haven't even talked about children! Kellan, you gotta have kids. They love you!"

  I shook my head. "Damn, you're good."

  He wasn't grinning like an evil gnome so much as the devil by then.

  Finn looked down into his empty beer bottle, suddenly morose. "I love my daughter. You guys should have a daughter."

  I said, "We'll get right on that."

  Kellan seemed to be getting ahold of himself again. He gritted his teeth and said, "Awesome. Can't wait."

  Finn opened his mouth once more, but we were all saved by a sweet little-girl voice shouting, "Uncle Kelly!"

  Kellan's face changed, like he'd forgotten about Finn and Ken, maybe even me, and he smiled his most honest, wide-open smile. He lifted Maggie into his lap when she held up her chubby little arms. Her face was pink with sun, and though it was barely creeping into evening, her eyelids drooped low. He kissed the top of her head. "You're tired, sweetheart. You have a nap today?"

  Just like that, the grin slipped off my face. One second, I was indulging in Ken's evil politics for the sake of amusement; the next, my heart was swollen, lodged in my throat so I could hardly breathe, looking at Kellan.

  "I'm not tired," Maggie said, though the last word was swallowed by a massive yawn.

  "Okay, you're not tired." He kissed her head again. "Tell Uncle Finn he's an idiot."

  "Last time you made me say that, Mommy got mad at you."

  "I'll take the heat."

  Kennedy and Finn both laughed. I think I did too, but my head felt
spinny of a sudden. Too much sun and too little water.

  Yet I felt like I needed another beer more than anything else in the world. Maybe twelve.

  I pushed myself up to standing. "Can I get anyone a drink?"

  Kellan returned briefly to his exasperated expression, though it resolved back into the dimple-revealing smile. "God, please, James. Save me."

  Ken waggled his empty. "If you don't mind."

  "Yeah," Finn said, still seeming a little dazed, but happy once more. "Yeah, definitely."

  I managed a "Be right back" and walked away as straight as I could. I didn't feel drunk. I didn't feel tired. So what the hell had that been, that weird, sudden choking feeling? Like getting the wind knocked out of me or something.

  Just before I was out of earshot, Kennedy said, "I like that one, Kelly. Tara's boyfriend, though—the hell are we gonna do about that tool?"

  *~*~*

  Just before dark, Maura and the Three Stooges—the inseparable Matt, Delany, and Gerry—built a crackling bonfire behind the barn, and everyone started gathering there. This seemed partly an effort to convince the mosquitoes to stay away and partly because an unnamed something was about to happen. Kellan pulled me down next to him on a little blanket at the edge of the gathering and put his lips against my ear, sending a shiver down my spine. "Sorry about Finn. I'd like to say he's not normally like that, but he is."

  "I like him," I admitted, putting my arm over his shoulders and pulling him close against my side. Finn and his gorgeous girlfriend—who'd spent most of the afternoon trying to be helpful to Mrs. Shea and really just irritating her—were looking kind of snuggly, and Erin leaned against Kyle's shoulder, so I figured it was all right. "I mean, he's easy to pick on, and he doesn't seem to care we're doing it."

  He snorted, leaning into me. "Comes with being an arrogant prick, I guess."

  If I ever wondered before where Kellan's issues with not being one of the "cool kids" had come from, I had my answers in Finn. Not his fault, not really. Finn was playing the hand he'd been dealt, and for all his stupidity, he'd insisted on hugging Kellan and apologizing no less than three times since.

  Finn loved his brother. He was just kind of an idiot.

  Kellan watched the fire build, teeth clacking absently against the mouth of his beer bottle. Was he mad at Finn? Did he care that Ken wound them up like that? Or was he just so used to it all that he didn't even notice anymore? Was he remembering this same party, years ago, when he was as young as the stooges and running around in bare feet screaming and wrestling?