Fic: Faith of Family 2/2 (PG)
*
Don reached the hospital a few hours later, thanks in no small part to Kenny’s one-night stand a week before with the owner of a snow-plow company. Later, he’d thank Kenny and the snow-plow guy, but at that moment his only thought was to get to his husband. But when he reached there and got direction to Timmy’s room, it was empty.
Whirling around, he ran to the nurses’ station. “My husband, Tim Callahan,” he began.
A nurse who was walking up to the station called him. “You must be Don, I’d recognize you anywhere,” she said, much to his confusion. “I just wheeled Mr. Callahan to the chapel. But please, get him to come back and lie down. He really shouldn’t even be sitting, but he insisted that he was feeling better and that he needed to be there.” She stopped, her expression bearing the discomfort of a true secularist, but went on respectfully. “He told me that he needed spiritual guidance.”
Don got directions to the chapel and walked there at a more sedate place. Tim’s forlorn body, hunched into his wheelchair, was the only occupant. His husband’s pale cheeks were marred with a few angry cuts and a steady stream of tears. Afraid, a little, of the somber atmosphere, Don whispered Tim’s name.
Tim said nothing, but reached out a hand. Don held it and drew closer, until he could hug his husband gently. “Baby, are you- I’m so sorry”-
“Shh,” Tim said gently. But he was not at peace, no. Tim’s eyes held anger and grief, and Don knew that someone had told him everything. So Don sat on the bench next to Tim’s chair and waited. “Did you know about the Senator?”
“Yes.”
“Her husband, kids…”
Don shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to them. They haven’t contacted me and I thought that… well, I wanted to let them get over the shock first.”
There was a pause, and then some time later, enough that Don almost thought his husband had gone to sleep, Tim went on in a dreamy tone. “Do you know what made me leave the church?”
Surprised, Don admitted that he had always thought it was Tim’s sexuality. “I figured you couldn’t live a lie anymore.”
“It wasn’t a lie, not really. Not at first. I had never been with a man, and at that time I thought that I could go a lifetime without doing anything that would violate my vows. I loved the church enough to make that sacrifice, and since straight men make it too I didn’t see why it would be that different for me. But as time passed, I realized that the Vatican’s acceptance, or lack of it, of homosexuals and homosexuality clashed too much with my vision of God, and His love of all things and all people, for me to continue on that path. But Don, that decision was so difficult that I would probably have taken years to make it if I hadn’t met Hannah Marsh.”
Don waited for a few minutes, but eventually prompted his husband to continue. “Who is Hannah Marsh?”
Tim swallowed. “She was a beautiful five-year-old girl.” Don closed his eyes at the tense shift. “She had curly dark hair, and these eyes that gave her that old soul look, you know, the ones kids have that tells you that they are going to be someone, some day. If they have the chance.”
“She didn’t.”
“She was the grand-daughter of our neighbors; their kids were our age, but Marianne, Hannah’s mother, became pregnant pretty young. Lots of young girls in her situation would have gotten an abortion, but I was a good friend of hers, and a better Catholic than a friend right then. I don’t regret it, because Hannah came out of it, but sometimes I wonder at the arrogance I had to be giving anyone advice about parenthood.”
“What happened?”
“One day she was there, the next she wasn’t. A stupid accident, you know? Someone should have stopped or taken a nap, but instead they kept driving and fell asleep at the wheel. They hit Marianne’s car. She was fine, the driver asleep at the wheel was fine, but Hannah died. And I couldn’t preach the word of a God who saw fit to do that to her, to us.”
Don thought of his own past, the times he’d railed at and cursed God, and the difficulty he’d had coming to terms with how important Tim’s faith was to him. “You’re not the first or the only person to feel like that.”
“I don’t anymore, not really. It took a lot of time, but I came to realize that whether or not there is a creator, if there weren’t any consequences to our actions, then we’d never have to make the right ones.” Then Tim looked at Don, for the first time really. Don hid his shock at the bruises he could see on his husband’s face and neck, and quelled his desire to bundle Tim up and tuck him in. “But then times like this, right now, that anger and uncertainty comes back.”
“So why are you here?”
“I think I’m trying to find my way out of it.”
*
“Oh darling, are you all right?” Angela bustled in, and not even waiting for a response, began unpacking all that she had brought. There were pajamas, plates of comfort food, and even pillows and soft sheets.
Don laughed. “This is great! What about the kitchen sink?”
“Oh, stop,” Angela laughed, coming and kissing him before going on to her son. She gently ran her hand over Tim’s cheek, and then leaned down and pressed her cheek to his hair. Looking up for a second, she mouthed a quick prayer of thanks. Perhaps a tear or two fell on the pillow next to Tim, but by the time she raised her head there was no trace of it.
A knock on the door got everyone’s attention. “May I come in?” Congressman Callahan’s normally strong, eloquent voice sounded unsure and unsteady.
Tim stared, but then beckoned his father in. If there was a part of him that resented his father’s inability to get over his political choices until a near-death experience, he ignored it and followed his better impulses. “Of course Dad, you’re always welcome.”
He held out a hand, but although Rich grabbed it, he continued on to lay a hand on Tim’s forehead, as his wife had done. “You’re looking good,” he said gruffly, then leaned down to kiss his son’s cheek. That was not something he did often, but Tim understood then just how much what had happened had shaken the people who loved him.
Soon, the room was full with Kelly, her husband, and Kenny dropping by to wish him well. The storm had abated, and snowplows had cleared up the main roads, so while getting around was still a bit difficult, everyone had seized the opportunity to visit him. It was, Tim thought, the first time all four members of his family had been together in a long time. Too long.
*
Tim was a little cranky. Not very surprising, Don thought, because it was Christmas Eve and Tim had finally gotten out of the hospital. That day had been a difficult one. Tim was, of course, unable to attend the Senator’s funeral several days before, but Don had gone and delivered a note from his husband. It was horrible, Tim had said, but Don had a feeling it was something that the family had needed, because a few hours before Timmy had been released, John Platt had come to visit him.
It had been a difficult visit, of course. Lauren’s husband was barely beginning to process his wife’s death, and he was dealing with two young, grief-stricken children to boot. Don had left soon after his arrival, after giving his condolences one more time, but he’d been unable to stay there. It was almost impossible to face the might-have-been, because it could so easily have been him in John’s place. And while he knew his relief was normal, he couldn’t help feeling ashamed of it.
But by the time he got back, John was leaving. Tim wouldn’t say what they talked about; he just murmured something about John taking Lauren’s seat for the time being and then laid back and contemplated the ceiling. His enthusiasm about getting out had seemed to dim, but he remained adamant about it.
Still, the silence in the car was getting to Don, and he looked over at Tim for a second to make sure he was awake before he began to speak. “By the way, your mom is over getting the house ready. Knowing her, I’m guessing that means it’s going to be even cleaner than you ever manage to make it.”
Tim laughed, but the sound was short and not very joyous. “And there will be food on the stove.”
“Yum,” Don responded inanely, searching for another topic of conversation. But Tim was obviously thinking things over and not in the mood to talk.
When they got to the house, it was obvious that the Callahans weren’t the only ones there. “Is that Kenny’s bike?”
“And Kelly’s car?” Tim frowned. “What is everyone doing here?”
The answer was clear as soon as they walked into the house. The smell of turkey wafted through the air, while the tree that Tim and Don had picked out weeks before was now surrounded by a tower of presents. All of the Christmas lights were on, and there were stocking hanging with Kelly’s children’s names on them. Their house was alive with the sound of jingling bells and children laughing, and as soon as the door opened, the entire family descended on Tim and bore him off to the comfortable sofa.
Don stopped at the door, his mouth open. He’d never experienced Christmas like this; hell, he didn’t think this kind of thing existed outside of books and movies. But it was impossible to be too tired, too achy or too depressed to withstand the loving people welcoming them into their own home. Hands pressed hot chocolate and warm cookies into his hands and pushed him down into a chair near Tim.
*
Three hours later the house was empty, with everyone promising to come early so that they could open presents. The kids were hushed when they complained about having to wait until their parents woke up and made the drive, but even they couldn’t resent it too much when they saw just how much was waiting for them when they made it. Kelly’s husband was an only child and this was their first Christmas with their mother’s family. And despite all of Tim and Don’s invitations, Angela and Rich were also returning to their apartment, leaving the married couple alone.
Don brought his bedding downstairs, and was just making himself comfortable when Tim spoke up. “Acting Senator Platt asked me to continue on as his aide.”
“Ah,” Don said unintelligently. “Um, what did you tell him?”
“The same thing I told you in the chapel that day after my accident. I’m looking for something. I need to have faith in something again.”
“In God?”
“Not just Him. In my work-I spent much of the past few weeks trying to pass a bill to ensure that you and I and everyone like us gets a right that other people take for granted and piss on every day. And now that bill is either going to fail because we need more people with Senator Platt’s personal drive and commitment to it, not less, or it will pass if we make her its martyr. So I’m going to either fail at one of the most important things I’ve done professionally, or I’m going to succeed by using the memory of someone I cared for very much, and isn’t that living up to every dirty, unpleasant cliché of a politician?
“Maybe it is,” Don said, “or maybe you’re looking in the wrong places. Maybe you’re so busy looking for the greater meaning in things that you’re ignoring the smaller things, the simple truths.”
“Like?”
“Like whatever you do about this bill, you’ll do with John Platt because there’s no way you’re going to leave him to the wolves. And that if John and you can’t between yourselves save Lauren Platt’s memory from being a political tool, then no one can. There’s a difference between making someone an inspiration and making them a martyr. You just have to find it, and you will or you won’t do it at all.”
Then, leaning forward, he grabbed Tim’s hands and looked at him lovingly. “I can’t help you with finding God, that’s a point that we never find common ground at, but maybe, just maybe, you can have faith in people instead. Look at this room today, Tim. It was full of three generations of people who came to welcome you home and celebrate that you’re here with them, this Christmas, when you could so easily have”- Don couldn’t continue, and his head bowed as he shied away from expressing the fear that still haunted him by day as well as by night.
“They were here because it’s Christmas,” Tim said wryly, trying to wring a laugh out of Don. He hated bringing him down when Don had been reveling in their Christmas merriment such a short time before.
“No Tim. They were here because we are all bonded together over one very special fact-that we all love you, Tim Callahan.
THE END
Don reached the hospital a few hours later, thanks in no small part to Kenny’s one-night stand a week before with the owner of a snow-plow company. Later, he’d thank Kenny and the snow-plow guy, but at that moment his only thought was to get to his husband. But when he reached there and got direction to Timmy’s room, it was empty.
Whirling around, he ran to the nurses’ station. “My husband, Tim Callahan,” he began.
A nurse who was walking up to the station called him. “You must be Don, I’d recognize you anywhere,” she said, much to his confusion. “I just wheeled Mr. Callahan to the chapel. But please, get him to come back and lie down. He really shouldn’t even be sitting, but he insisted that he was feeling better and that he needed to be there.” She stopped, her expression bearing the discomfort of a true secularist, but went on respectfully. “He told me that he needed spiritual guidance.”
Don got directions to the chapel and walked there at a more sedate place. Tim’s forlorn body, hunched into his wheelchair, was the only occupant. His husband’s pale cheeks were marred with a few angry cuts and a steady stream of tears. Afraid, a little, of the somber atmosphere, Don whispered Tim’s name.
Tim said nothing, but reached out a hand. Don held it and drew closer, until he could hug his husband gently. “Baby, are you- I’m so sorry”-
“Shh,” Tim said gently. But he was not at peace, no. Tim’s eyes held anger and grief, and Don knew that someone had told him everything. So Don sat on the bench next to Tim’s chair and waited. “Did you know about the Senator?”
“Yes.”
“Her husband, kids…”
Don shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to them. They haven’t contacted me and I thought that… well, I wanted to let them get over the shock first.”
There was a pause, and then some time later, enough that Don almost thought his husband had gone to sleep, Tim went on in a dreamy tone. “Do you know what made me leave the church?”
Surprised, Don admitted that he had always thought it was Tim’s sexuality. “I figured you couldn’t live a lie anymore.”
“It wasn’t a lie, not really. Not at first. I had never been with a man, and at that time I thought that I could go a lifetime without doing anything that would violate my vows. I loved the church enough to make that sacrifice, and since straight men make it too I didn’t see why it would be that different for me. But as time passed, I realized that the Vatican’s acceptance, or lack of it, of homosexuals and homosexuality clashed too much with my vision of God, and His love of all things and all people, for me to continue on that path. But Don, that decision was so difficult that I would probably have taken years to make it if I hadn’t met Hannah Marsh.”
Don waited for a few minutes, but eventually prompted his husband to continue. “Who is Hannah Marsh?”
Tim swallowed. “She was a beautiful five-year-old girl.” Don closed his eyes at the tense shift. “She had curly dark hair, and these eyes that gave her that old soul look, you know, the ones kids have that tells you that they are going to be someone, some day. If they have the chance.”
“She didn’t.”
“She was the grand-daughter of our neighbors; their kids were our age, but Marianne, Hannah’s mother, became pregnant pretty young. Lots of young girls in her situation would have gotten an abortion, but I was a good friend of hers, and a better Catholic than a friend right then. I don’t regret it, because Hannah came out of it, but sometimes I wonder at the arrogance I had to be giving anyone advice about parenthood.”
“What happened?”
“One day she was there, the next she wasn’t. A stupid accident, you know? Someone should have stopped or taken a nap, but instead they kept driving and fell asleep at the wheel. They hit Marianne’s car. She was fine, the driver asleep at the wheel was fine, but Hannah died. And I couldn’t preach the word of a God who saw fit to do that to her, to us.”
Don thought of his own past, the times he’d railed at and cursed God, and the difficulty he’d had coming to terms with how important Tim’s faith was to him. “You’re not the first or the only person to feel like that.”
“I don’t anymore, not really. It took a lot of time, but I came to realize that whether or not there is a creator, if there weren’t any consequences to our actions, then we’d never have to make the right ones.” Then Tim looked at Don, for the first time really. Don hid his shock at the bruises he could see on his husband’s face and neck, and quelled his desire to bundle Tim up and tuck him in. “But then times like this, right now, that anger and uncertainty comes back.”
“So why are you here?”
“I think I’m trying to find my way out of it.”
*
“Oh darling, are you all right?” Angela bustled in, and not even waiting for a response, began unpacking all that she had brought. There were pajamas, plates of comfort food, and even pillows and soft sheets.
Don laughed. “This is great! What about the kitchen sink?”
“Oh, stop,” Angela laughed, coming and kissing him before going on to her son. She gently ran her hand over Tim’s cheek, and then leaned down and pressed her cheek to his hair. Looking up for a second, she mouthed a quick prayer of thanks. Perhaps a tear or two fell on the pillow next to Tim, but by the time she raised her head there was no trace of it.
A knock on the door got everyone’s attention. “May I come in?” Congressman Callahan’s normally strong, eloquent voice sounded unsure and unsteady.
Tim stared, but then beckoned his father in. If there was a part of him that resented his father’s inability to get over his political choices until a near-death experience, he ignored it and followed his better impulses. “Of course Dad, you’re always welcome.”
He held out a hand, but although Rich grabbed it, he continued on to lay a hand on Tim’s forehead, as his wife had done. “You’re looking good,” he said gruffly, then leaned down to kiss his son’s cheek. That was not something he did often, but Tim understood then just how much what had happened had shaken the people who loved him.
Soon, the room was full with Kelly, her husband, and Kenny dropping by to wish him well. The storm had abated, and snowplows had cleared up the main roads, so while getting around was still a bit difficult, everyone had seized the opportunity to visit him. It was, Tim thought, the first time all four members of his family had been together in a long time. Too long.
*
Tim was a little cranky. Not very surprising, Don thought, because it was Christmas Eve and Tim had finally gotten out of the hospital. That day had been a difficult one. Tim was, of course, unable to attend the Senator’s funeral several days before, but Don had gone and delivered a note from his husband. It was horrible, Tim had said, but Don had a feeling it was something that the family had needed, because a few hours before Timmy had been released, John Platt had come to visit him.
It had been a difficult visit, of course. Lauren’s husband was barely beginning to process his wife’s death, and he was dealing with two young, grief-stricken children to boot. Don had left soon after his arrival, after giving his condolences one more time, but he’d been unable to stay there. It was almost impossible to face the might-have-been, because it could so easily have been him in John’s place. And while he knew his relief was normal, he couldn’t help feeling ashamed of it.
But by the time he got back, John was leaving. Tim wouldn’t say what they talked about; he just murmured something about John taking Lauren’s seat for the time being and then laid back and contemplated the ceiling. His enthusiasm about getting out had seemed to dim, but he remained adamant about it.
Still, the silence in the car was getting to Don, and he looked over at Tim for a second to make sure he was awake before he began to speak. “By the way, your mom is over getting the house ready. Knowing her, I’m guessing that means it’s going to be even cleaner than you ever manage to make it.”
Tim laughed, but the sound was short and not very joyous. “And there will be food on the stove.”
“Yum,” Don responded inanely, searching for another topic of conversation. But Tim was obviously thinking things over and not in the mood to talk.
When they got to the house, it was obvious that the Callahans weren’t the only ones there. “Is that Kenny’s bike?”
“And Kelly’s car?” Tim frowned. “What is everyone doing here?”
The answer was clear as soon as they walked into the house. The smell of turkey wafted through the air, while the tree that Tim and Don had picked out weeks before was now surrounded by a tower of presents. All of the Christmas lights were on, and there were stocking hanging with Kelly’s children’s names on them. Their house was alive with the sound of jingling bells and children laughing, and as soon as the door opened, the entire family descended on Tim and bore him off to the comfortable sofa.
Don stopped at the door, his mouth open. He’d never experienced Christmas like this; hell, he didn’t think this kind of thing existed outside of books and movies. But it was impossible to be too tired, too achy or too depressed to withstand the loving people welcoming them into their own home. Hands pressed hot chocolate and warm cookies into his hands and pushed him down into a chair near Tim.
*
Three hours later the house was empty, with everyone promising to come early so that they could open presents. The kids were hushed when they complained about having to wait until their parents woke up and made the drive, but even they couldn’t resent it too much when they saw just how much was waiting for them when they made it. Kelly’s husband was an only child and this was their first Christmas with their mother’s family. And despite all of Tim and Don’s invitations, Angela and Rich were also returning to their apartment, leaving the married couple alone.
Don brought his bedding downstairs, and was just making himself comfortable when Tim spoke up. “Acting Senator Platt asked me to continue on as his aide.”
“Ah,” Don said unintelligently. “Um, what did you tell him?”
“The same thing I told you in the chapel that day after my accident. I’m looking for something. I need to have faith in something again.”
“In God?”
“Not just Him. In my work-I spent much of the past few weeks trying to pass a bill to ensure that you and I and everyone like us gets a right that other people take for granted and piss on every day. And now that bill is either going to fail because we need more people with Senator Platt’s personal drive and commitment to it, not less, or it will pass if we make her its martyr. So I’m going to either fail at one of the most important things I’ve done professionally, or I’m going to succeed by using the memory of someone I cared for very much, and isn’t that living up to every dirty, unpleasant cliché of a politician?
“Maybe it is,” Don said, “or maybe you’re looking in the wrong places. Maybe you’re so busy looking for the greater meaning in things that you’re ignoring the smaller things, the simple truths.”
“Like?”
“Like whatever you do about this bill, you’ll do with John Platt because there’s no way you’re going to leave him to the wolves. And that if John and you can’t between yourselves save Lauren Platt’s memory from being a political tool, then no one can. There’s a difference between making someone an inspiration and making them a martyr. You just have to find it, and you will or you won’t do it at all.”
Then, leaning forward, he grabbed Tim’s hands and looked at him lovingly. “I can’t help you with finding God, that’s a point that we never find common ground at, but maybe, just maybe, you can have faith in people instead. Look at this room today, Tim. It was full of three generations of people who came to welcome you home and celebrate that you’re here with them, this Christmas, when you could so easily have”- Don couldn’t continue, and his head bowed as he shied away from expressing the fear that still haunted him by day as well as by night.
“They were here because it’s Christmas,” Tim said wryly, trying to wring a laugh out of Don. He hated bringing him down when Don had been reveling in their Christmas merriment such a short time before.
“No Tim. They were here because we are all bonded together over one very special fact-that we all love you, Tim Callahan.
THE END