Late In the Evening

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Vermont had never boasted its Jewish population, consisting of less than 1% of the residents, half that of neighboring New Hampshire and roughly on par with Utah, hardly a bastion of religious or cultural diversity.They were far outnumbered by the areligious, and the general Christian cultural domination persisted in the background.

For instance, in how City Hall, like the court system, shut down for a bit over a week, from Christmas Eve through January 2nd. And how the High Holy Days were barely a blip on the radar.

It remained months too early for the War on Christmas, but Rosh Hashanah was upon them. Hammel, like every other school in Vermont, remained open Monday and Tuesday. Sean, at most a passive participant in the holidays, happy to accommodate his spouse and celebrate to an extent, which didn’t rise to the level of religious observance, numbered among the high percentage of Vermont atheists raised in a Christian denomination. He had no compunction about attending to his job during the tend day stretch.

After a long morning of meetings and an afternoon of sessions,including a particularly grueling forty-five minutes with one of the newest students, and with a surprise present from Irving Coley, Jr., he returned home to Chez Neville-Bernstein, arms laden with food.

By the time Josh returned home from the temple in Burlington, the house smelled of apples, honey, and fish. The telepath had changed from his suit into more comfortable, albeit respectful attire, and he had just finished setting the table with the dishes inherited from Bobby and Mama B, upon their passing.

[Josh Bernstein]

Josh inhaled deeply as he stepped foot into his home. That he knew exactly what to expect didn't lessen the delight he felt that Sean accommodated his holidays. Of course Sean would, because that was the sort of person he was, but the cultural expectations were always on him to be the one to make accommodations.

And then there was Sean, who knew about as much as any gentile could be expected to.

He bent to remove his shoes, not wanting to track dirt through the house, as he called out, "Honey! I'm home!"

He would never tire of using that cliche.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

The sweet and salty aromas wafted from the kitchen and the dining room as Sean carried the salmon from the stove to set on the table as the centerpiece. Decades ago - far closer to four than three now - when he and Josh first lived together, he had approached Mama B to learn some of Josh’s favorite recipes. She had sat him down and together they created a series of cards, some for holiday dishes and others simply because they made Josh smile.

He still used those for meal preparation during the important occasions, or when he thought his partner might enjoy a favorite. He had long dispensed with the need to consult the cards, having committed them to memory through frequent enough use.

Now, with her passing, the recipes took on an additional significance, a means of incorporating her into their celebrations when her absence, keenly felt, might settle a heaviness over their table.

Of course, he sensed Josh’s arrival before the other man had crossed the threshold - that special combination of telepathy and familiarity. Still, he lifted his head, a smile touching his lips, as his spouse sank into cliches to announce his return.

“In the dining room, Slim!”

[Josh Bernstein]

Josh meandered into the dining room, blue eyes instantly alighting not on the spread but on the beloved face of his husband. His entire face melted into a smile that almost hurt his cheeks, warmth flooding his body. Once upon a time this hadn't been mere warmth but had been overwhelming fire; the flames had long since died down to something more manageable but no less fond.

"How was your day, Steve?"

The nickname slipped easily from his tongue, confusing to those who were unfamiliar with why Sean might be Steve at times.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean mirrored the other man’s expression, his entire mood so often shifted in Josh’s presence, which had not changed from their first months of intense friendship turned tentative romance, as they each stumbled through dating (at all for Josh and another boy for Sean). Fortunately, forty-one years later imbued him with both comfort and confidence, an expert now rather than a novice struggling to sort through feelings and contain the nearly endless intensity of desire.

Setting down the dish, he extended one hand, reaching across the table to entwine their fingers together. The nickname brought a burst of warmth to his chest as the single syllable so often did when spoken by his husband, either as a husky whisper or here, with an affectionate twinkle in his eye.

“You know how it is now. Double the meetings and endless bureaucracy. One of the new students is having some difficulty adjusting to the situation.” Time away from their family, the revelation of their meta-human status coupled with uncontrollable powers, the awkwardness of puberty. Take one’s pick.

Drawing their joined hands to his lips, he kissed the back of Josh’s knuckles. “And how was your day, Slim? L’shanah tovah tikateivu v’teichateimu.”

One of the few phrases of Hebrew that he had memorized, and which he deployed appropriately for the holiday.

[Josh Bernstein]

Holidays were difficult now, with his parents gone and the remainder of the family another state away. The prevalence of meta-humans from all over the country meant a larger Jewish population than Pilot Ridge might otherwise have as a tiny little Vermont mountain town but it remained a far cry from the community he'd grown up with.

Still, Sean's attempts helped him feel a bit less lonely about the whole affair.

"I saw a few new faces at shul today. Young. Students of yours, I assume. It's shocking just how young teens look to me anymore, I almost wondered what a couple of nine year olds were doing without adult supervision, but then one of them was driving."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean knew through both experience and observation how isolating it could be, and he was capable of extrapolating further beyond. Telepathy and conversation each made him privy to what his husband felt during the assorted holidays. How he had moved with his parents those nine years ago and there had remained some semblance of normality, between finding a shul in Burlington and visiting the elder Bernsteins for meals afterward.

Sean had long lost his faith by the time his own parents had passed, and yet the Christmas and Easter afterward had hit him hard, leaving him with a tangible sense of loss and an aching emptiness that he had struggled to articulate.

Which he couldn’t share because he and Kathleen remained off speaking terms.

The least he could do was serve as a home for his husband. He might not be Jewish himself, he might never attend shul, he might not be able to do the reading at the Passover seders or blow the shofar for Rosh Hashashana, but he could listen afterward, cook their holiday menus, and remain a pillar of support.

“Did you? Did you get names by any chance?” His fingers slipped loose of Josh’s, freeing the other man to wash up for their supper. As for the rest of it- “I know what you mean. I’m surrounded by children and teens all day, and still some of the students who recently manifested seem like little more than babies to me. Sometimes I expect them to still have a loose tooth or three.”

[Josh Bernstein]

Josh disentangled their hands reluctantly in order to grab his plate, blue eyes sweeping over their supper selections. He speared a fish, sliding it onto the china as a burst of bittersweet nostalgia washed over him. He was diverted from dwelling too much on his pain, though, by the question his husband asked.

"Only first names. Arthur and Elijah. I can't believe Elijah is old enough to drive. They were both so baby faced."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

With so many meals that they had shared, or that Sean had shared with anyone over the course of his life, he waited for Josh to serve himself before turning his own attention to the selection. Unlike a member of the Downstairs staff in the stately manors of yore, he didn’t stand there stock-still awaiting some subtle sign of approval from the other man over the spread.

The menu rarely changed for this particular holiday, Sean less inclined to experiment where Josh’s customs and culture alone were involved than for St. Patrick’s Day or a shared secular holiday like Halloween or Thanksgiving, where a new recipe in a magazine or borrowed from the Food Network might make an unannounced appearance.

The salmon remained the main event, selected both because it was one of Josh’s favorite real foods (not to be confused with beer or the packaged fluff like Pop Tarts that he had consumed almost daily before their reconciliation with Sean there to cook) and for the symbolism. Fish signified fertility and abundance, both important concepts for a harvest festival. Moreover, the first time Sean had made an appearance at a Bernstein Rosh Hashanah, he had been treated to an impromptu Hebrew lesson, learning that the name translated to “head of the year,” necessitating a head make an appearance somewhere on the supper table. Fish were the simplest and least gruesome option unless one went for a vegan pun of a head of lettuce or cabbage.

Neither vegan nor Jewish, Sean didn’t find it appropriate to make light in such a way. No matter that much of the traditional menu itself was based on puns from Hebrew to English; there remained a difference between in-group and out-group humor, and while the Bernsteins had all but adopted him four decades ago the night that Josh first brought him home, Sean was as much a gentile as Irish-American (ex-) Catholic.

Other dishes chosen for their symbolism included leeks, a lightly sweetened fruit and vegetable assortment called tzimmmes (whose recipe Sean had learned from Mama B), couscous, apples to dip in honey, and then the challah he had purchased at the bakery on his trip home from Hammel.

Once Josh had taken his fill, Sean served himself with a bit of everything, pausing to take not one but two handfuls of challah because it had been one of those days.

The student names brought a smile to his lips, and he nodded his recognition while unfurling his napkin in his lap. “They’re baby-faced even for their ages. They still have apple in their cheeks.”

[Josh Bernstein]

"I don't remember ever looking that young," Josh declared with a certainty that belied reality. He had photos of himself and Sean from their first relationship and in those he looked painfully young, too young to be in college let alone living on his own (or, well, with a roommate.)

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean’s hand hovered above the butter where he’d reached for the knife, tilting his head ever-so-slightly sidewise at Josh’s declaration. So often, part of how they smoothed over differences of opinion, or simply were able to navigate the day, involved him turning a blind eye to his husband’s tendency towards delusion. He took after his mother that way, Charlie Bernstein’s ability to inhabit a separate reality was truly a force with which to be reckoned.

But Josh not remembering them looking that young? His husband who still couldn’t grow a proper beard despite sitting only six months shy of this 60th birthday? Who had been asked what high school he attended while pursuing his L.L.M. at NYU Law? Who spent as much time in the living room as Sean himself did, where the photos displayed prominently on the mantle remained at eye level?

The telepath had to comment.

“Do you remember the protest in D.C. we went to where the officer threatened you with truancy if you didn’t quiet down?” Not the group of them that had driven from Manhattan to the nation’s capital in Sean’s VW bus, but Josh alone because at first glance they’d thought him, at his oldest, a high school freshman sneaking out of class to make trouble.

[Josh Bernstein]

Josh's mouth hung open at Sean's reminder, salmon hanging from his fork. The memory was one he hadn't thought of in years, and in many details was hazy around the edges. But the indignation he'd felt (and, if he were honest, some amount of fear) sprang back to mind with clarity.

"I...yes," He conceded after a moment of staring at his fish. "But...police officers aren't trustworthy."

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Sean hardly disagreed with the underlying point. How many protests had he and Josh attended over the years? How many hundreds of cases of police abuse of civil rights, or physical abuse of the population had Josh tried during his nearly three decades of law practice? The telepath remained resentful of how the force in this very town had turned a blind eye to Gabriel Underwood and his cohorts during the years 2010-2011 until they had been fired for misconduct.

No, they were untrustworthy because they were drunk with power and protected one another behind misapplied laws and the so-called Thin Blue Line.

But Josh had still been painfully young once upon a time and appeared even younger to those around him. Sean, who had always looked his age, neither with the apple cheeks of someone younger nor the thousand-yard stare and inappropriate wrinkles of someone older, had born the brunt of that in the early years of their first relationship. The stares or raised eyebrows, the occasional question and more frequent unvoiced thoughts on the matter.

Now, people still thought that he was robing the cradle but it hardly mattered at their age.

“All I mean is we were that young once. Somehow.” He slathered butter on his bread and prepared to take a bite, pausing with the food at his lips. “And everyone knew it.”

[Josh Bernstein]

Josh took a bite of his salmon as he considered Sean's point. He supposed it was valid, even if it was difficult to remember. "I suppose I didn't always look old." He agreed at last.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

“Old?” Sean repeated, gesturing at his husband with the hand not currently holding a fistful of buttered challah. “You still look better than I did when I was turning 50.”

A sincere statement rather than flirtatious flattery. His attraction to the younger man was hardly in issue, had sustained itself through the years of their separation before the reconciliation in 2011; everyone in the town knew, everyone who had ever seen the two of them together knew. But this was a matter beyond subjective experience, dipping into the objective.

Josh aged gracefully. The same frustrating genes that had led the police officer to believe him a high school freshman now sliced at least a decade off his face. His hair had yet to show even a single gray hair where the telepath’s temples had turned a while back. His face was largely free of the wrinkles that had set into Sean’s forehead so many years ago.

And Josh was only six months shy of his 60th birthday.

Whatever one thought about how sixty qualified as old (and the AARP, Denny’s, the local cinema, and Social Security all applied different, largely inconsistent standards), he didn’t look it in the slightest.