The Road Home

by Michael Thomas Ford

  He paused a few moments as Burke and Gregg stared at him. “I see you’ve lost your sense of humor, living in Boston,” he said. “Lucy and I can bring you anything you need.” Apparently having settled the matter, he steered Burke to a flight of stairs. “Gregg, if you’d be so good as to get his other side,” he said.

  Gregg obliged, and together they got Burke up the stairs, but not before Burke had banged his cast against the wall half a dozen times and uttered a different curse each time.

  When they reached the top, Ed looked at his son and remarked, “Excellent vocabulary you’ve developed over the years. But we’re not so smart here, so maybe you can keep it simple. Nothing wrong with a plain old ‘damn’ every now and then if you really feel the need. So long as you put enough weight behind it, people will get your meaning.”

  “Sorry,” said Burke.

  “No need,” his father replied as they moved down a long hallway with doors on either side. “How do you like the color of these walls? Lucy picked it out.”

  Burke looked around. “Weren’t they always blue?” he said.

  “You’d think so,” said his father. “But apparently what we had before was plain old blue. This is Nantucket Cottage.”

  “Sort of like blue with a pedigree,” Gregg suggested as they stopped before one of the doors and Mr. Crenshaw opened it.

  “Name brand,” Ed agreed.

  They walked Burke to a large bed with an antique wrought-iron frame painted white. The mattress was covered by a colorful handpieced quilt that looked almost as old as the bed itself. Burke sank onto it with a groan. “Looks like you painted in here, too,” he commented.

  “Same color it always was, though,” said his father. “I thought we might try something else, but Lucy said no to that. She said you’d be back someday, and she wanted it just the way you had it.” He walked back into the hallway. “I’ve got a few things to attend to in the barn,” he told them. “I’ll leave you to get settled in.”

  When Ed was gone, Gregg took a long look around the room. “So this is where Burke Crenshaw became a man,” he said.

  “No, that happened in room 717 of Crone Hall after Shane Mc-Covey and I downed a six-pack and he dared me to suck his cock,” Burke said, lying back against the pillows.

  “Yes,” Gregg agreed. “But this is where you began to explore the strange yearnings of your budding homosexual self,” he elaborated dramatically. He looked seriously at Burke. “By which, of course, I mean you beat yourself off while thinking about being Harrison Ford’s sex slave,” he said, nodding at the Raiders of the Lost Ark one-sheet that hung on the wall across from the bed.

  Burke glanced at the poster. He hadn’t noticed it and hadn’t even thought about it in fifteen or more years. “I can’t believe she put it back up after they repainted,” he said.

  “She who?” Gregg asked.

  “Lucy,” said Burke. “My father’s girlfriend.”

  Gregg raised an eyebrow. “Is she a Maleficent?” he asked. “A Mommie Dearest?”

  “Hardly,” Burke replied. “She’s really nice.”

  “She must be to have kept this museum to your teenage years,” said Gregg. He picked up a trophy that was on the white painted dresser beneath one of the room’s two large windows. It was a gold cup topped by the figure of a horse. “What’s this?”

  “Four-H,” Burke explained. “I raised a colt.”

  Gregg set the trophy down. “How agricultural,” he said. He then began to examine the books in the small bookcase beside the desk. “I see you delved deeply into the oeuvre of Stephen King,” he said. “Also Frank Herbert and Terry Brooks. Very eclectic.”

  “Put a pillow under my leg, Marian Librarian,” Burke commanded.

  Gregg did so, elevating Burke’s foot. “Is that better?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  “It’s as better as it’s going to get,” Burke replied.

  Gregg looked out the window. “At least you have a nice view from here,” he said. “Very pastoral.”

  “Are the horses out?” asked Burke.

  “Not unless they’ve invented horses that are short, woolly, and have no tails,” Gregg answered. “I’m making an uneducated guess here, but I think these might be sheep.”

  “Dad must be renting out pastureland,” said Burke. “Are they Blackface?”

  “Isn’t that racist?” Gregg said. “And no, they have plain old white faces.” He stood up. “Well, if there’s nothing else I can do for you, Mr. Crenshaw, I have other patients who need attending to.”

  “What?” said Burke. “You’re not leaving?”

  Gregg nodded. “I’m afraid so, sweetie. I’m allergic to the country. If I go more than a hundred miles from a Starbucks, I go into anaphylactic shock. Besides, I have a client meeting tomorrow morning.”

  “But you can’t,” said Burke, his voice tightening. “I’ll be all alone with”—he gestured around—“this.”

  “This seems perfectly lovely,” Gregg told him. “I’d love to recuperate in a place like this.”

  “What about Starbucks?” said Burke, mimicking Gregg’s voice. “And anaphylactic shock?”

  “All right, I’m just trying to make you feel better,” Gregg admitted. “The truth is, I’d probably down a bottle of cold medicine and throw myself down those stairs after twenty-four hours here. But we’re not talking about me. For you, it’s fine. Now bye.” He leaned down and gave Burke a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll call you.”

  Burke began to protest again as Gregg left the room, but he knew there was no point. Gregg was right about one thing—he wasn’t the sort who could fit comfortably into country life. Burke put his head back and looked around the all too familiar room.

  The question is, can you? he wondered.

  CHAPTER 4

  He awoke to the smell of roast chicken. When he opened his eyes, he saw a thin, red-haired woman standing beside the bed, looking down at him. Her bright blue eyes sparkled, and her head was cocked to the side, giving her the appearance of a curious banty hen regarding a beetle.

  “Have a nice nap?” she asked.

  Burke rubbed his eyes. “Lucy,” he said. “Hi.”

  “Nice to have you home, sweetie,” Lucy said, kissing him on the forehead as if he were a little boy. “We’ve missed you.”

  Burke tried to sit up, forgot about his leg, and yelped in pain. Immediately Lucy was there, helping him lean forward as she slipped a pillow behind his back. “There you go,” she said as Burke sighed with relief.

  Lucy turned to the dresser, on top of which sat a tray holding a plate of chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. She picked the tray up and brought it to the bed, where she set it across Burke’s lap. He inhaled the delicious scents and felt his stomach rumble.

  “Eat up,” Lucy said. “You need it. I bet you’ve been living on take-out down there in the city.”

  Burke took up a fork and tried to cut a piece of chicken. Unused to using his right hand for such things, he succeeded mostly in hacking at the meat.

  “Here,” Lucy said, taking the fork from him and using a knife to cut the chicken into manageable pieces.

  “Thanks,” said Burke, embarrassed that he required her assistance for something so basic as eating. Stabbing one of the pieces with his fork, he put it in his mouth and chewed slowly. “This is fantastic,” he said.

  “Your father made it,” Lucy answered. “But don’t tell him you know. He’s a little sensitive about it.”

  Burke shook his head. “You’re joking,” he said. “Mom could barely get him to open a can.” He speared a green bean and popped it in his mouth. “And these are fresh,” he said, amazed.

  “From his own garden,” said Lucy.

  “How’d you do it?” Burke asked.

  Lucy laughed. “I told him either he could learn to cook or he could take me out to dinner every night. I cooked for Jerry for forty years, with only my birthday off. I’m through cooking. Unless there’s a good reason,” she
said, patting Burke’s leg.

  Burke plowed into the mashed potatoes, rich with butter. After a week of hospital food, it was if he were eating for the first time. Lucy watched him, waiting until he slowed down before continuing the conversation.

  “You put quite a scare into your father,” she said when Burke paused for a moment in between bites of chicken.

  “He seems fine,” said Burke.

  “Now he is,” Lucy replied. “But when he got that phone call from your friend Gregg, it really shook him up.”

  “But I’m okay,” Burke said. “Apart from this.” He gestured at his leg with his fork. “And this,” he added, lifting his arm.

  Lucy nodded. “It’s different when you’ve already lost someone,” she said quietly.

  “I lost Mom, too,” Burke reminded her.

  “I know,” Lucy told him. “But it’s different when it’s your wife or husband or . . . whatever,” she concluded. She seemed to drift away for a moment. Then she shook her head. “Anyway, as you say, he’s fine now. I just thought you should know that he was worried.”

  Burke stabbed a green bean. He knew what Lucy was doing, and although part of him appreciated her kindness, another part resented her trying to play the role of his mother. He’d lived with his father longer than Lucy had. He didn’t need to be reminded of their sometimes awkward relationship.

  “Do you think your mother would have liked me?” Lucy asked suddenly.

  Burke looked at her. She looked back, not blinking. It was Burke who turned away first. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess so. Why?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just something I was thinking about the other day. I was at the cemetery—it was Jerry’s birthday—and I was talking to him like I do, and it occurred to me that I think he and your father would have been good friends.”

  “I’m surprised they weren’t,” said Burke. “You live only one town over. I don’t know how you all lived this close to one another and never met.”

  “Don’t forget, Jerry and I had only been here five years when he died,” said Lucy. “In Vermont terms we were just vacationing.”

  Burke grinned. “Does it still bother Dad that some of the old-timers call him a flatlander?”

  Lucy suppressed a laugh. “It’s his own fault for suggesting they change things and keep the library open one hour later on Saturdays.”

  “That was forty-five years ago!” Burke said in a perfect imitation of his father.

  They both chuckled. Lucy wiped her eyes. “Jerry could be just as stubborn,” she said. “Particularly after he got sick.”

  Burke didn’t know much about Lucy’s late husband other than that he was dead. His father had mentioned Jerry only once, and Burke had not asked for anything more. The whole topic of his father and Lucy’s relationship was one he avoided, not because it upset him, but because discussing their personal lives was not something the Crenshaw men did. Particularly when one of them was having relationships with other men.

  “I know when Mom was going through chemo, she got pretty testy,” Burke told Lucy. “Sometimes it was like talking to a completely different person.”

  “It happens,” said Lucy. “When Jerry was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I thought it would be a gradual process, a kind of long, slow descent into forgetfulness. I thought I would have time to get used to the person he was becoming before that person got there.” She paused. “But it wasn’t like that,” she continued, her voice softer, more fragile. “One day he was forgetting the names of the flowers in the garden. A week later he wandered down the road and had to be brought back by the postman. After that it seemed like every day another piece of him vanished into thin air. Pretty soon he looked at me as if he’d never seen me before.” She looked at Burke. “The funny thing is, I was thinking exactly the same thing.”

  Burke looked down at his plate. A few green beans lay among the chicken bones. A smear of mashed potatoes curved along one side of the plate. He cleared his throat, which suddenly felt blocked. “I didn’t know,” he said.

  “That’s because we’ve never talked about it,” said Lucy. “There are lots of things we’ve never talked about. Lucky for you, we have all summer to get caught up. Now, do you want to pee?”

  Burke looked up. “What?” he said.

  “Pee,” Lucy repeated. “You probably need to pee.” She went to the dresser, opened the top drawer, and pulled out one of the hated plastic containers Burke remembered all too well from his time in the hospital. Lucy waved it at him. “I got this from my friend Alice. She works at the old folks’ home over in Paullis Springs. All you have to do is put your—”

  “I know how it works,” Burke interrupted. He wished Lucy would stop talking about his need to pee, mostly because her talking about it was making him have to do it.

  “Then you just dump it out in the toilet—or I suppose you could put it in the sink—and rinse it out. It’s really pretty clever, when you think about it.” She set the urine bottle down and picked up Burke’s tray, setting it on the dresser top. “Let’s just get those pants down,” she said, coming back to the bed.

  “No!” Burke said firmly. “I mean, it’s okay. I can handle things. As it were.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “I have seen one before,” she said. “It’s not like they’re all that different. And it’s not like you had anything to do with how it looks, anyway. Honestly, it’s like you men think your dicks are floral centerpieces you have arranged and are being judged on. You all want the blue ribbon.”

  Burke felt himself blushing at Lucy’s use of such a crude term for his penis. Mom would never have said that, he found himself thinking.

  “All right,” Lucy said. She handed him the bottle. “Do it yourself. But if you need any help, just holler. And leave that on the bedside table. I’ll pick it up later. Do you need anything else?”

  “Um, my pills,” Burke said. “I think Gregg put them all in a big plastic bag in the small suitcase.”

  “Already downstairs,” said Lucy. “I unpacked while you were sleeping. Those are some fancy underpants you got there. I’ll get the pills and some water. You take care of business while I’m gone.”

  She took up the tray and left the room, shutting the door behind her. Burke looked at the bottle on the table, then reluctantly picked it up and began the laborious process of using it. He hadn’t finished when, a few minutes later, Lucy opened the door without knocking and came in.

  “Here you go,” she said brightly, shaking a bottle of pills and then placing it on the bedside table.

  Burke quickly finished and pulled the covers up just in time for Lucy to take the still warm bottle of urine from him.

  She placed a glass of water on the bedside table. “Now, take only two of those,” she said, nodding at the pills. “I’m going to be counting.”

  Burke picked the bottle of pills up, then held it out to Lucy. “Childproof cap,” he explained.

  Lucy set down the urine bottle, opened the pills, and shook two of them into her hand. She gave them to Burke, who downed them with a swallow of water.

  “We should get you into your pj’s,” Lucy said. “Can’t have you sleeping in your clothes.”

  “Oh, I sleep in my boxers,” Burke told her.

  “Then let’s get those shorts off,” said Lucy.

  Burke began to object but realized that he didn’t really have a choice. He’d already experimented with trying to dress himself, an undertaking that had nearly earned him another few days in the hospital when he had gotten his arm cast stuck while trying to put on a sweatshirt and had nearly fallen off the bed, attempting to extricate himself.

  Because of the cast on Burke’s leg, he couldn’t wear regular pants and had resorted to shorts. Lucy undid Burke’s belt and began tugging his shorts down. He tried to help but couldn’t do much more than lift his butt up a little. Lucy, struggling to get him undressed, managed to grab Burke’s underwear along with the shorts. When she
pulled the shorts down, the boxers came with them, leaving Burke bare assed.

  “Sorry about that,” said Lucy, helping him pull his boxers back up. “But don’t worry. I had my eyes closed.”

  Burke, blushing, pulled the covers up. Lucy picked up the urine bottle and walked to the door. Holding the bottle up as if it were a gravy boat, she said, “There’s a bell on the table. If you need anything, just ring. And don’t go trying to walk around by yourself. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  When the door was shut, Burke lay back and looked around the room. He had slept for quite some time and, as a result, was no longer tired. Outside the sky was the purple black of twilight, and although night was not far behind, it was still far too early to try and get back to sleep. He would just wake up in the middle of the night.

  He’d forgotten what it was like in the country. The so-called quiet was actually far from silent. The noises of traffic and people were gone, but they were replaced by the sounds of birds and crickets. And who knows what else, Burke thought as he listened to the assorted chirping sounds coming through the open window. Probably owls. Or bats. He shuddered at the thought.

  Also, it was too dark. When night fell here, it really fell. Apart from the moon and the stars, there was nothing to illuminate the world. No streetlamps or porch lights. No well-lit windows in buildings across the way. Not even a television in the room. How was he going to live without television? He’d brought his laptop, of course, but it occurred to him with rapidly growing horror that the likelihood of finding a wireless signal in this part of the world was about as great as finding a Kenneth Cole outlet.

  You can always read, he reminded himself. He glanced over at the bookcase. He couldn’t reach it without getting out of bed, and he wasn’t about to ring for help. But when he looked back at the bedside table, he saw that there were three battered paperbacks already stacked there. He wondered if he’d left them there years ago or if Lucy had set them out for him.