The Shortest Way Home

by Juliette Fay

  He hung in there, though, and thought he might even make it to the end. There was a family a couple of rows up, a mother, father, and three boys. The oldest was maybe fifteen, slouching and yawning. The other two were elementary age. The youngest came and went from the pew with the regularity of a flight attendant. Again? the mother mouthed when he apparently notified her of yet another trip to the bathroom. The middle boy bit his nails constantly.

  At the Sign of Peace the two younger boys shoved each other, the father and mother kissed, the teenager rolled his eyes when his father shook his hand. As everyone was turning their attention back to the altar, the middle boy leaned back and peered behind his father to his older brother, with a look of doubtful hope. The older boy reached out a fisted hand behind the father’s back. They knuckle-bumped, and the older one gave a sly smile that said, You’re a pain in my ass, but you’re okay.

  Sean felt as if someone had reached into his chest and squeezed. He remembered how Hugh would wear his father out with his fidgeting, and by about halfway through Mass he’d be turned over to Sean. They would thumb-wrestle or pinch each other till it was time to leave.

  Hugh, thought Sean. Goddamn it.

  He went up to take Communion, took the wafer, and left. It was tasteless, and he had to swallow hard to make it go down.

  CHAPTER 13

  On Tuesday night, Barb had her class, so Sean and Cormac walked over to The Pal. After an order of mozzarella sticks, a plate of potato skins, and enough beer to make them slouch in their seats and talk more freely than usual, Cormac said, “We’re trying to get pregnant.”

  “Hey, that’s great,” said Sean. “Congratulations.”

  “Don’t congratulate me. It hasn’t worked yet.”

  “Must be fun trying, though.”

  Cormac picked at the nachos that had just arrived. “Except it’s kind of . . . scheduled.”

  “When she’s ovulating.”

  Cormac looked up.

  “Hey, I’m a nurse,” said Sean, “a member of the secret society of guys who know about ovulating.”

  Cormac laughed. “How’d I get in?”

  “Trying to knock up your wife.” Sean made the sign of the cross in the air between them. “Go forth and be fruitful. Lots and lots of fruit. Pumpkins, kiwis. A whole freaking orchard.”

  They ordered more beers. “Deirdre’s moving to New York,” said Sean. “After the show.”

  Cormac studied him for a minute. “Well, that’s one hell of a domino effect.”

  “Yeah, no shit.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  Sean shrugged. “Dee says they can’t be alone.”

  Cormac’s eyebrows went up. “You’re staying?”

  “No! I’m hiring someone.”

  “Oh,” said Cormac, and took another sip of his beer.

  * * *

  Cormac’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket during the next round, and he jumped like it’d stung him. “Damn,” he said when he read the text. “What time is it?”

  Sean squinted at the clock over the bar. “Looks like somewhere around midnight.”

  “Shit, I got her worried.” He texted rapidly, the phone bobbing under his huge thumbs.

  They paid the bill, hustled down the stairs, and stumbled across the parking lot, moonlight splashing across the ruffled surface of Lake Pequot like jewelry.

  “I have to pee like a racehorse,” said Sean.

  “Me, too, but I gotta get home.” There was a Dumpster at the far end of the parking lot, and they headed for that.

  As they unzipped Sean said, “I forgot to tell you! The massage therapist at the place Barb sent me to—you know who it is?”

  “Katy Perry? Because I think I had a dream about her doing that ‘Teenage Dream’ song.”

  “What? No.”

  “It’d be pretty cool if it was.”

  “Okay, can you shut up and listen? It was Becky Feingold!”

  Cormac squinted, shadows from the moonlight making dark rivulets around his eyes.

  “For chrissake!” said Sean. “Little Becky Feingold!” But Cormac still didn’t get it. Sean put a cupped palm up to the right side of his face.

  Cormac’s squint fell. “No fucking way.”

  “Serious! I couldn’t believe it—”

  Suddenly a high-powered flashlight beam hit them as they stood there with their flies open. Steam from their urine curled like smoke in the illuminated air.

  “What the hell!” Sean yelled as they hurried to zip up.

  The flashlight owner started to laugh. “Cormac, man, you know better than that. And who’s with you? Sean Doran! Where the hell’d you come from?”

  “Christ, Dougie, can you turn off the beam at least?” said Cormac.

  As Sean’s eyes adjusted to the darkness again, he began to make out a man in a police uniform walking toward them.

  “Public urination, indecent exposure,” said Officer Dougie. “You know I have to bring you in, right?”

  “Oh, come on!” said Sean.

  “He’s not serious,” said Cormac calmly.

  “Nah, man,” said Dougie. “Just kidding. So how’ve you been?”

  They stood there talking for a bit, then Dougie drove them home in the police cruiser, which was nice of him. Sean thought it would’ve been even nicer if he hadn’t made them sit in the back like criminals behind the wire mesh. But rules were rules, and Dougie was only willing to bend some of them. They dropped Cormac off first, as no one was waiting up for Sean.

  “So, how’s that nephew of yours?” Dougie asked. “Hugh’s boy.”

  “Okay, except he’s got nothing to do. Won’t go to any camps that still have openings.”

  “Huh,” said Dougie, pulling into the driveway. “I’ve seen him walking up in the woods when I’m patrolling through the cemetery. If he likes that kind of thing, hiking and stuff, you might want to try Boy Scouts. Got a very active troop here in town.”

  Sean nodded. Suddenly he felt so sleepy he didn’t know if he’d make it up to bed. It was tempting to curl up under Viv’s magnolia in the front yard till morning. Dougie was saying a name and writing it on a piece of paper. He passed it over and Sean stuffed it in his jeans pocket.

  “Hey, um. I know it’s long past and all, but I never got a chance to say how sorry I was about Hugh. He was a great guy.”

  Sean nodded. Hugh would’ve found that hilarious—a cop calling him a great guy.

  “Never should’ve happened,” said Dougie. “And it wouldn’t have, except he was such a good dad.”

  Sean did make it to his bed. And in the twenty seconds before he fell into a snoring torpor, Dougie’s words scrolled over and over in his brain.

  CHAPTER 14

  The next day as Sean walked home from the Confectionary through the sprinkling rain, it was all he could do not to swing around lampposts like Gene Kelly. Chrissy Stillman had come in. They had bantered a bit, and this time Sean had had the presence of mind to notice that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Chrissy Stillman was not married.

  They made plans to have lunch the next day. After she left, fantasies fluttered constantly through Sean’s mind, quickly turning him into the most inept employee Cormac had ever hired.

  “I love you like a brother,” Cormac said, “but if I have to do one more void on this register, I’m gonna can your ass.”

  “Have pity,” Tree taunted. “He’s got a crush-induced learning disability.”

  The two of them laughed their caffeinated hyena laughs, but Sean didn’t care. Lunch. Tomorrow. With Chrissy Stillman.

  Back at the house, Kevin lay slumped on the love seat in the den watching TV, clicking through channels every few seconds. “Can we get a PlayStation?” he asked. Sean wasn’t sure what that was, but he
didn’t like the sound of it. What kind of kid needed a “station” to play at?

  Later when Deirdre buzzed in from Carey’s Diner, Kevin wandered into the kitchen. “Any syrup?” he asked half-heartedly. She grinned and pulled a couple of tiny bottles from her purse with a flourish. “You remembered!” he said.

  Sean gave Deirdre a what’s the deal look. “If people ask for real maple syrup instead of the corn syrup junk, we give them those,” she explained. “Half the time they don’t use them all, and he likes to drink them.” Kevin was gleefully lining up three little bottles on the kitchen table. He picked one up, unscrewed the cap, and took a sip.

  Aunt Vivian came in from the backyard, her straw gardening hat slightly askew on her head. She held the door for George and then turned to survey her kitchen. Suddenly she banged her hand down on the counter and yelled with surprising strength, “By God, I told you if I caught you with that again you’d be grounded for a month!”

  Her wrath seemed to be aimed at Kevin, and he stared back at her, his green eyes round with concern. “But . . . it’s just . . .” he stammered.

  “Don’t tell me ‘It’s just.’ I know what nip bottles are, Hugh. I’m not as naïve as you think!”

  Sean looked at Deirdre, whose face revealed as much shock as he felt. “Auntie Vivvy,” he said. “That’s not—”

  She turned on him. “And don’t try to shield him from a well-­deserved punishment, Sean! He’ll never learn, if you continue to defend him as you do.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Go to your room, both of you!”

  The dog started to bark, and Sean was worried his aunt might fall if she became any more agitated, so he took Kevin by the arm and steered him from the kitchen. As the door swung behind them, he heard Deirdre say, “Can I get you a glass of water, Auntie?”

  In the hallway, Sean turned to Kevin, hoping some reasonable explanation would occur to him, but all he could come up with was “That was really . . . weird.”

  Kevin nodded. “She does that sometimes. Calls me Dad’s name. Or sometimes Martin. That’s your dad, right?”

  “When did she start?”

  The boy’s brow wrinkled in thought. “Um, I don’t know. A while ago. But not too long.”

  Deirdre came through the door. “Jesussufferingchrist,” she murmured.

  “Has it happened before?” Sean questioned her.

  “No. I mean, she’s been off her game for a while. Doesn’t always seem entirely with it. But nothing like that. Could it be—?”

  “Very rare to have it crop up this late in life. And she doesn’t have the chorea.”

  “What’s that?” asked Kevin. Sean had almost forgotten he was there.

  “Huntington’s chorea. It’s a symptom of a disease that makes people kind of jerky and uncoordinated.” He looked at Deirdre. “It could be anything. It could be Alzheimer’s.”

  “She needs to be checked out.” Deirdre gave him a pointed look. Then she glanced at her watch. “I have to go to rehearsal.”

  Sean sighed. Of course you do, he thought.

  * * *

  Later that night he tried to talk to her about it. “Auntie,” he said. “Remember this afternoon when you got so mad at Kevin?”

  She neither answered nor met his gaze, but he could tell she was listening. “You thought he was Hugh,” Sean said gently. He watched her eyes blink as she took in this information. “He says it’s not the first time.” She glared at the kitchen cabinets as if they were the ones accusing her. It reminded him of a time when he’d had to tell a teenage boy he’d contracted HIV. The boy had been silently furious with Sean simply for saying the words.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” he said. Still she wouldn’t respond. “Aunt Vivvy, I think you know you’ve been slipping here and there.”

  “Well, I’m seventy-eight years old,” she retorted. “In my dotage, as it were.”

  He smiled. “You’ve been sharp as a tack your whole life,” he said. “Smarter than the rest of us combined.”

  “Don’t placate me.”

  “My point is, you’re smart enough to know that even an elder statesman like yourself doesn’t forget who she’s talking to for no good reason. We need to find out what that reason is, Auntie. It’s time to find a new doctor.”

  “Not for all the tulips in Holland,” she said.

  The conversation went on for a bit, Sean attempting to reason, sweet-talk, and intimidate her into a doctor’s visit. She held firm, saying only that it was her decision, and she chose not to. Eventually she said, “Sean, the world abounds with calamities much greater than mine, and I know you’re nearly ready to run off and find one. You’ll go, and I’ll have my way. Why don’t we save ourselves the trouble of a disagreement?”

  “Because Deirdre’s leaving, that’s why! She’s planning to move to New York next month. I’m sorry you have to learn about it like this—she should have told you herself by now. But if Deirdre and I are both gone, who’ll take care of things? Who’ll be there for Kevin?”

  She stared at him unblinking as she analyzed this new information. “Well,” she said finally, “apparently you will have your way. At some point I’ll be too dotty to know if I’m taken to a doctor or not. Either way, Kevin will be your charge. Yours and Deirdre’s. The two of you will have to decide what’s to become of him.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Lunch with Chrissy Stillman was a welcome distraction from the previous day’s debacle. Just looking at her, lithe and bouncy even while seated, brushed the thought of Sean’s foundering family from his mind. They ate at a little café in Belham Heights called Milano that served sandwiches on thick focaccia bread.

  She and her husband were newly separated, she told him. “You remember Rick, right? Star quarterback, captain of the football team . . . massive jerk?”

  Unfortunately, a surprised laugh burst out of Sean before he could suppress it. “You married Ricky Cavicchio?”

  His reaction was not well received. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and raised her chin. “He was ambitious and smart, and very . . . well . . . he was everything I was looking for.”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean . . . it’s just, you know, rare that high school romances actually . . .” He felt like a heel. It wasn’t her fault she’d been slow to realize what everyone else had seen all along. Love being blind and all that. Not that he had much experience with the matter himself.

  “I haven’t been with him since high school, for godsake—we broke up freshman year in college!” She seemed even more annoyed by the idea that she’d never been with anyone else. But then she reined herself in. “We got together after our tenth class reunion. It was obvious we still had feelings for each other.”

  Sean nodded supportively. “I’m sure that happens all the time.”

  “We were happy for many years,” she insisted. “Then he got all midlife-crisis-y.” She rolled her eyes and gave her head a little wag. Sean remembered her making just that same face in high school. “Affairs, big dumb purchases, getting creative with the taxes . . . After a while it’s more than you can handle. Finally I served him papers. That got his attention.” She pointed at Sean. “But hey—too late, is what I said.”

  They had twin girls who were freshmen in high school. One was the star goalie of her field hockey team, and the other was on the cheerleading squad. “I’m so proud of them,” said Chrissy with a little grin. “I hope I’m not gushing too much.”

  She had been gushing a bit, but Sean found it adorable—and admirable, really. She was a very committed mom. In fact, she’d decided against going back to the legal field—she’d been a plaintiff’s attorney before the girls were born—and was searching around for a line of work that would be more flexible so she could be home for them.

  “Right now I’m back and forth between Pilates instructor and dog trainer.
I don’t have any real education in either, but I have loads of experience,” she said.

  “You have experience training dogs?”

  “Oh, heck yeah! You know what I love to do? I go down to Man’s Best Friend—that shelter in Sudbury? And I pick the worst-looking, most badly behaved dog. I bring him home and clean him up and whip him into shape. Takes me about two months to turn a bad dog around.”

  “No kidding! How many dogs do you have?”

  “Right now? Let me think.” She murmured names to herself like Bowser and Slick, counting them off on her fingers. “Six? Yep. That’s right. I give them away a lot to good families. But only if I think they really deserve the dog and can be a responsible master.”

  “You don’t hear people talking about being a dog’s ‘master’ very much anymore.”

  “Well, then they’re probably not a very good one!” She did the head-wag eye-roll. “Dogs don’t need us to be their friends. They need us to be in charge, in control, and responsible. Domesticated dogs are not supposed to be the alpha—we are. People who can’t provide good alpha leadership don’t deserve a dog!” Her cheeks got pink as she talked.

  “Do you make house calls?” asked Sean. “Because as it so happens, we’ve got a very problematic dog at our house.” He’d never been so grateful for a bad dog in his life. George suddenly went from being a demonic hellhound to a lovable old grouch in his mind.

  Chrissy was delighted to work with George. “He can be my first client!”

  “You’ll have to let me know what your rates are.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t charge you.” Chrissy gave a coy little smile. “We’ll just call this a portfolio builder.”

  Sean smiled back. He’d be very happy to help her build her portfolio. Or anything else that needed constructing.