The Shortest Way Home

by Juliette Fay

  “I would’ve told her to shut the hell up!”

  Rebecca looked away. “I did tell you once. Junior year. She taunted me in the lunchroom, in front of half our class. You weren’t there, but I told you afterward.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t remember that.”

  “You told me to ignore it.” Rebecca’s voice got tight, as if she could still feel the sting of humiliation. “You said Chrissy was just playing, and I shouldn’t take it so personally.”

  And then he remembered.

  Becky had come out of the lunch room looking pale and shaken. He had asked her what was wrong, and she’d told him. He remembered feeling slightly annoyed by her thin-skinned-ness, and told her to brush it off . . . as if a public humiliation about your facial birth defect could be taken any way other than personally.

  “Oh, Beck,” he murmured, shaking his head. “God, what an ass.”

  She gave a little shrug. “You didn’t get it. No one ever called you names like that.”

  He was still reeling from retroactive guilt. “Lucky, I guess,” he muttered.

  “It wasn’t just luck. You had this sort of . . . it was like a protective coating. People knew they couldn’t get to you, so they didn’t bother.”

  “I was basically an orphan with a terminal disease, what more could they do to me?”

  “Plus you made it clear you had one foot out the door—things didn’t affect you.”

  “But they did.”

  She chuckled. “I’m not talking about things like Chrissy Stillman.”

  She was more relaxed now. His admission of guilt seemed to have irradiated the little ball of cancerous anger she’d obviously been carrying around all these years. “You know, in a way I should thank you—both of you,” she said. “People can be mean, whether you’ve got a funny-looking face or not. Part of growing up is learning how not to internalize it. And your reaction helped me realize that I did take things too personally.”

  “Who wouldn’t take something like that personally!”

  “No, but see, Becky Bubble wasn’t me. That was Chrissy’s creation, not mine. I had to get better at not accepting other people’s definitions.”

  “Like your parents’.”

  “Like anyone’s.”

  He studied her for a moment, the warm brown eyes, the mildly uncontrollable wavy hair . . . the bubble. He had stopped seeing it, he realized, had stopped registering it when he looked at her, and forgot that every time she met someone new they might reject or pity her. And if they were repulsed, she would know it. Her strength wasn’t only in her limbs.

  “You hate when I call you Becky, don’t you?” he said.

  She smiled. “No, it’s fine. I just decided I like Rebecca better. It’s pretty.”

  “I’ll try to call you Rebecca, but I might slip sometimes.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you call me, Sean. We’re friends—I’ll love you either way.”

  Yes, he thought. Me, too. Either way.

  And he wanted to reach over and touch her shoulder or squeeze her hand. But instead he pushed his plate toward her and said, “Here, eat my fries. Yours have enough salt to make you hypertensive.”

  CHAPTER 24

  On Sunday morning, Frank Quentzer called. “What’s your e-mail address?” he asked Sean. “I need to send the forms and packing list for camp.”

  “Oh. I don’t actually have one.”

  There were about three seconds of silence. “You don’t have e-mail.”

  “Yeah, I don’t really need it. I’ll give you my sister’s address and get it from her.”

  But when Sean powered up Deirdre’s laptop in the den, he ­realized he didn’t have her e-mail password and wouldn’t be able to access the documents without it. He went upstairs and knocked on her door. She didn’t answer, so he opened it and whispered, “Dee.”

  A muffled grunt came from the darkened recesses of the room.

  “Dee, what’s your password?” he whispered.

  “What?” she groaned.

  “I need your e-mail password so I can get something a guy is sending me.”

  “What the hell, Sean.”

  “Hey, it’s for Kevin.”

  “I don’t care if it’s for Andrew Lloyd Webber. I’m not giving you my password.”

  “Well, can you get up and do it for me then?”

  There was a lot of muttering about having one day to sleep in and lack of consideration. “Seriously,” she said, yanking on a robe. “What grown-up doesn’t have his own e-mail account? Oh, yeah—the same one who doesn’t have a cell phone.”

  She followed him downstairs to the den and printed out the forms. Then she headed back to her room. As she crossed through the living room, Sean heard George growl.

  “Shut it!” Deirdre barked. Then there was only the sound of her aggravated soles hitting each stair as she ascended.

  Kevin wandered into the den and saw Sean filling out the forms. “Wait, don’t!” he said.

  Sean looked up. “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure about going.”

  “What do you mean? I thought you decided.”

  Kevin slumped onto the couch. “Yeah, but I remembered something. Ivan said the middle school schedules come out next week. I have to be here.”

  “Can’t you just get it when you get back?”

  “No, because they come by e-mail, and they sent out this form asking what e-mail to send it to, but I didn’t know what to put, so I just wrote in that I’d go to the school and pick it up.”

  “I can do that.”

  Kevin considered this for a moment. “Are you allowed to? I mean, you’re not, like, in charge of me or anything.”

  And who is? thought Sean darkly. Look around, they’re dropping like flies. But he said, “I think it’d be okay, under the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “The circumstances of my going down there and saying, ‘I’m his uncle, give me the paper.’ ”

  Kevin liked this. “Yeah, give me that paper, or else!”

  “And if they won’t do it . . . I’ll . . . take out a squirt gun and squirt them in the face.”

  “Yeah, and they’ll be all like ‘Oh, no! Please stop! We’ll give you the paper!’ ”

  Sean laughed. “But I’ll keep squirting them anyway, just for fun.”

  “Yeah, then you’ll run out of water, and they’ll tackle you and call Officer Doug to take you to jail.”

  “Dougie Shaw? You know him?”

  “A little. He came by sometimes.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know . . . to say ‘Hi, how’re you doing?’ And he’d bring me stuff from the police station, like a plastic whistle and stuff.”

  “He was the one who told me about Boy Scouts,” said Sean.

  “Yeah, he knows all kinds of stuff like that.”

  The night Dougie had brought him home came back to Sean—the incongruity of seeing crazy Dougie Shaw in a police uniform . . . and saying what a good father Hugh had been. Sean wanted to know more about that. And yet part of him didn’t. Like Hugh’s pranks and shenanigans, his fatherhood had a sort of a semifictional quality in Sean’s mind—an interesting anecdote, but probably only half true. Something inside him didn’t want it to be fully factual.

  The camp packing list had only a few items that Kevin didn’t ­already have, the most critical of which was a Class A Boy Scout uniform. For this they had to go to the Scout Store in Southborough, about fifteen minutes away. Riding down the Mass Pike in the Caprice, Sean said idly, “So you’re pretty excited about middle school.”

  Kevin gave him a look that would melt rocks.

  “No?”

  “Have you seen it?”

 
“Well, not recently, but I did go there myself when I was your age.”

  “It’s huge. Like fifty times the size of Juniper Hill. And it’s made out of cement with really small windows—and they’re never open. And you have to use a locker room for gym and change your clothes and everything. It smells so bad in there I thought I was gonna puke!”

  “When were you there?”

  “They do this stupid tour thing. All the fifth graders go over on a bus and walk around and listen to stupid talks and stuff.” Kevin was getting really agitated. Sean didn’t know whether to let the boy blow off steam or to change the subject.

  “So apparently we have to get this sticky stuff to glue on the patches,” said Sean. “I’m pretty good at stitching up cuts, but I wouldn’t have a clue what to do with cloth.”

  “Did you ever eat lunch in the cafeteria when you went to middle school?”

  “Um, yeah. Pretty much every day.”

  “It’s so loud in there. Kids are screaming, and there’s like one teacher standing there telling them to settle down. But they don’t!”

  “Well . . . maybe there’s a corner where it’s a little quieter.”

  “I looked,” said Kevin. “There isn’t.”

  Sean took his eyes off the highway to glance over at Kevin. The boy’s head was turned toward the window. But Sean could see his chin quivering.

  “It’s normal to be nervous about going to a new place.”

  There was a little gasp from Kevin, as if his lungs couldn’t expand to take in the air. “I don’t like bad smells or loud sounds, and I”—­another little gasp—“I don’t like to be bumped. That’s what Ms. Lindquist says. She says it’s okay not to want to roughhouse.” His narrow shoulders began to quiver. “But that’s what they do. They bump into each other all the time in the hallways, and bang each other into lockers, and do high fives—I saw it!”

  Kevin began to sob, his body shaking against the seat, the reverberation of his pain filling the car. Sean felt sick. He had no idea what to do—the kid had to go to school, and he was right—there’d be a lot of nasty pubescent smells and shrieking and banging into one another.

  The next exit was theirs, and Sean almost missed it. The Scout Store was a few minutes down the road, and he pulled into a space in the parking lot away from the other cars. Kevin’s crying had subsided a little, the gasps for air coming with less frequency.

  “Kev,” said Sean. “It’ll be okay.”

  Kevin shrugged off this lame attempt at comfort and pulled his T-shirt up to wipe his face.

  “What did Ms. Lindquist do to help?”

  “Nothing really. She just talked to me.”

  “Just talked?”

  “Yeah, and sometimes when she knew it was getting too much, she would give me a look, like she understood, and I would feel better.”

  “Maybe there’ll be somebody like that at middle school.”

  “No,” said Kevin. “There won’t.” He wiped his face again and got out of the car.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Why don’t you call his teacher?” Cormac suggested. The waitress set a plate of nachos on the table, the cheese oozing down the mountain of tortilla chips like an orange mudslide.

  “Good thinking. But aren’t the teachers gone for the summer?”

  “Everyone’s reachable by e-mail.”

  “Except me, apparently.”

  “Jesus, Spin, why don’t you get a Gmail account or something? It couldn’t be easier.”

  “Because I don’t want a fucking e-mail account, okay? I like my life spam-free.”

  Cormac snorted a laugh. “You like your life complication-free.”

  “Be honest. What guy doesn’t?”

  Cormac took a long pull of his Sam Adams while he considered this. “Maybe most guys think they do, until they get to a certain age. Speaking of which . . . Chrissy?”

  Sean lifted a shoulder dismissively.

  “Hold the phone—Chrissy Stillman gets a shrug?”

  Sean told him about Becky Bubble. Cormac wasn’t surprised. “I heard her say it once.”

  “You’re kidding me. What’d you do?”

  “Told her to knock it off. But what did she care? I wasn’t anyone she wanted to impress.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything when I asked if I could bring her to dinner?”

  “Because that was a lifetime ago, and hopefully she’s matured. Besides, what was I going to say—no? You’ve been in love with her your whole life.”

  “Infatuated, maybe, not in love. I’ve never been in love with anyone.”

  “Okay, tomato, tomahto. Whatever. You had it bad for her, and everyone knew it.”

  Everyone including Becky, thought Sean. The realization stung, and he felt the shame of his thoughtlessness all over again.

  “So that’s it?” asked Cormac. “Becky Bubble killed your crush?”

  “I don’t know—I haven’t officially ended it or anything. But, I mean, Jesus. Becky Bubble? That’s pretty fucking cold.”

  Cormac took another sip of his beer, but the smile on his lips made it hard for him to drink much. “Know what Barb said?”

  “What?”

  “She said, ‘If you go around telling people you’re an old soul—you aren’t.’ ”

  Sean burst out laughing and clinked his bottle on Cormac’s. “Love that girl.”

  “Back off,” said Cormac with a grin. “She’s all mine.”

  * * *

  The next day, Sean and Kevin were on the front porch playing five-card stud. Deirdre had taught Kevin the game, and it soon became clear that they’d played often enough for Kevin to get pretty good at it. Sean was happy to play, except it annoyed him that Deirdre had encouraged the use of a lot of wild cards. “I can barely keep track of what’s a real number and what could be any number!” he complained.

  “Auntie Dee likes it. She says if you get dealt a bad hand, it gives you more of a shot.”

  Sean was considering this when Chrissy pulled up. “Geez, she didn’t even call first.”

  “Yeah, she did. You were in the bathroom.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I forgot. Plus I thought you’d be happy to see her.” Kevin gave a gooey look. “Like you always are.”

  Sean flicked a card at him, and Kevin giggled. “Uh-huh,” he teased.

  “Hey, there!” Chrissy called, strolling up the walk in a pair of tight jeans and a short T-shirt. “Couple of handsome gamblers up on the porch, I see.” Her straight white teeth gleamed.

  “Hi, Chrissy,” said Sean.

  “Hi,” said Kevin, with an equal lack of enthusiasm.

  George picked up her head, ears cocked. She looked at Kevin, then back to Chrissy.

  “And there’s my Georgie-girl. Come on over here and give me some lovin’, girlfriend.”

  George stood, then looked at Kevin again, clearly confused about what to do. Sean stifled a smile, watching the world’s most cocksure dog have a moment of utter uncertainty. Kevin gave her a scratch behind the ears, and George lay her head on his lap.

  “Look at that! She knows you’re in charge. Great job, Kevin,” said Chrissy, but her smile didn’t seem entirely genuine. “Want to go for a walk? I can give you some advanced tips.”

  George looked at Kevin. Kevin looked at Sean. George started to whine. Kevin raised his eyebrows at Sean.

  Sean nodded. “Why don’t you take George for a stroll by yourself?” Boy and dog rose as one and headed quickly off the porch.

  Chrissy put her hand on her hip. “What’s this about, Sean?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m just not sure they need any more training.”

  “I’m not dumb.” She gave the little head-wag eye-roll. “Something’s
bothering you. Is it last week? Was I too forward?”

  “No, not at all. I just . . . I don’t think we, uh . . . You’re great but . . .”

  Oh, what the hell, he thought. “I heard something about you—something mean you said in high school. Repeatedly.”

  “In high school? That was quite a while ago, Sean.”

  “True. And yet it still really bothers me. Becky Feingold—you remember her.”

  “No, I can’t say I do.”

  “You called her Becky Bubble.”

  Sean watched the realization dawn on her. “The shy girl with the face thing,” she said.

  “Yeah, Chrissy, ‘the face thing.’ You teased her all through school about a congenital cranial defect. Even in high school, when you should’ve known better. You made her miserable.”

  Chrissy’s eyes flicked back and forth, as if she were not only remembering, but seeing the misery. “I forgot about that,” she murmured. “It was pretty mean.”

  “It was mean? That’s all you can say?”

  “For godsake, Sean, I’m agreeing with you!” She was on the defensive now. “And I’m genuinely sorry—I wish I’d never said it. If anyone treated one of my girls like that, I’d go after them with a sand wedge. But it was twenty-five years ago! What’s the statute of limitations on name calling?”

  She had a point, and Sean hesitated. How long can you hold someone accountable for something she did as a teenager? As he stared at her, pondering just exactly how much he could reasonably hate her, he watched her posture begin to slump, as if she were melting just a little.

  Her body gave a sudden twitch. “God,” she muttered. Her eyes, utterly devoid of their signature perky gleam, flicked to Sean. “Do you ever get a glimpse of yourself—not the main part, but some horrible little corner—and you just feel sick?”

  He wasn’t sure if he ever had. But her self-hatred, however momentary, softened the edges of his righteous anger.

  “I was seriously bitchy sometimes,” she said. “But you have to believe I would never do anything like that now.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t,” he conceded.

  “We’ve all grown up, haven’t we?”

  More or less, he thought.