The Shortest Way Home

by Juliette Fay

  “Can’t you give me another chance?”

  How could he say no without seeming just as hard-hearted as she herself had once been? He nodded, and she came up on the porch to wait for Kevin to return. They talked, halting and careful at first, but then she made some little joke about her ex-husband and he found himself smiling, and the storm surge of his aversion to her began to recede a little.

  Kevin and George rounded the curve of the street then, side by side, the leash slack between them, as if it were unnecessary, a mere accessory meant to make others feel more secure that the big shepherd-lab was under the control of a sensible human. Sean watched them, the loop of the leash hanging loosely from Kevin’s fingers, the dog stopping to sniff occasionally and then trotting to get back in stride with the skinny freckled boy.

  A car went by. A man at the wheel. Thick neck and granite-gray hair, head turned toward the house. Sean’s glance shifted to him a nanosecond after the man turned away again. The car passed Kevin and George and continued up the road.

  CHAPTER 26

  “What did you do to yourself?”

  “It wasn’t on purpose, for godsake.” Sean gritted his teeth as Rebecca’s fingers probed the throbbing almond-sized knot by his shoulder blade. Between groans, he described his day to her: eight hours on his feet at the Confectionary, followed by a hike through the woods with Kevin and George. “And then, because I was feeling so great—ow!—I decided to go for a run. I’ve been trying to exercise more.”

  “Why were you feeling so great?”

  “I don’t know. I was just happy. Don’t you ever just feel happy for no reason? Damn that hurts!” It was hot in the room, and so crowded with furniture, there was no air circulation. Sean could feel beads of sweat forming under his chest.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “But usually something kicks it off, like beautiful weather, or a really sincere compliment from a client.” She moved off the knot, kneading around it with the heels of her palms, which helped to dissipate the agony.

  “Okay, well maybe there was something,” he admitted. Her pressing stopped for a beat then resumed, her fingers traveling down opposite sides of his spine. He waited for her to ask, but she was quiet. It was as if she didn’t want to know.

  But he had to tell her, pride nudging him to continue. “Chrissy dropped by yesterday.”

  Still no word from above. Had she heard him? “Chrissy Stillman from high school.”

  “Oh, that Chrissy,” she said, and it felt like she was using something pointy and hard, possibly her knuckle, to burrow up under his ribs.

  “Yeah, that Chrissy, and can you try not to pierce my kidney, please?”

  She backed off a little, but not completely. Sean took a breath. “I told her off.”

  “You what?”

  “I told her I’d heard how mean she’d been to you. And she felt terrible.”

  “Jesus, Sean. Are you kidding me?” She did not sound happy or grateful. She actually sounded kind of pissed off.

  “No, I . . . Hold on a minute—I thought you’d be glad about how sorry she is.”

  “Glad? It was twenty-five years ago! Why would you bring that up with her now? Like I’m still crying about it, still . . . still some pathetic little loser with a screwed-up face! Are you really that clueless?” The heels of both palms slammed into the small of his back. Sean suspected it was not an entirely therapeutic move.

  Then her hands came off his back altogether, and he imagined that they were on her hips, just like Chrissy’s had been. “Apparently I am that clueless,” he said. “Because I actually thought you’d be happy that I finally stood up for you.”

  That seemed to halt her fury, and her hands returned to rest on his back. “Well, thanks for that,” she muttered. “But you can see how it might be slightly infuriating, too, right? How it sort of compounds the patheticness factor?”

  “Yes, okay,” he said. “But you said it yourself—being pathetic isn’t you. That’s Chrissy’s creation. And I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I hope I speak for both of us when I say, who honestly gives a shit what Chrissy Stillman thinks?”

  She laughed. Such a sweet, melodious sound.

  “And by the way,” he said. “Your energy got totally unstable for a minute there. I could really feel it.”

  She laughed again, and the flat of her hand came down hard on his skin, which felt almost as good as a massage.

  * * *

  After he got dressed, he called to her. “Come back in here for a minute.” She popped her head in the door. “This dresser’s toast,” he said.

  “Sean, I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can. You have more muscle mass than I do.”

  “Well, I’m able,” she said, “I just don’t think—”

  “Then don’t think. Do as you’re told and pick up that end.”

  They shuffled the clunky brown dresser into the hallway. After hemming and hawing for a few minutes, with Sean threatening to shove the damn thing down the stairs, Rebecca finally decided the best place for it was her parents’ bedroom. They hauled it down to the end of the hallway and into the only room in the house Sean had never seen.

  Sol and Betty’s bedroom was a study in rusts and greens, with a lumpy satin bedspread beaming its polyester shine from the king-sized bed. The headboard was upholstered in a dizzying geometric pattern of avocado green squares and orange circles.

  “Holy mother of God,” murmured Sean.

  “I know.” Rebecca sighed. “It really makes me wonder if I’m ­adopted.”

  They went down to the kitchen and Rebecca got out some vegetables and hummus. Sean sliced up celery while she seeded a red pepper. “I used to beg my parents to have another kid,” she admitted. “I think they ran into some fertility trouble after I came along. They used to say, ‘We have you. Why would we ever want anyone else?’ ”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Yeah, a little too sweet. And completely transparent. Like I needed to be bolstered up so badly that I would actually believe such nonsense.”

  “Why were you dying for a sibling?”

  “Well, it always looked like families with lots of kids were having way more fun than we were. And I figured siblings would sort of diffuse the intensity—they couldn’t watch me every minute of the day because there’d be other kids to hover over. Once I figured out they were too old, I used to beg them to adopt.”

  Sean dipped a wedge of cucumber into the hummus. “I’m available,” he said.

  “For what—adoption?”

  “Yeah, I don’t have parents, you don’t have siblings. It’s the perfect solution.”

  “Okay, poof,” she said. “You’re adopted.”

  He grinned. “This means I have a say in how we handle the house. I’m calling Salvation Army in the morning to haul half the furniture away. Assuming they’d actually want any of it.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re hilarious.”

  “Don’t worry.” He patted her hand. “I’ll be the one to break it to Mom and Dad.”

  They snacked on the vegetables, and Sean told her about the trip to the Scout Store with Kevin. “He totally fell apart, and I have no idea how to help him. From what I remember, being loud and slamming into one another is pretty much what middle school is all about.”

  “Has he always had it?”

  “Had what?”

  “A sensory integration problem.”

  “What is that? I’ve never even heard of it.”

  “Really? It’s pretty common pediatric stuff.”

  “Yeah, well, the pediatric stuff I’m familiar with is more along the lines of malnutrition, burns from falling into fires, and preventable childhood diseases.”

  Rebecca described what she’d learned about it in massage school—that it’s gene
rally associated with being easily overstimulated, and not much is known about its root causes.

  “There are all kinds of interesting ways to treat it,” she said. “Massage, chiropractic, various products. For instance, does he sleep with a lot of blankets?”

  “Yeah, a ton. Even in this heat.”

  “Physical pressure is very calming to the senses. You could get him a weighted blanket.”

  “So this is real, this sensory thing—they have devices for it and everything?”

  “Absolutely real. And it looks like Kevin’s a clear example.”

  Sean’s assessment of the boy shifted in that moment, from merely odd to someone with a definable medical problem.

  “I need to find a cassette player, too,” he said. “I guess my brother would play soothing music for him when he got overcooked. Kevin still has the tape, but the tape player broke and my aunt threw it out.”

  “Oh!” Rebecca jumped up. “We have one! When I was a kid I used to love books on tape, and I know the player’s around here somewhere.” She grinned at him. “Because as you know, bro, we never throw anything out.” She began opening overstuffed drawers and cabinets, without luck. Then she said, “I know where it is.” She took the stairs two at a time and was back in a matter of moments with an oversized cassette player. “My mother’s a huge Barbra Streisand fan. She would always listen to Barbra tapes in bed.”

  Sean chuckled. “You’d need something to distract you in that room.”

  Rebecca flipped the switch, and two tiny wheels began to turn behind the clear plastic casing. “Jingle bell, jingle bell, jing-jang-gul,” sang Barbra.

  “A Jew singing a Christmas song,” chuckled Sean. “Very ecumenical.”

  “Oh, yes. We’re open to all creeds, here in the Feingold house,” said Rebecca with a smile. “We even adopted a nice Irish Catholic boy.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The hall clock said eleven-fifteen when Sean came in that night. As usual Aunt Vivian had left on the small lamp with the bulbous glass shade that sat squat and homely on a side table. The rest of the house was dark. The phone ringing in the kitchen seemed like a fire alarm in the silence.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello.” A heavy voice, old and cracked like a scratched record. “Who’m I speaking to?”

  Sean’s heart started to pound, and he didn’t know why, exactly. The voice gave him a startled, panicky feeling. And there was something else. Anger. It was as if he were bracing for a fight. “Who’s calling?” he said sharply.

  “Is this Sean . . . or Hugh? I ask you to tell me.”

  “Who the hell is this,” Sean demanded.

  “Ah,” said the voice. “Is it you then, Sean?”

  Sean dropped into a kitchen chair like a bag of rocks. He wanted to hang up. And he wanted to crawl through the phone line toward the voice.

  “Sean, it’s your da.”

  “Jesussufferingchrist,” muttered Sean. “You’re alive.”

  “Yes, son. And I need to see you. All three of you.”

  You need . . . ? YOU need?

  “I should say,” Da corrected himself, “I very much want to see you. If you’d be willing.”

  “Jesus, Da.”

  “You owe me nothing, son. Not a kind word. Not a welcome. But I hope you might be willing just to see me, and maybe talk a little. I’ll ask no more of ye.”

  Crazy things ran through Sean’s brain. Hugh’s dead! he wanted to scream. And Deirdre’s leaving! Viv’s losing her mind and Kevin’s got problems I’ve never even heard of!

  “Please,” he said, feeling weak. “I can’t even—”

  “I know it, boy. It’s a shock. And I’ve put it off for so long. And then it came to me that maybe it’s just what you’d been wanting—for your da to call and ask.”

  For my da to call . . . Of course it’s what he’d wanted. To be somebody’s son, cared for and encouraged. To be just a little less alone in the world. It’s what he’d been desperate for. . . .

  Twenty-five years ago.

  And now? After having been abandoned when the need was greatest?

  “I don’t know,” he said. And truthfully, he didn’t.

  “Okay,” said the old man. “I’ll give you some time. It’s the least I can do.”

  Sean sat there in the dark, moonlight sifting in through the sheer curtains, the receiver gripped in his hand like a weapon. It wasn’t until the line went dead and a steady beep hummed that he was certain his father was no longer on the other end.

  Gone again.

  CHAPTER 28

  Sean woke early to a pounding rain. In the half consciousness of waking he imagined his father standing out in the downpour. Because he didn’t actually live anywhere, did he? Had he simply made his life aboard ships for the last quarter century? Or had he bought a house or rented an apartment somewhere? Had he signed a lease or mortgage and looked at the address listed, and said to himself, This is not where I live. I live in Belham, Massachusetts. I have a family there. They don’t live at this address. And then signed the goddamned paper anyway?

  Where the hell on this big blue ball of misery called Planet Earth was he?

  Sean couldn’t stay in bed, remembering that it had been his father’s bed at one time, and feeling as if the mattress would rise up at any moment and attach itself to Sean like some sort of blanket-shrouded succubus. He stood in his boxers, shivering in the dampness that had seeped into the house. At one hip, the fabric of his boxers was separating from the waistband, and he randomly thought about throwing them away. Or I could go somewhere where holey boxers are the norm—where having boxers at all is a luxury . . . Yeah, that was looking better and better.

  He slid them to the floor, put on a pair of running shorts he’d purchased recently and a T-shirt and sneakers. The hell with his back, he was going for a good hard run. When he stepped into the hallway, he glanced down toward Aunt Vivvy’s room. George lay outside the door as usual. She picked up her head and looked at him. He found himself walking toward her. She stood, a barely audible growl in the back of her throat.

  “Don’t fucking start with me,” he muttered at her, and knocked on the door.

  “Who is it?” came the weak but aggravated response.

  “It’s Sean. I need to speak to you.”

  Sean turned the knob and entered. Aunt Vivvy was drawing herself up to a sitting position in her bed, the faded Lanz nightgown slightly askew around her tiny frame.

  “What could this possibly be about?” she demanded.

  “My father called last night.”

  She stared at him for a moment, assessing the veracity of the statement. “Here? You spoke to him?”

  “Yes.” Sean sat down on the edge of her bed.

  Aunt Vivvy looked away. “What does he want?”

  “He wants to see me. Actually all of us. Apparently he doesn’t know Hugh’s unavailable.”

  A look of mild disgust. “Don’t be dramatic. One Bette Davis in the family is enough.”

  “Forgive me, but this is actually dramatic. For all I knew, the guy was dead!”

  A whine outside the door from George was shushed by both of them.

  “Aunt Vivian,” Sean said, trying to rein in his temper. “I need to know what happened.”

  “He left.”

  Sean slammed his hand down on the chenille bedspread, which caused no sound, of course, but made the point nonetheless. She narrowed her eyes at him, the glint of the light saber glowing behind them. “Think, Sean,” she said. “You know almost as much as I do. The drinking, the crying. He couldn’t take it, and he left.”

  “When. How. What was the precipitating event, Vivian. I may have the gist, but you have the details, and I want them.”

  “How can you be sure that I’ll even remember them
correctly?”

  “Jesus, I can’t be sure of anything, can I? Just tell me what you know—what you think you know—and we’ll start there.”

  She stared off for a moment, her bony fingers skimming slowly across the white-on-white pattern of the chenille. “How old were you when we told you about your mother’s condition?”

  “Twelve.” He remembered it more vividly than he wanted to. Auntie Vivvy and his father sitting there, his aunt doing all the talking, his father looking as if he’d just been Tasered.

  Sean had asked, “Could I get it?”

  Auntie Vivvy had looked to his father, urging him with her light-saber eyes to say something, contribute in some way. “Yes, Sean,” she’d said finally. “It’s an inherited trait, like your brown eyes, which you obviously got from her, instead of the green from your father.”

  Da’s eyes were the color of sea glass, which Sean had always thought was kind of cool, since his father spent so much time at sea. But those eyes had been lowered, staring at his huge callused hands.

  “Could Hugh get it, or Deirdre?” Six-year-old Hugh had been swinging by his knees from a limb of the magnolia tree. Sean had caught sight of him through the front window. He hadn’t said anything. Auntie Vivvy hated when Hugh climbed her trees.

  One-year-old Deirdre had sat on the floor nearby, babbling and clapping to herself. Sean remembered wishing he were little, like her, and didn’t have to hear all this Huntington’s crap.

  “Each of you has a fifty percent chance of carrying the gene,” Auntie Vivvy had said matter-of-factly, the way she said most things. But it had delivered a jolt of understanding—Sean realized what she was really saying was they could all end up like their mother—twitchy and weird, saying things that didn’t make sense. “There’s no way to know until symptoms emerge,” said his aunt. “But that wouldn’t be until you’re older, so you don’t need to worry about it now.”

  Right, he remembered thinking at the time. I’m twelve, but I’m not a frickin’ idiot.

  There in her bedroom, Aunt Vivvy was remembering this scene, too. “He never said a word. I had to do everything. Such a big strong man,” she scoffed, “weak as a baby.”