The Shortest Way Home

by Juliette Fay

  He sat up in bed. “What did I do?”

  “Nothing. It’s fine. You’re just you. It’s not like you ever tried to hide it.”

  “Hide what?”

  “That you like me, but not enough.”

  “Enough for what? To want to be with you every second of the day? Because I do.”

  “Enough to do more than hang out and have sex, Sean. Enough to stay.”

  Which of course silenced him. He thought of Cormac talking about Barb’s desire for a child with his genes and asking, What’s the comeback for that? Absolutely nothing.

  “This isn’t healthy for me, Sean. I thought it was—like it might be some kind of closure for how in love with you I was in high school. But it’s not. I’m thinking crazy thoughts, like, ‘Maybe if I were more like Chrissy . . .’ Or ‘Maybe if my face—’ ”

  “No!” he said, standing up and coming toward her. “That’s not—”

  But she backed away from him. “I know. But don’t you see why that makes it worse? I know it’s crazy, but I’m thinking it anyway.”

  He stood there stunned. Because he did see why that made it worse. And he couldn’t believe he could cause someone that kind of pain. He wasn’t used to . . . affecting people like this.

  “I’m sorry.” He meant it so sincerely, but knowing, too, how meager a response it was.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I were so much . . . cooler than this.”

  “Rebecca, you’re perfect. I’m the—”

  “Oh, my God, please don’t do the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ line. We both know it’s you. But it’s also me for knowing you so well and wanting you anyway. So let’s just not say it.”

  They stared at each other in the dimness, and he could see the reflection of light from a streetlamp on her dampened face. He knew that if he offered the only kind of comfort that he had ever been good at—physical comfort, palliative care—she was likely to reject it. But he did it anyway, because how much worse could it get than this?

  He put his arms around her and was surprised when she didn’t pull away. He held her as close as he dared and said, “You are everything that’s good.”

  “Please shut up,” she whispered. And he knew that at least it was better than the other thing she could have said, which was But still not good enough.

  CHAPTER 45

  Sean came to consciousness in his own bed like a man suddenly dropping through the ice of a frozen pond. The memory of the previous night hit him before he’d even opened his eyes. It was over with Rebecca. In every way. She had told him she couldn’t see him until she got herself back on solid ground. That’s how she’d put it. As if his very presence were a kind of emotional tar pit, sucking her down into some dark lifeless place.

  She hadn’t blamed him. And yet she’d called their relationship “unhealthy.” It was only a whisper away from saying that he was bad for her. He had never been The Bad Guy before. Certainly he’d disappointed women occasionally. There had been one or two, prone to drama, who’d professed their love for him, demanding to know why he wouldn’t return it. And he’d felt sorry for them, despite what he’d known to be a very clear message: This is casual. It is not love.

  Rebecca had demanded nothing. And he’d given her everything he had. His innermost thoughts. His worship of her body. His utter admiration and pride in her. He’d loved her and it showed. He had to admit that now. The fact that he’d never said the words seemed now to be as relevant as making a promise with your fingers crossed behind your back. A technicality that counted only among children.

  And there was that guy—the old boyfriend. Maybe now that Sean was The Bad Guy, this jerk had been promoted to The Good Guy. Gainfully employed, centrally located, saying all the right things simply because he knew how. He’d been in an actual normal relationship with her, for godsake—he had the edge!

  But she was too smart to go out with some loser who didn’t appreciate her, wasn’t she? He couldn’t be all that bad, because at some point Rebecca had chosen him. But why did they break up? It was hard enough to be without her, but he found it unbearable to lose her to someone who might not get how great she was. As if he had a choice.

  * * *

  Why he had agreed to take Kevin to meet his father at IHOP, he couldn’t for the life of him recall. Just pulling into the parking lot, remembering the dread he’d felt only a week ago when he’d faced his father the first time, compounded that drowning-in-ice-water feeling he’d been having all morning. He was grateful that Kevin was too anxious to notice.

  Da was too excited to notice, at first. He reached his hand out to shake Kevin’s, grinning, studying every hair, every freckle. As Kevin slid into the booth, Da gestured surreptitiously to his eyes and murmured, “Just like . . .”

  Hugh.

  “Yeah.” Sean nodded and sat beside Kevin.

  The older man asked his grandson about school and camp and the dog. Sean monitored this interaction as if he were sitting in a high school English composition class, struggling to focus on what he knew he would be tested on later, but unable to keep his mind from wandering out the window, across the sports fields and over the trees.

  “And your Aunt Deirdre,” he heard Da say. “I understand she’s to be in a play.”

  “Yeah, we’re going to see her tonight. She’s got a really big part. But not the biggest part. That has to be a guy, because the play is called Joseph and . . . something about a jacket.”

  “Where is the theater?”

  “In Worcester. She practically lives there.”

  Sean studied his father, who was assiduously avoiding eye contact as he stirred sugar into his tea. Kevin excused himself to go to the bathroom.

  “You can’t go,” Sean told Da. “Deirdre’s already freaked out enough. If you show up, she’ll blow a gasket.”

  “She said she didn’t want to see me. She never said I couldn’t see her.”

  Sean squinted at him, annoyed. “You’re kidding me with this. Really? You want to play semantics with the grown daughter you haven’t seen since she was in preschool?”

  When Da looked up, his gaze was lit with anger. “No, I want to see her. I want to lay eyes on my baby girl before I move across the ocean and die.”

  “Don’t be dramatic. You could have seen her anytime in the last twenty-eight years. And don’t pull the old man stuff on me, either. We’re all going to die.”

  Da scrutinized him. “Rough night?” he said.

  He thinks I’m hungover. Sean let out a bitter snort. “You could say.”

  Da studied him a moment longer. “Well,” he concluded, “not from drinking. Bad news of some kind?”

  Oh, what the hell, thought Sean. He could play twenty questions or he could just say it.

  “I was seeing someone. She broke it off last night.”

  Da nodded, his face softening slightly, but thankfully not to the point of pity. “I’m sorry.”

  Sean shrugged, but he supposed that Da knew better than to believe the matter was shrug-able.

  When Kevin returned, Da shifted the conversation to his upcoming trip. “It’s a beautiful place, really,” he told Kevin. “Great rolling hills and green pastures. A place that heals the soul.”

  “What’s the highest point?” Kevin asked, his lips sticky from syrup.

  “That would be Carrauntoohil, in County Kerry, where I was born. It’s a great one for climbing.”

  Kevin’s eyes shone with interest. “What makes it so great?”

  “Ah, you have to scramble up the Devil’s Ladder to get to the top.”

  “Why do they call it that?”

  “Well, not for being a stroll in the garden, lad, that’s for sure!”

  “Have you done it?”

  “Once. Just before I came to America when I was ni
neteen. I wanted to go to the very top of Ireland before I left it, so me and some of the lads hitchhiked down and made the climb. The weather turned sour at the peak and we very nearly froze to death—even though it was May!”

  “That’s awesome,” breathed Kevin.

  “You’ll have to see it yourself someday.”

  As the boy’s questioning gaze turned to him, Sean realized a campaign had been waged by the wily old man. Waged and practically won.

  “Could we go?” asked Kevin.

  “Ah, Kev,” Sean said wearily. “It’s not exactly like going to ­Connecticut.”

  “The highest point in Ireland, Uncle Sean. The Devil’s Ladder!”

  Sean looked at his father, the man’s eyes wide with false innocence.

  “Don’t give me that,” Sean told him. “You’re sinking pretty low, turning the kid on me.”

  “I’ve done no such thing, and I resent the implication.”

  Sean snorted. “Right!”

  “Just think for a moment,” said his father. “Think of the boy and yourself, traveling the land of the faeries with me. It’d be grand!”

  “And don’t turn on the Irish charm. I’m half Irish—it doesn’t work on me.”

  Kevin watched this sparring intently, as if the outcome had significance far beyond vacation plans. Sean looked at him, at Hugh’s eyes silently hoping.

  “It might do you good to get away for a bit,” Da said, his tone mild, his meaning clear.

  Yes, indeed it might. In fact there was nothing Sean wanted more at the moment than to go far away. “School starts in two weeks,” he relented. “We could do one week, tops.”

  Kevin and Da let out simultaneous whoops of joy that made pancake eaters at other booths turn their heads and smile.

  * * *

  They went straight to the Belham library, got onto a computer, and filled out the online passport forms for Kevin. Then they stopped off at the house for Kevin’s birth certificate, went to the post office, submitted the forms, and had his picture taken. For a steep fee, the passport would arrive in two days.

  When Sean saw the cost of the expedited passport and then the airline tickets, he murmured to his father, “Are you sure you can cover all this? I can help, but money’s tight on our end. I’m working at a coffee shop at the moment.”

  “I was never happier to pay a bill in all my life” was all he said.

  Later that afternoon, after Da had gone back to his hotel and Sean and Kevin had returned to the house, the phone rang. “Is Kevin there?” asked a boy’s voice.

  Sean handed it over and dawdled in the kitchen, constructing his turkey sandwich with unnecessary care. The caller apparently asked what classes Kevin would have, and the two of them determined they would have science and drama together. Then the conversation circled around to a tent full of farts, and Sean quickly determined that the kid on the other end was Ivan from Boy Scouts.

  “Sure, I can hang out,” said Kevin. “But it’ll have to be in the next couple days.” He waited for the obvious question this begged, a proud little smile playing around his cheeks. “I’m leaving on Sunday for a week. Me and my uncle and my grandfather are going to Ireland.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Sean assumed that Deirdre was working at Carey’s Diner, but when she came downstairs, auburn locks still sticky with hairspray, vestiges of stage makeup around her eyes and hairline, he realized she’d been sleeping all day.

  “How’d opening night go?” he asked.

  “I didn’t suck,” she said, slumping into a kitchen chair.

  “Good girl.” Sean poured a glass of orange juice and set it on the table in front of her.

  She squinted up at him. “Is this for me?”

  “Yeah, you look like you could use some sugar and vitamin C.”

  “Thanks,” she murmured. “No one gets me juice.”

  Maybe it was a commiserating response to his own recent reminder of being alone in the world, but Sean felt a surge of sympathy for his sister in that moment. No one got her juice . . . or anything else. As little parenting as Sean had had, Deirdre’d had virtually none. And for all the grief she’d given him over the last two months, he felt forgiveness descend on him like an unexpected blessing.

  “How about an egg?” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, how do you like them? I’ll make you any kind you want.”

  “Scrambled,” she said. “Geez, I didn’t realize how hungry I was till you said that. I’m freaking starving.”

  Sean started to laugh. It was so . . . Deirdre.

  “Yeah, I know.” She chuckled. “Drama, drama, drama.”

  He pulled out a pan and she told him about last night, about how her heart had pounded so hard before her entrance she thought she’d need a defibrillator, about that ecstatic feeling of wanting to give every­thing to the audience—everything. To rock their world with her voice and body and emotion. To knock it out of the park.

  They had clapped after her number—hard, she thought, but not so hard that their palms hurt. Enthusiastically, but not wildly. And she had been thrilled and relieved that they hadn’t given her golf claps, polite but subdued. But at the same time disappointed that they hadn’t stood on their seats, screaming and crying and throwing roses onstage.

  “Have you ever felt like crazy happy and deeply depressed at the same time?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “At work. You’re living in these horrible conditions, and your patients are living in even worse. But then you do something—clean out an infected gash or give some antibiotics, and you know without it they would’ve eventually died, but since you were there, they won’t. And they know it, too, and they are so grateful, Dee. So joyful to live another day. It’s inspiring and heartbreaking all rolled up in one.”

  Deirdre nodded. And she smiled at him—a real, loving, sisterly smile. And his heart opened to her all over again.

  He set the plate of eggs down before her with a fork and a napkin, and sat down, too. “Listen,” he said. “I should’ve talked to you about this before. I’ll be honest, I’m a little whacked out because I just got dumped last night.”

  “You liked her, huh.”

  “Yeah. A lot. Too much, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “Been there,” she said, nodding, and he wondered about it. Of course she’d been with guys, he figured. He was about to ask her how she’d handled it, but she cut in first with, “So what’d you neglect to tell me, in your kicked-to-the-curb state?”

  “I took Kevin to see Da yesterday.”

  Her eyes went half-lidded with false disinterest. “That has nothing to do with me.”

  “Yeah, okay, let me finish. So they kind of hit it off. And Da’s been bugging me to go to Ireland with him. I said absolutely not about ten different times, and then the two of them wore me down.”

  “You’re leaving? Goddamn it, Sean, you can’t just fucking—”

  “Whoa, I know, okay, I know. So here’s my proposal, and you can accept or reject it, but just hear me out first. Kevin and Da and I leave for Ireland on Sunday, the day your show ends. Would you be willing to stay for one week, look after Viv and the dog, and then you can sail off into the sunset when we get back?”

  She stewed on this, eyes simmering with suspicion. “So what does that mean, exactly? I can leave because you’re staying?”

  “Yeah. I’ll stay until I figure out what to do. I’m going to try and hire some kind of housekeeper-caretaker.”

  “Someone good, Sean. Someone who can really deal with all of it, not just toss groceries in the fridge and keep the bathroom clean. You have to promise.”

  “Jesus, I promise, okay?”

  “And if it doesn’t work out it’s on you,” she said. “You won’t call me in a month and say I have to com
e back because you’re jetting off to Siberia?”

  He sighed. Jesus, what was he agreeing to—and what choice did he have? “Yeah,” he said. “I won’t call you.”

  “Holy shit,” she whispered. “I feel like I just got released from a Turkish prison.”

  He chuckled. So dramatic. “One thing,” he said. “When you make it big, you’re footing the bill for the hired help. Because we both know I’m never going to make any money.”

  “Type up the contract, Mr. Ziegfeld, I’m ready to sign.”

  * * *

  Sean called Cormac to see if he’d wanted the extra ticket to Deirdre’s show—Rebecca’s ticket—and caught him up on the latest developments. “Wow,” Cormac said. “For a guy who hates complications . . .”

  “Yeah, I know, you practically need Cliff’s Notes to follow them all.”

  Cormac laughed out loud, and Sean was grateful. At least his sense of humor kicked in sporadically. It was the only relief he got. And it was fleeting.

  Cormac called the theater and was able to get another ticket for Barb. They would drive on their own in case Barb wanted to leave. “Still a little up and down,” he explained.

  * * *

  The Worcester Footlight Theatre was a hundred years old. It had ­recently been completely renovated, every fleur-de-lis and winged cherub replastered and regilded.

  “Pretty fancy,” said Kevin.

  “Worth wearing a button-down shirt for?” said Sean, holding Aunt Vivvy’s elbow as they climbed the polished marble steps.

  “I guess,” grumbled Kevin. The shirt collar bugged him, and they’d butted heads about it. Sean had won out, saying Kevin should show respect for Aunt Deirdre, and make himself get used to things a little. Kevin had thrown the tie on the floor. It was a ­compromise.

  When they reached their seats, Cormac and Barb were already there. Cormac greeted Aunt Vivvy with a respectful handshake and Kevin with a high five. Sean gave Barb a hug, and she gripped him tightly. “I’m praying for you, Sean,” she whispered in his ear.