The Shortest Way Home (11 page)

Sean started disaster-surfing on Deirdre’s laptop again, the familiar time-to-move-on feeling poking at him intermittently. He had the sense that if he could just recapture the purpose and contentedness, and (if he were honest) the righteousness he’d felt earlier in his career, everything could go back to normal. Or some facsimile thereof.

He crossed off several places in Africa right away. Too far. And too much civil unrest. He was still having those flashes of preteen rape victims and severed limbs and wasn’t sure he could stomach a return to those kinds of daily visuals. He focused his search on natural disaster relief. At the moment, Haiti was looking pretty good.

The following week, he borrowed Kevin’s alarm clock so he could be up in time to walk over to the Confectionary by five-thirty. He felt calm and happy as he strolled through the slanting rays of early morning sunlight. Entering the Confectionary, he smelled the yeasty sweetness of dough rising and the sharp, invigorating scent of recently ground coffee beans. It reminded him of his childhood visits to the McGrath house—the encouraging smell of food.

Aunt Vivvy’s house smelled of cleaning products and talcum powder, the latter his aunt’s one indulgence. She never baked unless it was compulsory, like a birthday cake. Meals were adequately nutritious and efficiently prepared, in quantities designed to avoid leftovers.

Now wearing a cranberry-colored
CORMAC’S CONFECTIONARY
T-shirt, Sean stationed himself behind the register. A teenager trudged in wearing a similar shirt, eyes half-lidded in semiconsciousness, and introduced herself as Theresa. “Call me Tree,” she mumbled. “You ring, I’ll brew. I can’t talk to people this early in the morning.”

“Tree,” said Cormac. “Hair.” She let out a dejected sigh and wound her hair into a strangled bun. Cormac leaned over to Sean. “Use as few words as possible,” he murmured. “She’s a good worker, but her language processing skills don’t kick in until about seven.”

The first few customers gave easy orders: a large coffee and a cruller. A cup of tea. They were dressed for work, made no eye contact, and were obviously anxious to spend as little time in this particular transaction as possible. Then a woman came in wearing workout clothes—turquoise yoga pants and a matching sleeveless top. She had big white sunglasses with gold letters on the sides: DKNY.

Dinky?
thought Sean.

She lifted them up onto her head, pushing back the glossy light brown hair that fell in gentle waves toward her breasts, and squinted up at the menu board. “Medium half-caf iced skinny latte, two Splendas, and a dash of nutmeg, please,” she said, never even glancing at Sean. “No, make that large.”

There was a flicker of something pinging at the back of Sean’s brain, but he was so distracted by trying to get all the right letters written on the cup, he didn’t focus on it. He handed off the cup to Tree and rang up the order. “That’ll be four-ten,” he said, fairly certain he’d gotten both the letters and the cost computation right. Smiling with satisfaction, he glanced at the customer, recognition hitting him with a crackle of electricity.

Chrissy Stillman.

She handed him a five and gave a tiny flick of her wrist to indicate that the change could go in the tip jar,
College Tuition/Harley Fund
scrawled on it. She moved to the Pick Up counter.

“Chrissy?” he said quietly, unsure if he really wanted her to hear him.

She looked up, tilted her head slightly to one side.

“Sean,” he murmured. “Sean Doran.”

“Oh, my God,
Sean
!” she called out, her long legs quickly striding back to the Order counter. “Wow! How are you? Where’ve you been? It’s been like—what?—over twenty years!”

“Yeah, I know, long time. I’ve been doing overseas work.”

“And now you’re . . .” She wiggled her tan fingers toward the register.

“Oh, no,” he said quickly. “No, I’m not . . . I’m just here for a few weeks. Cormac needed a little help so I’m just . . . helping.”

“That is terrific. Well, hey! We have to get together! I want to hear all about what you’ve been doing overseas.”

Sean’s head started to spin just a little. “Sure, that’d be great.”

“What’s your cell?” She whipped a phone out of her small white purse and began tapping at the screen. “Sean Doran,” she muttered. “Okay, shoot!”

“Uh, actually, I don’t . . . lots of places I’ve worked don’t exactly have cell service. I’ll give you my home number.” He blanked on it for a second, recovered, and recited the number.

“Shoot, shoot, shoot,” she said. “I’m late for yoga. But I will definitely call you! I can’t believe it—Sean Doran!” She sailed back to Pick Up for her latte. Suddenly her face lost its exuberance. “This is supposed to be iced,” she told Tree. The girl reached for the cup, cutting her eyes toward Sean to indicate the source of the mistake. “Oh, never mind,” said Chrissy, grabbing the cup. She shone a good-sport smile at Sean. “I’ll just crank up the AC!”

* * *

L
ater, he took a good bit of razzing from Cormac about it, as he knew he would. He didn’t expect Tree to chime in, though. “Shoulda seen it, Cormac,” she smirked. “He was like . . .” She wiggled her body like a happy puppy. “Then he was like . . .” She strutted a few steps, nodding her head smugly. “And then he screwed up the next three orders.” Apparently Tree’s language processing skills had kicked in.

He walked home that afternoon, back throbbing slightly, but with a silly grin he couldn’t seem to get rid of. Chrissy Stillman. The unattainable Holy Grail of his teen years. She had his number. She was going to call.

Sean hadn’t been home ten minutes when Kevin banged through the back door with a look of undiluted terror on his face. The dog jumped up and began barking homicidally, and Aunt Vivvy dropped her plate of saltine crackers. Sean turned so quickly to see what the commotion was that his back twanged into spasm and he had to hang on to the counter to keep from falling.

“I . . .” Kevin panted, “. . . there was . . .”

“For goodness
sake
, Hugh,” Aunt Vivvy chastised, as the dog continued to bark. “Stop this foolishness! Are you in your right mind? Come here and let me look at you.”

Kevin’s terror turned to confusion, as his eyes flicked from his irate aunt to her irate dog.

With sirens of pain wailing up and down his spine, Sean could barely process the scene. “Jesus! Stop your damned barking!” he yelled at the dog, who downgraded her outbursts to an aggravated growl. “Get me a chair,” he said, and Kevin slid a kitchen chair over to Sean, who lowered himself gingerly onto it. “What is going on here?” he demanded.

“I was in the woods . . .” Kevin said tremulously. He glanced to Aunt Vivvy, who stood looking slightly dazed, the crackers and sandwich plate strewn across the floor at her feet.

“Auntie Vivvy,” murmured Sean. “Sit down. We’ll pick that up in a minute.” The older woman moved obediently to a chair. He turned his gaze back to Kevin and tried to focus on the boy, despite the blistering pain in his back.

“I . . . I was up by the big log. I made a . . . a fort up there a couple of weeks ago. But when I went in, there was . . . stuff in it. Not my stuff. And then some kids came . . . older.” His chin started to tremble. “They chased me.” He blinked furiously but a tear spilled down his cheek anyway. He quickly wiped it against the shoulder of his T-shirt.

“Ah, Kevin,” Sean sighed. “Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time up there alone.”

“What’m I
supposed
to do, then?”

Sean didn’t know. He could barely form coherent thoughts. Kevin trudged out of the room—Sean could hear him clomp up the stairs and close a door. “Auntie,” he said after a moment. “We need to do something about the dog. She can’t go into attack mode every time one of us walks into the room.”

Aunt Vivian leveled a clear-eyed gaze at him. “George is protective,” she said. “It is a laudable trait, one that is grievously lacking in the world, and it is not a feature that can be surgically removed like some sort of mole or polyp.” She rose and left the room, the dog trotting behind at her slippered heels.

Sean sat there with his back muscles pulsating as if to a crazed rumba. He wished he’d asked someone to get him some ibuprofen before they’d stormed out. And what was that about Aunt Vivvy demanding to see if Kevin was “in his right mind”? Sean pondered this for a moment. Had she actually called him Hugh?

His brain was too busy sounding an alarm about his back to puzzle it out at the moment. He needed to be flat, so he slid off the chair and onto the floor, vowing to carry ibuprofen tablets in his pocket from now on. The spilled saltines lay inches away from his face and looked like delicate little rafts in the churning waters of the pitted linoleum.

* * *

S
ean was able to accomplish two things the next morning. The first was to confirm that there were no summer camps that fit into the union of subsets that included Kevin’s willingness to attend, the camp’s having space for him, and being located within a twenty-mile radius of Belham. Kevin flatly refused to go to overnight camp. “What if I don’t like it? What am I supposed to do—leave like a homesick baby?”

Comments from Sean like “It’ll be an adventure!” and “You’ll make some great new friends!” and “This one has horses, a driving range, skeet shooting, and a gourmet selection of desserts after every meal!” held no sway.

“Besides,” Kevin muttered about that last one, “it costs six thousand dollars for two weeks.”

He was willing to consider some nature-oriented day camps, but they had no openings. There were a couple of sports camps with available spots, but Kevin wasn’t interested. Then Sean found one that looked perfect.

“I went there last summer,” said Kevin. “They never empty the trash cans. By the end of the week, there’s stinky milk cartons and baloney sandwiches falling out and bees swarming all over. And the counselors are mean.”

They’d spent three hours on Deirdre’s laptop and making phone calls—all for nothing. Kevin took a book on Denali National Park, his stainless steel water bottle, and a Clif Bar out to the backyard. Sean popped another quartet of ibuprofen tablets and called Tree of Life Spa. Miraculously, Rebecca had an opening at four o’clock.

He arrived at ten to four with the long-odds hope that she had finished early with the previous client and he’d get a few extra minutes. Cleopatra the receptionist disabused him of that fantasy in record time. In fact she claimed Rebecca wasn’t available at all. “You wanted Missy last time,” she said. “Now you can have her.”

“Why’s Rebecca suddenly unavailable?” Sean said, barely able to keep the edge out of his tone. “I just called a couple of hours ago.”

“Yeah, um . . .” Cleopatra shook her head as if searching for an excuse. “Miscommunication? Missy will be ready for you in a few minutes.”

“When
is
Rebecca available?”

“She’s pretty booked up.”

“Okay, tell you what,” he said, irritation rising like high tide under a full moon. “Why don’t you just give me Rebecca’s first available appointment—whenever that is. Today, tomorrow, next week. I’ll take it.”

Cleopatra gave a long-suffering sigh, got up, and went down the hallway toward the massage rooms. Sean sat in the little waiting area, which consisted of two vinyl chairs and a tall dieffenbachia plant. He touched the leaves. Fake. No surprise.

He snorted in annoyance. He did not
want
the wailing, pajama-clad Missy to attempt—and fail, he was certain!—to corral his pain into manageable chunks. He wanted Rebecca. And there was a little part of his brain telling him he sounded like a child refusing to drink out of the blue cup because he’d irrationally determined the red cup to be somehow superior. But it had been a hell of a twenty-four hours, and he wanted what he wanted. It was so unlike him, he realized. He wasn’t used to caring the least bit whether he got the blue, the red, or any cup at all. It was exhausting, having preferences like this.

An older woman came in and sat down. “Getting a massage?” she asked congenially.

Maybe,
he thought.
It’s either that or throw a head-banging hissy
fit.

He smiled back politely. “Yes,” he said. “You?”

She nodded. “My first one.”

“Who’s it with?” he asked.

“Oh, whoever they give me, I suppose. I’ve never been here before. My daughter gave me a gift certificate for my birthday and . . .” She kept talking, but Sean stopped listening.

“
Whoever they give me”?
he thought.
I’ll tell you who they’re giving you—Wailing Pajama Girl, that’s
who.

Cleopatra returned and gave him a momentary glare. “Rebecca is now available in room three,” she said, with a tone that implied,
Happy now, you big baby?

“I’m
so
grateful.” He smiled at her, knowing she’d take it to be sarcastic whether he meant it that way or not. Which he most certainly did.

CHAPTER 11

W
hen he walked into room three, a woman stood there with her arms folded across her chest. Her face was calm, framed in layers of wavy dark hair that fell to her shoulders, but also somewhat surprised-looking. Actually one half seemed calm, the other surprised. Her misaligned right eye was slightly bigger than the other, and the cheekbone on the right was also more pronounced than its mate on the opposite side. The asymmetry made it hard to judge her expression.

“Hi, Sean,” she said quietly. “How’ve you been?”

“Becky? Jesus, Becky Feingold!” He went forward to give her a hug, which she received warmly, if a little awkwardly, too. “You’re Rebecca now!”

“Yeah.” She gave a little smiling shrug. “It’s more adult than Becky.”

“Wow,” he said stupidly, still trying to assemble the previously unconnected pieces of this puzzle. Rebecca the All-Powerful Pain Tamer was really little Becky Feingold, his pal from high school. They’d hung out quite a bit back then, though it was pretty much an established fact that she’d had a widely known secret crush on him since junior high. She’d never made a bid for his affection, though, and after a while he’d forgotten about it, the crush becoming just another tree in the social forest, and not a terribly tall one at that. She was a nice girl, a good listener, and had a sense of humor that was all the more hilarious for its selective use. The congenital facial deformity had created a barrier between her and many of her classmates. She and Sean both felt an outsiderness that had served to strengthen their friendship.