The Shortest Way Home (13 page)

How could I not have been looking?

“What about you?” she murmured.

He shook his head. “I think I dodged it.” She closed her eyes and squeezed him.

They released each other, slumping exhausted into kitchen chairs as if they’d just run for their lives. She reached for the vodka and refreshed her drink. “I told myself that if I got to play Mrs. Potiphar even
once
,” she said, “I’d go to New York.”

“You should. You deserve a trip like that.”

“No, I mean, to live.”

Oh,
he thought, the gravity of it pressing harder on him with every passing second.
Shit.

He fiddled with the beer cap on the table. She tapped her fingers soundlessly against her glass. He glanced up, and she met his gaze with a look of intractability too real to be acting.

“How’s it going to work?” he said finally.

“They can’t live alone.”

“Could we hire someone?”

She stared at him a moment, barely controlled disgust in her gaze. “Well, if no one they actually
know
will stay with them . . . I suppose we’ll have to. But it has to be somebody good, Sean, not some cheap rent-a-maid. They both need more than you think.” She let out an annoyed sigh. “You got anything left in your fund? Because mine’s gone. That’s why I’ve been working so much, so I’d have money for New York.”

“Did Hugh—?”

“Right,” she snorted sarcastically. “A motorcycle, a boat, and a really expensive fishing rod.” She snapped her fingers. “Gone before he was twenty.”

Sean felt a surge of disgust for his brother’s prodigality. But it was just Hugh being Hugh, at the height of his Hugh-ness. “Viv?”

“No idea,” said Deirdre. “She could be loaded or she could be broke, for all I know. I contribute every month, but she’s still paying the bills.” She tipped her glass up, finished off her drink and rose. “I’m going as soon as the show’s over, middle of August.”

“Dee, you can’t just leave me holding the bag!”

“Yeah, I can,” she said. “I’ve earned it, and then some.” She put her glass in the dishwasher and left.

* * *

S
ean hadn’t been to church in months. There were times in his life when he’d gone every day. There was always a church of some kind near the clinics and hospitals where he’d worked—not always Catholic but it didn’t matter much to Sean. A holy place was a holy place.

But about year ago, he’d found himself feeling irritable during services—especially if it was a Catholic Mass. Either he thought the priest was too young to know what he was talking about or too old to understand today’s world. They burned stinky incense or sang songs like “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
Marching as to war?
He’d had enough of that.

Worst of all, he couldn’t say the prayers. The Penitential Rite drove him up the wall. Not because he didn’t feel penitent about things. Hadn’t he been too stern with a parent who should have brought a sick child in sooner? Hadn’t he slept with that cute, slightly insecure med student, knowing it meant more to her than it did to him? He had plenty of things to regret.

But, confessing
to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters
? Why should he confess to a God who was giving him the silent treatment? And the majority of his “brothers and sisters” were too busy just trying to survive. What did they care about his petty misdemeanors?

I have sinned through my own fault.
Well, fault—it was a matter of perspective, wasn’t it? If he hadn’t thought he’d only get half a lifetime instead of a whole one, wouldn’t he have made other choices? Wouldn’t he have lived a less stressful life, where the temptations were easier to withstand? Whose “fault” was that?

In what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.
Had he failed to go to the most primitive, dangerous places on earth to tend and comfort the least fortunate? Had he failed to put his own needs last?
Failed, my
ass!

That was generally the point at which he slunk sullenly out the back, eventually deciding there wasn’t much reason to go in the first place.

But Sunday morning he woke in such a funk it seemed that drastic measures were called for. It had been two days since Deirdre had confirmed her plans to leave, throwing him into such a stew of resentment that he’d spent half of Saturday in the den on her laptop making plans for his own departure while she was at rehearsal. He’d narrowed it down to three aid organizations when Kevin came in to see what was on TV. Sean felt as if he’d been caught looking at porn.

“What’re you doing?” Kevin had asked, searching for the remote.

“Nothing. Just surfing around.” He shut down the laptop.

Kevin had given him a look as he clicked on the TV. Sean couldn’t quite decipher it—quizzical, maybe? Skeptical? Disapproving in some way? He didn’t stick around to find out.

* * *

O
n Sunday Sean woke early, the blinking vestiges of a dream still firing across his brain, the word
Da
unspoken on his tongue. It was what he’d always called his father, in the Irish tradition. Da’s given name was Martin, and he was a short, muscular man with wiry red hair and forearms to rival Popeye’s. He spoke with a brogue so thick that Sean’s friends often needed him to translate when Da spoke to them. The thought of his father could still ring a faint note of longing in Sean, despite the hateful fact of his desertion.

On Sunday mornings, Da would corral everyone for church, saying, “When I lived on the Great Blasket Island, the priest only came across the sound once a year. Here in America we have a lovely church sitting right up the road, and we’ll go if we’ve legs to carry us.” They had a car, of course, but that was how he’d say it, as if he were prepared to march them forcibly.

Sean’s mother, Lila, had been Anglican but had converted to Catholicism at Martin’s request. Her older sister, Vivian, was none too thrilled with the prospect of sweet, lovely Lila becoming a contemptible Papist—and married to a rough Irishman, to boot. But Lila loved the Irishman and didn’t mind the Church, so she married him despite her sister’s protestations. However, Lila was a bit lackadaisical about Mass when Martin was at sea. There were Sundays when she said, “God can visit with us over a nice leisurely breakfast, and then we’ll offer up our prayers and petitions all the more fervently.”

Lying there in bed, Sean didn’t really want to go to church. But he wondered if it might feel different at Our Lady Comforter of the Afflicted, his home parish. It had been there, listening to the story of Jesus healing his friend Lazarus, and worrying about his mother and his own uncertain future, that he’d had an epiphany. Right then at the tender age of thirteen, he’d decided that if he couldn’t live a normal life, never knowing when or if he’d start to lose his mind, then he’d make the most of what he had: an interest in medicine, a willingness to live without the usual comforts, and a strong desire to get far away from Belham.

His father had beaten him to the exit, however, and Sean tried to remember when exactly Da had failed to return from one of his many stints as an able seaman in the merchant marine. He had taken shorter trips for a while when they’d first moved in with Aunt Vivvy, and he’d been home two years later when Lila fell down the steps into the fieldstone basement, knocking her head against the rock wall as she tumbled. Da had discovered her and had screamed up the stairs for Sean to call an ambulance. That desperate, agonized roar was the last time Sean could remember hearing his father raise his voice. His mother was pronounced dead at the scene.

After that, Da’s trips at sea were longer. Then one day Sean realized that his father had been gone longer than ever before, and that they hadn’t received any postcards from him in a while. “When is Da’s trip over?” he’d asked his aunt.

The sympathy in her eyes worried him—it was unlike her. “Sean,” she said. “It was over three months ago. It appears that he’s decided to move on.”

For a moment he couldn’t believe it. He was only starting to accept that his mother was truly gone for good, and now his father had left them? But Aunt Vivvy never lied. She never even coated the truth, so it must be true. The cruelty of it hit him like a grenade, and he broke down crying right in front of her. At almost seventeen he was already far taller than her, and she’d had to reach up to cup her hands around his face and gently swipe the tears with her thumbs.

“We’ll get through” was all she said. And her word was law, so he believed her.

* * *

S
ean got out of bed and with no small ambivalence made his way to Our Lady’s. He sat in the back in order to have a clear escape route in case he started to get that annoyed, slightly sociopathic feeling he’d been subject to in Mass lately. As the priest, lectors, cross and candle bearers processed up the aisle, he noticed that the priest was fairly young.
Great,
thought Sean sardonically.
Another dewy-eyed homily about how nothing bad can happen if we just believe.

To his credit, he did try to listen. But the Word of God sounded remote and static-ridden, as if it were the disembodied voice of a subway conductor on the T in Boston. The priest’s voice rose and fell with instructions that no longer seemed to apply to him, words and whole phrases drowned out by his indifference, like the passing of an oncoming train.

He watched a baby wriggle irritably in its mother’s arms across the aisle, eyes half-lidded and unfocused. The child rested his cheek against her shoulder for a moment, then popped up again. The mother guided his downy head back to the sleepy haven of her shoulder. Then his eyes closed and his body went slack, a chubby leg bouncing once against her belly, a bare foot twitching and then coming at last to rest against her hip.

This serene tableau might have happened in any country in the world; their skin could have been any color from freckled white to root beer black. The reassuring arms of the mother, the child’s utter confidence in her love and the safety of sleep. Not long ago the sight would’ve been heartwarming to Sean. But not today. He felt his nerves twang with envy toward them both.

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

O
n 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.

* * *

C
ormac’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.