The Shortest Way Home

by Juliette Fay

  “Solved every problem I ever had. Hunger, employment . . .” He raised his eyebrows. “Female companionship.”

  “Pie slut.”

  “Fruit, sugar, and a nice flaky crust.” Cormac raised his beer. “Makes the world a sweeter place, my friend.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Sean drove to Tree of Life Spa, irritable as an overtired child. He didn’t believe a massage would help his back, and he certainly didn’t want to spend the money. Eighty bucks for the privilege of having his ravaged musculature pummeled and poked? Why would anyone agree to that?

  Independence Day, that was why.

  Cormac’s Confectionary was the one store in Belham Center that would be open. And as fire trucks and antique cars, uniformed Boy and Girl Scouts, and various clowns and elected officials marched by, parade goers would be thronging to the shop for sustenance. It was only two days away, and Cormac was having a heck of a time rounding up the necessary quorum of employees. Even his father had said, “I’ll help if I have to, but I’d sure rather sit my ass in a lounge chair and watch from the sidewalk like I’ve done every year for the past half-century.”

  In desperation Cormac had called Sean, and what could Sean say? I’m busy? He wasn’t. In fact he was bored. He’d been home for more than two weeks now and, other than the odd home maintenance job, trip to the grocery store, or pass over the carpets with the vacuum, he really had nothing going on. He’d logged some hours on Deirdre’s laptop researching travel to Tierra del Fuego and, when that failed to inspire him, other distant locales. Nothing grabbed him.

  And while slinging scones and smoothies to the tune of off-key marching band music didn’t really light his fire, either, he was willing to give Cormac a hand. He was actually a little relieved to have something to do.

  Cormac was unnecessarily grateful. “All the pie you can eat! And bring Kevin!”

  The downside occurred to Sean as he hung up the phone. Barb. The massage. Jesus, how had he gotten himself boxed into that one? For a guy who’d spent the better part of his life honing a George Clooney–like ability to avoid interpersonal obligations, he’d really blown it.

  So here he was, with his seldom-used credit card in his back poc­ket, driving to a spa, of all places. Aunt Vivian had given him the card shortly before his first overseas trip. “What’s this for?” he’d asked ­naÏvely.

  “Emergencies.”

  “What kind of emergencies?”

  “I have no idea,” she’d replied, paging through The Avant Gardener. “Whatever you deem emergent.”

  The credit limit was purposely kept very low in case it was stolen. The statements went to her, and she paid off the balance from his trust fund. Occasionally his meager earnings outpaced his living expenses, and he sent her the excess, which she posted to the fund. She wired him money for big-ticket items like plane fare and reimbursed herself.

  Can’t wait to see the look on her face when this bill comes in, Sean thought.

  Tree of Life was located in a strip mall on Route 9, and was ­distinctly unleafy. Sean slid the Caprice into a parking spot in front of the sooty pink stucco façade and walked in.

  “Hi,” he said to the receptionist with the Cleopatra eyeliner and burgundy-red hair. “I’ve got an appointment with Missy at eleven?”

  She gave him a look that said, Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, and gazed apathetically at the appointment book. Then she got up and went down the hallway without a word. He heard voices, then a strange gush of noise, like someone venting a brief wail of exhaustion or despair. Cleopatra slunk back down the hall toward him, lifted a finger as if it were too much of an effort to point in any specific direction, and said, “Room three.” Sean took that as permission to search somewhere behind her for it, should it actually exist.

  There were four doors: rooms one, two, and three, and one with a sign that said, MASSAGE THERAPISTS ONLY. PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR ROOM. He entered room three, which was taken up almost entirely by a sheet-shrouded massage table. The lights were dim, and it took him a moment to locate the source of what sounded like a running toilet—a miniature fountain with water cascading over a small pile of smooth black rocks that sat on a table in the corner. The sound made him feel as if he hadn’t fully emptied his bladder the last time he’d hit the men’s room.

  The door opened and in walked a woman with wiry blond hair and pajama-like clothing. Her eyes seemed red. “Hi, I’m Missy?” she said. “I’ll be applying a deep-muscle massage?” She instructed Sean to disrobe—he could leave his underwear on if he preferred, it didn’t matter one bit to her. Then he should lie facedown under the sheet and rest his forehead on the doughnut-shaped cushion at one end. She pressed two fingers between her eyes and abruptly walked out. When the door closed, he heard the weird gushing wail again.

  Christ, he thought, what the hell am I doing here?

  He was tempted to leave. But what if this Missy told Barb he’d walked out on her? Barb would not be happy. So Cormac would not be happy. And Sean calculated it was worth just about eighty bucks and an hour of torture not to piss off his closest friend. But that’s it, he told himself. He wasn’t coming back to this loony bin ever again. He stripped and lay down.

  Several minutes later, the door opened and closed with a hushed click. With his face resting in the doughnut hole, he couldn’t see ­anything except the industrial-grade carpet, but he could hear Missy’s even breaths, and he thought she seemed calmer. Her hand rested briefly on the back of his head, and he could feel her lean away for a moment. The running toilet sound stopped, there was a click, and soft acoustic guitar music filled the room.

  Her hands slid gently up and down his back, lightly skimming his skin, and he felt his brittle nerve endings melt just a little under her touch.

  “Okay,” she said, her voice round and melodious. “Missy’s having a little bit of a hard day, so I’m going to do your massage. I’m Rebecca. I’m sorry—I know you requested her.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t really know her,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” He thought he could hear a little sliver of a smile in her voice. “Everything’s fine.” Her fingers started to press harder, exploring the terrain of his back. “How’s this feel?”

  “Uh, honestly? It hurts like hell.”

  “No kidding—your muscles are like cement. I’ll go easy, but I do want you to walk out of here with some relief.” As she began to press harder, the pain increased, but it was a shifting pain, not the impenetrable anvil type that he generally carried around all day. “Tell me if I overdo it, okay?” she said.

  “Don’t worry about that. It hurts all the time anyway.”

  “How’d it get like this, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m a nurse,” he said.

  “On your feet all day, lifting patients, the stress of people’s lives in your hands . . .”

  “Exactly.”

  “Are you wearing good supportive shoes?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ow! That’s a little sore there.”

  “And why should I be gentle with a person in your line of work who doesn’t take care of his one and only body by wearing good shoes?” She said this in a teasing way, but he knew she was also making a point.

  So he told her about Africa, and how his coworkers often had only sandals or battered sneakers. He would never have shamed them by sporting high-end shoes, not for all the knots in his entire body. She began to work on his arms, finding pockets of soreness around his elbows and wrists and even in the palms of his hands that he didn’t realize he had. She asked about the work he did, and he found himself telling her about the less gruesome cases, careful to gauge how squeamish she might be. She let out little sighs of sadness, an occasional, “Oh, that’s awful,” but he never heard her reach the point of distress.


  “And what sustains you?” she asked as she kneaded the backs of his thighs and calves.

  “Sustains me?”

  “Yeah, you know, what fills your tank so you can keep going?”

  The long answer, which involved genetics, terminal illness, his belief in being chosen by God for the task, and the assumption that he’d be dead by now . . . it was a little heavy to get into with someone he’d just met—and hadn’t even seen. But she seemed interested and intelligent, and to have magical powers over his pain, so he didn’t want to blow it off, either.

  “It used to be faith,” he said. “But I have to admit, at the moment I’m pretty burned out.”

  “So you came back to the States to recharge.”

  “That was the plan.”

  “It’s not working?”

  “Not really. At least not yet. Feels more like a holding pen than a jumping-off spot.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, just kept working a line of soreness along his inner calf, pressing at it, coaxing it to dissipate.

  “That must sound pretty self-centered,” he said.

  “No,” she said quietly. “I was just thinking . . . the only difference between the two is—and I’m referring more to myself at the moment, so please don’t be offended—”

  “No, of course not.”

  “The only difference between a holding pen and a jumping-off spot . . . it’s you, and whether you decide to jump.”

  Sean was just starting to roll this around in his mind when Rebecca’s thumbs burrowed into the arch of his left foot, and he let out a screech that he couldn’t believe came from his own mouth.

  “Wow, sorry,” she said. “That’s a hot spot.”

  “Holy shit,” he squeaked, trying to control his volume.

  Her hands lightly stroked the bottoms of his feet. “Try to relax,” she said, “and I’ll be more careful.”

  “What was that?”

  “That was your foot, and it’s really unhappy, and I’m guessing the other one feels the same.” She wrapped her hands around his left foot again and started to squeeze in little pulses. “Okay, we’re going to stop talking now and take nice deep even breaths, and I’m going to make your feet happier. So just let your mind roam around off its leash for a while.”

  Rebecca inhaled and slowly let it out. Sean did the same. Gradually she increased her pressure, working at his heel, then his toes. When he flinched, she backed off, but never completely. It still hurt a lot, but an image began to grow in his mind of the pain in his feet, and how she wasn’t really getting rid of it so much as molding it like clay, putting it back into its proper shape. And that seemed about right to him—that while his pain couldn’t be completely eradicated, it could be made to behave. This thought was somehow comforting, and he found himself slipping off into a gauzy doze, remaining so even when she told him to turn onto his back. She held the sheet in place as he rolled over underneath it, and he realized it was the best he’d felt in months. Possibly years.

  She came around behind his head and began to work at his shoulders and neck again. Suddenly she stopped, and he heard a little inhalation of breath. He wanted to open his eyes and see if everything was all right, but in his state of relaxation, his reflexes were slow. She began to knead his shoulders again, and the impulse to open his eyes passed, as he floated back down into the satiny swirl of semiconsciousness.

  He couldn’t say how much longer the rest of the massage took. He felt her fingers on his scalp, and across his forehead and around his cheekbones, and the next thing he knew she was massaging around an ankle. At the end she rested her hands lightly in several spots on his chest and stomach, as if her palms were stethoscopes listening to the internal flow of his body. They wavered over him, smoothing the air from his head to his toes and back up again.

  “You can get up when you’re ready,” she whispered. When he opened his eyes she was gone.

  Slowly he rose and got dressed. He walked out to the reception area feeling a little like when he used to get high with Hugh, only smoother and less giggly. Like when he used to pray and it worked. He smiled beneficently at Cleopatra as she took his credit card. “Would you mind adding a twenty-dollar tip on there?”

  She raised her eyebrows and included the tip.

  He looked back down the hallway, hoping Rebecca would appear. He wanted to see her, this phenom who’d molded his aches back into manageable chunks. But no one came.

  CHAPTER 9

  “You’ve purchased new footwear, I see,” said Aunt Vivvy, lifting a forkful of peas to her mouth.

  Kevin leaned off his chair to look but popped up again when a growl came from under the table.

  “George,” chided Aunt Viv, and the dog quieted.

  “Yeah, my back’s been hurting, so I went to this specialty store over in the mall. They recommended these.”

  “Your old ones were all worn down on the bottom,” said Kevin. Aunt Vivvy raised her eyebrows. “Well, they were,” he said.

  “How nice to have you join the conversation,” she replied.

  Kevin kept his eyes on Sean. “You could hike in those.”

  “I probably could. Not much mountain climbing around here though.”

  “Jansen Hill,” said Kevin. “You can get to it through the woods out back.”

  “Maybe you’ll take me sometime. Hey, how about after the pa­rade tomorrow?”

  Kevin shrugged and stuffed a hunk of buttered bread in his mouth.

  Later, after the dishes had been done and Aunt Vivian and George had retired to her room, Sean found Kevin watching television in the den off the living room. On screen, a man was walking across sand dunes and apparently talking to himself. His accent was Australian.

  “What’s this?”

  “Man vs. Wild.” Kevin’s voice was low and reverent. “It’s this guy, Bear Grylls. He gets himself lost in jungles and deserts and stuff on purpose. Then he has to find his way out.”

  Sean watched as the man talked about the critical importance of keeping hydrated.

  “But he’s not alone, right?” said Sean. “He’s got a film crew.”

  Kevin frowned. “How else could we see it?”

  “True. So, any chance you want to come with me to the parade tomorrow? I have to help out my friend Cormac, the guy who owns the bakery.”

  “Not really,” said Kevin, gazing intently at the small screen. The man had taken off his T-shirt and appeared to be peeing on it, the camera discreetly aimed above his waist.

  “You should come. It’ll be fun.”

  “Parades are boring.”

  “Maybe you could work with me in the bakery.”

  At that moment, Bear Grylls raised the wet T-shirt over his face and squeezed the liquid—his own urine—into his mouth. Kevin and Sean let out simultaneous groans of disgust.

  To their relief, a commercial came on. “Seriously, you should come,” Sean said. “Cormac says we can have all the pie we want.”

  Kevin looked skeptical. “What would I have to do?”

  “Just hang with me and help out. Tell you what, I’ll even slip you a twenty. Cormac’s insisting on paying me, so you can be my ­subcontractor.”

  Kevin thought about this for a minute, eyes blinking pensively. “Okay. But if I don’t like it, I can leave and you don’t have to pay me.”

  “Deal.”

  * * *

  They walked over to the Confectionary the next morning, Kevin recounting the many instances of Bear Grylls eating disgusting things like a fat squirming rhino beetle larva the size of a gummy worm.

  “I brought reinforcements,” said Sean when Cormac let them in.

  “Excellent! Welcome aboard, Kevin my man.” Cormac held his hand out, and Kevin hesitated, then gave it a perfunctory little slap
. He stepped back to Sean’s side and surreptitiously scanned the bakery. “Smells good,” he murmured.

  “Hope so,” said Cormac. “Otherwise I’m in the wrong line of work.”

  He showed Sean how to run the register, the shorthand for writing customers’ orders on coffee cups, where to find pastry bags and extra napkins. He addressed all of this to Kevin, too. “Because you know your uncle’s going to forget something, and you’ll have to be his backup hard drive.” Kevin glanced up at Sean, a tiny smile lighting his features.

  Cormac assigned Kevin the job of retrieving pastries from the big glass display case and putting them in the to-go bags for Sean. “Throw on a pair of these, okay?” said Cormac, handing them both stretchy vinyl food service gloves. He turned to get the coffee started.

  Kevin held them between thumb and forefinger. “I don’t like these,” he whispered.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Sean donned the tight-fitting gloves, snapping them around his wrists.

  “They feel weird.”

  “They’re not that bad. You get used to them.”

  Kevin pressed his lips together. “I don’t want to.”

  Sean stared at him for a moment. “Kevin, can you just try? Because I think it’s a rule.”

  The boy slid his fingers halfway into one of the gloves, then quickly pulled it off again. “I can’t do it.” Sean tried to hide his annoyance, but the kid hadn’t made much of an effort.

  Cormac glanced over. “Not a fan, huh?” he said. “Okay, I have this other kind—they’re plastic and kind of loose, so you’re going to have to keep tugging at them to stay on.” He opened a cabinet and took out another box. Kevin made a face when he put them on, but he didn’t complain.

  Customers were waiting outside, and Cormac went to open the door, calling “Happy Fourth of July! Check out the red, white, and blue cupcakes—specially priced to honor our forefathers.”

  “And mothers,” said a voice. “John Adams was just a short guy in a bad wig without Abigail.”

  “Too right, chickie,” said Cormac.