The Shortest Way Home

by Juliette Fay

  He had to think about it for a moment. He wanted to say yes, wanted to have that talent in common with her. But he couldn’t lie. “Not really,” he said. “Generally they’re just in pain and unhappy. It isn’t all that hard to pick up on.”

  She nodded, but he could tell she’d hoped for more from him. “In massage, we’re trained to recognize energy. I know that sounds New Agey, but once you learn to do it, you can’t not. It’s more than just someone’s mood, or how they’re feeling in the moment. Our bodies are constantly struggling to achieve balance, and we do that with energy. Does that make sense?”

  “Sort of . . .”

  “Okay, so if a client comes in and his energy is really out of whack, I can feel it. And I have to be careful to keep my energy in balance, because we affect each other, right? You know how some people just make you feel good because they’re calm and clear, and other people bring you down, and you don’t even really know why? That’s energy.”

  “Hmm,” he murmured. “How’s mine?”

  “How’s your energy?” She was obviously stalling.

  “No, my cholesterol,” he said wryly.

  “Um . . .” She grinned. “I’d say you need to cut down on the fried foods.”

  * * *

  The room she led him to, up the half flight of stairs from the living room, had metallic wallpaper with a dizzying pattern of little brown and blue circles.

  “Nineteen seventies?” he asked.

  She nodded. “It was the guest bedroom. Can you imagine anyone getting any sleep in here?” She had moved the bed into one corner, but the room was still crowded with an oversized chest of drawers, a desk, and a floor-to-ceiling pole lamp with five orange metal shades. The massage table stood in the middle, as incongruous as a sunflower growing in a crowded parking lot. She left him to get undressed and he surveyed the room. It wouldn’t take much to make it more conducive to her business. She could take a few things out, maybe take down the wallpaper.

  He slid under the sheet, put his face in the doughnut cushion, and, mercifully, the room’s décor ceased to exist for him. When she came back in, she turned on a CD of soft instrumental music. “I could help you move some stuff out of here,” he said.

  “I’d have to get the okay from my parents.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe we just move it, and if they visit we move it back, no harm done.”

  Her hands began to swirl across his back, and he felt his body ­respond, every nerve curling to her touch like a cat around its owner’s legs. He barely noticed when she changed the subject without answering the question. “Tell me more about Africa,” she said, and he complied, knowing that if she’d told him to rob a bank, he would have done that, too.

  The small hospital in which he’d worked had open-air buildings, he told her. “Even the operating room. Flies landed in open wounds all the time.” After surgery, if they were crowded and didn’t have enough space, which was often, they’d put two patients in the same bed. The families of the sick would often sleep under the bed, especially if it was the mother. The children had to be with her. “Child care is strictly women’s work. There’s no such thing as a stay-at-home father. A man might be home if he’s unemployed, but he doesn’t watch the kids.”

  “What did they think of you being a nurse?”

  “The patients usually assumed I was a doctor, just not a very good one.”

  He didn’t mind that, though, he told her. He’d been all over the globe, and generally people found a way to make you fit into their worldview. Once they got to know you, you stopped being a failed doctor and were just the guy they could bring a sick child or injured friend to. “And they could tell me their stories. I think they liked that almost as much as getting fixed up. When I stopped being able to listen, that’s when I knew I had to take a break.”

  “Why couldn’t you listen, do you think?”

  “I just got burned out.”

  “Was there anything that triggered it?” She had worked her way to his feet, and he braced himself against the pain he knew would come. “Relax,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  He felt the strength of her hands, though she squeezed only gently at his heels. “How’s my energy now?” he said, trying not to grit his teeth.

  “Unstable,” she said. “How’s mine?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She laughed. “Good. Then I’m keeping it in the background, like a good massage therapist should.”

  Once he’d made it through the ordeal of his feet, he could feel the tension drain from the rest of his body, too. It was time for him to flip over, and she held the sheet for him. She came around behind and began to work on his neck and shoulders, and he found himself gazing at her through half-open eyes. Her oddly shaped face was so familiar to him. Her wavy brown hair bounced slightly as she moved.

  “I stopped believing in a God who cared,” he confessed to her, surprising himself.

  She thought about this. “You lost your faith in the face of all that suffering.”

  He closed his eyes. It was embarrassing to admit, but it wasn’t really the suffering that had gotten to him. “It’s way more selfish than that,” he said. “I stopped believing in a God who cared about me.” He felt tension rise in his throat and behind his eyes. Her fingers moved down from his scalp and around his eye sockets, as if they were following the pain across his face.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I wasn’t who I thought I was. I thought God had chosen me. Yes, I would die young, but I was called to do something extraordinary. By God. Do you see?”

  Her warm fingers pressed at his temples. “And now it feels like God pulled a fast one.”

  He let out a groan. It sounded so childish and self-centered. But it was a belief born in the self-absorption of adolescence and in the wake of loss. His mother and then his father. An abbreviated future. There had to be a reason for it. God had given him that reason. And now it appeared as if he’d lived a life of hardship and self-denial for no reason at all. A fast one, indeed.

  “So now you know why my fucking energy’s unstable.”

  She rested a hand on his chest for a moment. “It’s a really good reason,” she said. In silence, she continued down his arms, and then to his legs, corralling his pain—his energy—in that way she had. He understood it a little better now.

  “You know,” she said, as she kneaded his calf. “I think you might be a Jew.”

  A quick laugh burst out of him. “How d’you figure?”

  “We consider ourselves God’s chosen people, and look how that’s turned out. Pure trouble for the entire history of Judaism.”

  “You’ve got a point,” he admitted.

  “But also, your life has been one long mitzvah—an endless good deed. That’s very important to Jews.”

  “So you’re saying I should go to Hebrew school now?”

  “No.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m just saying you’re in good company. Isn’t it what your patients wanted? First to get fixed up, and then to know they’re not alone.”

  * * *

  After she left the room and he got dressed, he loosened the screw that held the hideous pole lamp to the ceiling and took it down to the living room where she was waiting. It felt like some kind of postmodern spear in his hand. “You have a closet I can put this in?” he said.

  “Sean . . .”

  “Consider it a mitzvah.”

  She sighed and led him to a small storage room near the garage, where he stowed it carefully. “Mazel tov,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulder and giving a little squeeze. “Am I saying that right?”

  “Yeah, you’re practically Rabbi Schechter.”

  “Who’s that?”

  She smiled and closed the storage room door. “Never mind.�
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  * * *

  He didn’t feel like leaving. She’d always told him to drink lots of water after a massage, so he asked for a glass and sipped it slowly. They sat in the living room, on opposite ends of the vast cracked leather couch.

  “Just one room,” he said. “Why can’t you have just one room the way you want it?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “How about giving me a shot?”

  She shook her head in frustration. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to . . . it’s just . . . my situation is the opposite of yours. You never felt the pressure to stay and be what people wanted.”

  He hadn’t thought of himself that way—in fact he’d felt enormous pressure to do what he thought God had wanted. But he could see her point. And he remembered her parents. “Your folks were kind of hoverers, weren’t they? They kept a close rein.”

  “Yeah, a little,” she said sarcastically. “I guess, in fairness to them, they were just worried.”

  “Why? You were a good kid. You were smart and never got in any trouble that I knew of.”

  “Sean, look at me.”

  “What?”

  “Jesus, Sean. Either you’re being dense or you’re faking.”

  He was startled by this. Becky was generally so nonconfrontational. But he remembered that she could pack a punch when she felt pressed.

  “My face, Sean,” she said, an index finger twitching up toward the side of her head that swelled out like an unexpected hill on an otherwise smooth landscape. “Kids teased me constantly. I was shy. I cried a lot. And I was their only child—there was no one else to take a share of their worry off my plate. Of course they hovered.”

  “All right. But that was a long time ago. You’re a grown-up now. They don’t still need to control your every move.” It was obvious by the look she gave him that he still didn’t get it. “Beck, do you feel like you owe them something for taking care of you all those years?”

  “Uhh!” she groaned, her hands flying up in frustration. If there was anything to this “energy” theory, Sean could feel it then. Definitely very unstable. Rebecca took a deep breath and let it out. “Look, here’s the difference between you and me.”

  She told him a story. One day back in high school, she had stayed late to work on a science lab and missed the bus. She was walking home in a heavy rain when a car pulled up. “It was your aunt, offering me a ride.” Rebecca had been feeling particularly sorry for herself that day. Someone had said something mean. When Aunt Vivian questioned why she hadn’t taken the bus, Rebecca had admitted somewhat bitterly that honors chemistry was just too hard.

  “You know what she said? She said, ‘You’re an intelligent young woman. I’m sure you’ll find a solution.’ Not one ounce of sympathy for the poor, sad deformed girl! In fact, when she dropped me off and I thanked her for the ride, her answer was, ‘Consider investing in a raincoat.’ It was a total kick in the pants!”

  “Vintage Aunt Viv.” He nodded. “She never put up with whining of any kind.”

  “She expected you to manage your own needs, and she didn’t ask you to manage hers. You see the difference, right? With my parents we manage each other constantly. Trust me, when your whole relationship is built on it, that’s a tough habit to break.”

  * * *

  It was late, and though he could have sat there and talked all night like they used to, he knew it was time to leave. He pulled five twenties out of his wallet, glad he’d remembered to cash his paycheck from the Confectionary before he left for the Mount Frissell trip.

  “I only charge fifty when it’s at my house,” she said.

  “Why? Are you any less effective here?”

  She rolled her eyes at the obviousness of the point he was making. “No. But even at fifty I end up with way more than I’d get at Tree of Life.”

  “Speaking as your average self-centered client, I really don’t care what you end up with. I care that I got a kickass massage, as good as or better than what I’d get at that nuthouse you call a spa.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. He took her hand and closed her fingers around the bills. “Tip’s included,” he said. “And since I plan to have all my massages here from now on, I should warn you that every time I come, I’m taking something out of that room.”

  * * *

  On the ride home through the lamplit streets of Belham, he ruminated on what she’d said about the difference between her parents and his aunt. Opposite ends of the spectrum, from “We’re involved in every move you make” to “You’re on your own.” And although as a kid he’d always wished for someone who’d look out for him a bit more, Becky had a point. At least he didn’t feel he owed Aunt Vivvy the way Becky seemed to feel she owed her parents. He’d earned the right to go his own way. It was something to be thankful for.

  CHAPTER 19

  The next afternoon the lights went out. Sean had beat an incoming squall on his way home from the Confectionary, the sky growing heavy and dark as he walked, pelting buttons of rain just as he reached the front porch. He had walked through the house turning on lights and gone up to change his clothes. Ten minutes later, the house was dark again.

  “Hey, what’s the deal?” Kevin hollered from the den where he’d been watching TV.

  George started to bark, and Aunt Vivvy emerged from the kitchen. “I didn’t hear any thunder,” she said to Sean as he descended the stairs.

  “Maybe a limb came down.” Sean went out on the front porch to see if the neighbors were also in the dark, but their curtains glowed with lamplight.

  “Looks like it’s just us,” he said. “I’ll call NSTAR.” He asked his aunt for a recent bill so he could find their emergency number, and she went into the den and pulled open the file drawer of her burled maple desk. She handed him an envelope marked NSTAR.

  Sean did not immediately locate the number. He was too distracted by the message in bold capital letters across the top of the bill.

  THIS IS YOUR THIRD AND FINAL NOTICE.

  Wordlessly, he held the bill out to Aunt Vivian. She squinted at it for a moment, then her gaze locked on Sean’s. “I paid that bill,” she said.

  And though it was the same light-saber glare that had so often reduced him to a stammering child, this time he was able to say, “They don’t seem to think you did.”

  Aunt Vivian stalked out of the room, followed by George.

  “Auntie Vivvy didn’t send the money?” Kevin said, as if he’d just witnessed something as incongruous as his elderly aunt break dancing.

  Sean called NSTAR. They hadn’t received payment in three months. “We make mistakes,” said the friendly customer service representative, “but not very often. We’ll put the power back on as a temporary measure. I’d advise you to check her bank account to confirm whether the checks were written and cashed.”

  Sean looked though the file folder and found three payment envelopes, all containing checks written in her tight, precise handwriting.

  * * *

  He found her sitting on the edge of her bed. He’d only been in her room a couple of times when he was young and didn’t remember many details. It smelled of talcum powder. It had lacy curtains and a cameo brooch sitting on a doily on the mahogany dresser. It seemed like the quarters of a woman whose life had been halted somewhere in the 1940s.

  George barked dementedly until Aunt Vivian shushed her. And though she looked as angry as a wronged lover, Sean sat down on the bed next to her.

  “I didn’t realize,” she growled. “I had no idea.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You wouldn’t knowingly leave your bills unpaid.”

  She cut her eyes at him, then quickly looked away. “Well, what do you suggest?” she said. “You didn’t come up here without a plan in mind.”

  “Actually, my plan was to ask you the
same thing.”

  She softened a little at this. He’d shown respect for what was left of her mental faculties, and he could sense her appreciation. “You’ll take over the bills,” she conceded.

  “Or I could sign you up for one of those bill-paying services.”

  She smiled coldly. “Maintaining a viable escape route, I see.”

  He didn’t answer. They both knew it was true.

  * * *

  The next morning Chrissy Stillman showed up unexpectedly. Her blindingly beautiful smile made Sean blink like a startled baby when he opened the door. “Chrissy! Hi!” he said, sounding weirdly breathless to himself.

  The width of her smile narrowed slightly. “You got my message, right?”

  There was a rapid click behind him, like the ticking of an overwound metronome, the attending growl growing deeper and more aggravated. Chrissy glanced over Sean’s shoulder to the staircase behind him, and a strange look came over her. Like she was about to do battle and could hardly wait to start swinging her sword.

  George stood at the bottom of the stairs staring back. She barked once.

  A noise came out of Chrissy. Chtch!

  George barked again. She looked at Sean and back to Chrissy, and though Sean had never before considered that George might have actual thoughts, he felt he could practically hear the dog thinking, And who in the hell is this?

  Chrissy turned to Sean and put her hands on her hips. “Put the dog in another room, please,” she instructed.

  Put the dog . . . ? Sean had never even patted George before, much less directed her movements. “Let me get my aunt,” he said, knowing he had probably just emasculated himself in Chrissy’s eyes. He went up and knocked gently on Aunt Vivvy’s door, and explained the situation to her. “I thought it would be helpful . . .” he murmured, and “I didn’t expect her to come so soon . . .” He sounded like he was trying to avoid being punished.

  When Aunt Vivvy came down the stairs with him she eyed Chrissy. “Mrs. Cavicchio,” she said. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  “Vivian Preston!” She turned to Sean. “This is your aunt? Vivian Preston?”