The Shortest Way Home (7 page)

The teacup went down into its saucer with a clank. “What leads you to believe I’ve stopped participating in activities I enjoy?”

“Well,” he stammered, thrown off by her testiness. “Cormac said you weren’t doing the Garden Club anymore. . . .”

She turned to him, eyes narrowed. “The Garden Club has devolved into a flock of chattering flibbertigibbets who’d rather preen about their grandchildren and critique the executive committee than actually
plant
anything. It was no longer worthy of my time.”

“But . . . what about all your friends?” Aunt Vivvy’s laserlike glare had always had the effect of reducing his reasoning and communication skills to those of a five-year-old.

She glanced away, and Sean felt the relief as if someone had turned off a thousand-watt bulb. “Some have moved to warmer locales or to live closer to adult children.” She took a sip of her tea. “And many have passed.”

Lonely.
He’d never thought of her as someone who needed much in the way of human interaction. She was a doer, not a talker. But even the most independent, unemotional people felt the loss of those they’d come to rely on, if only for their presence. Sean had seen it many times. An imperious, commanding village leader would crumble into incoherence when he learned his subordinates hadn’t survived a natural disaster or tribal attack.

That’s why she got the dog
, he realized. She wasn’t losing it. She just wanted company.

* * *

A
few days later, Deirdre flopped down onto the couch next to Sean and put her sticky sneakers on the coffee table. She pulled a wad of bills out of her khakis and began counting.

“Do they still do the clapping thing at the end of fifth grade?” he asked, closing his book.

“Clapping thing?”

“Yeah, Kevin’s last day is tomorrow, and it reminded me how all the families used to line up in the hallways and clap when we left on the last day of elementary school.”

“I have no memory of that,” she said dismissively.

“Dee, think,” he said, a little annoyed that she was unwilling simply to confirm an inconsequential memory of his. “On your last day of fifth grade, your
last day
at Juniper Hill, didn’t everyone come and clap for you?”

“And who’s everyone, Sean? Dad was gone, Hugh was probably busy getting high and crashing the car, Viv didn’t do school events . . . and where were you? Greenland or something? Who would’ve come?” She picked a flake of dried ketchup off her pant leg. “Assuming the stupid clapping thing even happened, which, as I
said
, I have no memory of.” She swung her legs down and rose from the couch. “Besides, I’m pulling a double tomorrow, so unless they’re clapping all the way to Carey’s, I’m out.”

His original question had been an idle one. And yet her evasiveness had somehow made him feel weirdly strident about it. If he were right about this vague memory of his elementary days, and if the tradition still held, shouldn’t
somebody
go down to school and clap for Kevin?

Dinner that night was a box of linguine and a jar of marinara that Sean found in one of the cupboards. Deirdre had gone to rehearsal, and Aunt Vivian hadn’t yet risen from a brief rest that had begun two hours before.

“Hey,” he said, as he and Kevin sat at the kitchen table and ate pasta from cereal bowls. “When I was your age, they did this clapping thing—”

Kevin slurped a strand of linguine into his mouth. “Uh huh,” he said. “The Clap Out.”

“Okay!” Sean gave the table a triumphant little slap. “I’m not crazy!”

Kevin looked at him as if he most certainly were.

“No, see, I asked Deirdre and she said she didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Kevin shrugged as if to say,
Why would
she?

“Don’t they send notices home about stuff like that?”

“They do it by e-mail.”

Aunt Vivvy had a typewriter. Period. “Aunt Dee has a laptop, right?”

“Yeah, but she’s not on the parent e-mail list.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s not a parent.” Kevin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand—the annoyance showed only in his eyes.

Sean nodded, chastened. They ate their last strands of linguine in silence.

As they cleared the table, Sean said, “So what if . . . I mean, would it be all right if I, like . . . came? And clapped?”

Kevin glanced over at him with a sort of bafflement.

“If you don’t want me to, that’s fine. No offense taken. And you wouldn’t have to introduce me or anything. I could just clap and go. You know, like . . . like the Lone Ranger of clapping.” He grinned. “Then I’d gallop off on my white horse. . . . Very inconspicuous, I promise.”

Kevin rolled his eyes, but Sean could tell he was stifling a smile.

“Or I could take you with me,” he offered. “A big white stallion is a pretty sweet ride—great way to impress the chicks.”

“Gross!” said Kevin, a faint pink rising under his scattered freckles.

“Okay, no horse. Got it. How about if I just say a quick ‘Hi-ho Silver’ and trot away?”

“No!” said Kevin, giggling with embarrassment.

“Please?”

“No! You’re crazy!”

“All right,” said Sean with a dejected sigh. “I’ll just stand in the back and I won’t even clap very loudly. Come on, give your old uncle Sean something to do tomorrow.”

Kevin shrugged, but he couldn’t erase the grin from his face completely.

* * *

J
uniper Hill School seemed to be just as he’d left it. Oh, there were a couple of additional classrooms tacked onto the back, and a fence across the sledding hill where he and his friends had often endangered the integrity of their spines by sliding down on lunch trays. But other than that, it was the same. Same smell of tempera paint as he walked past the art room; same bulletin boards covered with book reports, each stapled onto a different color of construction paper; same sound of children’s voices growing shrill with impatience as they ticked down the last moments of the school day. And not just any school day—the
last
day. Summer beckoned from just beyond the heavy fire doors at the end of the hall.

Parents were arriving, claiming space along the hallway like fans lined up for hot concert tickets. Sean thought he had a good spot near the lost and found until the smell of mildewed fleece wafted by him. He maneuvered down toward a drinking fountain installed at the height of his thigh and found himself outside a classroom door with a sign that said
MS. LINDQUIST, GRADE 5
. Sean peeked through the narrow window in the door. There was Kevin sitting at his desk, eyes fixed on something across the room. The kids around him were poking each other or rifling through their desks. Sean shifted so he could see what Kevin was gazing at so intently.

There was a young woman with thin brown hair and glasses who appeared to be giving instructions of some kind. A student teacher, maybe? But shouldn’t old Mrs. Lindquist be the one to give that tiresome end-of-the-year speech that no child on the face of the earth had ever listened to? Sean shifted his position so that he could scan the entire classroom, but there didn’t appear to be any other adults in the room.

A bell rang, and like a flock of birds changing direction in unison, all the parents in the hallway seemed to bring out their cameras and video recorders at once. It hadn’t crossed Sean’s mind to bring a camera because he didn’t own one. He didn’t even have a cell phone. But he felt a sudden twinge of regret that he hadn’t thought to ask Deirdre if she had a camera he could use. He looked around. The parents whose faces weren’t covered by electronics all carried various expressions of intense anticipation. A few were teary. This was clearly a very big deal.

Sean wondered if his own parents had felt the same way—he remembered them both being there, his mother holding baby Deirdre, his father’s hand tight around Hugh’s, who was practically born ready to take off the second he saw an opening. Or maybe by then his mother’s mind had already started to wander, so that she really wasn’t taking in the weight of the occasion; possibly his father was too distracted by his wife’s waning lucidity to care very much that his oldest would momentarily be marking a milestone.

The principal’s voice came on over the PA system, straining to enunciate over the rising din in the hallway. He said what a wonderful year of learning it had been for their school community, requested that all parents check the lost and found, and said a few other things to which no one really listened. And then three of the classroom doors opened and a stream of children began to march down the hall. Sean was taller than most of the other adults, but he found himself straining to make sure that Kevin saw him. Suddenly that seemed important.

The line of children spilling from the classroom laughing and high-fiving people as they marched along came to an end, and Kevin still hadn’t come out. Sean peered into the doorway and saw Kevin handing the young woman with the glasses a folded-up piece of paper. His face was so red Sean thought he might burst into flames. She smiled at him with great affection, said a few words, took a deep breath and said a few more. Her eyes welled, and she suddenly clutched him to her, pressing her cheek to the top of his head. Then she let him go. She laughed, said one or two more words. Kevin nodded sheepishly and turned toward the door. Sean popped back out of sight before Kevin could catch him.

When Kevin came out, Sean called his name and he looked up, startled, it seemed, to see his uncle there at school. Sean made a show of silent claps, then mimed galloping. Kevin rolled his eyes, embarrassed but laughing all the same. Sean felt an odd surge of happiness. “I’ll meet you outside!” he called, as Kevin went to follow his classmates.

When Kevin was no longer visible beyond the sea of parents, Sean turned and found the young teacher looking at him.

“Are you . . . a relative?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m his uncle.”

She thought about this for a moment, pressing her glasses up a little farther on the bridge of her nose. “The one who lives in Africa?”

Sean nodded. “He told you about that?”

“He tells me a lot of things.” Her smile had a strangely sad tinge to it. “Boy, I’m going to miss him.” She looked down the hallway. “I better get out there. Nice to actually meet you.” And she strode away.

Sean followed the crowd to the front of the school. When he spotted Kevin, he was listening patiently to a man with a brightly colored tie. The man patted Kevin’s shoulder. From the look on Kevin’s face, he wasn’t nearly as happy to be talking to this guy as to his teacher.

“There you are,” said Sean. “Ready to hit the high road?”

“Yeah!” Kevin’s relief was palpable. The man seemed about to introduce himself, but Kevin grabbed Sean by the elbow and steered him toward the street. As soon as they’d put a safe distance between themselves and the school, Kevin’s hand dropped back to his side.

“Who was that?” Sean asked.

“Guidance counselor.” Kevin continued up the sidewalk and Sean went with him.

“He seemed to like you.”

“That’s his job.”

Sean nodded. The kid had a point. “And who was that lady in your classroom?”

“My teacher.” Said like it was ridiculously obvious.

“Deirdre said you had old Mrs. Lindquist.”

“She retired a couple of years ago. That’s her daughter.”

“I guess Deirdre didn’t realize a secret switch had been made,” Sean joked.

“She doesn’t pay that much attention.”

True,
thought Sean. “So what do you want to do now? Should we go get an ice cream or something to celebrate the end of your elementary career? We could go home and get Auntie Vivvy’s car and hit Dairy Queen.”

“Um . . .” Kevin squinted in indecision.

“ ‘Um’ to
ice cream
? What kind of kid are you?” Sean teased.

“No, it’s just . . . There’ll be a lot of people there.”

“The line’ll be long,” Sean conceded. “But we’re not in a hurry, are we?”

“No . . . but it’ll be really . . .
crowded
.” He said it as if the word tasted bad.

Sean didn’t know how to respond. How crowded could it be, and what did it matter anyway? “I see,” he said, though he didn’t. “Well, um. I’m open for suggestions.”

“I was just gonna go home and have a Popsicle.”

They walked in silence for another few moments. “Popsicles it is, then,” said Sean.

As they made their way home, Sean was glad that he’d thought to go to the Clap Out. Even an uncle you hardly knew was better than no one showing up at all. Especially since Kevin didn’t seem to have a friend whose parents had taken him under their wing, like Cormac’s parents had done for Sean all those years ago. The McGraths had always included Sean, and had hooted and clapped the loudest for him at his high school graduation. Still, he remembered looking into the audience, hoping stupidly that his father might be there, though he hadn’t laid eyes on the man for a good two years. He’d heard so many of his classmates complain about their parents’ interference and had told himself that at least he could do as he liked. Aunt Vivvy had made sure he was properly clothed and adequately fed, but she didn’t stick her nose into his business.

But graduation had obliterated the little fantasy he’d clung to that his father, a merchant mariner, was just on a long trip. He’d felt the truth of his father’s abandonment like a gut punch as he took his diploma, shook the principal’s hand, and gazed out into the sea of parenthood that didn’t include his own. At least his mother had had a good excuse.

It had been hard enough for Sean at eighteen. How terribly lonely must Deirdre have felt at eleven when no one showed up to her Clap Out, not to mention every other parent-invited event? And how must it have sharpened those steely edges she seemed to have now?

“Hey,” he said to Kevin as they rounded the corner toward the house. “You spend much time with Auntie Deirdre?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “When she doesn’t have a show.”

“What kinds of things do you do?”

Kevin shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff.”