But then stress’ll do that to you.
He so didn’t want to go into that house. Probably should have stayed at the Four Seasons, which was what he usually did when he was in town. Except on some molecular level, he needed to see the old place even though he hated it. Needed to go inside.
It was like peeling back a Band-Aid and checking out a cut.
With a curse, he grabbed his leather duffel as well as the two bags of groceries he’d bought at a twenty-four-hour Star Market, then opened the car door and stood up.
Boston smelled different than New York. Always had. Tonight, the brine of the ocean was especially heavy in the air, buffered by the sweet sweat of summer’s humidity. As his nose ate up the scent, his brain registered it as home.
He followed the short concrete walkway up to the house then long-legged the five steps to the shallow front porch. He didn’t have a key, but as always, there was one tucked behind the flimsy metal mailbox that was tacked onto the aluminum siding.
The door opened with the exact same squeak he remembered, and, hearing the hinge complain, his blood turned into icy slush.
That squeak had always been the warning, the call to listen hard for what came next. If it was a door closing underneath them, he and his brothers would take a deep breath because it was just the tenants coming home. But if it was footsteps on the stairs? That meant pure panic and running for cover.
As he stepped inside the foyer, Sean’s heart started to jackrabbit in his chest and sweat broke out on his forehead.
Except, damn it, he was thirty-six years old and the man was dead. Nothing could hurt him here anymore. Nothing.
Uh-huh, right. Too bad his body didn’t know this. As he went up the staircase, his knees were weak and his gut was a lead balloon. And God, the sound of the wood creaking under his soles was awful in his ears. The dirge of his approach was the same as when his father had come home, and hearing his own footsteps now, he remembered the fear he had felt as a boy as the thundering noise grew louder and louder.
At the top of the landing he put his hand on the doorknob and the key in the lock. Before he went in, he told himself this was only a door and he wasn’t stepping back into his past. The space-time continuum just didn’t work that way. Thank God.
But he was still in a cold sweat as he opened up and walked in.
When he turned on the lights, he was amazed. Everything was exactly the same: the tattered Barcalounger with the TV tray right next to it; the rumpled couch with its faded flower print; the 1970s lamps that were as big as oil drums and just as ugly; the crucifix on the wall, the yellowed, exhausted lace drapery.
The air was stuffy in spite of the air conditioner that was humming, so he cracked open a window. The place smelled of cigarette smoke, but it was the kind of thing left over after a four-pack-a-day addict stops. The stench lingered, embedded in the room’s paint and flooring and fabrics, but wasn’t in the air itself.
As the breeze came in, he walked over to the TV tray and picked up the Boston Globe crossword puzzle that was mostly done. The date in the upper right-hand corner was from the previous Sunday, the last time his father had sat in the chair with a pencil in hand filling in little boxes with wobbly, capitalized letters.
Going by the script, it seemed as if his father had had hand tremors. Odd, to picture him as anything other than brutally strong.
Sean put the paper down and forced himself to walk through every room. It was about halfway through the tour when he realized something was different.
Everything was clean.
The cramped kitchen was tidy, no dirty dishes in the sink, no trash collecting in the Rubbermaid bin in the corner, no food left out on the counters. The room he’d shared with Billy had both beds made and a vacuumed rug. Mac’s bedroom was just as neat. Their father’s private space was likewise in wilted but tidy condition.
Back when Sean had lived here, there had been cobwebs in the corners of the rooms and dirt tracked in the front door and beds with rumpled sheets and dust everywhere. There had also been a lot of empty bottles.
With a compulsion he couldn’t fight, Sean went through all the closets and cupboards and dressers in the apartment. He looked under each bed and the couch. Checked behind the TV and then went into the kitchen and moved the refrigerator out from the wall.
Not one single booze bottle. Not one beer can.
No alcohol in the place.
As he threw his shoulder into the fridge and forced the thing back into place, he was flat-out amazed. He’d never have thought their father could kick the sauce. The drinking had been as much a part of him as his dark hair and the hard tone of his voice.
Sean stalled out, but then went into the living room and figured it was time to score some shut-eye. First thing tomorrow, he was going to make arrangements with Finnegan’s Funeral Home for the cremation and the interment. After that, he’d have to pack up the apartment. No question they would sell the duplex. There was no reason to come back here ever again.
He glanced around. God, how long had it been since he’d stood in this room?
As he went through the years, he was surprised to realize it had been all the way back when he’d gone away to Harvard as a freshman. Made sense though. College had been his ticket out, and once he didn’t have to sleep under this roof, he’d made damn sure he never showed up again. It had been the same for Billy when he’d gotten a football scholarship to Holy Cross. And for Mac, who’d joined the army the very month Billy went off to college. They’d all left and never returned.
Go figure.
Sean went over to his duffel, stripped down to his boxers and grabbed his toothbrush. After he hit the bathroom in the hall, he picked a pillow off his old bed and headed for the couch.
No way in hell he was sleeping in his room.
Lying flat on his back in the dark, he thought of the penthouse he lived in down in Manhattan. Park Avenue in the seventies, a perfect address. And everything in that showstopper of a place was sleek and expensive, from the furniture to the drapes to the kitchen appliances to that million-dollar view of Central Park.
It was about as far away from where he was now as was humanly possible.
Sean screwed his lids down, crossed his arms over his chest and concentrated on going to sleep.
Yeah, right.
He lasted not even ten minutes before he was on his bare feet and pacing up and down over the knobby area rug.
* * *
Lizzie parked the Toyota in front of the row house and got out with the bag of Mr. O’Banyon’s things. Her feet were killing her and she had a headache from having had too many coffees, but at least she didn’t have to be at the clinic until noon today because she was working the later shift.
As she stepped onto the duplex’s concrete walkway, she stopped and looked up. No lights were on upstairs, but that wasn’t because someone was sleeping. It was because no one lived there anymore.
Tears stung her eyes. It was hard to imagine her cranky old friend gone. Hard to internalize the fact that there would be no more blue glow from his TV at night, no more sound of him shuffling about, no more trips to buy him the chocolate ice cream he liked.
No more talking to him the way a daughter talked to a gruff father.
She tightened her grip on the bag’s handles and hoped he hadn’t struggled at the end, hadn’t felt horrible pain and fear. She wished for him a peaceful slide as he passed, not a bumpy, frightening fall.
As she went up to the house, she felt as if there was a draft licking around her body, as if the night had turned frigid though it was in fact balmy.