Irish Goodbye

Home is a place that doesn’t exist. Or, at least it used to. The years of my childhood sprawl out before me as I drive home on the I-90 to Boston. I feel as though I could reach out and grab these fragments; the signposts, the orange glow of streetlamps, and the old oaks lined up like soldiers against the gray bruised sky. It is somewhere on this road that it settles over me. This is the last time that I will ever make this trip; Chicago to Boston. And now, even this beaten down route makes me feel as if nothing will feel familiar again. All these memories reflect only the muddy negatives of an eternal photograph—Nicky, Ben, and me, all winter-white limbs on the green backyards of spring, fluorescent blue skies, and the smell of grease and lemons as we watched dad fix up the truck that never needed fixing. Now these remnants are scattered across the drive home like dust, and there is nothing left to bring into the present.

Ben had decided two years ago that there was nothing left to keep in the present, and drove dad’s pristine pickup into the side of the Summer Street Bridge. The officers thought that he might have been trying to drive off the bridge, but had failed at his mission. He rammed dad’s blue Ford straight into the guard rail, flipping the truck onto its side and setting it ablaze like the Fourth of July. I saw it on the news before I got the call. I was still working at the Health Center in South Boston, and the news lit up all the screens, staticky and neon as hospital beds screeched to a stop and bodies huddled, straining their necks. Voices flared about another terrorist attack in the city; ‘probably a suicide bomber,’ and, ‘when is Boston going to catch a break?’ I was barely able to watch, sick to my stomach. Some poor soul's death wish, confused again for political violence.

That was when I got the call from Nicky, and I stood petrified and sweaty under the garish lights of the corridor. It was my own older brother, Benny, freckled arms and unruly blond hair, who had lit up the bridge in orange and black. My own brother, awkward and lanky and lovely all at once. Benny, who picked me up from school every day since I was seven; smoking out the window, smirking and blasting the radio.

Like a tide, the memories flood back to me as I cross the threshold into South Boston, and I eventually have to pull over the car into an Advance Auto Parts parking lot to collect myself. Rain drizzles the windshield, and a soft hum envelopes me.

“Olive,” I hear Benny’s voice and I am back in his car, feet barely touching the floor, “Oliveee.”

“Yeaaah Benny?” I scrunched my small nose at him, giggling.

“You ready?” he asked, and I gave a quick nod. He pulled the car out of the McKinley Elementary pick-up line. “You know dad’s gonna go berserk if he sees that on your shirt,” he pointed at my pink t-shirt, now with a dime-sized chocolate ice cream stain on the belly. My fingers stretched out the fabric to examine it, mouth agape. I gasped.

“Oh no!” I licked my pudgy finger and tried to lift the brown color. Then after minutes of concentrating, I turned back to Benny, who took a long drag on his cigarette, “What’s berserk mean?” I asked. He burst into laughter; white paneled houses and chain-link fences whirred past, the September air was sweet and sticky,

“It means…to go crazy.”

“Go crazy?”

“Yeah, you know? Like dad does sometimes,” Benny scrunched his nose back at me, his freckles gathering up like little seeds, “To go berserk.”

“Ohhhh,” although I didn’t understand it much, I wanted to agree with Benny. I had heard people talk about our father in a way that wasn’t so nice; as if something that was once good had somehow soured, like old milk. I propped my Sketchers on the dash board, “Yeah.”

When we pulled into our driveway next to our lemon yellow box-home, Benny jumped out and ran around to the passenger door. He crouched down, unbuckled me, pulled his big gray sweatshirt out of his backpack and swept it over my tiny frame. At a glance, it might have looked like I was prepping my ghost costume for Halloween. The heavy cotton hung loosely on my shoulders, and almost completely swallowed my arms and legs. But, it did cover the dime-sized chocolate ice cream stain. Smile lines appeared around Benny’s eyes, and he shot a look back at the house. Still. Turning back, he did a goofy salute,

“There ya go kid.”

~

The rain has crescendoed to a roar but I can’t hear it. I am hunched over the steering wheel and heaving. The world is made of noise and I am under it.

There is nothing to cover me.

~

When the downpour has settled into the mist, it feels as though it has been hours. My breathing slows and I lift my head, suddenly becoming very aware of my surroundings. Across the street, the fire hall sits chalky red in the fog, and next to it—the Bronson’s house on the corner. I know that I am one right turn from Charlie Street, onward towards home, for the very last time. I swipe my eyes and run my fingers through my hair. I glance around the auto repair lot where an old man walks outside, balancing a Dunkin coffee and a plastic bag. I let out one more labored breath, clunk the shift out of park, and begin the last part of my journey.

On Charlie Street, I relive all of our drives home from school. They drift across the scenery like New England tumbleweeds. Joking and arguing, fighting over the music, all the way through middle school and high school. Days where Benny was just my big brother, and days when we were both young and silent and understanding; as if neither of us had ever known how to protect the other.

The three of us were never able to afford more than one car, and dad never let us drive the Ford, so our old beater lived with us through everything. Today it sits in the driveway where my brother Nick has pulled in, he’s sitting on the concrete steps under the porch, brown stubble and a barn coat—smoking. The car was always Nick’s token of Ben.

I wipe under my eyes one last time as my wheels creak into the long crumbling driveway. I hope he doesn’t see that I have been crying. The lemon yellow house is now a lemon brown, and the grass has overgrown around the chain-link fence. The paint has begun to chip off the once bright-white door, still adorned with a sign that reads, “Fáilte!” The Irish welcome, as well as a red document that blares, “Sold.”

“If only dad could see it now,” I whisper to myself.

After Ben died, dad’s mental and emotional state declined at an even faster rate. He started having episodes of seeing things, unplugging the landline and smashing all of our devices in the garage with a hammer; believing that we were being listened to. He told us that Ben’s death had been planned, either by the government, a hitman, or the cartel, it always changed. For the most part, we were just glad that his rampages were being redirected to the imaginary.

Nick would come home from long days of work downtown, and me from the hospital, only to find dad huddled up in the closet with a rifle. For a long time, a deep sour part of our souls wanted to believe what dad was saying. That a car could never explode like that without intention. That there was no way Benny would ever do something like that. But, we knew that he was living at home while we were both away at college. We knew that Benny had always been through the worst of it.

I turn off the engine and make my way to the steps where my older brother stares into the jungle of the front lawn. He flicks ashes onto the stair and grinds them with his boot. He looks up at me, then stands to pull me into a hug,

“Hey Olive,” he sighs.

“Hey Nicky,” I pull away for a moment and look at the door, and to my surprise, start chuckling, “You know the red and the yellow…it’s quite the combination.” Nicky lifts his eyebrows and swings around towards the door, then back at me, grinning,

“Fáilte!”

“Fáilte!” I shoot back with a wry grin. I crouch to sit on the steps, still laughing, and he sits down beside me. We exist in silence for what feels like a lifetime. Nicky hands me the cigarette, and I take a short drag and puff it out. Across the street, two sisters emerge from the school bus and run inside their baby-blue Colonial. Nicky turns to me and his face twists into a puzzled expression,

“Is that…is that Benny’s sweatshirt?” I look down at the once oversized sweatshirt that now fits my frame mostly perfectly, I pull on the fabric, “I hadn’t even recognized it until now,” he continues, “I always thought you didn’t keep anything.”

“Yeah, I’ve never been the sentimental type,” I tease, leaning into him. I look back down at the sweatshirt and try to push down the memory, “It’s the only thing I have ever needed to keep,” I say. Nicky seems satisfied with my answer and gives a slow melancholy grin, gazing at me as the crickets start to buzz around us in the coming dusk. He leans his shoulder back into me.

“It’s two years ago today,” I say, “and everything is gone now, or going to be gone,” I laugh, “even this dump.” We both know what I mean. Dad was forced into assisted living six months ago, but suffered from a stroke. It was then that we knew he wouldn’t be coming back to this place. After that, it didn't take long, Nick listed it off-market and a development company made an offer within two weeks. The closing is tomorrow morning. Nicky leaves for Denver the day after. There have been rumors that the whole neighborhood is about to boom, and they want to tear this place down to the studs.

“Ah, I know you always secretly liked this place,” he challenges.

“I don’t know,” I say, grabbing the cigarette from his fingers and taking another drag, “I spent all this time while I was driving today thinking about all the drives we had with Benny. Every single time he picked us up from school, he always took the same route. I thought about how most of my favorite memories with him were in that car, and I think that–” I took a deep breath, “I think that’s why I stayed away for so much of these past two years, Nicky.” Hot tears prick my eyes, and I try to focus my gaze on a crack in the sidewalk, “I didn’t want to drive home without him.”

Nicky nods, and we sit there until the school bus has made it down the street and the world has gone quiet again. Even the crickets seem to have been relieved of their song. The mist hangs low over the roofs, soft and gray, and the house sits heavy around us, like something tired that has finally decided to lie down.

“You ready?” Nick asks, and we make our way to the car.