The Long Road Home. Mary Monroe Alice

teeth, varicose veins kept her off her feet, and every spring and fall the flowers that she adored kept her sneezing and tearing.

      She cast all that off as “her ailments,” and nothing more. Just crosses to bear, time off purgatory. Nonetheless, her own ailments kept her on the alert for the ailments of others. No flu bug could creep in her family’s house without vitamin C and orange juice being rushed out. If a sore throat stung, a spoonful of honey, some lemon juice, and a splash of whisky flowed.

      May had come to Seth’s house soon after his wife took sick. She bathed, fed, dressed, and nursed Liza during the final months the doctors let her stay home. Then, after cancer claimed her sister-in-law, May stayed on awhile longer to help her brother and his five motherless children. She rented a trailer, parked it across the road from Seth’s house, and in typical fashion, rolled up her sleeves and focused on “the babies.”

      That was twenty-two years ago. May had long since bought the trailer, planted her beloved perennial bed, and paved a small walkway from her trailer to Seth’s back door. Her “babies” were grown up now, and “her ailments” kept her boxed up in the trailer most of the time. Still, she never let an ailment pass by without speaking on it.

      “You sure that doctor came up and checked on Mrs. MacKenzie?” she asked Seth.

      “Yeh-up. Saw his car come and go.”

      “How big did you say that lump was?”

      Seth offered as detailed a description as he could between burps, knowing his sister would settle for nothing less.

      “Strange, her coming back here. Thought for sure they’d put that land up for sale once he died. The Vermont Land Trust already made inquiries, you know. Nice piece a land. You sure she ain’t selling?”

      “Didn’t sound like it. She wants to live here, so she says.”

      “Live in that big, unfinished house all alone? Without help?” Her meaty hand slapped the table. “That’s just crazy.”

      “Don’t I know it. Told her so but she’s got her mind set. Me and the boys are gonna work on the house. They can use the work. Lamb prices are down again.”

      “I just hope she don’t end up breakin’ up the land into ten-acre parcels and selling them off. Like Widow Nealy’s done.” May made loud clucking noises. “Leaving her kids with nothin’.”

      “The widow’s gonna be lonely someday…real lonely.”

      “MacKenzie’s got some beauty views. Them out o’ towners like the views.”

      “Like I said, she ain’t selling. Not right away anyway. She’s a funny thing. Stick-to kinda person. Remember how she planted all them blueberry bushes on the slope, then came over to get fresh manure?” He chuckled and wiped his mouth.

      May laughed and slapped her hand again. “Lord almighty, I do too! I about died when I saw them nylon bags full of manure hangin’ off them tiny little bushes. Bowed them right over.”

      “Deer came and ate them bushes anyway.” Seth’s eyes twinkled. “But she went and planted another batch.”

      “Yes, she did,” said May, remembering now. “Deer ate them too, though.”

      Seth scratched his head. “Yeh-up. Hungry, ain’t they?”

      May picked at a muffin, gummed it awhile, then sneaked a quick glance at her brother. He seemed comfortable enough now that the burping stopped. She decided to venture a new topic.

      “How’d Esther take Mrs. MacKenzie coming back?”

      Seth’s face pinched and he drummed his fingers a moment. Then his eyes met May’s. They spoke in a silent code established early in childhood and nurtured over fifty years of devotion. May interpreted his pain, his worry, and his hesitancy to discuss the subject.

      Seth knew she understood. May was a good listener and an even better observer.

      “She’s up there now,” Seth finally muttered. “I guess she’s all right.”

      “Don’t be so sure, Seth. Esther’s all bark and no bite. She may have a hard time seeing Nora MacKenzie move in next door. She’ll have to work with her every day, too.”

      “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Seth’s mouth was set in a hard line.

      “That’ll be the day I listen to a heathen preach the Bible at me!”

      “Who you callin’ a heathen, heathen?”

      May cackled loud and hearty. Neither one of them went to church, but they each considered the other the most honest, loving Christian they’d ever known.

      “Well then,” May said, pushing back her chair and hoisting her largesse out of it. She, too, panted with the effort and her legs started to throb from sitting still too long. “Ain’t nothing left to do but go up and see the missus for myself. Check on her ailment. Sweet little thing, up in that big house by herself. Just hope she don’t plant no more blueberries. Don’t know I can stand the smell!”

      May rolled up the mountain in her burgundy Buick. When May turned fifty, she treated herself to her first luxury, an “almost new” new car. It was plush: wide bodied, a cushy interior, air conditioning—the works. She even got one of those vanity mirrors, though she never used it. Today, eight years later, her beloved auto had spots of rust and a crumpled left fender from when she slid on the ice and bumped a tree. These she considered her car’s mere ailments. Like her, the burgundy Buick ran rough but reliable and only clocked in at 49,241 miles.

      She spotted Esther barreling toward her down the back road with dust flying at the wheels. May lay on a honk that brought Esther to a crawl at the fork. She eased to a stop beside the Buick. May made a show of blowing the dust out of her face and offered a cough for emphasis.

      “We don’t need no more accidents,” May warned.

      “Yes’m,” Esther replied, knowing better than to risk a fiery scolding from her aunt. Nothing Aunt May hated more than back-road speeders.

      “You just leaving the MacKenzie place?”

      Esther’s face clouded. “Not soon enough.”

      May scrutinized Esther’s face. She was right, she decided. This move of Mrs. MacKenzie’s back to the farm was coming hard for Esther. Esther would never let on to anyone how deeply she’d been hurt by Michael MacKenzie; she was too proud, or too ornery, to show it. They all counted on Esther to be the strong one, and she never let them down. In the process, however, she never let her hurt out. May saw it, however. Saw the hurt in the spurts of anger at all the wrong places, in the many lone ventures up to the mountains with her easel. Mostly, she heard it in the way Esther pined to leave the farm but never did.

      “Your pa, he wants us to be fair with her. Don’t be casting blame where it don’t belong.”

      “I don’t know what you mean.” Esther looked ahead out the windshield.

      May knew that tight-lipped, squinty-eyed stare. Esther was simmering and ready to blow.

      “I’ve got something I want to take care of,” said Esther, abruptly shifting into drive. “You be careful going up that road, hear? It’s full of rough spots. See you.”

      Esther’s Impala sailed away on a cloud of dust. May clucked and wagged her head. The devil had that girl’s tail, she thought, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d have the devil to pay. Esther sure had a tongue. May remembered Nora as the kind of girl who kept her thoughts to herself.

      “Poor little thing,” she murmured, thinking of what might have transpired between the two young women. That’d be like pitting a cock with a razor against a hen.

      She rambled to the MacKenzie road, and remembering it, she took it in first gear all the way. The burgundy Buick had plenty of power and hummed without whining, though May did each time she spotted bare dirt on the steep incline.