There’s No Place Like Here

11

I went to see Mr. Burton every week while I was at St. Mary’s Secondary School. We even met up during the summer months when the school remained open to the rest of the town for summer activities. The last time I went to see him was when I had just turned eighteen. I’d finished my leaving certificate the previous year and I’d found out that morning I’d been accepted into the Gardaí Síochana. I was due to move to Cork in a few months to train at Templemore.

“Hello, Mr. Burton,” I said as he entered the small office that hadn’t changed one bit since the first day we met. He was still young and handsome and I loved every inch of him.

“ Sandy, for the hundredth time, stop calling me Mr. Burton. You make me sound like an old man.”

“You are an old man,” I teased.

“Which makes you an old woman,” he said lightly, and a silence fell between us. “So”-he became businesslike-“what’s on your mind this week?”

“I got accepted into the Gardaí today.”

His eyes widened. Happiness? Sadness? “Wow, Sandy, congratulations. You did it!” He came over and gave me a hug. We held on a second longer than we should have.

“How do your mum and dad feel?”

“They don’t know yet.”

“They’ll be sad to see you go.”

“It’s for the best.” I looked away.

“You won’t leave all your problems behind in Leitrim, you know,” he said gently.

“No, but I’ll leave behind the people who know about them.”

“Do you plan on coming back to visit?”

I stared him directly in the eyes. Were we still talking about my parents? “As much as I can.”

“How much will that be?”

I shrugged.

“They have always supported you, Sandy.”

“I can’t be who they want me to be, Mr. Burton. I make them uncomfortable.”

He rolled his eyes at me calling him that, at my deliberate attempts to build a wall between us. “They just want you to be you, you know that. Don’t be ashamed of the way you are. They love you for who you are.”

The way he looked at me made me wonder again if we were talking about my parents at all. I looked around the room. He knew everything about me, absolutely everything, and I sensed everything about him. He was still single and living alone, despite every girl in Leitrim town chasing him. He tried to tell me week after week to accept things as they were and move on with life, but if there was one man who had put his life on hold to wait for something, or someone, it was him.

He cleared his throat. “I heard you went out with Andy McCarthy this weekend.”

“And?”

He rubbed his face wearily and allowed a silence to fall between us. We were both good at that. Four years of therapy, of me baring my soul, yet every new word was a word farther from discussing the very thing that consumed my thoughts most moments of most days.

“So come on, talk to me,” he said softly.

Our last session and I couldn’t think of anything. He still had no answers for me.

“Are you going to the costume party on Friday?” He picked up the mood of the atmosphere.

“Yes,” I smiled. “I can’t think of a better way to say good-bye to this place than to walk out being dressed as something else.”

“What are you dressing up as?”

“A sock.”

He laughed so hard. I knew he, of all people, would get the joke. “Andy isn’t going with you?”

“Do my socks ever come as a pair?”

He raised his eyebrows, indicating he wanted to know more.

“He didn’t ‘get’ why I turned his flat upside down when I couldn’t find the invite.”

“Where do you think it is?”

“With everything else. With my mind.” I rubbed my eyes wearily.

“You haven’t lost your mind, Sandy. So you’re going to be a garda.” His smile was shaky.

“Worried about the future of our country?”

“No.” He smiled. “At least I know we’ll be in safe hands. You’ll be questioning criminals to death.”

“I learned from the best.” I forced myself to smile.

Mr. Burton turned up at the costume party that Friday night-dressed as a sock. I’d laughed so hard. He drove me home that night and we sat in silence. After so many years of talking, neither of us knew what to say. Outside my house he leaned over and kissed my lips hungrily; long and hard. It was like our hello and a good-bye all at once.

“Pity we’re not the same pattern, Gregory. We would have made a good pair,” I said sadly.

I wanted him to tell me that we’d make the most perfect odd pair around but I think he agreed because I watched him drive away.

The more partners I had, the more I realized Gregory and I were the best pair I’d ever come across. But in my pursuit of answers to all the difficult questions in my life, I missed out on the obvious ones right in front of my very eyes.