Going Home

        “21 Friends available” lied Sean’s MacBook.  Sean found it comforting though, as he scanned through peoples personal lives from the discomfort of his Ikea loveseat.  Steve was bitching about going to work.  Stacey had spent the weekend drinking so much that she had been legally retarded for twenty-six hours; she didn’t remember a thing but had three albums worth of photos to commemorate the events.  Even Sean’s wife’s parents were in on the action.  His mother-in-law was alerting the back-lit world that she would be joining a mob of potentially “5 millon” people who believe in God, while her husband had just reached the level of “grade school teacher” in Mahjong.  Sean told himself that he found all of this comforting.  Despite sitting alone in his apartment, his wife at work, he was still surrounded by friends.  This was also a lie.
        Three years, one month, two weeks, and six days was apparently not enough time to make a place home.  Sean had never considered it before the two of them had moved.  How many roads must a man walk down, and all that.  It seemed so angst-y, something a teenager, no, a child would worry about.  He was a man.  He was finally moving out; leaving the fold.  Leaving this hick town for the great wide world.
        One thousand one hundred and forty-seven days had been spent painting, furnishing, sleeping, eating, cleaning, and generally living in the apartment that Sean currently occupied.  Perhaps eleven-fifty was the appropriate waiting period.
        It hurt Sean when, in moments of loneliness and abandon, his wife clung to him, her tear streaked face buried against his chest, kicking and flailing at the world, her voice straining to be heard amidst the sobs, “I want to go home.”  Sean held her close while whispering a message that only caused her more anguish but must be uttered like a protective spell against the demons of the night, “we are home, this, is our home.”
        Twenty-eight people had already responded to Doug’s announcement that he would be renting a party bus in a few weeks.  “We are home,” Sean muttered as he closed the laptop’s clam-shell.  Normally, Sean was a stickler for properly shutting down his “baby” before storing it in a protective sleeve--today he placed the still warm body on the coffee table and stared at the crimson accent walls of his living room.  It felt terrible when Emily would lash out at him during those moments of deep-seeded doubt, but it hurt him even more to lie to her, “we are home.”  He needed to be brave, for her, he told himself almost daily now.  Sometimes things would be so busy, between work, school, and “just living” that he forgot; forgot those alien feelings, forgot for weeks at a time that they weren’t comfortable.  Then, when things quieted down, finally a moment to relax; it inevitably started again.  Maybe Sean reached out for something that was no-longer there, some sort-of suburban phantom limb.  Sean craved culture; the city provided monthly car shows, gun shows, car and gun shows, then finally, a spark of hope; a touring show of Fiddler on the Roof was coming.  A one-night only engagement--on a Wednesday.
        The feeling always peaked quietly, only surfacing to reinforce the need for Sean’s shielding mantra, “we are home.”  These quiet moments bombarded Sean with memories of regaling friends and coworkers with stories that began, “back home...”  Those words tasted acidic in his mouth whenever they were uttered to soothe his yearning wife “we ARE...” “this IS...”.  Nothing felt further from the truth; but he needed to believe it, she needed him to believe it.