The Path

A Short Story

Cover by Winston Malone

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“I’ve been thinking about that path today,” Georgia said into the receiver. “You know, the one by the grocery store?” 

She wound the phone cord around her bony fingers. She was seventy-seven and had never learned to use a cell phone. She sat in her comfy chair, looking out the window into the backyard. It was a bright, summer morning in the suburbs of Indianapolis. The chain-link fence was just visible over the windowsill; and beyond the fence were the sycamore and cottonwood trees.

“What path?” Ritchie asked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, mom.”

“When you walk down the sidewalk to the store, there’s that path that goes off into the woods, in the direction of our house—just before the intersection by the grocery store.”

“Are you talking about the one on the right side of the road before the stoplight on Gaston?”

“Yeah, that’s it. I’ve never walked down it before.”

“That’s because before they took away your license you always drove to the store. It’s about a mile walk.”

“I know,” she said. “Thanks for reminding me I’m a bad driver.”

Ritchie laughed. “What are you doing today?”

“Nothing. I need to get some groceries.”

“You don’t need groceries. We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Numbers are up. You don’t need to go outside. You might catch a cold.”

She smiled wryly and contemplated the soft sunlight glancing on the windowpanes.

“Do you even have a mask?” Ritchie asked.

“Yes,” she said. She looked at the box of surgical masks on the table by the front door. “The anniversary of your brother’s passing is coming up. It’s gonna be—what?—13 years?”

“I miss him too, mom.” Ritchie sighed heavily.

“Or will be 14 years?”

“No one expected Jonathan to do that. There was nothing you or anyone else could’ve done.”

“I wonder why he went down that path?”

“Loneliness…The drugs.”

“No, I mean that path by the grocery store.”

“Mom, why do you keep talking about that goddamned path?”

She frowned. “I just don’t know why I never walked down it.”

“It’s because it used to be dangerous. Gangs hung out there and it wasn’t until about 10 or 12 years ago that the county cleaned it up. It was before I retired from the Marines—around then—when they put up those luxury apartments behind the store. They built bike paths and walking trails through the woods. The paths all link up to the trail around Allison Lake. There’s a community garden, playground, basketball court, water fountains, benches, everything. At some point—I don’t know when—they put in a footbridge over the creek behind our house. So now everything’s connected to that shitty dirt path behind our backyard fence.”

“That’s the path Jonathan went down. The one behind our house.”

“You said he went down the path by the grocery store.”

Georgia rolled her eyes. “You just said that the paths are connected, so he went down both.”

“Jesus, mom, you’re confusing me. You fixate on the weirdest shit.”

“I need to go to the store.”

“You don’t need to go to the store. You have everything you need there. I was just there on Sunday.—That reminds me…I can’t visit this weekend. Grace has a recital in South Bend on Saturday, so we’ll be out of town.”

“Okay.”

“But I’ll see you the Saturday after that.”

“It’s only Wednesday.”

“I know, I’m just saying that we’re out of town this weekend.”

“But that Friday is—”

“The anniversary…I know. I’ll stop by to see you before then…I have to go, mom. Love you.”

“I love you too.”

Georgia returned the receiver to the cradle. She lifted herself out of the comfy chair. She decided she would go to the store. She wasn’t an invalid, and all of this staying cooped up in the house because of COVID was tiresome. She grabbed the canvas shopping bag from the hook. She put two surgical masks in it, just in case she lost one. Then she stepped outside and locked the door behind her.

She was healthy and agile for her age. She didn’t need a walker or a cane. True, she couldn’t see too good. They’d suspended her driver’s license because of that—after the fender bender. She told them the glare of the sun had made her think the traffic light had been green. The DMV employees exuded sympathy and understanding but told her she’d have to pass an eye exam. She had two chances, and failed both.

Jonathan, too, had trouble with his eyes near the end. The week before he committed suicide, she drove him home from the unemployment bureau. He kept fidgeting in the passenger seat.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He was so thin, so pale. There were bruises in the crooks of his arms. He didn’t talk for a while; a when he finally spoke, a tear rolled down his cheek.

“I keep seeing spiders falling out of the trees.”

“Oh, babes…There aren’t any spiders falling out of the trees.”

“I know,” he said. Then he rested his chin on his fist and stared out the passenger window. When he was upset as a little boy, he would rest his chin on fist and brood in silence.

It took Georgia about an hour of walking to get to that point on the sidewalk where that path she had been thinking about was located. The way the sunlight filtered through the trees made the path look like something out of a fairytale. It descended between the shrubs and made a sharp bend. Georgia stood pondering it for a moment, but then moved on. She continued to the intersection at Gaston Lane, where the store parking lot was. She removed one of the masks from the bag and put it on. She entered the store through the sliding-glass doors.

She only needed a few things: half a loaf of bread, a package of lunchmeat, and a small carton of acidophilus milk. Ritchie kept buying her regular milk, which gave her indigestion and kept her up at night. Georgia paid for the groceries and left. When she got back to the path, she decided to be adventurous. Ritchie said the path led to their home; so she took it. 

The temperature was a few degrees cooler in the shade. There was a playground with a swing, a slide and two plastic animals on springs (a fish and an elephant) for children to rock back and forth on. There was a community garden with stakes for the tomatoes and wire cages around some of the plots.

The trees were green, the birds were chirping, and there was a light pleasant breeze. The path led her to a full basketball court. Two boys were there. The older one was teaching the younger how to ride a bike. There was a bench close by, so she sat down for a moment, put her canvas bag beside her, and watched them. They ignored her. They didn’t seem to mind her sitting there.

Her eyes misted over. She remembered when Ritchie taught Jonathan, five years his junior, how to ride his bike for the first time without training wheels.

“Georgia,” her husband Paul said.

“What?” She asked. She was washing the dishes after lunch.

“Come here.”

He led her to the picture window by the front door. The window was cracked open, and they could see and hear the boys in the street at the base of the drive.

Ritchie was coaching Jonathan. “The hard part’s balancing the foot you push off on with the foot you use to start pedaling.”

Jonathon kept trying, but he just couldn’t get it. Ritchie held the bike so he didn’t fall. Because Ritchie was a swift runner, he ran along the bike, holding it up until Jonathon got used to pedaling with both feet. And at last, he could take off on his own. 

Paul had put his arm around Georgia. She leaned into him. 

“You’re doing it!” Ritchie said. “I’m so proud of you!” he shouted, as Jonathan pedaled faster and faster. Then Jonathan laughed, as he turned in the road and rode his bike back toward Ritchie. He even managed to make it over the bump at the edge of the drive before braking, putting his feet down and dismounting, triumphantly.

The two boys here on the basketball court must be brothers as well, she thought. 

As Jonathan and Ritchie grew older, Ritchie’s reputation soared. He made straight “A”s. He became the captain of the basketball team. The whole family turned out for his games. They rooted for him from the bleachers. Jonathan was amazed by his big brother; and his cheers were the loudest of all.

But then they began to drift apart. Jonathan did poorly in school. He had few friends. This bothered Georgia, because she knew it was partially attributable to the obvious favoritism Paul showed toward Ritchie. She broached this subject with Paul on several occasions, but he told her she was being silly.

Georgia tried to boost Jonathan’s confidence by bragging about him around her friends. 

“Jonathan is smart as a whip. He’s doing good in shop class, and he draws like a draftsman.—That’s where his talents lie. He’d make a great architect.” 

At first, Jonathan would smile gratefully when she talked this way about him. But gradually, it embarrassed him. She was repeating the same phrases. And in her voice there was a lilt of concern. He knew she was trying to make him feel good about himself, but it was becoming unbearable to him. Georgia noticed his reaction. So she toned it down, then stopped saying these things altogether, because now her son would leave the room when she started talking him up to her friends.

Paul didn’t understand. He thought his younger son was intentionally getting bad grades. “He’s doing it for attention. He knows it pisses me off. He thinks it’s funny. He won’t buckle down and do his homework. I don’t know what he’s doing at school. Fluffing off and ogling girls, I guess.”

Georgia had been sitting on the bench daydreaming for so long that she hadn’t noticed that the two boys were gone. This was the other aspect of growing old that she didn’t like—the way her attention strayed. She stood up and looked at the signpost by the water fountain. One arrow pointed to Allison Lake, the other to Allison Creek. The path to the creek must be where the footbridge was—the one that Ritchie said was linked to the dirt path behind her house. This was all kind of fun, a bit of an adventure. The scenery was new.

Ritchie enlisted in the Marines after high school. After completing basic training, he was granted leave for a week and returned to Indiana just in time for Jonathan’s fourteenth birthday. They had a small party at the house. Ritchie looked resplendent in his tan and brown uniform, which he wore at the party with pride. Jonathan had five friends over, including his girlfriend. Georgia bought a sheet cake earlier that day from the store—the same store she’d just been to.

“Make a wish.” Georgia said.

Jonathan closed his eyes, smiled, and blew out the candles. That’s when it happened. Once the candles were extinguished, Ritchie, apparently thinking it funny, pushed his brother’s face into the cake and said, “Oorah!—You’re a man now!”  

Shocked and humiliated, Jonathan pushed his chair away from the table and ran from the kitchen. He opened the basement door and dashed down the steps.

“Jesus Christ, Ritchie.” Paul said.

“What?!” Ritchie shouted.

The adolescent guests moved to the periphery of the kitchen, or into the front room. They milled about in awkward silence.

Georgia went downstairs and found Jonathan on the lower step. He wiped his eyes and stared at the bike his brother had taught him to ride, which was propped up against the wall.

“I can’t go back up,” he said. “All my friends…” He cried again and tried to hide his tears.

“Don’t be upset, sweety. Ritchie didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

He sniffled and did what he’d always done when he was upset as a little boy. He put his chin on his fist, even though there was nothing to rest his elbow on.

Georgia still had a napkin clenched in her hand, which she’d brought with her into the basement. She wiped the tears and cake icing from Jonathan’s face. He grabbed the napkin and shied away from her. Georgia stood up and went back up the steps. He wanted to be alone to collect himself. When he emerged from the basement, he was sullen. The edges of the cake had been sliced into thin rectangles. The impression of Jonathan’s face was still visible in the icing at the bottom. The guests were eating in silence from paper plates. They were pretending the incident had never happened.

“I’m sorry,” Ritchie said and handed Jonathan a plate. Jonathan couldn’t look at his brother but accepted it. Jonathan’s girlfriend, Dee, said in a flat voice, “Chance had to go home.” Georgia could tell by her tone that the girl had lost all respect for Jonathan.

In the years that followed, Ritchie went off to serve in Desert Storm and then, after that, he was sent to Quantico, where he became an instructor. In 1999 Paul died of heat stroke while mowing the backyard lawn. Ritchie returned to Indiana for the funeral. But no one could find Jonathan at the time. He hadn’t been seen in months. He missed his father’s funeral.

Georgia thought about these things as she came to the footbridge over the creek. Ritchie was right, the path was no longer paved at this point. It was bumpy and choked with weeds. She had to watch her step so she didn’t fall. The path skirted a hill. Then she saw her house. She’d always wondered where the kids ran off to when they went out through the backyard gate to play in the woods. Paul had kept the gate padlocked after thieves stole lawn furniture and a grill from the backyard in the late 1970s. The thieves had come and gone this way. 

She opened the gate and entered the backyard. As she closed the gate behind her, she realized something: there was no padlock on it. Jonathan must have removed it when he’d lived with her the last 6 years of his life. He had nowhere else to go. He would’ve been homeless otherwise. The brothers had stopped talking to each other, and it infuriated Ritchie that she let Jonathan live with her.

“He’ll never learn to take care of himself if you keep coddling him,” he said. “He’s an addict and a criminal. You can’t trust him.”

Jonathan stole money from her purse, and she let him do it, because he didn’t steal a lot and she didn’t have the heart to humiliate him when she knew he was already ashamed. “I’m going for a walk,” he’d say. Then he’d head out through the backyard and slip open the gate. Now she wondered if he met with his dealer on the path—somewhere in the woods, maybe at that basketball court where she’d seen the two boys with the bicycle earlier.

Ritchie sent Georgia a gorgeous bouquet for Mother’s Day the year before Jonathan’s death. Jonathan had no money at the time and was between jobs. He sat at the kitchen table, staring glumly at the flowers. “If I had money,” he said, “I would’ve gotten you something like that for Mother’s Day. But I don’t have anything.” Then he rested his chin on his fist.

Georgia stopped dead in her tracks and gasped. How could she have been so stupid! She’d left the groceries at the basketball court. Now she didn’t have the energy to go back: $12.45 down the drain, along with her canvas bag.

She looked over at the neighbors’ backyard swimming pool. The McGoverns; nice couple. They had both passed away a few years back. Now a young couple she’d never met lived there now. Georgia remembered taking Ritchie and Jonathan to the McGoverns’ backyard sometime in the early 1980s so the kids could swim and play in the pool. Paul was out of town for a conference. Georgia was playing cribbage with Mrs McGovern on the patio when she heard the sound of frantic splashing. She instinctively knew something was wrong and cried out “Jonathan!” She jumped up and ran to the pool. Jonathan had slipped into the deep end and was flailing his arms in panic. Ritchie was on the other side of the pool and thought his brother was playing, so he laughed. Without a second thought, Georgia leapt into the water, clothes and all, and scooped Jonathan up into her arms. Ritchie realized what was happening, got up and sprinted to the side of the pool where they were. When she set Jonathan down on the concrete, he tremblingly hugged Ritchie, who kept telling his little brother, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Georgia decided that, instead of going inside the house through the patio door, she’d descend the brick steps in the backyard that led into the basement. Foolishly, she’d left that door unlocked as well. Ritchie was right. She needed to be careful and lock up after herself. 

Once in the basement, Georgia shut the door and secured it from the inside with the deadbolt and chain. Then she threaded her way through the clutter and went to the wooden steps that led up to the kitchen. But she was starting to feel tired, so she sat down for a moment on an old trunk and looked sadly at Jonathan’s bicycle. 

It was she who’d found his body. And it was she who called Ritchie to tell him. He drove to the house and up onto the front lawn, just as the ambulance arrived.

Jonathan had hanged himself in the basement with an electrical cable. Georgia remained upstairs because she couldn’t bear to see them handling her baby. But Ritchie helped the EMTs take Jonathan’s body down. Georgia heard him yelling. “Not like that!” Then he cried, “My baby brother!” 

When they brought his body up the steps, one of the EMTs pulled her aside and gave her an envelope that he said was pinned up against the basement wall by the bicycle seat. Inside was a brief handwritten note: 

I love you, mom, and I loved Ritchie and dad. I’m so sorry to do this to you. I started taking these drugs in high school, and now something’s happening to my brain. I’m seeing things that aren’t there, and it’s getting worse. I don’t want to be a burden to you anymore.

Georgia raised her eyes and looked up at the cracked crossbeam. She felt very strange. The anniversary of Jonathan’s suicide was coming up. But he he’d killed himself in winter. She remembered this now, because Ritchie had slipped on the ice as he ran after the receding ambulance and lay curled on the sidewalk sobbing, unaware that he’d broken his nose in the fall…But that couldn’t be right, because it was sunny today. And, now that she thought of it, she could’ve sworn that she, too, had seen the spiders falling from the trees, as Jonathan had.

She heard the door at the top of the steps open.

“Miss Georgia?!” the certified nursing assistant (CNA) said.

Georgia stood up.

“Miss Georgia where’ve you been?! We’ve been worried sick about you! Your son’s on his way over. We thought you’d run off into the woods!”

The CNA was wearing a mask. She picked up a phone on the wall, dialed a three-digit code and waited. “I found her,” she said. “She’s downstairs in the boiler room, poor thing.” 

The CNA came down the steps. Georgia gaped at the woman and said, “I left my groceries at the park.”

“Miss Georgia, it’s winter and it’s snowing outside.—Where’s your mask?” The CNA pulled a new mask from her pocket, even as she asked the question. “You need to put this on.” She took the mask out of the cellophane and helped cover Georgia’s face.

Due to the uptick in COVID cases, the nursing home had enhanced their precautions. Relatives were not permitted to come inside. When Ritchie had stopped by the previous Sunday, he’d left the groceries on a card table outside and called the attendants, who fetched the bags, delivered them to his mom’s room, and put them in the small refrigerator by her bed. 

Ritchie had been able to see her that day, but only through the glass partition of the community room’s long window in the front of the building. She’d been coherent then. He’d talked with her for an hour. The staff had moved an office line to the community room so that Georgia could use it to talk with him on the phone.

This morning, she seemed fine, but they called Ritchie at noon to say she’d gone missing and they were afraid she might have gone outside and wandered off into the woods. It was freezing outside and he panicked. He’d been working at a construction site 80 miles south of Indianapolis. By the time he arrived at the nursing home, it was dark. He pushed the button on the intercom by the sealed glass doors. The attendant told him to walk to the east side of the building and that his mother’s room would be the third window on the left. 

“She’s in her room and she’s fine,” the attendant said.

Ritchie walked around the building in the cold, his boots crunching on the snow. The light in her room was on. She was sitting in her comfy chair. He tapped on the glass, pointed at his cell phone, and then pointed at the phone by her chair. He dialed her number. She picked it up.

“Paul?” Georgia said.

She assumed Paul had taken a break from mowing the lawn and was now standing outside her window in the backyard, holding the cordless phone up to his ear.

“Mom?” Ritchie said.

“What do you mean?…Paul?” Georgia said and grinned, uncomprehendingly.

“It’s Ritchie.” 

Georgia shook her head. Paul’s father had been named Richard.

“Your dad’s been dead for years, Paul.” 

Ritchie had been named after his grandpa, Richard. “It’s Ritchie,” he said, and a single tear rolled down his cheek.

“You’re acting very strange, Paul.” Georgia said.

“You don’t recognize your own son?” Ritchie asked. He turned away from the window and wiped his eyes. He was sobbing.

“Why are you sad, Paul? Of course, I recognize my son. Jonathan’s fine…He called this morning and told me not to go to the store.”

Ritchie spoke quietly into the cell phone: “I’m sorry I confused you…Are you okay?”

“You shouldn’t be mowing the lawn. It’s hot outside. You’ll have a stroke.”

Ritchie pressed his forehead to the glass as the snow fell on his neck and shoulders.

“I can’t believe my own mother doesn’t recognize me.”

“I’m so sorry, Paul. But I’m very tired. And I need to get some rest.”

Georgia hung up the phone. She was so exhausted, she could barely lift herself from the chair. Paul walked away, looking defeated. He’d evidently finished cutting the backyard and would be putting the lawnmower back into the shed. It was late in the afternoon. The leaves of the trees were shedding spiders in the waning sunlight.

Georgia climbed into her hospital bed and doused the lights. She died peacefully in her sleep that night, and woke when Paul touched her arm and led her to the picture window by the front door. The window was cracked open, and they could see and hear the boys in the street at the base of the drive.

“You’re doing it!” Ritchie said. “I’m so proud of you!”

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