TITLE: Home AUTHOR: Kasey POST-EP: The Indians in the Lobby RATING: PG, Joshfic SUMMARY: “Home.  Not some rented condo in Orlando.  HOME.  As in Connecticut.” DISCLAIMERS: Not mine.  Don’t sue. I shouldn’t have had to change flights in Atlanta. I shouldn’t have had to be even remotely NEAR Atlanta. Atlanta is South.  Home is North.  Connecticut is North, thus home is North. Home.   Not some rented condo in Orlando.  HOME.  As in Connecticut. As in the house where I came home to after I was born, the house we came home to after Joanie’s funeral, the house where I came home to after Dad died. Which is precisely the reason Mom SOLD the house ten months ago, but it’s…it’s not sunken in yet. The last time I was there was for Dad’s funeral.  It wasn’t entirely my fault – some of it was, but not all.  We had too much work to do last Thanksgiving so I stayed in DC, and last Christmas I was a little busy going insane and going to see a guy so I could keep my job. It’s not like I get time off for Channukkah.  And theoretically, Toby and I should get off for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, but we don’t take it off. So now I’m heading to this condo I’ve never been to in a town I’ve been to once because now it’s considered to be home. Mom keeps talking like it’s gonna be the same thing, y’know? And it’s starting to rub off on me - I called her to tell her I’d be late for dinner.  Which I’ve done almost every year since 1983.  But she’d already said she’d wait and have dinner whenever I got there, ‘cause it’s just me and her anyway. Which is gonna be weird. She actually packed up home herself.  All the stuff from home, she packed it up.  Even Joanie’s room, which she never did change really after Joanie died.  Joanie’s room was on the other side of the house than where the fire was.  We used it as a guest room, but everything that was in there stayed in there, and not in boxes, out.  Where it was supposed to be. She packed all of it up.  She packed up Dad’s office.  She packed up my old room which she’d kept a lot of my old childhood stuff in, too, which is sorta…strange to think.  That, if I were to go home right now, there’d be some stranger opening the door and some kid sleeping in my bedroom. And the house really was too big for Mom to take care of by herself and it was too empty without Dad.  She’d said a long time ago that it was too lonely even without me there – I guess I was a handful and made the emptiness less or something – so I can’t even imagine how she’d gotten along without Dad in the house. So it makes sense she sold it, I guess. But it still isn’t right.  It isn’t right that I have to go South to get home.  I should be goin’ North.  Direct flight from DC to Hartford, then rent a car and drive half an hour.  202 to 179 South to Collinsville.  Ending up in front of the big Cape Cod house with the slightly crooked mailbox Dad never did fix.  White with Colonial Blue trim and an attached garage. And I’d park the rented car outside the garage, under the basketball hoop I used to practice at for HOURS when I was younger.  I’d walk up the front walk next to Mom’s favourite bush and push open the door and walk in the big front hall, setting down my bags on the stairs.  Mom would then yell at me “Get your stuff off the stairs, Joshua, how many times do I have to tell you?” and I would just grin and hug her.  We’d have dinner in the dining room where we only used to eat on Thanksgiving, birthdays, and the first night of Channukkah. Instead, I flew from DC to Atlanta to Orlando, and Mom picked me up at the airport, then drove me back to her condo.  It was pretty small, and when I walked in, there were no steps in the front hall for me to set my stuff in, so I set it in front of the closet that was where the steps were back home.  We ate dinner at the little table in the kitchen. It was, after all, just the two of us, in a place that wasn’t home.