Recovery

by Michael Baron

  Recovery

  RECOVERY

  A Gold Family Story by

  MICHAEL BARON

  The Story Plant

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  The Story Plant

  Studio Digital CT, LLC

  P.O. Box 4331

  Stamford, CT 06907

  Copyright © 2013 by The Fiction Studio

  Cover design by Barbara Aronica-Buck

  E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-083-0

  Visit our website at www.TheStoryPlant.com and the author’s website at www.MichaelBaronBooks.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, except as provided by US Copyright Law. For information, address The Story Plant.

  E-book publication: November 2013

  Chapter One

  Corrina had no idea how long she’d been holding the knife over the red bell pepper. A couple of minutes? Twenty? An hour? It wasn’t the first time this sort of thing had happened lately. A few days ago, it took her more than ten minutes to get out of the car, and the other morning, the water in the shower ran for something like forty-five minutes before she got her hand on the door to enter. There was nothing to signal the onset of these events – at least nothing conscious – nor was there anything in particular that snapped her out of them. Was she going to lose an entire day to this kind of thing sometime in the future?

  Corrina didn’t want to become comfortable with the idea that these “fugue states” were becoming a regular part of her life. She realized, of course, that they weren’t actual fugue states. They were moments when she simply couldn’t get moving because her entire body – her entire being, it seemed – was focused on the stunning events that had swept her husband out of her life.

  Gardner had seemed fine. He was working too much and he was stressed over the case he was prepping, but those circumstances were business as usual with him. Corrina couldn’t easily recall an image of Gardner when he wasn’t at the very least preoccupied with his legal career. The day of the last annual Gold Family Halloween party, he’d complained about headaches and overall malaise, but she was sure he was setting her up, making excuses about not feeling well simply so he could spend as little time at the party as possible before he got back to his office. Corrina was very surprised to find him in bed that night when she returned home, but she thought nothing of the fact that he didn’t budge when she got in next to him. On the rare occasions when he crashed before she did, he never moved when she got under the sheets. Consequently, she rolled over and fell asleep quickly.

  The next morning, though, he still wasn’t moving. That’s when she jostled him and realized that Gardner was gone. She had no idea if he had already been dead when she returned the previous night, but the suddenness wrenched her. Just hours earlier, her biggest concern had been whether the food was coming out of the kitchen quickly enough to keep the guests happy and make the final party an indelible memory. That morning, she was a widow in her thirties.

  The weeks since had been a combination of befuddlement and mystification about the future, punctuated by the moments when she found herself simply stopping. She was like the spinning rainbow wheel on her computer; every now and then there was more to process than she could handle, and she just ceased to function. Maybe it was time for her to click “force quit” and just reboot. There would be files to recover and maybe some things lost forever, but in the end everything would be moving again. Too bad no such function was possible. Computers didn’t know how good they had it.

  Realizing that the knife was still poised above the pepper half, she took the proactive step of cutting a slice. There it was; her life was going forward again. If the past few weeks were any indication, she would be able to finish making dinner and even eat the food she made without any further incident. She had yet to experience two of these shutdown moments in close succession, so the upside was that she was probably clear for the night. Nothing but vivid moments from now until bedtime.

  She was in the middle of sautéing the pepper with onion and some chicken breasts she’d managed to cut before she locked up when she heard the front door open. This was followed seconds later by the familiar sound of Ryan running up the stairs without acknowledging that she was in the house – or even that they lived in the house together – in any way. She and her stepson had barely spoken since Gardner died. Corrina had no idea what normal was under these circumstances, but she was relatively certain this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Shouldn’t two survivors of the untimely death of a close family member be able to share their experiences, especially if they had been together nearly every day for the past six years? Corrina had tried a variety of approaches, from pinning notes to the door of Ryan’s room to making his favorite meals to leaving books on grieving on his dresser, but he didn’t seem interested in turning any of those gestures into a shared experience.

  Corrina would have taken this personally – and the truth was that she was taking it at least a little personally – if not for the fact that Ryan didn’t seem willing to talk to anyone. At least not anyone she knew. He’d sat off by himself during the funeral, offering barely a sentence to any of the rest of the family and unwilling to speak during the memorial service. Without question, Ryan was going through a lot. A month short of his seventeenth birthday, he’d already lost both of his parents. Corrina could barely imagine what such a thing could do to one’s psyche. Still, she would have thought that Ryan would have wanted to open up to someone. He had to be incredibly confused, and keeping all of his thoughts to himself wasn’t healthy. In one of their few exchanges, Corrina had even suggested to Ryan that he talk to a therapist. His response was simply to shut up and walk away.

  It was difficult to know exactly what this was about. Until Gardner’s death, Corrina believed that she had a relatively healthy relationship with Ryan, healthier than many in their situation. He was a teenager and there was certainly plenty of teenage angst, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, and only some of it directed specifically at her. Meanwhile, there were plenty of times when they talked easily about things going on at school or with friends, though matters got dicey around the subject of girls. They were far from “best buds,” but she would have expected them to handle something this enormous together, at least somewhat.

  Dinner was nearly ready and Corrina pulled a plate out of the cupboard. As she did every night, she wondered if she should pull out two plates. Setting the first down on the counter, she looked toward the front hallway. Before Gardner died, she and Ryan had nearly every dinner together, quite often without the person who’d brought them under the same roof. They had a regular, easy rhythm with those dinners, talking about pop culture, local events, or maybe something in the news. The conversation could get more strained if Gardner were around and in a prosecutorial mood, but when it was just Ryan and her, they passed the time casually.

  She knew this was an exercise in futility, but she decided to go up to Ryan’s room anyway. The door was of course closed when she got there. She knocked softly.

  “Yeah,” he said without opening it.

  “I made chicken. Do you want some?”

  A full ten seconds passed, and Corrina thought for a moment that Ryan might be coming to the door to join her since she couldn’t imagine he’d just ignore her now that he’d already answered once. Instead, he said, “I’m really not hungry.”

  What a surprise. “Oka
y. Let me know if you change your mind. I made plenty. I’ll keep it in the fridge in case you want some later.”

  Corrina knew the drill. An hour or so from now, she’d hear Ryan come down the stairs. He’d grab his coat and head out the door. Maybe he’d bother to tell her he was leaving but probably not. Somewhere around midnight, she would hear him come home as she lay in bed trying to get to sleep.

  How was he getting by? It was possible, of course, that he was talking to someone. There was the girl that Corrina had seen him with on the street back in October, though Ryan had never admitted she was his girlfriend – in spite of some very compelling evidence to the contrary – and he hadn’t mentioned her name once. If not that, he had some good friends. Corrina hoped at least one of them had been able to coax more out of Ryan than she’d been able to do. It simply wasn’t healthy for him to shut off his emotions like this. As bad as Corrina’s “fugue states” had been, she was at least facing reality the rest of the time, and she’d kept the lines of communication open with family and friends.

  She stood in front of the closed door for a few more seconds, though she knew that her “conversation” with Ryan was over. Then she went downstairs, spooned some food onto her plate, and ate on one of the kitchen stools. She’d had many meals at the dining room table without Gardner when he was alive, but doing so felt emptier now, so she tended to eat in the kitchen.

  It took three bites for her to notice that the chicken seemed tasteless. It took another two for her to remember that she’d forgotten to season it.

  She reached for the salt and pepper, wishing that everything was this easy to fix.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, Corrina was making coffee when she heard Ryan come down the stairs. She listened for the front door to open and close, since that was the pattern these days, but she heard him walk in her direction instead.

  “Hey,” she said when he entered the kitchen. “Do you want some breakfast?”

  Ryan seemed confused by the question. She hadn’t asked it to challenge him or to remind him that he hadn’t had breakfast at home since his father died. She’d really just asked as a reflex.

  “I need twenty bucks,” he said.

  Corrina chuckled. “I was thinking eggs, not cash.”

  Ryan didn’t respond to this, which she interpreted as meaning that he either found her supremely unfunny or simply annoying. Given that the conversation was going nowhere, she went for her wallet. He hadn’t bothered to mention why he needed the money and Corrina guessed that asking him was only going to lead to added unpleasantness. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d asked her for cash, so this was unlikely to become a habit.

  She started to hand him the bill and then decided to use the occasion of an actual audience with him to try to make some headway. If she didn’t take this opportunity, it might be weeks before she saw his face again.

  “So, your birthday is next week,” she said as casually as she could.

  Corrina noticed Ryan’s eyes narrow a bit. “Yeah.”

  “That’s always been a pretty big deal around here. I thought maybe you and I could do something.”

  One of the few special traditions Gardner had had with his son was that he always took the day off from work on Ryan’s birthday, even scheduling trials around it in a couple of instances. He’d let Ryan play hooky, and they’d load the day with arcades, sporting events, movies, and sugar. Corrina had never been a direct participant in one of these extravaganzas, but she was fine with that because the two of them always came back jazzed; it was an annual singular experience. The fact that the good spirits never carried forward for long didn’t seem to diminish the enjoyment for either of them nor quell expectations for the next year. They would spend weeks planning the day, usually the most engaged weeks they had together from one November to the next.

  They’d never gotten around to planning this year’s birthday and Corrina had been reluctant to bring it up after Gardner died. She certainly didn’t want Ryan to think she was trying to replace his father, whatever that might mean to him, and the idea of discussing fun of any sort had seemed inappropriate during the few times she was in the same room with him. At the same time, though, Corrina didn’t want Ryan to think that she was going to let the day pass unnoticed.

  When Ryan spoke again, his voice was restrained. “I think I’m just gonna skip my birthday this year.”

  Though her first attempt at cleverness had fallen flat this morning, she made a second attempt. “You know it’s going to happen whether you do something or not, right?”

  Ryan smirked at her. That was probably the appropriate response. Corrina had no idea what she was trying to accomplish with a remark like that. How had she spoken with him back when they actually exchanged conversation? She wasn’t speaking with him differently now, was she?

  He reached for the twenty-dollar-bill in Corrina’s hand. “Can I get that? I need to get to school.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  His hand grazed hers as he took the money, marking the first time they’d touched since she awkwardly put an arm around his shoulders at the gravesite. More progress. Things really were moving in the right direction.

  “Thanks,” he said, turning to leave the kitchen. “I’ll see you later.”

  “See you.”

  He was out the door moments after that.

  Corrina stayed rooted to where she’d been when Ryan turned and left. She wondered if another shutdown moment was coming on, but she’d never been aware of those while they were happening. Again, she tried to figure out why things had gotten to this point. Had she been kidding herself about the relationship she’d had with Ryan over the years? No, she could think of numerous indications that this wasn’t the case. Ryan liked helping her make dinner, they listened to much of the same music, and Ryan seemed to appreciate that their closer proximity in age – Gardner was eight years older than Corrina – made her valuable as a sounding board both in terms of things he was going through with his peers and things that might be happening with his father. Now, though, he’d completely shut her out. What was that about?

  At the same time, she could appreciate that he had to be feeling more than a little lost at sea these days. What must he be thinking about his home life at this point? Both of his parents were gone and he was suddenly living alone with his father’s second wife. Was he wondering if he was going to come home some afternoon to find Corrina dead as well? Was he thinking that this was in some way his fault? Maybe he wasn’t avoiding speaking with her at all. Maybe he just didn’t know what to say.

  She had to figure out a way to change the tenor of things. They both needed it.

  Chapter Three

  A few hours later, Corrina was at work behind the counter of the Oldham Visitors Bureau. It was only her third day at the bureau since Gardner’s death, and she was still trying to get back in the flow. Now that Thanksgiving had passed, Oldham was becoming a busy town again, and she was counting on getting caught up in the activity, hoping that she wouldn’t have a moment when she locked up in the middle of a conversation with someone about nearby Christmas events. In reality, she’d never had an experience like that while she was with other people. These moments seemed exclusively the domain of solo time, something she had much more of at home than she expected to have.

  It had registered on Corrina that she didn’t really need this job any longer. She and her siblings had made a good profit on the sale of their parents’ inn, and a sizeable check would be showing up soon from the life insurance company. Still, working here hadn’t been about the money for years. Gardner had always made plenty, and for more than half a decade now they’d used her income for vacations and home improvements. The Visitor’s Bureau was a great way for Corrina to feel that she was in the middle of things. The local shops and services always kept the bureau up to date regarding specials and promotions, the nearby theatres
invited the staff to opening nights, and her e-mail inbox was constantly filled with updates. Working at the Visitor’s Bureau allowed Corrina to feel that she was standing at Oldham’s crossroads, and that meant much more to her than her modest salary ever could.

  Corrina had been there about twenty minutes when Kathy Valentine entered. The day was crisp, probably the coldest of the season, but Kathy seemed dressed for the arctic with a parka, a muffler, and a furry hat.

  “Oh, Corrina, you’re here,” she said as she unzipped and loosened. Corrina wondered if she’d be carrying a portable heater around with her by January.

  “I started back on Monday.”

  Kathy finished adjusting herself. “It’s so good to see you.” Her voice softened. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m okay,” Corrina said, nodding perhaps a bit too elaborately. “Day by day, you know?”

  Kathy reached out to touch Corrina on the arm. She was wearing mittens, so the gesture came off as more comical than she probably intended. “I don’t know what I would do in your situation.”

  “I don’t suppose any of us ever do. This isn’t the kind of thing anyone plans for.”

  Kathy glanced at her sympathetically. Corrina and Kathy were friendly, but they weren’t friends. They might stop to chat for a minute on the street, but that was as deep as their relationship had ever gotten. Corrina could tell that Kathy was sincerely concerned about her state, though.

  “It’s good to be back here,” Corrina said, trying to ease Kathy’s mind. “The routine is nice. So is getting out of the house.”

  “It’s probably lonely, huh?”

  Corrina sighed. “The place suddenly feels a whole lot bigger than it ever did before.”