In Sickness and in Hell: A Collection of Unusual Stories

by Stefan Barkow

  I picked up the shovel beside me.

  Andy taking the road he did made sense. He’d always had a chip on his shoulder, always been up for a fight when it was smarter to lay off. That was never me, though, and either way I’m not gonna leave Dawn again till I have to.

  I hit Tom across the back of the head, hard. I felt his skull give way to the old steel. He never saw it coming.

  I don’t need any more proof than today that the love between her and me’s real. It saved her, didn't it? And I proved that it’s still me in here, not this goddamn demon. Not yet. With what Andy and Tom told me, I can watch for the signs—odd behavior, rationalizing, and the rest—so I’ll know when I start to slip. If they say I got some months before it really takes over then alright, Dawn and I got that long together, don’t we? If that’s all we get, then I’m not gonna run away from it any more.

  The dirt packed down pretty good over them three. It was tough getting the shed back in place all alone, but I managed. I went back inside. Tom had let on that Dawn wouldn't remember much, so I just had to clean up the house and figure out how to explain the busted door and the other shit without, you know, telling her the rest.

  Till death do us part. That phrase always bugged me. Supposedly we all believe in a hereafter, right? So why take a vow to end love with death? Just never rubbed me right.

  It’s different when you know that death is the end, when you know that heaven isn’t up there waiting for you. For me, “till death do us part” has a whole new meaning. It means more. It means forever. It means as long as humanly possible, I’ll love and honor and protect my girl. It means exactly what I wanna promise Dawn.

  It was too bright in the bedroom where Dawn was sleeping. First thing I did, I hung a shade over the window to block out the sunlight, filling the room with darkness once more.

  You know, so she could sleep better.

  Jen, Now

  Linda stirred her tea and tried to decide how best to surprise her son Erik with the news. The wrinkles around her eyes softened as she appraised her son sitting across from her at the kitchen table. It was Sunday morning, and he had picked her up from church for breakfast at her house just like he had done every Sunday since he had accepted a job in Newgan and moved back into town.

  Erik’s face was obscured by the newspaper he was studying, but Linda didn’t need to see him to know that on the other side of the grey pages his expression was just the same as it had been a decade ago, when he used to fan his high school textbooks across this very same wooden table and pore over them. Yes, he’d be there studying and she’d be washing dishes behind him or talking on the phone with Beth, because Beth still lived next door back then. And in the study Rick, Linda’s husband, would be in his chair, rocking himself with his foot and reading a novel of some sort or another. She always said he’d die in that chair one day; she’d been wrong in the end. But that was two years ago now.

  “Erik,” she began, “something interesting happened at work just this last Friday.”

  Erik sighed, wrangling with the newspaper until it gave in and folded up. His brown eyes met hers. “What’s her name?” he asked, his tone mockingly patient.

  “What?”

  “Mom, you work in the community center. Not once have you brought up your job of your own volition since I’ve been back in Newgan—not once!” he continued over her noise of protest “except when it has had something to do with a girl you want me to meet. And date, and marry, and give you some grandchildren; preferably a granddaughter who I’ll name Mary, after your mother.

  “So out with it, Mom. I’m twenty-seven and I’m not getting any younger. She my age this time? Or out of college at least?” He said it all with a good-natured grin. Linda shouldn’t have kidded herself that she could surprise him, as this discussion wasn’t exactly breaking new ground.

  Dropping her pretense of indignation, Linda allowed herself to smile back. “Rick was eight years older than me when he and I got married, you know.”

  “Yes, Mom, I know that. But Dad was thirty-six, which is not the same as twenty-seven and nineteen.”

  “Alright, alright. But that one was very cute, you can’t deny the truth of that.”

  “Hmph. I bet you can’t even remember ‘that one’s’ name, can you?”

  Outside, the full green leaves rustled on the branches as an April wind rolled through the Midwestern town. In the fall, the citizens would be electing their first town manager because the town had grown so much in the last few years.

  “Well.” Linda said, “Fine. I may not remember that one, but I know this one.”

  Erik got up and went to the sink to pour the last of his coffee out. He rinsed out the blue mug. “Still listening,” he said, to make it clear that he wasn’t.

  “Jennifer Sonners.”

  There was the reaction Linda had been waiting for, a response other than Erik’s usual bemused banter. It was nothing more sinister than the nature of life, one generation surpassing another, but it had been some years since her son had looked at his mother searching for answers that he didn’t already know.

  The moment didn’t last long, but it was enough to satisfy her. Erik picked up his jaw and went on toweling off his mug. “Jennifer? What is she doing in town again?”

  Linda launched herself wholeheartedly into relaying every detail that her supervisor Cary had told her at the center. It should have been a short story really, especially since Erik already knew most of it, like that Jennifer had been born in the nearby city. The only part he didn’t know was what Jennifer had done after college when she moved to Arizona to work, and what had made her come back to her long-abandoned hometown now.

  Erik let Linda go on without interruption. He wasn’t really in the kitchen anymore; he was four years back in time, at college again. That was where he’d first met Jennifer Sonners, where their relationship had begun and ended in the span of two years. But he’d never gotten over that girl, as his mom rightly suspected. What Linda didn’t know was to what extent Erik had loved Jennifer, or the way that his love had fossilized in the intervening years until soft half-truths of love-blind perception had hardened into facts beyond the reality of who Jennifer had ever been to begin with.

  “…and don’t tell anyone,” Linda finished, “but I snitched her cellular number from her résumé for you.” She thrust a fluorescent yellow post-it in Erik’s direction like it was made of gold.

  “Good idea, Mom, that won’t be awkward for me to explain at all.” He put his mug in an overhead cupboard and accepted the phone number.

  The moment Linda had reveled in before had passed by completely now, but she wasn’t disappointed. He’d dried that mug for a good two minutes, long after it was bone-dry. If he was that distracted, she reasoned, then she had been right and he was still interested. This was her best chance yet to have a granddaughter named Mary.

  Linda had witnessed the symptoms of her only son’s feelings, even if she didn’t understand what drove them. It went unspoken every time, but the girls since Jennifer had all been dumped for, at least as far as she knew, terrible reasons. Not that he really told her about it, she just pieced together what she could from the stories she dragged out of him over the phone or on Sundays like this when she had a captive audience. The girls she’d been introduced to had all seemed nice enough, but before even two months had passed, the relationship would be over. She was afraid that it was because of Jennifer’s ghost; none of the others could measure up to his memory of her.

  “Are you going to call her?” Linda asked, surprised at how timid her voice sounded even to herself. She wanted grandkids, sure, but she also wanted Erik to be happy.

  He flipped the note between his fingers. “I don’t know. Maybe in a day or two.”

  “Erik, can I tell you something? It’s about Rick.”

  Erik sat back down at the table, forgetting his own concerns for a moment. It had been a few years since his dad had died and although Linda kept a smile on her face, he
had promised himself that he would be there to talk if she needed him.

  “Sure.”

  Linda let out a long breath and stared at the wedding band she still wore. “Now don’t get mad at me for this, just let me talk and see if it means anything to you.” She waited until he gave a sign that he was taking her seriously. “Rick said something to me once about love that I want you to think about.”

  Before she could continue, there was a knock at the front door at the other end of the house and Erik went to answer it. He passed by Rick’s recliner, still unmoved since his death, and the bookshelf behind it with all the adventure tales his father had loved. From where he stood he could see a girl’s profile obscured by cream-colored lace curtain. She was looking away from the house into the side yard, surveying the neighborhood of Erik’s formative years.

  Erik had always thought Jennifer looked most beautiful in profile. After the break up, whenever he thought of her there was only one image that came to mind, one picture that he held onto: Her back towards him but her head turning to face him, the first rays of a self-assured smirk only just dawning, pinning her cheek up in place. In his mind the long arc of her face was mirrored by the lines of her hair which hung, poised, on the point of her shoulder so that with the passing of just one more moment, one more breath, it would spill over across the smooth expanse of her back like golden silk over pale ivory.

  In the intervening years he had never allowed that moment to pass. He had tried to preserve that image against the acidic world in which real people lived. Now, she was here, in front of him. When he opened that door, there wouldn’t be anything to stop the moment from coming. She would turn her head and look at him and he would have to say something to her.

  “Who is it?” he heard Linda call from where she still sat in the kitchen. “Should I make up some more coffee?”

  “Yeah, go ahead.” Erik’s pulse was up and he felt like he was back in high school, more nervous than he’d ever been in college. “It’s Jennifer.”

  Even though she was nothing more than a fuzzy outline through the window, he could see who she was now and who she had been were not the same. He pulled the door open in one motion and tried to smile.

  From the kitchen Linda could hear the two walking towards her through the house, talking like old friends but with a kind of forced familiarity, like they had both been hoping someone else would be on the other side of the door.

  As they walked in, Linda put a big smile on her face. “Hello, Jennifer. My, you look lovely today!”

  “Thank you, Linda,” Jennifer said.

  Where he stood, Erik jolted a little; Jennifer used to call his mom “Mrs. Letner.” But he supposed they did work together now, so it would be different.

  “I’m sorry to drop in like this. I just needed to drop something off for you. I didn’t think anyone would be home.”

  “Oh, that’s fine, dear. We were just enjoying the morning anyway. Would you like some coffee?”

  Jennifer waved a hand. “Oh, no. I won’t impose on you. Here, this is what I came by for.” She set a yellow shoebox on the table. Its sides bulged with whatever it was holding.

  Linda took the top off and pulled a few photos out.

  “Oh! You found the pictures from the Spring Parade! But this could’ve waited until tomorrow, you didn’t have to drive all the way over here.”

  Jennifer blushed. “Well, I knew you were looking for them so when I came across them I just thought—”

  Linda cut her off, exclaiming “Look at me! Questioning kindness. What’s wrong with me? But please sit with me and don’t go running off so quickly. Erik”—she smacked him on the arm—“Get this young woman a chair from the other room.”

  “Really, Linda,” Jennifer said, moving towards the front door. “I can’t stay, but thank you for the offer. It was nice seeing you again, Erik.” She had made it sound like she was about to walk out, but it was clear from the way her body hesitated that there was something more she wanted to say.

  “Let me walk you out then,” Erik said, shaking off his lingering bewilderment at Jennifer’s re-entry in his life and regaining his usual attitude of dominance. The two retraced their steps through the living room to the porch. Outside, they said goodbye like friends and she walked down the sidewalk to her green SUV.

  “Jennifer!” Erik called her back before she could climb in. He ran up and put his hand on her arm, trying very hard to make it seem friendly and natural when the reality was that just touching her sent his heart into overdrive. “I’d like to catch up more.” He let his hand drop to his side.

  He didn’t know it, but his touch had sent her heart beating too. “That would be great! What did you have in mind?”

  “Would dinner be too much to ask?”

  “No, I’d love to.”

  They settled the rest of the details: Wednesday night, seven o’clock at Rita’s. Rita’s was Newgan’s staple nice restaurant that forgave you if you didn’t own a black tie. Jennifer drove home after giving Erik a quick peck on the cheek that put him nine miles high. Jennifer smiled the whole way back to her parent’s house, where she was living until she found an apartment in town.

  Erik did his best to hide his own smile when he rejoined his mother in her kitchen. To cover it up, he entered the room with a question. “You were going to say something before Jennifer stopped by, something that Dad said? What was it?”

  “Oh, it was…nothing. Don’t worry about it, dear.”

  Love is a science of dynamics, Rick had said to her, setting down whatever paperback he was reading at the time. That was what Linda had wanted to say to Erik out of fear that the Jennifer he was in love with didn’t exist anymore. It’s too risky to fall in love with a person: people change. Rick’s unprovoked outburst was unforgettable because it was so unlike him; he was the type to sit quietly and observe. It’s rates of change, that’s all. He had continued. Fall in love with the way a person changes instead. Then you’ve got something special: not one man and one woman that love each other for an instant, but a consecutive series of men and women that love each other for ever.

  You mean like us? Linda had asked with a little bit of a laugh in her voice, just in case he wasn’t being as serious as he sounded. Rick had picked up his book again and continued reading without answering but now with a smile on his face unlike any she had seen there before. Linda had smiled too and thought it was sweet and ignored that it had happened, just like he did, until months later when he died and his words came back to her. It had taken Linda a while to decipher what it was he was talking about, and she never would know what had prompted the outburst of philosophical poetics.

  * * *

  Erik held the door for a family leaving Rita’s, who smiled and thanked him before hurrying through the drizzle to their minivan. Although the weather was grey, Jennifer was glowing when the teenage hostess sat them at a table by the window. She was wearing a teal dress that she had accented with a matching black-stone necklace and bracelet set. She had laid out her outfit Monday and changed her mind three times a day since then. Erik, though not as bad, had almost been late when he spent five minutes retying his tie before deciding to leave it home and leave his collar open instead.

  The restaurant seemed unusually busy for a Wednesday, the rush of busboys and the clatter of silverware sounding frantic for no apparent reason. They ordered, and ate, and talked long after the dessert plates were taken and wine glasses were empty. She told him all about her time in Arizona, and why she had returned home. He told her about moving back and as much as he tried to stay away from the topic, she got out of him what had happened to his father and what his mother had gone through. It was, after all, a large part of why he was working in Newgan.

  “So that’s why you didn’t go to Indy, like you used to want to.” She had said it as if it were a revelation.

  “Still want to,” he had corrected her, forgetting himself for a moment. The conversation had moved on in search of happier topics.
/>
  They had fun. Most of the time they spent laughing, or warming themselves in memories of their school days. But both of them were aware that those days were past them. Those times, that love, were other people in another place.

  Driving to his own house, Erik tried to come to terms with this new girl. In many ways she was the same: she’d gained the weight that only the early twenties are excused from, but other than that she was still pretty, still living on the happy side of happy-go-lucky. No illusions, he thought, we both know the truth. She used to love the person she saw in me, that I could become. But now she sees that I’m not that person.

  The rain had let off, but the roads were still slick. Erik kept his speed down, braking early at the red lights. And she isn’t what I remember, either. It was hard to even define what had changed, but the fact was that when love exists, it is undeniable. And when it does not, its absence is just as impossible to ignore.

  Her name, Erik thought. I always loved her name: Jennifer is so long and regal and proud. The garage door closed behind his car, sealing out the damp night.

  “Please,” she had said when he told her how beautiful she looked as they climbed into his car. “It’s ‘Jen,’ now.”

  Medium

  The artist explains his latest piece to the gathered critics.

  As you can see, most of this piece is common enough—carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, etc. Even the canvas itself is similar to many of the other planets I have worked on before. I began this project as I had the others, shaping the environment and placing my creatures on it wherever it pleased me. But this time, even as I worked, I knew I would not be happy with the piece if I went on as planned.

  The forms were unique and new, yes, and the ecological balance was complex and interesting enough, but the overall result was—well, boring. I had done it all before, and so had many others, the exact same way. It was becoming routine; art should never be routine.