By Elissa Greenwald

Sunlight flashed in Kelly’s eyes as she drove home. The bright light reminded her of the summer.  She thought back to how she had met Carl.

It was the first time she had placed a personal ad in the Pocono Record, after answering ads led to a miserable series of dates from which she wanted to flee as soon as the men started to speak.

Carl was different–a good listener, not a talker. They sat outdoors at the Cherry Creek Inn, the fanciest place in town. He said after their first date at the Duet that he’d like to see her again. She looked at him differently when he showed her a picture of his four-year-old niece. His shirt buttons were misaligned and a stray bit of shaving cream clung to his cheek, but his blue eyes were wide and guileless.

“Beautiful here, isn’t it?” he said. They were surrounded by trees, the creek burbling at their feet.  

“Mmmm,” Kelly murmured. “Reminds me of my uncle’s house on Green Pond.”

“Green Pond. In Rockaway, New Jersey? Wasn’t it in that movie The Station Agent?”

She nodded. It was her favorite movie; she had visited the abandoned railroad car in Newfoundland where it was set as if to recreate the magic of the film.

“I love that movie,” she revealed. “About new beginnings.” At 40, she was eager for a second chance.

“New beginnings.” He lifted the champagne he had ordered from its bucket of melting ice and poured her another glass. 

As they walked unsteadily out of the restaurant through an archway of pine boughs, Carl put his arm around her shoulder. His light touch gave her an electrical charge. She leaned towards him, inhaling his distinctive fragrance, a mixture of pine and sweat.  

* * *

At the house on Patriots Lane, snow remained  piled on the walkway. She turned off the ignition and leaned her head on the steering wheel. “Want to go home,” she said aloud. 

She got into the back seat, pulled a blanket over her, and lay down in the sunlight streaming through the window, the car seat’s plastic scraping her cheek. As children, she and her sister would sleep in the back seat in the early morning darkness after their parents carried them in their pajamas into the car before driving away on summer vacations.

When she awoke, the sun was hanging low in the sky. She sat up, watching the sun set through the car window. As soon as the sun was down, she shivered and got out of the car. She extricated a shovel from the trunk and cleared a path to the front door.

She didn’t stop shivering until she had consumed a bowl of soup. She tried to think what to do next. The mounds of paperwork on her coffee table would not subside on their own any more than the mounds of snow would.

She picked up the file for her newest patient, Gabriel, one of many whose faces haunted her. Some came to a few meetings, then drifted away like seaweed on the tide.  

She thought of him as the boy with purple eyelids. She once heard one of the girls in group therapy whisper, “Is that eye shadow he’s wearing? Is he trans?” Kelly recognized a symptom of late-stage heroin addiction. When the combined effects of the drug and malnutrition led to anemia, in fair-skinned people the skin around the eyes took on a permanent shade of purple.  She had seen it before, but never in one so young.

In their intake session, he introduced himself as Gabe. He didn’t say much, but his voice was unexpectedly musical. His manner, however, was agitated. The incident this morning when he upset the coffee cup was typical. In group therapy, he couldn’t sit still for more than ten minutes, constantly excusing himself to go to the bathroom. When told he could not smoke inside, he would get up periodically and pace around the room.

His long blond hair, emaciated face, and thin body gave him a wraith-like look.  He always wore a green army jacket and too-big beige pants cinched by a belt. The only aspect of his wardrobe that varied were the patterned shirts he’d picked up from the thrift store on Main Street. Lightning zigzags in black and pink or paisley patterns in green and yellow made him look even more agitated.

She re-read the facts of his story from his intake papers. It was an American tragedy: mother dead from cancer five years after the birth of her third child (Gabe was the oldest), father dead a year later after his arm was torn off in a factory accident. Gabe became addicted to Percocet prescribed for injuries he suffered in a bike accident on his second job, delivering pizza at night. Then he moved on to heroin, cheaper and more easily obtained. He had tried to support his two younger sisters after their parents died but social services placed them elsewhere after a home visit. He was determined to get his sisters back with him under one roof.

He disclosed all that at their intake meeting. When she saw his current address, a Stroudsburg rooming house known for drug dealing and vagrants, she feared for him. She put helping Gabe with job placement and housing on her to-do list, which seemed to grow longer daily. Her reduced hours made it hard to keep up, though she compensated for lost time by working evenings at home.  

At first, Gabe had been sullen and uncommunicative in group therapy, but after a couple of weeks, something about Kelly unlocked something in him. She realized that his habitually tense stance was not defensiveness but a watchful longing for someone, anyone, to talk to.

When she saw him sketching in group therapy, he confided his dream of becoming an artist. She obtained an application to East Stroudsburg State University for him and urged him to visit their art gallery. He fingered the application as if it were stolen goods and secured it in a pocket of his green army jacket. The next week, after group therapy, he talked to her excitedly about the exhibition of abstract paintings he had seen at the gallery.  

“My mother was an artist,” he said, voice laced with a sob. “They had an exhibit of her sculpture at that gallery once.”

“Do you have a picture of her?” Kelly asked.  

He nodded.  He took from a wallet of cracked brown leather the picture of a woman with wavy blond hair like his, holding a baby to her cheek and smiling. “That’s me with her. That’s me she’s holding.” Kelly resisted the temptation to smooth his blond curls.

Thinking about Gabe drove away thoughts of her own problems. She was lucky compared to her clients: she had a safe place to live, a job, friends–though she’d lost touch with many friends since she moved, especially once winter set in. She resolved to go hiking with a friend once the snow melted. 

The week after the session where he’d spilled his coffee, Gabe missed group therapy.  

“Anyone seen Gabe?” Kelly asked. She watched Jeanette play with the tassels on her mittens.

“Jeanette, do you know where he is?”  

“Why’re you asking me?”

Kelly kept her voice steady. “No reason. I’m sure he’ll be back. Let’s start. Maybe he’ll come in late.”  

Three weeks later, Gabe hadn’t returned.  

Kelly knew he still visited the methadone clinic down the street–she had checked–but patients had been known to go there while still using. His name did not appear in the police columns in the Pocono Record. She thought of visiting the supermarket where she had found him a job, but it was not her usual market. 

#

A month later, hills of dirty snow still lay thick on the ground as March limped to a close. One Saturday, Kelly called Reenie, who worked with her for five years until Reenie snagged a high-paying job as nurse administrator in a hospital deeper in the Poconos. They hadn’t spoken for six months.  

“Still doing therapy in that awful basement, Kelly? Bet you still don’t have up-to-date computers.” Reenie proclaimed that she loved her new job, even though she worked six days a week. They arranged to hike up Mt. Minsi, the mountain along the Delaware River with outstanding views of the Water Gap from the top, on the first Saturday in May. 

 “I could use some outdoor exercise,” Reenie said. “Hate that sweaty gym. You OK, Kelly? You sound kind of down. Is the job getting to you? Please don’t tell me you miss Carl.  Jerk.”  

Kelly wasn’t sure how to answer. Sometimes she was happy to be on her own. Other times, she wanted to scream just to hear the sound of a human voice, to reassure herself that she existed. “Nothing’s wrong. Just cabin fever. You know how it gets by March. A hike will give me a lift. See you soon.”

* * *

After six months of rehab at Sunny Acres, it was easier and cheaper for Jeanette to stay in Stroudsburg than to return to Manhattan, so she had settled in to the basement apartment her old boyfriend Tommy had lived in since they graduated from high school.  Tommy’s parents, like Jeanette’ mother, had moved to Florida.

The basement apartment was in a part of town Jeanette had never spent much time in before.  In Stroudsburg, the older brick houses proudly ascended the hill behind the town, the historic end where she grew up. There 18th-century houses looked down on the rest of the city. Below Main Street, near the river that flowed alongside the defunct mill, 20th-century wood houses with aluminum siding and chain link fences crowded around narrow yards where the detritus of recent floods accumulated. In the house next to Tommy’s, a doorless refrigerator on its side rusted like a slowly decaying body. Shelves that would never be straight again sprawled around it like dismembered limbs.

Jeanette went for a walk every night, as her drug rehab counselor Kelly had urged.  There were fewer lights than there used to be on the familiar downtown streets; the pandemic had closed many stores and restaurants. The vaping parlor remained open, as if its patrons, risking their health by vaping, thought they might as well risk exposure to the deadly virus too. 

At first, Jeanette would venture in to buy e-cigarettes, wearing the black mask that made her feel like a bank robber. After a few visits overhearing fragmentary conversations, wondering if the e-cigs or the dreaded virus made most of the patrons cough, she’d had enough.  

Jeanette kicked her vaping habit as well as her drug habit; she couldn’t afford either. Her endurance improved.  

She longed to return to the mountains that surrounded Stroudsburg, where she spent many happy childhood days hiking with her family. Without a car, though, the six-mile walk to reach the trails on highways without sidewalks seemed an indomitable obstacle.

One April Saturday, she was walking on the shoulder of Route 611 to Dunkin’ Donuts when a car pulled up alongside her. It was Kelly, the 50ish, relentlessly smiling counselor who led the group therapy sessions Jeanette had to attend as part of her recovery. 

“Hop in!” Kelly said, leaning over to open the passenger door of a battered Chevy. “Where to?”

Jeanette didn’t want to reveal that she was walking miles along a busy road just to buy donuts, one of the few treats she could afford. She tried to think of an alternate destination. 

“Dunnfield Creek.”

 “Sure?” Kelly swung her car back into traffic.  

“I want to walk up to Sunfish Pond. You said we should get outdoors.”

“That’s true.” She stole a glance at Jeanette, who wore her usual filthy pink sneakers and brown hoodie. Neither spoke for a while.

“How will you get back?”  

“I’ll get a ride from my brother.”  

Kelly raised an eyebrow. They remained silent, Jeanette playing with the tassels on her mittens, while Kelly drove to the parking lot where the trail began. She stopped and turned to Jeanette.  

“Sure your brother can pick you up?”  

Jeanette smiled, brandishing her cell phone. “I’ll call him when I get down the mountain.”

She didn’t mention that she hadn’t spoken to her brother in a year and had no idea where he was. Kelly should know by now, Jeanette thought, gazing into those wide blue eyes, that addicts lied. Or had she heard so many lies that she couldn’t tell a lie from the truth any more?  Probably she didn’t care.  

Before Kelly could protest, Jeanette hopped out of the car and ran to the wooden bridge straddling Dunnfield Creek. She crossed the bridge without looking back. The quiet of the woods drew her in.

When she finished the two-hour climb to Sunfish Pond, there was no place to sit on the sun-warmed rocks around it. All the good perches were taken by people enjoying a rare sunny day in April.

She walked on until her legs grew rubbery. She hadn’t brought any water.  

When she returned to the pond, some spaces on the rocks had opened up. She dipped her kerchief in the water and wrapped it around her neck to cool herself, then lay back on a rock.

When she awoke, it was 5 PM. She was alone. She looked at the lake glimmering in light slanting through the trees. Then she shook herself; she didn’t want to be caught in the woods after dark.  

She put on her headphones, playing the tape of “Gabriel’s Oboe,” the solo she once played with the Stroudsburg High School orchestra. Halfway through, the orchestra joined in piece by piece, as if to comfort the melancholy oboe, until they reached unison on the last note. Hurrying down the trail as the light dimmed, she stepped on something soft and felt something sharp. She stumbled and fell flat on her face, cutting her elbow on a rock.  

She winced as she sat up and rubbed her elbow. Surely someone would stop and help her up.  

Pain radiated from her right foot. Two tiny holes like a vampire’s bite punctured the center of her rapidly swelling ankle. She heard a rustling noise and saw something move under a pile of leaves. Her headphones, jarred by her fall, dangled around her neck.  

There was a strange sound. She struggled to her feet as the thing in the leaves slowly unwound across the trail. It was an enormous rattlesnake. It slid across the trail not ten feet in front of her.

Her ankle throbbed. She tried to remember what she knew about rattlesnake bites. She stumbled down the trail, hindered by her swollen ankle. 

After the turnoff to the Dunnfield Creek trail, it wasn’t far to the parking lot. Someone there would help her. There was no cell phone coverage on the trail to call 911.  

It was nearly dark. She must have descended more slowly than she realized. Then she sighed with relief. A woman in a brown cloak stood beside the trail a hundred yards down. Jeanette called out to her but her shout must have been drowned out by the waterfall the woman was contemplating, because the woman did not move. The woman stood very still and slightly bent; she must be old.

“Help! Please help me!” Jeanette cried as she limped along, breath labored. Why didn’t  the woman respond? By the time Jeanette came abreast of the woman, she was too weak to shout “Help!”again. Then she realized that the leaning shape was a tree trunk. She flung up her hands as if to embrace the tree and collapsed.

* * *

The light was so bright that she closed her eyes against it. When she tried to free her right hand from something attached to it, she felt a stab of pain.

A hand took hers. “Daddy?” She opened her eyes.

A dark haired man with round glasses looked at her. Her vision was fuzzy without her glasses. He looked like her father. Then she remembered that her father died a year earlier.

“It’s Brian, Jeanie. Remember me?”  

“Brian? What are you doing here?”

He cleared his throat, released her hand, and retreated to a chair in the corner of the room.  “That’s quite a welcome, Jeanette.”

“Sorry.” She turned towards him. “Ow.” Her head throbbed. “What are you doing here?  What happened?”

“You got bitten by a rattlesnake.”

“A rattlesnake? In Pennsylvania?”

“On the Jersey side, actually. You know there are rattlers around here. You must not have heard the rattle.”

“I was listening to music.” Remembering how the snake slithered across the path, she shuddered.

“Don’t you remember Dad told us not to move if we were ever bitten? You were lucky; the doctors said some guy’s dog found you near the parking lot.”

A wave of anger seared her. How dare he preach to her? What did he know about their father?

The thought of her father brought tears to her eyes. She would never forgive her brother for refusing to spend time with their father in his dying days, leaving her to care for him by herself. Brian even missed the funeral, saying it was too far to come from California. When he called the next day and tried to speak to her, she hung up on him, choked with anger and grief.  

Just thinking of that time was painful. She closed her eyes to blot out the sight of her brother’s face. She lay back on the pillow, staring at the white ceiling punctured with little holes, wishing she could disappear into one of the holes.

She turned her head. Her brother was still there. 

“Where are you living now, Brian?”

“Ninth Street.”

“Manhattan?”

“Of course not. I’m a musician, not a stockbroker. I moved back to Stroudsburg last month. I heard you were staying at Tommy’s and I . . . I was going to call you. Tommy called me when he couldn’t reach you. I went by the apartment but it was dark. Then I thought to call the hospital. I went through a lot of trouble to find you, Jeanie. You realize you’ve been here a week already?” He smiled his ingratiating grin.

She did not smile back. During the past week, she had awakened enough times in the middle of the night to develop a long list of reasons to start using again, especially when the pain in her foot made her writhe in the sweaty bed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were back? What’s wrong with you?”

His face turned red.

She bit her lip, turning away so he wouldn’t see tears course down her cheeks.  Where were you when I needed you, she thought. If you’d been there to support me, I wouldn’t have slid as far and as fast as I did.  

“Jeanie,” he said softly.

She turned back. He stood over her. “The doctor says you can come home tomorrow but need to stay off your feet for a month. I’m bringing you home with me. I owe you that much.” There were tears in his eyes too. She turned away so she wouldn’t see them.

* * *

The room Brian offered his sister was not a bedroom but the living room of the house where he was staying. The house on Ninth Street, at Stroudsburg’s western edge near the highway, attracted people with no real attachment to the town. Torn shades on the lamps and a couch with sprung springs concealed by an India print cloth made the place look like what her mother would call a “second-rate whorehouse.”

The couch became her bed, though the comings and goings of four other people who lived in the house made it hard to sleep. At first, the others were considerate and avoided the living room, but as she felt better and the heat intensified in June, in the evening they sought out the living room, the coolest room in the three-story house.

At the hospital, she had been prescribed Percocet for pain. She wondered why doctors had prescribed it, given her history, but apparently no one checked her records.

At first, the drug made her sick to her stomach, but she got used to it. She took it at the prescribed intervals, then added an additional pill at night so she wouldn’t wake up when a housemate left for a night shift or returned at 3 AM.  

She descended into a permanent state of half waking and half sleeping, watching with apprehension as the number of pills in the bottle diminished. Her brother remarked on her diminished appetite, though his housemates were happy to eat her share of the pizza they ordered every Friday night.

One afternoon, Brian brought a visitor. “Here’s someone to cheer you up.  You remember Jack?” 

Of course she remembered Jack. She looked at the blue eyes with long dark lashes and the curly black hair of Stroudsburg High School’s star quarterback from Brian’s class, two years ahead of her. For a nerdy girl like her, always juggling her books and her oboe in the school hallways, he was a god glimpsed from afar. When Brian wondered why she started attending football games, she confided in him her crush on Jack. Brian mocked her for a while, then grew serious. “I heard he’s bad news,” he said, refusing to elaborate.

Now Jack Hanrahan was sitting on her bed! She had never been this close to him. She wished she weren’t wearing her T-shirt bearing the Stroudsburg High School logo of a man dressed in deerskins.  

“Still a loyal Mountaineer, I see.” He flashed the grin that got him voted “Best Smile” in his class in the yearbook. Lines around his eyes now made his face haggard. He was still a handsome man, though, with an athlete’s litheness.

“Jeanie, right? Brian told me about you.”

She glared at her brother, then smiled at Jack. She had spent so much energy in high school trying to run into him, but he didn’t even know her name. 

“Jeanie, yes.”

“I admire you, Jeanie.”

“Why?”

“Your brother says you got an MBA, you had a cool job in New York. What brings you back to this . . . to Stroudsburg?”

“Long story.”

“Come on, Jack,” Brian interrupted. “Let’s get you settled.”

“You’re moving in?” Jeanie could not conceal a grin.

“Remember I told you Greg was leaving?” Brian said. “Jack’s taking his room on the third floor.”.

“That’s a shame, ‘cause I’m leaving soon,” Jeanie said.  

“That’s a crying shame indeed,” said Jack. He held her gaze as he picked up his backpack, then followed her brother upstairs. As they ascended the staircase, he winked at her behind Brian’s back.

* * *

“Where’ve you been all my life?” Jack asked after they slept together on their third date.  

“I don’t usually do this so soon,” Jeanie said, blushing. 

“Don’t apologize!” They lay in the green glow of the lava lamps at Tommy’s place, where Jeanie had returned a week after Jack moved in to Brian’s. 

 “Good idea to move out, Jeanie,” her brother said when she left his place. “I saw Jack give you the onceover.”  

Jeanie saw no reason to fear Jack. He had a light in his eyes just for her. He embraced her now, nuzzling her neck.  

 “Private here,” Jack whispered. “So noisy at Brian’s. I’ll tell him I stayed at a friend’s last night.” 

The secrecy of their relationship thrilled Jeanie. At last, she had something of her own. Jeanie and Jack lived like tourists in their old town, visiting restaurants on Main Street every Saturday night. It was always Jack’s treat; he worked as a deejay while Jeanie was still searching for a job.  

Jack would squeeze her hand and wink at her when they were in a roomful of his buddies, mostly his friends from high school. His gaze seemed to say that, no matter how popular he was, he thought only of her.

They were lingering in bed one Saturday afternoon when the phone rang.

“Jeanie?”

“Tommy?”  She sat upright. Jack tickled her stomach; she swatted his hand away. Then he kissed her neck.

“Stop!” 

“What’d you say?”

She giggled, pushing Jack away.

“Is someone there, Jeanie?” She recognized the old petulance in Tommy’s voice that meant he was jealous.

“No, just . . . a cat.”

There was silence for a moment. “Jeanie, I’m going to stay in Colorado a little longer.”

“Sorry to hear that, Tommy.” 

“You can still stay there for now; I won’t be back for six months. But, Jeanie –”

She sat up straighter.

“I need you to pay rent.  It’s $800 a month. Can you handle that?”

She watched a naked Jack stroke his chest as he eyed his full-length reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door.  

“Sure, Tommy, that’s only right. Thanks for letting me stay so long. You OK?”  

Jack had dived under the covers and was trying to lie on top of her.

“Gotta go,” she said, giggling.

It seemed inevitable that Jack would move in with Jeanette. He offered to pay the rent until she got back on her feet. 

Brian, it turned out, knew about the relationship all along. It was a small town, after all. Brian warned her against the arrangement, claiming he couldn’t recall the rumors he’d heard about Jack and women in high school. But Jeanette was powerless against Jack’s pleading that he needed a quiet place to sleep. “And help you sleep better, too, Jeanie,” he said, grinning.

Football season made him feel melancholy, Jack confessed in September. His college career had been brought to a halt by a broken leg that never healed right in his first semester. Soon afterwards, he dropped out of school. He enjoyed deejaying at the Mouse House Pub on Main Street. To Jeanie, though, the job seemed a comedown from his high school glory.

She had managed to curb her craving for Percocet, but she feared she was growing addicted to Jack. When she went back to rehab, Kelly the counselor found her a clerical job with a real estate attorney downtown.  She paid for groceries and half the rent, with enough left over to buy a few pots and pans. It was helpful to have a reason to wake up in the morning.

All day long at the lawyer’s office, Jeanette filed documents, typed and retyped records of real estate deals. If only she could work for a divorce lawyer or an employment lawyer, where the cases would have some human interest. She remembered her father’s accounts of dramatic trials.

When pain in her foot flared late one night, she searched for her Percocet in the medicine cabinet. She could have sworn the bottle had been half full, but it was nearly empty. She swallowed the last two pills, but they barely dulled the pain. The next morning, she called in sick to the office and spent the day in bed. Jack made her toast before heading to work at 5 PM.

When he returned at 1 AM, she was wide awake. When he fell asleep, she stirred in bed and accidentally kicked him. “Hey, honey, I need my sleep and so do you.” She didn’t respond because she was in too much pain. 

He got up and grabbed something from his shaving kit, holding out two pills on his palm. “Take these; they’ll help you sleep.” Jeanie looked at the pills, then at Jack, who smiled encouragingly. She gazed into his eyes as she took the pills, then fell into a profound sleep.  

When she awoke at 10 AM, she was embarrassed to go to work so late, so called in sick again. The other secretary who answered the phone sounded more impatient this time. “Any idea when you’ll be back? Donovan’s loading me up with work.”  

“Tomorrow. Definitely.”

That night the pain in her foot grew unbearable. When she nudged Jack in the middle of the night, he got up and handed her another pill. “What is that?” she asked drowsily.  

“Ambien. Go to sleep.” He turned his back to her.

The next morning, Jeanie was convinced she had gotten up and gone to work, only to realize by mid-afternoon that she was still in bed.  She did not want to confront anyone at work so she didn’t call.  

For the rest of September, Jack left a pill at Jeanie’s bedside every evening at 5 PM when he went to work. She would struggle not to take it until he returned, but her resolve weakened around 8 PM each night. Then she luxuriated in dreams where she went hiking and swimming as she used to as a child.  

The reality around her grew dim. Jack took on the cleaning and cooking, though Jeanie could see dust balls under the couch and lost her appetite. She went to work occasionally, though many mornings she dreamed she was awake and going to work when she was not.

In October, a letter arrived from Anthony Donovan, Esq., informing Jeanette that her employment had been terminated for absenteeism. She couldn’t face Kelly the drug counselor,  so she stopped attending group therapy.  

One late night, Jeanie lay on the couch, half asleep, when Jack came in. He turned on a light and started to kiss her. She drew back; there was liquor on his breath. She opened her eyes and looked over his shoulder.

Sitting in a chair across from them was a man with a mustache, who looked vaguely familiar. She grabbed a blanket to cover herself; she wore only a tee-shirt and underpants.  

“Who the hell is that?” she shouted.

“Now, Jeanie,” Jack grabbed her arm. “Don’t go crazy on me.”  

“Who is that? Why did you bring him here? Why is he watching us?”  She writhed in Jack’s grasp.

The man did not move. A cloud of smoke wreathed his features.

Jack marched her into the bedroom. “That’s Lewis, from the pub,” he whispered. “You met him once. You liked his mustache. He just wanted to . . . join us.”

She stared at him, not comprehending.

“He offered me a hundred dollars.”

She shook off his grip.

“Jeanie, you haven’t paid your share of rent this month. I can’t support you forever.  I thought you’d want to . . .”. He looked at her face, then his feet, and muttered “. . . help out.”

Staring at that handsome but worn face, she heard the sound of a rattle. She pulled on a pair of jeans, pointed to the living room, and said loudly “Get rid of him–now.” Jack left the bedroom. She heard a whispered conversation, then curses proceeding from the living room. The front door slammed.  

She shook her head to clear it and walked into the living room. Jack sat in the cracked brown leather chair where his friend had been. He had turned off the light.  

“Why the hell did you do that?” she yelled. “What do you think I am?”

“He’s one of my best customers.” His voice sounded different, whiny and outraged.

“Customers? For what?”

“Don’t play dumb, Jeanie. You must have noticed your Percocet running low. I don’t make enough to cover the rent. You haven’t contributed a penny for two months. Sleeping all day while I take care of the apartment and work at night.”

She stared at him, then took a deep breath.

“I want you out.” She pointed toward the door. She didn’t know where the deep voice within her came from.

“Come off it. What’s this tough girl act all of a sudden?”

She stood unmoving. Finally, he unfolded himself from the leather chair. “Bitch!” he threw back at her as he headed into the bedroom to gather his things.

Half an hour later, he was gone. Where could she go now? She had no money, no job.  Her brother was in Austin, Texas, for a month-long gig with his new band. In any case, she didn’t want to return to his house in defeat.  

She thought of the sweet boy she met in rehab, Gabriel. His shift at the supermarket started at 6 AM, he had told her once long ago.  Did he even work there any more?  It was worth a shot. She was wide awake now. She would find him.

---

After teaching English for thirty years, Elissa Greenwald received her MFA in 2024 at 70; this is her first long work of fiction to be published. Her first chapbook of poetry, The Church of This World, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 2027. She is completing a novel, The Blessed House, a family saga set on Cape Cod.