A Better Place to Be Read online

  Tomorrow was the day. Tomorrow was the commitment. Tomorrow would be the final goodbye. He wasn’t fooling himself any longer. He knew what he had to do, how it had to be done. He knew what he would go through afterward; but, after the months of sobriety—the weeks and days and hours of facing his demons and of coming to grips with the acceptance of why he had become what he had—he needed to be ready for whatever Lowenstein’s decision would be.

  “Am I?”

  He sensed Claire then, and knew she was about to come out. “No!” He spun, went to the window, pulled up the blinds to look at the descending moon. He stared at the man who had somehow gotten his face drawn upon the moon’s surface—the twin dark circles of eyes, the strangely crumbled nose, and the oval open mouth, which seemed to be calling out for something. Then he wondered who the man had been just before he burst into a laugh because he knew exactly who the man in the moon was. It was him, all shadows and reflections and a hollow version of what he once was.

  Then, his sense of Claire was gone. He breathed easier, his muscles loosening as he returned to the bed and lay down. He knew he wouldn’t sleep, but the twisting nervousness had diminished, and that in itself, helped.

  <><><>

  “I didn’t sleep well last night,” he told Lowenstein in answer to her question of how he was.

  “What bothered you?”

  “Psychosis.”

  “Hmmm. In what way?”

  “In my conversations with Claire. What else could I have been but psychotic?”

  “Now you’re self-diagnosing your mental condition?”

  “After spending two years talking to my dead wife, and four months talking to you, yes.”

  Lowenstein smiled broadly. “Perhaps a touch psychotic, if you must have a label, but you’ve proved to be one of my more interestingly sane patients.”

  John blinked, twice, before he said, “How so?”

  “Well, for starters, I’ve never had a patient, whose manifestation spent two years telling him to get himself fixed.”

  “That’s because you never met Claire.”

  Lowenstein nodded. Her eyes changed, the humor fading. “I wish I had met her.” She paused, took a breath, and smiled at John once more. “But I’m also glad to know you’ve reached this level of understanding.”

  John stared at her for several long seconds. “I will never understand why Claire died. I will never understand or accept the cruel whims of...nature, or whatever might or might not be overseeing us...humanity, I guess you would say.”

  “Yes, that’s one way of putting it. Humans...humanity as a whole, is the only life form on this planet who we believe intelligent enough to contemplate death and what it means. The other species, animals for instance, as far as we can tell, do not contemplate death, yet, they acknowledge it in many ways, show grief in many ways,” the psychiatrist responded.

  “But,” she went on before John could say anything. “We’re talking about you, John, not a bird or an animal. And today is the most important of days, so tell me, where do we go from here?”

  “I thought that was up to you, Doc...”

  “Me? You flatter me. No, John, it’s all up to you.”

  “Me? How?”

  Lowenstein leaned back in her chair. “You are clean and sober. You’ve stopped talking to your dead wife and started the real grieving process. Now you have to tell me if you believe you’re ready to face the world. Ready to take the next step.”

  “The halfway house?”

  “Exactly, as the court has ordered. You’ve been here three and a half months; you’ll be there for ninety days or longer. The facility is part of Brookville, but is in Hicksville, and operates as an independent facility.”.

  “When do I go?”

  “Within the next two weeks. I have to finish the reports and submit them to the court. Once the papers are filed and the judge approves them, you’ll be transferred there.

  “And you’re going to start that today?”

  She looked at him, her eyes crisscrossing his face. “When we are finished here and I’m satisfied with your responses.”

  “Okay.”

  “When was the last time you had the urge to speak with Claire?”

  “All the time; but, the last time I sensed she wanted to speak to me was during the night.”

  “And?” the shrink prompted.

  “I turned away and pushed the sense of her...the urge away.”

  “And before last night?”

  John moistened his lips with a wash of his tongue. “About four days ago. She appeared and I closed my eyes till she was gone.”

  “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know, but I’m working on it.”

  “How does it feel...not talking to Claire?”

  He closed his eyes. His chest constricted, and he had to take several breaths in order to speak. “Hard...almost as bad as when she died.”

  “It will get better,” Lowenstein counseled.

  “That’s what they say,” he whispered. “I’m not sure, but I can’t stay a vegetable much longer, can I?”

  “Vegetable?”

  “I should have said I can’t vegetate much longer.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because that’s what I’ve been doing, vegetating, and not living. I’ve been hiding from myself.”

  “And now you want to become active again? Do what, accounting? Rebuild your career?”

  John shook his head vehemently. “No, I will never be an accountant again. It would... It would bring back everything. No, I don’t know what I’ll do, not yet, but I know I want whatever I do to be a...solitary type of work.”

  “What does that mean—solitary?”

  John shrugged. “I’m not sure, I just don’t want to be in a place where I’m forced to have a lot of people around me.”

  Lowenstein gazed intently at him for several seconds. “When you get to the facility, you’ll have time to figure that out.”

  “Will you be there as well?”

  Lowenstein shook her head. “Not daily. I’m there once a week to see how everything is going. We’ll have weekly sessions, but you’ll be working with Doctor Jason Abilene and Doctor Victoria Suarez. Both are psychologists, Doctors of Clinical Psychology, and well respected in the community.”

  “How long?”

  Lowenstein held his eyes. “Until you’re ready, which will be up to you. “

  “Are you worried I’ll start drinking again?”

  “Should I be?”

  He shook his head slowly. Then he raised his arm and twisted his hand in a circular motion. “My wrist healed better than expected, I don’t need to have it broken again. No, I won’t be walking down that road again.” He moved his eyes from his wrist to Lowenstein. “Do you consider me an alcoholic?”

  “Do I—no, let me rephrase that—should I?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I don’t think so. I didn’t need the gin, I needed what it gave me, release from my agony.”

  “And you don’t have that agony any longer?”

  He studied her for a full half-minute as his heart began to pound, beating so loud it threatened to make him deaf. Then, slowly, he said, “Every minute of the day. But the gin only made it go away for a little while, and when it came back, it was worse. No, you’ve taught me how to handle it, how to stop it from ruling my life.”

  Lowenstein didn’t reply immediately. As John waited for her to say something, he became intensely aware of the way she was studying him. Her eyes were like twin microscopes, focusing down on him. And when she finally spoke, his breath rushed out in a whoosh.

  “I’ll tell you this. I would not believe what you said for an instant, if you were any other addict. But you aren’t any other. I have seen you almost every day from the first day you were admitted. I have watched how you’ve changed. I have seen your acceptance of what has happened, the start of your ability to grieve, and I do believe you are on the way to handling
things. However, it will be up to the two doctors at the facility to determine when you are ready for the outside world as well as how you handle the skills to enable you to move forward, mentally.”

  She paused, smiled, and said, “As to you ever drinking alcohol again...that will depend on how you deal your ‘agony’. And, our time is done. See you later.”

  John rose from the chair, started toward the door, and then stopped. He turned back to Lowenstein. “Will you recommend my...my release to the halfway house?”

  “I’ll plan on submitting the papers to the court tomorrow morning.”

  <><><>

  He stared at the fountain, unfeeling of the cold air whipping about him, dressed in his hospital day clothing of jeans and a long sleeve pullover shirt, and tried his best to get his stomach to stop twisting.

  But it wouldn’t. She was going to release him. He was nauseous and swallowed time and again, trying his best to control his emotions, but he failed. An instant later, he turned and raced to the edge of the garden, where he vomited the remnants of his breakfast over the evergreen bushes surrounding the courtyard.

  Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he took in several deep breaths while ignoring the smell and taste in his mouth. When he straightened up, he turned and looked up at the building, wondering if anyone had seen him.

  What if they had? He shrugged. He looked up at the sky: white clouds floated lazily in a blue winter sky and he thought of how he would be out of here soon. Can I handle it? Can I do this? Can I really live without...her?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  April, BPH Rehabilitation Center, Hicksville, NY

  The last week of February and most of March were more an adaption to the changes of moving from the hospital than anything else. Like the hospital, a standard routine was set, and every day, John would have a morning group session; every afternoon would be the individual sessions.

  He found it interesting in how the two psychologists running the facility worked. Whichever one handled the group session also did the individual session that day. And they alternated every day. Everything was set up as a typical work week, even though the sessions were held seven days a week; however, once in training, the weekdays and weekends emulated the real world.

  He was not yet at that level. After six weeks in rehab, the one thing he confirmed about himself, was what he’d discovered the night he’d said goodbye to Claire. Whatever the future held for him, it would always be surrounded with the knowledge that he needed to make his way alone, because he would never, ever, go through what he had when Claire died.

  He no longer talked directly to Claire, but he never went to sleep without saying goodnight, and never awoke in the morning without turning onto his right side to look for her. He knew it had been he who responded when he talked with Claire. He knew as well, he couldn’t let it happen any longer, not for him, but for her.

  Which is why, on the second Monday in April, he sat in Doctor Abilene’s office, on a comfortable chair directly across from the psychologist and stared at the papers in his hands. The harder he stared, the less he could read. The words floated in random patterns while he tried to make them settle back onto the paper. Then he shook his head and looked at the psychologist. “What do you think?”

  Doctor Jason Abilene leaned back. “I’m not the one who has to decide, you do.”

  “It doesn’t really matter. All I’ve done from the moment I graduated college, was work for an accounting firm. I do not want to be anywhere near that again.”

  Abilene, a tall, lanky tow-headed man in his mid-thirties, with piecing almost turquoise blue-green eyes leaned forward. “John, it’s the beginning of April, and you’ve been here what, going on seven weeks? You are as ready as you will ever be to start training for a job. From this point on, you’re hiding from the world, not participating in it.” He took the papers from John’s hands and read. “Computer programming?”

  John shook his head.

  “Let’s look at this differently: Do you want to work indoors or outdoors?”

  “Outdoors sounds nice, but I’ll do either.”

  “Okay, office work?” When John shook his head, Abilene nodded. “Have you ever worked with your hands?”

  John’s brows pulled together. “Not really. When I was a kid, I used to help my next-door neighbor. He built his own furniture and started to teach me. And I liked the shop classes as well.”

  “What about construction?”

  John thought about it for a half-minute before he shook his head. “I think I want something more—” He paused, searching his head for the right word “—solitary.”

  The shrink cocked his head to the side. “You want to work alone?”

  John read the caution and the question in Abilene’s voice. “No, not alone, but not with a lot of people.”

  “I think I get it, but it will be a huge step down for an accountant.”

  “What about for a drunk?”

  Abilene stared at him. “I keep forgetting you have a dark sense of humor that tends to pop out at times like this.”

  John shook his head. “Not a sense of humor, more a truth as I see it. What are you thinking?”

  Abilene gave him a quirky smile. “I’m thinking a step up from a drunk...custodial. As a custodian, you are half janitor and half handyman. It’s solitary, but there are people around you. But John, this is like nothing you’ve ever done.”

  “You mean like in an apartment building?”

  The psychologist shook his head. “Not really, that’s more a super’s job. I was thinking about janitorial and custodial companies who handle businesses and apartments. You train in all aspects of maintenance, from cleaning to repairing.”

  John pondered the doctor’s words for a little while. “It does follow the precepts of an addict returning to the world, doesn’t it?”

  Abilene frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “I’ve been reading up on what comes next. The Internet is full of this stuff. There are certain guidelines to be followed: Regular hours; reasonable working conditions, and, routine tasks.”

  “Of course. Yes, John, those things are very important for the average recovering addict, but I agree with Doctor Lowenstein where you’re concerned. You are not the average recovering addict. I even question if you are an alcoholic.”

  “Why is that?”

  Abilene smiled. “Why do you think?”

  “I’m not the shrink,” John snapped back.

  “No, you’re not. But you’re not stupid either.”

  “If I’m not your ah...average alcoholic, what am I?”

  “Exactly what you said you were before. A drunk. There’s a fine line between addiction to alcohol and...and what you have been going through. I’m not exactly certain as to where you fall on the addiction spectrum.”

  “And that makes a difference?”

  “It does. So, what do you think of custodial?

  John shrugged eloquently enough. “Let’s do it.”

  Abilene studied him. “Okay, I’ll start the process.”

  <><><>

  Staring up at the ceiling, John thought about the first week of training. In all, it had been fairly easy. The company where he was training, All Island Services, Inc., was a moderate-sized company, with just over a hundred employees. They maintained the facilities of businesses, non-profit organizations, and several apartment buildings in Nassau County and a section of western Suffolk County. They didn’t call their employees custodians; rather, they used the term maintenance technicians.

  John’s training had begun on the third Monday of April. There were two other men from rehab with him. In the first four days of training, he had learned how to repair what the instructor described as the holy three—faucets, toilets, and door locks. Today, the fifth day, had been spent on learning how to clear and maintain air conditioning drains.

  He’d found the understanding of the mechanical aspects easy, and the overall work, not difficult. The instructor had explained that f
or the more complicated repairs, they would call in one of the seven company staff mechanics.

  There would be one more week of in-house training, and then three to four weeks of on-the-job training, which was set up as one-on-one training with an experienced maintenance tech. John thought the term shadowing to be a better description.

  John shifted on the bed, then sat up. He wasn’t ready for sleep. The week of days outside the protection of the facility had been more of an ethereal adventure than training sessions. He laughed aloud at his thought.

  It was going on two and a half years since Claire’s death. Thirty months of semi-existence. And in the time since she had been gone, he had fallen into the darkest of places, and was now rising up. But he understood himself so much better now, understood his life, and understood as well, what the rest of his life would be. He knew exactly what that looked like.

  He didn’t bother to paint a pretty picture in his head; he preferred a realistic one. The two years of hiding in gin bottles taught him one simple rule: Keep no one close. He knew that if he did not allow himself to feel anything for another, he would never be hurt again.

  It wasn’t something he shared with the shrinks, he knew better than to open a new can of worms. They would shrink him to the point of cruelty, even if they didn’t see it that way. No, he knew damned well to speak of his real intention would keep him here for an endless time.

  He had two more weeks of training, and then another two weeks at the halfway house while working full time; then, he would go before the judge and find out what his next lap in his life would be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Room 1701, Nassau County Courthouse, May

  It was the same courtroom and the same judge he had faced seven and a half months ago. Next to him, on his left, was Elyse Lowenstein. To his right sat Thomas Dodd, his new public defender, his former attorney having returned to private practice.

  Dodd was a tall and skinny man, with a face reflective of his body, long and angular. His receding hairline made him look a decade older than forty years. However, the hazel eyes, set behind gold-rimmed glasses, and above a nose well suited to his face, had a confidence John liked.