C.J. Carmichael - Small-Town Girl

Not many of the guys he chummed around with had called since he’d been released from hospital. Even Jeff, his best friend, had come around only once. Though to be honest, Ben didn’t seem to want to see his friends, either. Was he self-conscious about the changes in himself? Or was he still too weak to play?

Julie didn’t know the answers. Not to these questions, or any of the hundred others she’d had since Ben’s accident. The doctors were no help. They’d adopted a “wait and see” attitude that drove her nuts.

She’d waited too long already, damn it! Hadn’t Ben suffered enough—hadn’t they all?

Despite the hours and hours at therapy, Ben’s speech was still slow—he had to search for the words that had once spilled out of his mouth like the froth from a shaken soda can. His balance was shaky; his memory, unreliable. Worst of all were the headaches and his frustrated anger.

“It’ll be okay, Ben,” she promised her son every night, but as the days passed into weeks and months, she’d begun to feel like a liar. Ben wasn’t okay, at least not yet.

She’d memorized the chapter on traumatic head injury in the book she’d bought on brain disorders, as well as every word Dr. Assad had ever spoken to them. Her acquired knowledge offered as much cause for worry as for hope.

Every brain injury was unique. Outcomes were unpredictable. So far they’d been lucky. Ben had emerged from the coma. That was the biggie, wasn’t it? She tried to be grateful, but it was hard.

If only…

Biting her lip, Julie opened a cupboard door at random and began to clean.

“SALAD?” JULIE ASKED rhetorically as she passed the crystal bowl from her husband to her son. Ben, using the silver tongs awkwardly, portioned some of the greens onto his side plate.

Once the highlight of Julie’s day, the dinner hour at home had turned into an ordeal—and not just for her. Ben sat quiet and withdrawn—usual for him since the accident. His hair, so like his father’s, had grown to cover most of the scar tissue on his forehead. While he’d regained some weight in the past month, he remained five pounds lighter than before the accident in April, and Julie struggled not to urge him to eat more.

All three of them had lost weight. Her waistbands were loose and Russell had dropped at least ten pounds. Naturally thin, now he appeared almost gaunt.

Of all of them, he made the most effort to keep dinner pleasant, filling the conversation that had once been centered on Ben’s school day and recess antics with stories about the university.

“Can’t say I’m sorry there are only two weeks left in the summer session,” he said. “This has to be the most boring batch of students I’ve ever had. Even Weasel has been quiet lately.”

“Didn’t beg for any extra marks in last week’s assignment?” Julie asked.

“Surprisingly, no. Though maybe he considered himself fortunate I’d been as generous as I was. He should have been, anyway.”

Ben stabbed at his plate with his fork until he speared a piece of chicken. If he was paying attention to any of this, it wasn’t noticeable.

Russell sighed and his forehead creased. Julie had seen a lot of that frown lately. Probably she sported one on her brow, too. Struggling to smile, she tried to tell a story about an aborted photo shoot at a new home furnishings store on Robson Street, but the story fizzled halfway through.

“Anyway, it was quite a mess. But I guess you had to be there.” She forked a piece of lettuce, then another and another.

“Can I be excused?” Ben asked. He pushed back from the table. In the past, he’d spent most evenings playing with Lego or reading with her and Russell in the living room. Lately he preferred to blockade himself in his bedroom.

Julie set aside her plate, fighting an urge to hurl it at the kitchen window. Everything had been so perfect before the accident. Why did it have to happen? They were good people. They didn’t deserve…

Hell. She forced her mind to go blank. That kind of thinking got her nowhere. And she knew it.

The accident was reality. Ben’s injury was reality, too. Now, deal with it, Julie. You’re the mother here. So why couldn’t she say the right things, do the right things, to make this family whole again?

“I’ve been thinking, Julie.”

She’d almost forgotten Russell was still in the room. “Yes?”

“This family needs a change.”

Caution made her reply slowly. “What do you mean?”

When her husband didn’t answer right away, she kept going. “If you’re suggesting a holiday, I’d been wondering if we might squeeze in a week at Saltspring before school starts now that Ben’s therapy is finished. Any chance you could get away?” She knew he was already busy preparing for the fall session.

Russell drummed his fingers on the table. He was an academic, but he had hands that looked as though they could actually do something. Tighten a valve, unclog a sink, change the oil in a car.

“We always go to Saltspring,” he said.

Well, of course. They had a cottage on the ocean. Why wouldn’t they go to Saltspring? “What kind of holiday did you have in mind?”

“I wasn’t thinking of a holiday. I’m proposing a real change—something permanent.”

Oh, no. She didn’t like the sound of this. What she needed—what they all needed—was a return to normal. Not change. Especially not permanent change.

Watching Russell, she experienced the disorienting sensation of observing a stranger. She had absolutely no idea what he was thinking right now. When was the last time they’d talked—really talked—about something other than Ben?

Actually, they didn’t even talk about Ben anymore. She hated seeing the strain on her husband’s face when she admitted her deepest fears. So she did her best to keep them to herself. If Russell had any anxieties of his own, she never heard them. Maybe he was protecting her? Or maybe his ingrained optimism protected him from imagining the worst. Nothing got Russell down. Apparently not even the near death of his son.

She struggled to keep resentment out of her voice. “Sounds like you have something specific in mind.”

“I do. I think we need to move.”

She froze, certain she couldn’t have heard correctly. “Russell?”

“I know how much you love this house. And you’ve done a beautiful job with it. But we’re in a rut.”

“Russell, this house is perfect—and I’m not talking about the bloody furniture or the color on the walls, for heaven’s sake.”

“But—”

“We’re close to Ben’s school, and his friends…. And what about the ten thousand we just spent on landscaping?”

She considered Russell’s long commute to work. “Do you want to move closer to the university, is that it?”

“No. Farther. Much farther.” Russell cleared his plate and Ben’s from the table. Hunching his lean, large-boned frame over the sink, he rinsed them for the dishwasher.

Julie sat, waiting for him to tell her exactly what he had in mind. Finally, he returned to the table. Gripping the back of his chair, he took a fortifying breath.

“This may seem like it’s coming out of the blue, but I’ve been tossing around the idea for years now. Ben’s accident is only the catalyst.”

Cold dread pinned Julie to her chair. Years, Russell had said. And yet until this moment, he’d never even hinted he wasn’t happy living here.

“I’d like us to move back to Chatsworth.”

Her nervous tension snapped on a burst of surprise, then outrage. “You can’t be serious.”

Russell had been born and raised in Chatsworth, Saskatchewan. The small prairie town was lucky to boast five hundred citizens at most. Usually Russell and Ben went by themselves to visit Russell’s parents, but Julie had tagged along often enough to know exactly what life in that small town would offer her and her son.