When they get
back in, the sun is setting lavishly through the skyscrapers beyond their
window, liquid orange and glittering with eye-watering ferocity off every
metallic surface across the span of city that separates their thirtieth-floor
room from the river. Tommy’s drawn to the window; his breath fogs the glass as
he stares out at the vista, the cars crawling below like ants, boats moving on
the Hudson. He counts five rooftop gardens, one strung with fairy lights that
snap on as he watches, tiny people gathering at a table and toasting one
another with tiny glasses.
Even at his
most miserable during their twenty years apart, he always found a kind of
bittersweet comfort in the sheer busyness of the city. The knowledge that, even
if he was pining and lonely, there were so many others out there, just beyond
his window, living, and loving, and enjoying themselves.
Now, he gets
to be one of their number.
He catches
the ghost of his own smile in his reflection as he turns, and puts his back to
the view, and focuses instead on the view that’s for him only.
I'll keep it brief - ha - because this is a novella and not a big doorstopper, but there are lots of little truth bombs and tender moments in A Cure for Recovery that make me happy I took the time to pen it.
When I was wrapping up College Town, I wanted to dig a little deeper into Tommy's recovery, and the challenges therein, but ultimately decided to end the book on a high note. The story had reached a natural denouement, and I felt like digging too deep into "what comes next" would throw off the pacing of the rest of the narrative. But his recovery - and recovery in general - was a topic I wanted to write about, so here we have A Cure for Recovery, which is essentially 38k words of domestic fluff and angst, without the mystery/suspense angle of the original novel, but with its own kind of muted, what I think of as a very real-world plotline.
While I'm very happy with the way College Town ends, I don't think it allowed Lawson or Tommy the chance to unbox their leftover anxieties with regard to finding a true permanence in one another's lives. Lawson's still worried that Tommy will wake up one day, wonder what the hell he's doing, and go back to New York. And Tommy's worried that, after twenty years apart, and finally getting together, Lawson's going to resent having to play both husband and caretaker, furious at his own body for what he sees as "failing" him.
Their circumstances in College Town were a bit extreme - the forced separation, the deception, the mafia plot - and Cure feels like a chance to step back and approach the practical, day-to-day aspects of their relationship. Making things work when lives aren't on the line, and it's just drinks at Flanagan's and career frustration.
As a writer, I don't know that I ever truly leave a project, a story, or a couple alone. There's always ideas left dangling. In this case, Cure was a chance to share some of those in a coherent novella, and to help my brain work through some of the more domestic challenges of Lord Have Mercy. I'll put Lawson and Tommy to bed - for now. No promises I won't ever revisit them again. And I really hope you enjoy their epilogue, which does, never fear, feature another happily ever after.
You can purchase it here:
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