The Rivening

The Corner Store

Connie walked slowly back to her house and paused in the kitchen to make a fresh pot of tea. She wondered, what are people supposed to do if they're suffering from shock? When a seismic change washes over their lives?

The tears started and she couldn't stop them. No noisy sobbing, only streams of tears pouring down her cheeks. Fifteen minutes until her scheduled meeting. She had to get a grip. Thankfully, it was only on the phone, no video. They would share the text on-line to finish up walking through the edits.

She went into the bathroom to splash water on her face and spent several minutes staring in the mirror. She'd never been someone who spent much time mirror-gazing, probably because her eye-oddity made her self-conscious about her looks. She had to admit, even beyond the two-tone eyes, the similarities to Arden and Eneko were startling. Arched eyebrows, triangular face.

She spread out her hands. And her long fingers. She brought up the image of Eneko pointing out the plants in her garden. He had better posture than she did, more comfortable in his tall, slender body. She remembered her petite grandmother continuingly admonishing her: 'Stand tall...be proud of your height...you're lucky.'

It took a couple of hours on the phone to complete going over the textbook edits. Once they got started, Connie was glad to have the diversion. When she finished, she saw that Jean's daughter, Angie, had left a couple of text messages: 'need to talk – it's urgent, please call.'

"Hey Angie, it's Connie. Sorry, I was in the middle of a work meeting and had stuff turned off."

"It's okay. I know how that goes. It's about Jean. She collapsed when she got to the store. They called an ambulance and took her to the hospital. She's had a stroke. I'm there now, waiting until they let me go in and see her. It was pretty massive, but they say she'll make it through. The coming days will tell how well she'll be able to recover."

"Oh Angie. I'm so sorry to hear that. What can I do to help? I can look after her house. Water plants or whatever."

"That would be great. There's a key to the back door inside that empty birdhouse on the step. Oh god, I keep wondering if it was somehow related to that horrible forest fire smoke that's been drifting down. The air quality is terrible today and with who knows the state of Jean's lungs. She won't tell me what's going on with her, and refuses to stop smoking..."

"Don't Angie. You know you couldn't have deterred her from going in to work. And it may have nothing to do with the air."

"Maybe, but I can't help but thinking. Would you be able to visit her tomorrow? They feel she should be fairly alert. I know she'll be worried about Peter. It may be hard to get her to say too much, but it will be making her anxious."

"Peter? I don't know who that is, but I'm guessing he lives in the place where Jean drops off stuff. I asked her if maybe I could help deliver things for her sometimes, and she closed right down."

"I'm not surprised. She'll barely talk to me about him."

"Who is he?"

"Her guilty conscience."

"About what?"

Angie sighed. "I'll tell you as much as I know, what I've pieced together. Just take in whatever Jean tells you and don't mention I told you anything. I may not have it right and she probably won't like some of my interpretation.

"Peter lives in what used to be the neighborhood corner store. He's maybe 50 or so? His parents came from China. The family ran the store and lived upstairs. About 25 years ago, there was a fire at the store. I remember because it was not long after I came to live with Jean and Mac. Peter's parents died in the fire, and he was badly burned we heard. Mac told me that Peter tried to save his parents. I guess he was an only child and single because I don't recall any mention of other family members. "

After Peter came back from the hospital, Jean started taking him stuff, mainly groceries. And she's done that ever since. I don't know if he ever comes out. I never saw him after the fire."

Connie queried, "Why did you say guilty conscience?"

"She'll hate me telling you this. Before the fire, Jean used to make fun of his parents. She'd imitate their accent when she'd ask me to run and get something from their store. And I kind of remember her making racist comments about the family. I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention at the time, being pretty self-absorbed in my own shit, as it were."

"And all that stopped after the fire?"

"Oh yeah," Her voice got quieter. "In fact, after the fire, I got a slap across the face when I did my own mocking of how the Wong's talked. It was the only time she ever hit me." Angie paused. "Not a great moment for either of us. But I think, in time, we came out of it okay in the end."

"I think you did too."

"You're a generous person, Connie."

"I don't know about that. Jean won me over, hearing her sing 'I'm a little teapot' to Kami in that scraggly voice of hers. Even though she seemed so unapproachable."

"I'm glad you persevered. She's taken a shine to you and that doesn't come easy to her. I know she can seem a little gruff, especially at first."

What else would the day bring? After nearly two hours going over the textbook edits and then the conversation with Angie, Pria's talk about a parallel world no one knows about was sounding increasingly absurd. Though after another probing look in the mirror, she couldn't dismiss her likeness to Arden and Eneko. Could it be a fantasy come true that she might have some real family?

However, right now, her priority was Jean. As she walked to Jean's house, Connie thought about sporadic texts she'd been getting from Sonya about the forest fires spreading up north. All signs were indicating that this was going to be a long season of worry for Sonya and her family and the northern communities. And would affect millions of people, most of them hundreds of miles away.

Connie found the key and let herself into the house. She checked the few plants Jean had and did a quick inventory of the refrigerator. A few things would need to be tossed if Jean wasn't back soon. It hit Connie that if Jean was doing really poorly, she might not be coming back to her house. Connie slumped down on Jean's old sofa trying not to contemplate that or something even worse. She had grown fond of her grumpy neighbour.