The Opening

by Ron Savarese

  THE OPENING

  A Novel

  Copyright ©2011 Ronald J. Savarese

  All rights reserved under International and

  Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from copyright holder, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in review.

  Published in the USA by Home Planet Publishing

  ISBN: 0615460763

  ISBN-13: 978-0615460765

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9847049-0-3

  Book design and layout by Benjie Nelson

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  This is a Home Planet Publishing Book

  for Dougie

  When I die, I will soar with the angels,

  And when I die to the angels,

  What I shall become,

  You cannot imagine.

  Rumi

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  WITH THE ANGELS

  THE APPOINTMENT

  THE CONVERSATION

  THE BLIZZARD

  THE PUB

  THE VOICE

  THE LIGHT PLACE

  ALBERT

  THE LIGHT PLACE

  1954

  THE LIGHT PLACE

  1955

  MEETING AVA

  THE SNOW CAVE

  1960

  WITH THE ANGELS

  ALBERT

  THE LIGHT PLACE

  THE SNOW CAVE

  THE LIGHT PLACE

  ALBERT

  1995

  1996

  THE LIGHT PLACE

  ALBERT

  THE LIGHT PLACE

  THE CELEBRATION

  THE CHOICE

  WITH THE ANGELS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  WITH THE ANGELS

  The day before the child departed I sat with him under a willow tree near the banks of the crystal waterfall. His feet grazed the blanket as he positioned himself cross-legged next to me.

  It’s time for our story now, I said. It’s about a man who has to make a difficult choice and a little child like you who goes on a journey. Are you ready?

  He rocked back and forth ever so slightly with his arms wrapped around his knees. He placed his hands behind him on the blanket and leaned back.

  I Am, he said.

  THE APPOINTMENT

  My appointment with death was less than a month away.

  I had no idea at the time. I started the day with my usual routine. I woke up early, sat on the bed, and looked out the window. I shuffled down the hall, drank a cup of coffee, and took a shower. I got dressed, kissed my wife good-bye, and went to the office—just another ordinary day. Or so I thought.

  I didn’t actually schedule the appointment. You could say I brought it upon myself. But that might be overstating things just a bit. So let’s just say it was an accident and leave it at that for now.

  I thought my appointment with death would come much later in my life. I don’t know why. I guess I liked to imagine I would die in my own bed, at a ripe old age with my family around me. Or better yet, pass away peacefully in my sleep.

  Nothing can really prepare you for your final moments. You just live and breathe and try to be happy. And when your number gets pulled, it’s your time. Well, that’s what I thought. But it didn’t quite work out that way for me.

  Oh, I know what you might be thinking. You’re going to have some time to prepare. You’re going to have some idea your time is approaching. You might. But I didn’t. I had no idea. Not even a hint.

  Now I know it was the little decisions I made along the way that lead me to my destiny. Or away from it. I didn’t believe that then. But I believe it now.

  I don’t know if it was my destiny to have a conversation with my wife Jessica on that drizzly, November night. And I don’t know if it was that conversation that brought me to the appointment. But there’s no doubt in my mind—after the conversation, the appointment was set.

  In retrospect, I guess there were signs. I see that now. Perhaps if I had been more tuned in I would have noticed. God knows I’d been taught.

  Some say death is a big sleep. A big dream. I wonder. I wonder which is the bigger sleep or the bigger dream. Life or death?

  It didn’t matter.

  My appointment had already been penciled in.

  THE CONVERSATION

  It was cold that November evening and I had just driven home through the rain from a meeting with one of my key financial advisors. He confirmed what I already knew, and what I didn’t want to know. Things did not look good. I’d hit a cold streak. I had invested far too much of my money in technology and telecom stocks and several internet ventures that were on the verge of bankruptcy.

  Stock prices had become stretched to ridiculous proportions. A severe correction was underway. It was a year ago when I said to my advisor, “I think we should sell some of those tech stocks—cut back on some of our positions. Those companies don’t have the earnings to justify the prices.”

  “It’s not about the earnings,” he said. “It’s about clicks and e-commerce. We’re in a new economy now. The Internet is going to change everything. I think we should add to our positions on any pullbacks.”

  Fortunately, I didn’t add to my positions. But I didn’t cut back on them either. Now I was paying the price. And if the market correction wasn’t bad enough, my real estate holdings were all leveraged to the hilt, and the debt which I had been trying to refinance for the past several months was strangling my cash flow.

  On the home front, my wife Jessica had been diagnosed with cancer less than a year before. She had recently completed chemotherapy treatments. The doctors said the treatments had done what they had hoped—they thought they caught it early enough—but we all knew her future was uncertain. There were no guarantees. Our marriage, which was rocky before her illness, had recently become even more strained.

  To top it all off, my relationship with my three children, Caryn and John—both away at college—and Thomas, a junior in high school, had deteriorated to the point where we seemed to speak only out of necessity. Just a few years ago, they had looked to me as a role model, a loving father, someone they could come to for guidance and support. But now as I battled the demons of mid-life, financial losses, and a growing dependence on alcohol, the chasm between us had widened to uncomfortable proportions.

  It was my fault I guess, I was working too much; traveling and drinking and staying out late trying to get deals done.

  Yeah, things didn’t look good. Yet in spite of my souring relationships, and compulsions, and financial woes, I still had enough money to live “the good life.” I was fairly well set. I didn’t need to worry about money. Too much. There were a couple of problems, though. One problem: my life wasn’t very “good” anymore. It was a struggle just to get up in the morning, make it through a day, and get back in bed at night.

  So that night I settled into my typical after-work routine. I sat on the back porch with a bottle of bourbon at my side. I stared out at the ocean through the branches of a few tall palms and watched a half moon rise between the clouds of a starless gray night. As I contemplated my situation, I sipped my fourth glass of straight bourbon over ice, something I’d done far too often both before and after dinner the past year.

  With eac
h sip, I watched Jessica through the back door window as she put the last of the dishes into the dishwasher. In spite of her condition, she carried on with remarkable strength. She continued her P.R. career and even found the energy to work with her charities. I admired that about her. Where did her strength come from? If I were in her shoes, I wouldn’t be able to do it. She’s a hell of a lot stronger than me, I thought. And she has a big heart.

  Oh sure, don’t get me wrong. I did my part. I could throw the money in, make an appearance at a cocktail party or black-tie, make a speech, and get the credit. But Jesse put in the time and the touch. And that’s what really matters. Once I used to care about the sort of things Jessica cared about, but things had changed. I’d become self-centered, Jesse said. I didn’t necessarily think that was true. But if it was, what the hell did she want me to do about it? That “self-centeredness” had provided well for our family.

  I knew Jessica was more worried about me than she was about herself. She was just made that way I guess. She told me she thought my mood swings had gotten worse lately and I was drinking too much. It was time for me to consider professional help, she said. So I did. She was a worrier. That’s probably why she had the cancer and I had the depression.

  Battles seemed to be burning like wild fires everywhere in my world that November. I battled everything. I guess I just liked a good fight. I liked the competition. Truth is I enjoyed the battles. Besides, if you’re going to get ahead in this world, you’ve got to fight for every dollar. And don’t let anybody tell you any different. That’s just the way it is.

  So I battled with attorneys over contracts and clauses. I battled with bankers over loan repayments and interest rates and where to price deals. I battled with my partners over percentages of ownership and dominion over our clientele. I battled with my children over the choices they made with their lives. It seemed like I was battling everybody and everything, including myself.

  It’s true. One part of me liked a good fight, but another part of me had grown tired of negotiating deals with men in navy blue suits and button-down shirts. I had hit the wall. Hard. What had happened to my ambition? My motivation? What had happened to my drive? I was tired of the long hours in corporate boardrooms and late night dinners and drinks. I wanted freedom. I wanted to live my life the way I wanted to live it. I wanted to feel passionate about something again. I wanted meaning. I wanted peace.

  And that was the other problem: I didn’t even know what I was passionate about anymore or how I wanted to live. It seemed the only thing that had any meaning to me was making money and showing my superiority. It seemed like I was always judging, always comparing myself to the other guys. It seemed as if somewhere along the road to becoming a master of success, I’d lost my way.

  Something inside of me had changed, but my life remained the same. Something had shifted, yet I was stuck in a rut of my own making. What happened to me? When did this change occur? And where was I when it happened? These were the questions I asked myself that night, and yet, no answers came. So I stifled myself, and languished away on bourbon, or anything else that numbed the emptiness and hid the truth and feelings I didn’t want to confront. And as the fire in my belly smoldered into burned-out ashes of a half-lived life, I felt as though I was losing my grip.

  I was depressed. No doubt about it. But no one had a clue about my depression except Jessica. My doctor had prescribed some anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication, but that didn’t seem to do much good. And besides, the meds gave me pounding headaches. So it was back to the old stand-by for me: bourbon, before and after dinner.

  It was just getting windy enough that I was thinking should I fill my bourbon glass again or head inside to bed, when Jessica opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. She stood just behind me, her hand resting lightly on my shoulder. “What is it, Jesse?” I asked.

  “Are you okay? I’m worried about you,” she said. She snuggled in behind me and kissed my cheek. “You’ve been sitting out here a long time. What are you thinking about?”

  I used to share all my thoughts with Jessica. We were so close then we seemed to be one person. But lately that question just irritated me. I didn’t answer.

  She patted my chest then wrapped her arms around me. “It’s going to be okay. Things are never as bad as they seem.”

  I half-turned in the chair and looked up at her.

  “I know. I’m not worried about anything. I’m just thinking about the old times. Reminiscing mostly—seems like the world is changing so fast. I don’t know where I fit in anymore.”

  “Oh, come on now. You fit in right where you are. Right here with me.”

  I rubbed her hands. “Your hands are cold, Jesse,” I said. “Please don’t worry about me—I’ve just been feeling a little strange lately. That’s all. It’ll pass.”

  She rubbed her cheek against mine. “Hey, why don’t you make a tee-time with some of your friends,” she asked. “You haven’t played golf at the club in months. They say the remnants of this hurricane are going to move out tomorrow— it’s supposed to be 75 and sunny on Friday. You might as well get some use out of that membership while we’re still down here. You know your partners are going to want you back in New York soon.”

  Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the country club membership that cost me a hundred grand. Did she have to bring that up? Just another one of those things I wish I’d never done. That and this seven-thousand square-foot ocean-front money pit. I’ve got to give Jesse credit though. She didn’t want it. She told me she didn’t think we needed a house this big. And she never did like the neighborhood or the country club crowd for that matter. Too uppity she said. I should have listened to her. I’m the one who pushed for it. What was I thinking?

  And how the hell did we end up in Miami, of all places? And for seven years! My god! This was supposed to be a two-year gig. Life can sure take you for a wild ride—especially in my line of work—private equity. Oh yeah, it was a good move. Greg thought it would be a good idea for me to be here. Would give us good proximity to the Latin American telecom market, he said. And he was right.

  But now it was payback time for me: lots of stock options, and my turn to get back to the city—I’ll do better when I get back up north where I belong.

  “Come on in now, will you?” Jessica said, snapping me back from my drifting thoughts. “It’s late, and it’s windy out here and I’d like to have you next to me as I fall asleep.”

  Of course it was a reasonable request. So I followed Jessica in and washed up quickly and slipped on some fresh cotton boxers. She was waiting, and I knew from the look on her face we weren’t finished with the conversation.

  I was right. Jessica said it might be a good idea for the whole family to go back to my hometown to spend the Christmas holidays. By that time, she explained, she hoped her energy level would be back to something close to normal. The doctors had said it would be good for her to get away, if she felt up to it. She thought she would be feeling up to it. And she thought a trip to be with family for Christmas was just what we all needed.

  “It will be good for you to be with your family for the holidays,” she said, as we lay next to each other. “Besides, it’s been a long time since we’ve been back for Christmas— it’s been fifteen years.”

  I brushed my hair off of my forehead. “No, it hasn’t been that long, has it?”

  “I’ll bet it has. I think the last time we were there for Christmas was the year after Thomas was born. And you know—you haven’t even been back there since Albert’s…”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” I snapped.

  My response came out stronger than I’d meant it to. Jesse was hurt.

  “Alright, Joe,” she said. “All I’m saying is that it would do us all good to spend time with family and old friends this Christmas.”

  I didn’t want to talk about Albert. I didn’t want to talk about anything. I wanted to let the liquor ease me into a night’s oblivion. I took a deep brea
th and rested my hand in hers. “I’ll think about it, Jesse. Anyway, I’ll have to check my schedule at work. Let’s get some sleep, okay?”

  Jessica rolled over and turned away from me. She turned out the bedside light. I lay there in the dark for a few minutes languishing in my remorse. Finally I made a feeble attempt to repair the damage.

  “I dreamed of him a while ago,” I whispered. “I never told you about it. I dreamt I was pulling him out of some sort of black water. It was really strange Jesse, and so real.” I rolled on my side and touched her shoulder. She didn’t move.

  “Hey, are you asleep?”

  Frankly, I hoped if I didn’t get back to her about the trip she’d just quietly abandon her plans as she had so many times before. I didn’t want to go. But Jessica persisted. We argued mildly about it for a few weeks until finally, as usual when she decided to take a firm stand on something, she won.

  By the first week of December we had made the arrangements, booked the flights for ourselves and the kids, and contacted the relatives to make sleeping arrangements. They wouldn’t hear of us spending the night in a hotel. Jessica and Caryn and I would stay at Paul and Nancy’s house. And John and Thomas would stay next door at cousin Jim’s. The plans were made. I set my sights on a traditional family Christmas Eve bash.

  Appointment confirmed.

  THE BLIZZARD

  The days of early December flew by, and before long it was time for our trip. Jessica and I and our youngest, Thomas, loaded our bags and drove to the airport. The other two kids, our oldest child Caryn, and middle son John, coordinated their flights from their respective colleges to arrive within a half-hour of us, planning to rendezvous with us at the airport. Our plan was to meet there, rent an SUV, and drive to Paul’s house together.

  But that was not to be. As fate would have it, weather conditions changed abruptly. Paul called just as we were leaving Miami to tell me the weather report said it was going to be snowing octopus and squid. A storm system moving south from Canada was expected to drop mounds of snow along the southern shores of the Great Lakes and disrupt flight schedules.