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This is the first chapter of my post-apocalyptic novel, Relativity.  The story follows a middle-aged housewife's journey through an America ravaged by an extreme solar magnetic storm that completely destroyed the country's power grid.

Relativity

by E. K. Deutsch

Chapter One – Meteor

The mountain was always magical to Emma.  From the moment she stepped out of her 10-year-old black Subaru into that clear, rarefied air her lungs billowed and her heart soared.  Swallows swooped overhead, the nearby mountain with its gash of ski slopes was green and lush, and everywhere was blessed silence, so different from the incessant hum of Emma’s New Jersey suburb where the Manhattan skyline was visible from several neighborhood vantage points.

It had been many months since Emma was able to escape to her mountain retreat three hours away in Virgil, New York.  Her husband Earl’s heart stopped two years ago, a sudden cardiac arrest, and Emma pounded his chest for two minutes in a weeping, frantic version of CPR until his eyes fluttered open.  Three surgeries later, after months of recovery he was all the way back, pink, smiling, ambling around the house telling jokes and bear-hugging Emma like the old days.  She could leave him for a short respite, and she was more than ripe for quiet time out of harness.

Emma entered the cabin as if flung into the arms of a welcoming old friend.  She felt like kissing the ridiculous wooden pig she’d found at a yard sale and nailed over the doorway that said “Welcome Friends” on its ample belly in Colonial Blue lettering, and she stroked the doorway and ran her hands along the wooden hat tree in the entry.  She liked to touch her surroundings after an absence, even if only a night’s sleep.  Earl chuckled as Emma ran her hands along the hallway in the morning on her way from the bedroom to the kitchen, and as she opened the blinds and turned on the classical radio station next to the kitchen sink she touched tables, countertops, doorway moldings.

“I’m here!” she exulted.  “I missed you.”  Everything was in order of course, Emma required neatness and efficiency, but always with a warm and welcoming esthetic.  Tasteful prints brightened the plain white walls of the cabin, the warm brown sofa was softened by woolen afghans and quaint, colorful throw pillows, and in the center of the living space the fireplace mantle was dotted with family photos in wrought-iron frames.  A wooden and wrought-iron candelabra-style chandelier hovered over the antique hand-me-down dining table with its strategically placed cotton placemats to cover burn marks made by careless renters.  Times were hard, Emma and Earl didn’t ski, so rather than shut the cabin down in winter, they rented it to families of skiers who always managed to break, damage or mangle at least a few things during the season.

Emma made the bed with fresh sheets, put away all her things and headed to Price Chopper, the grocery store several miles away in the town of Cortlandville.  She sighed as she forced herself to acknowledge that her delicious solo reverie had to be broken periodically over the next four days to accommodate “The Reunion”.  The reunion.  Her family’s yearly summer homage to their checkered, chaotic and colorful lives together.  “Probably at least 25 people this year” Emma thought.  “And most of them chatty.”  In the past Emma tried to be patient with the forced, frenetic pace of The Reunion, as everyone clamored to be heard, to connect and to squeeze as much fun out of the inevitable madness as they could, but this year all Emma wanted was to be left alone. Obligation trumped her fervent desire for Garbo-like seclusion, but she vowed to visit as briefly as politically possible. 

It helped that The Reunion was an hour away in Watkins Glen, NY at a rustic resort called Seneca Lodge.  The entire family (save Emma) rented cabins, hotel rooms and A-frames and The Reunion was spent shuttling between various digs, always terminating at the “Party House”, a log cabin rented by Emma’s sister Carol and her...colorful family.  Since Carol and her husband Joe had no rules, no bedtime and very little sense, the Party House was a magnet for children and teenagers, and anathema to Emma.  “I won’t think about it now” she thought as she guided the Subaru through a breathtaking panorama of roller-coaster-like hills with huge vistas of distant mountains and mile upon mile of rippling corn and grain fields.  “Tonight is mine.”     

She arrived back at the cabin in the moonlight and marveled at the asymmetrical, glowing moon, just a few days from full, and the staggering array of stars with no ambient light from nearby towns to muffle their brightness.  As she walked down the narrow, soft macadam path she heard a sizzling sound in the sky over the mountain in front of her, and looked up to see a blazing orange, red and yellow ball hurtle toward the mountain.  Just before it made contact with the earth the ball abruptly fizzled, and terminated into a curlicue of orange vapor just above the horizon.  “Fireworks?”  Emma thought, and she waited for the boom that accompanies such pyrotechnics.  Nothing, just crickets and the friendly blink of fireflies along her path.  “Hmmmm” she thought, and stopped mid step to think.

A meteor.  She had just seen a meteor.  Not the kind she was used to, on her forays into her suburban backyard at just the right time of night or early morning to see predicted meteor showers, those tiny white dashes in the night sky.  This was a meteor with what Emma called “Kazatz”.  Kahonees.  This meteor was a big, brazen, blazing bruiser of molten rock, it demanded full attention as it performed its cosmic Kamikaze ritual over the silent, hushed mountain.  “That’s a first”, Emma thought, and she actually looked forward to sharing it with her family the following day.

After the deepest sleep Emma had experienced in months, she awoke at 6:30 a.m. and opened her bedroom blinds to see her favorite morning treat, mist on the mountain.  Just like a postcard.  She twiddled her toes on the footboard of the sleighbed and stretched luxuriously.  No dear, darling Earl passing morning gas like a tuba in a football half-time show, no groaning as he heaved his 70-year-old hulk out of bed and gargled loudly before he stumbled into the shower.  Oh, this was good.  “I could get used to this” Emma mused.  But she knew it was only its novelty that made this morning so special.  Life without Earl was not something Emma ever wanted to think about.  He was the love of her life.  She couldn’t imagine a world without his warm, liquid kisses, his bedroom eyes and his knack for finding the joke in everything.  Absolutely everything.  Emma remembered the ambulance attendant who commented that every time Earl came out of his semi-comatose state on the way to the hospital he made a joke.  “That’s a real good sign” the earnest blond young man asserted.  “No” smiled Emma ruefully, “That’s just him.”  Sometimes Earl’s lightness infuriated her, along with the slippery way he avoided any kind of serious conversation, but he was the perfect foil for Emma’s intense, fiery seriousness.  Earl was the whipped cream on Emma’s double-chocolate decadence cake.

Emma began her detailed morning regimen, designed to keep adipose denizens and Alzheimer’s precursors at bay.  First, either an hour long brisk walk (or bike ride at home), followed by a grueling 45-minutes of weight work with an emphasis on abs.  Oh, those nasty, elusive abs.  “Hard as a rock under there” Emma said to anyone who would listen, as she stiffened her belly and invited the uninitiated to give her a good punch in the breadbasket.  If only she could get rid of that little bit of flab and looseness courtesy of an operation to remove an ovarian cyst followed by a c-section many years later.  The final stage of this horrific fitness triad was Brain Training, a series of mind-bending online exercises created by mad scientists in San Francisco, designed to “improve cognitive function”. 

Emma was 57, but could easily pass for a woman in her 40’s.  As the years wore on, this became more and more difficult and time-consuming, but Emma was no quitter.  Size 6 was her limit, and nothing over 130 pounds.  Emma’s years as a ballet dancer stood her in good stead, she thrived on discipline and a healthy, unrefined diet.  But little puffs were appearing under her eyes, puffs that didn’t disappear during the day, and when she pursed her lips a series of crevices appeared.  “Hell, I’m almost 60, I’m entitled” she said bravely as she stared oxidation in the face and eschewed suction, injections or the dreaded plastic surgeon’s knife.  Emma had been a babe in her prime, and was blessed with an ample bosom, small waist and large, round accommodating bottom that still managed to get a rise out of gentlemen of a certain age.  Her hair was still blonde, courtesy of the bottle, and her big eyes were still bright blue.  She wasn’t going to go gentle into that good night, not without a good fight.

So she huffed and puffed up and down the hills of Virgil in the early morning, hoisted her weights with enthusiasm, trained her aging synapses and downed a breakfast of mixed raw fruit, plain yogurt and nuts.  Then she had to acknowledge, the dreaded time had come.  Time to go to...The Reunion.

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