the attendants trying to 'recover'
The attendants always came and went, most of them from the Ennet House place, trying to ‘recover.’
Context
The halfway house's quiet structural presence on the hill: the portcullis security-booth attendants are mostly Ennet House residents, "trying to 'recover'" — the scare-quotes carrying the whole precariousness of the enterprise, the recovering addicts working the gate of the academy above them, coming and going as their sobriety holds or doesn't.