Of Literature and Lattes, page 6
Becca giggled. “I like it. I’m tallest in my class, taller than the boys too.”
“That’s a good thing. It keeps them in line.” He bent, kissed her forehead, and lifted his coffee cup under her nose. “Smell this.”
Becca inhaled, eyes closed, just like her dad. “Chocolate and cinnamon. It smells sharp, Daddy.”
“You are getting so good. It’s an Ethiopian bean . . . And you’re right. It pulled too fast today. I underestimated how much beans can dry in a single day. It was perfect yesterday . . . So what happened?”
“Today the water went through the dry beans too fast to pull the mellow flavors. It’s going to be sour.”
“That’s my girl.” He ruffled her hair. He’d done the same thing last night and had pulled at her ponytail. This time, with her hair long and loose, he made a complete mess and covered her face with a curtain of thick hair—exactly his intention.
“Daddy!”
Jeremy laughed his way out of the room and began breakfast. Becca emerged a few minutes later with an Amelia Bedelia book tucked under her arm.
“Do you want to take that one with you?”
She nodded.
After a quick breakfast and a drive with no traffic, they pulled up to Krista’s with ten minutes to spare. Nevertheless, she was already waiting on the front stoop.
Krista hugged Becca, then tapped her shoulder. “Go inside, honey. I’ll be right in.”
As their daughter turned to go, Jeremy bent down. “Remember that I love you just the way you are—to the moon and back again.”
Becca wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged. He closed his eyes and truly believed he could stay in that moment, quads burning from the squat, forever.
As Becca walked inside, Krista turned back to Jeremy. “Look, I want to take this at my own pace. No jumping ahead here. I’m her mother and I’ll decide what help she needs.”
“Life doesn’t follow clear lines, Krista.”
“I never said it did.”
“But you want it to. You want it glossy and neat. If Becca needs special classes, attention, then that’s what she needs. We read together last night and—”
“I told you. I’m handling it.”
Jeremy shifted his gaze above Krista’s head toward the house. “She’s nervous and she feels that she’s not measuring up. She brought Amelia Bedelia with her.” At Krista’s perplexed expression, he continued. “No one does things more differently or is less understood at the beginning than Amelia Bedelia.”
“It’s a kids’ book.”
“You know what Madeleine L’Engle said . . . If the book’s too difficult for adults, write it for children. Kids’ books are important.”
Krista scoffed.
“I’m serious, Krista. This isn’t about you, or me. You may be her mom, but I’m her dad.”
Krista’s face hardened.
He stepped back to his car in hopes a physical retreat would signal an emotional one. “I’ll come back in a couple hours. I’d still like to spend the weekend with her.”
“No. I don’t—”
Jeremy raised a hand. “Please. I don’t get a ton of time with her. And I didn’t mean to push.”
He noted the instant Krista relented. Her eyes softened. In those moments, although few and far between, he remembered why he had loved her and why he had married her. When she forgot to push and strive, there was vulnerability, softness, and a light that enthralled him. When they’d met, she’d just finished her sophomore year of college, had had a rough time with some boyfriend, had struggled in school, had fought with her parents . . . It wasn’t an ideal time to start something new, but she had also needed someplace safe to land, and that someplace and someone had been him. The ability to hold her, love her, and even help her heal had formed the greatest six months of his life.
She stepped forward. “I need to tell you something else.” She too glanced back to the house. “We’re moving, Jeremy.”
“Closer to me?”
“North Carolina. The company’s expanding, and I’ve been asked to run point in Charlotte. No more supervising parties. I’ll set up the whole operation.” She held up a hand to stop him from speaking. “I’ve already done the research. The office is in a great area with an excellent school system—smaller classes, individual attention, special programs. It’s everything you want for her.”
“You can’t . . . Is this what you planned all along? To get me to push, then spring your already pat answer on me?”
“That’s not fair.”
“You can’t do this, Krista. I just moved here. I have everything invested here. I can’t get out. I can’t—”
“As you said, this isn’t about you.”
“That’s not what I was talking about and you know it. You never asked me to move here, I get that, but I came. You can’t just leave. Don’t act like you’re doing this for Becca—they have all those classes here. And what about your parents? They love having her here.”
“I’m not twenty anymore. I need out . . . And this is good for her. Great for me. You can’t be against this.” Krista slid her phone from her back pocket. “I’ve got to go. We can talk later, but this is happening, Jeremy. It’s exactly what I’ve been working for.”
“It isn’t. You’ve always wanted to do layout and design, not manage infrastructure.”
One of Krista’s more recent social media campaigns flashed in Jeremy’s memory. She’d created a series of pictures of different foods the catering company sold. Beautiful croissants, bright green salads, savory tarts. But when he’d replied to ask the cost for Andante and if it was all as good as it looked, she’d replied, I have no idea. After the pictures, I throw it all away.
“That’s what they’re offering me, Jeremy.”
“We have to talk about this.”
“Later.” She spun toward the door. “I have a doctor’s appointment to get to.”
As he drove away, a prayer floated into his consciousness. He quirked a small smile because, unbidden, it always arrived when needed and brought a sliver of peace each time.
God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
He had heard it for the first time at one of Ryan’s AA meetings back in Seattle and liked it so much he’d grabbed a small printed card of it on his way out the door. He knew he should pay attention to the first clause. It pricked his conscience like a small, calm voice every time he raced over it to get to the middle part. Yet he never did the accepting. He rushed on, like a parched man to water, certain that with hard work and perseverance he could create the outcome he wanted and be sated.
The courage to change the things we can . . .
He just needed to work a little harder.
Chapter 8
A half hour spent nursing a now cold coffee at Andante didn’t alter what needed to be done. Alyssa checked her email accounts twice in an attempt to look like everyone else in the shop, glued to their phones, but none of the three companies to which she’d submitted resumes had replied. In fact, a new email, not spam, hadn’t landed in her three in-boxes in four days.
As for social media, she’d closed her accounts months ago. She couldn’t post as her life fell apart, and she had felt like a voyeur peeking into the PicMonkeyed and Facetuned lives of her friends, celebrating marriages, births, promotions, and exotic vacations. Everyone was always out doing something, moving forward.
Going back is the quickest way on.
The thought drifted in and through before she could grasp it. She’d read it somewhere—something about the fact that, after taking a wrong turn, traveling farther down the road doesn’t get you any closer to your destination. You have to go back in order to go on. There was truth and logic to it, and she remembered it striking her at the time, but she remembered sneering at it too. There was no way she’d ever go back, she had thought. Every memory’s glossy veneer had been blasted away in a single revelation.
Yet three years later, the short phrase struck her anew—she was back at the beginning, and perhaps, the saying didn’t deserve a sneer after all. Perhaps it was true.
Alyssa threw the last of her cold coffee down her throat and stood.
It was time to go home.
She stepped outside and looked toward the Printed Letter Bookshop. Its window was a gorgeous and opulent display of life through literature—nothing like the unimaginative row of books that had lined the bay window’s floor, and the empty armchair that had commanded the window’s focal point for years. Mrs. Carter always said that if you sat in the armchair and read in her window for all Winsome to see, and stayed there for at least an hour, you could keep any book you wanted. Alyssa didn’t recall that anyone had ever taken her up on it.
The sun ducked behind a cloud and, rather than bounce off the window, shot through it and illuminated the shop within. There stood Alyssa’s mom a mere ten feet away, conversing with a tall man. Not Andante tall, but still a few inches taller than Janet. As she spoke, her hands waved through the air. It looked like she was telling the best story Alyssa had never heard.
Unable to step forward, she turned back to her car and, within a matter of minutes, pulled into the driveway of her childhood home and parked in the small space between the backyard and the garage. The bushes were taller, scruffier—not pruned into the neat, tight configurations of yesteryear.
She stepped out of her car and looked around. Everything looked a little off, as if time had worn away that veneer here too and let a glimpse of true life escape. It must drive Mom nuts, Alyssa thought as she fingered through her keys.
She unlocked the back door and stepped into the kitchen. It looked the same—the same clock on the wall, the same stove, refrigerator, and appliances on the counters. But it felt quieter, as if no one cooked in here anymore. It had always been a place of emotion—laughter and banter, sobs and frustration. It was where she found her mom, the “control center” from where her mom ran the house and their lives.
Janet loved to cook. She always made dinner, cookies for Alyssa’s friends most afternoons, and extravagant egg-sausage casseroles on the weekends. She brought dishes to every school event, potluck, and bake sale; she organized church meals for babies, moves, and funerals. The kitchen was the lifeblood of their seemingly idyllic family.
Alyssa passed through the kitchen toward the stairs, noting her dad’s old study to her right. Many of the pictures still hung on the walls as if he still worked there. She paused and looked closer. His blotter, pen holder, and even his computer monitor still sat on his desk. In fact, nothing signaled that he had ever left. Not a picture missing. Not a book out of place. His study, the living room, the small sitting room to the left—it was as if the house had frozen in time three years ago when her dad walked out the door.
She cast back to his apartment. Other than the pillow she’d made him all those years ago, everything was new. How had it taken her so long to recognize that?
She thought about the last time she’d entered the house. Two and a half years ago, at Christmas. How had she not seen it then?
Her dad had moved out in September, and Alyssa had fled to California the following week. But they’d all agreed to try to come together as a family at Christmas. She had flown home, crashed on Dad’s pullout armchair, and driven over with him Christmas morning. He had been silent and taciturn in the car, and Alyssa wondered why they were bothering at all. But her mom had insisted, still clinging to the standard she’d created.
Chase arrived at the same time they did, having driven up from the city with his wife, Laura. And all four of them had stood on the front doorstep, stymied as to what came next. After a few awkward glances, Alyssa reached forward and rang the doorbell. It sounded loud and discordant, and she suspected none of them, including Laura, had ever rung it before.
“What are you all doing out here?” Janet had been beyond perky that morning, wound into a tight knot, and the house had been decorated to the nines. Garlands followed the bannister down the stairs, poinsettias flanked the fireplace, stockings hung in a row. Warm smells of hot apple cider, coffee, and one of her signature egg-sausage casseroles wafted on the air, which was buzzing with the soft notes of Christmas carols.
The fantasy lasted mere moments, and the morning, not ten minutes old, ended with Janet screaming at Seth in the driveway. Alyssa had been up in her room and had gotten left behind as her dad sped away. Without a word, she walked down the stairs and out the front door, getting an equally good berating as she walked down the driveway. In fact, she suspected her mom continued to yell well beyond earshot. Janet never gave up.
Alyssa took a deep breath and looked up. Her favorite painting still hung at the top of the stairs, a huge modernist piece that hung crown molding to baseboard and stretched at least four feet wide. It always made her feel as if she were climbing to space and part of a larger story. Its portrayal of a midnight sky had been created with a palette knife. Deep curls of midnight blues, flashes of silver, white, yellow, and gray. It was three-dimensional, textural, and spoke of vast, immutable realities. It comforted her, giving her a sense of place and possibility. Over the years Alyssa had even worn smooth a ridge of oil on the left edge by touching it each time she climbed the stairs.
Seeing it brought back another memory too—an older one, yet still poignant. One afternoon her mom had found her staring at the painting. Janet had curled her lip at it and slid her hand along its right edge, as if trying to lift it from the wall. “This ugly thing belongs in the trash. I can’t look at it anymore.”
“No, stop.” Alyssa had swiped at her hand.
Janet turned. Her face was full of something Alyssa had never seen before. It wasn’t anger, despite her words. It looked and felt like agony.
“Please don’t.” Instinctively Alyssa knew to stay away from the painting. She looked up at the crown molding instead. “You’ll bring it crashing down and ruin the wall.”
Janet shrugged. “Fine. I’ll get someone to handle it later.”
Alyssa never mentioned or touched the painting again. Deep inside, she believed if she ignored it her mom might forget and leave it hanging. By loving it, she sensed she had created a problem. And perhaps, she thought as she now climbed the stairs, she had been right. With Alyssa not calling attention to it ever again, her mom had never removed it.
She stalled before it and touched the smoothed bump of blue at its edge. Home. Yellow light caught her eye. The sun was back out, and beams of liquid sunshine spilled into the hallway. She’d forgotten how much yellow her room cast in the sunshine. Although the rug was white, the bedcovers white, the trim white, and the roman shades a blue floral print, the yellow walls bathed everything in a warm glow. It was a happy room, a sanctuary.
She crossed the white carpet, noting that nothing new had stained it in fifteen years. The only mark was the faint smudge from a blue pen that had exploded in ninth grade. Glancing around, her eyes struck upon memories—so many good. Most good, in fact. Pictures of friends. Makeup in dishes still sat on her dresser, dried now, but oh-so-important back then, especially the colored mascara. Lexi’s cheerleading poms were still tucked behind the corners of her bulletin board. Alyssa had taken them one night from her best friend and never returned them. She pulled them down now and liked how their soft rustle filled her silent room. Pens on her desk. Three Mason jars full. She’d forgotten how many she owned and how she’d written her notes in a rainbow of colors throughout high school and college. Red for lectures, green for readings, blue for original thoughts, purple for connections and correlations, black for the answer to any problem—in English, math, science, or history.
She pulled open her dresser drawer and cringed at the graphic T-shirts and prairie tops she found there. The next drawer held jeans and a couple pairs of cargo pants, one with a pink camo pattern. The early 2000s had been an odd time for fashion, she thought. Yet as she looked down at her own clothes—ones she’d been wearing since everything in her car was stolen in Rawlins—she decided she’d had enough. Odd or not, she pulled out the camo pants and a tight white cropped T-shirt with capped sleeves, pleased she could still fit into them. She looked in the mirror and, noting the dish of tiny hair clips, piled her hair into her signature high school style, a high ponytail with clips pulling back the bangs and sides.
“You look good.”
Alyssa spun with a yelp. “What are you doing here? You scared me.”
Janet’s eyes were bright and clear and danced with laughter. The look startled Alyssa more than the interruption. Was it size? Shape? Color? Alyssa dismissed each as she questioned. Nothing was different. Yet she hardly recognized her mom’s eyes. Something new was igniting them from within.
But whatever it was, it was gone in the flash it took for her mom’s gaze to lock on hers. Her expression changed, and the light vanished. “I’m sorry. I assumed you heard me come up the stairs.”
Alyssa thought she heard a note of contrition, but that didn’t fit. Janet had never been one to show embarrassment, regret, or self-reproach. As far as her mother was concerned, Alyssa firmly believed, a good offense made for the only defense.
And Alyssa was her mother’s daughter.
“I didn’t,” she snapped. She hadn’t intended her words to carry such aggression, but rather than pull back, she let her harsh notes drift between them. She felt her pulse pick up its pace to prepare for battle as words—most unkind and rude—filled her head.
Yet even as the words flooded her brain, she also felt a skipped beat in her heart. The longing that she’d felt leaning into her dad’s hug, the sense of camaraderie she’d felt staring up at Andante’s tall owner, overwhelmed her with the undeniable truth that she yearned for such a connection with this person too. Her mom. It was a pulled-inside-out, laid-bare feeling. She glanced down to her twisting hands and tried to still them.
“I came home early because your dad said you were moving in with me today.” Janet gestured into the room. “I washed your sheets yesterday to make sure they were fresh, but then when you didn’t—”
