Page 25 of Of Literature and Lattes
Alyssa stepped past her and stood in the center of the dark office. She looked smaller to Janet, less formidable than she had when she stormed out of her bedroom two days before. The whole episode, including the circa 2004 clothing, had reminded Janet so much of Alyssa’s high school years that she had spent the rest of that day vacillating between laughter and tears. They’d lasted three minutes in the same room. It did not bode well for the summer or for their relationship.
Now she watched Alyssa look toward the front of the store as if calculating her exit options. Light poured in through the front bay windows, making the books look lit internally, as though their stories were too bright, too colorful, and too alive to remain between their covers. The store glowed. She smiled and glanced to her daughter. Alyssa too held that look of wonder—until she directed her attention back to her mom.
“Remember when you sent me here for my college essays?”
Janet did remember. She remembered all their yelling matches. She remembered every standoff. In the past few months each memory had washed over her anew. And, while revisiting each was painful, the insights gave her hope. What before she had regarded as instances of Alyssa’s ingratitude, obstinance, and petulance were recast in light of her own issues of control, manipulation, and anger. The wave of memory should have broken her, if it hadn’t also become freeing. And if looking back and accepting the past felt freeing, how much better would forgiveness and resolution feel? Janet struggled to hold herself back. Alyssa wasn’t there yet.
“I still have a lot of the books Mrs. Carter gave me.”
Janet straightened. Back then one issue was that Alyssa wanted to handle her college applications herself. But Janet had wanted them to be the best. Mrs. Maddie Carter, the retired English teacher who owned the bookshop and tutored out of a storage closet, was their compromise. But she never knew Maddie had given Alyssa books. Granted, she only became friends with Maddie once she herself started working in the shop three years ago, and only two before Maddie died, but still... She’d never known.
“What books?” Janet held her breath in anticipation. Maddie never suggested books without a reason. Her suggestions were personal, indicative, instructive, and life changing. To have such insight into her daughter was both enticing and terrifying.
“The Catcher in the Rye,Bridge to Terabithia,Where the Red FernGrows... I liked that she didn’t give me books I ‘should know’ rather than books I’d enjoy.From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.Frankweilerwas one. Kid books, middle-grade books, adult books—age didn’t matter. I’ll never forget Ramona, Katniss Everdeen, and Antonina Zabinski.” Alyssa’s voice sounded wistful, as if she had forgotten them and was only now remembering.
“Voice, courage, companionship, place.”
Alyssa shot her a glance.
Janet shrugged. She should have kept her mouth shut. “That’s what I get from those books and those characters, but it’s probably different for everyone.”
Alyssa nodded, more in a synthesizing information way than anI agreeway. “I think I owe you an apology for yesterday.”
Janet felt a snarkyYou think?rise within her. Her snappy anger still felt like an old comfortable coat she often longed to wear. It was familiar, almost soothing, and for years, she would have let the comment fly and enjoyed the sting it brought both her and Alyssa. My oh my, she ruefully thought, this changing stuff is hard work. She tilted her head to her studio. “Come in here and we can talk.”
Alyssa stepped through the doorway, and Janet watched as a series of emotions played across her face. Alyssa’s first flash of awe and delight made her smile. Yet a sharpness lingered last, and Janet felt her face drop into a frown mirroring her daughter’s.
She trailed Alyssa’s gaze, trying to imagine what she saw, what it said to her, why it irritated her. Janet’s heart sank, because her art was the purest expression of her very self. Her creations covered the walls, some in charcoal, some in delicate watercolor, others made from huge swaths of bright acrylic paint. Two new oil paintings were propped along the walls, and a stack of canvases blocked the doorway to the shop’s powder room.
Alyssa’s eyes drifted up. Janet’s followed. A skylight bathed the room in natural light, and through it she caught a glimpse of cerulean blue. It was going to be a beautiful day.
“What—” Alyssa did not finish her question, as the answer arrived with the asking and she was reminded of a verse that had struck her long ago:For now we see through a glass,darkly...
She was under no illusion that the verse referred to a daughter seeing her mother, but the truth of it still applied. She had “seen through a glass darkly.” No, worse than that, she hadn’t seen at all.
The reality of the room clarified so much in her life, and her interpretation of it. Even though she’d never seen her mom hold a paintbrush or doodle with a pencil, she recognized her in every brushstroke and line within the room. And they did not reveal a mom she knew or a life she understood and lived, but a world she had somehow missed. One that should have existed, but never did. Her senses were captured by the creative cacophony. Forget the window displays, she thought, this is where someone shot sunshine and infused all with its life and color.
“You’re an artist,” Alyssa said softly.
She faced her mom and fully absorbed what she’d seen in Chris’s eyes as he met her at the side of the road. He had known her by sight, and looking now, it was so clear why he had. In the three years since she’d moved, Alyssa knew her face had thinned—she was perhaps too thin now. Too much work, too much stress, too little sleep... But her mom—she looked better than she had in years. It felt as if across time and space their ages had crept closer together rather than running parallel.
This was not the Janet of three years ago—wan, thin, with dark circles and angry eyes pink from perpetual crying. This was not the Janet of Alyssa’s high school years either, almost brittle in her own need to manage every moment. She was something entirely new, animate, happy, alive—and completely disconcerting.
The rest of the verse drifted to Alyssa’s mind... But then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.Again, not about a mother and a daughter, nor about revelations here on earth, yet to see someone or something more clearly than ever before, as if seeing their essence, not just their being, felt as revelatory and consequential.
Janet had always had a certain flair, in decorating, in dress, and in a vocabulary she wielded like a weapon. Despite striving with every single breath of every single day, Alyssa had never measured up, never quite felt secure in Janet’s love. There was her second-grade self-portrait. They’d been studying Van Gogh and other artists, and Alyssa could still feel the pressure of each word delivered during the parents’ tour of their art exhibit.Proportion,dominance,realism,abstraction, andexaggeration.Somehow she’d missed each one.Then, in fourth grade, they got to pick any subject to paint they wanted. She’d painted their house, hoping it could hang in the kitchen over the light switch. But that attempt brought new and different words. Shading,relief,focal point,composition. Some of the words her teacher had taught the class, but clearly Alyssa had again missed in their execution. In response, or maybe retaliation, she hadswitched to an extra math class in the fifth grade and for her art requirement signed up for choir after school. In fact, her mom never knew about that one art appreciation class she’d taken in college—her only one. Just like Mrs. Carter’s books, that class had been her secret and savory delight.
Janet’s happy sigh brought her back to the present. “I’m becoming one. Again. Can I show you around the room?”
Alyssa couldn’t move a muscle.
Her mom took it as a yes and eagerly pointed to one wall. “This is where it began in February. I call herThe Woman.” She described all the words she’d penned in different fonts, inks, textures, and sizes into a large word cloud of a woman moving forward toward the viewer. And in the center of a large piece of linen paper, Janet had created something extraordinary. Tall and strong, the mass of words didn’t cover the woman, they created her. They defined and propelled her.
Alyssa stepped close to untangle them.Confidence, good, eager hands, food, confers, buys, earnings, plants, vigorously, strong, profitable, open arms, no fear, scarlet, fine, purple, dignity, wisdom, household, blessed, noble, praise.
“The words come from Proverbs 31. Maddie, Mrs. Carter, gave it to me in a letter.”
Alyssa stepped back and took in the room again. “Four months? How is that possible?” She heard the note of sarcasm in her voice and bit her lip against it.
