Page 36 of Of Literature and Lattes
“What’s happened? Are you okay?” Madeline asked each question slowly, with the clear implication she knew full well something had and Jill wasn’t.
“Nothing. Of course.” Jill offered a hesitant smile and waved them away. She knew neither Chris nor Madeline was fooled, so she dialed it up a notch and added a perky laugh. “You two go enjoy the sunshine. We’re supposed to get rain tonight.”
They walked out, and Jill’s bravado fell. She felt it in her face. Every muscle slacked as if there was no energy or collagen to hold them up. She’d spent an hour that morning with her mother, who not only had not known who she was, but had grown upset at not knowing her. Those had been rare days before but were becoming more common.
She’s only sixty-five, Jill told herself. It’s too young. But regardless of age, it was happening. On some days a memory would simply evade her mother, like smoke drifting above her. Yet on other days she would catch that smoke—not the memory, but the ephemeral realization that a memory should be enfolded within it. She would chase it with a dogged determination. And then, unable to find it, she became agitated and, this morning, inconsolable. For the first time, a nurse was forced to give her a sedative. That’s what shook Jill the most. It marked a watershed moment in her mother’s decline. These days will come faster now, she thought.
For me too...
How long until she too reached for memories she couldn’t grasp? Would it start with a word? An event? A milestone she’d never willfully relinquish? Her wedding day? What about recognizing her own children? Would she ever meet, and remember, grandchildren? Would she too become frantic, almost violent, in her fear?
“Stop!” She yelled the word aloud. Lately she found it the only way to truly halt her cascading fears.
She glanced to her small side desk. A picture of her two kids rested there. Jack was thirteen next week and Carrie, at seventeen, would begin her senior year in September.
They were too young to know, too young to carry that burden.
But it had been months since her Vita XGC results arrived... They needed to be told.
Chapter 16
Alyssa watched the car pull away. Inside the slick black BMW sat the third driver that morning who hadn’t looked her in the eye, hadn’t said please or thank you, and had actually held their credit cards by their fingertips from a cracked window, like she was going to reach in and steal their iced Frappuccinos or give them cooties with her dirty hands. And this particular driver had demanded she clean her windshield three times.
“You’ve left smudges... You’re still not doing it right... Fine, if that’s the best you can do.”
Then she peeled out with a glare and a nasty scowl.
“Good riddance,” Alyssa muttered and pulled a rag from her back pocket. Grease was everywhere, under her fingernails, in the lines within her palm, and as she tucked her long bangs behind her ear, probably in her hair. She looked down at another winning 2004 outfit—this time capri jeans and a scoop-necked T-shirt—and sighed, “Doesn’t get better than this.”
She noticed Jasper rounding the corner from the garage bays and set to wiping off the gas pumps. With the rain and the wind from a middle-of-the-night storm, they were already green with pollen despite wiping them down the day before.
“Alyssa?” He nodded to her from a few steps away. “I don’t think this is going to work. After you finish that, let’s settle up and get you on your way. You can drop off those uniform shirts you never wore whenever you get the chance.” He dug his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
“I’m sorry. They don’t fit. But... you’re firing me? I need to pay for my car.”
“We’ll figure out something else.” Jasper lifted his Cubs cap off his head and swiped at his gray hair. He then nodded like the chat was over. When she didn’t move, he bit the corner of his mouth and regarded her more closely. “Maybe you feel this work isn’t good enough, or maybe you woke up on the wrong side of your bed every day for a week, but either way I can’t have you being rude to my customers.”
Without meaning to, Alyssa looked down the road after the BMW and its sour middle-aged occupant. A million excuses and a few defensive retorts came to mind, but as she cycled through them, each sounded worse than the last.
Jasper pushed through her silence. “I’ll finish the work on your car, don’t you fret. You’re smart and you’ll get work, and I know you’ll pay me too.”
“No.” Interview six gave the word power.
I’m overqualified for this job. You won’t have any problems with me, and even though I can’t answer these questions, I’m honest and I’ll be out of all this someday, and I’m smarter now. You won’t find a more dedicated employee.
She had believed every word when she said that to the interviewer at the financial management start-up, and she believed every word when they came to mind the day she asked Jasper for a job. But it wasn’t true... She hadn’t been willing to do anything, even when offered a chance.
Jasper shook his head. He looked like a grandfather who was not angry, but sad about a wayward grandchild—the one who never listened, the one who always went astray, yet perhaps the one he loved best. “You tried. I’ll give you that, but—”
“Please. If you’ll let me stay, you won’t regret it. I promise.”
“I’ve owned this corner for forty years, and I like my life here. Some people aren’t pleasant, that’s for sure, but they’re my customers and this is my home. Costco out on Route 10 can charge up to fifty cents less a gallon on premium, but they haven’t cut into my business one bit, and that’s a miracle.” He looked around with a small satisfied smile. “And maybe it’s because others feel at home here too. I do good work and most people respect that.”
“I’ll respect that too.”
Her comment drew his gaze to her again. She worked to keep eye contact because she wanted him to see something new in her, something worth believing in. Because he was right. She hadn’t respected his work and the joy he brought to it. She had treated it, and him, as if they were beneath her. Her “day job” had already taken a back seat to what she deemed her “real work.”
Over the past week she’d stayed up late every night poring over Lexi’s and Jeremy’s data, wanting to do her best for them. She wanted to wow them and had convinced herself it was because they were taking a chance on her. But Jasper had taken a chance on her first—and when she’d needed it the most. As he studied her now, she got the oddest feeling that he saw through her, and she imagined he saw a small dirty thing, and it had nothing to do with the grime on her hands or the grease under her nails.
