Page 85 of Of Literature and Lattes
“Don’t go. Come sit,” Janet called to her. “Come tell us. You were so excited this morning.”
Alyssa looked back, then up the stairs again. Escape felt so close. She looked at the painting at the top of the stairs. Her fictional dreams of escaping into that starry night seemed so foolish in the harsh light of today. Safety took a more narrow form—a childhood bedroom, decorated in white, blue, and yellow, with enough pillows to lose herself within.
“Alyssa?” her grandmother prompted.
She turned, crossed into the living room, and perched on the sofa next to her mom’s chair. “There’s nothing to tell. I finished my work and they don’t need me anymore. I figured out what they wanted to know and it’s over.”
“You don’t seem happy.”
“I’m not happy. It was horrible. What XGC did, what I helped to do, ruined lives, and nothing I did this week is going to change that.”
“Of course it will. They’ll let people know if they were lied to, and you said it yourself, it was all predictive, way-in-the-future kind of stuff.”
Alyssa turned on her mom with a ferocity she couldn’t point at herself. “That’s a cop-out. You don’t think that if you were told you were going to get early onset Alzheimer’s—that’s before sixty-five, Mom—you’d panic. You’re only a few years from that now, which means any day you’ll start forgetting, and wondering, and worrying. You don’t think you’d be scared to death, so terrified you might do something stupid and irrevocable? You’re about to forget them, Mom, your family, your new granddaughter, and everything else that was ever good in your life. But not your family—they won’t forget you. They’ll still have to pay for your care, expensive care, maybe for years. Don’t you think that would terrify you now, not down the road in some nebulous future? Right now.”
“Stop.” Janet lifted off the cushion with a hand outstretched. “Stop it. What’s gotten into you?” She glanced to her own mom before looking back to her daughter. “I’m sorry I said that, but please stop. I wasn’t saying it wasn’t serious, but I hardly think—”
“That someone wouldn’t die over this?” Alyssa blanched. She shifted her words. “Couldn’t die?”
“What?”
Alyssa’s head filled with fuzz. She had said too much, but she couldn’t remember what she was not allowed to say. She pointed to her mom and her grandma. “Nothing. I didn’t say anything and you didn’t hear anything. Do you understand? Neither of you.”
Her grandmother lifted from the love seat and sat next to her. She reached for Alyssa’s hand. Her knuckles were swollen. They looked tender. Yet she held Alyssa’s tight without saying a word.
Alyssa felt the panic and rage pull like tide away from the shore. She whispered to her grandmother, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said all that.”
“Seems it needed to get out of you.”
She looked at her grandmother, then across to her mom again, who sat silent and still. “Don’t repeat what I said. To anyone, okay? I could be in real trouble.” She swiped at her eyes. “Listen to me... Worrying about real trouble for me.”
“Don’t think like that, sweetheart.” Grandma tucked her close.
After a few seconds, Alyssa pushed to stand. “I’m going to go upstairs.”
She reached the bottom step when her mom called after her.
“Oh... Eve Parker stopped by the shop this afternoon. She submitted your name for the Chamber of Commerce position. I know you don’t plan to stay here and I told her that, but she was so pleased with all the work you did for her. She said she couldn’t help herself.”
Alyssa didn’t turn or acknowledge her mom. She simply wanted to reach the top of the stairs.
“Alyssa?” Janet prompted her again.
She paused and looked back. “I’m leaving next week. With the money Lexi paid me, I can go.”
“You’re leaving? Just like that?” Janet’s face fell.
“What do you want from me? Yes. I’m leaving.” Alyssa continued up the stairs.
“Respect!” her mom yelled. “A lot more respect than that.”
Alyssa turned. Her mom stood in the center of the room, eyes blazing.
“I’ve had enough. You don’t get to come home like a spoiled child, dump all over me for almost two months, scream at me about my mental demise because you now understand the severity of what happened at XGC, apologize to my mother but not to me, then walk up those stairs with an ‘I’m taking my ball and going home’ attitude. Well, this is your home. And run away again if you want, but think long and hard about what you’re leaving behind.”
Janet stiff-arm pointed to the front door. “A friend of mine took the time to come over here to thank you for what you did for her and was thrilled to have done something she thought was nice for you. You need a job, and she thought that would be a perfect one for you. I didn’t put her up to it. I didn’t ask her to get involved. She did that all on her own because she cares. You tell me how many people in Palo Alto did that for you, did what Jasper did for you. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but I am saying your attitude and your behavior are unacceptable. Your life wasn’t so bad here, and it isn’t so bad right now. Yes, be sad about what went down at XGC and do your best to help clean it up, and while you’re doing that, grow up and be a little thankful. Respectful too. Never come in here and dump on me like that again.”
Alyssa’s focus drifted to the sofa’s side table. A cluster of family photos rested there. Happy times of Christmases, vacations, and birthdays. There was one of Lexi, her dad, and herself at the Fourth of July parade when she was about ten.
