Page 18 of Of Literature and Lattes
The courage to change the things wecan...
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.
