Page 43 of Of Literature and Lattes
Everything felt so heightened he couldn’t let go. So sure he’d finally found a home, not a place, but a person, he proposed after only three weeks. And she accepted. They hopped a flight to Vegas and he’d even found them an Elvis chapel. After all, if you were going to be a cliché, you had to go all the way.
Only once did he detect any hesitation. While Krista recited her vows, dressed in a white minidress, she hesitated. Her voice hitched and her eyes flickered away. But even now he couldn’t be sure. He thought he saw it, thought he remembered that it had pulled at him, thought it was the first crack in the idyllic façade, but it was smoke. He couldn’t catch it and maybe it was revisionist thinking anyway. Maybe she’d been, in that moment, as committed as he was, and things only unraveled later.
But it wasn’t the wedding he remembered most, it was their one-month anniversary. The frenzy of their time together had cooled and he hoped they were settling down, finding level ground. Then she told him she was pregnant, and he soared. That wasn’t revisionist thinking. He felt the pulse and joy of that moment, even now, watching his daughter laugh in the sunshine.
He had pulled Krista tight and assured her that their baby was everything he hoped for, that everything would be just fine.
Five months later, she was gone.
Becca was helping another kid climb the ladder to the slide. He could imagine her soft, encouraging words. It was the same voice she used on him when they played a game and he didn’t understand the rules. And rather than point out to her that he’d never learn the rules if she didn’t quit changing them, he would listen as she explained her new and proper way to play school, restaurant, doctor, or Candy Land.
It always astonished him how quickly kids made friends. It’d been only a half hour since Alyssa asked if she could bring Becca to the park, and already his daughter had found another couple kids her age and teamed up with a few younger. He laughed as all six launched from the slide and clambered over the playscape. She’ll remember these days, he thought. She’ll remember this laughter. And she would remember him.
Jeremy tried to summon a memory of his own childhood. He couldn’t. Tragedy will do that, each and every therapist said. But it never helped. Over the years he had worked to push his mind back to his mom, to his dad, to their life together—to recall his mom’s hair color, height, smell, or voice; his father’s laugh, occupation, hobbies, or height. Did he have a beard? Was he thin or stocky? And every time Jeremy was met with the impenetrable wall formed at their deaths. He thought about the photos and albums he knew his aunt had packed away when she came to clear and sell the house. She came for it, not for him. But he never searched for them, afraid that when looking at them, he’d only find the faces of strangers.
So when a friend commented that he was a stranger to his own daughter, he vowed she would remember him. No matter what it took. He would not become that faceless, voiceless void in her life. Because no matter how involved Krista purported him to be on social media, it wasn’t true. He knew marginally more about his daughter, while living in Seattle, than he knew about his parents. But he could change that. Whereas the other, he could only regret.
The kids ran to the swings. Their dash across the wood chips drew his vision left and brought Alyssa in sight. She was sitting directly behind the swings at the edge of the park. He circled the play area. “I didn’t see you right away in that sweater.”
She looked down as if she’d forgotten what she was wearing. “It was in my bag... The sun disappeared again. Do you know I haven’t worn this since college? The jeans too. I can’t believe I ever wore these. I can hardly hold them up. I hadn’t realized I’d gotten so much thinner. Or maybe they were just really baggy back then.”
Jeremy dropped onto the bench next to her. “They look normal to me.”
“That doesn’t necessarily say anything good about the jeans.” She laughed and swiped at her eyes. “But since they’re all I’ve got right now, they’ll do.”
“Are you okay?”
She shrugged and laid her hand on a book sitting in her lap.Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. “Have you ever read this?”
“It’s my favorite. Did Becca make you read it to her?” He leaned around her and noted a small stack of books on the other side of the bench. “Did she bring them all?”
“I think so. She grabbed them as we walked out the door.” Alyssa lifted her head toward the kids on the swing. “We got two pages into this one before she ran off to play.” She looked down at the book again. “It’s just so sad.”
“Sad? Are we talking about the same story?”
She laid her hands on the cover. “Never mind.”
“No. What?”
“Sylvester lost so much, everything. He just wanted to be safe. If he’d thought clearly he could’ve wished to be home, but he didn’t and it turned out horrible.”
“He went home. He got his family back. You read the end, right?”
“But it doesn’t always work like that.” Her focus shifted to the kids again. “My car got completely emptied on my way out here. I gather you’re supposed to carry your bags into the motel each night.”
Lost between conversations, Jeremy grabbed onto the last sentence. “Kind of, at least the valuable stuff.”
“Well, despite having nothing valuable, I still got robbed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault, and really it’s par for the course lately.” Alyssa kept her eyes straight ahead. “I can’t seem to find my way home, find a way to make this all okay.”
Jeremy shifted to match her posture. Straight forward. “You and me both... They just took my machine away. The check didn’t clear and I have no idea why.”
She twisted toward him. “That’s what’s been bothering me. You said you have no other accounts, but they don’t reconcile. I’m looking into your Square Reader files. Maybe it’s a glitch.”
“Who knows? I could’ve set it up wrong. That’d be par for the course for me lately too.”
