One Step Away (A Bedford Falls Novel Book 1) (6 page)

“That’s wonderful news,” his mother said,
beaming. “What did Marisa say?”

It always came down to this: not only did
Kelsey and Marisa share a deep friendship, but Marisa’s name always
came up whenever anyone mentioned Alexander’s love life or lack of
one. Over the last year or so, she had sort of become an unofficial
sixth member of the family (his older sister, Ashley, was a
television star, and for reasons he never understood, the family
hadn’t seen her since the day she graduated from high school
fifteen years ago).

Like him, his parents had concluded that he
and Marisa were destined to get married and deliver them a few
grandchildren. And while Alexander liked that they pulled for him
in this regard, he always felt tremendous pressure to make it
happen.

“I don’t know,” he said, refusing to make
eye contact with anyone. He picked at a crescent roll.

Kelsey gasped. “Marisa knows?” She turned to
him, eyes burrowing into the side of his head. “You told her how
you feel, didn’t you?” She glanced at her mother. “This isn’t good.
Not good at all.”

“Are you okay?” his mother asked with an
understanding tone.

A lump appeared in Alexander’s throat. If he
opened his mouth, each word that tumbled out would crack. He shook
his head and took a bite from the roll so he wouldn’t have to
talk.

“Come on,” his father said. “Let’s give him
some space.”

The waitress arrived, plopping an
extra-large cheese and sausage pizza into the center of the red and
white checkered tablecloth.

Awkward conversation would commence until
Alexander decided to end it by spilling the details his family
wanted to hear, so he decided to get it over with. “I told her.” He
grabbed a slice of pizza. “It didn’t go well.” He took a bite.

His mother tipped her head to the side. “Oh,
I’m so sorry.” She laid a hand across his forearm in empathy. “What
happened?”

“What you’d expect after telling a girl that
you love her: disinterest,” she said sarcastically. “She was kind
of upset.”

After sliding a few slices of pizza onto his
plate, his father said, “Good.”

Alexander looked up at his father, thinking
that he’d misheard him. He waited for clarification.

“If she felt strongly enough to get upset,
she’s not indifferent. She feels something.”

Alexander hadn’t thought of it that way.

“Yeah,” Kelsey said. “Hatred.”

Alexander glanced at her, disheartened.
“Thanks.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t let that one pass,” she
said, looking apologetic. “But she’s upset and conflicted. She knew
you liked her way back when you met but figured you outgrew it. Now
that you brought it up, what does she do now? What does she say?
You changed your relationship, and you can’t take something like
that back.”

“What should he do?” her mother asked.

“I wish I knew,” said Kelsey with
sincerity.

“Did she say anything?” asked Alexander,
both curious and frightened to hear the truth. “Did you talk to
her?”

“Yeah, because the one person she wants to
confide in is your sister…so I can tell you what she said.” Kelsey
looked around the table. “Or you guys, which she knows I’d do,
since that’s what we do: overshare. But I do have one piece of
advice that will help you.”

Alexander waited. “Well, what is it?”

“Man-up, bitch!”

As his mother chastised Kelsey, the comment
echoed through Alexander’s brain, and a part of him agreed with her
recommendation. But what should he do? Where should he start?
Normally, at this point, he’d call Marisa, but he obviously
couldn’t do that now.

His phone chirped. A text message from his
buddy, Damon, popped up on the screen: “
You tell her
?”
Alexander replied:
“Yep. Shot down in flames.” Damon responded:
“Sorry, man. Hate to say that I told you so, but you needed to hear
it from the source. We’ll come up with a plan. Let’s meet at 10
p.m. tonight at Apocalyptica,”
he decided, referring to the
trendy bar they had frequented over the years. Alexander dropped
the phone into his pocket.

Although his father paid more attention to
his pizza, Alexander’s mother granted her son a sympathetic look
that also conveyed tenderness and commiseration – almost as if she
feared but expected this outcome. Alexander looked away,
dispirited. Since first meeting Marisa, his family had offered
long-standing invitations for meals, welcoming her to their
spontaneous board game nights, and encouraging her to visit during
the holidays.

Alexander’s despondency soon intensified
into a boiling anger. Never before had his mother failed to offer
words of encouragement and support. She insisted that whatever he
put his mind to, he could accomplish. But seeing that she
considered winning Marisa’s affections beyond the realm of
possibility, he said, “I’ve got to go.” He got to his feet, almost
knocking the chair behind him to the floor, and left his family
behind, determined to meet Damon to try to come up with a plan to
put an end to the emptiness inside his heart.

*

Marisa stood beside the dinner table inside
the townhome she had grown up in and left ten years ago for
college. Framed photographs of trips she had taken with her parents
adorned the walls: the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, Mammoth Cave,
the French Quarter, Yellowstone Park. Each picture represented
memories she wished she could erase: Jaclyn chastising her husband
for failing to purchase enough film for the camera; consistently
complaining that her husband drove too slow to and from every
destination; scolding him for selecting a restaurant that resulted
in her suffering from food poisoning; screaming at him numerous
times each day because he forgot one of her suitcases (even though
she got by without even needing the extra clothes); and yelling at
him because a nail wedged into the tire of their Ford Taurus,
sidetracking them for a few hours while he applied the spare before
stopping at Walmart to purchase a replacement.

Likewise, Jaclyn’s style dominated every
room of the small townhome. She had placed a dozen lit candles of
various colors, styles, and sizes across her home: above the
kitchen cupboards; on the top of the tube (because she refused to
upgrade to a flat screen when this one worked just fine); above a
clear fish tank where six different types of fish swam; and various
other strategic spots, culminating in a hodgepodge of aromas that
made Marisa nauseous. How had she grown up without spilling her
guts every day?

Her father exited the bathroom down the hall
and sprayed yet another scent into the bathroom to disguise any
odor. Spotting his daughter, he greeted her with a loving smile.
“Your mother makes me spray – even for number one.” He met Marisa
with an embrace that conveyed more affection than all of the hugs
her mother had bestowed upon her throughout her life, which
averaged about a handful per year. If forced to reveal a more
accurate estimate, Marisa would put that number at twice annually
(her birthday and Christmas Day), but she wanted to give Jaclyn the
benefit of the doubt.

“You look lovely as always,” said her
father, separating from his daughter and heading toward the kitchen
cabinets. “Sloppy Joes tonight.”

“I told you I wanted Italian beef,” said
Jaclyn from the bedroom at the other end of the house, just one of
a dozen daily reminders about who wore the pants in their
household.

He said, “We’re celebrating your daughter’s
promotion. It’s her choice.”

Jaclyn grumbled an incoherent sentence.

Marisa shook her head. Since Jaclyn wasn’t
blessed with motherly intuition – or any interest in caring for her
only child, for that matter – her father had to pick up the slack.
Recalling the lonely days growing up with her mother (who watched
soap operas and read erotic fiction when she wasn’t out spending
money on clothes she never wore and trinkets that she often gave
away to Goodwill only days after purchasing them), Marisa wondered
yet again what it would have been like to have a mother who cared
about her and didn’t treat her as an accident that had ruined her
life.

“Have a seat, honey,” her father said,
tightening his orange apron that contained a huge question mark
with the words “Who’s Your Daddy?” etched on it. Marisa smiled at
her father’s obliviousness. He actually believed the words
described a devoted father figure, rather than how popular culture
had contorted that phrase into a disgusting perversity.

That surprised her because a couple decades
ago her father had started but recently sold – for an unspecified
seven-figure amount – a local franchise similar to
Jiffy
Lube
called
Slippery When Wet
, named after the Bon Jovi
album. He had only hired female employees, aged between18-28, who
wore skimpy outfits, and did plenty of bending (under the hood,
inside the car to clean, etc.) and squatting (checking tire
pressure, changing light bulbs, etc.). When the first of two
employees were chosen as centerfolds of a well-known men’s
magazine, her father had enough business savvy to have his
employees sign a waiver, mandating that they model for a
Slippery When Wet
annual calendar if customers selected that
individual as the most desired employee at that franchised
location.

It seemed his propensity for profit trumped
his interest in sex: he married Marisa’s mother, after all. And
Marisa was glad to have never heard or seen her parents in the act.
She got the impression that the only time they made love was their
wedding night, which according to her father, was the night they
conceived her. It probably made for a more satisfying existence for
her father.

And since Marisa wanted her dad to be happy,
she often wondered why he hadn’t left her mother long ago. Seeing
her parents endure such an unhappy marriage inadvertently taught
her that relationships were like everything else in life: if it’s
broken, try to fix it. If it still doesn’t work, cut your losses
and move on.

Just as Marisa sat down, her mother, leaving
a trail of cigarette smoke in her wake, plunked down at the kitchen
table without so much as glancing at her daughter. She pushed back
sleeves from a dress that Stevie Nicks would wear on stage while
singing the Fleetwood Mac song “Gypsy.” With bony arms and a torso
that looked like a lamp—a fat base thinning at the neck until the
head protruded wide—Jaclyn took a drag on her cigarette and blew it
off to the side, slinging a chain of smoke through the air.

Although she knew how much Marisa disliked
inhaling second-hand smoke, her mother seemed to take pleasure in
making her daughter uncomfortable. “Mom, when you’re smoking in the
car, you exhale out the window and even dangle your cigarette out
the window. My question is…why?”

“I don’t want it to ruin the
upholstery.”

“But it’s okay to ruin your lungs?” Marisa
had no idea why, year after year of enduring one letdown after
another, she still cared about her mother. “Why?”

“The smoke in my lungs reminds me of my
life. Constricting. Suffocating.”

Marisa turned to her dad, who slipped in
between both women and placed a few plates onto the table. “I
thought she quit smoking in the house?”

“I’m right here,” Jaclyn said, glancing
around for an ashtray. Seeing none nearby, she dashed the cigarette
out on the table and flicked the ashes on the floor. “Acting like
I’m not here, like I’m wearing some kind of invisible cloak or
something.” She shifted to the side and waved her hands in front of
Marisa’s face while glaring at her daughter. “Hello!”

If her mother wanted to act like an immature
child, Marisa wouldn’t resist the opportunity to play along. “Mom?”
she asked, glancing around with a worried expression. “She was just
here, I swear!” She looked at her father. “She disappeared right in
front of us.”

“If we could only be so lucky,” said her
father.

Marisa gave her dad a high-five. During her
childhood, along with her father’s endless supply of support and
understanding and love, Marisa relied on his sense of humor to help
her through the disappointment of having Jaclyn for a mother.

“Why are you here again?” asked her mother,
far from amused.

“Promotion?” Marisa prompted. “Second
highest position in the library? Ring any bells?”

With a slack expression and not even a hint
of emotion in her eyes, Jaclyn said, “Well, I’m sure you worked
hard to get it.”

Marveling at how Jaclyn couldn’t even try to
reflect the tiniest bit of joy in her voice, Marisa wished that her
mother resembled the kind, thoughtful, caring mothers on
television: Jill Taylor from
Home Improvement
or Marge
Simpson from
The Simpsons
– hell, who was she kidding: she’d
be happy to have Marie Barone, Raymond’s meddling, often
manipulative, and sometimes cruel (but always loving) mother on
Everybody Loves Raymond
. At least she meant well and wanted
her son to be happy.

Discounting the years leading up to
adolescence, Marisa only wanted to hear pride in her mother’s voice
and see it in her expression upon achieving two accomplishments:
six years ago when she received her master’s degree and today,
after getting this promotion, because it all but guaranteed that
she’d become a library director in the future. Why was she
surprised that her mother let her down on both counts?

Simmering with disappointment, yet blaming
herself for hoping against reason that Jaclyn would show her a bit
of affection, Marisa pushed back her chair with care and rose to
her feet. She didn’t know whether she wanted to scream at her
mother or—break down and cry.

Jaclyn looked up at her, a judgmental stare
on her face.

Marisa took a deep breath and turned to go,
but her father stood right beside her and wrapped his arms around
her.