by Laina Turner
“Forget him. When are you leaving for Alkon? You should do this, just go. I mean why not?”
“I was planning on leaving tomorrow morning. I just need to throw a few things in a bag, and it’ll only take me a couple of hours to get there since I would be going against traffic coming into the city. The interview is already scheduled for Saturday. I can hang out for the weekend and visit my parents. Maybe stay a few extra days since I can write the article from anywhere. Well, at least stay until I get bored or my mother drives me insane.”
“Have fun and call me when you get back so I can keep you posted on all the office gossip.”
I got off the phone with Tonya and found the will power to walk away from the ice cream in my freezer. It was freezer burnt anyway, so it wasn’t too difficult to resist. My thighs would thank me later. Promising myself a glass of wine after I packed, I walked into my bedroom to make sure I had clean clothes for the trip. I thought I should call my parents and tell them I was on my way, though maybe I would take a nap first. Today had been stressful and I deserved some relaxation.
I choose the nap, thinking that maybe being unemployed wasn’t so bad after all if it allowed me to take naps in the middle of the day. But just as I snuggled down and started to close my eyes, the phone rang again. Who the hell was it this time? I thought irritably. I wasn’t in the mood to speak to anyone else. I just wanted to sleep. I tried ignoring it, but it wouldn’t stop ringing. Grumpy and in no mood to talk, I snatched the phone off the table. The caller I.D. said unknown, but I answered it anyway. Maybe it was someone from Trevor’s office. Though once I heard the voice on the other end, I realized what a big mistake that was. Stupid, stupid move. I threw myself back down on the couch and gritted my teeth in frustration.
“Hey, Sweet Pea.” It was Rick. I groaned, wondering why I had answered the phone. I should have known better. Maybe I could just hang up on him. Forget it. He would just call back, so I might as well get it over with.
“Why are you calling me, Rick?” I said, sighing heavily, hoping he would realize I had no desire to speak to him and wishing I had poured that glass of wine after all. Talking to Rick would require it.
“Baby,” he whined, “don’t act like you don’t want to talk to me.” That was another thing. Why had I not noticed before how annoying his whining was? Did I ever really think it was cute? No, but his ass was and that, along with his big baby blues, overshadowed many of his flaws for a long time. However, a hot body only can take you so far, and now it made me want to puke.
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you, I have told you this a hundred times. I don’t really understand why this is so difficult for you to comprehend. Why don’t you give Linda a call? I bet she’ll talk to you.” Linda was the infamous assistant, and yes, I admit, I was still a little bitter. Who wouldn’t be?
“You know you don’t mean that, baby. How many times do I have to say I’m sorry? It was a one-time thing. Linda meant nothing to me. It’s you that I love. I need you. We belong together. I know that now.”
Blah, blah, blah, I thought, rolling my eyes. I had heard the same story so many times I could tell it better than he could. Did he really think he was being sincere? “Was that what you were thinking as you were screwing her in the back of your car? Besides, I don’t care anymore, Rick. About you or our relationship. Because there is no relationship. Get that through your head. I don’t have time for this. I have to pack. I need to go. Permanently, as far as you’re concerned.”
“Where are you going?” Rick asked, changing immediately from whining to that possessive tone I had always hated, even when I had still liked him. Since we had broken up, I noticed it much more than when we were together, though I was sure it had always been there. They say love is blind and sometimes deaf and stupid too. Why had I put up with him for so long? I thought I was a reasonably smart girl, but I kept choosing losers. Maybe I should thank Linda for helping me see the light. Mental note, send Linda the slutty assistant a thank you card. That’s what made me even madder. Linda was still his assistant even after that had happened. The asshole wouldn’t even fire her. Said it wasn’t fair to her. I figured he was afraid of the same sexual harassment lawsuit David Ritter was worried about.
“Not that it is any of your business, but I am going home for a few days.”
“What about work?”
“I quit.” I figured if he could lie, so could I.
“What! Why didn’t you tell me?” Rick demanded.
I held the phone out from my ear. Why me? Why couldn’t I just find a normal guy to get involved with?
“And why would I tell my ex-boyfriend?” I said exasperatedly, trying to stress the“ex” part, though he either was not getting it or choosing to ignore it. “It happened barely two hours ago, and again, it is none of your business.”
“We need to talk about this, Presley.”
Are you kidding me? Was he smoking crack? What made him think I needed to discuss anything with him?
“Rick, there is nothing that we need to talk about. There is no “we” anymore.” I enunciated slowly to help him understand.
“Listen, Presley,” he started.
“Bye, Rick. I am done with this conversation.”
“Quit being a bitch, Presley. I…”
I hung up and turned the phone off because even though I was too irritated to sleep now I was definitely not in the mood to talk to anyone else. Since a nap was out of the question, I decided to pack. What an ass! Then I pushed all thoughts of Rick from my mind and tried to think happy thoughts about my new career.
Chapter 3I rocked out to Pearl Jam as I headed down the highway the last few miles to my parents’ home in Alkon. I enjoyed watching the skyscrapers and exhaust smell of the city morph into the calmer landscape of suburbia and felt happy when I saw the rolling countryside just beginning to green up with spring. I didn’t usually notice the landscape on the drive to Alkon—I was always too preoccupied with work, but today I realized how truly different Chicago and Alkon were, although they were only a few hours apart. The city was still my favorite place, but I could appreciate the pretty landscape outside the city too. Nothing like a calming roadside view and good music to put a person in a good mood. While my current playlist consisted of Pearl Jam and Counting Crows tunes, I also liked to get my groove on to hip-hop, top 40, and, if I was feeling melancholy or needed to chill with a glass of my favorite wine, a little blues.
After yesterday’s drama, I was surprised I woke up in such a good mood. I realized I was probably in denial about not having a steady income but I refused to let it get to me. Besides, this morning I found my favorite Tiffany choker. It had been missing for weeks. I put my tennis shoes on and hit it with my toe. As soon as I did, I remembered what was in there. I had put the silver necklace in my shoe the last time I went to Pilates. There had been a new girl in class who had just seemed a little off. You could never be too careful and Tiffany necklaces didn’t grow on trees. Even though that asshole Rick had bought it for me, I wasn’t about to give up fine jewelry. Hell, I wasn’t stupid about accessories, just men. Why was that? I was a reasonably intelligent woman, so why was I always picking guys who seemed great at first and then turned into assholes? Maybe I was trying too hard and should just take a break from men. That might be—HOLY CRAP! I slammed on the brakes and my car skidded sideways, coming to a shuddering stop about two inches from a cow. This is why I lived in the city. You might have to watch out for drunks and crazy people wandering around the streets, but traffic didn’t move fast enough for it to be much of an issue. My heart was pounding and my hands, shaking, thinking about how my poor Kia would have crumpled around me like an accordion if I had hit that cow. The cow didn’t even seemed fazed by the near miss. It looked at me through the windshield as if to say What? Is there a problem? I sat there for a second longer, waiting for my heart rate to return to normal and willing the cow to get the hell out of the middle of the road. Where had this thing come from anyway? The cow qu
it staring at me and ambled the rest of the way across the road. Thank god there wasn’t any traffic coming or there would have been quite a back up. I pressed the gas to move back on down the road. Feeling a little more composed, I started to laugh. I couldn’t wait to tell my friends in the city about this. They would never believe it.
Cow crisis averted, I went back to thinking about the events of yesterday. Today was the start of a completely new career, a new journey, a new chapter in the story of my life. See how good I can make things sound? I thought. I can do this writing thing. Everything was going to be just fine, and I just wasn’t going to worry about how to pay the bills. Life usually worked out, which was why having good karma was important—something that David Ritter, and Rick, would find out. They would eventually get what was coming to them. That is why I couldn’t pass up a homeless person on the street without giving them some money, even though all of my friends made fun of me for it. I was convinced that I would be able to balance out all the bad I had done with good deeds. Nobody’s perfect and it was my way to even things out.
My fingers went back to keeping time with the music on the steering wheel as I considered the senator’s stay in Alkon. Why Alkon? It was such a small town. The Senator was from some town outside of Sacramento, but his wife, Helen, had been born in Alkon. She was from old-family money. Her grandfather, Tobias Davis, had been some type of land developer and he had just raked in the bucks. He was also the type of man who had to do everything on the grandest scale imaginable—huge house, expensive cars, and a library, school, wing at the hospital, all named after him, of course. His son, Helen’s dad, was just a playboy with more interest in spending money than making it. That was how the story went anyway. He was killed in a drunk driving car crash, with the stereotypical mistress, when Helen was twelve. Tobias had been dead for close to twenty years and had left most everything to Helen’s mother, Cherise. Tobias had two other sons, so his choice of heir had surprised some people, but the rumor mill said that it was because he thought all his sons were lazy scoundrels. Helen’s mother never remarried and still lived in Tobias’ house, as far as I knew. I would have to ask her parents. It might provide some interesting background for my story on the Senator. I wondered if Helen realized she ended up marrying someone who seemed to be just like her daddy—a womanizing drunk who couldn’t be trusted. That was more rumor mill talking, but if you believed everything you heard about Tom Daniels, it did make the two men very similar.
On the campaign trail, the Senator always talked about his small town connection; he claimed to be a small town guy with small town values. Since he wasn’t actually from a small town at all, I wasn’t sure why people bought into that. It would be interesting to get to know him in person to see how he compared with his media image.
I thought about how excited my parents had been on the phone last night when I had told them I was coming to stay with them for a few days. Well, they were excited after they got over the shock of me losing my job and after my mother had given me the third degree about not coming home often. Why didn’t I come home more often? Me, my mom, and my dad all had different opinions on the subject. I felt constantly guilty about it because I loved my parents and did miss them dearly. I just wasn’t a small town person and felt stifled in Alkon after about twenty-four hours. Compounding that urge to flee was that, after about twenty-four minutes, my mother got on my last nerve.
I thought about how nice it would be to relax and enjoy being free from the stress of my old job, where inevitably any time I was gone for a few days, some crisis would occur that I felt compelled to rush back and fix. The more I thought about not working at my old job, the freer I felt. I would, of course, miss my work friends dearly, but it wasn’t as if I wouldn’t still see them, and the pleasure of seeing them daily wasn’t worth putting up with all the crap. These next few days were going to be fun. I could catch up with Katy and maybe some other old school friends I hadn’t seen in a while.
Katy Smythe had been my best friend all through high school, in that “together 24-7” type relationship all high school girls have—the kind where you share all your secrets and talk on the phone all night about boys. It was funny to think of what was high drama back then, though sometimes eighteen-year-old-boy drama was remarkably similar to thirty-something-boy drama. Lately, our relationship was relegated to the occasional Christmas card, which I felt bad about because Katy had always been there for me. Time just seemed to get away, and before I knew it, months passed. I was terrible about keeping up with old friends. I spent all my time working to reach my professional goals. Lot of fucking good that did. However, I was reforming and resolved to change my priorities. I hadn’t seen Katy in a long time and looked forward to catching up and staying caught up. I didn’t want to be the friend who was the hardest to reach anymore.
I pulled into my parents’ driveway and couldn’t help smiling at what I saw. The landscape was beautiful. It was moments like these, when I came back home to visit, that I realized why my parents loved living here so much. The driveway, lined with huge oak trees just starting to develop small green buds with the onset of warm spring weather, was long and twisty. My mother had already planted some beautiful red and pink flowers. Gardening was my mother’s source of pride, and she spent hours outside in the yard making sure things were perfect, although, truth be told, she never felt they were perfect. Every year she tried to out-do herself in making the yard look even better. And while it always looked great to me, neither me nor my dad could ever convince my mom of that. Sue, he always said, those other women don’t have anything on you. You’re the only one who can grow roses as high and bountiful as you do. In my opinion, it was the pressure applied by the women in the Junior League that made my mom feel constantly inadequate. They were worse than a bunch of truckers fighting over the last country-fried steak at the all-you-can-eat buffet. They spent all their time trying to one-up each other, though I could never see why. Did it really matter who had better flowers? Flowers died and you had to grow them again the next year; it seemed pointless to me.
I never shared my mother’s passion for gardening, much to my mother’s disappointment. It ruined a manicure quicker than anything, except maybe painting—and I didn’t do that either, and digging in the dirt and having to patiently watch for things to grow wasn’t exactly my idea of high excitement. I felt a pang of guilt, however, because I didn’t even know what kind of flowers those red and pink ones were. I was sure my mother had told me a million times; I just didn’t pay attention. I didn’t need to know their names to enjoy the fact that they were beautiful.
As I took in the sight of my parent’s house, memories of being a kid flooded back. Walking to the school bus had always been a chore. In bad weather, it seemed to take forever to get to the protection of the little dollhouse-like bus stop house my dad had built to shelter me while I waited. The little house was now an ornamental part of its surroundings. And when I was late for the bus, which was often, I had to run down the entire length of the driveway, screaming all the way, so the bus wouldn’t leave me.
My parents, Clark and Sue Thurman, had lived in the same two-story white Colonial house for over thirty years. This was always a loving home; people could sense it the moment they walked in, and as I approached the familiar white house, a feeling of calmness washed over me. There is something to be said about coming back to a place that, for eighteen years, had been a source of comfort. Although I couldn’t wait to get out of this small town when I turned eighteen and went off to college, I could appreciate the peace of my home now. I wanted to slow down and enjoy it now—after adding one more crappy boyfriend to my string of losers, and after losing my job, I needed some tranquility. Maybe this visit could be the start of a harmonious relationship with my mother, like the one I had always envisioned. I envied the way my friend Julie from the city was with her mom, always shopping and gossiping on the phone. Julie’s mom seemed interested in what she was doing, not so critical. Nah…that wasn’t goi
ng to happen to me and my mom. This was reality, not a fairy tale. The proverbial pigs had a better chance of flying.
As my black Kia Sportage rolled to a stop in front of the detached garage, my parents walked out onto the wrap-around porch. My dad had built the porch himself. Carpentry wasn’t one of his best talents, but at the time, my parents couldn’t afford to have someone build it for them. My mother wanted a porch so badly—of course, because many of her friends had one—that dad spent all of his spare time researching how to build it. It was really sweet when you think about it. Many weekends and a few injuries later, she had her porch, which she loved—crooked boards and all. She told my dad that those minor imperfections gave it more character than if it was perfectly constructed by professional carpenters.
I hoped I would get a great guy like that someday. After that jerk Rick, I knew I deserved more. I stepped out of my car as my dad walked up and gave me a big hug. I smelled comfort in my dad’s tried and true Old Spice cologne.
“We’re so glad that you’re here,” he said, kissing me on the cheek. He then went and grabbed my hot pink suitcase out of the back of my car. I grabbed the rest of my stuff, a carry-on tote and my computer bag, which was excessive for a weekend with the folks, but I never knew what might come up. I needed to have the right shoes for every situation, even in Alkon. Shoes, bags, and accessories of all kinds were just as important as food; actually, they were probably more important than food. Right after coffee and before food was probably the perfect priority for accessories.
“Me too, Dad,” I said affectionately, realizing how much I missed him. He was the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. Just over six feet tall, his dark wavy hair was now starting to turn silver, which always looked good on men. Not fair at all. He had dark brown eyes, almost black, but they were always sparkling. My dad and I had always had a close relationship because he had played the role of mediator on many occasions.