For the Love of Alex

by J. E. Hopkins

  Less than ten minutes later, the phone rang and, not surprisingly, it was Marcus on the line.

  “Hey, boss.”

  “Hey, Leah. I read it.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Actually, I read it twice. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just say you’ll publish it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes and no. I need you to publish it. I just need to be brave enough to let you do it.”

  “Okay.” He paused for a long moment as if struggling to find the right words. “I hate that you are going through this. I hate that I can’t help you. You don’t deserve this. Neither does Alex. What an insidious disease this is.”

  “It truly is, but it doesn’t have to win.”

  “It won’t. Not with you fighting against it. I would bet on you any day.”

  III

  “Grant Deverson wants to marry you,” Marcus exclaimed as he sat on Leah’s desk. “The comments have been pouring in, and I mean pouring in all week. I think our site might crash. You article touched people. Have you read some of these?”

  Leah had read most of them, although she hadn’t planned to. Once she starting reading them, she couldn’t stop. So many people experiencing just what she faced. It was comforting to know she was not alone. This was a struggle that millions went through every day. Many won, many lost, but there was such comfort in those kind words.

  At first she felt so exposed when the article was published. She wanted to retreat to her home and hide from the world, but the comments ignited a bravery she didn’t know existed. For once, she didn’t feel quite so alone.

  “I’ve read them,” she responded. “I’m still surprised by the reaction.”

  “You and me both. Although there a couple in here you may want to ignore. You have a couple of offers for a reality show. One about you and Alex and another one that sounds like a dating show in case things don’t work out with Alex.”

  Leah bristled. “No thanks.”

  “I figured as much. Look superstar, get out of here, go home, and put your swollen feet up.”

  “Hey.” She slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “My feet are not swollen.” That was a huge relief. So far her pregnancy was progressing well. No more signs of protein in the urine. She wasn’t totally out of the wood for preeclampsia, but for now the baby was thriving.

  “I thought all pregnant women had swollen feet. Well, it doesn’t matter. Go home and nap. I do know that all pregnant women like naps.”

  “You are such an idiot.” Leah put on her wool coat and grabbed her bag. “Marcus, thank you. You’ve been a great boss, but an even better friend when I really need one.”

  Marcus cheeks turned a surprising crimson. Clearly he was not used to compliments. “Yeah, well, you’re not so bad yourself. Now get out of here and think of a follow-up to that article.”

  Leah stopped at the local Chinese food restaurant on her way home. She was craving sesame chicken and pork fried rice. Not exactly the ideal health food, but it would be worth every extra pound. According to her doctor, she was a good size so a few extra pounds shouldn’t hurt. That was why she stopped and bought a three-scoop brownie sundae for dessert.

  As she approached her apartment door she saw a figure in a white wool coat standing by her door. The figure turned to her direction. It took a moment but recognition dawned along with shock.

  “Mom?”

  “Hello, Leah.”

  How could her mother be here? It had been years. Of course the flawless Francesca Rhodes looked as if she hadn’t aged a day.

  “What are you doing here?” Leah could not conceal the contempt in her voice. No calls, no visits, no letters, nothing from her parents in nearly four years. They cut her off as if she didn’t matter to them. As if she had never existed at all. Her only crime, disobeying their wishes because she chose to stay with Alex. She built a life with a man they felt unworthy to associate with their upper-class world. He was garbage to them, yet she chose his love over their money. For that choice, her parents turned their backs on their only daughter.

  Leah had attempted to reach out to them, but their cold disdain was too much to bear. Eventually, she let go of them the way they had so easily let go of her.

  Yet here her mother stood at her apartment door as if no time and harsh words had passed between them. She was so annoyingly calm and controlled that Leah wanted to shake her to get some type of reaction out of her mother. She was seething, and her mother’s passivity fueled the flames of her overwrought emotions.

  “May we go inside? I would prefer not to talk to my daughter in a hallway.”

  “For the last few years you preferred not to talk to me at all.”

  Francesca dismissed the hostility of her daughter’s comment. “I would prefer we not catch up in a public hallway where anyone could hear us talk. If you do not want me in your home, maybe we can stop at a coffee shop or something? I only ask for a few moments of your time, Leah. After four years, I would think you could spare that for your mother.”

  Only her mother could manage to make her feel guilty when it was her choice to cast her aside for four years. “Of course,” Leah gritted, opting to take the high road even though she really wanted to slam the door in her mother’s emotionless face.

  Leah opened the door and her mother followed her inside. Her much-anticipated dinner would have to wait. She put the bags in the kitchen and went to the living room, where her mother stood stiffly as she surveyed the apartment and was undoubtedly criticizing every aspect of it. She didn’t bother hiding her disappointment. This tiny apartment with its second-hand furnishings was beneath the likes of Francesca Rhodes. Leah would not let her mother intimidate her. She was proud of the home she and Alex created with so little money. Despite their problems, they had survived on their own, and not once in four years did she ever have to go crawling back to her parents for help. No matter how difficult things had become, she refused to ever seek help from those who had so easily tossed her away.

  “Charming home.” Francesca smiled emptily.

  A veiled criticism. Leah was used to those. It looked like Mommie Dearest hadn’t changed one bit.

  “Why are you here, Mom? You asked for a few minutes, which are more than you deserve. You’ve already wasted a couple of those minutes. So why don’t you tell me why you bothered showing up at my front door after all this time?”

  “May I sit?” Francesca replied.

  Leah was fuming. Maybe it was the hormones or the hunger, but she was not in the mood for her mother tonight. “Sit, stand, leave, do whatever you want. Just tell me why you’re here or get out so I can eat my dinner in peace.”

  “Ouch. Clearly the lessons in tact I taught you as a child were forgotten the day you left my home. In any case, I will get right to it. I’m here because I read your article. I read all your articles. I have to say you are a surprisingly good writer. I’m not sure how much money you can hope to make as a journalist, but you certainly show signs of talent.”

  Her mother had actually read her articles. Leah wanted to believe that was a sign that her mother cared, but too many years of experiences to the contrary stopped her from reading too much into her mother’s words. She would not allow herself to soften towards this woman, who would inevitably stomp all over her feelings as she had done most of her life.

  “Well Mom, you might have known about my talent if you had taken the time to read anything I wrote when I was in school, but you had no interest in anything involving me.”

  Francesca sat on the couch so stiffly that Leah thought she must have had a rod in her back. “I can see why you might think that. I was not the most maternal of women I admit, but I never felt like you needed me to be that way. You were so independent, so strong. I didn’t see a place for me in your world. You only seemed to care about the boy, Alex.”

  “You are my mother. Of course there was a place for you in my life. My relationship with Alex had nothing to do with my ne
ed for you.”

  “I regret if I failed to give you the attention you required. I did the best I could with what I had to work with, and if it wasn’t enough for you then I am sorry for that failure. Parenting is not easy, especially when you didn’t have good role models to teach you.”

  Francesca rarely spoke about her parents. They had died before Leah was born. Any time she asked about them, Francesca would dismiss her questions. Leah always wanted to know more and this seemed like the best opportunity to get her mother to open up even just a little. There was so much she did not know about the woman who brought her into this world and she didn’t want her mother to be a stranger her whole life.

  “What were your parents like, Mom? You never speak of them but I always wanted to know where you came from.”

  “Oh, Leah. You always wanted to know where I came from and I spent my entire adult life trying to forget.” For a moment, Leah thought that nothing had changed and her mother would ignore her question, but surprisingly she answered. “There’s not much I can tell you about my parents, especially my father. He left when I was two and Eddie was just an infant. I have no memory of him. No picture to even know what he looked like. My mother raised us in a trailer park in West Virginia. ‘Raised us’ is a generous term. She gave us a place to live, but she was useless as a parent, as a human being. She was a violent drunk that struck out against anyone who got in her way of more booze. Mostly that was Eddie, occasionally me.”

  Leah was floored. Her mother with her nauseatingly perfect etiquette had grown up in a trailer park. It was like she was seeing her mother for the first time. The more she learned, the more she wanted to know. Finally, the puzzle that was Francesca Rhodes was coming together.

  “My mother finally grew weary of her two brats and so she gave us up to her mother in NJ. She dropped us off on my seventh birthday for a visit with my grandparents. She said she was leaving to get me a birthday cake. Eddie and I sat on the stoop waiting for her to come back. We sat there all day and then most of the night. Eddie fell asleep on my lap, but I stayed there with him, waiting. My grandparents tried to get us to come inside but I refused. I was determined to wait for her, but finally even as a child I understood she wasn’t coming back that night and eventually I knew she never would. I put Eddie to bed and I curled up next to him afraid that if I woke up, he would be gone too.

  “We lived with our grandparents until they died. I was nineteen and in college already. I was trying to take care of myself and Eddie. He started to get in trouble. Nothing serious. Typical teenage bad behavior. When he turned eighteen he decided to become a cop. I thought that would straighten him out. It did for a while. Several years later, I married your father and had you and Tristan. I never looked back on my trailer-park beginnings. I never wanted to, but Eddie couldn’t let go of the past. He was obsessed with it. He could not escape the memories of our mother and he eventually became just like her. A violent drunk who struck out against others.”

  “Uncle Eddie was violent?” Leah had never seen that side of him. He was always so gregarious and boisterous with her and Tristan. Never violent or threatening.

  “At times. On his job he was violent. He was too aggressive with the criminals he arrested. He was written up several times. I paid for a lawyer to get him off and it worked, but then he went too far and nothing could save him from Internal Affairs. He nearly killed a guy. That’s when they discovered he was an alcoholic. He lost his job and shortly thereafter his wife and kids. His drinking progressed and then he discovered methamphetamine. He had been teetering precariously over the edge for so long, but meth was the final push that sent him over. His addiction worsened and so did his mental illness. He was bipolar, and the alcohol on top of the disease was more than anyone could handle—including Eddie. Finally my little brother killed himself. A bullet to the brain.”

  “I thought he overdosed.” Leah would never forget the day her mother coldly announced that Uncle Eddie had overdosed. How she hated her in that moment, but now she realized that was her mother’s way of coping with grief. She detached herself from it keeping herself numb to the hurt otherwise it would swallow her up whole.

  “No. I told you that because I thought it would be worse for you to know that he shot himself. You and Tristan were so young and you loved him so deeply. I wanted to protect you from the horror of the truth.”

  “Why are you telling me now, Mom?”

  “You asked and I knew it was time you heard the truth. I knew it was time when I read your article. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made. I never wanted you to be with Alex.”

  Leah was not in the mood for another one of her mother’s sermons about why Alex was wrong for her. She’d heard that story too many times. She eventually learned to shut out her mother’s harsh words about Alex.

  “I know, Mom. He isn’t good enough for me….”

  “I knew he was an addict, Leah,” Francesca interrupted. “I am very familiar with the signs. Like my brother, he was walking the edge of that cliff and I never wanted him to drag you down with him. I knew if he fell you would willingly fall with him. You would follow him to hell. I wanted to protect you from that mistake, but nothing I did worked. I was hoping to stop you by forbidding you to see him, but that was a poor decision. It just made you two closer. Romeo and Juliet defying the odds to be together despite family protests. Star-crossed lovers who would rather die together than live apart. It’s a lovely story in a book or a movie, but not in real life. Not when it’s your child. Then it becomes a nightmare.”

  That wasn’t the first time her mother had compared her relationship with Alex to Romeo and Juliet. Leah hated that analogy. Romeo and Juliet was a story of tragedy, and she refused to believe she and Alex would end up the same tortured way.

  “That’s not our nightmare, Mom. Alex and I are not some tragedy in the making.” Leah could see her mother’s doubt, as it likely mirrored her own.

  “I’ve always wondered how you were doing with him, and then I saw the article and I knew. I wanted to march over here and tell you to give him up and drag you back home where you belong. That was my plan. Not a great one I confess, but I had hoped to bully you into coming back.”

  “It won’t work, Mom.”

  “I know. While I waited for you to put your bags away, I saw the picture on the wall of you and Alex.” Francesca pointed to the 8x10 black and white picture of Leah holding Alex in her arms as he clutched her tightly resting his head on her chest. Her head resting on top of his, with her eyes closed and a content smile on her face.

  “A friend of Alex’s took the picture. He’s a photographer.” At least he was one until, like Alex, he succumbed to addiction. “He asked to take a picture of us for his photo project. We agreed to model for him. He took so many wonderful shots, but this one was our favorite. We weren’t even posing. The shoot was over. Alex said something to me and I just held him close. To our surprise, our picture was taken and this was framed and gifted to us. I always loved this shot.”

  “He holds you like you’re the most precious gift in the world to him and you return that affection just as deeply. It’s captured so perfectly in your face. As soon as I saw that photograph, I knew my plans to take you away were all for naught. You won’t give up on him, and you shouldn’t.”

  For a moment, Leah thought she misunderstood her mother. That was the last thing she expected her mother to say.

  “Wipe that shocked look off your face, Leah. It’s very unbecoming.” Francesca’s stern features softened ever so slightly, and for a moment Leah saw a different side of her mother. The woman she might have been had life not taught her to hide her emotions and adopt a façade of disinterest. Her mask was slipping and Leah could see a glimpse of the pain her mother tried to bury.

  “I gave up on my little brother and now he’s dead and I have no family left. No parents, no grandparents, no baby brother. I pushed him away because I was ashamed of him, of his weakness. That was the last thing I sai
d to him. I told him that was a joke and a disappointment to me and I wanted him out of my house. I knew I couldn’t save him from his addiction and I refused to enable him, but I didn’t have to cut him off completely. Everyone we loved had abandoned us at one time and I knew that was Eddie’s greatest fear and yet I let him go. I forced him to go when I was all he had left. Eddie gave up on himself. When you have nothing left to lose, you have no reason to fight to live.”

  “Oh, Mom.” Leah sat next to her mother and, for the first time since she was a small child, hugged her. Her mother allowed this display of affection. It was awkward but comforting for Leah. “I had no idea.” Had she known this before their relationship could have been so different. She thought her mother incapable of understanding her struggles, but now she knew her mother understood better than anyone. Like Leah, her mother had loved an addict. Leah had assumed Eddie meant nothing to her mother, but she could see now how wrong she was. Francesca loved her little brother and the loss of him was eating her up inside, even if she wouldn’t admit it.

  She wondered if her father had any clue about her mother’s pain. Probably not. David Rhodes was even less interested in emotions than his wife. Leah wondered how her mother had coped for so long keeping her feelings inside never letting anyone help her.

  “I wish we would have talked like this before, Mom. We could have helped each other.”

  Francesca pulled away. Her mask firmly in place. “I don’t need help. I’ve had years to make peace with my station in life, and I have. I cannot undo what’s been done and I refuse to wallow in it. I don’t want your pity. There’s no need for it. I have a good life. I have a solid husband, two children, a grand home, and all the money I need. I have security and I have comfort. That’s enough for me.”

  But not love. Francesca never mentioned love. Maybe she convinced herself she didn’t need it, but Leah knew that was a lie her mother told herself to get through each day.

  Francesca surveyed her daughter. “I was surprised to read in your article that you were expecting. Either you are due very soon or you are so depressed that you are eating yourself to death. Neither is ideal for you under the circumstances.”