by Amelia Jones
Her mother wasn’t done though. She’d followed that with a litany of complaints about the unfairness of life and how she could have been anything she wanted to be if only she hadn’t given up her career and devoted her life to raising three ungrateful daughters and catering to their miserable father.
When Alicia suggested that it wasn’t late, that her mother was still a young woman capable of finding a second wind that would allow her to fulfill her dreams, her mother snapped at her. “And so what if I did? Who’s going to hire a woman in her 50s? You’re just like your father – rubbing it in that I am a failure.”
This was followed by another hour of criticism and misery. Soon it would be capped off with a series of comments about how the only reason Alicia was where she was is that her mother gave up everything for her. When Alicia had taken a year off to work, her mother harped endlessly about her lack of ambition.
Alicia looked at her mother. She could see the bitter unhappiness in her mother’s eyes and in the set of her mouth and the lines of her face. Alicia wished her father would have stayed home for a least part of her visit but he used it as a release from having to be trapped with her mother.
She knew that he welcomed even an afternoon’s respite from her mother’s endless harping. It would never change. Her mother set down the teacup.
“Mom, I hate to rush off, but I have work to do.” There, she’d said it. She’d had to. Any more of the negativity and her head would have exploded. Alicia stood up and had begun clearing away the tea things. Her mother had scowled at her and complained that Alicia was completely ungrateful.
As Alicia rearranged the charts and tubes in her lab, she thanked her lucky stars for the joys of bio-chem. She felt completely lonely and alone. Usually being in the laboratory brought Alicia the sense of well-being that she needed. However, she was haunted by the memory of the happy souls she saw at the patio party. And the memory of her mother’s invective as she’d left the house where she had grown up.
It was not unusual for Alicia to rush away from a visit with her mother. The conversation was about to switch into that same old discussion that had no logic. On one hand, her mother complained about the effort of looking after everyone and on the other hand, she complained that Alicia chose to live in residence when she could have lived at home and commuted to classes.
Even in the lab, all alone, one of her favorite moments of the week, Alicia felt agitated. She turned her mind to the party only to drive thoughts of her mother out of her mind.
As much as she’d hated the idea of being at the party at first, she’d later found it interesting and it had somehow shone a great bright light on the narrowness of her own life. Briefly she wondered why Howard was there. Then frustrated that she’d even wondered anything about the man or her mother or life in general, she buried herself in her work.
On the other side of town, Howard was having a similar kind of weekend. The golf date with his father was unfortunately just as he predicted. His father had a great idea for his son’s life. He would go into the family business, just like daddy had always imagined he would. This was not a new idea but his father had this special skill of presenting the same old discussion as if it were a brand new idea that he had thought of that morning.
Maybe it was part of the reason he was so successful in business but it was a huge aggravation to Howard. Howard’s major was in computer science. It was the one point of agreement that he had ever had with his father – his decision to study computer science. At the time, he saw his father beam with approval of his son’s choice and he heard the words, “It will be great to have someone I can trust manage the company network and security.”
Leland Wentworth had gone on to describe the types of custom software that the family’s business needed and Howard just listened. The continued goodwill between him and his father depended on him never talking to his father about his life goal.
So far, so good. Howard had managed to keep all contact with his parents light and easy. He dressed and acted like the campus playboy and this pleased his father. Howard was at least as skilled as his father in playing whatever part he needed to play to charm those around him. As he swung at the golf ball, he concentrated on deflecting his father’s plans for his life.
He focused his mind on the woman he had met last night. He made a mental note to call Sophie again. There was something about Alicia’s face that clung to his memory and thinking about her provided a buffer between his mind and his father’s constant talk.
He felt as if he had known her before, in some other context. He managed to keep his cool with his father during their golfing adventure by remembering his brief encounter with Alicia. He smiled as he remembered her stubborn refusal to let go of her glass.
His father was telling him about the company adding a new factory to produce a line of knock-off clothing for export at precisely that moment. He was aware of the impact of the smile, generated by his memory of Alicia, on his father. He could see the old man’s delight in what he thought was Howard’s approval of his empire expanding.
Howard felt like his skin might burst. He felt a sense of disgust with himself. He was too old to be such a child in front of his father. What was Leland going to do? Cut off his allowance? Well, maybe. And this was where Howard always came to the knot in his thought processes. He wanted to be a good person, a person of integrity, but his old argument with himself about practicality was wearing thin.
Howard could tell himself as often as he wanted to that he was protecting his father’s feelings but the reality was, and he knew it, he was being a coward. Sooner or later he would have to break the news that he was not going to be part of a business with weak ethics. But not just yet.
After the day with his father was over, he still needed a distraction. There was nothing to gain from going over the same territory in his mind, again and again. At the thought of the distraction, he smiled. Alicia was perfect as a diversion from negative thoughts. He logged in to the campus database, and did a simple search to find Alicia’s class list and course list.
In a matter of a very few minutes, Howard had a pretty good idea of her schedule, classes and labs. However it was the weekend and there were no classes. He also had her home address and her campus address. He took a drive along the street where the nurse residences were.
It was borderline intruding in her life to just be driving along her street. And how could he explain to her that he was simply trying to avoid dealing with his own life? He spent Saturday night with his computer buddies, playing video games. Sunday he worked on the programming he needed to get finished up for his current job.
He drove to the science building and parked the car in one of the professors’ parking spots.
The science building was deserted except for a couple of students who were walking down stairs chatting to each other. He was about to walk up to the third floor with the vague thought that he might accidentally encounter Alicia.
He stopped on the second floor. It was happening. He was reaching the point in his life where he had to take a stand. Everything had been so easy, evening conning his father into thinking that he was actually to go into the family business. The thought of the family business infuriated Howard.
The Wentworths’ had been industrialists for generations. In his father’s day, the transition to providing inexpensive clothing started out as a great idea. On the face of it, Howard was in favor of providing well made clothing at reasonable prices for the mass market. His problems began when he realized that some of the factories providing the clothing relied on child labor.
Howard stopped in his tracks. It was if a light bulb had just snapped on his head. The time had come for him to grow up. He swung around on his heel and as he did, the elevator at the end of the hallway opened and Alicia stepped out. They looked at each other both of them standing still as if frozen in time.
“What you doing here?” Alicia asked. As he opened his mouth to reply, she put up her hand. “And please do
n’t answer my question with your question.”
Howard had indeed been just about asked her what she was doing there. He followed her instruction and did not ask this question. Actually he said nothing. Yesterday with his father, he thought of her. Now here, with her standing in front of him, he was thinking about his father with such intensity, he was actually surprised to see her.
Alicia gave him a half smile and said, “Well. What are you doing here?”
Howard regained his composure and slipped into the role that was so much like the uniform that he wore, the playboy. “If I were a smooth and slick kind of guy, I come up with something clever and say that I was here looking for you.”
He shrugged. “However, as much as I wish that were the case, the truth is much more prosaic. But then isn’t it always? I’m supposed to meet friend of mine to help him with his laptop.” To prevent her from asking the name of this purported friend, he continued.
“However since he’s a no-show and you’re a surprise appearance, how about having a cup coffee with me?” He held his hands up, palms facing her, in a gesture of surrender. “But I bet I can guess your answer. You’re going to say not a chance.”
“Why; would I be a surprise appearance? I told you I was in premed.”
“What does biology have to do with premed?” he asked. He grinned so that she would know he was teasing. The fact is, even though he had entered the building in the hopes of seeing her, when the reality of the situation struck him, he banished all thought of her or seeing her. He was just trying to keep his thoughts sorted.
Alicia said, “If you don’t know, then coffee with you will be an interesting adventure.” She frowned, “We could talk about – oh – well, nothing.”
“We could. Let’s go? Do you want to go to the coffee shop here or shall we be daring and drive some place?”
“I need to get away from this place,” she said.
As she settled into Howard sporty little car, Alicia struggled with the tension that was so much a part of her life. She could feel her shoulder blades pulling together and her neck muscles knot up.
Chapter 4
Conversation was difficult in the car. They talked about the weather. It was warm, they agreed, and then there was silence. Howard maneuvered the car through the campus traffic, which was light but tedious because of the way the area was laid out.
They were on the street and when they came to a stop light, Howard said, “I’m sorry to admit that I’m not a very good conversationalist today.” He was surprised at his candor. “I’m in one of those family-created moods.”
Alicia laughed, “Well, so am I.” Her laugh was tinged with bitterness.
“Tell me about your family,” he said, “Please.” “Only if you tell me about yours.”
“Let’s have dinner,” he said. “It’s going to take a while.” They were on a main commercial street by now and he pulled into a family restaurant. “Is this okay with you?”
Alicia saw the look on his face and she didn’t have the heart to tantalize him. “So long as you don’t mind if I listen and don’t talk too much.”
He grinned at her and they went into the restaurant. They sat in a booth, facing each other and ordered coffee and water and took the menus to look over. In the car, not facing each other, they were quiet and that seemed acceptable. Now they were tensely sitting like strangers, which they were, and Alicia was all too aware of the silence.
Her head was pounding. Her neck was on fire. She ran her hands up over her shoulders and tried to massage the knots out of her neck muscles.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Just got a tension thing going on in my neck. It happens.”
“I know a great masseuse,” he said. “I’ll make you an appointment.”
She looked at him as if this was some sort of suggestive comment but she saw no sign of it. “Or, if you prefer, I can give you the number and let you call her.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Long hours at the lab table. It does me in.”
Howard sat and stared across the table at her. He had been charming the ladies since he was old enough to know that they were worth charming but today he felt completely off his game. He felt like he was at some sort of command performance but forgot how to behave.
He reminded himself that this was the first day of his new way of being. He was barely aware of the decision to change but he had the realization that it was upon him. The thought that he was in the process of changing surprised him. Somehow he always thought it would be something he planned and then implemented not something that seemed to take on a life of its own.
Here he was in what should have been the most satisfying situation of his life. This was his métier. This was where he shone the brightest. Here he was, with a woman who intrigued him, and he was talking about getting his masseuse to help her. He smiled ruefully.
It was a family restaurant, not a fancy restaurant with low lighting, muted music and a lover’s menu. I am definitely losing my touch, he thought.
“So tell me about your family angst,” she said.
He shrugged, “It’s nothing really.”
“It’s like this, Wentworth, you tell me or I tell you about my mother. And believe me, you don’t need that….”
“How about this?” he suggested. “We take turns comparing parents?” As soon as he said it, he realized he made a faux pas. He should not have said parents. What if she only had one parent? In his entire privileged life, he had never felt ill at ease; except when he was with his father. Maybe his awkwardness was a leftover from yesterday with dad.
“Unless you have really annoying parents, it won’t be a fair comparison,” she said. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth. In her entire life, she had never complained about her parents to anyone. Well, she thought, Sophie had seen her mother in action and they had talked about that.
But to just open up and say anything about her parents that were not approved comments – that just did not happen. She felt herself blush. And she silently apologized to her father. He had always been kind and gentle. He wasn’t annoying quite so much as he was invisible.
The waitress came to take their order and each of them spoke at the same time. They each said, “you first.” Then they each laughed.
“Okay,” Howard said, “you go first.”
Alicia ordered first. “Baked salmon with lemon.”
Howard nodded, “Me too.”
After the waitress left, Howard said, “Why did you order that?”
Alicia frowned at him and said in a slow deliberate tone, “Because it is my favorite meal….”
“But that is my favorite meal….”
“I knew I liked you.” She blurted it out and then laughed. “This is just weird.”
“It is.”
“Let’s see how weird it is,” she said. “You start talking. Let’s see what else we might have in common.”
He looked at her and nodded. “Okay.”
But he didn’t speak.
The waitress came with their coffee and water and that broke the tension of the moment. After they were alone again, Howard said, “I’m a computer programmer.” Alicia nodded. She didn’t know what to say. It was a good field to be in.
“My dream is to find a way to bring innovative technology to children in third-world countries so that they can get the education they need to improve their lives and, well, the future of their own countries.” He said it as if he were admitting something shameful about himself.
Alicia opened her eyes wide. “I want to join one of those doctors without borders type of programs. There is so much that good medical care can do in disadvantaged areas.”
The two of them became animated as they entered into a heated shared discussion about how the gaps in society created an unfair situation. They talked through the food that they ate and they talked through coffee that the waitress kept refilling and they talked through the change of patrons at the surrounding tables.
&nbs
p; The only personal question exchanged was when Howard asked why she called him Wentworth and not Howard. She just looked at him and said, “I don’t know. It just seems like the right thing to do.” But she did know. It was to keep it all at arm’s length.
In her classes and labs, the students tended to call each other by their last names. It was some unspoken expectation and she liked it. Sophie called her Alicia or Am but just about everyone else she knew on campus called her Swanson.
Alicia was, well, just too personal. When he asked, “Should I call you Swanson?” she was about to say yes but having just spilled out her soul about how urgent it was to her to be a doctor, she realized she should feel some sort of camaraderie with this man.
“I’ll leave that up to you,” she responded.
When the waitress came over with the bills for the meal, Howard reached for both bills and Alicia protested. “Please,” he said, “let me get this. I’m just lucky you’re not sending me a bill for the therapy.”
“Who says I won’t?” Alicia said, surprising herself with this tiny joke.
“I better give you my address, then,” he said. Then as he handed the waitress the cash for the bills, he asked Alicia, “Would you like some more coffee?”
She was surprised that she did and only because she didn’t want the evening to end. She remembered reading something somewhere about how people will tell strangers in airports things that they would not tell their best friends and now she had an inkling of just how that might happen.
She knew that this evening with Howard was an anomaly. It would never be repeated and she did not have to impress him. She could do imitations of her mother and if he judged her for being a bad daughter, an ungrateful brat, then so be it.
She did one right then, an impromptu impression of her mother criticizing a couple who were paying their bill at the register. Howard laughed. Alicia turned to him. “Now I feel badly on several levels. It’s none of my business if that lady wants to wear bright yellow pants with those hips. I actually applaud her for having a sense of daring. I feel a little guilty about mocking mother, but just a little. And I realize that this might turn into a part of my personality and I’ll spend the rest of my life whining and complaining.”
