Anywhere But Here, Chapters 13–15
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Author’s note: AWBH is told in alternating points of view between Sandra (mom) and Emily (teenage daughter).
AWBH is a work in progress. An experiment. Feedback is welcome.
Chapters 1–3 | Chapters 4–6 | Chapters 7–9 | Chapters 10–12 | Chapters 13–15| Chapters 16–18 | Chapters 19–21 | Chapters 22–24 | Chapters 25–27 | Chapters 28–30 | Chapters 31–33 | Chapters 34–36 | Chapters 37–39 | Chapters 40–42 | Chapters 43–45 | Chapters 46–48 | Chapters 49–50 | Chapters 51–53 | Chapters 54–57 | Chapters 58–60 | Chapters 61–63
Chapter 13: Sandra (January 2012)
Friday night loomed over Sandra, an omnipresent cloud of loneliness. It could have been any Friday of her last few years — Emily at a sleepover, Drew in some foreign country, returning sometime tomorrow.
A quiet empty house, a silent sleeping cat, and Sandra.
Sandra walked into the tidy kitchen. There was nothing to put away, not even a dish to wash; she’d done them all this morning. Laundry? She dismissed the thought. It could wait until tomorrow.
She opened the short wine fridge and pulled out a bottle of red. She walked to the drawer where the wine opener had resided since they’d moved into this house.
She opened the bottle automatically, and poured wine into a fragile, bulbous glass before she realized she didn’t want wine. She wanted company. She wanted to have someone to call right now, and chat, and talk about how she used to be on stage; how a dozen years ago she took furtive trips to San Francisco; how … anything, really.
The smallest part of her wished she could tell the truth to someone. She wished she could tell the truth to herself.
She was backyard barbecue friendly with a couple women in the neighborhood; women her age who she’d chat with about inconsequential drivel. If she told one of them she lusted for a city, Drew would know in 30 seconds, regardless of where he was on the planet. Her Mom? That was a joke, she hadn’t talked to her in years, had no plans of starting that conversation with domestic discontent. Plus she’d probably ask for money.
There was nobody.
Orbit meowed at the sliding glass door, tinted blue to deflect the heat that would arrive predictably in the summer.
“I wish I could go outside,” Sandra said, opening the door. “Anywhere, actually.”
Anywhere.
“Sandra, what are you waiting for?” she chastised herself, “Someone to show up and invite you into your own life?”
She picked up her mobile phone and dialed, her finger trembling slightly, like she was calling a boy she had a crush on. Or a city.
“Sandra Dee!” Parker exclaimed, “Come on down!”
❤
Freedom tickled as she drove onto the freeway entrance. Each road sign declaring “San Francisco” left her smiling and giddy. Memories bubbled up from the few illicit trips she’d taken when Emily was a baby, and she’d coax Rizzo, her orange Datsun B210, 100 miles west.
The trip with Drew and Emily, six years ago, rose up, dark and stormy, and she tried to squash it back down.
What did Drew have against San Francisco anyway? Sandra wondered. Sure, they lost Emily for ten minutes in San Francisco on that trip when she was nine. Emily was watching the kittens in the windows of Macy’s, and Sandra walked away as Drew was trying to tell her why the city was so horrible. Sandra didn’t argue with him; what was the point?
“Lilli,” Sandra said, patting her Subaru Outback’s dash, “Let’s have an adventure. Drew and Emily are not here, and I’m not bringing them along as disapproving spectral passengers.”
She passed exits to other freeways leading to memories of “Anywhere” trips south to Yosemite and Disneyland; north to Napa and Mount Shasta. Their family made trips to everywhere when Emily was an infant; adventures that grew sparse, and then stopped after the last San Francisco trip when Drew started traveling every week for work.
Drew got wings, and I got grounded, Sandra thought.
Sandra jumped when her mobile phone chimed next to her. “Sandra Dee! Where are you? Tell me you didn’t change your mind?”
“I just passed Berkeley!” Sandra said, glancing at a road sign.
“See you soon!” Parker said, hanging up.
Anticipation tickled her from skin to skeleton. Would she remember anything from her secret trips when Emily was a toddler? Did muscle memory apply to directions? She had Internet directions that didn’t seem too complex, one exit, a half dozen turns. “We can do this, Lilli,” she told her car.
She found the exit for Octavia smashed between other off ramps and dodged into the correct lane at the last minute. She found his house with only a few wrong turns.
Sandra double parked in front of his house, a pretty two story Victorian, with curvy awnings and steps leading up to the front. She picked up her phone and dialed.
“Parker, I’m out front, but there’s no parking!”
“I’ll come out and join you.” Parker walked out the front door.
“No worse for the years, I see,” Parker smiled, full straight teeth. He was still so gorgeous. He hugged her across the center console.
“Did you try the park?” he asked.
Sandra looked at him blankly.
“Drive straight, I’ll show you.”
A block ahead, a wide, grassy hill rose towards the sky. Sandra expected to see a castle perched on top.
“Turn left. You keep your eyes on the road, I’ll look for parking.”
“How will we get to the place?”
“Cab. Sandra, STOP!”
Sandra slammed on her brakes, “What? A cat? A kid?”
“No,” he beamed, “a parking space.”
It took Sandra five attempts to parallel-park Lilli into a space.
“Only two cars honked at you,” Parker grinned, “not bad. If you weren’t in the car I would have flipped them a one finger salute.”
Sandra pulled an overnight bag out of her trunk and followed Parker to his house. She barely had time to register the period furnishings in the Victorian flat, before Parker urged her into the kitchen at the far back. “Now! Tell me everything! I haven’t seen you since high school graduation.” He glanced up at the clock. “Never mind. We need to go. You can tell me on the way.”
Fifteen minutes later, as the trademark hills of San Francisco rose and subsided underneath the cab, Sandra smiled. She was here. In San Francisco. She looked out the window of the cab. Nothing looked familiar; had the city transformed in the past years? Or did the absence of a grumpy husband make the city beautiful?
Chapter 14: Emily
(Summer 2012, San Francisco)
From the Bay Bridge, Emily and her mom drove on a crowded strip of elevated freeway, with tall buildings leaning in from the right, shorter buildings and bay stretched out on the left. “They’re all stuck together like the popular kids,” Emily thought.
Her mom took an exit off some raised freeway towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Maybe we’ll get back on the Golden Gate Bridge and head back home. But after thirty minutes of crawling through densely packed streets, Emily’s hope was swallowed by the omnipresent fog.
“Wait until you see it,” her Mom said again, like she’d said every day for the last week, her fabricated enthusiasm chafing. “Parker lives in a classic Victorian. It has so much more charm and character than the houses in our old neighborhood. You will love it!”
As if Emily didn’t know what a Victorian house was, really, with Internet access and Wikipedia always available. Why did her Mom think an old house was more interesting than a new one? Charm and character? Sounded like one of those old musicals she’d catch her Mom watching when her Dad wasn’t home. Why watch old boring movies, or live in an old house?
Emily hadn’t even met Parker, and they were going to live with him! Her mom had been super-vague, only saying that he was an old friend from high school.
“We’ll be here just until we get on our feet,” her Mom had said, as if they had suddenly devolved to serpents without legs.
When would her mom stop lying? They were moving in with her boyfriend, and they were never moving out.
I should have pushed for living with Grandma, Emily thought. I could have stayed in Folsom, gone to high school with my friends, and been a totally different kind of miserable eating chicken cacciatore every Sunday after church.
But her dad killed that idea in another conversation that Emily wasn’t supposed to have heard. “Emily is our responsibility, Sandra, you can’t push her off on my mom because she’ll be in the way, even if it means she could stay in Folsom. And you know she can’t stay with me. What would she do, live out of a suitcase and hotel rooms? What about school?
Why didn’t they ask Emily what she wanted?
Her Mom stopped the car, double parking in front of an old white building. Steps lead to the second floor and a steep driveway fell down into the ground, leading to a narrow garage door.
Her mom pushed the button for her hazard lights, “Wait here, Em, I’ll be right back.”
“What?” Emily snapped, “You’re going to leave your car blocking the street? And me in it? What if someone hits me, and I’m crippled for life?”
“Emily, it will only be a minute. You’ll be fine.” Her mom was already out of the car and walking up the drive.
She watched her mom knock on the door. Like a guest? Emily wondered.
Her shock level doubled, tripled, when Parker opened the door. He must be ten years younger than mom! Emily thought. A big, boyish grin stretched across his face, revealing cute dimples. He was wearing khaki shorts and a close fitting t-shirt, revealing sculpted biceps. Emily wouldn’t admit he was hot. She couldn’t. He wasn’t. Ewwww.
“Saannn-deee!” the not-hot man yelped, and Emily cringed. Sacramento probably heard him. She swallowed down a sob and stared stonily ahead, not wanting to see any kind of PDA. Could grandma and endless horrible chicken cacciatore still be an option?
Chapter 15: Sandra (January 2012)
“Where are we going?” Sandra hated that she asked.
“A company launch party at a club in SOMA. I did some Biz Dev work for the founder.” Parker explained. Launch party? Biz Dev? Were those words English? Sandra was too embarrassed to ask.
They arrived in front of a dark two story building with a neon pink plaster cow the size of a Great Dane dangling on chains from the building’s awning.
“That’s quite a cow,” Sandra said.
“Holy Cow, actually,” Parker grinned, “that’s the name of the club. We have a couple hours before they’re open to the public, let’s find a drink, a seat, and people watch.”
At the door, a tall, bald man dressed in black checked Parker’s name on the guest list and waved them inside. About thirty people were scattered around, in groups of three or four, standing near the bar at the back, or sitting on the long silver banquette that surrounded a wide dance floor.
Every woman was dressed in next to nothing, revealing copious perfect twenty-year-old skin. Sandra wondered if her underwear lines were showing, and felt overdressed. She couldn’t remember the last time she was in a bar.
She’s barely older than Emily, Sandra mumbled, watching a beautiful brunette woman walk by, her breasts trying to escape the confines of her halter top. Would her daughter want to wear that kind of outfit soon? Sandra hoped that she wouldn’t know anything about it, when it did happen.
Sandra’s purse, which came from Target or Ross, suddenly felt conspicuous and beige. Every woman clutched something, or held something bright and flashy and with a named label. If Sandra’s did have a label, it would probably say “old lady.” When did she become her mother?
If only she wasn’t embarrassed that her thighs were five times the size of the beauties with toothpicks for legs, supporting flawless bodies. All this time I’ve spent telling Emily that women are not objects, and what’s the first thing I do when my age and insecurities confront me? Sandra chastised herself. I am sure they are all perfectly lovely, with parents that love them, and … She looked in a dark corner and saw a couple kissing, the man’s hand inching up a toothpick thigh. And parents are the last thing on their mind, except maybe how to avoid becoming one tonight.
She should go home. Turn around, head out of here on the first taxi right back to Folsom, to her empty house and decent red wine where she didn’t give a second thought to her beige Target purse. This wasn’t even a semblance of a good idea.
“Sandra!” She looked at Parker. “Subtlety! Stop gawking, we’ll do that discretely when we sit down,” he looked at the bartender, “two lemon drops, please.”
How much alcohol could be in that martini glass? “I have to be on the road by eight tomorrow, Park…”
“You’ll be fine.”
Her phone rang from the depths of the purse. She dug through until she found it. Drew. 8:30. Shit!
“Who is it?” Parker asked.
“My husband.”
“Here,” Parker took the phone out of her hand and answered the call. “Sandra’s phone.”
He didn’t just answer my phone, Sandra cringed.
“Parker,” Parker said into the phone. “I’m a friend of Sandra’s. She’s right here.” He handed the venomous phone back to Sandra. How am I going to pretend I’m not in a noisy bar, and how Parker is just someone she happened to run into. Can I pretend the connection dropped?
“Sandra,” she heard the growl though the earpiece was six inches away.
“Hi Drew.”
“Who is Parker? Where are you?”
The bartender put a lemon drop in front of her, and Sandra fought the urge to gulp it down in one shot. “Parker’s my friend,” she tried to sound calm, “we’re out getting a drink.” Leaving out crucial elements: In a club. In San Francisco.
“You’re out getting a drink, with your friend Parker.” Enormous weighty pause. “And where’s Emily?”
“At a sleepover at Lauren’s.”
“Sandra.” She could feel him shaking his head in disapproval, however many miles away in whatever city.
“We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
“Right.” She hung up her phone, then looked at it for answers. “Parker, I have to go.”
“Are you kidding me? Your husband won’t be home until tomorrow, your kid is a teenager, and you’re going home to what? A big empty house?”
“And a cat?” she offered.
“Cats take care of themselves, Sandra, and so can the rest of your family. What about you?”
What about me? Sandra wondered, a tremor of anger rumbled in her stomach.
“I’ll find you a cab if that’s what you want, but …”
Over the speakers, a booming voice announced, “Get your voices warmed up, friends, the karaoke starts in five minutes!”
“One song,” Parker said.
“Song?”
“Yes, and I choose it.”
It was so absurd, that Sandra just nodded, and two minutes later was holding a microphone. She’d stashed her purse behind a speaker, thinking that if it got stolen, it would be easy to recognize.
“Just look at me, Sandra Dee, you know what to do.” Parker whispered.
She looked at Parker as the twang of a very familiar song began to play. “You didn’t!” She whispered, fiercely.
Parker smirked, and started singing, “I got chills, they’re multiplying, and I’m losing control, for the power you’re supplying, it’s electrifying!”
Sandra inhaled, “You better shape up, because I need a man, and my heart is set on you …”
“You’re the one that I want, ooh, ooh, ooh, honey,” they sang together, Sandra slipping into her stage persona.
They finished the final refrain, Sandra looking at Parker, then turning to the audience, realizing the crowd of fifty or more people were applauding, cheering, and catcalling. Sandra smiled. The cloak of apathy around her life evaporated. This is happy, she thought.
She followed Parker to the bar. If this was it, if this was the whole trip, and she got in her car and headed home now, that would be enough. She could live on that applause for the next five years.
“Another lemon drop?” the bartender asked them.
“Club soda, please, with lime?” Sandra responded. She already felt intoxicated.
“How responsible of you,” Parker teased.
“Parker, nice performance up there.” A man was extending his hand to Parker, an Italian accent softening and augmenting his words.
Sandra glanced at him. Debonair, she thought, that’s the only word that describes this man, in a dark suit, white shirt, no tie. Maybe fifty?
“Who is your friend?” Debonair man asked.
“Francesco, this is Sandra,” Parker smiled.
Sandra smiled, nervous, and shook his hand.
“Where did you leave the man that goes with your wedding ring?”
“In Dubai?” Sandra wanted to smack her forehead.
“Dubai?” Cesco smiled, “Curious.”
“I’m married!” she stuttered.
“So am I, and my wife is over there.” He pointed to a slightly older, beautiful woman. “Sandra, cosa ti piace della vita?” he asked. “What do you like in life?” His purr of an accent made the words into a melody.
“Cesco, what are you doing to my girl?” Parker asked, walking back to them, “Stop your Italian flirting! You’ve got her all flustered!”
“Since when would you have a girl, Parker,” Cesco teased.
“San Francisco!” Sandra blurted. “I like San Francisco. And being on stage.”
“Cesco! I was supposed to send her back to the suburbs tomorrow with a skinny vanilla latte and fond memories. Now look what you’ve done!”
“What have I done? You don’t live here?” Cesco asked Sandra.
“No, but I want to,” Sandra swallowed.
“What do you do? For work or …?”
Sandra paused for a moment, arranging her scattered thoughts. “I work in the customer service department at HealthCo.”
“You answer customer service calls? How long have you done this?” Cesco asked.
“Six,” Sandra paused, counting mentally, “no, make that seven years, Emily was in second grade when I started.”
“Emily? Your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“And Emily’s father?”
“He works in Sales.”
“You said he’s in Dubai, are you divorced?”
“No, he’s traveling for work.”
“Cesco, where are you going with this?” Parker interjected.
“My last question, I promise,” Cesco grinned, deep laugh lines creating parentheses around his smile. “What do you like about customer service that has kept you there for seven years?”
A smile eased Sandra’s worry lines. “I love taking a call with the most irate customer, and seeing if I can turn them around, appease them, but also give them as little as possible.” She smirked at Parker, “Unless they want Lasik.”
“Ouch!” Parker exclaimed.
Cesco looked directly at Sandra, serious and calm. “You’re hired.”
“What?” Sandra choked on a nervous laugh.
“I need a Customer Service Manager for my venture,” he gestured around the room at the people chatting idly, “so if you want the job, it’s yours.”
Parker looked from Cesco to Sandra, and seeing Sandra’s bewilderment, said, “Sandra,” he paused. “Francesco is the CEO of the company hosting this party, and he’s literally offered you a job.”
“A job? You can’t be serious?”
“I’ve been successful when I trust my gut, as Americans say, and my gut says you’ll make a good Customer Service Manager. We can work out the details next week if you’re interested.”
❤ Thanks so much for reading! ❤
Up next … Chapters 16–18
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