Chapter 7 Alex

I stare down at the gasket and water pan in front of me, but I can’t for the life of me remember what I’m supposed to be doing with them. My world has been a bleak gray fog since I walked out on Riley. I’m still shell-shocked by the high of our amazing night together transforming into a nightmare that won’t stop replaying in my head.

Riley told me that she loved me, and I pushed her away. What is wrong with me?

There’s a knock at my door. “Go away, Mina!” My sister has been checking in on me daily for the past week, each time with different peppers from the ranch. She can tell that something has me sufficiently distraught that I won’t even engage with some potential new ingredients, but I can’t bear to tell her the whole story.

“Alex, it’s Umma.”

What is my mom doing here? I’m not sure I can handle her disappointment over whatever it is that I’ve surely neglected to do as I’ve been wrapped up in my own world.

I open the door. My mom and Mina stand on the other side, and I glare at my traitorous sister. She shrugs. “Dude, you’ve been in a total funk. I didn’t know what else to do. Besides…” She throws my mom a meaningful look. “You both should talk.”

My mom comes in and perches on the couch, her hair drawn up gracefully away from her face, dignified grays swirled amongst jet black.

“Alex, what is going on?” she asks. As the words come out of her mouth, I realize that since coming home our interactions have been mostly business-related, quick and practical. It’s been this way for years – our negotiated band-aid over a wall of hurt from all those years ago. Brushed off and left behind.

When I got my first real food service job a year after leaving home, chopping vegetables at a fancy hotel on the Upper West Side, I had finally called my parents. Mina, who I regularly texted updates to about my hardscrabble adventures in New York, insisted on it. She said they were sick with worry, but I felt so much shame about how I had stormed off. Still, I wanted to let them know I was doing what I had set out to do – supporting myself, forging my own path.

My dad picked up, his voice filled with relief. He asked question after question: where was I staying, had I made new friends, was I able to support myself, was I sure I didn’t want to come home. Then, he passed the phone to Umma. “Alex. Glad you’re doing okay. I see you were able to find some work.” she had said before handing the phone back to my dad.

Since that moment, we had worked out a tenuous balance. A crisp, cordial relationship with so much unresolved under the service. As the years passed, things were fine enough that I knew I could come back to Park Ranch eventually, if I really needed to.

When everything had collapsed with the restaurants, I had retreated to Bandera, hoping for some respite away from clients, reporters, and investors. When I told my parents that I was essentially back to square one, I had seen the look of deep sadness flash across my mother’s face.

Umma clears her throat. “Mina says you haven’t left the cabin at all. She’s been taking on all of your tasks.”

I brace myself for what’s coming. Umma has always seen me for what I am – a fuck-up. She was right to kick me out all those years ago, hoping I would learn about life the hard way.

“I know. I came up here to help you all, and I’m not even doing that correctly.” I run my hand over my face and scratch at the stubble that’s gathered across my chin. “You were right all those years ago, Umma. I’m a failure.”

My mom looks up at me sharply. “What are you talking about?”

I start pacing around the kitchen. “I know I’ve always been a disappointment to you. I thought that I’d grow out of this feeling of letting you down, eventually. And for a while – especially when things were going well – I really thought that I had. But coming back here has only reminded me that I really haven’t amounted to anything. Just like you predicted – “

“Alex, I’m sorry.” Umma cuts me off. Her obsidian eyes, full of regret and love, meet mine. I stare back at her in surprise.

“I should never have said those things to you all those years ago. I should never have let you leave home like that.”

My mom sighs and shakes her head.“You were so different, Alex. So independent. I couldn’t ever tell you what to do, and I felt that I had failed you as a parent.”

My mouth drops open slightly. My mom had always been hard on me, but it was necessary. I was a handful.

Umma continues. “The night you left, that Darren Flores boy had come over to the house. He told me that he knew his cousin Riley was your tutor, and he was worried you were having a bad influence on her. He told me he had seen you and Glenn over by the train tracks, and he knew what was happening there – drug deals, stealing.”

Train tracks? Darren? I had only met the guy a few times when he had introduced me to Zorro. He was a few years older than me and Riley, and exuded the cool and confidence of someone who was doing exactly what he was meant to be doing. It was everything I had wanted to possess back then.

“I told him that no son of mine could be involved in something that would hurt people and that he was mistaken.”

Wait, she had stood up for me? I tried to summon what Darren could possibly have been referring to. Glenn and I sometimes went into the old junkyard near the tracks to scavenge for motorcycle parts and fool around. We probably should have been spending our time in other ways, but sharing vodka I had swiped from my parents’ liquor cabinet was the extent of our illegal activity.

“But then you came home after running around with Glenn, late again. The school had let us know that you skipped class. I was ashamed – it felt like yet another sign that I wasn’t able to be a good parent to you. Your father tried to calm me down, but I lost my temper. That’s why I said all those horrible things.”

Realization dawns on me as I flash back to that night.

*****

“People are talking about you, Alex”, she had said, her petite frame bristling. “They’re saying that you’ll never amount to anything if you keep going down this path.”

The disappointment and anger shone on her face as my dad tried to console her. “Lyle, I know you think that he just needs room to explore. But look what’s happening to him.

The tattoos, the neglecting your classes, that was already bad enough, Alex. But getting involved in actual danger? Riley Flores is such a good student and a thoughtful daughter – I had thought that maybe she could influence you, but now I see that isn’t working either.”

Riley. Umma’s words landed a heavy blow to my chest. She was right. If this was how the town – heck, my own parents – felt about me, I was only going to stand in Riley’s way as she pursued her dreams. I thought of our tutoring sessions and the studio, Riley’s face bursting with smart ideas and creativity. She didn’t deserve to be bogged down by someone like me.

“Alex. If this is how it’s going to be, then maybe it’s time for you to leave.” Umma kept going. “See how you enjoy your freedom when you’re out there on your own.”

My dad interrupted. “Imogene! Come on now, this is extreme – ”

“No Dad, it’s fine”. I leveled a stare back at my mother as I headed up the stairs to pack a bag. “Umma’s right. I don’t want to bring any sort of disrespect to our family any longer. I’m going.”

*****

In the present, my mom shakes her head, no doubt remembering the same exchange. “Alex, I should have never told you to leave home like that. I’m sorry I let my pride get in the way.”

I take in my mother’s hands, folded on her lap. The same ones that had handed me a peeler, a spatula, and a knife all those times when I had barged into the kitchen as a curious kid.

“It’s okay, Umma. I’m sorry I put you through so much. And anyway, you and Darren were both right about Riley. She’s much better off without me.”

“What do you mean, without you?”

“I’m not a good influence. I had fooled myself in high school thinking that she and I could be together. And then, when I saw her back in town this week, after all these years, I convinced myself that it could happen again.” I ramble on, too in pain to try and keep things at the surface level my mother and I have maintained for years. “But I’m a distraction. She deserves someone who supports her dreams, not someone who takes away from them.”

My mother’s face softens. She walks over to me and takes my hand, grasping it in her slightly wrinkled one. “Alex. You are too hard on yourself. That is my fault. I never told you how proud I was of you – everything you built from scratch, on your own, so far away from us. I followed all of it. But I didn’t know how to tell you.”

She continues, “I tend to focus on what needs to be improved, rather than what is already good. And I’ve always seen that in you, too – you don’t rest until you feel you’ve achieved perfection. Sometimes, if you think you can’t get that, you’ll just stop trying.” She gestures towards the smoker parts with a knowing nod.

“Riley – she wants you in her life?” Umma asks.

I think back to the moment before I had let my anxiety spiral. Riley smiling up at the ceiling, talking about us making new plans for the future. Together.

“Yes, but –”

“Then you are not a distraction, Alex. You are already a part of her path.”

I freeze. She’s right. All this time, I’ve been using my own insecurities to put distance between myself and Riley. Taking myself out of the equation supposedly to protect her from pain. But all I’ve been doing is hurting the person I love.

Oh god, the person I love. And who told me she loved me – right before I ran away from her.

I have to fix this. I look down at my mom’s hand, still intertwined with mine. “Umma, what if it’s too late?”

“Look at us, Alex. It’s never too late.”