Back in the Day by Katrina Jackson

Author:Katrina Jackson [Jackson, Katrina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sea Port Press LLC

2010

Amir pulled his car into a parking spot on the edge of Jack London Square, just down the street from the Amtrak station. The overflow parking lot had the most unobstructed view of the water as he could get. Every now and then, a person strolled in front of the car, but Alonzo didn’t seem to mind. If he saw anything at all, Amir imagined he saw his late wife in his mind’s eye on so many of the trips they took down here, which were too many to count. They used to come here for a date night to Yoshi’s to hear some jazz and have a few drinks. They brought the kids to one of the restaurants for a special seafood dinner when they made honor roll. Or hell, maybe he was remembering the night of Amir’s junior prom when he and his best friend Jay somehow ended up at Jack London in the middle of the night, tipsy and confused about which night bus would get them home.

Amir remembered that night a little too often for his liking. Ada had been silently furious in her disappointment in the front passenger seat. She’d expected better of him and couldn’t imagine that he hadn’t expected better of himself. Her silence was a heavy thing, and it started burning through the alcohol left in his blood. Alonzo was not the silent type. He’d looked in the rearview mirror at the boys and told them to, “Get ready for some manual labor this summer,” with a good-natured chuckle. And then he’d pulled into a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s to buy them some food while squeezing Ada’s knee with his free hand.

He’d been too drunk and tired and young to think about it at the time, but in hindsight, Amir had come to reconsider Ada’s rage. The disappointment was real, but as an adult, he recognized her uncharacteristic silence for what it most likely had been. Fear. Ada hadn’t had a problem expressing herself, but fear could be paralyzing. Amir knew that now, every time Alonzo stumbled over a curb or laughed so hard, he wheezed. He wished he could go back in time and tell his mother what he’d learned.

He also wished he could find a space in the city that didn’t trigger these kinds of memories, but that was impossible because Ada was everywhere in this city, memories of her threatening around every corner. For as long as he was here, he knew he would never stop missing her. He’d never get past his grief.

Alonzo sure hadn’t.

He turned to his father and lifted his eyebrows.

“Alright, so who was playing at the concert?”

“Festival,” Alonzo corrected.

“Festival,” Amir said with a shake of his head and a shrug because what was the difference? Not that he would ask his father that question for real. That would only get him the most boring semantics lecture ever. He’d sat through more than a few of those in his life, and he did not care. It was so much easier to just capitulate and move the story along.

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