Love's Door
(cont'd) a short story written for our writers group anthology: Passages
Passages is a collection of short stories loosely based on the theme: When one door closes, another opens. What door opens for which person makes all the difference.
I write the Mackenzie Wilder/Classic Boat mystery series. The protagonist is Dr. Mackenzie Wilder, a widowed small-town physician with a passion for old boats and a knack for fixing both boats and her patients.
The following story (presented in eight installments) is about Mackenzie’s cousin, Lara, who feels she has been unfairly compared to Mackenzie (Mackie) her whole life.
Installment 7
Love’s Door
“Lara! Mackie’s here!”
“She is? Great! I want to show her the new move for the end of our number. She’ll just die when she sees how the costume billows out behind us. It looks like smoke exploding!”
“Well, she’s out back on the patio.” Bev put a hand on her shoulder to pause her. “Take it easy. She seems very quiet today. Thoughtful, sort of. We don’t want to disturb that.”
Lara rolled her eyes and bounded through the kitchen.
“Mackie—wait ‘til you see the move Krista taught me. It’s perfect for the close of our last number! It’s super—and so professional! Come here!”
Mackie met her at the patio door, her smile faint. “That’s great, Lara.”
“Watch!” Lara struck a pose then strutted forward, swiveling her hips and gesturing with her fingers stretched in jazz position. Sliding her left foot in front of her right, she swung her lift hip toward Mackie then bumped it forward as she flung her head back, drew her chin down and locked into place.
“See! What do you think?”
“It’s a good move, Lara. It should work really well.” Her voice was low, subdued.
“Mackie? What? Don’t you like it?”
“I like it all right.” Mackie came into the room. “Lara, we need to talk.”
“Talk? About what?
Mackie sighed, sitting down. “About the audition, Lara. I can’t do it.”
“Wha-? What do you mean, you can’t do it? You can’t make it that day? We can get a different audition date. My mom can call. She’s gotten really close with the casting lady. She’ll get the date changed.”
Mackie stared at the floor for a minute, then she jumped up, shaking her head, her curls bobbling around her face. “It’s not that.”
“Well, what?” Lara’s stomach did a flip-flop.
“You know the Becker twins?”
“Yeah. You mean the ones we’re auditioning against, right?”
Mackie nodded. “I talked to Whitney yesterday.”
“Hmm.” Lara raised an eyebrow at her cousin. “Why?” Then she bent over and stretched to keep her muscles from cooling down, stretching toward the floor and out for maximum pull.
“I wish I could stretch out like that.” Mackie bent down and stretched alongside Lara as they continued the conversation.
“Why did you talk to Whitney? Is she the taller one?”
“Yeah. The one with the long hair. She’s pretty nice.”
“Hmph,” Lara grunted. “Still the competition. And Bethany is snobby. And not that good a dancer.”
“Yeah, well, I know. But ... did you know their father lost his job? And their mom doesn’t work—outside of being a mom, I mean.”
Lara started working her arms in a rowing pattern. “So? I mean, that’s tough and all, but...”
“It is tough. You and I, we know how hard it is when things at home aren’t great.” Mackie looked pointedly at Lara.
“Yeah,” Lara spoke slowly. She’d learned more about Mackie since they’d been rehearsing. Her home life wasn’t exactly the picnic Lara had always supposed it to be, but what did that have to do with the auditions—or how difficult anybody else had it?
She gave her arms one last rep then brushed back her hair from her face and placed her hands on her hips. “Mackie, tell me what the heck you’re talking about.”
Mackie made a face then pulled herself upright. She drew a breath and then pushed out the words as fast as she could. “I can’t do the audition because we’d probably win and the Beckers need the twins to get this job because it’s the only income they’ll have. I—we can’t take that away from them!”
She gave Lara an anxious look then marched over to the couch and flung herself down, staring up at Lara with fear—but it was fear backed by a determination Lara had never associated with her cousin before.
“I—You can’t—we can’t— Look, I feel sorry for Whitney and Bethany and all, but that is not our problem. It’s not our fault their dad lost his job, and it’s not up to us to fix it. And even if we did win, they’d still get the second cast -”
“Which doesn’t pay nearly as much. I know it’s not up to us to fix this! But we can do something about it, and we should! This audition isn’t important for us -“
“It’s important to me!” Lara wailed. How could Mackie say that? How can she discount all the work we’ve put in!
Mackie raised a hand. “Okay, it’s important. But not the way it is for the Becker twins.”
“Look, Mackie, I know you’re trying to be a good person and all, but this is too much. Let their parents solve their money problems. It’s not our job. We’re supposed to make the best audition we can to get the gig. This is our big chance!”
Mackie shook her head at every word. “I can’t Lara, I can’t do it.”
And that was that.
Worse, when the news was shared with Bev, Mackie convinced her that hers and Lara’s dreams of becoming performers wasn’t that big a deal after all. Mackie became the golden girl in Bev’s eyes all over again, sacrificing her desires to help someone. That this meant sacrificing Lara’s shot at a future seemed to be a fact that sailed right over Bev’s head.
***
Eventually, Lara could acknowledge, it didn’t matter. Her future wasn’t intended to include a musical career, and that was fine, but she couldn’t think of that day without wondering what might have happened, what might have been different. She came to accept the permanent flaw in her relationships with Bev and Mackie the way families do. But it gave her a low tolerance for problematic relationships, and built a high standard for the relationships most intimate to her. It was the pile of straw beneath the final one of Rodger’s infidelity. While Lara herself would not be broken, the backbone of her tolerance was smashed, and she was not going to let that go unanswered.
No moving on like after Chieftain came back home.
No putting up with an inevitable sequence of behavior from someone who supposedly loved her, like with Bev and Mackie.
And no letting a bad relationship pass with a cynical “Men!” and move on to repeat the cycle with a new partner, like most of her friends would. She wasn’t letting Rodger off the hook that easily.
Lara would rebuild her plan. Maybe better.
She sat up, rubbing her eyes, and reached for the keyboard again. flicking the power button on the way. “Come on! Dammit!” She’d never been one to resolve her own hardware issues. She’d always had Leonard – or Rodger, damn him – for that. And, she had to admit, she was hung over from mixing the whiskey and wine.
What was it Leonard had told her? Something about ‘waking’ the computer improperly would shut it down. And if it wouldn’t re-start – reboot, then you—aha! She grabbed a flash drive and plugged it in, then pressed the power key once more.
The start-up was slower, a long hesitation, as the board tried its boot disk, which failed, and resorted to the flash drive for instruction. At last a screen, login, and she was ready to check settings and re-assign start-up. A few more manipulations, and her desktop appeared, folders and files recovered intact. She verified one, then immediately copied it onto the flash drive. Verified that, and sank back with a sigh of relief.
“Wait – wait -,” She checked and with growing pleasure sent her fingers into a fury over the keys. Only half the images and posts had uploaded. She uploaded the rest, scanning each one for completeness and editing, then sat back and waited for the twenty minutes it took for everything to reload. The sun was rising as she stood and watched the computer shut down the way it was supposed to.