Surviving San Francisco

By Susan Oloier

When 23-year-old Leah Newland accepts a job in San Francisco and runs away from her small-town Illinois life, she expects things to change for the better. What she doesn’t expect is to lose her job, adopt a cat she hit with her car, and fall for a sexy and seemingly unavailable veterinarian. Suddenly, going back to the Midwest seems better than surviving San Francisco.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Oloier
• Release date: Feb 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311954398

Susan Oloier

Susan Oloier lives in Southwest Colorado with her husband and two sons where she skis when it's cold and hikes when it's warm.After working in both finance and teaching, with a single audition at an acting agency, Susan went back to her first love, which is writing. She has been published in national and regional publications, as well as online. You can find her lurking about on her blog at http://www.susanoloier.blogspot.com

Book preview

Chapter One

Leah Newland pushes the frilly pink curtains of her bedroom window aside for the last time. Outside, it’s a typical winter wonderland in the suburbs of Chicago: gray, blustery, and wet. Even the once-fluffy whiteness that edges the roads has turned to charcoal black. Leah will leave it all behind.

Inside, stuffed bears sit idly on her frilly pink linens, and her BS in Marketing degree from Northern Illinois University hangs on the wall beside an Assistant Buyer of the Year Award. She doesn’t think she’ll miss any of it.

Neatly stacked boxes reside in the corner of a room, which is nearly bare and void, save an open U.S. map. A matching set of luggage leans beneath the valanced window.

Leah lingers at her dresser where a letter is folded closed. The only visible portion is the closing, scrawled in a male’s handwriting. I’m sorry I hurt you. Love, Charlie. Leah runs a finger over the name, pushes it away, and then finally swipes and pockets it.

Leah hears voices in the living room and decides to go downstairs to join her going-away party. She touches the San Francisco dot on the map one last time before folding it. She plans to study her route again, just to be sure.

As she descends the stairs like a not-so Miss America in her stuffy Liz Claiborne, hair in a French twist, a deflating helium balloon hits Leah in the face. She recovers, only to be molested by a renegade streamer arranged near the stairs. Its brothers hang limply from the guardrails. Leah can’t wait for all of this to be over and to start her new life. She musters her courage and creeps toward the living room. A few of her family members sit around, waiting.

She first spies her cousin, Jay. Not a hard thing to do considering he screams at the television set.

Rip ‘em a new one!

His Bears jersey rides up in the back, giving Leah an unwanted glimpse at his butt crack. His girlfriend, Tara—whom Leah barely knows—sits beside him rolling her eyes, studying a Tostito like it’s a Rubik’s Cube. Leah wonders what she and Jay are doing here at all. It’s not like Leah spends any time with them. Ever.

She wishes her friend, Paisley, were here instead of being at an obligatory wedding in Florida.

Leah picks up one of her mom’s Precious Moments statuettes and wiggles her way between her grandmother, who crouches in her wheelchair, and her older brother, Glen, who seems to not want to make any room for her on the love seat.

Leah feels awkward, so she opens up her road map again.

In twenty-four hours— she says to her grandmother.

You’ll be back, Glen says. His smile is smug.

Leah looks at Glen, and then she searches around the room. Painted wood furniture, upholstered chairs, country-style everything, snow outside the windows, Bears on TV, and butt cracks. No way.

You say that now—

I’m not coming back, Glen, she puts the Precious Moments down, I’m not. This job transfer is everything I hoped for.

Glen picks up the figurine and assesses it. You know, you’ll be living with the gays.

Good. Less chance of being hit on.

You have nothing to worry about, Glen smacks the figurine down on the painted end table; Leah’s sure it’s going to break. No one’s going to hit on you. Then Glen stands and leaves the room, headed for the kitchen where Leah hears her mom humming along to Barry Manilow.

Fifty-five year-old Lorna Newland dances, Copacabana-style, into the living room. She carries two packages.

It’s clear she lives for her two children. Unfortunately, they don’t live for her. But Leah knows her mother went out of her way to make the going-away celebration memorable.

Singing a throwback 70’s song, Lorna sets the presents down right on top of Leah’s map. Make your grandmother happy. Open them now.

Gina, her grandmother, beams. Leah studies her grandma for a moment. She seems so small: Dentures too big for her mouth, hands curled in on themselves. Maybe she’s physically fading.

Lorna clears her throat, and Leah moves the map from under the gifts, checking it for creases. She hates creases. When she finds none, Leah folds it.

Open it, Gina demands.

Leah sets the map aside and unwraps the package along the seams of the paper, not wanting to tear the gift-wrap: Just another thing to drive her crazy.

A sewing kit! Leah says with mustered enthusiasm.

Buttons pop off at the worst times, Grandma Gina says.

Leah opens the pouch and removes a whistle on a chain and a butterfly pin. No sewing items.

I was dancing with a fellow—not your grandfather, Gina says. He twirled me so hard that a button popped off and my boob flew out. The shock of the experience shows on her face. I could have used a sewing kit then. Instead, I danced all night like this. She closes her arms over her chest.

Lorna shakes her head at Leah—the tell-tale sign that Lorna thinks her grandmother is making up memories again.

Thanks for the tip, Grandma, Leah says while twirling the whistle.

That’s in case you get into a spot.

Leah nods.

Glen picks up the butterfly pin, and his face is a question mark.

My father bought that pin for me when I was a girl, Gina reminisces, so that I’d stop chasing butterflies and pinning them.

Glen winces. He looks as though he’s going to be sick.

Gina turns to Leah. I want you to have it.

Leah ponders the item before taking it from her grandmother.

His famous saying was ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.’

Leah opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted.

What does that even mean? Glen asks while trying to puzzle it out. That doesn’t even make sense. Unless it’s some sort of weird hybrid bug. Glen fingers the sharp end as if it’s a dangerous weapon, as if putting himself in a scenario with the mythical creature. Disgust spells out on his face.

Leah clears her throat. Grandma, I actually think Muhammad Ali said that.

Muhammad who? Gina asks, leaning in toward Leah and turning up the volume on her hearing aid.

Lorna points to her temple, does a swirly-whirly thing with her finger and rolls her eyes.

It looks expensive, Grandma.

Real rubies and emeralds.

Lorna shakes her head.

I want to play some Yahtzee, Grandma Gina blurts.

Not right now, Grandma.

Lorna steps in the center of the conversation. This is from your father, Glen, and me.

Touchdown! Yes! Jay jumps up.

Leah’s eyes move to the television set, but Lorna chooses to ignore it.

It’s not from me, Glen says, leaning back in his chair.

Where is dad? Leah asks.

Open the gift.

Leah removes the paper, revealing a glass, heart-shaped music box. As she lifts the lid, Chicago chimes. Leah gives Lorna a wide-eyed look. She’s clearly moved by the gesture.

So not from me, Glen says.

Leah, so much like her mom, ignores her brother. Where did you find it?

We found it, Lorna answers.

Music Box Company, Glen says as if spilling the news about Santa Claus.

Leah shoots her brother a look. I’m going to find dad.

***

It’s dark in the den, except for the flashing screen where the stock quotes scroll along the bottom of the television. The anchorman drones in his monotone voice. Intel’s stock showed a sharp increase today…

Leah tunes it out and focuses on her dad, who tips back in his recliner. Darrell Newland is a distinguished man in his mid-fifties. He wears his glasses on the tip of his nose, making him look either like an east coast scholar or a washed-up newspaper reporter. As Leah creeps in with the music box, she notices that her dad’s stern demeanor remains unchanged.

Dad?

Darrell continues to look straight ahead.

Even Leah’s voice is a tiptoe. Thank you for the music box. Mom said—

Shhh. I’m trying to listen to the stocks.

Leah hesitates, and then sets the gift on the end table and leaves.

Chapter Two

In the waxing light of a new morning, a snowplow hums in the distance. Curls of chimney smoke thread through the brisk air, and the muted headlights of a plow prowl along a street riddled with vehicles. The truck buries the Illinois plates in a blanket of white, sending a burst of flakes into the air.

A set of tire marks cuts through the newly-fallen snow, the only thing left behind by Leah Newland’s Honda as it trails out of town before the rising sun. The song Chicago pipes through a tinny car stereo.

Then the plow trudges through, sweeping away any sign she was there at all.

***

The music box lay on the passenger’s seat of the Honda. On the radio, I Left My Heart in San Francisco replaces the melody of Chicago. Traffic rushes past as Leah navigates her way along the I-101. She spies the Golden Gate Bridge up ahead, and Leah’s heart races.