Seems Like Old Times Read Online Free

the hour glass, so are the days of our
lives."
    The words, the voice, reminded Lee of years ago when, as a
child, if home from school due to illness or vacation, she would watch that
soap with her mother. Judith would spend hours in front of the television. When
Lee was very young, her mother stayed home, living off of young widow's
benefits and insurance money after Jack’s death. After the money was all spent,
when Lee was about twelve, Judith got a job in a dentist’s office. But she
never lost her love of television. Lee often thought the sitcoms and dramas
were more real to Judith than the life she led. They were certainly livelier.
    Lee fought hard against those memories and the bitterness
that lurked just beneath the surface. She didn’t want to remember those days,
didn’t want to remember her mother, and how she used to act back then when Lisa
Marie was growing up...the days of her life. She excused herself and quickly
left the room.
    She wandered into the living room, a minefield of early
American reproductions, from a green and yellow floral high-backed sofa, to
frilly armchairs, and country-style wooden or porcelain knickknacks standing on
tables or hanging from walls. Despite the number of do-dads, the room looked
strangely empty. Then she realized that none of her mother's constant
companions were here. None of the Premier, Variety, and
Entertainment Weekly that cluttered the tabletops of her childhood. Or the filled ashtrays. Or the dirty glasses and empty
bottles...
    Judith had known Hollywood backwards and forwards. She
never let Lee forget that she had planned to go to Hollywood to become an
actress. It was only because of an auto accident--the one in which Lee’s father
died--that she didn’t make it. The accident had killed her
husband, shattered her right hip, and left her alone and limping and with
chronic pain. Worst of all, it had shattered her dreams.
    She tried to transfer those dreams to Lisa Marie, but
little Lisa Marie just couldn't live up to expectations, no matter how hard she
tried, and she'd once tried very, very hard.
    Lee turned away, rubbing her forehead, forcing her
thoughts back to her job, Bruce, anything but the past. Her stomach began to
churn for no apparent reason and she went into the kitchen for a swallow of her
ulcer medicine. No one knew about the ulcer, not even her fiancé, Bruce. She
learned early on to never show a weakness, never show she wasn’t in absolute
control. In her line of work, any flaw was an invitation to attack.
    She didn't want Miriam to know about it simply because she
didn't want Miriam to think that her perfect job and heaven-blessed love life
were anything less than ideal. They were ideal, but that didn’t make them
lacking in stress. She would have felt far less stress if she weren’t a
perfectionist, but to be one was part of her nature. She prepared for
interviews right up until airtime, and even when over, she would often fret
that she hadn’t dug a little deeper, hadn’t been a little more insightful.
    She folded her arms and paced, waiting for the medicine to
work. As she thought of how much Miriam had enjoyed being with her old friends,
she remembered that the best friend of her own childhood still lived in Miwok,
and although they’d made occasional phone calls and sent yearly Christmas and
birthday cards, they hadn’t sat and chatted together for many years.
    She phoned Cheryl McConnell, now Stanton, and was told to get
her butt right over there....
    o0o
    An hour later, Lee walked toward Cheryl Stanton's house.
She’d been there once before, ten years earlier, during a horribly mistaken
visit home, the last time she'd been to Miwok.
    It was a middle-class home--two-stories with dormer
windows on the top floor, and a jutting two-car attached garage. The front lawn
was more beige than green, and both it and the driveway were edged by low-lying
juniper. A basketball hoop hung over the garage door, three bicycles lay on their
sides in the