Barefoot Beach (5 page)

The Turquoise Café was located in the Tuckahoe Mews, a twisting alley off the main drag lined with high-end artsy-craftsy shops and specialty women's boutiques. I trotted by Neptune's Sister, which carried shell and coral necklaces—not my style—and silver bracelets, beautiful but pricey. I moved on past the lemon-and-lavender facade of Time and Tide Books, then ducked through the bougainvillea-draped arches of Rainbow's End, a restaurant with a largely gay male clientele who congregated in the half-walled front garden at sunset to drink and laugh and sometimes dance to Cole Porter on the sound system.

I made a left turn, then followed the aroma of brewing coffee and freshly baked muffins, and there I was at the Turquoise Café, a vibrant blue-green jewel set among the paler pastel shops. Through the glass storefront, I saw Emine behind the marble counter serving a customer. I rapped on the window and she looked toward me, smiled a greeting, and motioned me in.

The café was flooded with morning light. One pale aqua wall was decorated with photographs of the Turquoise Coast, the Turkish Riviera. The opposite wall was a backdrop for an arrangement of rugs, a red-and-yellow Oushak, a Kayseri silk, and some smaller hangings. Across the ceiling, Emine had hung banners of gauzy yellow fabric that billowed with each air-conditioned draft. Under this gossamer tent, the customers
sat back and slipped into slow gear, sipped coffee, and nibbled pastry or
simit
, the Turkish bagel. You could almost see them shed their tight winter skins.

I headed toward one of the smaller tables against the window to drop my gym bag before placing my order at the service counter. I watched as Em exchanged a few words with her husband, waved me back, and met me halfway across the floor. She wrapped me in a hug and I felt the crispness of her white apron appliquéd with a rendition of the
nazar boncuğu
, the blue anti–evil eye talisman, which reputedly brought good luck or at least warded off bad. Maybe the crush of her embrace pressed into me some of its power to deflect calamity. I could hope.

She nodded at my choice of seating. “Here is good. I am taking my break.”

The early breakfast rush was over; the counter line had thinned. Adnan and his cousin Volkan, who helped out at peak times, had the front of the house under control and Em could sit for a while, she said. We lowered ourselves into chairs cushioned in turquoise fabric and automatically extended hands across the table so we could interlace our fingers.

“Cold,” she commented on my skin's chill. “On such a warm day, your fingers are ice.”

Lon used to say that my blood literally ran cold when I was frightened, sad, or worried.

The aroma of toasted spices had given me a taste for a mug of the traditional rich Turkish coffee, or maybe for one of Em's inventions, bicultural cardamom lattes or cinnamon and clove macchiatos. But Emine had preempted my coffee order by telling Adnan to bring us both tea. He materialized on his silent tread with a tray holding two tulip-shaped glass cups, steam rising from them, and a plate of baklava still warm from the oven.

The atmosphere cooled in his presence. While he and I exchanged polite greetings, his wife turned her back on him and stared out the window at
the Friday morning shoppers strolling by, the gulls pecking at crumbs on the cobblestones. Tension prickled the air. I knew the Haydars were going through a rough patch, something to do with Merry, because it was always something about their daughter. In her weekly phone calls from Tuckahoe to Baltimore to brief me on the off-season happenings at We Got Rhythm, Em's end of the conversation eventually slid from business to personal and invariably to her wayward daughter. How helpless my friend felt. How alone, despite the parade of therapists with their contradictory theories and recommendations. How she and Adnan disagreed on how to handle their difficult child.

Handsome and slim, his crisp unstained apron wrapped from chest to knee like armor, he bent stiffly to remove the items from the tray and arrange them in front of us. Traditional black tea for Emine, the apple tea I loved at my place, the plate of pastries centered.

“You are well?” he asked me.

“Fine,” I said. “You?”

“Thanks God, yes.” He cleared his throat and said, “This baklava is with chocolate. I know you like chocolate, Nora. But we also have—”

“Tell me when you need me back there,” Em interrupted him without shifting her gaze from the gulls. It was a dismissal.

“For now, it is quiet,” he replied. “I will let you two have your talking time together.”

“You will
let
?” Emine whipped around. This was a new version of my gentle friend. “You will
let
? Very kind of you.”

“All I meant . . .” He shrugged, raised an eyebrow to me as if we were conspirators in some plot. Then he clipped an old-school bow toward me, turned on his heel, and strode away.

Em stared into her cup. I cradled mine to warm my hands. Before sipping, I inhaled the apple scent and felt the steam soften the grip of my anxiety about my own kid.

Emine pushed the plate of baklava toward me. I pushed it back, but it
was a symbolic gesture. An extra inch away wouldn't stop me from polishing off at least two pieces of the syrup-drenched pastry she made from scratch.

At that moment, Erol, the Haydars' ten-year-old son, dashed by with a pink backpack slung from one finger. He called out a hi to me.

“Again Merry left her lunch behind.” Em shook her head in frustration. “She's so mean to her brother, and he tries hard to be kind. Him, she hates all the time. Me, one day she hates—one day she hugs. The doctor says the hormones of puberty are giving her the ups and downs. Like the roller coaster in Ocean City.”

“Sounds like a typical teenager,” I responded.

“I wish so. Meryem is not typical.” She gave me a smile made crooked by pain.

When I'd first met Emine six years before, I thought she resembled a woman on an ancient Turkish mosaic with her elegantly carved features and deeply waved brown hair loosely gathered back from an oval face. Now the grout between the tiles was showing as a fretwork of wrinkles, and her hair was wisped with silver. She was still beautiful, but less vivid, more faded than her forty-one years warranted. The last few with Merry had aged her.

She went on. “So now we have new things to be concerned with. Makeup, too much. Adnan will not allow it when she works at the café. Even so we keep her in the back, not serving the customers. But as soon as her shift is over she goes to the bathroom and piles it on. Then she usually slips out the back door to sneak past us.”

Em rubbed her eyes with her palms as if she could erase her daughter's image. “We grounded her for a week after she gave herself that awful haircut. Adnan pulled her cell phone when she broke curfew. A friend loaned her another one. We can't keep up. Her final grades were high. She's very smart and, I am ashamed to say, very cunning. Also stubborn. Like her father. Adnan is . . . Well, there is an Arab saying ‘Stubborn as a
Turk.' He is best example.” She shook her head. “Wrong—best example is his mother.”

The legendary Mrs. Haydar senior still ruled what was left of the roost in Istanbul, but Emine lived in terror of her random visits. At seventy-eight, Selda Haydar was a powerhouse, as crammed with opinions, advice, and directives as her
imam bayildi
, stuffed eggplant, was crammed with onions and garlic. Selda had insisted on cooking the dish for me during her last stay, although I told her eggplant made my tongue fuzzy. “Not
my
recipe,” she'd insisted, looming over me as I ventured to take a forkful. One of the reasons for the family's relocation to the States was her daughter-in-law's refusal to live under Selda's thumb.

Emine sent a sharp look toward her husband as if he'd made the choice of a mother. Misinterpreting, he lifted a kettle questioningly. More tea? She shook her head no.

She sighed. “Every day it's something new with Merry. Boys now. She's crazy for them. She winks to them. They look at . . .” Her hands made a silhouette of breasts. “Thanks God, so far I think mostly it is fantasy. But I worry that she'll step over the line. Do they have judgment at that age?”

I thought of Jack's love or lust or whatever drove his need to hang on to mean-girl Tiffanie. At nineteen, my son was no Solomon.

Emine played with a sugar packet, folding and refolding it until it sprung a leak. “Thinking about her keeps me awake at night. If she's like this now—and she just had the fifteenth birthday last month—what do we have to look forward to at sixteen and”—she shuddered—“eighteen? What college would even consider her with the way she presents herself?”

“Sometimes the future takes care of itself,” I said. Kismet wasn't a particularly consoling concept at the moment, but it was all I had. Maybe I should try to believe it myself.

Em darted a look to the line beginning to form at the counter. “I'd better go help up front.”

If I was going to teach the morning Zumba class, I'd better get moving, too. Em walked me to the door and stopped to tuck a pound of her finest ground coffee into my gym bag, along with a package of the sour-cherry baklava Jack loved.

We hadn't talked about him. On my way to town, I'd thought I wanted to. I'd hoped Em, a wise and caring soul, could help me sort out my conflicted feelings. But as she anguished over Merry, I thought how trifling my situation would sound compared to hers. I was worried because my son was elated at the prospect of locating his sperm donor? I should have been thrilled for Jack. I was. And I wasn't. I was scared. I'd been ambushed too many times before not to see danger lurking around every dark corner. Besides, hearing myself talk about his quest would make it real. And bottom line, what was there to say? So far nothing had happened. Not actually. Just possibly, and possibly didn't count.

Em kissed me on one cheek, then the other. “Say hello to Margo for me.”

Oh God. Margo. I'd forgotten. She attended the eleven a.m. Zumba class.

“Tell her we'll be there early to set up the coffee and pastries on Sunday.” The Manolises' annual Father's Day cookout. “I spoke to her yesterday about it, but you know how anxious she gets before the party. Sixty people on your lawn is a big deal. And they're predicting thunderstorms in the afternoon. She said she would try to make it to class, but she wasn't sure. She has the pool man coming sometime this morning and the tent people this afternoon.”

The pool man, I got. One of her many minions. But the tent people? It sounded like a
Star Trek
episode.

“Summer begins. You are now officially in charge of the studio,” Em said. “Now, go Zumba. And, oh yes, while you're there, take a look at the sign-in list for Tuesday nights. We're set with Larissa and Bobby.” She meant my assistants, who would cover anyone lacking a partner for the ballroom class. “We close out registration tomorrow.”

“Any surprises so far?” I asked.

We had our share of perennial students, especially among the older folks. Dancing exercised the body and mind. Music was good for the soul, and it was nice to be in a partner's embrace. For me now, having a man's arms around me was business. But once it hadn't been, and I missed that.

I hadn't thought about a man's arms wrapped around me for a long time after Lon's death. A man's body? Just the phrase had sent chills through me. The wrong kind. I replayed countless times the police officer's reporting, “Your husband's body was found . . . ,” and the conference chairwoman telling me, between sobs, how and where they'd found him.

The next time I could think of a man's body with pleasure wasn't until I was in the arms of Scott Goddard. Just dancing, nothing else. Of course nothing else. His wife, Bunny, was cracking her gum only feet away. And if that wasn't enough of a deterrent, the mind-reading admonition of Sister Loretta, principal back at Our Lady of Peace Academy, came in loud and clear. “The impure thought is, at the very least, a venial sin. It is also the devil's temptation to the act, which is a mortal sin.”

Those impure thoughts were addictive over that summer two years back. Scott's eyes, so very blue and usually cool, warmed when he strode over to claim me for the next dance. His arms were well muscled, his lead strong. One hand in mine was dry and warm; the other shaped a sure-fingered curve at my waist. Of course, what had sprung from those innocent gestures was an adolescent crush, and the sad truth was, I was old enough to know better.

Then one night that summer, on my deck, under the influence of jasmine-scented darkness and too much wine, I confessed to the worst possible priestess. Margo and I had already worked through a bottle of cabernet and opened a second, and I was relating the latest transgression of Bunnicula, as my girlfriend had named Scott's wife. The witch refused to
socialize with the other students during breaks and went outside to smoke and yammer into her cell phone. She treated Scott with barely concealed contempt and sneered when he stumbled trying to follow my demonstration of a step.