The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (22 page)

In bed that morning, Allegra startled awake at the scent of coffee. She could hear someone bustling in the kitchen, but Al was right here beside her. She shook his shoulder. “Al, wake up. I think someone’s broken into your house.”

He roused and propped himself on one elbow. “It’s only Cricket.”

“Who the hell is Cricket?”

“My housekeeper.”

She looked around the spartan bedroom: a platform bed, a chair and ottoman in the corner, a pile of books beside it. The only other item was a large abstract painting that looked to her like so much weathered wood with an orange paint spill on it that she wanted to touch it. His closet was one of those walk-in types, bigger than any of the bedrooms above The Owl & Moon. And tidy. Last night she’d watched him put his clothes into the hamper. There was nothing to clean. “What do you need a housekeeper for?”

He rubbed his eyes. “It’s a big house. I don’t have time to dust or keep the mildew at bay. She cleans up and—” he yawned and stretched his arms, falling back on the pillow. “Makes my dinner, does the laundry. Stuff like that. Don’t worry, I pay her a lot, and I give her a Christmas bonus and a paid vacation. Nobody’s getting exploited.”

Allegra turned and looked out the window. There it was, a daylight view of an empty beach, curlews and sandpipers at the water line, poking their beaks into the sand in search of sand crabs. “I have to get to work,” she said.

“No, you don’t. It’s Saturday.”

“Saturday is one of our biggest days at the café. I know I can’t do the baking, but I can run the register. Besides, Gammy needs to be able to yell at me for being a wanton sinner or she’ll be mean to customers all day.”

Al traced a finger down her spine. Doc, her fellow stargazer. The man who could make Spam and Swiss Miss cocoa haute cuisine. She could still hear the sound of his whoop when Damnation Creek Trail ended with the ocean view they’d hiked hours to see. Sex with someone you loved was different. There was youth and risk and adventure to measure up to. What if after all these years, she wasn’t any good? “I need to shower,” she said, getting up from the bed, standing there in the T-shirt, afraid to let him see her naked.

Al turned over and whistled. “Nice legs. Come back to bed.”

“I can’t. I have to get changed and call a cab unless you’re willing to drive me.”

“Then take my car.”

“But how will you get around?”

He gave her a sheepish smile. “Actually, I have two cars.”

“Two cars? Why on earth do you need two cars?”

“The Porsche I drive to work. Sometimes I use the Land Rover on the weekends. I still like getting into the woods, hiking. Oh, God. I’m going to have to sell them, aren’t I? Stop looking at me like I enjoy wasting fossil fuels. Until you said you’d marry me all I had for fun was my cars. As soon as Mercedes comes out with a hybrid, I’m there.”

She looked at his sleepy face. “We’re so different. What makes you so sure we can do this?”

“Hey, I know Pascal wasn’t a poet, but he did say ‘the heart has its reasons. ’Dammit, Allegra. I’ll sell everything and deed this place to the Nature Conservancy if that’s what it takes for you to have faith in me. In us.”

She decided he meant it. “You don’t have to sell anything. For now.”

He tossed his pillow in the air and caught it. “Thank you. Come back when you’re done working. We can have all night and tomorrow together.”

“I’ll try. It depends on how things go with Gammy and the girls.”

“Let me come with you. We’ll tell them together.”

“Thanks, but I think I have to do this alone.”

Allegra parked on the street at a meter she’d have to feed quarters to all day, but at least she could keep an eye on the ritzy car. She slid her key into the front-door lock, pausing first to look up at the sign. All these years it had been her touchstone. Then Al came back. She wanted to believe that their finding one another was as magic to him as it was to her, that maybe it had drawn him here, but she knew the true reason was her illness. The moment she entered the café she heard Gammy in the kitchen, speaking to Mariah. “Four in the morning, Mariah?”

Her daughter countered, “But you said you’d babysit Lindsay, and she sleeps late on Saturday. I didn’t realize you wanted me home early.”

“I suppose four
AM
is normal for some folks, like milkmen or newspaper delivery boys.”

“I’m sorry. If I’d known it was going to upset you…”

Allegra tried to send Mariah a mental message: Don’t cave in! If she’d learned anything over the years, it was don’t give Gammy ammunition and don’t ever apologize.

“That’s not the point,” Gammy continued, and Allegra could see Mariah’s stricken face through the cutout for the order counter. Whatever brief joy a late night with Fergus had given her, it was gone now. “Dating is good for you. God wants us to find mates, but premarital sex, that’s a big N-O.”

“We didn’t have sex.”

“Not this time.”

“I said I was sorry, Gammy.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“Then, well, what other point is there?”

That tremble in Mariah’s voice meant she was going to cry. Her tough cookie of a daughter, finally taking a chance on love. Allegra set her keys down on the counter and picked up Khan for a quick snuggle. She kissed him all over, and inhaled his doggy smell, which was earthy and funky and better than perfume.

“Mariah, that old saying about why buy the cow when you can milk it through the fence is as true now as it was when people still owned cows. I’m going to tell you something not even your mother knows. I was starry-eyed myself, once. Then I had an argument with my beau over something so silly I can’t even remember what it was. Along comes Myron Moon, the heir to a lumber company, and every girl’s idea of a happy ending. He poured me a drink while I boo-hooed my troubles to a boy I thought was a good listener. Turned out he listened so well I let him lift my dress. Thirty days later I have to say good-bye to the boy I could have been happy with to marry the one who made me pregnant. You think that was any way to start a marriage? Let me tell you, Sister Sue, it was not. I was a conquest, that’s all. He got tired of me when I was there every day. When he was killed his family couldn’t wait two days to ship me off. This building we’re standing in? It was my go-away-and-forget-you-ever-knew-us present.”

Allegra was stunned.

Mariah said, “That’s not fair. You should have told me when I got pregnant with Lindsay. You should have told Mom a long time ago.”

“I was ashamed. Some things are personal. Premarital sex is a sin. Why else does the Church advise against it? Come on, now. Don’t make me lose faith in you. Think of the example you’re setting for Lindsay.”

That did it. Allegra put Khan in his basket, but he’d already started trembling. He’d always sensed her moods. “Mama,” Allegra said, pushing her way into the kitchen through the louvered saloon doors. “You shut your mouth this instant.”

“Here comes another one who thinks it’s acceptable to stay out all hours with a man,” Gammy said. “Is anybody going to work today?”

Allegra took down from the wall the oversized ladle someone had given to her one year as a joke present. She lifted it up, and then brought it down as hard as she could, enough to leave a dent on the metal counter. “That’s enough out of you! Don’t you dare talk to my daughter that way.”

“Why not? I raised her.”

“Gammy!” Mariah said. “You take that back. Allegra may not have been the best mother, but she loves me and Lindsay with all her heart.”

Allegra blinked away tears on what should have been the happiest day of her life. “Honey, you go start folding napkin bundles. I need to talk to Gammy alone.”

Mariah fled. Gammy squared off, the ailing dishwasher at her back. Allegra composed herself as much as she could, but every nerve was bristling. “I know life didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to, Mama. I know raising me by yourself wasn’t easy. But I can’t think of one reason why you’d keep your pregnancy story from me all these years except to punish me. I have to wonder what your God thinks about that, Mama. I just have to wonder.”

Gammy sniffled. “You think the world stopped in its tracks when I made a mistake? It did not. I didn’t tell you because I was trying my darndest to keep it from happening to you. And look what happened. It did. I failed.”

Allegra took hold of her mother’s hand. “You didn’t fail, you were human. But do you have any idea how much easier it would have been for Mariah if she’d known you got pregnant accidentally, too? Here I lived my whole life feeling sorry for you losing Myron so early, and his family rejecting us when it turns out you didn’t even want to be there.” She hung the ladle up. “Where Mariah’s concerned I admit I screwed up a lot of the time. But she’s an adult, and if she wants to spend the night with Charlie Manson, that’s her decision. Are your legs bothering you? Why don’t you go back upstairs? We can handle things down here without you.”

Gammy snorted. “You have no more flesh on you than a scarecrow. I’d like to see you try to get through this day without me.”

“Then take a seat at the counter.”

Gammy took hold of her cross and looked away. Allegra, fire in her belly, went into the café and found Mariah standing at table four, crying. She put her arms around her from behind, and for once, Mariah allowed it. “Imagine that. Us loose broads having something in common with Gammy! Who’d of thunk it?” She pressed her face into Mariah’s hair, which smelled of a man’s soap. Allegra patted her daughter’s shoulder. “We’ll cope, honey. Gammy doesn’t mean to be so harsh. It’s her legs. Sooner or later we are going to have to get Al to give us a Mickey to slip into her food. Then we’ll rush her to the hospital and have the varicose vein surgery done. Maybe when she isn’t in pain all the time, she’ll act human again. And for what it’s worth? Good for you, staying out late. I bet you had fun.”

The way Mariah smiled, Allegra knew she was right. “Simon will be here any minute, and I have croissants to bake.”

“Yes,” Allegra said. “And I seem to have lost one of my eyebrows. Thank God they come in packs of three.”

Gammy stayed upstairs all day. Lindsay came down around ten, and surprised Allegra by putting on an apron and taking up an order pad. “Can I wait on tables? I need to earn some money for supplies for my science project.”

For once Allegra thought before she answered. “Go ask your mother.”

Allegra watched the way Mariah placed her hand on Lindsay’s shoulder. That restrained gesture said it all. She was a better mother than Allegra had been to her. Lindsay smiled broadly and began taking charge of her tables. Timing, she told herself, was everything. Part three of her plan—telling Mariah and Lindsay—could wait a little while.

“I
FAIL TO SEE HOW
shopping counts as a date,” Fergus complained on the Wednesday afternoon of Halloween as Mariah dragged him into the used bookstore near the Monterey Bay Aquarium. “If it’s secondhand books you’re after, Hay-on-Wye’s the place to go.”

“Where’s that, I’m afraid to ask,” Mariah said, running her finger along the spines of the science books, trying to find the
S
authors. Interesting organizational skills were at work here—there was a
B
in the middle of the
R
’s, and that was followed by an
M,
for crying out loud.

“Wales.”

Of course it was. Fergus thrived on telling her how everything “across the pond” was superior to America, to Northern California in particular, to which she always replied, then why do you live here? “Next time we’re in Wales, I’ll make a special point to check out the bookstores. Just give me a few minutes, okay? I’ve been looking for this book for months.”

“Why?”

“Because Lindsay loves this author.”

“Allow me to help you.”

She felt his lips graze the back of her neck. “That’s not helping. As soon as I find the book, we can go have our conventional date. Dammit all, they told me they had it when I called. I can’t believe someone else in Pacific Grove would be on the hunt for
Communications with Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
I’m going to ask the guy at the desk. If he sold it to someone else I’m going to be very mad.”

“If I was that bloke,” Fergus said, “I’d run hell-bent for leather.”

Mariah stuck her tongue out at Fergus, then marched up to the elderly gentleman behind the counter who apparently didn’t hear very well. Finally she wrote the title down on a business card and pointed. “It’s by Carl Sagan. You know, ‘billions and billions’? That guy.”

“Never heard of him.”

“But I called here this morning. Whoever answered the phone said you had it.” She glanced at her watch. “That was only a few hours ago.”

He began counting out his till. “Sorry. We’re closing now. Come back another time.”

“You’re dreaming if you think I’ll come back after this lousy service.”

Fergus took Mariah by the arm and dragged her through the doorway.

“Why did you do that? I wasn’t finished telling him what a terrible shopkeeper he was.”

“Precisely why I removed you. Into the car with you. Theodora’s waiting.”

Mariah rode along in silence to Noah’s Bark, the doggie day-care center where Fergus left Theodora on workdays. Her feet hurt, and she had a burn on her wrist from not paying attention to the oven door this morning. This book would have made the perfect Christmas present. Mariah had imagined the look on Lindsay’s face. She’d immediately stick her nose into the pages and inhale like some people did with coffee beans.

“Cheer up, lass,” Fergus said. “You’ll find it yet. Of that I have no doubt. You’re as stubborn as you are pretty.”

“You don’t have to butter me up,” she said. “I was planning to have sex with you tonight anyway.”

Fergus braked so hard for the red light that they both had to brace themselves against the dashboard. He cleared his throat. “I must know. Was it retail frustration that prompted this decision? If so, we must shop more often.”

She looked out the window at the fog rolling in, bringing salt air through the air vents. “Now you’re talking like a sociologist trying to find some weird logical thread. It wasn’t that. We’ve established you’re a good kisser. Continual sexual frustration isn’t healthy. We end every evening with our hearts pounding and so breathless we sound like we have asthma.” She opened a stick of gum and peeled off the wrapper. “Even though the plague of AIDS looms over the world, safe sex can be had for minimal effort.”

“You’re dead romantic, aren’t you?”

She grinned. “Maybe I just want to see what’s under the hood.”

He continued to look at her while the light cycled its way to green again. “I have no idea what that means, but it sounds terribly racy. My da warned me about you American girls. So forward.”

“Fine, I won’t sleep with you. The light’s green.”

He accelerated. “I take that back. But seriously, Mariah, we’ll go to bed only if you’re ready.”

She had been ready since day one, but it had taken her eight weeks, two “teas,” one dinner out, one at the café, and one on his boat to make her brave enough to act on it. “I appreciate that about you, Fergus. You let me say whatever I want. You might be the only man I’ve ever met who’s done that for me.” She kissed his mouth, and then leaned back in the seat, trying to forget she’d missed finding that book.

He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t think I’m not grateful. Or won’t be more so in an hour.”

“You have a filthy mind for a college administrator.”

“Pot calling the kettle black, missy.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Saying things Gammy would say. I’m still mad at her and I don’t want to think about that.”

“Your gran’s of a different era, Mariah. She wants the best for you, and in her estimation, the rules are the same as they were when she was your age.”

“You don’t know the whole story.”

“Well, I do know that life’s brief enough. I say forgive her and move along. Yet why do I feel certain that isn’t the course you’ll choose?”

She was touched that her life dilemmas actually caused him to frown. “Admit you like the stubborn in me.”

He downshifted. “I’ve always appreciated pushy women. My mum was one. Fought her way to everything, until the bitter end.”

“What happened to her?”

“Dreadful disease. Ovarian cancer. I held her hand while she died.”

“I’m so sorry.” Mariah thought of Allegra, and tried to imagine her allowing such a thing as company on her deathbed. It would never happen. Allegra would run off like a sick dog and die somewhere hidden, it never crossing her mind that maybe those who loved her would like to say good-bye. Your mother’s going to be fine, Dr. G said, but he didn’t hand out guarantees. “Sounds like you did everything a good son should.”

“I tried. I do miss her. I’ve named every boat I’ve ever owned after her.”

“You have other boats?”

“Had. Sold them when I needed cash, or grew tired of the maintenance. ’Tis bad luck to change a boat’s name.”

“I’d heard that.” She patted his leg, and looked out the window toward the ocean until he took a left that headed them off in the direction of the valley. Gammy’s card-playing friends lived there. One of the “biddies” had a ramshackle farm and raised ladybugs that she sent through the mail to organic gardeners. Another tatted lace tablecloths that took her years to finish. Gammy was of a different era. Her legs needed a surgeon. With her mind so sharp and her draft horse work ethic it was easy to forget she would soon turn sixty-nine.

“We love having Theo with us,” the girl behind the counter at Noah’s Bark said. “She’s so patient with everyone, even the shy dogs. We call her the canine Gandhi. I wish all our clients were like her.”

“Thanks. We love her, too,” Fergus said. “Do I owe you any money?”

The woman checked the computer. “Nope. You still have a hundred dollars credit on your account.”

Mariah watched Fergus greet his dog, taking note of the routine: First they shook paws, and then butted foreheads. Theodora’s long pink tongue darted forth to sneak in a kiss, and then Fergus scratched behind her ears, and her immense tail thumped the floor. The deerhound trembled with pleasure when he hooked the leash onto her harness. Fergus told Mariah he never missed a day, even if it was raining, even if he had a cold. On the weekends she got two walks a day, three if he was feeling ambitious. She wondered what Theo would make of two bodies thrashing on the bed she slept next to. Would she be offended? Try to intervene? Just then, Mariah missed her overly expensive condo. So many places to stretch out, and the whole time she’d lived there she’d never once had a man over, unless she counted Simon, who asked her why there were no paintings on the walls, and Mariah realized it was the first time she’d noticed.

The three of them piled into the Mini Cooper, Mariah wedged in the back so Theodora could stick her head out the passenger-side window.

“If you want to have a girlfriend, you should get a bigger car,” she said.

“I didn’t have a girlfriend when I leased the automobile. I plan to turn it in come December, just before I fly home for the holidays. Get one of those wagon things for the remainder of my year lease. Plenty of room for comfortable snogging.”

In May he’d leave for good. And he wasn’t spending Christmas here. She wanted to ask when he was coming back, and to hear him say it was only a week, but that was pushing the limits of the relationship, controlling, and also assuming the relationship was at that level, which was something normal women her age would know. “For Christmas you could give me a gift certificate to a chiropractor.”

“Mariah, what is this preoccupation with the holidays? It’s only All Hallows’ Eve. Fifty-five more days until Father Christmas arrives.”

“Fifty-five days will be gone before you know it, and I stopped counting on Father Christmas as soon as I could walk. I have to shop when Lindsay’s not around. She’s had that book on her wish list for years. This year’s been so difficult for her that I really want to find it.”

“You’re a fine mother.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

“Did I mention how beautiful you are?”

Mariah dodged Theodora’s tail. “You should save some of that for the bedroom. Don’t want to run out of compliments at a crucial moment.”

Fergus tsked. “The things you say, Mariah. Shocking.”

At the Pier Two parking lot, Fergus extricated Mariah from the backseat. “This is going to be the fastest dog walk ever recorded,” he said. “Come along, then, both of you. Let’s jog.”

Behind them, the sun set. Little children dressed in costumes ran across the path, followed by parents with flashlights. When Lindsay was little, Mariah had let Allegra take her trick-or-treating. Allegra dressed up as a witch, and served meals all day in that get-up. That she looked so authentic was enough reason for Mariah to shy away. Back then she’d been embarrassed by her mother. Now she looked at the emaciated, bald person bussing tables and saw only courage. The way she’d stood up for her with Gammy—that was rare. Gammy’s secret, who would have thought the old girl had it in her? Please let Lindsay escape the Moon women’s curse, she prayed. Wouldn’t Gammy rail and pound her chest if she knew her mean comments were what made Mariah finally decide to sleep with Fergus? How far had being “good” gotten her? Why not try “bad” for a while and see what happened?

Mariah stopped to rest at a picnic table, winded. “Go on without me,” she said. “My feet are killing me. If you want me awake for sex, I had better go mainline some coffee.”

“You’re certain?”

She waved him on and walked back to Pier Two. Lindsay was at Sally’s tonight. DeThomas Farms’ Halloween bash went all out—a haunted greenhouse, refreshments, and games. Lindsay was spending the night there. Sometimes Mariah lost track of where her daughter was, but odds were she was at Sally’s.

Every November Mariah drove Gammy over there to buy Christmas ornaments, but in picking Lindsay up so often Mariah had learned that out of season DeThomas Farms was a serious working establishment, with employees tending rows of plants and a steady flow of flower customers. Sally’s mother looked so tiny and frail in her wheelchair until Mariah saw her heft up a clay sculpture out of the garden and place it in her lap. Then she rolled away to the hobbitlike outbuilding, let herself in, and closed the door behind her.

Mariah was thrilled Lindsay had a friend, but Sally wasn’t your run-of-the-mill eighth grader. Some nights she overheard Lindsay on the phone, seriously discussing some boy named Charlie. Incipient adolescence, she told herself. Puberty doesn’t care that she isn’t five feet tall yet.

Just as she poked her key into the pier gate, here came Fergus. He feinted one way and then another, and Theodora followed, their body postures presenting a universal “play pose” observed in people the world over. Cultural anthropologists believed these gestures and signals—the semaphoric code of homo sapiens—were stored in the body as memory. Imagining the body having a mind of its own was freeing enough that maybe they could skip dinner. Just go straight to his small berth and stay there all night while all around them the town teemed with spooks and aliens who could be bought for a handful of M&M’s. Earlier she had made sure she was wearing her underwear, not Lindsay’s.