The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (10 page)

“Mariah!” Gammy called out as they were serving the last of the day’s soup—cheddar-ale today, topped with popcorn—new to the menu—Simon’s recipe—and a big hit. “Phone for you.”

Mariah took the receiver, expecting Lindsay’s homeroom teacher—she’d left her a message about the art class—or maybe her landlord, whom she’d left a fateful message: I’m giving notice. Take the rest of what I owe you out of the security deposit. She didn’t have the cash to pay next month’s rent. “Hello?”

“Fergus Applecross here.”

She wiped her free hand on her apron. Now what? “Did the new tea not agree with you?”

He laughed. “The tea was lovely.”

“Then what’s up?” Mariah said. “Was it the croissants?”

“Curious expression, ‘What is up?’ The sky, for one. And the sun, though it appears to be making its hasty retreat. Stock market prices could be up as well. I suppose it’s a good thing if one’s suspenders are up. And one’s spirits. I certainly hope yours are.”

Mariah was happy to listen to his accent, but participate in an actual conversation? “I guess by spirits you mean physical exhaustion. If so, my spirits are tired, but they’ll revive when I finish my shift. Why do you want to know?”

More laughing. “’Tis very good to hear you have a resilient spirit.”

A what? Oh, he was
flirting
with her. She imagined him on the other end of the phone, playing with the cord, leaning into his words, that verifiable body language she’d seen exhibited in her students, in her mother, in everyone but herself. She decided to chat for another minute, to let him down easily. “How are your spirits? Are you one of those people who feel depressed when it rains? If so, be warned, it rains a lot here in the winter. And in the summer it mists. Full spectrum lights can help.”

“I’m not worried. My spirits are definitely up.”

Now that they’d settled that worry, she wondered what to say next. She was no good at this. “So, did you want to order something to go?”

“Actually, yes. Listen, Mariah. There’s a spot in Edinburgh called the Elephant House. It’s a restaurant. It’s a short walk from the National Library, actually. They serve biscuits shaped like elephants. Here you’d call them cookies. Bit of a repository for elephant paraphernalia, actually. Over six hundred items, figurines, mainly. On Friday nights they have a lounge act, a chap who sings Frank Sinatra tunes.”

Oh, God. Maybe he had Asperger’s syndrome. How sad to be in another country and have no social skills. A person with Asperger’s had little sense of private space. Once they began talking it was difficult to shut them up. “Is the singer any good?” she asked.

“Sadly, he is not.”

Mariah leaned her elbows on the counter, aware that her grandmother was listening. Save me, she mouthed, but Gammy turned her head away. Dammit. “And this is important for me to know because?”

“Because were you and I in Edinburgh, which unfortunately we are not, I would ask you to accompany me there this evening. They make the best cup of coffee.”

“Besides ours, right?”

“Certainly,” he said. “That’s it exactly. In addition, they happily provide instructions on how to make your own best Joe at home.”

“If it’s that good, why don’t they guard the recipe with their lives?”

“I had a feeling you might see it that way, being in the café business.”

“I’m just a waitress. I live on tips, not profit and loss statements.”

“Is that so?”

She could hear the smile in his voice. God helps those who are willing to pick up a shovel and pitch in, Gammy would say. No free rides. “Thanks for the chat, Mr. Applecross, but I have the feeling you’re trying to ask me out on a date and the thing is, I don’t really date.”

“Why ever not?”

She sighed. “For one thing, it’s too complicated.”

“Come along. A man, a woman, plates and silver, chatter, films. How can that be complicated?”

“It’s extremely complicated. Dating convention largely insists you not tell the truth. When a man asks how you are, and you have tired feet or cystitis, he really means say you’re fine. Then he’ll ask you for a date and you won’t reject him. I can show you statistics to support this. Men fear rejection more than anything else, including war. I’m sorry if that sounds blunt, but I don’t like games. And dating is games. I don’t have time for it.”

“What a pity.”

“Why is it a pity? Because I don’t see it the way you do?”

“How do I see it?”

She bit her thumbnail. “Well, okay, maybe I don’t know how you see it.”

“Which is a good reason to have tea with me.”

She frowned, and played with the toothpick dispenser. “Excising dating from my life has proved efficient. I never said you had to agree with it.”

“I’m not asking for a date, or dinner, only for tea. What time shall I fetch you?”

“Mr. Applecross, thank you for your interest, but in addition to asking the wrong person you also have unfortunate timing. My mother’s not well; I work long days that start at four
AM
, and I have a twelve-year-old daughter who’s worried sick about her science project topic. Now do you see why I can’t go out with you?”

“Not at all. Think about it for a second. The information you’ve just given me only reinforces your need for time away. I’m not being selfish; many would agree. And meeting new people broadens one’s view.”

Mariah wanted to scream. Why now? Dateless for so many years, being hit on by a man even her grandmother found sexy. The opposable forces in her life refused to knit together. And a tiny part of her, maybe two or three atoms, wanted to go, even if it led nowhere. Did that make her a terrible daughter? “I really—”

“Damn,” Fergus Applecross said, interrupting her. “Knew I should have sprung for tickets to The Elephant House. Would have been a long journey, though. Not sure I’d have been able to get you back in time for work tomorrow. And on my salary we’d have been forced to fly coach.”

“Look, it’s not that. I’m sure you’re very good company, but we’re having a family crisis just now. I’m not sure my mother’s up to watching my daughter.”

“I will hold while you check with her,” he said. “I love that American term—‘on hold.’ Brings to mind barnacles on wharfs, handshakes and promises. In Dublin, you’ll find the door of Reconciliation. Two men, their families longtime enemies, grew weary of the killing, so one chopped a hole in the door and put his hand through. He could very well have lost that hand, but they shook as gentlemen do, and in place of war there was peace.”

Mariah set the phone on the counter, and turned to see Gammy standing right behind her. “Sean Connery,” she whispered.

Gammy smiled. “I’m jealous, Mariah. Thought I’d hung up my dancing shoes but that man could put the jig back in my step.”

Mariah whispered more urgently. “He wants to take me to tea. Help me get out of it.”

“Say yes. I’ll take Lindsay to bingo with me.”

“Lindsay can watch herself. It’s just that Mom needs us around her.”

“That’s fluffer-nutter and you know it. Alice can be sick by herself, or I can skip bingo. We’ll be there if anything happens. Where’s he taking you?”

“I have no idea because I don’t intend to go.”

“Well, hell’s bells, Mariah. What’s the harm in drinking a cup of tea and talking with someone of the opposite sex? You’ve spent your whole life with your nose in a book. Say yes or hand me that phone so I can make him take me instead.”

Mariah picked up the receiver to hear Fergus Applecross laughing. “I apologize if you heard any of that. We’re not your typical family.”

“Whose family is?”

“Only one cup. My mother’s not well. She needs her family.”

“I understand. Shall I fetch you up around seven?’

“Fetch me what? Why not come over here? That way the tea won’t cost us anything.”

He laughed and laughed. “Forgive me. You’re such a strange girl.”

“Excuse me? How am I strange?”

“Strange in a refreshing way, believe me. I’ll fetch you up around seven.”

He hung up and she groaned. “Great. Now I’m getting fetched! Thanks, Gammy. What am I supposed to wear? My stinky work clothes? One of Allegra’s hippie dresses?”

Simon came out of the kitchen. “Scarlett O’Hara’s dress of draperies comes to mind.”

“Very funny, eavesdropper.”

“How can I not joke when every word that comes out of your mouth is so socially inept?”

“Thanks, Simon. This from the king of cool. The man who invented one-word sentences.”

“Jealous,” he said. “Losing your academic job may be your last chance for normalcy, Mariah. Write that dean a thank-you note. Send him one of Bess’s fruitcakes.”

“Don’t you insult my fruitcake, Mister,” Gammy said. “Mariah, you know I love you to pieces, but truthfully, honey, your hair could stand a perm. And have you ever heard of lipstick?”

“Gammy, give it up,” Mariah said. “I am never getting a perm. I don’t even have time to use conditioner, let alone lipstick.”

“Which explains a lot,” Simon said. “You could always—brace yourself for the shock—go shopping.”

“Great idea, Simon. Except I have no money. The only shopping I can do is at the thrift store, and with my luck, I’d end up picking something I donated.”

“Yes, and while that works for your mother,” he said, “somehow I can’t see it setting off your best feature, which, alas, is your mind.”

Mariah gave him a withering look. “Isn’t it time for you to go home and water your cymbidiums?”

“Why, so it is.”

“Then go before I beat you to a pulp with my order pad.”

“I pray for your soul, Simon,” Gammy said.

“Now there’s an exit line if ever I heard one.”

He exited out the back door, and Mariah shook her head, trying to clear it enough to figure out how to undo this “date.” Her mother had taken Khan for a walk, and Dr. Goodnough had gone along with her. Lindsay was upstairs researching topics like chaos theory and black holes. “Why does everyone around here know my personal business?” she asked her grandmother.

“Count your blessings,” Gammy said. “I hate to think what things would be like if we left you to your own devices.”

“Y
OU CAN SO STAND IT
,” Sally DeThomas said when Lindsay told her about Allegra’s chemotherapy a week later, during yet another endless block of art. Mrs. Shiasaka, her homeroom teacher, had convinced Lindsay’s mom to keep her in art class. “Just because you think, omigod, I am going to curl up and die when stuff gets bad, it doesn’t mean a hundred percent that’ll happen. Just cry for a while and then figure out a way to get through it. My dad croaked before I was even born. My mom’s had one heart attack already, both she and my stepdad are in wheelchairs for life, and my aunt Ness is HIV positive. What is the common denominator?”

Lindsay thought hard. “Really bad luck?”

Sally waved her hand in Lindsay’s face. “Hello? Me! I’m still here. And they’re still here, too.”

“I guess,” Lindsay said, “except for your dad.”

Sally shrugged like she didn’t care, but Lindsay knew otherwise. Sally glued a feathery fin to her papier-mâché fish, which was edged in glitter and perfect. “Your grandma will be sick for a little while, but once she’s on the right medicine, things will go back to normal.”

Lindsay doubted it. Carl Sagan had not gotten better. He did everything right. He got his bone marrow transplant from someone in his own family, and he died anyway. If Allegra died, then what? Would Lindsay inherit Khan? Walk him every day to the cemetery to see Allegra’s grave? Who would be left to protest for the underpaid hotel maids who wanted maternity leave? Who would take samples to the city council and make sure everyone knew just how much chlorine was in the drinking water?

“I know!” Sally said, setting her fish down, her beautiful purple-and-orange-spotted fish that looked like it had just been pulled up in a fisherman’s net from a tropical island where happy people sang and ripe fruit fell into your hands. “Make her a card. Grandmothers go wackadoo over hand-made cards. She’ll be so happy she’ll give you more money on your next birthday. When’s your birthday? Mine’s in November, only two months away. I can’t wait to turn thirteen. God, I love the way the word sounds—thirteen—so French.”

Lindsay looked down at her hopeless fish. This was the first assignment of the year that counted. She’d been working on it for two weeks and it was due at the end of this period. She’d given up on making it look realistic. Now it was a fish that had been in the back of the line when evolution was busy making all the other ocean creatures strangely beautiful and leaving him only strange. “I don’t know how to make a stupid card,” she said, throwing the fish-mess down onto the table. “I don’t know how to make a stupid fish, either.”

Sally took Lindsay’s fish in her hands, turning it over and over. “This looks like that mongo weird fish at the Aquarium, doesn’t it?”

“The ocean sunfish?”

“
Mola mola
in Latin,” Sally said.

“Also translates to—”

“Millstone!” she and Sally said in unison, and several of the other girls looked up to see who was having more fun than they were.

“Actually, that’s my favorite fish,” Lindsay said.

“So maybe you made it subconsciously,” Sally said. “That’s what art is, you know. ‘The conscious use of skill plus the surrender to the subconscious, blah-bitty-blah-blah.’ I’m quoting my mom, and knowing her, she was probably quoting the dead aunt I’m named after. Sounds good, though, doesn’t it? It’s amazing how far bullshit can get you.”

Lindsay had no idea what Sally meant. “Did you know that the sunfish has no caudal fin? In order to swim it has to work the dorsal fin really hard. That’s why people sometimes mistake it for a shark. They bask in the sun. If you’re out on a boat and conditions are right, you can see them lying flat right near the surface of the water.”

“Cool. Have you seen one in the regular ocean?” Sally asked.

Lindsay pictured herself standing by Cousteau’s great-grandson, charting the Monterey Coast, finding a new species of jellyfish and naming it
Allegras Oceanus,
after her grandmother so that when she died, a part of her would live on. “Not yet.”

“Here’s what you do to save your project,” Sally said. “Paint him gray, but not just one gray, a bunch of different shades of gray. Especially on the ossicles. Do tone on tone, like Mr. Hiller is always saying. Do the body first. When it’s dry, give it orange spots.”

“But a sunfish doesn’t have orange spots.”

“So? You think Hiller will go over to the Aquarium and check? If he asks, say this one has a sand rash. Or it swam into a poison anemone, or ate a bad shrimp and lived to call the health department. Just make it weird enough and he’ll be all happy you were creative and he’ll give you an A.”

“How do you know to
do
that?” Lindsay said, dipping the paintbrush into the white paint and making a pool of gray on her plastic tray.

“Duh. I live with artists. They mess up all the time. My mom says to just go for it when you do. She calls it having a ‘happy accident.’”

Sally went to the supply cupboard and returned with an array of paper, colored, marbled, and the heavyweight water-color rag that Mr. Hiller got mad if you wasted.

“What’s your grandma’s style?” Sally asked. “Is she a get-her-nails-done-every-week grandma? Does she wear those expensive sweaters with dogs embroidered on them?”

“She wears long skirts and weird jewelry that my mother says is a leftover from the sixties counterculture.”

Sally laughed. “Omigod! A hippie! Definitely we’ll go with the marbled paper. It’ll remind her of paisley, acid trips, and groovy happenings. I know all about that stuff from going through my aunt’s scrapbooks. Man, grandmothers from then are so cool! Mine wears nurse’s shoes and a girdle and she won’t eat tacos. She says tacos are ‘ethnic food.’ Can you imagine life without Mexican food? It’s my favorite. I probably get that from my dad. How do you spell your grandma’s name?”

“Just like the allergy medicine,” Lindsay said, and then dipped her brush into the main gray color. She painted carefully, afraid she’d ruin the fish with one badly placed brush-stroke. She was into shade of gray number two when Mr. Hiller came by to check on them.

“Will you look at this,” he said, as if the two of them were inventing some miraculous new technique that would give the old masters a run for their money. “Lindsay, I think this just might be the breakthrough you have been waiting for. I’m adding ten points to your grade.”

“Thanks,” Lindsay said, shocked. The only difference between her failures and this mess was she hadn’t given up.

Behind Hiller’s back, Sally rolled her eyes. As soon as he was out of earshot, she said, “Ten points for trying! God, don’t you ever wish they’d let us fail sometimes?”

Just the image of a C on her report card made Lindsay break out in gooseflesh. “No. Why?”

Sally was gluing what looked like comets to the card. “Because what if we’re not really that smart? What if we’re just average and getting accustomed to being called the best is going to wreck us in the long run?”

“How could that wreck us?”

Sally capped the glue stick. “In June we’re done here. We either go to the public high school and are bored for four years, or get sent to a boarding school where the psycho girls cut themselves for fun when they aren’t throwing up their dinner. I don’t know about you, but I have a feeling the rest of the world doesn’t lose sleep over my self-esteem. Of course, I’m trying
not
to go to high school at all. I already know everything I need to in order to become a famous writer, and writers answer to no one, except maybe their editors, but I plan on writing such amazing books that my editor will do whatever it takes to keep me happy.”

“Like what, for example?” Lindsay asked, imagining Sally reclining on pillows while an editor made her taco after perfect taco while Sally’s brain flitted from one brilliant idea to the next.

Sally squinted, as if she were envisioning her future life on a movie screen. “First of all, there has to be freshly made Kettle Korn, like they sell at the fair. And sharpened Mirado Black Warrior pencils, number two. Also, yellow lined legal pads. I’ll sit at my desk in my Big Sur house and look out on the ocean all day long while I fill page after page in really cool handwriting that some university library will collect, and when I’ve been dead a hundred years scholars will look me up and write books about me. I’ll hand my pages to my editor, and she will scan it into my computer in case they might want a change here and there.”

“Your family has a house in Big Sur?”

“Not my family. Me! My dead uncle David willed it to me. I can’t live there alone until I’m eighteen, though. Hey, maybe you could live there with me. We could set up a laboratory and you could do experiments while I write. But you have to like Kettle Korn.”

Kettle Korn was high in fiber, but high in sugar, too. “I like it okay,” Lindsay said, and squeezed out a worm of orange paint to decorate her resurrected
mola mola.

At home that night, the doorbell rang while Lindsay was sitting on the couch looking at her grandmother’s card, trying to figure out what she should write inside next to Sally’s poem. She set it aside and opened the door to the pizza delivery guy.

“One thick-crust spinach and sun-dried tomato with extra garlic,” he said. “That’ll be fourteen ninety-nine.”

“Mom!” she called out.

“There’s money on the table,” Mariah called from the bedroom. “Don’t forget to give him a tip!”

Lindsay paid the guy exactly seventeen dollars and ninety-seven cents. He looked at her, shook his head, and pocketed the money. She carried the fragrant box to the kitchen and set it on the counter. Her favorite pizza on no special occasion? Not a good sign. She sat at the counter looking at the closed box until her mom came down.

“Hey,” Mariah said. “Let’s just eat it on paper towels, okay? I don’t want to have to wash any dishes tonight.” She pulled two paper towels off the roll and handed one to Lindsay. Then she got herself a Diet Coke, a slice of lemon, and poured Lindsay a glass of water.

Lindsay felt her antennae quiver. “How’d Allegra’s treatment go today?”

Mariah looked at her. “Oh, you know, about the same as the last one. She rests while she gets the I.V., gets sick in the afternoon, and then she sleeps. Two weeks down and three to go. As soon as she gets back to work in the café she’ll be happy.”

“In time for Halloween?” Lindsay asked, poking at a fat garlic clove.

“Sure,” her mother said.

Lindsay worried about Allegra’s compromised immune system and contact with the general public. She would have liked to know what her latest leukocyte count was. The doctor had said she couldn’t let Khan lick her face anymore, or sleep with him. Allegra loved Khan more than anything, even more than the original
Star Trek
series.

“So what do you want to talk to me about?” she said. “I figure it’s something bad, since you got me the pizza I like even though you hate it.”

Mariah sighed. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”

“Why would you want to hide things from me?”

“It’s just an expression, sweetie. I’d never hide anything from you. You know that.” Her mother popped the top on her Diet Coke, poured it over ice, squeezed in the lemon, and took a long drink. “We’re at a crossroads, Linds.”

“What’s a crossroads?”

“A dividing point. It means we have to make some changes.”

“Didn’t we already make a bunch of changes?”

“We need to make another one. Our finances dictate our path right now.”

“Do I have to transfer to public school? Do I have to quit school and get a job, like Gammy Bess did when she was my age? Maybe I should start looking for a husband, too. That way I can get married before I have a baby!”

Her mother’s lips compressed together in a tight line. “You don’t have to do anything. And I don’t much care for the attitude.”

Lindsay felt a lump in her throat, but it was anger, not sadness. “Right.”

“What does that mean?”

She set her pizza slice down on a paper towel and watched the grease leach out. “I know Allegra is really sick and I know you lost your job and you said we’re barely making our bills, and I know how hard it is for Gammy to be on her feet all day. In science, Dr. Ritchie told us that the ozone layer is thinning out, that all drains lead to the ocean, and hardly anybody recycles. What I want to know is how come no one ever asks how I am? How come I’m not supposed to ever get upset? What if Allegra’s leukemia turns out to be genetic? What if you don’t find another job? What if—” her eyes welled up. “What if the ocean gets so polluted that all the fish die? What happens then?”

Her mother ran a thumb down the condensation on her glass of Diet Coke, and then touched Lindsay’s cheek with her chilly fingers. “Baby, there’s no way to soften this. We need to let the condo go. It’s a lot of money every month. I’d rather spend it on your tuition.”

Lindsay hadn’t even thought of that. The lump in her throat descended into her stomach. “Where will we live?”

“With Gammy and Allegra above the café. I already asked and they said yes.”

Lindsay tried to imagine living above The Owl & Moon all the time. It was a fun place to spend the weekend. They let her do anything she wanted, including stay up late to watch scary movies. But to live there every day? The smells of food all the time, the early-morning noise when they started baking? On the bright side, she could go to the beach anytime she wanted. The library was really close, and the Aquarium was within walking distance. But it was a small apartment. It had three bedrooms, one of which used to be a kitchen. “Where would I put my computer?”