The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (14 page)

The Beatles had gotten that part wrong. Love wasn’t all a person needed. No matter how beautifully Joni Mitchell sang the lyrics, for a lasting bond, you needed that piece of paper from City Hall.

Allegra blamed her own hair for much of her unhappiness. Hers hung down to her waist. She enjoyed girls’ jealous stares. She used her hair to draw close whichever boy she wanted, and she had wanted Doc. Him in that buckskin jacket with fringe and beads, his hair down to his shoulders, and a beard that somehow made the whole package irresistible. She decided then and there, Doc would be her first lover.

They’d met hitchhiking in Mendocino. He’d come home from Vietnam, where he’d been a medic, just six months before. They introduced themselves—Alvin, like the chipmunk. Alice, as in Wonderland, laughed, and decided to use only road names from that moment forward. To have a summer adventure. Not to hold each other accountable for the past or the future, but to be here now. This was Doc’s last free summer before entering medical school. He told her right off that he was as good as engaged to the daughter of his family’s best friends. He showed Allegra a picture of a horse-faced girl named Ruth.

“Do you love her?” Allegra asked, because Alice wouldn’t have been so bold.

Doc said, “We’ve known each other since we were babies.”

“But do you love her?”

“I like her all right. She’s smart and everything, but no, I can’t honestly say I love her.”

“So why on earth are you planning to marry her?” Allegra asked as they rolled out their sleeping bags on a bluff overlooking the ocean. The sun was going down in one of those goldfish bowl sunsets Dylan Thomas had written about, and Allegra desperately wished it would linger.

“Med school costs, you know? My parents will pay for it, but there’s always a string attached.”

“A string? Sounds to me like it’s a rope with a big noose on the end.”

He sighed. “It’s family. Hers, ours—business, social crap—I don’t want to talk about it because it will bum me out.”

“Marriage is a life sentence,” Allegra said, “and I don’t mean that in a good way. Hey, don’t you qualify for benefits being a veteran? There are always student loans. No matter what it costs, it’ll be cheaper in the long run if you pay for it yourself.”

Then the sun set, he kissed her under redwood trees so ancient they predated Christ, and the fact that someday Doc would be wearing a white coat seemed distant and dreamlike. The ocean roared, birds settled in their nests, and all across the sky stars winked at them while they lay in their sleeping bags, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Allegra knew it wouldn’t be just “sex.” She also knew that Doc wasn’t sleeping any more than she was. When he whispered in her ear “Alice?” she put her finger to his mouth and shushed him. “Call me Allegra, remember,” she said, and he kissed her finger, and that was how it had begun.

Allegra woke, her headache was gone; the buzz of the pills had vamoosed. She picked up the bedside phone, winced at the effort, and dialed the café.

“Owl and Moon,” Gammy said. “Bess speaking.”

“Hi, Mama. It’s me.”

“It’s about time! I was starting to worry you weren’t ever going to wake up. I came up there once, but that hippie pin fiend chased me away. Feeling better?”

“A little. How’s business?”

“Let me hold the phone out so you can listen. Everyone, say get well to my daughter.”

The roar in Allegra’s ear made her eyes fill with tears. She wanted to be schlepping plates and making the Springerle cookies using the custom owl and moon stamp. “Thanks, Mama,” she said when Gammy was back on the line.

“Hang on a second.”

She heard her mother ringing up customers, Simon furiously hammering at the bell for her to pick up orders. He never did that when Allegra was there. She heard her mother say, “Can you just wait a cotton pickin’ minute?” and assumed that was directed at Simon.

“It’s crazy around here, Alice. I have to go. You want me to send up a tray?”

“Just a cup of miso soup. I don’t know how much my stomach can take.”

She hung up the phone and picked up the handful of hair that had come out, studying it. Before leukemia, Gammy had told her if she wanted to keep wearing it long she had better start braiding it. Women get to an age, she said, helmet hair makes sense. You don’t want to look like a witch.

Had that been the sum of her? A loose broad with excellent hair?

When Allegra next woke up it was dusky out, a little after five
PM
. At this time of day she was usually sweeping the floor, emptying trash, the smell of garbage giving the alley a fruity tang, and oily rainbows from the delivery trucks’ tires glinting on the cobblestone. Somebody’s dog was barking. Khan joined in. Five o’clock meant his handful of kibble and a walk to the park, where he could huff and growl and make believe the deer were afraid of him, and then take the teeniest little poop, so small that it was hardly worth picking up, but Allegra did anyway. She missed her little man as fiercely as she missed Pacific Grove. Her town was precious, just as valuable as the butterfly grove, the twisted cypress and coastal pine, Fisherman’s Wharf and Cannery Row that Steinbeck made famous. So much history had happened there. A few hours north, even more history was made, most of it musical.

Country Joe and the Fish. Janis Joplin. Those old blues players, Mance Lipscomb, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith. Hare Krishnas handing out free sticks of incense. Flower children in bloom. Gays kissing each other in broad daylight. Native Americans story talking. Allegra Moon, age fifteen, sitting on the stone bench in Golden Gate Park, weaving a macramé belt she planned to give to her friend Doc. After that first night, they’d run naked into the freezing cold ocean to baptize themselves forever as lovers in the summer of love. It felt like time speeded up, that it was running out of the hourglass a hundred miles an hour. When Doc came loping up to the bench, shouting her name, she dropped the weaving in the grass. He picked her up and twirled her around. “I got us tickets!” he said. “Right up front. Can you believe it?” Allegra couldn’t remember what concert it was, only that the way his voice went squeaky at the end made her realize she wasn’t the only one so happy.

They danced around the campfire on Stinson Beach. Swam naked in Lake Tahoe. Did they climb the rocks to Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite, or was that a future plan? She remembered peeking into the box marked “free puppies” as they walked down Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. “I’m taking the runt,” she said, and in her hands Lieutenant Uhuru made little grunting noises because she missed her mother. With a lump in her throat, Allegra did, too, and wished she were in her mother’s apartment, eating popcorn or trail mix or nothing at all. Doc told Allegra, “If you tuck that puppy in your shirt, you can keep her warm and she can feel your heartbeat at the same time.”

From then on, she slept between them.

The sex was so powerful that Allegra got scared. The facts of sex, she knew. You could get venereal disease or pregnant. But in her head the theme from
Dr. Zhivago
drowned out everything else. Doc was slow and gentle. That first time, when he slid all the way inside, she gasped, and he placed his hand on the small of her back, waiting for her to catch up. He knew where to pet her. How to cup her breasts and kiss her nipples, and to look down at her as if to say all this was special. Afterward, he held her in his arms. When Lieutenant Uhuru bit him on the leg, they laughed so hard that the puppy growled. Doc gave the dog a tiny piece of beef jerky.

Sometimes they did it all night, and slept late. Other times they were lazy. Once they were alone in the forest, and things just happened. In the middle of a dusty trail lined with ferns, they had opened their eyes to see a curious jay staring at this strange, noisy human mess blocking the path.

Free love, bah! When you spent twenty-four hours a day with a man, when you told each other your secrets, when Spam heated over a campfire became a gourmet repast, you were in love. She had spent that summer suspended between fear and bliss. They never said the words, but she knew he felt the same way. Only one problem loomed in their future: He was heading off to medical school, and already engaged to this equine Ruth. What did Allegra have to compete with all that?

Her heart was her only wealth, so she gave it entirely.

“Anybody home?” she heard a man call out, and there was Fergus Applecross, standing in her bedroom and her looking a fright. She pulled the afghan up to her neck. “What are you doing here?”

“I brought your tray,” he said.

Allegra tried to cover her bald spot. “Where’s Mariah?”

He set the tray on the end table. “Down the stairs, making a wedding cake.”

“Who’s getting married?”

“I’m afraid I dunno. Mariah’s good at cakes, is she?”

Allegra settled back against the pillows that allowed her to sit upright. The dizziness passed, and she sighed, tucking her fallen hair beneath her covers. “Did she tell you she was a college professor? It was stinky of them to let her go after so many years.”

“I’m afraid the academic world has its own set of rules. Do you need help with your tray?”

“I’m fine.” Allegra took little sips from her spoon. “This doesn’t taste like miso soup.”

He frowned. “I didn’t watch it being made, so I can’t attest to it being what you asked for.”

She took another spoonful.

“Any better?”

“Oh, everything tastes like some kind of fluid you’d find in a car engine. But I’ll get it down.” She finished a quarter of the bowl before her stomach decided she was pressing her luck. “I feel like a prisoner of war.”

“I suppose, in a sense, you are. But you mustn’t give up, Allegra. Your family, your customers—every day when I have my breakfast they’re asking after you. ’Tis not small talk, either. They admire you. I must say, I do, too. I heard a rumor that you were instrumental in starting the homeless shelter.”

She felt tears gather in her eyes. “Back when I was in fighting form I had energy to burn. I did a lot of things.”

“What a lovely effort. Too many people have problems these days. A good hot meal can be a blessing. It can send a bloke on to better things.”

She wanted to get onto the subject of Mariah, but her mouth hurt, and it was time for
Star Trek
reruns. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, “but…”

“Say no more,” he said, rising to collect the tray and her napkin. “A pleasure to visit with you. Keep fighting, Allegra. You’ll beat this thing. Tirrah.”

When he was gone, she picked up the clicker and found Captain Kirk in an embrace with a beautiful woman who would turn out to be an alien. It was a rerun she’d seen a hundred times over, but this was the first time she identified so completely with the alien.

T
HE THIRD WEEK IN
O
CTOBER
the weather was wet and foggy, impossible to distinguish from the week before. Mariah, out late with Fergus, had overslept, so when she dropped the heavy dough hook mixer attachment on her foot, she could only blame herself. She pulled off her shoe and examined the bruise already rising. Because there was nobody else to decorate twelve dozen pumpkin cookies, she stuffed her throbbing foot back into her tennis shoe, washed her hands, and spread orange buttercream onto the cooled cookies. Next, she filled the frosting sleeve with black, and lined the cookies with happy grins.

“Did you notice the puddle under the dishwasher?” Simon asked as he hung up his jacket.

Mariah shrugged. “Maybe something spilled?”

“Something spilled, all right,” Simon said, bending down to look at the dishwasher. “The thing’s incontinent.” He opened the dishwasher door and a mildewlike odor filled the room. “Rocking bad news, Mariah. The dishes inside it are still dirty.”

Mariah couldn’t look. Allegra was ill, Gammy had lost at bingo, and Lindsay was obsessed with her science project to the point that she was getting stomachaches on a daily basis. Fergus, the fabulous kisser, had informed her he was headed home to Scotland in May. “I don’t care how you do it,” Mariah said. “Fix it with duct tape if you have to.”

“I may be many things, Mariah, but a magician is not one of them,” Simon answered, using a screwdriver to expose the machine’s guts. “If I were, I would have sent Bess to another galaxy ages ago.”

“Please,” Mariah said. “I can’t take one more thing going wrong today. I know this is terrible, but I can’t stop wishing Mr. Cashin’s grandkids would park him in a home. Any home, so long as it isn’t mine.”

Simon laughed. “Get some coffee. As soon as I get the soups started, I’ll wash the dishes, but you’re going to have to dry them.”

Mariah filled a mug and stood by the window, watching the sunrise. One of the many deer from the cemetery was nibbling greenery. How come things worked out just fine for some people and others could spend their whole lives trying to grab a shred of that? Was the easy life random? Had leukemia hit her mother utterly by chance? Was it the same kind of chance that made Lindsay’s father take off? She wished she knew where Ephraim was now, because she could sure use the child support to pay Lindsay’s tuition, not to mention Allegra’s hospital bills. The insurance people were the Antichrist. They made a game out of denying every claim, and then required notes from Dr. Goodnough. It didn’t matter what he said. In the end they’d pay only half, or a quarter of the bill submitted. The debt continued to mount, and bills began to arrive stamped overdue, which made Mariah want to go directly to the insurance company and ask them “What if your mother got cancer? What if some doughnut-eating insurance bimbo like you was doing this to your mother?” Whenever she called them the line was busy.

The deer continued browsing.

Health insurance was the perfect example of society’s decline. Based on a hierarchy of rich old white men driving Jaguars and playing golf in Hawaii, the industry depended on the working class to keep things running. This meant the more claims the employees denied, the richer and happier the golfers became. Eventually the employees noticed they weren’t getting anywhere near a Jaguar. Something had to give. This explained their predilection for denying claims. Maybe, if they denied the most that month, they got a nickel raise. When they declined to pay for the added dose of methotrexate her mother needed, all Mariah felt was rage. Who were these deniers? Her peers. Her fellow working-class citizens, who were no doubt busy planning office potlucks or playing Free Cell on their computers, or choosing which Krispy Kreme doughnut to have at break time.

Why couldn’t her family catch a goddamn break?

Just then she heard the familiar whirr and whoosh of the dishwasher. “I could kiss you!” Mariah yelled to Simon.

“Please,” he answered, “restrain yourself.”

The café was so busy all day that Mariah didn’t have time to count her tips. Judging from the bulge in her apron, she figured they were substantial. She seated a party of four in the yellow booth and handed them menus. “What can I bring you for drinks?” she asked.

“Coffee for me,” said the mousy-haired mom. Her daughter asked please, could she have a Coke. Her son said please, too. The husband/dad in his sky blue cardigan looked like he worked a steady job with normal hours and health benefits the insurer paid right away whenever he filed a claim. All day long the customers rolled right off Mariah, but this family, enjoying one another’s company, gave her that “I’ve wasted my life and shortchanged Lindsay” feeling.

“I don’t suppose you serve macchiato?” the father asked. “We’re celebrating my promotion.”

“Congratulations,” Mariah said, writing their order. “I’m afraid you have to go to Starbucks for that kind of thing, but I can add a shot of vanilla.”

“Great,” he said.

“Our specials today,” Mariah said, pasting her server’s smile on her face, “are pumpkin soup with roasted red peppers, and Hungarian mushroom with tarragon. I’ll be back shortly with your drinks.”

Maybe if she’d stayed home with Lindsay for five years instead of toughing it out in college that could have been her family. Were she still teaching, she’d be knee-deep in student portfolios. Her grad students’ fieldwork reports would be coming due, and every office hour she had would be filled with a waiting list. Instead, she poured Cokes, located the dusty bottle of vanilla syrup, and doctored coffee. Then it was back to the kitchen, pick up their orders, wash her hands again—it was cold season—and move on to the next table.

October featured Pacific Grove’s Tomato Festival. Silly people dressed up like the plump red globes for old-fashioned, corny fun that warmed residents up for the crown jewel, November’s Butterfly Festival. There was a parade and a butterfly queen, but the magic was in the monarchs themselves. During “clustering season,” a tree trunk could turn black and orange, covered with hundreds of wings. The Grove Path was deliberately unmarked. Only a few visitors were allowed each day. The sight of a thousand butterflies was humbling. Scientists could calculate their life cycles, but they hadn’t a clue as to why they returned to Pacific Grove instead of someplace else.

So it made sense for Pacific Grove to claim the butterflies like a trademark. Were she in class, teaching, Mariah would tell her students about societal façade, a community’s longing for gemeinschaft, a concept defined in the early 1900s by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies. A community that had worked together to better themselves didn’t want to forget their roots. The time she used to spend throwing five-syllable-words around, babying students with personal crises, or arguing in faculty meetings seemed wasted now. At night she picked up one of her mother’s romance novels, and after mocking the many euphemisms for sex, she studied this strange concept of romantic love like a high school freshman. Of course, the star-crossed lovers would find their happy ending, but it felt great to stop dissecting human behavior. What made people tick wasn’t automobiles or money or even one’s zip code. It was the human heart, plain and simple, craving its other half. Mariah’s had softened, thanks to Fergus’s stories of peat bogs and castles, and all that good kissing. Simply put, he activated long-dormant hormones.

In her old life, all she and Lindsay did was rush from here to there. Now Mariah set the alarm for four
AM
, got up and baked like her mother had before she got sick. Those dark hours in the kitchen gave her plenty of time to think. Lindsay’s science project kept her occupied. Gammy’s bingo buddies alleviated her bickering with Simon. Mariah tried to sit with Allegra, not just when she was throwing up her guts, but the truth was, she couldn’t stand to look at the sallow skin and thinning hair. Only a few more weeks of chemo remained, but what if all her mother’s efforts turned out to be for nothing in the end?

She rang up three customers and boxed the last of the rosemary-garlic Cheese Pennies she’d made from her mother’s recipe. Nibbling a broken one, she could no longer tell the difference between hers and Allegra’s. She turned the page on her order pad for the last customer of the day. In two hours, Fergus would be by, taking her to dinner again. It was a doomed relationship, but it got her out of the café, and she relished those breaks the way a plant turned to sunlight. Mariah turned on the neon sign, and then went to wait on the elderly couple at the window table.

“Sorry,” they said, rising to leave. “Didn’t realize the time. All we wanted was soup. Could we get it to go?”

Mariah hesitated. If Allegra had been in her place, she would have let the couple stay, and cleaned up while they ate, chatting to them. But Mariah was tired, and she needed a shower. “Of course,” she said. “Let me get the containers.”

In the kitchen, Simon was loading the dishwasher. He looked up from the powdered detergent. “Don’t even breathe on this thing or it will fall apart.”

Mariah capped the soup containers and put two plastic spoons in her apron pocket. She threw in a couple packets of crackers, and then hesitated at the doorway. “I’ll put up an electric fence. Simon, all your help—” she felt a lump rise in her throat and commanded it to retreat. “Thank you.”

“Are we having a wee bout of PMS?”

“Gammy’s right,” Mariah said. “You are evil.”

“Oh, please,” he said. “I’m the only person around here who tells the truth.”

She didn’t take the bait, instead, she watched as he turned a screw on the dishwasher and pushed the “on” button. When there was neither a horrible grinding noise nor flood, she returned to her customers.

“I don’t suppose you have those small bottles of wine?” the elderly man of the couple asked as Mariah rang them up.

If they did, Mariah would have been on her second. “Sorry. We have tea, coffee, bottled water, and soft drinks, though.”

“We’ll take two coffees,” the woman said.

Mariah gave them the flavored creamer packets, napkins, and threw in two butterscotch squares to make up for hurrying them along.

After they left, Mariah sat at the counter separating the day’s take into the till for the next day and what went into the deposit. She tossed junk mail and unfolded bills. Three from the hospital today, gray numbers spit out by a computer assigned to little boxes marked thirty, forty-five, and sixty days overdue. Two rejected claims from the half-baked health insurance. Apparently even when you’re sick with leukemia two sets of blood tests in one week were “above and beyond necessary care.” The final envelope contained a notice of a rate hike come the New Year. Mariah wondered what kind of penalty there was for dipping into her teacher’s retirement. The hard times, just like Gammy predicted, had arrived.

“Guess what?” Allegra said when Mariah opened the door into the apartment. “Doc called, and I get to skip a whole week of chemo!”

The twin spots of red on her mother’s cheeks were new, Mariah noted. Health or fever? “Is that good news or bad?”

“Who cares?” Allegra said, hugging a throw pillow to her breasts. “I don’t have to go sit in that apricot-colored room and watch
Days of Our Lives
with sick people.”

When she turned back to her talk show, Mariah saw the bald patches the bandanna didn’t hide. Mariah pulled off her apron and kicked off her shoes. Then she saw the untouched tray on the coffee table. “Mom, did you eat anything today?”

“I’ll eat when I feel hungry. Any cute guys today? Competition for the Scotsman?”

Mariah felt her hackles rise. The carefully prepared tray of not too spicy, not too bland wholesome foods intended to build her strength would go into the trash, wasted. “I wasn’t really paying attention, Mom. I was too busy working.”

“Come on,” Allegra said. “You can multitask. Not even a hottie too young for both of us?”

Mariah had her thumbs in her belt loops, ready to shuck her jeans right there before she went to shower. Could she make Dr. Goodnough put in a feeding tube? If her mother wanted to stop eating, wasn’t that her right? “If there was a hottie present I’m afraid I missed him. I’m going to take my shower now. Fergus is picking me up in an hour, and I have to wash the onion stink off me.”