The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (2 page)

All in the same moment, Mariah endured the too-tight hug, worried what Allegra would say when she told her the bad news, and noticed how pale her mother’s face was. “Are you catching a cold?” she asked.

“Of course not,” Allegra said, grinning. “I stayed out too late last night, but let me tell you, it was worth it. Mm-mm, do I love a hunky fireman! Please tell me you came over here to help serve the lunch crowd. Your grandmother means well, but she just can’t move all that fast anymore. We’re going to have to hire a waitress.”

Mariah bit her tongue before she told her maybe not. “As it happens, I can work the rest of the day.”

“Hot damn!” Allegra said, twisting her long black hair into a bun and securing it with chopsticks. “Let’s haul our gorgeous asses downstairs and get to work.”

Asses. Mariah winced at her mother’s choice of words, and the scent of patchouli floating in Allegra’s wake. Her thumping wooden clogs beat out a rhythm Mariah could never keep up with.

Growing up with twenty-four-hour access to food that regular mothers reserved for special occasions didn’t rot Mariah’s teeth. Before she was Lindsay’s age, she’d tired of sugar. Her Achilles’ heel, however, was her mother’s lemon bars. Lemons are fruit, she told herself as she ate two, then three of the powdered sugar–topped delicacies. Between her schedule and Lindsay’s, eating right came second to simply eating. Judge Judy, a sociological gold mine, had once publicly stated that “no child ever died from having McDonald’s for dinner,” and that was good enough for Mariah. Some days all Mariah managed was vending machine chips. And drinking eight glasses of water a day? No problem, if Diet Coke counted.

“How do the bakery cases look?” Allegra shouted out from the kitchen.

“Not bad,” Mariah said. “We could stand a few more peanut butter cookies.”

“A dozen Jumbo’s coming right up.”

The man at the counter smiled at Mariah. “I hate to bother,” he said, “but could I possibly get a take-away tea?”

Take-away? Just when she thought she’d heard all the idioms, here was another. So many tourists visited the Monterey Coast that there really was no such thing as off-season. Mariah took a new tea bag from the box under the counter. “We don’t get a lot of hot tea drinkers this time of year,” she said as she filled a paper cup and fitted it with a cardboard sleeve.

“I see,” he said. “I’m afraid Guinness was absent from your menu.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, thinking he was probably just another alcoholic fostered by the stress of working to afford living in one of the richest counties in America. “Anything else I can get you?”

He shook his head no, and then took out his wallet to pay. “Tea and scones have fortified me to go unto my day and slay whatever dragons await me.”

Scottish, Mariah noted. A land whose history was written in war. “Dragons are in short supply around here, but come back and see us again.”

He smiled once more, and she couldn’t help thinking of Sean Connery, who looked attractive and dangerous all at the same time. “Count on it.”

The unexpected thrill of a man flirting with her lifted her spirits. With that crooked smile she’d bet her last dime he was already in a relationship. In a week’s time of asking customers she could find out everything about him from his marital status to his shoe size, if she cared to. A small town could triple in population, turn its Victorian houses into bed-and-breakfasts galore, but the core of people who lived there remained a merrily dysfunctional family. She filled napkin dispensers and monkeyed with the automatic dishwasher everyone knew was dying. Either they’d have to get a loan for a new one or hire someone to do the dishes by hand. Money. Why was it so hard to earn and so easily spent?

From years of teaching Mariah knew that when the economy faltered, families weakened, and sometimes split up. It was the twenty-first century. “Downsizing” had made it into the lexicon. Schools were overcrowded. In her
Intro to Sociology
text a map of the geometric increase in global population told the story: too many people, not enough space. In 1798, Thomas Malthus had predicted overpopulation would lead to social chaos. His theory was dismissed as flawed—failing to take into consideration medical advances and lower death rates—but just try to find a parking place in Pacific Grove and his point was clear.

Her mother, counting the register till, suddenly shrieked. “There are three one-dollar bills in here! How are we supposed to make it through lunch?”

Off she ran to the Bank of America on the corner, while Gammy watched the tail end of
All My Children
on the tiny counter television and complained it was high time they gave poor Bianca back her baby.

“That is an immoral story line,” she said hotly. “I feel like writing ABC a letter.”

“Soap operas are dripping with sin,” Simon called out through the order bar.

“It’s make-believe, you dodo,” she said.

Simon laughed. “It’s probably a sin to watch them.”

Gammy huffed. “God and I have things all worked out. Can you say the same?”

Though in the pit of her belly the job news sat like a cold lump, Mariah’s dysfunctional family was doing all right. She’d find a way through this.

“God better grant me a bale of patience this afternoon,” Gammy said later that day, coming out from the kitchen with a tray full of bowls of artichoke soup. “If I make it through the day without killing Simon Huggins it will be a miracle.”

“What did he do now?” Mariah asked, adding a handful of cracker packets to the tray.

Gammy sighed. “What he said doesn’t bear repeating. He’s just trying to get my goat.”

Allegra slid by them toward the kitchen, throwing over her shoulder, “Then quit leaving your goat tied up where he can get to it!”

“Ha, ha,” Gammy said, taking the tray to table four. “Mariah, your mother is as funny as a crutch.”

“You’ll get no arguments from me,” Mariah said, then turned her attention to table two, where she opened her order pad. “Everyone decided?”

A middle-aged, brown-haired woman looked over her reading glasses. “I’d like a cup of artichoke soup, but not if it has MSG in it.”

“All our soups are organic,” Mariah said.

“So that means no MSG?”

“Correct.”

The woman turned to the elderly man with her. He had to be at least eighty, Mariah thought. He was a sweet-looking old guy in his red shirt and blue suspenders. “Daddy, have you decided?”

“I want a bowl of artichoke soup.”

“Daddy, you can’t finish a whole bowl,” the woman said.

“Don’t you tell me what I can’t do. I damn well want a bowl, and what’s more, I want an oatmeal cookie to go with it.”

Mariah waited while the argument ran its course. There it was, her future staring at her, the day when parent became child, and there was another lifetime of mothering to do. The definition of family was complex these days, what with blended families and single mothers galore. Gammy and Simon feuded constantly. What kind of soup to make, spotted owls, strip malls, gay rights, and Jesus. Except for each other, no one took them seriously. Mariah thought of her daughter, Lindsay, fortunately absent from this fray. She would be in art class about this time, the only class she detested. Just that morning, Mariah had listened to yet another plea.

“For example, while others are learning to throw pots, I could be memorizing the periodic table of the elements.”

“I know you hate art, sweetie,” Mariah had said. “Just try to hang in there this one last time and I promise I’ll make a date to talk to Mrs. Shiasaka and see about getting you switched.”

“Why can’t you talk to her today?”

“Because today I have an appointment with the dean. We’re already running so late I’m going to have to drive ninety miles an hour, and I have to sign my contract today or our benefits will lapse, and next week we start second quarter scheduling—”

Wow. Didn’t all that feel like a lifetime ago? The father-daughter table was not making headway. It was time to step in. “How about I bring you a cup of soup, sir, and if you want more, then I bring you a refill?”

“Now that’s the first intelligent thing I’ve heard all morning,” the father said. “And don’t forget my cookie.”

“Daddy!” the woman said. “Here I am trying to help you watch your sugar—”

“Mariah! Where’s my cinnamon roll?” one of the regulars asked, and she nodded and ran to fetch one hot from the baking tray.

“What good’s a bagel without cream cheese,” another customer announced as Mariah was trying to take a to-go order over the phone.

“Coming,” she said, resisting the temptation to yell that if they wanted fast food, drive through Taco Bell. Running back and forth from the kitchen to the cold case, she had no time to think about her problems. When there was a lull, she looked to see what needed to be restocked. Among items in the glass cold case were cheesecake, marzipan candies, The Owl & Moon’s famous Chocolate Cherry Thunder fudge, and a round of sharp cheddar for the apple tarts. The nonrefrigerated case held all manner of pastries, sweet rolls, and berry pies. When the buckwheat rolls came out of the oven they went directly into pink boxes tied with kite string.

Out of the corner of her eye she watched her mother answer the phone, tickle a customer’s new baby, wrap fudge, and box up cookies like she was working every station on the assembly line. Her face looked drawn. Sometimes Mariah couldn’t bear how hard Allegra and Gammy worked. The Owl & Moon was Faustian, ruling over their souls. Mariah had vowed never to let it take over hers, but the aroma in the café was comforting. The soup warmed you to the core. The pastry melted on your tongue. Conversation was always interesting. It was easy to become addicted, which meant regular customers eventually turned into demanding regular customers, and there you were, stuck in a loop of supply and demand with no time to rest.

From 11:40 until 2:25 she refilled coffees, emptied three pitchers of iced tea, and served artichoke soup until the last of it was gone. Her own stomach growled, her feet throbbed, and her arms ached. She couldn’t wait to have a bowl of soup herself, even if all that was left was beef barley.

All afternoon Mariah replayed the brief moment with the dragon-slaying Mr. Tea-and-scones. Since she didn’t date, she felt it was perfectly acceptable to indulge in fantasies. A real kiss would probably make her cry. Ever since Lindsay was born, she told herself she didn’t have the time, the right clothes, but Lindsay was the reason she didn’t date. What did men call the children of single women? Baggage. Lovely word. Spoiled rotten babies that men were, most of them wanted a mommy, and they wanted to be that mommy’s only child.

“Attention, everybody!” Allegra called out, tapping a spoon against a glass. “Time for our daily joke. What did Confucius say when he saw the man standing on the toilet?” She waited a moment, and then finished with, “That man high on pot!”

The customers laughed, but Mariah found nothing humorous about marijuana. Working here permanently would drive her mad. She’d look for a job in an office, a research position, learn to write grants, substitute teach, anything but waitressing. But what skills did she have? A hunt-and-peck typist, she needed Lindsay’s help to get anywhere on her computer. Decent jobs of any kind were hard to come by in Monterey County. The daily joke laughter was soon replaced by pleas—”I haven’t been helped yet” and “What do you mean you’re out of Chocolate Cherry Thunder fudge?” She edged by her mother to get to the cold case.

Allegra patted Mariah on the behind as she walked by with more cinnamon rolls. “Chill out,” she said. “Take life a little less seriously and you’ll have a lot more fun.”

What do you get when you cross a hippie with a mother, Mariah wanted to ask, and then let Allegra have it for every embarrassing comment since the day she was born.

A businesswoman tapped the counter. “Excuse me, I’m still waiting for my fudge.”

“There’s probably more in the back,” Mariah said. “Let me ring up this check and then I’ll go look.”

The Owl & Moon would never lack for customers. If a person came in for Chocolate Bomb cookies for her daughter’s birthday, while she waited to have them boxed she’d smell the paper-thin rosemary-garlic Cheese Pennies, and pick up two dozen. Then she’d ask for a taste of the gleaming slab of Chocolate Cherry Thunder fudge. She’d buy a small piece, unwrap it in the car, take one bite, and turn up Monterey Jack on KMPG, the drive-time radio DJ who played old Nat King Cole vocals and plenty of Ella. Pinch-by-pinch, the fudge would disappear.