The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (21 page)

What was left for a bald, skinny broad in a fragile remission? She didn’t want to watch another made-for-television movie, or read a phony-baloney romance novel, or even listen to music, considering the majority of songs were all about love. The whole idea was to escape from reality, not have it slap you in the face. She’d gotten along without Alvin Goodnough all these years. She could do it again. Maybe she’d take a taxi down to Pier Two and spy on Mariah. Serve her right, for being so secretive.

She bent to retrieve her bag from the floor, and as she came up, a large bouquet of carnations appeared under her nose. Behind them was Doc, the flowers in one hand, and chocolates in the other. “Okay, poetry fan,” he said. “I wrote you a poem. Let me read it to you.”

Several more dinner parties had arrived. Allegra felt her cheeks redden. “That’s okay. I’ll read it to myself.”

“Oh, no you won’t. Every time we’re together you’re quoting this poet or that one. You’re all about the poems. I wrote this poem and I’m by God reading it.” He cleared his throat. “ ‘Thirty-four years ago Allegra Moon stole my heart. If I’d been smart, I would’ve run after her.’ ” His voice broke, and Allegra reached for his hand, but he waved her away, and cleared his throat. “ ‘Back then we were both pretty wild, but I didn’t know that we’d have a child. Now that I do, it’s all up to you. Allegra Moon, please don’t be a donkey. Say you’ll marry this old honky.’ ”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. “That’s a terrible poem.”

He nodded. “I’m clumsy at matters of the heart, and my last wife left me for a guy with a stainless-steel speculum. But shouldn’t it count in my favor that if the situation warranted it, I could perform rudimentary heart surgery? Doesn’t that prove I’m not a total doofus with the organ?”

Allegra could feel every restaurant customer waiting for her “yes” so they could toast them, send over champagne, and feel reassured in their own relationships. But all she could do was look into her flowers, dip her nose into the peppery scent of carnations, and try not to feel sick. “Sit down and let’s talk.”

“No. Damn it, Allegra, I spent thirty minutes writing this poem in that florist’s shop. I’m serious. I want to marry you. Right now.”

“But Al, we don’t even know if I’ll be here a year from now.”

Doc hung his head. When he looked up, he said, “You see, that’s where you’re wrong. I do know you’ll be here. It’s you that doesn’t know it. For Christ’s sake, Allegra. You used to believe world peace was possible, so why can’t you believe you are?”

The display having no happy ending, the patrons had gone back to their meals and conversations. She reached into her purse and touched the crumpled up movie napkins, ready to use them if the tears came. “Do you still want dinner?”

“I’d go without ten dinners if it meant you’d take me seriously. Twenty.”

She tried to laugh, but all she could see was Johnny Depp’s face at the funeral. “Can you wait for me to believe I will be around?”

He reached across the table and took her hand. “I’ll give you three days.”

“Al—”

“Enough, Allegra. This is fate. It was back then, and we were so young we blew it. Who are we to spit in the face of finding each other again? Now that’s choosing dying over living.”

She was crying again. “Okay. If I’m still here in six months, I’ll marry you.”

Al had a first-paper-route, adopted-mutt, ten-speed-bike-for-Christmas smile. A person could get slammed going around like that, but it was his choice. “Excellent. But why do we have to wait six months?”

The man at the table next to them tipped his chair back. “Listen, pal, I don’t want to be a buttinsky, but don’t press your luck,” he said, and several people were laughing, and then they started clapping.

Al flagged the waiter down and handed him a credit card to pay for the soup and the torn up bread.

The waiter handed it back. “The manager said to tell you the soup’s on the house. This is the most fun we’ve had since Jane Smiley stopped by for cannoli. May we suggest you have your wedding reception here?”

Allegra held up her hand. “If I get married it will be on the beach with sun in my face and the wind in my hair. When it grows back.”

“My God, will you just look at her,” Doc said, spreading his arms to include everyone in the room. “Everybody, isn’t that the face of an angel?”

And Allegra thought, of course, to become an angel, all you have to do is die.

“Mama?” Allegra said into the telephone at Al’s “beach house,” a four-thousand-square-foot palace that she told him was as far from a beach house as Camp David was a Y camp. “I’m not coming home tonight. I just wanted to let—”

“You’re not coming home?” Gammy said. “Alice, are you going back in the hospital?”

“No, Mama. I’m fine. I’m spending the night with Al.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

Allegra sighed, while Al kissed the back of her neck. “Mama, Al asked me to marry him tonight. I said yes. I’m staying at his place. I called so you wouldn’t worry when I didn’t come home. Mama? Are you still there?”

Bess gave a heavy sigh. “Alice, the minute you turned fifteen you were as wild as duckweed. You nagged me for hiphugger bell-bottom pants and money to hear rock bands. You sneaked cigarettes whenever you got a chance. I let you go to one concert in San Francisco and boom, suddenly you’re on the road like that Jeff Kerouac. I probably should have called the cops, reported you a runaway, but how could I when it was my own fault for not chaining you to your bed? I did the only other thing I could, which was turn it over to our Lord. Then you come home, pregnant with Mariah. I bit my tongue and helped you raise her. She turned out to be such a good girl, but she didn’t escape the Moon family curse.”

“Mariah’s a grown woman, Mama. When are you going to stop judging us on getting pregnant outside of marriage?”

“Be that as it may, now you’re calling to tell me you’re spending the night just because the man said he wants to marry you. I’m sorry. I don’t care if you’re fifteen or fifty, Alice, marriage is a holy sacrament. The fun stuff comes after you get the ring. Now you call a taxi and come on home.”

Allegra could hear Lindsay squealing in the background. Did she say engaged? Is it to Doc? “Mama, be serious. I’ve just been through chemo. We are not having sex. Even if we were, it’s not like I’m going to get pregnant. If my ovaries had any eggs left I’m sure they got fried.”

“Alice, your words are arrows in my heart. How are you going to explain this at the pearly gates? Good gravy, Lindsay, will you hold on a second?”

Next, Allegra heard some muffled conversation, while Al nibbled her ear. Oh, it felt good to be with someone who wasn’t afraid you were going to give him cancer. Whenever she felt well enough to run the café register, people set the money on the counter and it hurt her to think they saw her as infectious.

Don’t listen to Gammy, Lindsay was saying. A person should take a chance to be happy no matter what.

“You hear that?” Gammy said.

“Hear what?”

“Me holding the phone to my creaky knees attached to my legs with the varicose veins that could burst any minute. I’m kneeling down for your immortal soul, Alice. I’m willing to make the sacrifice even if you’re not.”

Allegra could hear Lindsay in the background, saying don’t listen to her, Allegra. Dr. G will make a good husband.

And Mariah was out with Fergus. Allegra hadn’t planned having to postpone the third part of her plan, which was to tell Mariah and Lindsay face-to-face. Chemo hadn’t dulled all her nerve endings, for Doc had now moved on to her collarbone, and things were humming. Al wanted a wife. What did she want? Him to stitch her family together? Was it sexist, thinking that a man could do all that simply because of a shared pool of genes in the offspring you loved? She cleared her throat. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mama. Give Lindsay a goodnight kiss for me.” She hung up and turned to face the man who was getting her all stirred up. “That didn’t go well.”

“Who cares? Put on this jacket and let’s walk on the beach.”

To Allegra “the beach” meant walking three blocks, crossing three lanes of traffic and sharing the sand with whoever else happened to be there. The beach in front of Al’s house was empty. Not a single person besides them was there. There was no fast-food litter, no radios blaring, no stink of suntan lotion, just the gentle roar of the surf and strewn kelp. Standing there by the moonlit water, the Pacific Ocean once again became Allegra’s faithful and trustworthy companion. If she and Al married, they could start every morning naming the shorebirds over coffee. What a complete cop-out to live simple all these years only to discover you wanted the big ticket items after all?

Behind her, Al spread out a blanket. “Come sit,” he said.

She lowered herself to the blanket and ran her fingers through the sand, sifting the cool, dry grains through her fingers. Al put his arm around her and they kissed like longtime married couples, all lips, no tongue. “Thirty-four years is a long time,” she said. “Wanna mess around?”

“I’m afraid we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Allegra, even if I did have a condom, which I don’t, it’s not a good idea.” He slid his hand across her leg. “Baby, you’re radioactive.”

“Ha ha, Doc. Very funny. Maybe I used to be, but not anymore.”

“I’m serious. Most physicians will tell you that chemo transferring from patient to partner is a myth. I’m conservative. Chemo is present in exchanged fluids, probably too small to hurt anyone, but why take the chance? In addition, whatever cold or virus I’ve got brewing would love to latch on to you. Doctor’s orders: No fun stuff until you’re stronger. Look at it this way. We’re about to become experts in the field of hugging and kissing.”

“For how long?”

“Only eight or nine months.”

“Are you kidding me?”

He laughed. “Yes. Come on, let’s go to bed and try snuggling.”

Snuggle. Allegra rolled the word around in her mind as they settled into this chasm of a bed Al insisted was only king-size, but felt bigger. Allegra was wearing one of his T-shirts. Al slept nude, though he kind of backed into bed so she couldn’t see his penis, which she found silly but also kind of adorable. The second he was asleep she planned to lift the covers and look. For now she nestled into the nook of his shoulder and sighed at his tenseness. If he were bread dough, she’d give him some thorough kneading, a slap or two, and he’d become flexible to her hand, waiting for her to shape him. She ran her hand down the inside of his arm, feeling the difference between muscle and soft skin. She leaned in and kissed him in the fold of his elbow, where the skin was smoothest, careful to keep her lips closed. “We can have sex if we use a rubber, can’t we?”

“Please,” he said. “Don’t start. I’m having enough trouble keeping my hands off you.”

“So don’t keep your hands off me.”

“Will you please just accept that this can’t go anywhere right now?”

Allegra continued stroking his arm, feeling his skin and her own buzz from touching him. Sex makes the body act like an anemone, she thought. So sensitive that the slightest touch makes it pull inward. “Sleepy yet?” she asked a few minutes later.

“Of course not.”

“I know you said I’m radioactive, but isn’t there something we can do?”

He sighed. “Do I have to log onto the internet and show you studies?”

“Can’t I just touch you?”

“It depends on how you plan to touch me.”

“I was thinking like this.” She moved her hand to the furry space below his bellybutton, though her true destination lay a few inches south.

He closed his fingers around her hand. “Stop it,” he said. “We’re not in a hurry anymore. Let’s get up and eat cereal. We never had dinner and I’m hungry.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Allegra, what are you afraid of?”

“That the chemo took it away.”

“What could it possibly take away except your cancer?”

“Me wanting sex. I feel about as attractive as a spayed cat.”

He breathed into her neck. “You’re a knockout because of your soul, not your body. It’ll come back and you’ll rock this old man, I promise. Your body’s been working hard to get well. Give it time to grow stronger.”

“That is a promise I’m holding you to,” she said.

As they began to settle into sleep, Doc said, “Must we really wait six months to get married?”

“Tell you what. We can get married the minute we can have sex.”