The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (26 page)

“I’d better go walk Khan,” she said, handing Simon the last pot. “See you tomorrow, Simon.”

He waved, and Lindsay fetched an orange-and-blue argyle from Khan’s wardrobe. He hadn’t worn that sweater in a long time.

“Your friend Sally called,” Mariah said as Lindsay took over mopping so her mother could cash out the register. “Something about your science project?”

“I’d better go call her.”

“You can finish the mopping first. And where in the hell is Allegra?” Mariah said, tucking money into the deposit bag. “The bank’s going to close in a few minutes.”

“So use the night deposit,” Lindsay said.

Her mother sighed. “I had plans that didn’t include stopping by the night deposit.”

“Are you going out with Mr. Crabapple again?”

“Very funny. Just for dinner. Then I’ll be home. We can spend some time together. Won’t that be nice?”

Nothing sounded worse. “I know one place Allegra could be.”

“Where’s that?”

“Out buying a diamond engagement ring.”

“What are you talking about?”

Lindsay dipped the mop and squeezed out the water. “Dr. G asked her to get married and she said yes and spent the night at his house which was why Gammy got all angry, even before you stayed out all night. Maybe you didn’t hear about it because you hardly ever come home at night anymore.”

Her mother blushed. “No one told me anything about any engagement. Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand?”

“She called Gammy and I heard everything. Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Her mother looked toward the stairs. “Gammy’s legs hurt. You know how she gets. She could have been exaggerating.”

Nice try, Lindsay thought.

“Allegra better not forget about the café during this so-called romance of hers. What’s she thinking, agreeing to marry a doctor? They aren’t fiscally equal, and statistics prove relationships like that don’t last. I may be younger than her, but I can’t run this place all by myself, and as soon as I get a teaching job, things are going to change, you just watch…”

Maybe happiness didn’t last that long after all.

“I don’t get it,” Lindsay said into the telephone. “Why do you have to pretend you hate me?”

“Because,” Sally hissed, “otherwise Taylor’s going to tell on us about Charlie.”

“What if she’s lying? What if she tells anyway?”

“I don’t have much time,” Sally said. “She’s in the bathroom and she’ll be out any second. All you need to know is that I promised her I’d stop being friends with you and go back to hanging out with her so I have to pretend to hate you. I swore to God, even. But only until the project’s done. After that, Taylor can go haunt houses for all I care. Omigod, she’s coming! I gotta go!”

The phone clicked off and Lindsay set the receiver down in its cradle. No matter what Taylor promised, it didn’t make sense to trust her. But Sally knew her better, so maybe it did. Sally didn’t
really
hate her. At this point, what else could they do? It wasn’t that big a change, really. All Lindsay had to do was go back three months and step into the life she lived before Sally was her friend. Go back to having the “tree of life” for her lunch partner.

While her mother was out to dinner with FTF, aka Fergus the Freak, Lindsay logged on to the internet to check her e-mail. The first message was from an African prince who needed help with his inheritance. Two others were offers for credit cards. Nothing from Sally.

She deleted it all, flopped back on her bed and stared at the world map she had tacked to the rafters. America wasn’t so big. She looked at all the places she wanted to visit, starting with Auschwitz, because people who didn’t examine history usually ended up repeating it. Then there was Antarctica, because what with global warming, it might not be there in another generation. She glanced at the British Isles, which interested her because of the standing stones and museums and as babyish as it sounded, she wanted to see Yorkshire. There was Scotland, lumpy as a rotten cauliflower, infecting England.

Ever since Mrs. Shiasaka told them about Manzanar, and how during World War II nobody thought anything about interment was wrong, Lindsay began to look at countries differently. Scotland’s history was all about war, too. Scotland was full of really great writers. Maybe Sally would live there one day, when her books were all bestsellers and she couldn’t walk down the street without fans asking for her autograph. Of course they’d be friends again by that time. Taylor wasn’t that powerful.

“Get your buns out of that bed and put on a dress,” Gammy said Sunday morning, when she poked her head into the attic space where Lindsay was lying in bed, reading
Lives of a Cell.
“We’re going to church.”

Lindsay set the book down. “I don’t own a dress,” she lied. “And I’m pretty sure my mom wouldn’t like me going anywhere without checking with her first.”

“Is that so?” Gammy said. “Well, do you see your mother anywhere around here?”

“No. But I haven’t looked in her room. Or the café.”

“You’ll find the kitchen empty and the bed made,” Gammy said. “That’s because she didn’t come home last night. Again.”

“Well, what about Allegra? I bet she told her where she was going.”

“You know the old saying, Lindsay, ‘Like mother, like daughter’?”

“No,” Lindsay said, though she did.

“Doesn’t matter. You take a cat-bath and change your panties. We’ve got a date with ten o’clock Mass.”

She started back down the stairs. Using a yellow sticky, Lindsay marked her place in Lewis Thomas.

“It’s up to us to save their souls, Lindsay,” Gammy yelled. “You have five minutes to find a dress or I will make you wear one of mine. And don’t forget your hat. The good Lord is waiting.”

Why couldn’t religion happen at home? Lindsay wondered as she pulled the hideous green dress Gammy had bought for her last Christmas over her head. Even worse, it was partnered with a red sweater with candy canes on it. No way was she wearing that. She kicked her one and only hat—a straw boater with a red gingham ribbon—to the back of the closet and covered it with a beach towel.

The Carmel Mission had thick adobe walls and history. The Mayflower Church held pancake breakfasts and quilt shows. Gammy’s church was a plain old Catholic church with hard bench pews and stained-glass windows and statues of the holy family that made them look resigned to the horrible fate that had been their lives. Lindsay tried not to look at the statue of Mary. Between being surprised by poor doomed Jesus’ birth to watching him die to stepping on snakes, Mary never stood a chance.

Lindsay pictured her own mother’s smiling face the night before as she got into Fergus’s Mini Cooper, imported from the UK. She couldn’t wait to get away. FTF made her happier than her own family. That was why she didn’t come home. They were having so much fun they stayed up all night and went out to breakfast and maybe straight to the Aquarium after that. She could do the baking for Monday later. It didn’t have to be on Sunday morning.

A woven wall hanging that was probably once considered modern now hung limply behind the crucifix on the altar. The scent of mildew wafted through the air. Gammy laid her sterling silver rosary across her fingers, as she talked to “the man upstairs.” Lindsay watched Gammy pray, wishing she could believe in miracles and sacraments. It was evolution’s fault that she couldn’t. Lindsay pictured Sally and Taylor sitting in Sally’s room watching videos, eating Halloween candy all day. Tomorrow, on the school grounds, Sally would look at her like she was lower than dirt. They had to make it look real.

Gammy finished, sat back in the pew, and waited for the church to fill and Mass to begin. She reached over and smoothed Lindsay’s hair out of her face. “You look like you have the weight of two worlds on your shoulders. What’s cooking?”

“I’m fine,” Lindsay said. “Just tired.”

“Maybe you’re getting the curse,” Gammy whispered, her eyes turning merry for no good reason Lindsay could think of other than to embarrass her.

“Gammy,” Lindsay said, “in case you haven’t noticed, my secondary sexual characteristics are running late.”

“Lindsay!” Gammy said. “Don’t talk like that in church.”

Lindsay knew better than to ask why not. Gammy’s rules had her own special logic, which you could only learn by making mistakes.

“You’ll have the curse soon enough, honey. It’s every woman’s fate. A blessing and a curse. Just remember, if you’re having problems, I’m all ears.”

Every woman’s fate? Every woman except freaks like her. She studied Gammy’s face, soft and sagging a little bit in the cheeks and under her neck, where the wrinkle cream wasn’t doing its job. There was enough wrong in their family already without her adding marijuana to it, not that Gammy would understand. She’d only have to hear the word
marijuana
and be on the phone to We Tip. She’d donate whatever reward money they gave her to the church. “I’m fine, Gammy. Just tired from homework.”

“You read too much.”

“I like to read.”

“There’re other things in life besides reading. Things you need to do to maintain your spiritual self. Why your mother wouldn’t let you attend catechism, I’ll never understand.”

Lindsay wondered if you could just save God the trouble by turning your soul in early. Even the Buddha said all life was suffering. Why pretend it was going to get any better if it really wasn’t?