The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (28 page)

Lindsay felt a tear sneak down her cheek and swiped it away. If only he knew he was her grandfather, she could have hugged him. She put her hand out, and Dr. G shook it, holding on for an extra minute. “Thank you for talking to me, Dr. G. I hope you and Allegra have a special dinner. I’m extra happy you’re engaged.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I never had a dad, and getting a grandfather kind of makes up for it.”

“Now you’re going to make me cry,” he said. “Feel better, kiddo. We’ll have dinner another time.”

W
HEN
A
LLEGRA WAS SIXTEEN
and bursting with ideals, she scoffed at diamonds, branding De Beers a thief for profiting from what should have been Botswana’s good fortune. Thirty-three years later the buzz about “conflict diamonds” was even worse news. If terrorist groups sold diamonds in order to finance their bombings, how could anyone deliberately buy one? So when Al said it was time to shop for rings, she imagined a plain gold band, or maybe a piece of turquoise, which not only opened the heart chakra, but also facilitated communication and promoted healing—all of which she could certainly use.

Yet they weren’t in Gaspar’s Jewelers two minutes before she looked into a case of estate jewelry, brooches and pins, and saw her ring. Circa 1850, the card beside it read. Never before had her heart leaped up like that at something man-made. Set in platinum filigree, the stone was small but it caught the light. The clerk working that section was a woman about her age, but that was the extent of their common ground. Allegra was dressed in elderly jeans, a T-shirt, and her decades-old suede jacket. The clerk’s silk blouse, dressy slacks, and hundred-dollar haircut were the correct outfit for picking out engagement rings. Not that she needed more jewelry, as she wore diamonds at every pulse point. It took Allegra a few minutes of pretend looking to drum up the courage to ask, “May I try on that ring, please?”

Al walked over from the case where he’d been examining loose diamonds by the carat weight. “Don’t you want something new?” he asked. “Something bigger than a freckle?”

She turned to him, showing him how perfectly the ring fit. “Nope. Besides, all diamonds are the same age, really. I like this one.”

The clerk produced a jeweler’s loupe and Allegra reluctantly handed her the ring. She peered at it for a minute, and then said, “It’s got a rather significant flaw.”

“Don’t we all?” Allegra said, and Al laughed.

When the clerk started to put the ring back in the case, Allegra gave a little shriek. “But that’s the one I want. It spoke to me.”

The clerk held the ring out and Allegra took it. For the first time, she looked at the price tag and gasped. “I could buy the café a new dishwasher for this price.”

“You didn’t tell me that your dishwasher was broken.”

“Well, it is. Where are the plain gold bands?”

Al put his hand on her arm. “No way are we walking away from a talking ring. What did it say to you?”

Allegra touched the rounded stone, and peered inside the band to read the worn engraving. There were two sets of initials, but she couldn’t make them out. “That the woman who wore it had a happy marriage. That there were more good times than bad, and that whoever wore it next would have splendid luck.”

Al looked at the clerk, who had already begun filling out the invoice. “Can you find us a talking band to match?”

She laughed. “Those kinds of settings aren’t done anymore, but we have a craftsman who can make you one. I’ll need the ring back to make an impression.”

Allegra blanched. “No, I have to wear it immediately. Believe me, there’s no time to waste, and so much time to make up for.”

“I understand. I can make a wax impression now and you can take the ring with you.”

Allegra exhaled. “Thank you! Oh, Al. I just love it. It’s perfect, even if I’m not. Are you sure it’s not too much money?”

“Not for a diamond fortune cookie,” he said. “If that’s what you want, we’ll get it. Now help me find one, too.”

She followed him to the men’s rings, all the while watching the clerk polish her ring. She couldn’t help it. This was a second chance ring for second chance lovers, or would be, when she was no longer radioactive. So far, November was sunny. The monarchs were returning a few at a time. Dylan Thomas could have turned those facts into words that dripped off the tongue, but this occasion called for the sheer stubbornness of Rilke, who admitted that returning again and again to the landscape of love was as formidable as it was compelling.

“I like that one,” Allegra said, pointing at a gold band incised with an Art Deco design.

Al tried it on, as well as several others, but returned to the one she’d first pointed out. “Guess I’ll go the antique route, too,” he said. “What the hell, I’m practically one myself.”

They kissed, he wrote a check, and outside on the street Allegra had to sit down on the edge of the store’s brick planter if she wasn’t going to faint. She pretended to be captivated by the autumn-colored mums. “Look at these precious little flowers,” she said.

Al put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re not fooling me.”

She could tell he was looking at her like a doctor, assessing symptoms, weaving them together to make a diagnosis. “I was only dizzy for maybe one second, and that was due to overexcitement.”

“Excitement has nothing to do with it,” he said. “You’re still dizzy.”

“I feel better now.” She stood up and took his hand, willing herself to balance. “See?”

He shook his head. “What am I going to do with you?”

Love me for as long as I’m here, she wanted to say. She looked away so he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. They walked along, passing shops and bed-and-breakfasts, and realtors’ offices hawking ten-million-dollar properties. Would the real estate boom ever stop? How could a young couple make it, let alone anyone her age?

“Chilly?” Al said, as they reached the car.

“The breeze feels good.”

“Then why are you shivering?”

“I’m trembling with happiness.”

“Allegra—”

She stopped. “Are my white cells running with the rough crowd again?”

“Your white cells are behaving just fine, thanks to the Gleevec.”

Which has a copay of three hundred dollars, she wanted to say, but didn’t. It was her bill and she was going to find a way to pay it. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. What were you going to say?”

“While I understand that our plans didn’t work out the way we wanted them to—telling Mariah and Lindsay and your mother about everything all at once—now I think we ought to tell Mariah alone. Give her some time to process things before we talk to the others.”

Allegra frowned. “But I pictured all of us sitting around the table, with a glass of champagne in hand. Over flickering candlelight, we tell everyone the good news and toast the future.”

“That’s romantic as all get-out,” he said, “but has it occurred to you that Mariah might be angry when she hears I’m her father? After all, I’ve been in your lives a while now.”

“Since the day I got sick.”

“Yes, and Mariah’s going to wonder why we waited so long to tell her.”

Allegra looked up. “You mean me. She’s going to be pissed off at me.”

“I didn’t say that specifically.”

He didn’t have to. Hurricane Mariah would stamp her feet and call her mother names, and probably take Lindsay and drive off in her Subaru and not come home for days. “But she’ll adjust, don’t you think? Mariah’s so intelligent,” Allegra said, thinking it could turn out that way, that a happy ending was still possible after a firestorm. “She gets that from you.”

“And you. I just think we need to plan for other possible outcomes,” he said.

They stopped in front of a Mexican restaurant, and the smells wafted out, turning Allegra’s stomach sour. Chemo was done, but the pills she took—Al’s thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year wonder drug—upset her stomach, too. She tried to breathe through her mouth while Al bent down to tie his shoe. “Mariah’ll be fine. I’ll tell her myself.”

“Are you sure? Mariah seems to have a fair amount of the Goodnough gene pool in her, the ‘my way or the highway’ attitude. She reminds me of my great-aunt Clara, who suffered no fools.”

“How about we wait until Thanksgiving?” Allegra said. “From noon until five we serve dinner at the homeless shelter, but we could plan a late supper, make it a special occasion, one we’ll always remember.”

He reached into his pocket for his car keys. “I promised my son I’d drive to the city, spend the weekend with him, but I’ll see if I can come home earlier. And by the way, you’re not going to be serving anywhere unless you turn into Wonder Woman and gain twenty pounds. Do we really have to wait until Thanksgiving? That’s a long time to wait.”

“It’s nothing compared to thirty-three years.”

“Exactly! Doggone it, Allegra, I want Mariah to know who I am. I want a chance to hug my granddaughter. To spoil both of them rotten. You’ve had them all these years.”

She leaned in close enough to kiss his neck. “But you know they’re yours. Isn’t that enough?”

“What the hell is good about knowing without the hugs?”

“What good is marriage without sex?”

“Always with the sex.”

“I want it.”

“And you’ll have it, soon. We both know I’m not exactly Mariah’s favorite person. I say we talk to her tonight.”

“She’s out with Fergus,” she said. “Will you look at that sunset?”

“Beautiful,” Al replied.

Allegra turned to him and smiled. “Yep, it’s beautiful. But not as beautiful as my ring!” Out came her booming laugh and her yip-yip-yip war cry, and Al shook his head.

“How did you manage to stay the exact same person you were all those years ago?”

“I refused to grow up. Won’t that be fun when we’re married? I’ll add a little spice to your world, and you’ll bring some leavening to mine. Not too much, though. I hope you can live with that, Doc. I want to rattle the rafters until I’m eighty if I can.”

“Rattle away. Let’s drive over to that Italian place. There’s probably plenty of tables this early.”

Just steps from the car, a wave of nausea overcame her. Imagining marinara sauce and antipasto and overdressed salad was too much. She had to swallow hard twice before she could answer. “Maybe not Italian.”

He put his arm around her waist. “Allegra, you have to try the Marinol or you’re not going to gain weight. Ounce by ounce isn’t going to get you back to the life you love.”

“I’ve already taken more drugs than most people do in a lifetime,” she said. “There has to be another way. Something else.”

“Compazine put you to sleep, and Reglan was a dismal failure. There isn’t anything else except for Mary Jane, and I know how you feel about that.” He opened the passenger door and helped her into the car. “Let’s swing by my office and I’ll pick you up some samples. We’ll start you out with two and a half milligrams. If you tolerate that, we’ll add a second dose.”

She touched her diamond. “Okay.”

After her falling out with Sally, Lindsay had holed up in the attic. Gammy wasn’t overly worried. Mariah said it would blow over. Allegra, however, watched her granddaughter walk out the door with a sober face every morning and return in the afternoon looking exactly the same way. Lindsay climbed upstairs to her room and worked on her computer until dinner, and sometimes Allegra ate more than she did. That fancy girls’ school put too much pressure on kids. So what if their I.Q.’s were higher than Allegra could count? Twelve-year-olds needed to play with dolls, not memorize Plato. And this Science Fair business had gotten way out of control. Lindsay just wasn’t herself since that snotty Sally had kicked her to the curb. What could a skinny bald nana do about that? Hire a hit man?

It was three in the afternoon. Allegra lay on the couch, the pills in her hand. A bright yellow-orange, they looked like the penny gumballs she used to chew when she was a kid. Khan snored away in her lap. He was wearing his tie-dyed T-shirt today. Printed all across the front were Grateful Dead dancing bears.

“Allegra?” Lindsay said, rousing her from her reverie, “can you drive me to Sally’s house?”

Allegra tipped the pills back into the bottle. “I’m so glad you two patched things up! Every girl needs a best girlfriend to tell secrets to.”

“Actually,” Lindsay said, “I just need to collect the laboratory stuff part of our project. I called Sally’s mom and Sally isn’t there so this is the perfect time. Do you think you can drive me?”

Allegra hadn’t driven since she’d gotten sick, but she felt good today, or better. It wasn’t that long of a trip, and it would give her time alone with Lindsay to talk. They could zip over and back and Gammy and Mariah wouldn’t even notice. “Sure,” she said, sitting up slowly, giving herself time to adjust. Khan waddled to his bed. “Let’s go see if Cronkite wants to turn over. He can be pretty crotchety when he hasn’t been driven in a while.”

It felt good to be behind the wheel of her ancient beast plastered with bumper stickers proclaiming all her causes, and no chemo in the near future. Someday a courageous president would decide Leonard Peltier had done enough time and let him hold his grandchildren without bars between them. Not this president, but maybe the next one. As soon as they crossed the highway, the smell of the Valley—eucalyptus and grapevines—replaced the beach damp. Streets turned to country lanes. Every car passed the VW bus, but Allegra didn’t mind. Looking at the lush green hills—California’s winter was everybody else’s spring—she could have driven twenty miles per hour all day.

“Turn there,” Lindsay said, pointing to a cluster of mailboxes and a winding driveway.

Allegra drove up to the house and stopped.