The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (31 page)

Mariah slammed the Subaru’s hatchback and Allegra could imagine the fault lines cracking across the pies’ surfaces. When the hatchback shut, Allegra could see the café’s back door again. Lindsay stood in the doorway, holding the box of napkins.

“Why are you guys fighting?”

“We’re not fighting.”

“Yes, you are. Is it because of me? Because if it is that would be dumb. I figured out Dr. G was my grandfather along time ago. He showed me pictures, I asked a few questions, and then I applied Occam’s Razor. If the simplest solution is the truth, go with it. Maybe I
want
a grandfather, did you guys ever think of that?”

The three of them stood in Gardner’s Alley, not knowing what to say.

Then Lindsay held up a brown card with a stylized turkey on it. “I thought we could put them on the tables for decorations. Should I print more?”

“That’s a lovely idea,” Allegra said. “Go do that, and then find Gammy. We have to leave right away.”

“Okay.” Lindsay jogged back into the café.

“This is all wrong,” Mariah said the minute Lindsay was out of hearing range. She knuckled away a tear. “I used to fantasize about my father showing up one day. I suppose I can blame our Disney culture and fairy tales for that. Does he have children?”

“He has a grown son. He had a daughter who died.”

“So it’s not just us? There are half brothers to deal with? Cousins, too, I suppose?”

Allegra gave her a half-smile. “Geronimo said, ‘May your tribes increase.’ Why can’t you look at it like a blessing?”

“Because I can’t! He wasn’t here for the hard stuff. It’s not like I can take it all in and rejoice. You have to give me some time. Make sure you tell him that. I don’t want him calling me and expecting hugs or anything.”

Allegra reined in her disappointment. “I will.”

Soon Lindsay came running back with her cards, and behind her came Gammy, limping a little, and Allegra could tell this day was already hard on her. They got in the van and buckled up.

“Half-pint just filled me in regarding the grandfather thing. Good gravy, Alice, why didn’t you tell me?”

Allegra said nothing. She was no Edna St. Vincent Millay, not even smarmy Rod McKuen; she was just a crappy mother. “Mama?” she said. “Why is it that on
All My Children
things like this are ordinary?”

“Soaps are fiction, honey. Too bad we can’t stay young and forgiving like Lindsay.”

Lindsay climbed into the van. “Mom said she wants to drive over there by herself.”

Four hours later, Gammy was taking the first of the turkeys out of the oven. “Alice,” she said. “You’d come in dead last in a tanning contest even if the only other contestant was Casper the friendly ghost. Sit down and take a rest. I can’t believe Al said it was okay for you to work today.”

Al hadn’t. Allegra promised him that she would spend the day resting, letting everyone else do for her. The more she imagined herself lying on the couch watching the Macy’s Day Parade, the less appealing it sounded. She’d work for a little while and then rest. Then Al would be back, and they could have their family meeting and sort all this weirdness out.

Gammy snapped a foil tent over turkey number one to let it cool before carving. Then she disappeared down the hallway, barking orders. “I need six pair of hands. Who wants to earn a Brownie point with the Lord?”

Allegra’s tiredness wasn’t an age thing, not when Gammy was running circles around her. The only culprits she could blame were the pills making her well and her own tendency to overestimate her energy. All her joyous feelings of Thanksgiving, her gratefulness for remission, turned to crap.

“Don’t worry, Allegra,” Lindsay said, giving her a hug as she passed by with a load of trash. “Mom will get over it. She likes to think she’s in control of stuff.”

Allegra forced a smile. How humbling to hear your words parroted back to you. “Lindsay,” she whispered, “I think you’re going to love having Doc as your grandfather.”

Lindsay grinned and whispered back, “I already do.”

Allegra felt tears well up in her eyes. “You’re growing up so fast. I hope you’ll come visit me after I move out.”

“Allegra, stop worrying,” she said, tying the twist-tie on the trash bag. “Every summer I’ll come home from college and work at The Owl and Moon. After college, I’ll live in Pacific Grove. I like being near the beach and I love you. I’ll come back.”

Then she went on her way, and Allegra decided a nap on an empty cot made perfect sense.

M
ARIAH SPENT
T
HANKSGIVING
morning unpacking food, heating vegetables, and making meals for people she didn’t know. She accomplished all this with the energy that came from being wholly annoyed at her mother, humiliated that even her twelve-year-old daughter had figured out and dealt with Dr. Goodnough being Mariah’s father while Mariah had to be
told,
and told
two months
after the man had arrived on the scene and begun treating Allegra. When she tired of that subject, she reviewed her early-morning conversation with Fergus and wished it hadn’t gone like this:

Mariah: Hey, handsome. Are you awake?

Fergus: I am now.

Mariah: Last night was incredible.

God, what a stupid thing to say. It made her sound fifteen, not closing in on thirty-four.

Fergus: Huh? Oh, yeah. Listen, I’m knackered, Mariah. I have to get some rest.

Mariah: You can go back to sleep in a minute. I called because I need to talk to someone.

Fergus: Er, what is it?

Then after waking him up and annoying him, what did she say? Nothing. Like a total coward, she went for surface stuff, because what if her family complications turned him off? I’ll miss you today. Can I invite myself over later for dessert?

Then came the horrible silence, the empty stretch of phone line that lasted probably ten seconds but to her was endless, until he said, Actually, I have plans. Can I take a rain hat?

She knew he meant “rain check.” She could not, however, imagine what it was that was keeping him busy all Thanksgiving Day and night that he couldn’t tell her. The fact that she was basically throwing herself at him and he was making excuses caused the unpleasant feeling in her temples to ramp up to a migraine.

Of course, she said, and hung up before things could go any worse.

“I need that burner,” Gammy said, jolting Mariah out of her daydream. “We got a twenty-pound bag of yams someone forgot needed cooking. Mariah, dump those green beans into a tray and light a Sterno can underneath.”

Mariah moved through each task woodenly, trying not to engage anyone in conversation, especially her mother. She’d always had the ability to compartmentalize, to keep family in one place and work in another, but now they were one and the same. When Fergus left for Scotland in May, she was going to have to find something all-encompassing to fill the void. Maybe she’d take up rock climbing. Or learn Navajo. Then Portuguese.

Her peace lasted only a half hour, when one of the volunteers borrowed Gammy’s sweater and took it into the room with the cots. Since it was Gammy’s lucky sweater, the one with card faces embroidered on it, and the one she wore to bridge parties and bingo, Mariah had to see what could possibly make her give it up. On one of the cots the homeless claimed each night, her mother lay curled up nearly fetal, and Mariah stood there watching the way her every breath moved the sweater the tiniest bit. Her skin was so pale. She’d developed a facial rash from the medication. Though her beautiful black hair was growing back in, it was only about an inch long, and so very thin that bald patches showed under her red bandanna.

Mariah lingered. She knew somebody would pick up her slack because holidays brought out American guilt. Only one generation ago, the poorest age group in America was the elderly. Social Security taking the current administration’s political hits could send them back there in no time, but today the bulk of the poor were children, twenty percent of people under the age of eighteen. Oh, a million theories as to why this happened were spelled out in her textbooks: the welfare system, overpopulation, drug use, illegal immigration, the loss of jobs in America when manufacturing moved overseas, a frozen and completely unrealistic minimum wage, but none of that mattered when a person looked out into a room of cots that would be full up by nightfall, and turning still others away.

The only reason her mother was here in the first place was because she wanted to offer comfort the best way she knew how: through food.

Fergus adored Allegra. He laughed at her jokes. He didn’t flinch when she wore thin T-shirts that showed her nipples, though Mariah did. Fergus visited her when she was feeling too ill to come downstairs. Probably elders were more respected in Scotland. Thanksgiving wasn’t a holiday they celebrated in his family. Mariah wished she were in Fergus’s bed on the sailboat, feeling anything other than guilt over her mother and the fear that she might be losing him. Maybe Gammy was right about sex, though it was a little late now. She left her mother still asleep, and returned to the kitchen, now steamy with cooking food and too many well-meaning people trying to help.

The savory aromas of turkey, sage, and pumpkin forced her to take stock. Allegra gladly gave up her holidays to serve meals to strangers. When the United Way Campaign sent out requests for donations at school, Mariah threw them away, pissed off that the university had the nerve to ask teachers to volunteer for one more thing that took away from her time with Lindsay. Allegra was raunchy, but she spoke from the heart. Mariah was too afraid of rejection to finish her doctoral thesis, let alone pen the novel she kept saying she wanted to write. When Allegra’s hair started falling out, she shaved her head. Granted, Mariah didn’t think her hair was anything special, but if she lost it, she’d go into hiding. So what was it she couldn’t stand about her mother? Her ability to bounce back up when one of life’s bowling balls rolled over her?

Recalling sins, Mariah knew, was an avoidance tactic hauled out to keep her from thinking about Dr. Goodnough; Alvin, like the chipmunk. Unless she demanded lab tests, she had to take on faith that he was her biological father. Being kept in the dark hurt. Selfish, stupid, yes, but she couldn’t get beyond the pain and embarrassment.

Volunteers came and went. Green beans were spilled on the floor. A mop was commandeered. Messes got cleaned up to make way for the next mess. There was a time Mariah wished so badly for a father she would have asked any old bum on the street to fill the role. Forget birthdays and holidays; if only she’d had a father to teach her about men. What she missed wasn’t having someone to show off on Parents’ Night, it was his part in shaping the person she became: A woman who chose the right boyfriends, and who would be so well adjusted that she’d be married by now, own her own house or at least a condo. A grandfather-rock for Lindsay to turn to, not just now, but there from day one.

Gammy would have a tweaked cliché for that, but feelings weren’t clichés, and learning Al was her father had set in motion a grieving for everything she’d missed. Grief was unavoidable. If you tried not to feel it, you turned into a cranky, odd person who took things out on innocent bystanders and ended up in a place like this, depending on the kindness of strangers, just like Blanche Dubois.

“Mom?” Lindsay said, tugging at her sleeve. “Allegra’s still asleep.”

“I know, babe. She needs to rest, so let’s not disturb her.” She could feel Lindsay standing there, waiting. “What?”

Lindsay stared at her openly. “Nothing.”

Mariah knew her daughter was in shock at seeing her mother’s zeal with the kitchen duties. “Hey, even Gandhi had to start somewhere.”

Lindsay smiled. “Admit you like helping out.”

“Don’t smile at me like that,” Mariah said. “This is
one
day out of the year.”

On a bathroom break, Mariah stepped outside just in time to see a gull fly by. Did gulls have nests? She could give an off-the-cuff serious discussion of Marxism, but she did not know where seagulls raised their babies. Every Christmas Allegra saved the ribbons from presents. In the spring, she and Lindsay took them out to woodsy areas in the Valley and threw them into the wind so that, theoretically, birds could use them for nests. They had yet to see a decorated nest, but that didn’t stop them from believing in the possibility.

Gammy whistled from the shelter doorway. “You with the deep thoughts. Get your buns back inside, pronto. There’s turkey to carve and prayers to say. Word is the musical entertainment will be up shortly.”

“Can’t miss that,” Mariah said, though the idea of someone singing off-key hymns was no balm for her headache. How did Allegra do this and stay sane? The answer had to be marijuana.

The last of the turkeys was carved and laid out in the heated trays. Mariah still didn’t know what to say to her father. She had tried out the proper words and each felt wrong. Dad. Al. Doc. Sorry I hated you until I knew you were my dad, but I need a little more time to hate you because I’m incredibly selfish and can’t get over embarrassment? A shot of Fergus’s whiskey would help, but she couldn’t exactly serve meals at the shelter with alcohol on her breath.

Lindsay tugged on her arm. “We need to get in line or the order will fall apart. You’re at station three.”

Mariah looked at her daughter, hair up in a net, an apron doubled up so she wouldn’t trip over it. “Did I ever allow you to be a little girl?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lindsay asked.

“Never mind,” Mariah said, and slipped into the serving line, dreading Brother Fowler’s sermon. She looked for her mother, didn’t see her, and then spotted Gammy on the left side of the room, wearing her white apron that did nothing for her shape, and her silver beads that did little for the apron. When she noticed Mariah, she shot her a stern look.

What? Mariah mouthed. Her grandmother’s response was to incline her head to the left. She did the head-cocking thing three times in a row. Mariah didn’t get it. Was she having a bout of wry neck? The usual faces had turned out to help. Everyone except Mariah was over sixty, silver-haired and well intentioned, except for the man standing in front of the turkeys. What in the heck was he dressed in? A kilt? She’d have to tell Fergus there was another Scotsman in Pacific Grove. The shelter attracted all kinds. In winter, fog seeped into your bones. You wore what you had to keep warm.

Here came her mother to the microphone, looking frail, walking slowly. Allegra tapped the microphone with her finger and smiled. “Every year we have Brother Fowler from Valley Baptist to give us his good words, but this year he’s taken a trip to be with his family, bless his heart. We have a newcomer today, Reverend Diane Smith, from First Unitarian. Reverend Diane, welcome.”

As the tall blond woman came forward, the first thing Mariah noticed was that she couldn’t be out of her twenties. Her smile appeared genuine, but she could have gotten her braces off last week.

“Thank you for having me here to share on this holiday of uncertain history. By that I mean to say that Thanksgiving is less about the issue of pilgrims seeking religious freedom than it is about sharing our bounty. Now, don’t nod off into your turkey until you hear me out. Some of us are here today because we’re struggling. We can’t find the bounty in our lives. We’re scraping by. We’ve lost track of the hope that is every citizen’s birthright, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Look around you. Others are here because of a deep desire to share what they do have. To help those who are struggling to find their way back to having a home, a job, self-respect, a pair of shoes, a warm jacket, a place to sleep, a toy for a child’s Christmas….”

Platitudes versus action, Mariah thought as she stared at kilt man some more. His face was hidden because of the hat and the collar on his jacket, but something about him was familiar. She wondered if he’d come into the café, and whether Fergus knew him, if there was some kind of Scots support group, a community of his fellow countrymen who gathered to eat blood pudding or haggis. Reverend Diane wrapped it up quickly. Her sermon was a nice break from the metaphor of loaves and fishes, but when would someone come up with a practical solution to hunger instead of prattling on about hope?

“I know you’re all waiting to eat,” the minister said, “so I’m keeping things short this year. I do however ask you to be patient just a few minutes longer. We have among us a gentleman who has kindly offered the gift of his music.”

Mariah couldn’t help it—a small laugh escaped when she saw the man striding toward the microphone, bagpipes in hand, was indeed Fergus. When he’d asked, she’d told him she found bagpipe music schmaltzy and loud and just plain irritating. If he’d agreed to play in public, he must be pretty accomplished. When he reached the front of the room, he muttered “ ‘Highland Cathedral’ ” into the microphone, cast a quick glance her way, and her spirits perked right up. As he played, her heart filled with thistles. Becoming lovers so recently meant the images in her mind were too new to call memories, but calling them miracles might not be far off. When she was in his arms, the rest of the world went on without her. This displaced foreigner asked only for her company. She came and went from the boat, but her heart stayed on board. As she listened, she thought of his country’s complicated history, the bardic tradition, steins of dark ale as common as water, and tough old women like Gammy tending bar. Allegra would fit right in there. She would have the regulars coming back for more. When that song ended, he finished up with “Amazing Grace.” Not an eye in the room was dry.