The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (5 page)

Mariah looked at her mother and grandmother for help.

“Leave the fables to Aesop,” Gammy Bess said. “The truth may sting a little, but in the long run it hurts less than deceit.”

Lindsay watched her mom purse her lips in irritation. Who wasn’t telling the truth? And about what? “Mom?” Lindsay said.

“Please,” she said. “Just eat your dinner. We’ll talk later.”

“Allegra?” Lindsay said. “Want to hear my Science Fair project ideas?”

Allegra, Khan in her lap, looked very tired and did not answer.

“Do you want me to fix you a plate?” Lindsay asked. “I’ll share my salad with you. It’s really good, lots of ginger.”

Allegra petted Khan the way he liked, which was gently and lightly, like a butterfly kiss. “That’s all right, Lindsay. I’m not hungry.”

The four of them sat at the table in the empty café, nobody talking. Lindsay looked from adult to adult. No one would meet her eye except for Khan, and that was because he was the all-time beggar of the world.

Later that night, home in their rented condo, Lindsay got into her pajamas and slid into her bed with her secondhand copy of
The Dragons of Eden.
A quote from Shakespeare started it: “What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?” The words gave Lindsay shivers. Until tonight, the first fifty pages had never failed to calm her. Her mind raced. A new friend. A science project partner. Allegra and her mom at the doctor. Everyone so quiet at dinner. What Gammy said about telling the truth.

Lindsay got up from her bed and looked across the hall. She saw light under her mother’s door. No way she was sleeping. Lindsay got an antacid from the bathroom cabinet, chewed it up and swallowed, and then knocked at her mother’s door. “Come in,” her mother said.

Rather than propped up in bed with a dozen open books around her, her mom was just sitting there hugging her knees. When Lindsay looked at her, the tears began to fall.

“What’s wrong?” Lindsay said.

Her mother shook her head.

“Mom, it can’t be any worse than I imagined.”

Her mother swiped at her cheek. “Yes, it can. I lost my job.”

“Is that all? Mom! You can
get
another job. I thought it was much worse than that.”

“Like what?” her mother said.

A prickly relief flooded Lindsay’s skin. She held her arms out wide, gesturing. “End of the world stuff. Like maybe Allegra was dying, or there was going to be a tsunami, or we were going to have to move or something.”

“You really are a genius,” her mother said sadly. “You got two out of three right.”

A
LLEGRA BEGAN HER MORNING
in the usual way, pureeing wheatgrass in the blender and chugging it down in a single gulp. She ate a handful of almonds, and then an apple, and then drank a glass of water to swallow her vitamin supplements. Could a person eat any healthier? This fainting thing was probably something as simple as anemia. She’d given up beef years ago, doing her small part to save the rain forest. Then she’d given up chicken, too, because factory farming was evil and baby chicks were so adorable. Fish was full of mercury, so that left only tofu and veggies. Plenty of women lived with anemia. Menopause might be the culprit. She couldn’t believe she was nearly fifty and in the dreaded “change of life” already. Cronedom. The Red Hat Society. What did that pipsqueak E.R. doctor know about women, anyway? Western medicine was jackrabbit-quick to jump to dire conclusions. Lots of people went their whole lives without seeing a doctor and did just fine.

Just to be safe, she telephoned Krishna Dahvid, her acupuncturist, and got his machine.

“You have reached Abalone Healing Arts and the home of Krishna Dahvid. Please leave a message after the tone, and your call will be returned. Namaste.”

Her acupuncturist didn’t pick up when he was in session. “I need a tune-up ASAP,” she said. “If you can fit me in this week I promise to bring you cookies.” That did the trick. No matter how holy or faithful or devoted a person was, Allegra knew a recipe that would break their will. Krishna Dahvid’s was Chocolate Bombs, a cocoa-meringue-powdered-sugar confection that melted on the tongue and had a sugar content high enough to shoot preschoolers to Jupiter.

She unbraided her waist-length hair and brushed it until it crackled. “Rapunzel ain’t got nothing on me,” she said, tossing it over her shoulders, then rebraiding it and pinning it up into the heavy bun she wore at work. A few gray hairs were beginning to show up at her temples, but mostly it remained the blue black that Gammy swore came from her late husband, Myron Moon, the father Allegra couldn’t remember. The Moon family had been in lumber then. Bess’s father was a church deacon. Her mother took in ironing. The way Gammy told the story sounded so romantic. Myron had been so taken with Bess that they’d eloped, and the Moon family, moneyed and high class, had not been pleased, but he loved her so much he defied their wishes.

Before Allegra’s fourth birthday, the union abruptly ended. All it took was one tree falling the wrong way. Bess became a widow, and Allegra grew up fatherless. All that time was a fuzzy blur. She thought about doing rebirthing therapy to see if she could remember more, but it was so expensive only rich people could afford it. Just look at this hair, she thought. This is Moon hair. A person with leukemia would not have such healthy hair.

There. She’d let the L-word seep into her conscious thoughts. The E.R. doctor mentioned the possibility when he examined her and found the bruises on her abdomen. How did she get them? Allegra could think of lots of ways—bumping into the kitchen equipment, dancing at the bars, even during sex, which she considered a contact sport, she’d said. Or illness, he’d countered. Serious illness often begins subtly. Then he’d ordered more tests. Allegra had never done well on tests.

Krishna Dahvid had taught Allegra that once a fear was spoken, it was free to depart. Allegra imagined a giant letter
L
flapping its wings like a bat. “Go back to the dark and awful cave you came from,” she said. “There’s no room for you in my life.” She’d cancel the follow-up appointment with the hematologist. It was a waste of time. Filling out insurance forms was pointless. The self-employed policy the restaurant paid through the nose for covered the absolute minimum. Every claim submitted was rejected on the first go-round. If you submitted the claim a second time, they’d reconsider, but the heartless freaks wouldn’t part with a dime if they could get away with it. Besides, if her blood count was so dangerously out of whack, didn’t it make sense to hang on to every drop? She skewered her bun with chopsticks, and looked out the window.

It was rainy again today. Overnight the brisk fall weather had vamoosed. Delivery trucks rumbled by in the fog. If a person had to live in a city, Pacific Grove was a good choice. Even in winter the beach had charm. After a storm, the tide delivered shells and beach glass by the handful. Allegra never grew tired of wading in the surf.

Gammy pounded on the bathroom door, startling Allegra, who dropped her hand cream into the sink. “Get a move on, Toots!”

“Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?” she said to her mother, who was trying to make believe yesterday could be erased by prayer. Allegra had heard her last night, asking St. Jude to intervene on her daughter’s behalf. That was Gammy’s way. The doctor had wanted to give Allegra a transfusion. There are plenty of other ways to boost my red blood cells, she insisted. Give me an iron shot, or pills. I’ll even eat liver, she’d said, though the thought made her shudder. She daubed her elbows with the cream, and rubbed in the scent of roses.

“Alice, I’m telling you, if you don’t get your buns out here and start cooking, I’ll have the heart attack. What in heck are you doing in there, anyway? Waxing your legs?”

Allegra capped the lotion and straightened her dress, a floor-length purple T-shirt. She tied her Guatemalan belt and smiled in the mirror at the healthy person smiling back. “Bring ’em on,” she called down to Gammy. “I’m ready to feed the entire town.” Then she let out her yip-yip-yip war cry, something she did on special occasions.

“God, grant me strength,” Gammy said. “And while you’re at it, can you please make her stop that awful racket?”

By nine, the place was packed with people wanting in out of the rain. Mostly the usuals, but a few new faces, like the man at the counter Allegra had been giving the eye. So what if he was fifteen years younger than she? Between that sexy five o’clock shadow, the broad hands, and the way he ate his breakfast, he looked like a man of large appetites. Allegra knew just what dish she’d like to fix him.

Mariah came in, her eyes red and swollen.

“Did you tell Lindsay you lost your job?” Allegra hollered over the din. “Is that why you’ve been crying?”

Mariah made the scowly face Allegra hated. “Mother, please! Do you have to announce my personal business to the entire town?”

“Well, pardon me! All I did was ask. I have to yell to be heard in here. It’s noisy as hell, or didn’t you notice?”

Mariah ramped down to bristling. “Yes, I told Lindsay and she’s fine. Now will you please hand me my order pad so Gammy can take a break?”

“Here you go, princess.” Allegra leaned in close to the cute guy at the counter. “That’s my daughter,” she said. “The branch of our family tree she fell off is as straight as a ruler.”

The man looked up from his tea and scones. “She’s lovely. You’re both so lovely that I had you figured as sisters, actually.”

Allegra boomed out her trademark laugh. “Any compliment you want to throw my way I gladly accept. So, what brings you all the way from the land of plaid and haggis to Pacific Grove? You’re from Scotland, right?”

He folded his paper napkin, set it alongside his plate, and smiled a toothy grin. “I’ve never heard my homeland referred to in quite that way. How novel.” He turned on the stool to watch Mariah take her first order of the day. “So what’s the poor girl been weeping over? Jilted by a callous lover?”

Well, fine, then don’t flirt with me, Allegra thought. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. “Oh, she lost a job,” Allegra said. “But the way she’s carrying on, you’d think her whole life had come to an end.”

He looked up at Allegra. “Single?”

“As a matter of fact, I am,
and
I’m free tonight.”

“Actually,” he said, “I was inquiring about your daughter.”

“Oh. She’s unhitched, and a single mother, to boot.”

He frowned. “What exactly does ‘to boot’ mean? I’m attempting to master your vernacular, but in Scotland, a ‘boot’ is the luggage compartment in the rear of an automobile.”

Allegra cleared a customer’s plate and folded the newspaper he’d left behind. She walked over to the magazine basket near the door and popped it inside, at the same time reaching down into Khan’s bed to give him a pet. “A bonus. Something you don’t have to pay for.”

“If she has a child, then that makes you a granny, doesn’t it?”

Well, wasn’t this turning out to be quite the happy morning! Allegra tapped the counter with her order pad. “Watch it, buddy. You’re treading on thin ice.”

He smiled. “There you go again. The odd phrase. Although this one makes sense in metaphoric context.”

“You’re a smart one, aren’t you? And by that I mean ‘intelligent.’ ”

“Thank you,” he said. “And I mean that from my heart. May I bother you for more hot water?”

“It’s no bother.” She moved away from the counter, trying to get used to the idea that the man was more interested in Mariah than he was in her. Maybe she did look sick. Maybe she should use blusher. Burt’s Bees made natural makeup. God knows what went into the stuff they sold in department stores. Whale fat, probably, and did anyone ask the whales’ permission?

“Alice!” Gammy called out. “Phone for you.”

Allegra took the receiver. “Hello?”

“Am I speaking to Mrs. Alice Moon?”

Allegra sighed. “It’s
Allegra
Moon, and not Mrs. Who’s calling, please?”

“This is Dr. Goodnough’s office. We’ve had a cancellation and can work you in this afternoon.”

“Dr. Good who?”

“Goodnough. Dr. Alvin Goodnough. The hematologist your emergency room physician referred you to? You made an appointment to see him next week?”

“Oh,” Allegra said, twining the phone cord around her hand. “Today’s not really convenient for me. Actually, I’m feeling so much better, let’s cancel the original appointment, too. Thanks for—”

The woman on the other end didn’t let her finish. “Ms. Moon, Dr. Goodnough reviewed the test results the hospital faxed us. He told me to stress that it’s imperative that he see you today, not a month from now.”

Allegra’s heart took a leap. She pressed a hand to her chest. “Why? What does he think is wrong?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to discuss your test results. The doctor will go over them with you.”

“That’s crazy,” Allegra said. “It’s my body. Why can’t I have my test results?”

“You can. I’ll make a copy for you when you come to the office.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, fine. What time? I work until three.”

“Four o’clock.”

“What’s your address?”

She scribbled it on the back of the order pad, and then hung up the phone, trembling with fear. Yesterday, while she lay on the gurney feeling stupid—because by the time they’d gotten to the hospital she felt absolutely fine—she’d observed the medical world. Overworked nurses cleaning up kid barf. Mangled teenagers who’d driven drunk. The elderly clutching their chests because it was true, when your heart broke, it hurt. And all the lost souls who’d been turned out of institutions into the street when Reagan was in office, wandering, off their meds, ended up at CHOMP—the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula—as if it was their Mecca. This was the world she tried to feed, not a population she belonged to. The test had to be a mistake. They’d repeat it and that would be the end of her big scare. She poured Scotland’s hot water and smiled at Kiki Cooper, who was peering into the cold case. “Hi there, Kiki! What can I do you for on this soggy September day?”

“Cookies. Iced oatmeal raisin if you have them. I have bridge group this afternoon and they can’t get enough of your baking. Better make it a dozen.”

“Coming right up.”

By ten the sleepy beachfront town fully roused itself. Shop doors unlocked. Compulsive shoppers cruised the wet streets. The bell on The Owl & Moon’s door rang and rang, delivering Pacific Grove’s population that needed a wake-up, a fill-up, or a cheer-up. Allegra loved all her customers, but she had a special spot in her heart for the seniors. They practiced tai chi in the park. They gave tours at the Monterey Bay Aquarium that Lindsay loved so much that Allegra had given her a membership for Christmas. They knew the steamy bits of Central Coast history. Where else could you find out that author Robert Louis Stevenson stayed here for three months to court the unhappily married Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne? The seniors were respected elders in Allegra’s tribe. They kept in shape by walking, and The Owl & Moon was their in-town oasis.

But Allegra knew the sunny, happy stuff was only the town’s outer fabric. Behind that façade were people who had worked all their lives here, and now were forced to sell their Victorian homes that lined Laurel Avenue to Ocean View Boulevard and move to where the cost of living wasn’t so dear. It seemed like every six months another bed-and-breakfast conversion popped up. When she and Lindsay walked Khan, Allegra made sure to point out the widow’s walks atop houses, and to explain to her granddaughter how the wife of a sailor would stand there watching for her husband’s ship to return. That this town was once a fishing capital reaping huge profits from sardine and abalone sales must have sounded to Lindsay like a fairy tale, but Allegra wanted her to know more of the world than MTV and meth labs and astronomical housing prices.