Whole Latte Life (26 page)
M
ichael wakes up glad it’s Friday until Rachel calls him early and cancels their Saturday.
“It’s Sara Beth,” she says.
“Is she okay?”
“I think so. But she left a message on my machine when I was out walking.” He can tell she’s moving, bending and taking off her sneakers while she speaks, the telephone cradled to her ear. “Something about if I can meet her tomorrow to go shopping.”
“Shopping.”
“Well. It’s not really about shopping.”
“No,” he answers, pacing the kitchen and downing his coffee, hating to lose Saturday.
“I’m sorry. I have to give her this chance.”
“Of course you do. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, and Michael. It’s Ashley, too. She’s here. She drove down.”
“Everything all right?”
“She surprised me with a little visit, that’s all. We went to the movies last night, and we’re just going to hang out today.”
“I know how much that means to you. But I’m still going to miss you.”
Rachel pauses. “I wonder if I could ask you a favor. I want Ashley to meet you.”
“Meet me? When?”
“Today. She has to drive back to campus later and if I follow her, we could meet you in New York somewhere after you get off work. Maybe for a sandwich or something?”
“This is kind of sudden.”
“I know. It’s just that she’s here and she worries about
me
being alone now. She knows about you, and maybe it would help to meet you and see us together a little.”
“It could backfire too, Rach. She might resent me, thinking I’m taking her dad’s place.”
“Well I told her how you helped me in New York and she seems fine with it.” After another pause, she asks, “Can you do dinner tonight?”
They settle on a time and diner off one of the highway exits not too far out of their way.
What it all is, the phone call, Sara, Ashley, it’s the hold Addison has on Rachel. He wonders if he’s enough to draw her away, or if their summer plan will merely reveal whatever they can’t leave behind.
By the time he gets to his troop’s stable, that’s all he’s thinking. He saddles Maggie in the tack room, paints on hoof dressing and combs her tail before waiting in the locker room for roll. Maggie is tied outside the door while he sits at the square table and takes his assignment. He bums a cigarette from the sergeant.
“You okay, Micelli?” The sergeant hands him the pack.
“I feel like a smoke, all right?”
“Suit yourself.”
A few drags are enough, before he tamps out the cigarette and walks over to the bulletin board. Papers hang at random: job openings and formal department procedures tacked alongside handwritten index cards announcing the summer poker league, used refrigerators for sale, a tag sale, truck for hire.
Hands clasped behind his back, he reads the ads, searching for something, but not sure what. A landscaping service? Free kittens? A tattered index card is stuck behind the kitten card. He reads it once, then again. After calling the number and leaving a voicemail, he tucks the card in his shirt pocket, walks Maggie outside and starts his shift.
Anchor Beach is situated on Long Island Sound, in the crook of a bend in the coast. The sea air lingers heavier there, embraced by the stone jetty and pine forest, the arms of the bend. A long boardwalk reaches along half the length of the beach, giving way to a small street of seaside cottages running behind the sands. The American flag flies on the white pole in front of the boardwalk and a few gulls soar, floating like low-slung kites.
Michael can’t get it out of his head. As he patrols the streets, directs traffic, dismounts Maggie and writes a handful of tickets, it’s there. Even having a turkey club at Dee’s Sandwich Shoppe with Rachel and Ashley, he glances out the window and pictures the beach on the horizon. Ordering ice cream cones to-go and idling together outside the restaurant, it is Anchor Beach’s salt air he breathes. He hasn’t rented a cottage for a couple years, but this summer he needs to be there. It would be perfect.
His phone rings late that evening, after he finally gave up on a return call.
“Dave Wagnall here. You called about renting my cottage.”
“Dave, how’s it going?” Dave is a fellow officer with a precinct uptown. He’s heard the name before.
“Not bad. Hey, where the hell’d you find my card? On the board?”
“I pulled it off this morning.”
“The problem is, Micelli, that card’s old. I posted it last year.”
“No shit. So the cottage isn’t available?”
“Well, here’s the thing. It’s my mother-in-law’s place. She’s in a convalescent home and we’ve been too busy to open it up. You know, with my wife keeping an eye on her mother, it’s all I can do to get there and cut the grass.”
“It’s tough, I know.”
“But if you’re interested, I’ll rent it for a fair price. It needs to be aired out, sweep out the cobwebs. Other than that, it’s got the basics.”
“Yeah, yeah, I think I’d like to do that.” His vacation time’s booked for the end of July.
“What do you want? A week or two?”
He needs a week definitely for his daughter and her friend. And then time with Rachel. “How about July? Can you give me the month?”
The stores open at ten at Sycamore Square, an outdoor shopping plaza in the center of Addison. The plaza, a cluster of pretty, cream-colored buildings, sits nestled at the end of a wide, tree-lined boulevard.
Sara Beth asked Rachel to meet her at nine-thirty in front of Ann Taylor’s, so Rachel figures they’re back to that, their half hour walk before the stores open, window shopping and talking along the way. She dressed for shopping: black tank, denim skirt, wedge sandals. Easy on, easy off.
She spots Sara Beth sitting on the bench in the noted spot, legs crossed, hand clutching a big straw tote. “Sara,” she calls.
Sara Beth stands. Her ankle length gauzy skirt makes her look thinner than she is. Two long strings of beads hang over her fitted top. “Hey Rach. Let’s walk?”
Rachel steps beside her on the cobblestone walkway. Well okay, now here’s something she notices, one of the reverberations echoing since their New York weekend. No hug. “How are you, Sara Beth?”
“I’m doing okay,” she says, hiking her bag to her shoulder. “I’m glad you came.”
“I wasn’t too sure if I should.”
“I know, after the way I talked to you at the carriage house. Oy, when I think about it. So thanks,” Sara Beth says, and they walk a few quiet steps. “Hey.” She taps Rachel’s arm. “Speaking of that day, my secret’s out.”
“Secret?”
“The carriage house. Tom knows.”
“You told him?”
“Not exactly. He kind of stumbled on it by himself.”
“And?”
“Let’s say he’s trying to get used to the idea.”
“Idea? What idea?”
“I’m going to go ahead with my plans. To open a shop.”
“That’s great,” Rachel tells her, glancing into a shoe store, remembering how Sara Beth kicked her out of that carriage house and out of her life.
“But I’m only in the planning stage right now. The talking stage.”
“Didn’t look that way to me.” They approach The Gap and stop in front of a window of mannequins fitted with pastel tees and faded denim, square straw bags slung over armless shoulders. “Seems like you’ve got a readymade shop there. If you hung a shingle out front, you’d be in business.”
“There’s more to a business than that.”
“I meant it as a compliment. It looks like you’re past the talking stage is all I’m saying.”
“Oh. I guess.” They start walking.
“Is that what today is about? A formal business announcement?”
Sara Beth glances at her as they walk. “I’m just trying to make small talk.”
“Well.” Ship replicas crafted of mahogany and fine silk sails line Felucca’s window. Seagoing vessels and schooners laden with sails fore and aft remind her of the shoreline and her day at the beach with Michael. “Good luck with your plan then. Really. You deserve it more than anything.”
“Thanks. Do you want to go in here?” Sara Beth asks.
“No. That’s okay.” They start walking again.
“So how’ve you been? How’s your summer, Rach?”
Rachel slips off her sunglasses and studies her, squinting. “Gosh I hate it that this is what we’ve become. Polite questions. Forced smiles.”
Sara Beth motions toward the little café where dark green sun umbrellas have been opened at the outdoor tables. “Let’s get a coffee.”
When they sit side by side with two large mugs, Rachel hears Sara Beth’s low voice.
“I feel it too, Rach. That strain.” She reaches over and touches Rachel’s arm. “But I’m trying, I’m really trying, to make a connection with you.” She pauses. “And with Tom.”
So there is friction between Sara Beth and her husband, too. “Sara. We’re all trying to understand what you’re going through, because we love you. But maybe you’ve lost some connections because you’re not trying to understand us back.”
“Well help me to. Please.”
Rachel pulls in her chair and sits straight, elbows on the table, hands clasped beneath her chin. “Okay. Did you ever think that in The Plaza, Michael advised me not to touch your belongings, in case you were dead?
That’s
what I lived that weekend.”
“Michael? The guy with you?”
“The police officer. See what I mean about understanding? He’s a cop,” she says kindly, “and he helped me.”
A waitress approaches and sets a glass vase crammed with yellow marigolds on the center of their table, smiling briefly before breezing to the next.
“I’m sorry,” Sara Beth says, moving the vase to the side. “I’m sure you did everything you could. And I understand your worry now.”
“And it’s not only me. Your husband was devastated. As surprised as he was, all he cared about was that
you
were okay.”
“I’m working on being okay. It’s just that I turned forty and they say this is when you surrender some of your dreams. So I wondered why it can’t be a time to
pursue
them. You never know from day to day when it can be too late. Look what happened with my mom, an aneurysm out of nowhere. So I tried to change my life without disrupting everyone else’s.” She picks up her coffee cup, pauses mid-air and sets it back down. “Which is
exactly
what I did, didn’t I?”
Rachel pushes back from her chair and checks her watch. “You used to wear your heart on your sleeve. Your kids, your home, even Addison. I miss that openness. Now you’re changing yourself? A secret carriage house? A new look? I don’t know what’s in your heart anymore.” She stands in the shade of the green umbrella and pulls her sunglasses from the top of her head.
“Rachel, we have to do this.” Sara Beth watches from her seat. “You’re not leaving?”
“No. I saw a dress in Ann Taylor I want to try on.”
“Can I meet you there in fifteen minutes?” Sara Beth motions to her coffee as though she wants to finish it.
Rachel looks at her, squinting with doubt but knowing they need a breather here.