The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (30 page)

The next morning, as if elves had been at work all night, the day’s baking was done. It wasn’t yet seven
AM
so Allegra figured that Mariah must have returned from her date with Fergus feeling anything but sleepy, and put that energy to good use, because there were dozens of cookies shaped like Thanksgiving turkeys, braided loaves of egg bread, Russian teacakes—a cookie Allegra had stopped making because besides being labor-intensive, all that powdered sugar made a mess—and fudge, pounds of it, on all the available counter space.

A testament to the power of good sex, Allegra thought. She began arranging and wrapping cookies, checking orders off against the list. She sliced a wedge of fudge, admired its sheen, and set it on a marble slab. She folded napkin bundles. There was nothing left to do but replace the flowers in the bud vases. The café phone rang, and though they didn’t open for another hour, Allegra picked up. “Owl & Moon, Allegra speaking.”

“I overslept,” Mariah said into the receiver in lieu of hello. “I’ll be down in just a minute.”

“Take your time,” Allegra told her. “Sometime today I’d like to talk to you in private.” She could hear Mariah yawn.

“About anything special?”

Allegra thought a minute. Mariah was a step away from having her questions answered. “Yes,” she said. “It’s actually very special.”

“Okay. See you in a few minutes.”

Allegra hung up the phone and looked around her café. The Christmas cactus had buds. She’d upped their prices for holiday cookies and cakes by a few dollars, and so far nobody’d complained. For every extra dollar she took in, maybe a quarter of that could go toward paying her medical bills.

Simon blew in the back door, the wind behind him. “Morning, Allegra,” he said as he hung up his jacket. His T-shirt read:
Rainbows are gay.

“Don’t let Gammy see your shirt.”

“But that’s the reason I bought it.” He tied on his apron. “How’s love?”

“Love is great.”

“Happiness,” he said. “How utterly cloying.”

Allegra smiled. “You’re jealous. This is going to be a terrific Thanksgiving. Come to the shelter and help serve.”

“I’d rather have dinner with Pat Robertson.” He began seeding roasted peppers for his Santa Fe tomato soup.

Allegra turned. Mariah was in the doorway.

This was it. The moment of truth. “Let’s go sit in booth four, where we can talk privately.”

“This sounds juicy,” Simon said. “Can I come, too?”

“Go peel your peppers,” Allegra told him.

She followed Mariah to the table, where carnation buds lay wrapped in florist’s cellophane. With every step, her warm feeling shrank and her cold feeling grew.

Mariah sat down and began clipping carnations. “Am I not smiling enough at the customers? Did I mess up the till? I know Gammy’s mad about me sleeping with Fergus, but I never thought you’d be.”

“You’re doing great at the café and I for one am thrilled you finally got a sex life. I know this will sound odd for us, this year, anyway, but it’s happy news.” She placed her hand over Mariah’s, stopping the carnation clipping. “It’s Al, babe. He’s not going to be your stepfather.”

“Why not?” Mariah asked. “Did he break things off? Well, doesn’t that just take the cake! Does he have affairs with all of his patients? That’s got to be against the Hippocratic oath, or at least malpractice—”

“Hush,” Allegra said. “The wedding’s still on, and I’m counting on you to be my best woman. What I meant to say is that Al can’t be your stepfather, because he’s already your father.”

Mariah paled. She looked out the window. She exhaled, shook her head, and looked at her mother with tears in her eyes.

“Honey, say something,” Allegra pressed.

Mariah picked apart a flower bud. “Are you smoking pot again?”

Allegra sat back. “I resent that! You know darn good and well that I haven’t smoked pot for twenty years. I promised you I’d never do it again. I stuck to my promise. You apologize for that right now.”

She watched her daughter fold her arms across her chest and close up as neat as any lock. “As soon as you apologize for keeping my father from me for thirty-three years.”

“I will not. I’m your mother; it’s my prerogative to decide when to tell my child things and when to hold them back. Apparently it runs in the family. Ask Gammy about that.”

Hurricane Mariah blew. “Damn it, Mother! You had so many opportunities to tell me but you chose not to. Did you get some kind of kick out of torturing me? Was he in on it? A freaking sadist for a father. Isn’t that just my luck? Dammit!”

Allegra focused on the old Perrier bottles they used as vases. “I should have known you’d see it this way. Turn my wonderful news into a weapon against you.”

“Forget about me,” Mariah said, “what did you think this would do to Lindsay?”

“Lindsay and I are very close. She’ll understand. You have every right to be angry. I’m sorry I didn’t sit down and tell you before. But I had to work up the courage, Mariah.”

“The courage for what?”

Allegra slid a red flower into the green bottle. “I had to tell Al first. He never even knew I was pregnant.”

“So it was some one-night stand?”

“It wasn’t like that. I loved him. He was headed—”

Mariah stood up. “Don’t talk to me right now. Just leave me alone.”

She walked into the kitchen and Allegra watched her go. She snipped stems and filled vases, poured water into each one, and added a spring of baby’s tears. Eventually, she got up and placed one on each table. Suddenly she was exhausted, and decided to go back to bed.

“What crawled up Mariah’s behind?” Gammy asked when she passed Allegra on the stairs.

“Who knows?” Allegra said. “Maybe she has menstrual cramps.”

Gammy sighed in relief. “Thank the Lord for small miracles. At least she’s not pregnant.”

Allegra picked up Khan and shut herself in her room so she could cry in peace. She popped a Marinol before she lay down and prayed for good side effects. Seven
AM
was a great time to get royally plowed.

Thanksgiving morning, she was still waiting for Mariah to say she was forgiven. Worse, she’d kept the news from Al, and what kind of soon-to-be wife did that? Tomorrow she’d put up the Advent calendars, the one with chocolates for Lindsay, and the one with recipes for the café. She’d ask Simon to hang the fairy lights in the windows, and break out the reindeer mold for cookies. But her heart wouldn’t be in the holiday spirit.

Mariah came into the café and set the case of juice boxes meant for the shelter on the counter. “We specifically asked for cranberry and they sent us orange juice.”

“People won’t mind,” Allegra said. She looked at the clock. “We have to hustle. Take the box to the car and we can worry about flavors later.” She walked past her daughter and as she did, their shoulders brushed. “Sorry,” Allegra said.

“Sorry,” Mariah said at the exact same moment.

“This is ridiculous,” Allegra said. “We live in the same house. How long can we go on not talking?”

“How long did you keep the truth from me?” Mariah said, and walked in the other direction.

“Happy effing Thanksgiving,” Allegra muttered to herself. In the kitchen, she tore foil from the roll and covered the trays of green beans and sweet potatoes. She thought of Al, driving to San Francisco to see his son, and hoped traffic wouldn’t be dreadful. She tried to imagine what Doug might look like—did he have his father’s beaky nose, or did he resemble the clearly stupid wife who ran away with her gynecologist? She had been looking forward to meeting him, to the blending of their families, but maybe they should stay on separate sides of the fence.

Mariah came into the kitchen, kicked the river rock doorstop out of the way and closed the door behind her. This happened so rarely that Allegra looked up. “Are you still worried about the juice? Don’t be, it’s—”

“No.” Mariah crossed her arms over her breasts. “I’ve made a decision.”

“Obviously you want to tell me about it.”

“I do. Please do not stress Lindsay out when she’s having a hard enough time with that science project. Keep this information about Dr. Goodnough quiet until I consult a psychologist. It’s difficult to get an appointment this close to Christmas, but I’ll find someone if it kills me. Then, depending on what the professional has to say, we’ll sit down together and explain all this to Lindsay. I don’t really care if that sounds amenable to you because that is the way we are going to play it.”

Allegra finished crimping the foil around the sixth pan of mashed potatoes before she spoke. “I’m sorry, Mariah. I automatically assumed you’d be as happy as me. I wanted to tell the world. I have a big mouth.”

“I’m not finished yet. Regarding Dr. Goodnough.”

“He doesn’t expect you to call him Dad,” Allegra said, and saw at once from the look on Mariah’s face that that was not the best comment to make. “Or Father.”

“It would be best,” Mariah said, keeping her voice low, “to downplay the father/grandfather aspect of this and instead focus on the idea that he will be your husband, and therefore an extended part of the family. This will allow Lindsay time to get used to him before we place too much emphasis on biological ties. How does that sound to you?”

Asinine, Allegra thought, feeling faint again, but it wasn’t from her anemia, or inability to eat enough to make Al happy. The crushing blow that she had so gravely misjudged her daughter’s reaction was the culprit. “Whatever you want.”

“You will talk to Dr. Goodnough about it, and get him to agree.”

“I’ll talk to Al, but I’m not promising anything.” Allegra expected that would be that, the day would pass quickly because they’d be too busy to interact, but Mariah wasn’t finished.

“Mother, I know you have a generous heart, and that you’d just as soon give the shirt off your back to a stranger as your own family, but there is a problem with airing our dirty laundry with customers. I’d appreciate it if you don’t mention this to any of them, either.”

“Dirty laundry? You think that wonderful man who is your father and who’s going to be my husband is dirty laundry? Mariah Janis Joplin Moon, I should wash your mouth out with soap.”

Mariah gave her the glacier face. “I’d hoped to avoid arguing. I’m not the one who needs punishing. You knew all these years. And then he shows up. Why didn’t you tell me the day I took you to your first doctor appointment? I have to ask. Are you certain he’s my father?”

“Stop it, Mariah! He was the only man I slept with.”

“Ever? Or just that month?”

Allegra took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’m going to let that slide because I know you didn’t mean it. Al was my first time! I loved him. Then, all these years, and now, more than ever. I’ve made foolish choices between now and then, but I never once stopped loving him.”

Mariah’s stony face broke Allegra’s heart.

Allegra looked down at the foil-wrapped trays. “When you were little, you loved to draw pictures on the foil. Nothing made Gammy angrier than finding a drawing of a sun on her potato salad, especially if the foil tore. I stood up for you, Mariah. I defended your right to call whatever you saw as a canvas. I hoped by now you might understand me better. I’ll be leaving here soon enough to move in with your father. You can deny it all you want, but that’s what he is. I hope my leaving will make life easier for you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have hungry people to feed.”

She picked up a tray and walked past Mariah, headed out the back door, and loaded it into Cronkite in the same way she had last year and the year before that. Tired already, she stopped to take a breath. She needed to go back for the next one, but she didn’t have the energy. Her lungs ached. The streets were dead quiet. Every shop from Lighthouse to Central Avenue was closed, and the only living things on the beach were sand crabs and obsessed joggers. If only she were a runner, someone who could make the bad feelings go away by moving fast through the fog, peeling off miles. She knew exactly where she would run to—Hawk Tower at Tor House, the stone marvel Robinson Jeffers had built for his wife. The spiral staircase was narrow, but she’d climb it anyway, and when she reached the top, she’d stand there and look at the Pacific, that steely blue ocean full of secrets, and try to figure out how to make her daughter not hate her so much.

But instead she would drop these trays off at the shelter. Since Mariah could toddle upright she’d helped, folding napkins. Allegra secured the tray, and then turned to go back for the next one, and nearly had a head-on crash with Mariah, who was carrying pies.

“When I met him, he had just come home from the war,” Allegra said. “Vietnam.”

Mariah continued loading pies. “Is that supposed to excuse you?”

Allegra touched her fingers to her racing heart. “Boys went off to war and came home men, quite a few of them in boxes. They left believing they were doing right by their country, but came home to jeers and protests and being called baby killers. It’s easy to pass judgment when you haven’t walked a mile in the other person’s moccasins, Mariah.”

Mariah didn’t respond.

“I didn’t even know his last name, let alone think I’d ever see him again. It wasn’t until he’d been gone two months that I even knew I was pregnant.” She stopped herself, feeling the tears threaten to spill down her cheeks.