Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

by Deborah Rodriguez

  Halajan had returned to her chores. “You worry too much. That girl will be fine. The children these days, they are full of drama. Everything is a crisis. This is a matter of puppy love, you will see. Getting involved in others’ troubles will only bring us trouble,” the old woman said. “And trouble,” she continued as she stroked the wall beside her to ward off bad luck, “is the last thing we need in this place.”

  3

  The wheels of the rental car spun fruitlessly in the mud as Sunny made a left turn onto the steep driveway. She turned off the ignition and sighed, relieved to no longer be driving. The twenty-minute trip from the ferry landing had felt more like an hour, the pines obscuring the view on both sides, hemming her in like giant wooden prison bars. If there was a soul to be seen living behind that curtain of green, she sure couldn’t spot them. Only two cars had passed her after she made the first turn up the hill, one a battered truck with lumber hanging out of the back, the other a Subaru with bikes on top. A faded directional sign, similar to those she had seen along the road that seemed to be pointing to nowhere, showed the way up the drive to the house, but it was clear that the only way to go would be by foot. Sunny glanced down and said a quick goodbye to her grey suede Uggs, shut the car door behind her, and began the hike up between the gnarly vines, cursing Jack every step of the way. She stopped only briefly to catch her breath and shake her head at an abandoned firetrap of a barn halfway up, and then continued, the wet ground providing a thwacky percussive soundtrack with each step she took. It reminded her of her least favorite season in Kabul, when the winter rains would turn the muddy, flooded streets into a navigational nightmare, and the thick sludge would seep in through every crack and crevice imaginable.

  At the crest of the hill, a rickety mongrel of a house stood framed by a dull midday sun that was still struggling to be seen from behind the clouds. Sunny narrowed her eyes and cocked her head sideways at the structure. What the hell was it? Raised Ranch? Cape Cod Classic? Mid-Century Monstrosity? The place looked like a poorly constructed jigsaw puzzle, with every piece jammed together regardless of size or shape or color. It was all disintegrating shingles, lopsided angles, and a front porch straight out of The Waltons. She stood in disbelief, hands on hips. “Hello?” she called out in her booming voice, hoping that Rick, after getting her message that she’d arrive around midday, might be there to meet her. But of course nobody answered.

  She had just started back down the driveway when she heard someone call out from behind her. “Hey! Hold on! Hello! Wait!” She turned to see a skinny young man in ripped jeans and rubber boots rushing toward her. “Can I help you?” he shouted across the soggy lawn.

  “I don’t know,” she shouted back.

  “Sky,” he said as he came to a halt in front of her and wiped his palms on his jeans.

  Sunny smiled politely and squinted toward the clouds above.

  “Sky,” he repeated, holding out his hand. “That’s my name.”

  “Oh!” She held out her own hand. “Sunny.”

  The boy raised two pierced eyebrows.

  “No, that’s me. My name is Sunny.”

  “Of course,” he laughed, revealing a metal stud glistening in front of his teeth. “My bad. I should’ve known. Nice to meet you.” He clasped her hand between his own tattoo-covered ones and shook. “You just got here?”

  “I did. I told Rick I was coming. Maybe he didn’t get the message.” Sunny’s eyes wandered from the barn to the house and back again. This was so not what she had imagined, not even on her worst days.

  “Well, you want to look around?” the young man asked eagerly, shifting from foot to foot.

  “Don’t have the key.”

  “No worries. Nobody on the island locks their doors.”

  She followed him as he trotted toward the house, admiring how his long, shiny brown curls bounced with every step he took. To be that young and lovely, the forty-two-year-old in her thought, struggling to keep up.

  “But if you do want a key,” Sky said as he reached the back door and bent to lift up a worn straw mat, “here’s our secret hiding place.”

  “That’s original,” she said with a smirk as she tucked the key into the back pocket of her jeans.

  The ripped screen door screamed in protest as Sky pulled it open and stepped aside to allow her to enter. They were in the kitchen; at least, she assumed it was the kitchen from the slight glow coming from the green phosphorescent hands of the frozen clock on the electric stove. The room was so dark she could barely make out the shape of the old Frigidaire in the corner, with its rounded corners and hinged handle. Sky flipped the switch by the door, but nothing happened. “Sorry,” he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “I’ve been meaning to bring in some light bulbs.”

  As Sunny’s vision began to adjust to the dimness she was able to take in more. The dead flies legs-up on the windowsills. The crusty glasses in the sink. Sky watched silently as she took a sorry inventory. Thank God Jack isn’t with me was her first thought, trying to imagine the lengths she’d have to go to in order to cover her disappointment with this place. There was no way she could be that good an actor.

  “My bad again,” said Sky, bowing his head a little. “I would have cleaned the place up a little if I knew you were coming.”

  “You work for Rick?”

  “Oh, no.” Sky drew back his chin and shook his head a little. “Haven’t seen that guy in ages. He lives all the way up island, near the military base. It’s Jack I do work—I mean, used to do work—for. Just keeping an eye on things for him, stuff like that. Really great guy.”

  The sadness that had been shadowing her for the past few months suddenly tightened its grip. Sunny swallowed and struggled to blink back the tears that she knew held more power than she did. Sky lowered his eyes, then politely turned away to pretend to fiddle with the light switch. Sunny stood in place, concentrating on her breathing. “Yeah, pretty great,” she finally managed to utter, the three words coming out in a little croak.

  Sky turned around and placed a hand gently on her shoulder. “We all miss him, you know.”

  Sunny nodded, envious of this boy’s memories of Jack on this island when she had none. If only she could have pictured his head bent over the newspaper at the kitchen table, or remembered his crackly laugh bouncing off these walls, maybe it all might have felt different.

  She dragged herself through the kitchen door toward the rest of the house. The bedrooms and bath told pretty much the same story as the kitchen did. Dingy sheets covering the sparse furniture, a moldy shower curtain, rusty faucets, a peeling linoleum floor, and a plastic bucket half filled with stale, brackish rainwater perched on top of the toilet lid. The whole place had the aura of an old sepia photograph, all brown and yellow and dark, and Sunny found herself practically holding her breath as she passed from room to room.

  The living room seemed slightly more promising. At least it was big enough for entertaining, if one was so inclined. Which she wasn’t. She ran her fingers along the slats of the dirty white shutters that lined one entire wall of the room, and plopped herself down on the worn couch, where she was greeted with a cloud of dust up her nose. “Achoo!” she sneezed once, then again, and then five more times in a row, as was her way. Waving away the multiple blessings Sky was politely offering, she returned to the kitchen for a tissue from her purse, and checked her messages. Still no word from Rick. She circled the room until she finally found a spot where one little bar appeared on her phone, and hurried to send a message to the number he had given her. It’s Sunny. I’m here, but won’t be for long. Call me. God, how she wanted this day to be over.

  But when she returned to the living room Sunny let out a gasp so loud you could have heard it all the way back on the mainland. Sky laughed. He’d unhooked the shutters, revealing one of the most stunning views Sunny had seen in her entire life. The sun had made a brief appearance above, and below, the turquoise waters of Puget Sound shimmered like a sequined evening gown.
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  She had to admit, for one quick moment, that Jack’s description of the beauty of the Sound, at least when the sun shone, had been spot on. She’d give him that. But still, what had made him think she’d actually want to make a life here? For one thing, it was way too quiet, except for what was beginning to sound like a crazy woman on a rant next door. And for another thing, it was too wet. And woodsy. And isolated. What had he been thinking? She rubbed her temples, trying her damnedest to wrap her head around this place, to see what Jack saw, besides that view. And why wouldn’t that woman stop screaming, for God’s sake?

  Her answer came in the form of a frantic peahen hustling a trail of little ones across the lawn. The worried mama circled around her chicks like a tightly wound-up toy. But the sound Sunny heard wasn’t coming from her. It came from the branches of a maple tree, where the peahen’s peacock mate was screeching out a full-scale warning to the barking ball of matted fur loping toward his family at breakneck speed. A fat orange cat lay in wait by the bushes, licking his chops.

  Sky rapped on the window with his knuckles. “Bear! Bad dog! Leave it!”

  Sunny covered her eyes but watched through spread fingers as the birds scurried away and the cat slithered under the porch. That’s when she saw an ancient Asian man in a faded baseball cap waving a crooked stick in the air with one hand while flinging handfuls of dust right and left with the other. He looked like a demented fairy godmother as he crossed the property at the rate of a tortoise, either belting a song or arguing with himself, Sunny couldn’t tell which.

  “That’s your next-door neighbor,” Sky said.

  Sunny followed him outside, skirting the puddles that were blending into one giant lake across the soggy grass. Sky joined his hands in front of his chest and made a slight bow. “Youkoso irasshai mashita.”

  The man stood there silently under the tree, hat in hand, slowly turning his stony gaze to Sunny, who frantically and awkwardly bent down, replicating Sky’s gesture. You have got to be kidding me, she thought as she took in the sight of this strange man, from his miraculously spotless brown moccasins to his denim-on-denim outfit to his cropped full head of white hair. When she finally straightened to find herself eye to eye with him, the smooth, unlined face behind the wire-rimmed glasses surprised her. Not a single wrinkle, except for those ears. The two lobes hung long and low, and to Sunny looked like a couple of sheets of paper someone had crumpled up only to later realize they were something that was actually needed. And those eyebrows! You could practically braid them up and twist them into little buns they were so long and thick.

  “Benvenuti in paradiso,” the old man said loudly, gently taking her hand and raising it to his dry warm lips. “I am Giuseppe,” he added, the three words tinged with an accent Sunny couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Around here, just Joe.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said, surprised by this Japanese guy’s Italian but relieved at his English. It had been starting to feel like her early days at the coffeehouse, when the confusing jumble of tongues had made her brain spin like a top. “Sunny.”

  He turned and tilted his ear toward her mouth.

  “Sunny!” she repeated, louder this time.

  “Ah, that I know,” he nodded. “The remarkable Sunny Tedder, straight from Jonesboro, Arkansas via Kabul, Afghanistan and other points unknown. And you are even more bellissima than I ever imagined.” Joe scattered the remains of his birdseed across the lawn and tossed the stick into the air for the dog.

  She could feel the color rising in her cheeks. “Nice dog you’ve got there,” was the only response she could think of, this time delivered at a volume equal to his.

  “My dog? Bear? Oh no.” He shook his snowy head. “Not my dog. Your dog. Jack sprung him from the shelter a ways back. I’ve just been watching him. He’s a good dog, aren’t you, Bear-boy?” he yelled toward the dog, who was too busy turning the stick into a pile of toothpicks to answer. “He’s quite a scoundrel, that dog. I tell you, once he—”

  “And the cat?” Sunny squinted her eyes and wrinkled her nose, not sure she really wanted to hear his answer.

  Joe nodded. “Sangiovese? Yours as well.”

  “Typical Jack,” she muttered out loud, her shoulders dropping with annoyance.

  The old man wagged a gnarled finger in her face. “A caval donato non si guarda in bocca. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, they say. Or a cat, for that matter.”

  Oh no, she thought. Not another Halajan, with the quotes. Joe’s shameless cackling at his own joke quickly turned into a hacking cough. She grabbed his arm and gently patted the back of his worn blue shirt.

  “Don’t be fooled by this one’s charm,” Sky warned. “He’s a tough old bird. Before you know it he’ll be getting you to bring him his newspapers and clean his house for him.”

  “Not to worry. I’m not planning on staying here.”

  Either Joe didn’t hear her, or pretended not to. “Young man, you give away my secrets,” he chided. “I suppose you’ve also already spilled the beans about our little project.” He lowered himself slowly onto a wooden bench surrounding the maple, patting the spot beside him as an invitation for Sunny to sit, which she did. At the bottom of the sloping lawn, the Sound stretched out like a smooth, welcoming blanket, as if it were a totally different body of water than the choppy dark sea she had crossed just an hour before. She checked her watch. Only about two hours left to connect with Rick before she had to catch the last ferry out. But Joe had embarked on some long story to which she’d barely been listening.

  “Of course,” he was saying, “all of the winemakers on the island buy their grapes from the mainland. The vines you see in front of their places? Mostly for show.”

  “Wait, what? You mean nobody makes wine on this island?” Sunny thought she must have misheard the old man.

  “Oh, they make wine,” Sky, crouching down on his haunches in front of them, explained. “They just don’t grow their own grapes. It’s too difficult here, in this weather, on this land.”

  “You mean Jack bought half of a winery with no grapes?”

  “This place hasn’t made any wine for years.” Sky reached out to scratch the dog behind the ears. “Rick said he was waiting for Jack to come back before he put anything more into this place, before he brought in any more grapes.”

  “Well, now I guess he’ll just have to do it on his own.” Sunny noticed the two men’s eyes meet for a split second. “So those vines in the front are simply for decoration? Do they even get grapes on them?”

  “Ah, that, kiddo, is where young Sky and I are doing our magic, with Jack’s blessing of course. You see,” he said as he slowly sat back and leaned against the tree, “when I settled over in Italy, after the war, I grew my own grapes, I made my own wine. My Sylvia, bless her soul, came from a family famous for their Chianti. For forty years I had my own little patch of land, where I made just enough to last me and all my friends from harvest to harvest. Ever since she died, and I came back home to here,” Joe pointed to a low white house visible through the trees, “to help my brother, I have dreamed of trying again. And what you see over there,” he said, pointing in the other direction, “will be the first vintage of Screaming Peacock Vineyards’ rosé.”

  Sunny followed his last gesture to the sad, empty vines she had walked through earlier. “I thought you just said it was too hard to grow grapes around here.” Jack had to have been delusional when he made this decision, she thought. That long scar across his head from the blast he’d experienced in Kabul was proof enough that his brain had seen a lot of scrambling over the past few years. How else could she explain this normally rational man’s faith in this place?

  “You know, this is not such a bad place,” Joe said, as if reading her mind. He coughed into his sleeve. “Sure, it can be lonely,” he continued without missing a beat, dismissing the thought with a wave of a hand. “And yes, it can rain enough to drown a bullfrog, but things could be worse. Me,” he said, pointing at his chest with both
index fingers, “I was away from this area for sixty years. A long time to stay away from where you were born and raised, right? And when I came back? It was very difficult. Joe, I said to myself, this is not home anymore. Why are you here?” He flung out his hands, as if he were asking himself the question all over again.

  “Now my late brother, may he rest in peace,” Joe paused to look up at the sky and back down again, “he would tell you this is the best place on earth. God’s Green Acre. My brother, he was a happy man. Always content. Believed in live and let live, forgive and forget. Much more than me.” Joe sighed. “But he was right about one thing.” He bent and struggled to scoop up a handful of moist dirt from the ground below. “It is good here, the land. If you treat it well, treat it with respect. It’s like a temperamental woman,” he continued without taking a breath. “Like my Sylvia was. Show her some tenderness, listen to her, attend to her needs, but always make sure to leave her longing for just a tiny bit more, and she’ll give you whatever she’s got, and then some. But deny or ignore her or try to make her be something she’s not, and she’ll shut down faster than a possum getting a whiff of fox.” Joe squinted toward the vines and shook his head. “Jack understood that.”

  She had to laugh a little to herself at that. Who was this funny old man who looked Japanese but spoke English like an Italian, who talked with his hands as much as his mouth? And didn’t he ever stop?

  “So you know what they say in Italy, right? Bisogna accomodarsi ai tempi.”

  Sunny looked at him blankly. Suddenly she felt exhausted.

  “Gnaw the bone which is fallen to thy lot,” Joe continued. “Make the most of what you have,” he explained, with an encouraging pat on Sunny’s knee. “You’ll hear my story soon enough, and I will learn yours. We’ll have plenty of time to talk more and get to know each other better.”