Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans

by DeMaio, Joanne

  “They did. It was so good to see everyone. Too bad about Kyle and Lauren though. They hit a rough patch.”

  “The economy’s not helping them. It sucks he’s laid off again.”

  Maris notices his gait and wonders if he needs to rest.

  “Is your leg okay, Jason? Do you want to sit for a while?”

  “It’s better if I keep moving actually.”

  A distant train whistle moves through the night. As they step onto the beach road, Madison catches up and walks beside Jason. Her nails click on the pavement and she holds her head high, driftwood clamped in her jaw.

  “She’ll carry that all the way home,” Maris says.

  Jason laughs. “She’s all right. Loves the beach just like the rest of us. Have you had her long?”

  “She was my father’s dog. Eva and Matt are trying to find a home for her before I head back to Chicago.”

  “You’ll miss her,” he says after a moment. “When are you leaving?”

  They near her rented cottage. Not one detail, made softer by the light of evening and the thought of leaving, escapes Maris’ notice. Dim lamplight casts a glow on knotty pine paneling inside. On a porch table, pale lavender heather spills from a blue vase, the color of the morning Sound. The outside lamppost illuminates the stone walkway, shadowed with large pots of geraniums. “Next week. I’ll be driving back on Friday.”

  The dog trots to the side of the cottage where she sets the driftwood down before returning to Jason’s side. He reaches down and strokes her head. “You’re a good dog, Maddy.”

  Maris opens the porch door and lets the dog in ahead of her. “I hope I’ll see you before I leave?”

  Jason watches her for a second. “You bet. Have a good night now.”

  She goes inside and turns off the porch light, walking around the dog still standing at the front door watching Jason walk away.

  Chapter Seven

  Stop the presses,” Maris tells her assistant.

  “What?” Lily asks. “But the fabric samples just arrived. And the trade shows are in a couple weeks.”

  “I know. And I’m still going.” At Saybrooks, initial design to final production happens over eighteen months. So she is shy a few months and will have to sweat this one out. Her team will need to pull a few all-nighters to meet the deadline. “But I’m trashing the fall line and starting fresh.”

  “Maris, wait. After we’ve already cut the patterns?”

  Maris turns and looks into the living room. Sketches cover every surface. A zip-front jacquard denim jacket with notched sleeves and a collar turned up against a sea breeze. An ocean-blue colored cardigan with marled yarns. Bootcut jeans, the bell embellished with appliquéd leaves the color of sand touched by a sunset. A chenille jacket with princess seams and high lapels, the chenille color reminiscent of autumn’s beach hydrangeas, purples and blues fading to brown. A midnight-blue denim vest, detailed with time-lapsed shooting stars.

  She couldn’t stop earlier this morning. Ideas flowed like the tide, never-ending. Her sketches are textured with pastels, highlighted with gel pens, detailed with ink, beach colors blended with watercolors.

  “Lily, don’t worry,” she says into her cell. “I’m taking full responsibility for this. Just go ahead and scrap all the designs for the fall line. All of them.”

  “But the Trend reports. The way we analyzed them, I thought we nailed the next look.”

  “Oh I did now. Believe me. When I finish the basic conceptual development, I’ll get it to you right away. It’s got a new campaign name, too. Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans.”

  One of the tenets of design is that it blends reality and illustrations. The aim of a designer is always to give the illusion of reality. To capture moments in time with each sketch, rather than posing figures. Everyone from the marketing team to the consumer has to see the fashion fitting into their lives.

  She disconnects the call, takes off Scott’s diamond and sets it on the counter, then returns to her epic design madness filling the cottage. Funny how since she moved one step closer to commitment with Scott, she finds herself halfway across the country from him. She’s put on the diamond ring three times already today, taking it off after only minutes each time. Nothing seems to make that ring a permanent reality in her own mind.

  And yet, in the sketches spilling off the end tables, lined along the couch cushions, propped against the wall and leaning on the fireplace mantle, she sees clearly the day, the moments her artwork captures. The reality that she can’t seem to get enough of. The sketched figures of her new fall line sit on a penciled boardwalk, toss driftwood down a long watercolored beach, skim stones over the pastelled Sound, catch Frisbees mid-air, ink strokes freezing the moment, and walk along the high tide line, sipping coffee side by side with old friends.

  Jason hasn’t come this close to calling his doctor in more than a year. Nothing seems to be working today. He wonders if he’s developed an infection and feels his neck for fever. Maybe a virus is settling in. He took a walk. He wrapped his leg in a warm, soft towel. He removed the prosthesis and prosthetic sock, thinking maybe a nerve was being pinched, then put them back on a while later. Still the phantom pain hangs on. The last time it hurt like this, his doctor’s shot of morphine was all that worked.

  But he’s trained himself since then and put those lessons to use now. First, distraction.

  Scraping the trim around the barn door helps at first, but standing in one position only increases the pain. So he moves inside the barn and takes down old rusted tools hanging on one of the pegboards beneath the big stuffed moose head. If this is going to work, if the barn can be renovated into his architectural studio so he can stop working out of his condominium, the debris has to be cleaned out. A rickety lobster trap sits on the floor below the pegboard and he moves it to his workbench.

  “Jason?”

  “Yeah.” He leans his left arm on the lobster trap to pry open the jammed latch and the entire trap, dried out and fragile, caves in on itself. A thin nail slices his palm as the wood gives out. He gives his hand a shake.

  Paige walks into the barn. “Wow. This definitely has potential.” Her gaze moves over the walls, the cluttered workbenches and dusty wooden shelves covered with masonry tools. “What do you suppose Dad did with this?” She touches a strung rope with clothespins randomly clipped on it.

  “I don’t know.” Jason presses his palms together to stem the bleeding. One way to stop pain is to introduce a new one. “Maybe he hung his work gloves there when they got wet with mortar.”

  “Huh.” She flicks a clothespin with her fingers. “Hey. The kids loved sleeping here last night. We all did.” Paige turns to him. “Are you coming down to the beach with us?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Why not? It’ll do you good to get some sun.”

  He holds out his hand, the red gash already swelling. “I’ve got to take care of this.”

  She takes his hand in hers. “How’d you do that?”

  “Screwing around with a lobster trap.”

  “You should go to the emergency clinic. It might need a couple of stitches.”

  “Maybe.” He pulls his hand back and shakes out the sting again.

  “Do you want Vinny to drive you?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’ve got to stop back at my condo anyway. I’m backlogged with work.” He looks around the barn. “This old place is slowing me down.”

  “Why don’t you hire someone to clean it out? They have companies that haul all this away.”

  “No. It’s Dad’s stuff. I’m going through it myself.” He points to the wall shelves that he’s already cleaned and given a fresh coat of wax; Paige walks over to them, running her hand across the wood. “A small dumpster’s coming next week,” he adds. “I need somewhere to throw the trash.”

  “Well that’ll help.” She turns back to him. “We’re leaving before dinner, grabbing a bite to eat on the way home. Will you be back here later?”

  “Not t
oday.”

  “Oh. Okay then.” She walks the vast barn space. “Eva and Matt had a nice cookout yesterday. It was good seeing the whole gang. Maris, Kyle. You know.”

  “Neil should have been there, too.”

  “Don’t start blaming yourself again.” She stares at him for a long moment. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “All what is about?”

  “This.” She motions in a wide circle to the space around them. “Hiding out here in the barn.”

  “I’m working.”

  “No you’re not. You’re stewing.”

  Jason looks at his hand, then back to his sister. “More of it came back to me yesterday.”

  She sits in a wooden chair. “After all this time? What’d you see?”

  Paige’s words seem lost in the barn, in the vast space of memories and echoes and images that fill it if he turns a certain way, or when the lighting shines low at the day’s end. When he hears Neil’s voice talking up some renovation plan using the white sand as the cottage canvas, the colors of the harbor boats brought in with paints, starfish cutouts in the eaves and an elevation looking out to sea.

  “The reflection,” he says. “In the rearview mirror. Now I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “That means something, when the memory comes back. Doesn’t it?”

  “It means being back at this cottage is a mistake. I was doing fine until I decided to move the business here.” He looks up at the old rafters. “This is all a mistake.”

  “Can’t they give you something to speed your memory?”

  “No. I’ve got to do it myself.”

  “But if you’re under a doctor’s care,” she persists. “Or therapy maybe.”

  “Damn it, Paige.” Jason sweeps the old lobster trap onto the floor. “Just leave it alone already.”

  “Okay. Okay, I get the message.” She holds up an open hand and backs away. “Well it was fun spending the holiday here, and we’ll be back in a couple weeks. I’ll have the kids stop in to say goodbye. Try to be nice to them, would you please? You’re their uncle.”

  “Yeah.” He looks down at his hand, then reaches for a clean rag from a worktable, pressing it against the gash. If only it were that easy. Bandage it and let it heal. Medication, alcohol, exercise, time. They are all bullshit bandages. He’s tried them all, and yet when he walked on the beach alone late last night, he’d heard it in the waves. It sounded far away, just like then, that engine opened all the way, a ton of metal bearing down on them from a distance. He’s never forgotten that sound. But last night, a flash of the image finally returned when Kyle’s voice talking about the weather became Neil’s voice behind him on the bike. Memory triggers, his doctor calls them. Moments. Moments that bring it all back.

  He kicks the broken lobster trap aside, his leg feeling better now. The same way one pain displaces another, one thought does the same thing. He turns to go inside and wash out the stinging cut on his hand, knowing that it was Maris Carrington beside him on the beach who had displaced the vision of the accident last night.

  Chapter Eight

  On a hot July Saturday, all Lauren thinks about is painting driftwood on the beach, while all she actually does is take summer inventory at Bayside Department Store. But it is a temporary job from the employment agency, and at least it brings in a paycheck. The store is closed to shoppers while the help tickets and inventories the summer merchandise. She uses idle time to collect empty cartons from the storage room. They are perfect for vacation packing, and she thinks she just might toss her paints in one.

  At noontime, she settles in her car and directs the air conditioning vent at her face. The store isn’t far from home, and it’s easy to add ten minutes to her lunch hour without much notice to drop off the boxes. Driving down her street, the house looks deserted with no bicycles in the driveway, no kids drawing chalk games on the sidewalk. The drapes are drawn against the sun’s rays and the grass wilts beneath the heat. She lifts the cartons from her trunk and sets them in the garage, keeping them out of the oil that leaked from Kyle’s pickup truck. After neatly stacking the boxes along the back wall, there’s enough time to make a quick sandwich for lunch. When she opens the garage door into the kitchen, Kyle is coming in through the front door carrying a mixed bouquet wrapped in cellophane.

  “Hey, Ell. These are for you.”

  Lauren leans against the closed door to the garage. “For what?”

  “It’s a celebration. We’ll take the kids out for burgers tonight. They’ll love it.” He reaches for a glass vase from the cabinet beside the refrigerator and fills it with water.

  “Mom’s got the kids and I’m working till six, so she’s feeding them dinner.” She still leans on the door, not moving in the heat. “What are we celebrating anyway?” Watching Kyle, she thinks that even if he finds a permanent job, it might not help them at this point.

  “Sit down.” Kyle slides out a kitchen chair and Lauren sits while he peels off the plastic and sets the flowers into the vase. “Listen to this,” he says as he arranges the flowers. “Jerry’s going away for a couple weeks. To Maine.”

  “Maine.”

  “His son lives there. Somewhere on the coast. Jerry and his wife are taking a two-week vacation there. And before he goes, he’s taking a few days to finish up some chores around his house. Painting his porch, that kind of thing.” Kyle swings a chair around and sits backward, his hands clasped over the top.

  “So?”

  Kyle stares at her.

  “What?” she asks, hands turned up.

  “Come on, think about it. He’s leaving me in charge of The Dockside for almost three weeks. He was never comfortable leaving the diner before and always closed up on vacation. But he wants me to handle it. I’ll be running the whole show.”

  Possibilities run through Lauren’s mind: of Kyle turning this stint into another management job, of the money Jerry will pay him. She relents and goes to the refrigerator, pulling out the bottle of wine. Kyle stretches behind him and grabs two juice glasses from the counter. She fills them, feeling him watching as she pours herself only enough for a toast.

  “More money?” she asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Well congratulations then. It’s nice to have good news for a change.” They touch glasses and drink the wine.

  Lauren tries not to, but still, in the back of her mind, she waits for the bomb to fall. For the refrigerator to break. For the furnace to quit. For the pickup truck to break down. Good news never comes alone into their home. Something always sneaks in on its tail. She looks at the flowers and notices one white daisy has snapped. Its head droops.

  “When’s Jerry leaving?”

  “Next Thursday. I’ll start Monday so he can show me around the office.”

  Her mind calculates that the first two weeks of their vacation, Kyle will be working full days and some nights, what with the food ordering and paperwork. He’ll be exhausted. By the third week, he’ll be done and want to be with them at the cottage. They’ll cross that bridge when they get to it. For now, she plans to go on vacation with or without him. With him for a little while won’t be that bad.

  Kyle tops off his glass and takes a long swallow. “Listen, Ell.” He reaches across the table, taking her hand in his. “I know it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. Let’s celebrate.” He hitches his head toward the staircase, a question on his face.

  Lauren reads it. It asks her not to think that he found only three weeks of full-time work. That funds are getting low and he’s feeling nervous. Every line, every shadow on his face comes from that worry. But with a glass of wine downed and Kyle’s attitude filled with optimism, she could give in.

  “Come on,” he says. Half standing, Kyle bends over the table and kisses her on the mouth. His hands embrace her neck and lift her hair off her damp skin. She likes that she has no time to think. He just leans over and she can only feel: the warm air in the quiet house, the perspiration beneath her hair, his hands mo
ving down her back, her mouth opening to his. The cicadas buzz outside in the trees and Kyle slips her shirt off her shoulder. As the kiss deepens, he leans closer, knocking over her empty glass so that it rolls off the table, splintering on the floor. Lauren pulls back at the sound.

  “Don’t stop,” Kyle says.

  “I can’t do this, Kyle.” She glances at her watch. “My lunch break’s up.”

  “Who wants to take inventory in this heat? We’ve got a little time,” he says.

  Lauren stands and straightens her shirt. It’s probably better to move away from him. If he reaches for her again, if he holds her right, she just might stay. It will take a moment, but she can let him persist, let his mouth cover hers, let his hands slip off her clothes. But then he’ll think everything turned out all right. He’ll think he can stay at the cottage. That they can laugh again. That he can love her all the time. Too much feels wrong for that to happen. She doesn’t know what to think anymore. He needs to turn his energy to meeting the mortgage on time, to finding work. Not loving her. She screws the cover back on the wine bottle and returns it to the refrigerator, then starts sweeping up the glass. “Maybe later,” she says.

  Kyle finishes off his wine, watching her silently. “Forget it.”

  “Forget what? Money? Bills? Your truck leaking oil all over the driveway? Give me a break, Kyle. There’s so much on my mind, and I’ve got to get back to the store.” The marriage won’t stop unraveling, like a stray thread on a sweater. When they pick at it, at the thread, whether it is money, or sex, or work, a whole row of stitches unwinds with it.

  “I’m out of here.” Kyle swings his chair around and topples it over. “I am so gone,” he says as he bends and rights the fallen chair. Grabbing his keys from the table, he walks out of the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?”

  Kyle heads outside to his truck. He starts it and rolls down the window.

  “Kyle?” Lauren follows him out into the sunshine, the dustpan still in her hand. “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t take it here anymore.”