With a coffee-to-go on the seat, he drives in to work. Jerry, tanned and relaxed, scrambles eggs and fries sausages alongside him all morning. The radio is tuned to a local talk show and the waitresses keep the orders coming. It is too busy to talk shop until Jerry closes up early, placing the red Closed sign in the door right after one o’clock.
“Owners can do things like that,” he tells Kyle.
“Are you sure? We can talk later, after the lunch crowd.”
“It’s my first day back. I’m tired. What I want to do is review what happened here while I was gone.” He pours them each a cup of fresh coffee. “And I want to tell you about my vacation.”
Kyle sits on a stool. At least he’ll get back to the cottage early and get a head start on his vacation, such as it will be. It is warm in the diner and his shirt clings to the center of his back. His fingers toy with the bent corner of a black binder on the counter. The binder holds the bills and supply orders he processed during the past weeks, clipped and sorted by date and category. He flattens the binder corner and tries to press out the crease.
“I really don’t need to see those.” Jerry sits on the stool beside Kyle and moves the binder back to him. “Not if you accept my offer.” He slides a legal sized manila folder in front of Kyle.
Kyle looks up from the folder to Jerry’s face.
“Open it.” Jerry nods toward the folder.
Kyle doesn’t believe the words he reads until Jerry explains.
“Twenty-five years in the business is long enough, Kyle. This vacation, not to mention my wife, convinced me that it’s time to retire.”
“Retire?” Kyle tears his eyes from the sales contract bearing his name and squints at Jerry.
“From owning the business. My family planned my vacation as an enticement to slow down. The kids even pitched in and bought me that used boat I’ve always dreamed about. Imagine that? My boat. Nothing big, just enough to tool around out in the Sound, do a little fishing. But I’ll need some part-time work to keep me out of trouble, too. Do you think you could use me here?”
“Wow.” The shock of it moves Kyle right off the stool in a frantic walk around the diner. His hands light on different objects in the room. A booth back, a stack of menus, a chair that needs straightening. He can’t stop touching pieces of the diner. “Do you realize what this means?”
“Of course I do. No one else will keep this ship afloat the way you will.” Jerry watches him with a knowing nod. “I’m leaving her in good hands, Captain.”
Kyle walks to the door and looks out at the parking lot. His parking lot. He turns back and sees the fishing net Jerry had hung on the side wall years ago. And the anchors and buoys placed here and there. A big, shiny silver ship, Kyle once said to him.
“Now get out of here,” Jerry tells him after they discussed the financial details for an hour, “and talk it over with your wife and your attorney. Enjoy your vacation and take that time to really think about buying this place before you give me an answer.” He stands and closes the folder.
“You’re kidding, right?” Kyle asks. He grabs Jerry in a long hug, slapping him on the back. “There’s nothing to think about. I’m in.”
“I know, kid, I know.” Jerry walks him to the door and they shake hands. “Talk to your wife anyway. I’ll see you in a week, okay?”
Kyle doesn’t even remember the drive back to Stony Point. Only one thought fuels his trip there. The Dockside. Its every visual detail runs through his mind: the chrome stools, the red padded booths, the beautiful stoves, the boat décor. When he passes the Gallaghers’ home, he pulls into the driveway, jumps out of the pickup nearly before it stops moving and walks right into the house with a quick knock at the door. He walks through the porch, through the newly papered living room, heading to the kitchen unable to contain himself. “Gallagher?” he calls out.
Matt, reading the paper at the kitchen table, looks up to see Kyle standing there, jangling his keys. “Kyle. I thought you were Eva. Make yourself at home, why don’t you?”
“Thanks.” Kyle swings a painted chair around backward at the mahogany table and sits down, leaning his arms over the top. “You are never going to believe this. Shit, I can’t believe it.”
“What’s going on?” Matt asks. He moves the newspaper aside.
Kyle jumps up and grabs two cold cans of beer from the refrigerator, setting one in front of Matt. “Cheers, guy, to The Dockside. We have to christen my new boat.”
“What? The diner?” Matt opens his can and takes a swallow of the beer.
“It’s like I won the friggin’ lottery. It’s too damn good to be true.” After a long drink, Kyle keeps talking, all the while walking around the room. “I was glad that Lauren and I were working things out, you know? That was enough. And then, shit, Jerry put this on the table.” He looks up at the ceiling, laughing. “I know that place inside out, Matt. It’s my second home. I can’t believe it. I mean, I thought his kids would take over, but they’re not interested.” He runs his hand over the new granite countertop. “Never have been, according to Jerry. They’ve got big careers and are glad to see the diner go to me. Imagine?”
“What a break. Congratulations.” Matt holds up his can in a toast. “You’ll do right by that old diner. What did Lauren say?”
Kyle sits down again and takes a breath. “Okay, here’s the thing. She doesn’t know yet. I want to surprise her. Can I leave my truck here for a while?”
“Sure, why? What’s up?”
Kyle shakes his head. He doesn’t want to tell. “Does Eva have any shopping bags around? Big ones, like from a department store?”
Matt searches the broom closet off the kitchen. “I don’t know, how’s this?” He holds up a big square bag with heavy looped twine handles.
“Perfect. Everything’s perfect, man.” Kyle finishes his beer before spinning his chair back in place. “Thanks, guy. When you see Eva, tell her do not tell Lauren. I want to surprise her. And listen, I’ll be back for my truck in an hour or so.” Kyle walks out of the house, the bag folded in a neat square under his arm as he walks toward the far end of the beach.
“I still can’t believe you’re doing this,” Taylor says. “Are you sure?”
Eva flashes a grin. “Do you want to try, too?”
“No way.” Taylor drops into a seat and reaches for a magazine, all the while keeping an eye on her mother.
When Eva sits in the salon chair, her damp hair toweled dry, she touches its length distractedly.
“Okay, Eva,” her hairdresser says. “So you’re taking the plunge. How short do you want to go?”
“To my shoulders. With lots of layers. To about right here.” She motions with her hand up along the side of her head, at the same time searching for the reflection she saw this morning when Matt stood behind her and pulled her hair back. She really noticed her cheekbones then, and her eyes. Women say there comes a time when they look into the mirror and see that they’ve actually become their mother. Does she look like hers? “It has to all be off my face, and I want these colored ends cut off.” She needs to find her mother this way, too. To know she is seeing something of her in the reflection. The hairdresser runs her fingers over the ends still holding on to the ash blonde dye. Eva wants that feeling back now, that spark of recognition that she did get when Matt pressed her hair back and said how it was funny that more than anyone, she looked a little like Maris around the eyes.
Maris spends the afternoon on the beach, hidden beneath a straw cowboy hat, watching the families around her. Young or old, it is the mothers and sisters who draw her eye with the way they speak to each other. The way they sit together. The way they touch. She had all that for only the briefest time, which makes her miss it all the more right now, sitting among it. So instead she pulls a novel from her beach tote, but the words swim out of focus until she shuts the book and sets it aside.
She reclines in her sand chair at the water’s edge, her own saga opening in her mind; there is no need to rea
d one on the page or watch those around her. With her cowboy hat pulled low and Attorney Riley’s appointment only days away, the questions keep coming. Did a baby die in the car accident that took her mother? What family motive kept her existence from Maris? And then there is the empty Italian jewelry box she found in the carton with the 8mm home movie. Is there another pendant meant for a sister? Did her aunt in Italy know the secret then, too? Is the box from her? And where is Elsa? Where are the answers?
By late afternoon when the sun’s shadows fall long, she packs her lotion and book and comb into her canvas bag. The rays are weaker now and she tips her chair back and closes her eyes behind her sunglasses.
“A dinner for your thoughts?”
She sits up to see Jason standing there wearing an old concert tee, wrinkled cargo shorts, a paint scraper still in one pocket, his face unshaven. Even needing a shave, she notices the scar slightly raised above his jawline. “Hey, Jason. That sounds an awful lot like an invitation?”
“It is.” He leans an arm on the side of her chair, balancing as he crouches. “So you free for dinner? Maybe a minigolf rematch after?”
“Oh, am I ever. Being alone with your thoughts is so overrated.” She stands and picks up her tote. “I’m ready to head back. Let me change and feed the dog first.”
“Okay. We’ll keep it easy, maybe go out for a pizza.”
They walk back to Maris’ cottage together, but Jason continues on. Maris has just enough time to shower and slip on a denim skirt and black tank with leather flip-flops before he picks her up for dinner.
Now a hot chicken and eggplant pizza cools on a raised silver platter between them. More than a decade has passed since she’s been at Ronni’s Pizza, but nothing’s changed. It is one of those pure time-machine places, always a full house of people and noise, of wooden chairs scraping about, of pizza trays sliding from the big ovens, of the telephone ringing with take-out orders, and of talk.
“This is the best seat in the house.” Maris slides a pizza slice onto her dish. “I used to come here with Eva twenty years ago and it was always a contest to spot the train first.” She turns to the large window at their table. Across the street, behind patches of scrubby grass, the railroad tracks run by. Beyond those are East Bay, then Long Island Sound further out. Train tracks and water extend for as far as the eye can see.
“Neil and I did the same thing when we were kids.”
“I remember being able to feel it first,” Maris says.
Jason nods as though he knows exactly what she means. His hand skirts along the low windowsill now. “You can come in here and just sit and lose a whole decade, easy.”
A decade ago, his brother was alive. He is seeing the restaurant through those eyes, Maris knows, dealing with triggers and memory and longing. She sips her soda and gazes out the window. Her eyes search Long Island Sound at the horizon. Jason is lifting a piece of pizza onto his dish when she feels it. Before she can even speak, she points to the window first, because, heck, winning means everything at Ronni’s. “Train!”
It is a subtle change in the air, a hum from deep below. Looking at Jason, she can feel, at their table, the immense, palpable speed and power of the approaching train before it even comes into view. It is like the calm before a storm, you feel it and brace for something else. A few seconds later, the Amtrak blows by the front window on its way to Boston and everyone in the restaurant stops eating, stops talking, for only moments, until its whistle carries back to them after the train passes out of sight.
Kyle should be here by now. Lauren looks out the window, checking the street for his pickup before reaching for her comb. When she’s nearly done French braiding her hair, he pulls in the driveway. She glances out in time to see him reaching across the front seat for a large shopping bag.
“Hey you,” he says when he walks into the living room. He touches the side of her face. “Where are the kids?”
“They’re at Alison’s. She and Taylor are taking them to the movie on the beach later.”
“Good.” He studies her, touching her hair. “What do you want for dinner?”
“Want to go out? Maybe for fish and chips?”
Kyle heads into the kitchen. “Sounds good. I’m starved.”
Lauren follows him and leans against the kitchen counter, watching him grab a peach from the bowl on the table. The bruise on his arm has nearly faded away. When she reaches out to touch it, Kyle turns and pulls out a chair for her.
“Sit. I want to ask you something.” He bites into the peach. “What do you think if I take some business management courses? Just a night class or two.”
“Business?”
“To help me set up the books on a new computer system. I read that there’s some new software to keep the latest business tax records in order.”
“Tax records? What are you talking about?” When Kyle slides Jerry’s offer to her, she scans it quickly. “He’s selling you the diner? Is this for real?”
“Yes it is,” he says around a mouthful of peach.
“Really?” She looks up at Kyle’s face. Maybe part of life, the good in it, comes from how you look at stuff. Stuff like ten years of sweating out part-time, temporary work behind a hot stove in a diner. Ten long years grow into this.
“It’s ours, Ell.”
“This can’t be true.” She rereads the contract, slower this time. “But there’s a lot of cash involved. How can we ever manage to buy it?”
“We never touched that severance money from my layoff, and hell, I’ll beg, borrow and steal the rest. I just really have to come up with the down payment.” He finishes the peach while pointing out different figures on the contract. “Jerry’s holding the mortgage, kind of like a retirement plan for himself, and he’s giving us a low interest rate. And he’ll stay on for a few months till I get the hang of things.”
“No way. What if he changes his mind?”
Kyle points out Jerry’s signature. “Don’t worry. And I was thinking, maybe I could give it more of a bistro feel. You know, keep the boat theme, but update it. Make it kind of a café type of place. The Coffee Pier, The Driftwood Café, something like that.”
Lauren sits back in her chair, motionless. “I can’t believe this.”
“Wait, there’s more. Wait right there.” He pushes back his chair, tosses the peach pit in the trash and rushes through the cottage. “And close your eyes!” he calls out from the porch.
Lauren squeezes her eyes tight and sits on her hands to keep them off the contract. Not seeing brings the evening birdsong to her: a lone robin settling down, a distant blue jay. She knows this is good, that days like this come few and far between. Something tells her, in her heart, to remember every moment, every touch, every word. This gets you through the rest.
Kyle checks that her eyes are closed, sits and sets the bag down behind him. He scrapes his chair over beside hers, takes her hands in his and holds them to his lips for a long moment. “You’ll be really busy with the kids getting back to school in a few weeks, and the business will be crazy at first. But not forever.”
Lauren opens her eyes and watches him closely.
Kyle catches her tear with his thumb. “Things will quiet down. They always do. And then, well I think you’ll be needing this.” He reaches behind his chair and sets the shopping bag on the table. Driftwood swells from the bag in every weathered shade of gray and brown that he could find along the beach. They came from the seaweed line, from along the rocks, and from Little Beach, past the patch of woods, where her love of painting began. He stuffed in as many pieces as he could, all sizes and shapes, in every which way. In a smaller bag he packed her paints from the back shelf in her closet at home.
“Woo-hoo,” Lauren laughs. “Yes!” She stands and shifts around the driftwood, pulling out random pieces like they are precious jewels. “Now I get it. The Driftwood Café?”
Kyle moves behind her and when his arms wrap around her waist, pulling her close, she leans back easy against him. He
bends down, brushing his face against her hair. “I did good, didn’t I?”
She whispers something that he misses, and so he turns her around. “What did you say?” he asks.
She leans back against the refrigerator and his arms hold her there, the refrigerator behind her as he leans close, stroking her hair, touching her ear, watching her, waiting to hear the words.
And when she starts to talk, to say the words he’d missed, he stops her, slips his arm under her legs and scoops her up. “Wait, Ell. You can tell me upstairs.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maris spreads her sketches on the dining room table as the coffee brews Sunday morning. Up with the sun, the day awaits fresh and open to possibilities, inspiring her to pick up her graphite pencils, to play with light and shadow, to add texture to her designs. While the rest of the world still sleeps beneath cool, cotton sheets, or tangled in summer night-shirts, she intends to immerse herself in the fall denim line taking shape in her cottage. A constellation continues to connect the pieces, the stars travelling from one style to another, from cuffed jeans to a cropped blazer to a pair of slim denim gloves.
She walks first to the front porch doorway, sipping her coffee. Except for an early jogger passing by, the street outside looks still, yet liquid somehow, like a watercolor painting. Shadows and light softly blend in the greens of the maple trees, the blues of the sky. Summer quiet follows behind the jogger’s footsteps, touching upon the porch and its comfortable old white wicker furniture. Above the windows, a high shelf holding brass hurricane lanterns and starfish and pale pink conch shells reaches around the room. Spiky cattails rise from the large clay floor vase in the corner, standing against the crisp white paneling. Outside, scarlet red geraniums and pretty petunias spill from the flower boxes Maris filled weeks ago.
But seashells and white wicker and summer flowers can’t keep complications away. She sits in a chair on the porch, cupping her coffee. This complication is a new one. No man has ever kept her from her work before. Her career had become a shell, curving around her like the intricate whorls of the conch, shielding her, until now.
Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans Page 21