Life After Coffee

by Virginia Franken

  “So . . . if this varietal does turn out to be rust-free, Ethiopia will be the only place it’s going to be growing,” I say.

  “Still no export of seeds, then?”

  “Right,” I confirm.

  “And plants?”

  “The same. They’ve got it locked down. If someone else gets to this bean first, that’s pretty much the end of getting this affordably.”

  “Mommy, I’m tired.” Violet sighs.

  “Looks like someone needs a nap.” He smiles.

  “Right.” He’s stalling.

  “This sounds really interesting, Amy. So are you sourcing right now?” Damn it. He doesn’t want to offer me a job. He just wants to pay a one-off finder’s fee for the Arabica scoop of the century. That doesn’t help me or my situation.

  “Actually, I’m only interested in buying permanently for one roaster.”

  “Really? You still up for all that travel—even now?” He gestures to Violet, who’s passed-out sleeping on my chest.

  “Especially now.” Oops. Fortunately, under the veneer of hip there’s something of a sense of humor in there and Roth laughs.

  “Well, I’d love to taste what you have. I’m going away tomorrow for a couple of weeks, but come by the lab at the end of the month, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Roth saunters off for his illicit lunch, and I carry Violet back toward the car. I know he wants those beans. Thing is, if he’s going to employ me, he’s going to have to ditch his other buyer. Bean à la Bean is doing well, but not well enough to employ two, especially not with coffee prices going through the roof. Employing me on the basis of this bean would be pure risk. If he ditches his other buyer (who I’m sure is super trendy), employs me, and the beans turn out not to be rust resistant or not to taste as amazing as promised en masse, he just looks disloyal and is stuck with a buyer whose wardrobe was put together when the Spice Girls ruled the charts. If he keeps with his old buyer and can’t get me to consult, he could miss out on getting the next A-list celebrity bean at anywhere near an obtainable price.

  And where do I stand if Roth decides not to offer me a buying job? Nowhere anyone likes to be stood. Financially, we are limping by right now. My unemployment checks don’t even cover our mortgage payment, and we’re galloping through our rainy-day savings at a terrifying speed. I’m still trawling the Net for buying jobs whenever I get a chance. And there’s still next to nothing. If I could just start working for Bean à la Bean, everything would be back to status quo. Problems solved. Money in the bank, Peter back in the parental driving seat, and freedom would once more be mine.

  CHAPTER 9

  Violet’s been talking about this for a week solid. I’ve been avoiding it for about two. However, today, in a brave attempt to try and get in touch with my inner parent, we are attending “Time for Twos” at the local library. Violet’s actually three years old, but I’m sure no one’s going to ask to see a birth certificate. Mind you, the Time for Twos’ leader—Wendy, an ex-Yahoo employee turned career mother—is a little anal-retentive, so I wouldn’t completely rule it out. Wendy, in fact, is the reason I’ve spent minimal time at the local library for about two years now. For there’s no convert as zealous as a recent convert, and when I first made Wendy’s acquaintance, she’d just quit Yahoo in order to stay home with her two kids. She looked at me that day with shining eyes and declared it the best and most fulfilling decision she’d ever made. I told her that she and her session-musician husband were headed for the poorhouse and pointed out that her son’s diaper had just leaked and her arm was covered in solid-food poop. Since then I’ve attended Time for Twos twice, and both times she’s studiously ignored me.

  But today, Violet and I are the center of her dazzling attention. Word has got out that I’m staying home with the kids so Peter (a Time for Twos aficionado) can sell a screenplay. Word doesn’t seem to have spread that I actually got fired, we might not make the mortgage next month, I’m scrambling to get a new job, and I’m meeting with an ex-boyfriend today for completely aboveboard reasons that somehow feel highly illicit.

  Wendy starts to gently corral us into the “friendship circle,” but Violet’s having none of it and is off in the middle of the room, spinning round and round. I sit cross-legged in my designated spot, cautiously optimistic that at some point she’ll give up and come sit on my lap like she’s supposed to.

  “Violet,” I half call. She ignores me and grabs hold of a younger toddler, who’s not that steady on her feet, and starts pulling her round too fast in a “Ring around the Rosy” frenzy. Oh God. Should I stop her? Is that being too helicopter-momish? Not sure what to do, as usual, I’m busy pretending I don’t see any of it when Violet yanks too hard and the toddler takes a nose dive. Violet doesn’t let go, and the little kid starts getting spun around on the side of her face. Fuck. I jump up, pretty certain that I’m supposed to intervene at this point. At the same time, massively pregnant Amber—who’s been looking straight through me since I got here—lurches to her feet and slowly lumbers toward the situation.

  “I’m so sorry,” I gasp, not sure if I should pick her kid up off the floor before she gets there or leave her. Amber’s always made me feel kind of nervous and I’m not sure why. Probably something to do with her being one of those moms who always know exactly the right thing to do, versus my being so constantly clueless.

  “It’s fine,” she says, hauling her bewildered daughter to her feet. To her credit, she’s not crying. Plucky little thing.

  “Violet, can you say sorry to . . .” What’s this kid’s name again? It’s something really random. Paucity? Chastity? Liberty? Variety? Piety? Sobriety? “Verity?”

  “It’s Rarity,” says Amber. Rarity. That’s it. I’d be so happy if she turned up at kindergarten on the first day and found another kid in her class with the same name.

  “Such a big girl now! How old is she?” I ask. This is the kind of thing moms ask each other—right?

  “She’ll be sixteen months next week.”

  “Oh,” I say, and start subtly pulling Violet out toward the edge of the circle. Months of age? If you’re still marking the experience in months after their first birthday, you’re taking it all too seriously. How can I be expected to find a kindred mom amongst these slim pickings? I give up.

  “What happened to your glasses?” asks Lizzie, who’s sat herself in my circle spot. Really, what is she doing here? Odessa’s starting kindergarten next year, and she’s so big she’s sprawled across her mother’s lap. Odessa’s on a part-time schedule at preschool because Lizzie claims she can’t bear to be parted from her a full five mornings a week. Can she really not think of anywhere more dynamic to take her daughter on her days off? Violet and I squeeze in next to them both. So—the glasses. The other lens popped out on the walk here and I’m one-eyed once more.

  “The lens came out.” Kind of obvious. But she asked.

  “I mean, are they old?” she asks incredulously as if she can’t imagine that a lens would ever spontaneously fall out of a pair of frames. In her world they probably never do.

  “No. Not that old.” Lies. I got these back in college.

  “Maybe the sealant just got degraded with all the tropical travel you do. You know. In the heat.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.” So now my career is to be blamed for my deficient glasses as well as my deficient children? I’d say if one of us looks the more bizarre right now, it’s actually her. She’s wearing a bright-blue pointy-shouldered jacket with gold buttons, as well as six-inch pin heels—to playgroup! I was under the impression that shoulder pads finished around the time they stopped shooting Dynasty. And with good reason. Point being: I don’t mention her eighties wardrobe fetish, so likewise she should leave my faulty eyewear alone.

  And then the singing starts. Surprisingly, this group of women can really carry a tune; however, none of that is of any comfort to Violet, who by the end of “The Wheels on the Bus” has reverted to limpet mode and is now clamped around the fron
t of my body. It was something about the line “The doors on the bus go open and shut” that triggered it. Maybe there was a traumatic incident where she got slammed in some closing doors at some point and Peter forgot to tell me. Or I just forgot.

  “Violet. You want to turn around and listen to the story?” asks Wendy. All eyes in the group fixate on my daughter. There’s nonchalance, sympathy, and even a little envy from one mom whose son refuses to sit still for a second. Amber’s still looking through us both as if we’re made of water. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then I catch the eye of the woman sitting next to Amber in the circle. She looks straight at me for a microsecond. Whoa. The look’s over so quickly that perhaps its message is just a figment of my paranoid imagination, but I think she might have just given me the stink eye.

  “That’s Jasmine.” This is Annie, sitting to my left. She used to have a crazy traveling work schedule too. Divisional regional manager for some god-awful makeup brand. She gets it. But, of course, in the end she yielded to the pressure and quit her job. Her husband’s an oncologist, so she got to choose. I suspect it didn’t make her any less conflicted about her choice, though.

  “Right,” I say. Unsure whether Annie just saw that microsecond of disdain too. “How long’s she been coming?”

  “A while now. Don’t worry about her. She’s a bit on the intense side, but she’s mostly nice. When Time for Twos nearly got bumped to make way for Elder Eagles, she fought the committee and got us reinstated. And when Erin first got diagnosed with leukemia, she organized us all to deliver meals to her doorstep. Jasmine’s all right. She can just be a bit . . .”

  “What?”

  “Judgy.”

  “Judgy?”

  “Yeah. Peter was complaining one time about you traveling so much for your job, and she got kind of worked up about the whole thing. She thinks it’s super weird that you spend so much time away from your kids.”

  “Really,” I say, catching Jasmine’s eye and giving her my own microsecond of stink eye right on back. “And something tells me she’s not obliged to work the nine-to-nine to single-handedly keep her family above the poverty line.”

  “Er. No. Her husband has his own business, and I think she comes from family money. So, no, she’s never done the nine-to-nine, though she did once mention some volunteer work that allegedly took place in Borneo.”

  Well, no one likes to be judged on their life choices, we can all agree on that. Especially when you’re not completely happy about the way it’s all gone down. And, of course, it makes things extra icky when the person judging you has never actually been forced into that same corner and told to survive.

  As Wendy continues to put us all through “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” I occasionally feel Jasmine’s eyes flicking over Violet and me. It feels like she’s doing a Concerned Parent Audit to assess whether all this time away from my kids makes me a bad mother when I’m actually home. Given the events of the last few weeks, she may actually be onto something, but even so—that’s a hell of an assumption for her to make. I hug Violet closer and pretend I don’t know that she’s watching.

  Story time eventually drags itself to a close, and everyone is relieved of the burden of trying to keep their kids interested in Wendy’s feeble attempts at a variety of bear voices. The kids move on to “free play.” This seems to consist of them rifling through a bunch of musical toys and chiffon scarves that Wendy’s dumped onto the floor from a hemp bag. On seeing the instruments, Violet releases her torso clamp, runs over to the pile, and happily starts going at it with a tambourine and a shaker. She’s delighted. I make a mental note to stock up on a bevy of musical instruments to whip out and distract her with if I end up leaving to catch a plane again anytime soon.

  Wendy seems to have procured coffee from somewhere. Eco-friendly disposable cups filled with black liquid that smells much like my emotional state these days: fatigued and borderline bitter. She places a cup in my hands. I feel obliged to accept it. I take a sip, just because it seems as if that’s required. God. Awful. Wendy moves on and I allow my face to contort in disgust. I notice Jasmine next to me. She politely refuses the coffee—Wendy doesn’t press the issue. Jasmine catches my eye again. This time it’s conspiratorial. She crosses her eyes and mimes a minivomit. All the other mothers are gulping down the caffeine without complaint. If Jasmine gets coffee, then she can’t be all bad. Maybe Peter gave her some warped view of my situation and that’s why she was mouthing off about it.

  I see Annie making for the bathroom, her son Harry under one arm, midtantrum. She sees me and makes her way back over.

  “Before I forget.” She places Harry down, still thrashing, and pincers him between her skinny legs. I’m impressed. She hands me a business card. “If you get fed up of the at-home thing, Sylvia’s Angels are always looking for consultants. I think you’d be good!” She’s got to be kidding. I don’t think I’ve applied a mascara wand to my eyelashes since we arrived in the new century. She notices that I look less than convinced. “I’m serious! Everyone starts as a consultant, but if you make good sales, there’s room to move up pretty quickly. You could have my old job in a few months! Lots of travel involved, as you know. But you’re an old hand at that.” I can physically feel a force field of disapproval emitting from Jasmine behind me. “Come on now. You don’t need to look that scandalized,” says Annie to Jasmine with a passive-aggressive smile. And then she lifts Harry up onto her hip and makes her exit.

  So that was ultra awkward. I turn around to look at Jasmine. Her dark red curls get even darker and redder as her face turns alabaster. I can tell she is not used to Being Told. I suddenly sense that this is not going to end well for me. Half a second later Jasmine breaks out of it and gives me an ear-to-ear smile. My God. She’s intimidatingly beautiful when she smiles.

  “So, your husband told me you used to travel all over for work,” says Jasmine. The smile seems like it’s wedged in place with a coat hanger. This woman’s expression is making my heart beat faster. I bet this is the same smile she gave to the librarians just before she kicked their butts over canceling Time for Twos. “That must have been fun for you.”

  “I don’t know about ‘fun’ so much. Travel was a substantial part of my job.”

  “But how was it leaving your children behind?” She’s looking at me as if I’d abandoned them to fend for themselves in war-torn Syria instead of leaving them at home with their father in a very comfortable LA suburb.

  “It wasn’t ideal. But I didn’t really have a choice,” I say, my tone hardening to a crisp.

  “I could never . . .” She doesn’t finish her sentence. She doesn’t need to. It’s all there, hanging in the air between us. She could never make whatever unfortunate and second-rate decisions I made that placed my family in such a precarious situation. She could never not be there to stroke her kids’ heads till they dropped into their deepest sleep every night, and she could never miss out on their first kiss of the morning. She could never put her own ambition over being present for every new tooth and lost tooth, scabbed knee and birthday morning. She could never. She would never. But I did. Obviously.

  There’s such a nuclear bomb of emotion going off in my chest that at first I don’t hear the screaming. And then I do. It’s Violet. She’s doing her high-pitched dramatic-wail thing. I run over. She’s standing next to a boy who’s also crying, though less dramatically. Jasmine rushes over and pulls the boy’s cap off his head to reveal a healthy stream of blood flowing from his nose.

  “What happened?” She gasps.

  “Violet hit me with the tambourine.” He seems to have calmed down instantaneously now that he has his mother’s full attention. He wipes bright-red nose blood across his very expensive-looking T-shirt. This draws a gasp from the audience. I’m about to tell Violet to apologize and then swiftly remove us from the situation when Jasmine drops the accusation.

  “Well, this is what happens,” she says.

  “What do you mean?” I ask softly. Sh
e could, for instance, mean “this is what happens when three-year-olds gather in a library alongside musical instruments” or “this is what happens when I leave the house on a Tuesday without a packet of Seventh Generation baby wipes handy.” But I know that’s not what she means at all. However, I want to hear her say the words. Out loud.

  “Hmm?” she says. And then I see it. She’s trying to backtrack! She knows what she really wants to say is totally un-PC. I’ve caught her on the hop. “Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes kids get kind of antsy, you know.”

  “How so?” Let’s hear it, then.

  “I mean when one parent’s a bit in and out of their lives. It just reminds me of some of the kids I volunteer with in Boyle Heights. When their dads are incarcerated, they can get sort of, you know—riled up.”

  I’m speechless for a moment.

  “Are you comparing being a working mother to being a criminal?”

  Jasmine laughs and turns the coat-hanger smile back on. “Oh no—not at all! I just mean that it’s all the same to kids—whether you’re in jail for two months or away on business—I’m just saying the effects are similar.” I feel the entire group of women staring. Amber—who definitely seems able to see us now—included. None of them have the grace to look away or create a diversion. This is probably the most compelling drama they’ve witnessed at Time for Twos. And besides, what Jasmine’s saying is validating every sacrifice they’ve ever made—validating their very day-to-day existence! God forbid they’d actually gone for that next rung up on the career ladder instead of jumping off the first chance they got—they might have ended up as vice president or CEO and become just as wretched a woman as I am.

  I’m mad. I’m hurt. I feel the need to defend myself and every other working woman in the Western world. I see Annie return from the bathroom. Harry’s recovered from his earlier meltdown. At least I know she’s partially on my side.

  “I don’t think time away is just time away. My kids know I’m doing something worthwhile when I leave them. We talk about the people I’ve helped in Africa, the parents who otherwise might not have been able to send their kids to school or had enough for everyone to eat that year. My work’s had a far-reaching impact on a lot of people. I don’t know, I think we can all sometimes get so caught up in our own lives that we forget we all have the power to make positive changes for to the world around us.”