Life After Coffee

by Virginia Franken

  “Are you sure it wasn’t more like sixty/forty?”

  “I’d say seventy at the very least. Seventy-five by the time I was driving over there.”

  “You went over there?”

  “Of course. I wanted to deck him.”

  “Oh my God! Did you actually hit him?” I feel a flush of inappropriate excitement.

  “I had all intentions of hitting him.”

  “So what happened?” I ask, a little deflated. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suddenly all in approval of my husband’s anger-management problem; it’s just a little more exciting when he’s foaming with anger in the name of defending my honor.

  “When I got there, he was having a meeting with the head of production for Lionsgate.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know. Kind of awkward. So instead of beating Matt up, I gave the producer my elevator pitch.”

  “You had an elevator pitch ready?”

  “I didn’t really have it ready, but I did make one up on the spot. It was a bit longer than the standard elevator ride. But he liked it.”

  “He did!?”

  “This exec has green-light power, Amy.”

  “Is that like some kind of fun superpower?”

  “It means that if he likes a script and it’s not ludicrously expensive to make, he has the sole power to put it into production.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “I know! I’m going over to Lionsgate tomorrow to pitch it to the committee. I know I’m going to sell this one.”

  And I believe him. I have to. Because I know that in about an hour from now I’m going to be back together with Billy and Violet. Violet’ll attach herself around my neck like an orphaned baby orangutan; Billy’ll be reticent at first and then will come in for a long snuggle and a story. I’ll ruffle my fingers through his extra-thick hair and tolerate his stone-cold feet on my shins. We’ll be back together.

  And Peter had better sell this goddamn script, because this time, whatever I have to do to make it work, I swear I’ll never, never be parted from my family again.

  EPILOGUE

  I honestly don’t think there’s a truck in the entire world—certainly not in Ethiopia—that has enough suspension to be able to cope with these insanely bumpy mountain roads. My body’s been shaken so much recently that every time I step out of the truck and I don’t collapse into a pile of jiggly jelly, I’m surprised. I’m considering buying a motorcycle so I can at least try to steer around the worst of the ruts in the road.

  So I expect you’re wondering what the F-word I’m doing thousands of miles away from LA once again. Peter’s big sale of the century fell through. I know. The deal crumbled into a thousand tiny pieces before he even got to the pitch meeting. The producer with the fabled green-light superpowers had gotten an earful from Matt and a couple of other producers about what a nightmare Peter is to work with, and after Peter had tried to call him about five times, he got a short, sharp e-mail from the producer’s PA saying he was no longer interested in pursuing the project. Peter didn’t throw a fit or a tantrum upon the news, or try to storm Lionsgate’s offices in order to change the producer’s mind. He just fell into a dark, quiet depression. The kind of depression I’d never witnessed before. No moodiness. No passive-aggressive remarks about the importance of not leaving a residue of toothpaste around the sink after brushing one’s teeth or pointed suggestions for the right way to stack the dishwasher. No more hours spent in the garage with nothing but his laptop and pee bucket for company. He slept during the day. He watched trashy TV at night. He didn’t eat a whole bunch. It had become clear to him what should have been clear years ago: Hollywood had locked her doors to him and put the key in a high-up place that he’d never grow tall enough to reach.

  And what was my response to all this? I didn’t waste a minute. The moment I heard the script sale had fallen through, I put our house on the market at just under value. It sold fast—just like I knew it would. It broke my heart to sell, but I did it anyway. I had the world’s biggest garage sale, packed up a few boxes for shipping, got us all inoculations (my yellow fever booster included), handed Inkie back over the fence to be reunited with his mother, called Getu, and booked four tickets to Addis Ababa.

  I know.

  The first few months were the hardest. They were really hard. All four of us cooped up in two rooms at the Holiday Inn for weeks while I negotiated land-lease agreements with the local government, and then worked to get the shack that passed as a house hooked up to the electricity grid. At least it had a concrete floor. We were grateful for that when the rains came in. And then with the rains came pneumonia for Violet. She pulled through it. I almost didn’t. And then, just as I thought I was going to fall apart mentally, Peter came back from wherever his depressive state had taken him, and haltingly, day by day, we became a family again.

  In a huge surprise to both of us, Peter quickly developed some pretty impressive “man” skills and started slowly patching up the shack till it became quite livable—and then became a home. Getu and I, along with a crew of locals, planted up the land with the Yayu. So far the trees are doing very well. They’re sturdy little things. It’ll take about five years for them to fully mature. Until then we’re just picking what Yayu we can from the forest next to Getu’s house, where it all started, and exporting it back to Bean à la Bean in the States. Roth went from hostile to extremely amenable during that first conversation when I told him what I’d got stored up and ready to go. He could barely get his contrite apologies out quickly enough. He’s paying well for it, though, not that it’d be any other way with me at the helm. I know what this stuff’s worth. Of course, the bigger expansion—and the really worthwhile money—should come along when our miniplantation is mature. Until then? Let’s just say it’s a good thing our overhead is practically zero.

  However, in another Peter triumph that I didn’t see coming, he sold a novel! He wrote some folksy type of thing about a family of clueless Westerners who move to the coffee forest of Ethiopia to try their luck running a coffee farm. You can probably see where he got the inspiration. The book sold quite well, and the BBC—which hadn’t heard about Peter’s bad rep in Hollywood—is currently kicking around the idea of developing it into a miniseries.

  I glance at Billy in the backseat. His head’s resting easily against the window. Riding inside the world’s rattliest truck doesn’t seem to bother him at all. To him it’s as relaxing as a beautiful African lullaby rocking and shaking him to sleep. I’m not getting a motorcycle. How could I lose my lab partner? Billy and I have been riding into Jimma together to work on the DNA sequencing at the lab. The work’s still not near done, but I’m making great progress. Billy’s fascinated by the whole thing. He sits right by my side as I stare down a microscope for hours on end. Sometimes he gets on with his schoolwork, sometimes he requests a peek down the microscope, sometimes he conducts his own “experiments” with test tubes. He’s a changed boy, no longer a ball of pent-up emotion with too much energy for a relatively small suburban backyard. He’s engaged. He concentrates. He listens. He smiles a lot. He hasn’t asked to see an iPad since we moved to the farm. Why would he? He has a whole forest as his playground. It’s not all play for Billy, though. We pick up his special box of educational stuff for expat homeschooled kids once a month when we go into town. He’s already reading at a third-grade level. Getting him this far this quickly is my proudest life achievement without a doubt.

  Violet? She’s blossoming too. The pneumonia changed her somehow. She became calmer, older, less given to screeching and screaming to have things her way. She’s forgotten all about Disney princesses and wouldn’t know what to do with a Bratz doll if she came across one. Instead, her make-believe games have her in the starring role of intrepid explorer—she tells Billy he’s the pack mule, carrying her special science equipment, and he’s happy to comply, braying away. All traces of her illness are gone. She runs, she climbs, she chases after wild animals (I should probably put a stop to th
at). She mixes mysterious leaves and half-grown vegetables together in a clay pot and declares herself a magic jungle chef. Every day is a biology lesson.

  It’s six o’clock, and the landscape is starting to think about darkening. I’m glad I’ve made it back home in time. Those passes are no place to be after nightfall. As I pull up the truck, I see Peter is sitting on the porch. He’s burning a kerosene lamp—the electricity must be out. It’s spotty at best. He’s pounding away on his typewriter; he gave up on computers a while ago. The whole thing looks very turn of the century. The lack of electricity in the house seems to have had a directly inverse effect on the amount of electricity within our relationship. These days there seems to be so much more time and mental space for plain ol’ getting down to it. Besides—what else are you going to do after the sun goes down, the batteries for the radio go flat, and the candles burn out?

  I can see there’s been exactly zero progress on the guesthouse. Peter must have been in writing mode today. My parents—who were super concerned when I revealed that I was spiriting their grandchildren off to the wilds of Africa—came over recently to visit, and what they saw completely turned their opinion around. Dad’s knees eased up the minute he was out of the English chill, and when Mom qualifies for her county council pension at the end of the year, they’re considering moving out. Or at least spending some of the year here, anyway.

  I don’t see Violet anywhere. That doesn’t send me into an instant panic like it used to. She’ll be around. Antagonizing the wildlife, I’m sure. That girl’s not happy unless she’s driving something or somebody crazy. Most often me. Yup, there are still times when I want to throttle every member of my family—even here in paradise.

  Am I crazy for doing this? Maybe. At no point during this transition did I stop to ask myself if this was actually a good idea. I just acted on instinct and kept on moving till we were situated in this new life. Was I terrified like I’ve never been terrified before when Violet had a fever of a hundred and five and the nearest hospital was a six-hour drive away? Absolutely. Do I worry about another Rwanda? Ebola? All the time. Do I think this is the best thing I’ve done as a mother? Without a doubt.

  I open Billy’s car door. He wakes up and gives me a dozy gap-toothed smile. He lost his first tooth this morning, right at the front. It’s the first “first” I haven’t missed. The sun’s crawling quickly down behind the trees. Night is approaching. It’s time to go and put Billy’s tooth under his pillow to see if the tooth fairy’s going to pay him a visit.

  It’s time to go and be a mom.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Todd Burke for accompanying me on my coffee journey, and all the journeys. I know some of the stuff I drag you through isn’t much fun, so thanks for showing up in equal parts for all of it. Thanks to Robb Lanum for his take on faucets and foot fungus; to Kerry West for her portrait of Africa; to Rowena Escalona for the magical chats; to my readers Fiona Pearce, Ellie Cobb, Andrea Stein, and Linda Molnar Hines; and, of course, to the Kerley crew back in Kent.

  Thank you, thank you to Laura Longrigg, my wonderful agent, who started everything. You simply rock it. And thanks to Ethan Ellenburg. If I haven’t told you before now how happy I am that I have you in my corner, let’s get that in black-and-white right now: I am so happy I have you in my corner. Thank you to Miriam Juskowicz and to Robin Benjamin for your wonderful edits and for just “getting it.” A huge thank-you to Caroline Upcher, who saw a tiny flicker of a flame and decided she’d have a go at getting it burning properly.

  And, lastly, to the two minipairs of Thunder Feet who inspire me to try harder every day: I love you big (not small).

  THE BIT ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Virginia Franken was born and raised in the United Kingdom. She graduated from the University of Roehampton, in London, with a degree in dance and worked on cruise liners as a professional dancer before changing tracks to pursue a career in publishing. Virginia currently lives in suburban Los Angeles with two kids, a dog, an overweight goldfish, and one bearded dude, in a house that’s just a little too small to fit everyone in comfortably. She gets most of her writing done when she should be sleeping. This is her first novel.