by Lisa Dale
Now, floating among the reeds and salty inlets in bright, revealing sunlight, he knew that instant of tenderness he’d felt for her was only a mirage. He couldn’t let his anger at her go. He wouldn’t. He and his brother might finally reconnect in a way that was more than just lip service—if only because the woman who had broken both their hearts had united them, finally, as their mutual enemy.
Jonathan leaned back against his seat, his paddle resting on the kayak parallel to the waterline. “Thanks for taking me out here today. I think I needed a change of scenery.”
Garret back-paddled a few strokes. “All good. I’m glad we can do this.”
Jonathan turned his head, his dark eyes shaded by his baseball cap. “So am I.”
Her sophomore year, Thea’s girlfriends had started throwing around the word love—not in relation to shoes or movies or food but in relation to men. Sometimes Thea judged her friends to be silly in their love—as if they were trying to feel it by acting like they felt it. As if a person could think her way into love.
But then she would find herself in the girls’ room between classes, listening to a friend crying in the bathroom stall, and her own heart would crack because she herself knew that pain, knew what it was like—that love was not a spike driven into the heart, but rather, one pulled out of it: a hollow wound.
Garret was one of her best friends. Jonathan too. And so she’d taken care to treat them both exactly the same—never favoring one over the other, never teasing one more than the other, never spending too much time alone with one brother if the other wasn’t there. It wasn’t until Garret had pulled away from them that the truth became clear.
Her feelings astounded her: she couldn’t make sense of them. No single word could pin them down. Back in eighth grade the three of them had discovered that if they took twenty breaths very, very fast they could make themselves lightheaded, dizzy, so that the world spun on its side. They would compete to see who could take the most breaths, who could stand the sweet and terrible dizziness the longest. Now, when Thea saw Garret coming down the hallway, he made her feel just that way—as if her head might lift off her shoulders. He spent less and less time with her. She wanted to believe that it was soccer that was keeping him away. But it wasn’t.
Garret had splintered off from their little group and struck out on his own. He started hanging out with a new crowd, going to parties, forcing her or Jonathan to be his alibi. She and Jonathan could do nothing but speculate. Without Garret between them, some of the energy had gone out of their shrunken tribe.
Sometimes she saw him in the hallways, leaning near a locker. And when she went to say hello to him, she realized he was not alone, and that he was not leaning against a locker at all but was leaning on another person, a girl. She wondered, with bitter envy, if he was having sex. She figured it was a given.
She also saw him on the soccer fields, since she and Jonathan had not stopped going to his games simply because he’d stopped hanging around with them quite so incessantly. He’d changed in the last year. His face was different, though she couldn’t put her finger on precisely what feature—his nose? his jaw?—had changed. His body grew lean and hard from days of practicing, cuts of new muscle just beneath the surface of his skin. When he ran into the end zone, he left her breathless with his confidence. His teammates crowded around him, all wanting to be the first to congratulate him for a big win, and from the bleachers, Thea clapped and called his name. Sometimes he would wave in her direction. But there were many people in the stands—and Jonathan at her side—so she was never perfectly sure that he was waving at her.
Her friends, many of whom seemed to have a crush on him as well, commiserated with her in the line for the cafeteria. And Thea hated them for it. The way they loved him was different from the way she loved him. They had not seen him step in and take the blame (and the grounding) when Jonathan had accidentally scratched his father’s Mercedes. They had not seen him the day he grabbed her by both arms and pulled her up from the side of the breakwater before she fell in. They had not seen him working on his algebra homework, Jonathan patiently helping. They did not know he got so frustrated sometimes that tears came into his eyes.
“Why don’t you go out with Garret?” her friends would ask her, agreeing that if anyone among their little circle had a chance, it was her.
Thea’s reply was always the same, though it killed her to say it. “He doesn’t like me that way.”
And it was true. He didn’t. Not then.
Dear Sue:
I didn’t mean to put you in an awkward position by asking you to lunch. But Jonathan is very understanding. Even before he and I married, you and I were friends—and I don’t think he will have forgotten that. I hate not seeing you. How about this? What if you ask him what he thinks? If he’s against the idea of our meeting, then I won’t ask again.
Thea
Thea: Well, you were right, dear. You know him better than I do. Let’s meet one day next week. I’m looking forward to it. Sue.
“Thea?”
She knew his voice immediately, though it was the middle of the day on Wednesday and there was no sound on earth she’d expected less than the chill of her name when he said it. Around her, the coffee shop was busy with the lunch rush, locals stopping in to pick up fresh fruit and simple sandwiches on whole grain bread. Jules had just spilled an entire pitcher of scalded milk down the front of the counter, and Rochelle was about to break into tears before an angry customer who’d been given regular vanilla syrup instead of sugar-free. Hell was breaking loose, the calm of morning cracking open and chaos bursting through.
But Thea stepped away from it, the phone to her ear. Stepped away, behind the black curtain and into the quiet of the storage closet, as time slowed down. For an instant, pandemonium gave way to the jolt of memory, and she was in the dark of her bedroom, when he held her and they whispered together for hours.
“Yes. It’s me,” she said.
“It’s Garret.”
She closed the black curtain behind her, the closet going dark. “I know.”
“We need to talk.”
“All right.”
“About Irina. Jonathan wants to set up a regular visitation schedule. He wants to see her again.”
“I want him to see her too. We just have to figure out the best way.”
“I’ll come pick her up for the day on Saturday mornings. Let’s say ten. And I’ll bring her home in the evening around eight.”
“That sounds okay.” Thea leaned her shoulder against the cluttered shelving. “What else?”
“Nothing else. What else would there be?”
“I don’t know.” Thea took a breath. “I just don’t see why Jonathan can’t talk to me about this directly.”
“Well, what did you do to him?”
“Sorry?”
“Jonathan acts like it’s his fault. But I know better. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” she said, hating how defensive she sounded. “I didn’t do anything.”
“My brother isn’t the type to cheat, and you know it. You must have done something wrong.”
Thea was quiet. Garret had always known just how to strike her deepest nerve. For weeks she’d suspected herself of being more guilty than Jonathan—even though it was he who broke his vows. She loved him—she always had. And if he hadn’t left, she would have stayed with him forever. But did that make her blameless? She had her doubts.
“So what did you do?” he pushed. “Steal money?”
“Garret …”
“Did you apply the wifely thumbscrews? Crowd him? Not let him breathe?”
“None of those things,” she said, trembling now.
“Did you cheat on him?”
“No!”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” she said, anger rising like fire within her. “I never cheated. And it’s only between me and Jonathan if I did.”
“Then what did you do, Thea? Because when Jonathan ma
rried you he was the happiest person I knew. And now he’s a shadow of that guy.”
“Are you talking about him? Or yourself?”
“Please,” he said. “Don’t give yourself so much credit. Life’s moved on.”
“Has it?” she asked, surprising herself. She had no intention of having this conversation with him today. But here it was, astonishing as a ghost manifesting before her eyes. She took a step deeper into the closet, not wanting to be heard. “If that were true, Garret—that you’ve moved on—then why haven’t you said two words to me since we were eighteen? If what we were doesn’t matter anymore, then why can’t you even write your name on the bottom of your e-mails to me?”
He laughed, as if they weren’t on the brink of a meltdown. It was a practiced, perfect laugh. When he spoke his voice was cool. “As far as I’m concerned, you don’t exist. I don’t want to hear about you. I don’t want to see you. And I sure as hell don’t want to be talking to you. I’m only doing this because Jonathan asked me to. I’m not interested in a trip down memory lane.”
Thea held her breath, fuming. Fury choked her. She couldn’t stand this new side of Garret—the side of him that had become so callous, so willfully obtuse. Didn’t he know how much she’d thought of him over the years? How much she wished things were different?
“Why can’t you forgive me?” she asked.
“What would be the point?”
She let her forehead rest against the shelving. All those days she’d thought herself in love with him. All those nights her conscience had gnawed like rats on her heart. All the years she’d wished she could go back to do things differently.
“There’s always a point,” she said.
From “The Coffee Diaries” by Thea Celik
The Newport Examiner
Every story has a beginning, and coffee does too. Ethiopian folklore holds that coffee was discovered one day when a goatherd lost his goats.
When he finally found them, they were playing and frolicking—and they were also nibbling the cherries of a nearby tree. Intrigued, the goatherd tried one, and he was immediately energized—and hooked.
At any moment that you’re drinking a cup of coffee, you’re still connected to those first people who discovered the coffee bean. Sure, it may be hard to relate a sugary and icy mocha mint blend with the mashed-up seeds and lard that the ancients used as the first energy bars.
And maybe it’s difficult to see why an espresso—brewed with intense heat and steam—has anything to do with cultures that make “coffee” not from the beans of the tree but from the gently boiled leaves.
But all in all, coffee connects us to our roots—a reminder of our nomadic and unindustrialized origins, and a reminder that no matter how distant we get from our beginnings, we’re never very far away at all.
FOUR
In the dream it goes differently. She’s eighteen—beautiful. She’s wearing the same clothes she wore that day: an aqua T-shirt that shows a little of her belly. Denim shorts that are frayed to white at the bottom edge. Garret pushes open the door to the falling-down barn, knowing what he’ll find on the inside: old tires, a coil of rope the width of his leg, rust-crusted shovels, flattened beer cans, remnants of charcoal and ash.
But instead, as he leads Thea inside the barn inside the dream, he doesn’t find the detritus of a falling-down silo, but instead, he walks into paradise: pinkish sunlight, pillows and candles, grapes and wine.
She’s not nervous and neither is he. This isn’t their first time anymore—not in the dream. They’ve been doing this forever; he knows every inch of her body, every inch of flesh that’s round or sharp, dry or wet. He’s in no rush as he leads her to the plush and silken bed, the promise of her soft, slim fingers in his, the slight sheen of her lips where she’s licked them. Desire is restless but tender, greedy but patient—the want of old lovers, not new. The kind of passion Garret’s never known with anyone, least of all Thea, except in dreams.
On a peninsula jutting westerly into the waters of the Narragansett, the Pennant Inn appeared to Thea to be overwhelmingly regal, as if the perfect green lawn sloping away from the building was created to display the architecture like a velvet pillow displays a crown. At a table in the restaurant, Thea and Sue sat before a long line of curved bow windows that offered near panoramic views of the shoreline and foaming white breakers. Though they’d never explicitly talked about it, it was always understood that Sue paid.
The busboy refilled their glasses of cucumber water, the ice sparking in the sunlight, the sound of classical music covering a long lull in the conversation. Nervous, Thea picked up her glass. Lately, she’d been working extremely long hours at the coffee shop, and she’d looked forward to her lunch date with Sue. They’d already covered the unusually cool weather, the traffic on the bridge, and the drop in numbers of tourists. But the truth was that neither one of them had come for chitchat.
Thea shored up her courage. “Have you spoken to Jonathan?”
“I talked to him. And he seems fine. But he always seems fine.” When she spoke again, her voice was gentle. “What happened—if you don’t mind my asking. I thought everything was going so smoothly …”
“So did I.” Thea squeezed Sue’s hand; her friend’s compassion showed clear on her face. “He clammed up in the last year. Like he was going through the motions but nothing else. I wish he would have talked to me. Warned me that something was wrong.”
“Sweetheart. It sounds like he did.”
Thea was quiet. As far as she knew, no one had told Sue about Jonathan’s infidelity. And Thea wasn’t about to. What she wanted from Sue was guidance. Understanding. Wisdom. All the things she had come to depend on from her good friend. “Please. Tell me what I should do.”
Sue drew her hand back and picked up her white wine, her fingers almost as thin as the crystal stem. “Did you know Ken cheated on me once?”
“He did?”
Sue nodded, her usually gentle smile marred for a moment by nerves. “I don’t know if I should call it cheating really. It was more of an emotional affair. And they may have fooled around a little bit …”
“How did you find out?”
“He felt so terrible about it he confessed everything. He bought me a new car that I left sitting in the garage for six months. I thought my life was ending, and if it wasn’t for the boys holding us together, we might have come apart.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, we didn’t.” Sue looked out the window, where the sun was spraying the water with gold. “We toughed it out. And now that I can look back on it, all I see is a moment that made us stronger—that brought us together. We got through that. I think we could get through anything.”
Thea sat back in her seat, moved by the thought that Sue’s perfect-looking marriage wasn’t always so perfect, and she wondered again how much Sue really knew. Sue’s resilience in the face of pain was meant to be encouraging, but instead, Thea had the sense that her own marriage to Jonathan was nothing like the relationship that Ken and Sue shared. And when Thea found out that Jonathan had cheated, she hadn’t felt angry so much as resigned, as if the inevitable had finally arrived.
Since her friends had asked her whether or not she’d been happy, she’d been thinking about the circumstances of her marriage. She’d assumed that because she wasn’t unhappy she must have been happy. And yet now she was beginning to see that there was a third state—one she’d never considered before—and it felt an awful lot like happiness but wasn’t quite it.
The waiter brought their salads, loaded with nuts and fruit, but Thea didn’t pick up her fork. “And what about us? I mean, you and me.”
“We’ve been through worse than this. You know that.”
“So you’re saying this won’t be a big deal. That we can stay friends.”
“Of course we’ll stay friends! But if it starts to get too messy … Oh never mind. I can’t imagine this getting messy—you and Jonathan are both such well-meaning people.
As long as Jonathan is okay with it, I see no reason we can’t keep having our harmless little lunches from time to time.”
Thea picked up her fork. It wasn’t quite the declaration she’d hoped for—not a pledge of undying loyalty—but she felt comforted nonetheless.
“So tell me,” Sue said, stabbing at her salad. “What are your plans for the week?”
On days when school was closed and the snow went whipping down the narrow streets, Jonathan, Garret, and Thea bundled up in hats, sweaters, mittens, and scarves, and then headed outside. The snow piled here and there, blanketing cars and frosting windows, and the whole city was thrown into a familiar and intimate silence—one it had once known so well, four hundred years ago.
Much as Jonathan loved days off from school, Garret was always especially reckless in the snow—so much that it made Jonathan nervous for them both. And when Thea wasn’t around, Garret’s foolishness knew no restraints. He was so much more likely to do dumb things if she wasn’t there to stop him—like jump off the roof of the bakery into a snowdrift or decide to go sledding down the middle of the street. Jonathan tried to keep his little brother from being irresponsible, but Garret always ended the argument with the word that never failed to sock Jonathan in the gut: coward.
Unfortunately, Garret’s antics were just the first half of Jonathan’s torment; the other half he owed to his parents. After Garret had been grounded or sent to his room, Jonathan could never shake the sense that his parents secretly admired Garret for his outrageousness and daring. Family friends would ask, “What’s Garret grounded for this time?” and always Sue and Ken would answer with an amused twinkle in their eyes: “Oh you know. Boys will be boys.” Though Jonathan worked hard at his studies, never forgetting his homework, always getting A’s, Garret never failed to outshine him with little more than a good drive down the soccer field or a zinger of a joke that cracked up his class—even if it landed him in detention.
Maybe if Jonathan hadn’t been so pissed off on the day of the snowstorm during his junior year. Maybe if Thea hadn’t been sick, and had been there to distract Garret from his need for adrenaline, and Jonathan from his need to compete. Maybe if it hadn’t snowed, and they weren’t bored, and the rungs leading to the tops of the telephone poles hadn’t been quite so appealing …