by Lisa Dale
On the counter, one last bit of biscotti was left in the wrapper. She picked it up between two fingers. She had no idea what it was, but she popped it into her mouth. Anise. The flavor that she hated held so many memories for her. It had been Garret’s favorite. She wondered if it still was. She wondered what he would think if he knew just how long it had taken her to forget him and how much she still remembered.
From “The Coffee Diaries” by Thea Celik
The Newport Examiner
Coffee trees thrive only in equatorial regions, with the best arabicas grown slowly at high altitudes, and so the cost of importing coffee has been known to be prohibitive—especially during times of war or financial hardship.
And yet, because the desire for coffee doesn’t abate even when the supply of coffee dwindles, many countries have been forced over the years to rely on replacements.
During World War II, the most widely used coffee substitute was chicory—that stalky bluish wildflower that grows beside highways and in waste places on a hot summer day.
The root of the chicory plant can be roasted to resemble the color of coffee, and it can be ground to look like coffee beans. But chicory is not coffee. To mitigate chicory’s rough palate, Italians began serving their chicory-laced “espresso” with lemon peel on the side.
The fact is, there’s nothing in the world like a good cup of smooth, dark coffee—but as with so many things, sometimes it takes a substitute to make you appreciate the real thing.
SEVEN
Though technically Garret hadn’t been old enough to drink at his cousin’s wedding, no one noticed what he slipped into his glass. His parents pranced about and mingled on the parquet dance floor, and he hung around with his brother and Thea at the table that had been marked for the three of them with a place card that looked like a violin. In true Sorensen family fashion, the wedding was lavish. The mansion where they celebrated dripped with goldleaf swags and scrollwork. A series of crystal chandeliers hung from a high ceiling. Pilasters capped in acanthus leaves flanked elegant French doors. Garret didn’t mind the overzealous decor—as long as no one noticed that his Coke was spiked with rum.
Jonathan, whose soda remained uncorrupted on the tablecloth, sat beside him watching the dancers laugh and wiggle on the dance floor. “Hey. Have you seen Thea?”
“Bathroom.”
“She should have been back by now.”
“She’s mingling,” Garret said. “Leave it alone.”
He took a long swig of rum and Coke that burned his throat, and he tried to look unconcerned. But the truth was that he too had noticed that Thea was gone, and he’d been keeping an eye out for her for quite some time. She hadn’t been acting like herself today. In her deep red dress and dark eye makeup, Garret had expected her to outshine the bride. Instead, she seemed listless, disinterested. She loved dancing—but she wouldn’t get up even for her favorite songs.
“I’m going to get another drink,” Garret said, pushing back his chair. “Want something?”
“I’m fine,” Jonathan said.
“You okay here sitting by yourself?”
“I like people watching,” he said.
Garret made his way among the revelers, on the lookout for flailing elbows and knees as he cut across the dance floor. When he got across the loud room to the bar, he kept on walking. He walked until he got to the lobby, with its sparkling marble floors and light-studded ficus trees. But Thea wasn’t there. He stood for a while outside of the ladies’ lounge, watching a parade of cousins flutter in and out, but it did no good. He checked the coatroom to see if her coat was there; it was. He pushed open heavy, random doors and walked down echoing, random halls, but she was nowhere to be found.
Fifteen minutes later he was beginning to get nervous. He didn’t want to ask his parents or Jonathan if they’d seen her because he didn’t want to alarm them. He thought of his cousin Eric, who’d been making passes at her all night, and his stomach did an unexpected little turn. Had she ducked away into some hidden room with him? No. Not her. Thea didn’t date. Though he’d always wondered why she’d yet to hook up with anyone, he didn’t ever question her. He liked her being unattached.
When he finally found her—at the lowest point of a stairwell, where the underside of the stairs sloped sharply to meet the floor and made a kind of cave—she was alone, a shock of red against the dull planes of the cinder blocks. In this forgotten corner of the house, the finery had been stripped away so only the unadorned bones of the old structure showed. The damp air smelled of dust and Pine-Sol.
Thea jumped when she saw him, turning away.
“Garret!”
“What are you doing here?”
She didn’t turn to face him, nor did she explain. Her back was a study in layers, the fall of her dark hair, the rich red sheen of a sheer wrap, the thin straps of her dress across her shoulder blades, and then, finally, the smooth expanse of her skin and muscle beneath.
“Thea …”
He didn’t know what to do, how to help. He laid his arm along her shoulders, and to his surprise she turned into him, the backs of her hands pressed into his chest where she covered her face. He looped both arms around her; she fit so well against him. He resisted the urge to press his cheek against her hair. “Tell me what’s wrong so I can fix it,” he said.
She brushed the tears from her cheeks and brought herself to stand up straighter. Her eyes darted away. “I don’t want to say.”
“There’s no way I’m leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”
She sniffed, drew her shawl closer around her shoulders. “I wasn’t going to tell you until I knew for certain. I mean, there’s no sense in getting everyone upset until I’m sure.”
“Sure of what, Thea?”
She looked up at him from beneath her dark and clotted mascara. “That I’m leaving.”
“Leaving. Where?”
“My parents are talking about closing the coffee shop and moving back to Turkey.”
It took a moment before the news sank in. “Are they serious?”
“They started looking into it weeks ago,” she said.
He saw that the tears were rising up again, and he handed her the handkerchief in his pocket. He was stunned—completely at a loss for what to say. Thea—leaving. In all of his visions of the future—his intention of being a soccer star, of living the good life, of making his family proud—Thea had been there, right beside him. The idea of a future without her challenged the certainty he felt about all of his plans.
She dabbed the inside corners of her eyes. “Seeing everyone here at the wedding. Your cousin. Your aunts and uncles. Your parents … you. How can I leave this, Garret?”
“You don’t have to,” he said, taken aback by the swell of his own determination. “You’re not going anywhere.”
She shook her head. “If my parents go, I’ve got to go too.”
“Would they make you?” he asked.
“I don’t think they’d make me do anything,” she said. “I want to graduate high school with you and the rest of our class next year. I don’t want to go. But they’re my family. And as much as I’m afraid of leaving, I’m afraid of not leaving too.”
Garret sighed, feeling suddenly uncomfortable in his borrowed tux and tails. A feeling of possessiveness gripped him. Thea belonged with him. He simply couldn’t believe that she would just up and leave him, and she would never see him again.
He stepped toward her. He’d touched her a moment ago, and now he wanted to touch her again. She didn’t resist when he took her in his arms. She melted against him, her own arms going around him tight. Life without Thea—he simply couldn’t imagine it. He felt the press of her from his sternum to his waist; he thought he’d never touched a woman so intimately before—and not just any woman. Her.
He gathered her closer, as tight as their bodies would allow. As far as he was concerned, she wasn’t going anywhere. He would find a way.
At Garret’s apartment, Jonath
an watched as Irina and his brother played video game baseball, Irina swinging the bright white controller with two hands. “Your back foot should come up, Uncle Garret. Like this. It comes up. Look. Watch me.”
Jonathan sat back in his chair in Garret’s kitchen area, his favorite Le Guin novel open next to his laptop. He’d just checked his e-mail: Thea had sent him a note to say she’d received the papers from his lawyer. And in a matter of time she would no longer be his wife. He was struck by a strange feeling—not the notion that she had been uprooted from his life but that he had. She’d been his anchor: now he was supposed to set sail. But to where?
“Hey.”
Jonathan didn’t notice that Garret had stopped playing the game until his brother sat down next to him. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got good news.”
“What?”
“I talked Irina into sleeping over. And I texted Thea to tell her not to wait up.”
“That’s easily the best news I’ve had all day. How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“You’ve always had a way with people. I’ve never been able to figure it out.”
Garret dusted his fingernails on his shirt, blew them off, and grinned.
“How did you really do it?”
“Okay, you got me. I promised to take her with me to the gym tomorrow morning if she stayed.”
Jonathan laughed a little and looked back to the computer screen, where Thea’s e-mail stared back at him with unapologetic candor. I don’t know how Irina’s been acting with you and I know I wasn’t the best wife. Since he’d unloaded all his hurt and anger on her, the feeling of freedom that had come over him had worn off, and he was beginning to doubt himself again. It bothered him that Irina was so hesitant to stay with him. He knew as well as Thea did that they would have to work together if they wanted to be good parents. But could they do that? Or would they become like so many other ex-couples, who spent more time fighting about their kids than raising them?
“What’s bugging you?” Garret asked.
Jonathan glanced up to see if Irina was listening, but she’d gone into the bathroom, he guessed. “Has Irina seemed like she’s been acting up to you?”
“She seems fine to me.”
Jonathan rubbed his eyes, thinking. Irina acted like a tough little soldier when she was with him, but he didn’t doubt that Thea was telling the truth about her deteriorating behavior. Now that the separation was going to be permanent, things were going to change—for good. And he worried that Irina would have a tough time with the transition. “Thea got the papers from the lawyer,” he told his brother.
“And?”
He leaned his forehead on his hand. He’d told Garret of his meeting with Thea. He hadn’t needed to go into detail for Garret to understand that it hadn’t ended well.
“I don’t know what I expected,” Jonathan said. “Part of me wishes … I don’t know. Wishes that she would have been angrier.”
Garret was quiet.
“I want to separate from her, but I don’t want to let her go.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” Garret said.
Jonathan looked up at him. “You should have married her.”
“Please. I’ve never exactly had a reputation for being the smarter brother. But I knew enough not to get married. Especially to her.” He clasped Jonathan on the back. “You’re going to love the bachelor’s life. Trust me. But you’ve got to embrace it. Start living it, instead of just watching from the side.”
“So is that your way of saying it’s time for me to move out?”
“You can live here until you’re a hundred and four.” From the living room, Irina called Garret’s name, challenging him to another round. Garret grumbled as he got to his feet, but Jonathan could tell he was happy. He wondered how his brother—the most social person he knew—could have lived alone for so long. “Duty calls.”
Jonathan stopped him. “You know, I was worried at first about moving in with you. It’s been a long time since we’ve really spent any time together. But instead it feels like we picked up right where we left off.”
Garret clasped his brother’s hand, halfway between a handshake and a hug. “I’m right there with you,” he said.
The unofficial party for Jonathan’s senior class graduation was held at the same beach house where it was held every year, and Garret had no doubts at all about crashing it. Nor was he surprised when it hadn’t been difficult to talk Thea into crashing it with him. She sat beside him on a thick tree trunk of driftwood that was twisted and smooth. A small fire surrounded by lichen-speckled stones made her hair shine gold and red. At their backs, a huge clapboard house was lit up against the pitch of night, and newly liberated seniors made their way to and fro between the keg on the deck and the water’s edge. Already the party was getting sloppy—couples disappearing together, the sound of someone retching in the darkness, laughter bubbling and boiling over into the night.
“Come on,” Garret said. “Let’s get out of here.”
He took Thea’s hand and led her away from the fire, away from the crowd. He had a slightly dizzy and tipsy feeling, but not because he’d taken a single drink all night. Lately, Thea made him feel that way. He liked the smell of her perfume and the way she felt when he hugged her, which he did whenever he got the chance. She wasn’t rail-thin like so many of her friends; he’d been with skinny girls—all their sharp angles and planes. He liked them well enough. But in recent weeks he’d discovered that Thea was more comfortable, touchable somehow.
They walked to the edge of the water, which was unusually calm. Something about the blackness of it, the darkness, brought out its liquid nature, so that the ocean seemed more like itself at night than it did during the day. He led her down along the beach, not giving up the warmth of her fingers. Why hadn’t he ever held her hand before? And what kept her from pulling away now?
“I have good news,” he said. “I’ve been waiting all day to tell you.”
“What is it?”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “My parents said you can move in with us, if you need to, so that you don’t have to leave the country. You can graduate with us, here.”
In the moonlight, he saw tears come into her eyes, silvery as the surf that washed up on the sand. “Really?”
“Why are you crying? Aren’t you happy?”
“Of course I’m happy. I’m happy your parents would be so kind to me. I’m happy that you are. I don’t know what to say.”
He stood to face her, his heart racing in his chest and all of his awareness concentrated on the feel of her hand in his. “Say you’ll move in with us and that you won’t go.”
Slowly, the hope and pleasure ebbed from her eyes. “I don’t know. I think it would be better if I go.”
“But why?” he demanded, frustrated. “Why wouldn’t you move in with us? I thought it’s what you would want.”
She pulled her hand away from his. “I just can’t.”
“Thea …” He balled his fingers into fists, too angry to know what to do. Yell at her? Shake her? Beg? She couldn’t leave. She couldn’t. “I’m telling you … asking you … not to go.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not ready to lose you,” he said.
“But what do you mean, lose me?”
“Thea—” He ran a hand through his hair, frustration making every muscle in his body go tight. And because he didn’t know any other way to show her, to make her believe, he kissed her.
He’d meant—after years of strict friendship—to go slowly, to coax and tease the way he’d learned to when a girl wasn’t certain about being kissed. But his head swam, his heart raced, and Thea’s arms came around him, her fingers pressing hard into his skin, so that all thoughts of being slow and gentle vanished like a match burning down to his fingers. His hand found the back of her neck, cradling her head, and when her mouth opened beneath his, he felt whole worlds of desire open as if the earth had droppe
d away beneath his feet. Thea—his Thea—had been holding out on him. There was something inside of her that he wanted, needed more of, a light in her like a lantern in the darkness, and he chased it—deepening the kiss, reaching into the shadows of her mouth, seeking more.
He was startled by the punch of cool air when she pulled away.
“I don’t want to be just another one of your girlfriends,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Thea.” He threaded his hands into her hair, marveling at the just-kissed sheen of her lips, the openness that she gave so freely to him. “You’re not,” he said. “You could never be.” And much to his surprise, the words were true.
In the darkness of his kitchen, where he stood drinking a glass of water in the middle of the long night, Garret knew there were a million reasons he should not be thinking of Thea. And there were a million thoughts of her that he should not have been having.
And yet his mind replayed their conversation in the alley a hundred different ways. He saw the sunlight gleam on her hair. The kindness in her eyes. He thought of her calloused hands, her tired skin. He thought of the little knot of bone at the edge of her wrist when she’d handed him his espresso. He thought of the feel of her against him—he’d thought of it so much that when he’d dozed off earlier, it was to thoughts of being with her, holding her—and then the thoughts that had lulled him to sleep were the exact same thoughts that woke him up with sheer misery and loneliness, because he realized he’d been dreaming.
He refilled his glass of water, drank it down. Where is she tonight? he wondered—and then he chastised himself for the thought.
So he’d forgiven her, or she’d forgiven him—or both. Really, it meant nothing. Forgiveness didn’t change the way he would proceed in the future, and it certainly didn’t entitle him to wonder what she was doing so late at night while he paced the floors.