by Lisa Dale
“Yes,” he said. He leaned down, kissed her. His mouth was warm, sweet, and not enough. “But let me know if you change your mind.”
Then he put his hands in his pockets and walked farther down the path, leaving Thea to stand alone, her brain reeling and the ocean battering the shoreline, wearing the rocks down.
From “The Coffee Diaries” by Thea Celik
The Newport Examiner
Coffee had always been an important part of my parents’ lives. In their home country of Turkey, the per capita consumption of tea far outweighs that of coffee. Yet it’s the mystique of Turkish coffee that captures the imagination.
If you were a regular customer, wandering into my mother and father’s tidy and crude little shop twenty years ago, they would have served you a fresh, hot cup of American-style coffee.
If you came in often enough and liked a bit of friendly small talk, my mother might have offered you the occasional piece of Turkish Delight, made in her kitchen and sold at ten cents a square.
But if you became one of my parents’ true regulars—and you were invited to their home—they wouldn’t dream of serving you American coffee. They would get out their Turkish mill with all the pride of a professional kahveghi, and they would make you a cup of thick, rich coffee flavored only with a bit of sugar.
My mother’s grin would reach ear to ear, and guests didn’t dare refuse a second cup. When a good friend offers you a gift, you don’t say no.
FIFTEEN
As September blended into October, traffic into the coffee shop slowed down to a crawl. Only a very few tourists fresh off of bus trips or East Coast yachting excursions wandered in, their wool scarves falling loose around their jackets. The days grew shorter and colder, and Thea did her best to keep herself busy. She made plans to attend a coffee conference to kill time for at least one weekend. She worked hard with Irina on multiplication and the Revolutionary War—harder than she had to at times—and she called Jonathan often to make sure they were all on the same page. She reorganized all of her bookkeeping for the shop. She spent long hours at bedsides in the local nursing home, reading books to seniors who had lost their sight.
“What’s wrong with you?” Claudine wanted to know one day while they sat trying out new pumpkin-flavored coffee at the shop. “You’ve been so depressing lately.”
“She’s depressed. Not depressing,” Tenke said. “It’s finally sinking in that she’s divorced.”
“I don’t think so,” Claudine said. “I think she needs to get laid.”
Lettie too had a theory. “It’s a matter of momentum. Meter, we’d say in music. When you were married you knew where you were going. You knew what came next. Now, the next bars aren’t so predictable. But you should try to enjoy it—not knowing what’s ahead.”
“Maybe we should let her tell us what’s wrong,” Dani said.
But Thea had no idea what to say. Her relationship with the Sorensens—all of them—hadn’t been so strong since she was a child. She and Jonathan were friends. Sue and Ken had not changed in their affection for her. Garret no longer wanted her exiled away from the people he loved. She had everything she wanted.
And yet, day by day, she felt her moods growing darker. Food was bland and unappealing; not even the smell of fresh coffee beans tumbling into a hopper could make her senses light.
She was petrified of being alone with her thoughts—for fear of the direction they would lead. For comfort she turned to the same tried-and-true standbys, and not without the guilt of knowing that she was supposed to be trying new things instead of relying on the old. When she had to be by herself—nights when she could not sleep—she read books with fast-moving plots that would keep her from lingering too long on any one passage. She watched movies about bank heists and road trips, or in the very worst situations, she took a sleeping pill. Her thoughts—when left to their own devices—ran amok. And no matter what trail her musings started down, they always found their way into the past, back to the girl who stood on the brink of a decision—and did the wrong thing.
As a young man, there was no one in the world Jonathan had looked up to more than his father. Ken owned a boat dealership, and he had a way about him that made other men feel comfortable enough in his office to put their feet up on the table, talk about their wives, and light a cigar. Ken had expected that Jonathan would go into the family business, and for a long time Jonathan tried—he practiced his handshake, he studied the art of small talk, he read books on negotiating. But in the end, he simply didn’t have the personality for sales.
Eventually, Ken’s focus on Jonathan shifted away, his plans for the family business slowly being transferred to his other son, the son who laughed louder than Jonathan, talked louder than Jonathan—the son who was good at talking people into doing things that they didn’t want to do.
Despite the disappointment (it was never spoken aloud that Jonathan was no longer the favorite to take over the family trade), Jonathan had never stopped emulating his father. If there was one thing Ken could do that Jonathan could also do, it was to be kind to women. Jonathan had learned early on to treat women with dignity and respect—a lesson that Garret hadn’t entirely mastered, since he was apt to treat the women in his life no different than his soccer or drinking pals.
Jonathan thought to hold Thea’s coat for her when she was putting it on. He opened the car door. He asked what she wanted to order for dinner or what movie she wanted to see. He would have walked through fire for anyone who asked—but especially for Thea.
And so afterward—after Garret had stopped talking to her, after her heart had been broken and Jonathan’s prediction had come true—he’d spent as much time with her as she’d needed, holding her hand, handing her tissues when she cried, reassuring her in every way he could think of that she was worthy, beautiful, adored. And when it became clear that she would need more to heal than words, he didn’t shy away. He wasn’t good at many things—not like his brother, champion of last-minute drives down the field, of coercing customers into the larger boat motor and leather steering wheels, of sweet-talking teachers into passing grades—but he was good at being there for Thea. He could protect her and be kind to her and help her in every way. It’s what he’d always been good at.
Still, he could not—no matter how gentle, how patient, how good he was to her—get her to say yes.
Garret stood in the quiet of his apartment in Providence, drinking the last of the coffee that Jonathan had left when he’d moved out. At the glass windows, he gazed down on the city, the inky river snaking beneath fiery torches, the gondolas gliding silently along the water, the cars moving quickly over the bridges, the well-oiled machinery of it all.
For weeks, his condo had been empty. Irina had left a few of her toys behind by accident—a stuffed dog wedged behind the couch, a miniature Corvette parked beneath the coffee table—but all of her things had since been returned, and now there were no traces that Garret had ever had guests at all. He missed it—the noise and clutter of constant company. And it made him realize: he was getting older. If he was going to have a family, he needed to get started sooner rather than later.
But first, he had to get the roadblocks out of the way.
He drained the last sip of coffee from his mug, knowing he would not go to the Dancing Goat to get more. If he was going to see Thea again, she was going to have to make the choice to come to him. He fantasized about the moment a hundred different ways—that she was sitting on the park bench outside his work, that she stood when she saw him and said I’ve been thinking. He thought of coming home to find her in the lobby chatting with the doorman—the look she would give him that said Thank God you’re here. In his real life, he’d even gone so far as leaving his door unlocked and making sure he was freshly shaved and showered at all times.
The minutes were murder. The seconds, each one a prick against his skin. The circle that he’d once thought was closed had actually always been open, and it was opening farther. But still, in his
empty apartment, the phone did not ring.
When Thea arrived at Sue’s house one day in early October, she was only half surprised when the lights came on and her family was there to yell Surprise! Irina blew a paper trumpet, and Ken showered her with a handful of confetti. She laughed and held open her arms for hugs all around.
“It was Irina’s idea,” Sue said. “We planned it together.”
“Actually, it was all me,” Irina said.
Thea messed up her daughter’s hair and glanced around—Ken, Sue, Irina, Jonathan, Dani … no Garret. She hated that she felt so disappointed. She kept thinking that any day now things would go back to normal. And yet she suspected they were starting to slide back into the old ways—when he and she showed up for social functions only if each knew the other would not go. She couldn’t bear the thought of going through this with him again—for her own sake, but her family’s as well.
At one point, Sue pulled her aside. “Are you doing okay?”
“Of course,” Thea said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Sue’s lips pressed into a fine line. “It’s not my place, but you’re not really yourself these days.”
Thea gave Sue a quick hug. “Thanks for worrying about me. But I’m fine.”
They lit candles and sang “Happy Birthday” while Thea covered her ears in mock horror. Afterward, when the wax had been picked off the icing and slices of yellow cake had been passed around, Sue sat Thea in a chair in the living room to open her gifts.
From Irina: a handmade clay vase that she’d been working on in school, lumpy and painted in smears of green and red.
From Ken and Sue: plane tickets to the coffee conference that she’d wanted to go to.
From Dani: a pretty new clip for her hair, beads and pearls covered in a clear, hard resin.
From Jonathan: a book about the history of coffee, which she already owned.
“Thank you all so much,” Thea said. “This is so fantastic. What a great surprise.”
“I almost forgot. One more thing!” Sue jumped to her feet and hurried into another room. When she came back, she held a small, hastily wrapped box in her hands. “Garret sent this.”
Thea took it from her. “Did he get held up at work?”
“I have no idea,” Sue said.
Irina jumped up and down beside her. “Open it!”
Anxious, Thea pulled at the paper. Inside was a cardboard package with a picture of a wooden jewelry box on the side of it. Thea opened the top and peered in: it looked just like the picture on the front. She had to admit that it was an odd gift—not really to Garret’s taste, but she didn’t want to let herself dwell on it too long. The jewelry box meant Garret had thought of her. She felt his absence like a clamp on her heart.
“How nice,” she said, and then she closed the box, set it aside, and smiled at her spectators. “So what’s a woman got to do around here to get another piece of cake?” she said.
At some point, Thea had begun to see the shape of her bones under her skin. Jonathan had noticed too. He’d refused to leave her side after Garret had dumped her—guarding her not with any nervousness or obsessive crowding, but instead with a kind of steady, simple companionship. When he wasn’t with her, he called. He cheered her up, brought her small things like a handful of wild lilies or a chocolate bar. Thea leaned hard on him, not with the sense that she was taking advantage, but instead, with the feeling of coming back down to earth, to the place she’d always belonged.
Jonathan had been sitting beside her on the breakwater, his skinny legs dangling down to the churning ocean, when she realized she hadn’t had her period. She told him what worried her, the way she always told him things, with complete trust. He assured her. All they needed to do was wait a while. He made her feel as if her period was a thing that she had temporarily misplaced, and that it would turn up when she stopped looking for it.
She waited. The sun rose hot and crimson in the morning, set in a blaze of sweaty orange at night, and still—no period. When another week passed, he put his arms around her in the front seat of the car and let her cry on his T-shirt.
“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “I won’t tell anyone.”
And she knew he wouldn’t. He would support her. He’d always been supporting her, even when she hadn’t known it. Even when she’d been too obsessed with Garret to see. And she felt some echo of his tenderness in herself: the urge to protect him, to help him, to comfort him in the way that he gave so much care and kindness to her. He bought her a pregnancy test; it was pink and white like candy, and he waited outside the bathroom at a local fast-food restaurant while she stared at her watch in a tiny stall. Afterward, she slid into the plastic booth beside him, feeling as if she was floating above the tile floor.
“Negative,” she said.
And he gave her a long hug.
But still her period did not come.
After her birthday party, Thea accidentally let Irina stay up an hour later than usual watching television. She’d been on the phone with Dani, talking things over. She had the sense that her life was out of control—not that it suddenly was, but that it always had been. She’d fallen into her work at the coffee shop. She hadn’t married Jonathan so much as she hadn’t told him no. When Jonathan had suggested they have a child, she’d had no reason to hesitate. And her divorce—that probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Jonathan as well.
She’d always been good at letting her life make her happy. She loved the shop and motherhood and even her relationship with Jonathan. But the idea that she had not chosen those things plagued her.
It’s like coffee, she told Dani. We’re rarely born loving it—but drink it enough and you learn to love it. She wondered: Were all the things that made her happy the result of slowly acquired tastes for those things—as opposed to instinctive, built-in tendencies? And if a taste had to be acquired to be appreciated, didn’t that make it artificial in some way? How could she tell the things she’d learned to love from the things she was born loving?
When she hung up the phone with Dani, she still had no answers. Irina came into the kitchen, hopping up onto a chair, her slippers brushing the ground. It was only then that Thea realized how late it was.
“Did you brush your teeth?” Thea asked.
“Yes.”
“Top and bottom?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see.”
Irina rolled her eyes but dutifully opened her mouth. Dark flecks of Oreos were still mashed into her molars.
“What did I tell you about lying to me?” Thea asked, her voice unusually tight.
“Mom, I’m not. I brushed them.”
“You didn’t really brush them. Irina—get back upstairs and finish brushing your teeth.”
“Maaaaaah. No!”
“I said, now.”
“No, you didn’t say ‘now.’ You said, ‘Get back upstairs and—’ ”
Thea grabbed her daughter’s arms, harder than she meant to. She stood and brought Irina to the foot of the stairs.
“Ow! You’re hurting me!”
She ordered her daughter to brush again, and when Irina’s lip began to quiver, it only made her madder. “I said, GO!”
It wasn’t until Irina had stomped as hard as she could one foot over the other that Thea realized how close she was to losing it, as if she’d been taken over by some entirely different person. Sue was right: she’d been snapping at everyone—her daughter, her friends, her employees …
She sat down at the kitchen table, where the gifts from her birthday party were scattered, each a treasure in its own way: Irina’s lumpy, paint-streaked vase, Jonathan’s thick book, Dani’s glinting hair clip, and Garret’s odd jewelry box. She wondered how long this could go on—the feeling that she was coiled like a spring, the shades of frustration and even anger that discolored everything she did.
Garret’s offer—the fantasy of going to him at last—was constantly in the back of her mind. She wanted him; she wouldn’t
deny that. But she knew that she would not be able to simply shove desire under the carpet and expect it to disappear. Garret was the great, open-ended question of her life, and if she wanted that to change, she would need to do something about it—one way or the other.
She picked up the strange box he’d sent, pulled it out of its foam wrapping, and set it on the kitchen table. It was nice enough—thick wood, rounded corners, a little brass clasp—but given his taste for expensive things, the crude little box simply didn’t seem like something he would be attracted to. She wondered: Why would he bother sending her a present if he wasn’t going to show up at her party? What kind of mixed message was that?
It wasn’t until she opened the box and pulled the velvet ring holders out that she understood. All her indecision had been condensed down into the finite point of the moment: a taunt, a lure, a choice. Inside was a single silver key.
The fact that Garret had been sitting with his arm around his date at the drive-in theater in North Smithfield when he’d found out that Thea had started dating his brother had not eased his shock. The rain had just begun to fall, dotting the windshield and making the inside of the car humid. The sky was not yet dark.
“At least that’s what I heard,” the girl had said. And she scooted next to him, her bare shoulder pressed against his chest. “Does it bother you?”
He’d said hell, no even before he’d realized he’d spoken the words. That Thea was with another man—a man who might do better than him—was enough to make his blood seethe. Thea with his brother was unthinkable. Rage tightened his whole body like a crossbow.
He didn’t see a frame of the movie; he barely noticed when his date moved her hand to rest so suggestively on his lap. For the fullness of the season—so bloated with heat and humidity—he’d been living in a kind of time freeze, so that some part of him expected that everything would somehow settle back into its right place come the fall. As if the nightmare of his summer had been nothing more than a dream.