Whole Latte Life

by Joanne DeMaio

“Melissa,” she says to herself. “I don’t need a house. I need a vacant little store.”

  But there’s more. Two-room addition currently doctor office. Lots of traffic for in-home business. Zoned residential/business. Price Reduced.

  Sara Beth reads the ad three times, the first with her sister’s idea of renting out the addition in mind. The second time she reads it, she dallies on her own new idea. And the third time, she seriously considers her idea, the one about buying the house. Another thought runs through her mind: The house reminds her of the New England farmhouse in which she grew up, her mother spending a lifetime restoring it. Then of course comes this thought: This will really be suicide for her marriage.

  She enlarges the picture in the ad. It has stately lines typical of an old center chimney colonial, with a pillared entranceway, alcove windows on one side wall, and the addition with matching alcove windows on the other side. Near the street. She glances outside, then pulls her cell from her purse to call the agent, maybe get the address. There’s no law against being curious, after all.

  But after everything she put Tom through, will she really take her plan this far?

  “Maybe,” she says to herself. “Maybe I will. Can’t hurt to get some ideas.”

  “Who you talking to?” Tom asks when he walks into the carriage house. Owen tags along helping him carry the packing blankets. Melissa’s husband follows behind, letting out a low whistle at the sight of her antiques.

  Sara Beth slips her phone in her hobo bag and minimizes her screen. “Just Lissa.”

  “Well we’re ready to move the piano home. Owen’s going to supervise, right guy?” he asks his son.

  They make their way over to the piano, inching it closer to the doorway. As Tom and Kevin finally wheel it out the door, she saves the Currier & Ives ad in a Word file, pulls out her antique journal and keeps nudging her life along.

  Tour Colonial. Wish you could come too.

  The Seahorse Café is not much more than a summertime watering hole. Outside, over the big window, a neon seahorse blinks from side to side as though it’s swimming in the deep blue sea. The bar is a few towns over from Anchor Beach, on a strip where the cottages are stacked too close together, the arcade filled with teens and seasonal shops selling penny candy and overpriced beach tubes hanging from ropes outside their doorways. At the end of the strip, along a shabby boardwalk, a few bars rake in the summer money.

  Michael sits in his seat as though he knows it well. “It was a punk,” he says. “A low life with nothing to lose. We walked in right when he was booking.”

  “What was he running from?”

  “That’s the thing. A neighbor called in to report a racket in the next apartment. We thought we had a domestic on our hands. You know, arguing, yelling. You don’t usually get noise in a robbery.” He looks past her, running his hand through his hair. After working a full shift in the city heat, which is different from beach heat, the day shows on him. “Unless someone walks in on you.”

  “Oh no.”

  “The tenant had come home right in the middle of being robbed. The creep beat the shit out of him and left him for dead. That was the noise the neighbor heard.”

  “So you were thinking it was a domestic.”

  He nods before taking a swallow of his drink. “It was in a six-family tenement house. Going up the stairs, my partner Drew turned the corner on the porch landing and walked right into his gun.”

  A low murmur fills the bar with patrons talking, laughter ringing. A candle flickers low in its globe on their dark table and he reaches for a few pretzels in a bowl.

  “I remember the incredible noise of it. The explosion, Drew blown down the stairs, hitting the wall, his boots on the steps.”

  “Jesus,” Rachel whispers.

  He finishes his drink. “I talked to Jesus a lot in those days.”

  “I’ll bet.” She studies him. “So what did this guy do? Shoot you and run?”

  “He would have.” Michael taps his foot under the table. That night comes out in little ways like that, little fidgets. “If he could’ve found a way.”

  “Well he shot a cop. Wait, your partner. Did he make it?”

  Michael shakes his head no. “He didn’t have a chance.”

  “Then that guy must have been put away for a long time?”

  He hesitates, squinting briefly at her. “Look at you,” he says with regret.

  “Me?” She wears faded Levi’s with a black ribbed tank, a few gold chains hang around her neck. She notices he takes a long, deep breath.

  “You’re beautiful. And so far removed from that crazy night, I hate to bring it to you.” He pushes the pretzel bowl away. “I killed him Rachel. When he turned to face me, I’m just lucky to have got the first shot,” he says. “It threw off his aim, and here I am.”

  Rachel winces, reaching forward and clasping Michael’s hand.

  “I had to do it.” His voice is low. “Do you know what that gun sounded like on that landing? A freaking explosion. When Drew crashed down the stairs, I did what I had to do. For Drew, too. He never deserved what he got.”

  “Neither did you. I’m so sorry.”

  Michael stares at her and again, breathes. “My eardrum was ruptured from the close range noise and I did the whole physical therapy thing. Had a problem with bone infection at the wound afterwards. My shoulder still bothers me. But I killed a man,” he finally says, pulling his hand over his face. “I tell myself to this day that it wasn’t a man. It was a fucking monster. But, you know…”

  “It was a man.”

  “I almost quit the force. Didn’t come back for a long time. Thought I’d never touch a gun again. For a while I considered moving to the west coast, maybe get a hot shot computer engineering degree, something as far removed from the force as I could.”

  “What made you stay?”

  “A few things. Mostly my daughter. And then there’s the games.”

  “The Yankees,” Rachel says under her breath.

  “Someone in the department pulled some strings and arranged for a pair of season tickets for me.” Michael leans forward, his arms folded on the table. “When I took that guy down, the force agreed I did it for them, too. It was their thanks. The tickets.” The waitress sets down Michael’s scotch on a paper coaster. He reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the end of the table and lights one, inhaling deeply. “It’s the only time I smoke. When I go back like this. I used to smoke all the time, but I quit when I started with the Mounteds.”

  “That happened after you were shot then?”

  “About a year later.” Holding the cigarette, he lifts the carafe and fills her glass. “I took that time off and spent it in drinking establishments, not learning establishments. This place was one of my favorites.” Michael turns toward the window. The bar is dim, the back wall lined with tall booths, the round tables damp with the closeness of the sea. It’s the kind of place where on summer nights, the door and windows are opened so the sea breeze comes in and mixes with the smoke, the drink, and the stories told, and you feel like a fisherman who just came back from a long voyage. Who stops here right off the boat to leech the sea from his blood before heading home.

  “You wouldn’t have wanted to know me then. I had it in me to get even with everyone and anyone. If someone looked at me wrong, I was ready to blow. I did, a few times, right here. Lost a tooth, broke a couple of ribs. My ex-wife, and Summer, well, let’s say I wasn’t easy to live with.”

  She can’t believe that the Michael she’s gotten to know, the man who listens attentively to her story, who weaves his own with threads of nostalgia and family and lore, who stays in the absolute moment, she can’t believe he wouldn’t have shone through, somehow.

  “I’ll bet you weren’t that bad,” she says. “But bar fights?”

  He winks. “Should’ve seen the other guy.”

  “So that’s where it all comes from.”

  “What?”

  “The overprotective stuff. The gu
ard you have up.”

  “Hypervigilance. That’s its technical name, and believe me, I’m very much aware of it. It’s a post-traumatic thing I deal with. It serves a purpose, so they tell me.”

  “To stay safe?”

  He shakes his head. “No. It’s a psychological tool. My therapist says I keep it between myself and dealing with that night. You know, it’s a way to not come to terms with the reality of killing someone, by making a new issue instead. I don’t always see myself as protecting, but I’m working on it. I know it’s a problem for people.” He looks around the bar, then back at Rachel with another long breath. “Therapy is helping me deal with the trauma now.”

  “It’s not permanent then?”

  “Depends if, and how, I handle it. You know, the usual mumbo jumbo: deep breathing, exercise, self-talk. So if you see me talking to myself, well, there you have it. ”

  Rachel reaches for his hand and holds it for a minute. “So what made you take the Mounted job?”

  “Some new horses arrived and the captain thought it was time I got back to work. Or leave. He made me make a decision about whether to live or die at that point.” He takes a drag of the cigarette, then tamps it out. “This seemed good, because the Mounted Unit is safer. The thinking is that people won’t commit crimes when they see me. I’m in their face, on the street. Not in a car, but right there in the thick of it up on a horse. It would be the only way I’d come back, either on a horse or behind a desk.”

  “Behind a desk? You?”

  “Well I went in to the stable,” he continues, “to check out the horses and talk to the other Mounteds. I wasn’t sure, but when I walked past the stalls, Maggie pulled my Yankees cap right off my head. Like she wanted to stop me, you know? My horse was a Yankees fan.”

  “So she made your decision.”

  “Yeah, what a trip. She started out reckless and I didn’t know if I wanted to deal. The first time I took her on the street, she spooked and reared up on her back legs. I thought she’d fall right back on top of me, so I whacked her on the head with my fist.”

  “You hit her?”

  “You have to think horse. My trainer taught me that right away. Work on her level. When I hit her, she thought she hit her head because she reared and never pulled that stunt again. We hung in there and she calmed me down as much as I calmed her.”

  “She helped you through a rough time, then.”

  “A little Maggie, a little liquor, a few close calls. My life turned around in one long year. I used to be always on, ready for the next arrest, the next thrill.” He shakes his head. “Now, I take it slow and live every damn second. Every one of them matters.”

  “The good that came from the bad?”

  “Plenty of bad came out of it too. That day blew my marriage to smithereens. It was headed there, anyway. Barbara wanted me moving up the ranks and out of Queens. She’s been itching to do what she’s doing now for a long time.” His right hand reaches up and rubs his left shoulder as though the sheerness of that violence lingers: the routine call, turning the corner on the landing, followed by a blast that ruptured his life. “After I took that bullet and spent a year stewing, the last thing I could do was walk away from anything safe and familiar. Including my home. So she left.” He looks at his left shoulder and measures a half inch with his fingers. “I came this close to dying. It still scares the hell out of me.”

  “It’s no wonder. Do you ever think about going back to school? Making a change?”

  “No. No way. I’m not cut out to walk around campus with a bookbag, reading about King Arthur. Stability, that’s it for me. My home, the force, The Yankees, everything familiar. It’s a control thing after a night when, let me tell you, there was no control.”

  “So you know about second chances.”

  “It’s the only reason I’m here. Some God given second chance. And some fate that had Drew in front of me going up those stairs. Life can change at any corner.”

  “I hear you. Like mine did, in a Manhattan restaurant two months ago.”

  “Sometimes,” Michael says, “it feels like you’re talking about a death when you tell me about Sara Beth.”

  “Sometimes it feels like that, too.”

  “You care too much about her to let this go. ” He waits a moment. “You’ve got to try to get back what you had with her, before you turn some corner in your life and it’s too late.”

  “I will,” Rachel answers, squeezing his hands and trusting him. “I promise.”

  Afterward, the waves break along the dark beach. The salt air brushes his face as they walk the old boardwalk, her fingers laced through his. Leaving the bar behind, he glances back at the neon seahorse blinking in the window. There had been nights in that bar when he almost finished off what the bullet missed. Or his rage had. That seems long ago now.

  But that road brought him to this. Later, beneath the bedroom window in the little cottage, that same sea breeze lifts off Long Island Sound and glances across his skin, soothing with its hint of salt water and waves and innate rhythm. That’s what it comes down to, life. Rhythms inherent in every day, every decision, the high tide and low, every day.

  He inhales deeply, reassuring himself the cottage is secure, trying desperately not to get up and look out the window, check the locks, and Rachel must sense it. She reaches up and touches his face. It’s all new, this touch. And surprising. He turns to her, his fingers tangle in her hair.

  “Tell me about the gift,” she murmurs.

  “The gift.” He whispers back, not wanting to interrupt the rhythms, the waves and tides and moment at hand. “If I hadn’t been shot, I wouldn’t have become a Mounted, you wouldn’t have stopped me in May, you wouldn’t be here in this cottage, with me. This moment, right now,” he explains, then stops and kisses her, “would not exist without that one.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tom rinses his mug at the sink. Outside the kitchen window, the back yard is neatly mowed. The picnic table needs staining. Maybe he’ll do that later today, after waxing the cars. After getting to the bottom of things.

  “What?” Sara Beth asks when he turns, leans against the counter, and stares at her.

  “Your rings.” He’s not comfortable with their absence. Whether they’re missing or put away or sold, what matters is that he hasn’t seen them since New York. “I need to know what’s up with your wedding rings. If you can’t wear my rings, I really can’t consider looking at that house for sale. Where are they?”

  She pushes her coffee cup away. “I don’t have them.”

  “You don’t have them.”

  Her eyes drop closed. “Listen. You must figure it happened in New York. And it did. When I rode the ferry that night and I was so sad, missing Mom and wanting to change my life back, and I didn’t know how to go about it.”

  “Sara.”

  Now she looks at him. “I didn’t want to tell you this because you wouldn’t understand. It’s just something I did. I started dropping parts of my self into the river, okay? So that I could rebuild me a little at a time. You know, makeup, my sunglasses, a photograph, things like that.”

  “Please don’t tell me you dropped your rings into the Hudson River.”

  “Tom,” she whispers. “Don’t.”

  He doesn’t respond, doesn’t ask any questions, doesn’t move.

  “It was dark, I was crying, okay? One thought led to another and I didn’t know what we had anymore. I couldn’t keep living the same old way. It all changed. Without my mother, well, I was really hurting. And the rings felt symbolic of what I wanted to break from.”

  “From grief, or from me?” He looks long at her. “Never mind. Don’t answer.” He turns to the sink, puts his glasses on the counter, runs the cold water and scoops a handful onto his face, holding his hands over his eyes for several seconds.

  “All right,” he says when he turns back to Sara Beth sitting at the table. She wears a turquoise tunic he’s never seen, with black capris, wooden bangles
on her wrist. Vintage has returned to her style this summer and it reminds him of the Sara Beth he knew a long time ago. Sitting sideways on the chair, her long legs are casually crossed, showing her bare feet, a beaded ankle bracelet. He doesn’t want to lose her.

  “I’ll just take a look at that house. After I wax the car. And stop at the mall.”

  “Are there any coupon sales today? Or a discount if I put this on my credit card?” Tom looks closely at the diamond ring he’s chosen, and then at the saleswoman plucking rings from the display case and setting them on black velvet.

  “There is a coupon today, actually. Fifty dollars off any fine jewelry purchase over two hundred fifty dollars.” She slides a coupon across the counter. “That particular ring is available in white gold as well. It’s very stunning. Does your fiancé have a preference? Or maybe she joined our Bridal Registry?”

  “Now that’s a good idea, registering a ring. I think she only registered her china preferences.”

  “Oh, too bad. But really, that ring is one of our finest.”

  “You’re sure? I need to do right by the mother of my son,” he says. “Make an honest woman out of her. Now is this considered fine jewelry, for the coupon discount?” Tom asks.

  “Oh yes, every piece in this case is. The fine jewelry department sets stringent standards the gems must meet. And congratulations on your wedding. I’m sure you’ll be very happy!”

  And so Sara Beth has a new wedding ring. After which Tom buys a huge watch for himself. “A wedding gift for me,” he tells the saleswoman.

  “Why not?” she asks, handing him the bag. “It’s a celebration! Gift Wrap is located downstairs, at Customer Service. And good luck to you both!”

  “See those lights?” Michael asks. The Friday evening has grown lazy, endless. Banks of stadium lights shine down on the field. “When do you think The Yankees started playing night games?”

  The Yankees’ batter dallies enough to finally pull a walk. He trots to first and Rachel considers the question. “That would be at the old stadium? Which is a twin of this one?”