Of Literature and Lattes, page 5
“That’s rich, coming from you.” Jeremy winced at his words, at his tone. It wasn’t that they sounded angry—though they did. It was worse than that. They sounded broken, hurt, and he wondered if that feeling, that emptiness, was ever going to go away.
When Georgia Pavlis said Buy my shop, the Seattle roasting house owners said You’ve done good work and rewarded him for it, Ryan offered to move with him and be his right-hand man, and Krista didn’t kick up a fight, he thought he had found it—that place where he belonged and could call “home” had finally materialized.
Standing alone on the sidewalk, nothing felt like he’d expected.
Krista held the silence a few beats before moaning, “I’m not doing this anymore. Go back to Seattle, Jeremy.”
“I’m trying here, Krista . . . Don’t . . . Please don’t cut me out . . . Just hang on. I’m coming to get her.” Jeremy crossed the street, pulled his keys from his pocket, and tapped open his car door. “I’ll be there in a half hour.”
Chapter 6
Janet pushed open the alley door to the bookshop. Peace filled her like oxygen. She took another breath to make sure it was real, and hoped it would last. Sleep had abandoned her the past two nights with her ex-husband’s call—or was he her boyfriend now? Their daughter was home. Alyssa had slept at Seth’s apartment upon her arrival Sunday night, but then again last night too, as Seth had worked late and hadn’t realized Alyssa was still in his spare room. But she was coming to Janet sometime today. Today. Janet breathed deep.
And while it hurt that seeing her daughter required a paternal ultimatum, after three years of virtual silence, she’d take what she could get. Three years . . .
The memory of that day was still sharp, vivid. Alyssa had cleared out her Chicago apartment, driven to Winsome to dump some boxes in her old bedroom, spewed a gale-force storm of venom at her, and headed west. Within two weeks of finding out about Janet’s affair, Alyssa, as far as Janet could determine, had blown up her life. According to Chase, who had relayed the events to his sister, she hung up on him, walked straight into her boss’s office, and quit. A quick flight to California for a couple interviews a day later, and she was heading west before Janet had even caught her on the phone.
She had lost more than her husband on that night three years ago. She had lost her daughter.
But now . . .
Everything was different. You’ve learned to look back, accept what has come before, and ask forgiveness, she reminded herself. Some days all the work left her defeated, tired, and back at the beginning with too much hill to climb. But she also knew everything was being made new, and that took time, patience, grace, and a good dollop of mercy. There was no way it couldn’t include her relationship with Alyssa.
The bookshop’s windowless office was so dark she moved by memory rather than by sight as she dropped her bag on her desk and pushed open the door to the storage room Madeline and Claire, the shop’s owners, had allowed her to convert into an art studio. It was her favorite place.
Right in the mix of books and story, with her two best friends beside her, she got to create art—and through art she found herself. That was new too, as well as exhilarating and a little frightening. Sometimes she wondered how different her story might have been, how different all their stories might have been, if she hadn’t denied what was real and vital to her well-being for some unnamed and unreachable ideal—if she had followed what was right rather than what looked right.
She flipped the light switch and discovered the bookstore cat, Chesterton, curled on her high table, burrowed in her favorite sweater.
“Oh, no you don’t.” She swept him up with one hand under his belly. He draped over her arm like a warm heating pad as she pulled him closer. Then, as if recognizing who held him, he stiffened and leapt to the floor.
“I’ve apologized, you know, and it’s not nice to hold a grudge.”
Offering an apology didn’t mean it was accepted—and Alyssa held grudges well. Her daughter’s stubbornness had been adorable at two, formidable at twelve, pummeling at eighteen, and arctic at twenty-eight. Now, after three years held hostage in the cold dark, Janet found nothing “adorable” about blazing eyes and an unyielding spirit. They terrified her. They reminded her of herself.
She sank onto a stool and heard Chesterton purr at the alley door. She sighed and crossed the dark office again to open it for him. “Be back by lunch or they’ll think I was mean to you again . . . You’ll get me in trouble.” She called the last part, but the cat didn’t look back. He had slinked through the door’s first crack of light and had already rounded the corner, probably heading to Olive and Eve Designs.
Olive and Eve had opened their women’s clothing shop in April 2005. Actually, Olive opened it. High end, but with little markup; edgy, but not so on-point that the more conservative Winsome women didn’t embrace it; and varied enough to keep her clientele coming back almost weekly. But while her customers didn’t break the bank shopping there, Olive almost did, keeping it open. Six months in, Eve came on board. She ran the books, managed the inventory, and kept Olive’s sartorial dreams in check.
And gave Chesterton a bowl of cream each morning.
“You’re late.” Eve sat at her desk, the alley door propped open next to her with a brick. She bent down as the cat pounced into her lap. “You’d think I have nothing better to do than pamper you.” She pushed her computer keyboard across her desk as if distancing herself from something unpleasant. “We’re in a little trouble, Chesterton. Please tell me you’ve got some ideas.”
Chesterton purred and wiggled out of her arms. He dropped to the floor and slowly, with his back arched high, padded to his breakfast. Eve watched him until, bowl empty, he slid back through the alley door without a backward glance.
“If you don’t bother with a thanks, I might stop, you know.”
Chesterton didn’t pause. Eve suspected it was because he knew she was bluffing. The cream would be there tomorrow, and even in the dead of winter she would crack the alley door until he arrived. With kids long gone and moved away, she looked forward to her moment with that spoiled yet soft cat probably as much as he looked forward to his breakfast.
Brendon, on the other hand, did not look forward to seeing the cat. For the past four days, it sat perched on the dumpster as he took out the trash. His first two days, suspecting someone might hear, he’d shooed the cat away with a low voice. Yesterday he’d had a little more fun and launched the trash bag to the dumpster from across the alley. “Almost got you,” he’d jeered at the cat.
Today, his aim was even better. The bag skimmed Chesterton so closely it created a vacuum between him and the dumpster’s chasm as it sailed by. Brendon watched as the cat twisted in midair and arched away from the pull into the dumpster.
“Get out of here.” He crossed the alley and stomped near the cat’s landing spot. “You dirty old—” Movement caught his eye. He looked up. “You guys are early. Wait here.”
As Brendon opened Andante’s back alley door, Chesterton bolted through the back door of the Printed Letter Bookshop. Within seconds, he glided over a pair of feet and dived into the small space under his favorite desk, next to his favorite person.
“What’s up with him?” Claire remarked.
Chapter 7
Ping.
Light, but not bright midmorning light, crept through the crack in Jeremy’s shades. He rolled over and grabbed his phone as the text pinged again.
I need Becca back here by 10
He punched his pillow before tapping Krista’s number. This time he skipped the preliminaries. “You said I have her through the weekend.”
“We got into Dr. Benson’s practice. They just called.”
Jeremy sat up straight. “That’s great.”
“Save it. She doesn’t need this, but the school will get the report so we have to go.”
Jeremy closed his eyes. Becca’s school had been at Krista for two years about the reading issues. In fact, if Jeremy hadn’t moved closer, he doubted he ever would have heard about them.
“If they insisted on a doctor’s assessment, Krista, then she needs it.”
If he’d unraveled the story correctly, the questions from Becca’s teachers had started when she was in kindergarten. The school got officially involved halfway through first grade, and bandied about words like phonetics, comprehension, and developmental milestones. Krista had ignored it all. But now, entering second grade, Becca faced terms like consolidation, cognitive assessments, and dyslexia.
“I’ll get her back. See you soon.”
Krista clicked off without another word.
Jeremy pulled on a sweatshirt, shuffled to the kitchen, and pulled an espresso shot. He had restored an old La Pavoni machine during the evenings last month and had finally calibrated it the day before. It was never going to pull a shot the quality of the La Marzocco that was coming to Andante in a couple weeks, but its temperamental nature and the constant fine-tuning it required made each shot a fun adventure.
He’d only been a few minutes tardy to Krista’s house the night before. Yet he’d still gotten an Anna and Elsa duffel bag launched at his chest.
“I’m late now.” She strode out the front door with Becca in tow.
“I came right when you called.” He backed up.
Krista, though ten inches shorter and eighty pounds lighter, was fierce when angry. “Forget it, Jeremy. It just makes me look bad. Why should that bother you?”
The derision in her voice cut, as did the question. Fights were never simple with Krista. Each dug into every argument before, stirring them up and turning them into the light, and each ended with a question, letting him know he wasn’t enough—not aware, not thoughtful, and, last night, not on time.
“There was traffic.”
“You moved here to be a help. Don’t become a complication.”
As Becca emerged from behind her mom, Jeremy shifted his attention. “Ready, Ladybug?”
Expecting a huge grin, Jeremy deflated at his daughter’s nod. Her mood appeared to match his. She didn’t reply, nor did she smile—and none of that changed for their entire thirty-minute ride to Winsome or throughout a dinner of pasta and his “famous” Bolognese sauce. He even fell flat on her favorite vegetable.
Becca had scrunched up her face at the broccoli. “It’s not my favorite.”
“Tell me a green vegetable you like better.”
“I like avocados.”
“They’re a fruit. Try again.”
“Peas.”
“Okay, you got me.” Jeremy leaned against the counter. “But this is great stuff. I thought you liked broccoli.”
“I do.”
“Then what are you complaining about?” He tried to keep his voice light, but he could hear Krista in his daughter’s whine—her insistence that everything look and be just so, and on her terms.
“It’s just not my favorite. You didn’t ask if I liked it.”
He felt his body flood with delight at her logical innocence. “Good point. I’ll remember that next time.” As he cut the broccoli, he brought up Krista again, wondering if that was why his daughter was quiet. Perhaps their quarreling had upset her, and if he said Krista’s name and made it sound like all was right between them, Becca might feel safe. “You’re going to love the crispy bits. Does Mommy ever cook it like this?”
Nothing.
Next he suggested they read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, thinking she could relate. Still nothing.
But he’d probably gone about that wrong too. Rather than simply read to her and let her enjoy the story, he’d peppered her with challenges. By the end of the story even he knew he’d crossed a line.
Why don’t you read this page?
What does Alexander say here?
Can you believe he said that? Read this section.
He had closed the book feeling as shredded as his daughter. Looking at her tight face and watery eyes, he couldn’t tell who was worse off. Her for knowing she couldn’t do what was expected, or him for being the misguided dad, sure if he pushed just the right amount and in just the right ways, she’d feel confident and secure—and read like a champ. Whatever that even looked like.
He’d almost given up and suggested bedtime, just to end the whole night, when she noticed a large red box sitting on his living room coffee table.
“That? Go look.” He lifted her off his lap. “There’s a bookshop a few doors down from the coffee shop, and one of the women brought me that last week. She said you might like those.”
Becca crossed the room and dropped to the floor at the table, moving with a weary wariness. Then inside the box, his daughter discovered eighty-six rubbery Smurfs and two odd mushroom-looking houses, and her first smile broke free.
Within minutes, they set out the houses and discovered there weren’t nearly enough for all the Smurfs. They needed a whole village.
“What about Tupperware or books?” Jeremy suggested. “We have lots of books. Go grab some from your room too and we’ll build a book village.”
Becca ran down the short hallway, and Jeremy noted that her flip-flops slapped the hardwood floor in tiny raps rather than the heavy thwapping sound they’d made when she shuffled in his door at the beginning of the evening. His heart lifted in victory.
And the evening only got better from there.
He smiled as he ground the beans for his coffee, remembering how poor Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five almost became a residence for Smurfs. As Becca searched her room for books, he scoured his own shelves, bypassing his Stephen Kings and true crime in favor of Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum. The Hunt for Red October, Rainbow Six, and The Road to Omaha were titles more appropriate-sounding for a seven-year-old building houses. And they were all hardbacks—much better construction material.
“I’ve got some, Daddy,” Becca called from behind a stack of books. Jeremy could only see her eyes above the pile.
“You found all your old board books.” He straightened Good Night, Gorilla; Barnyard Dance!; The Very Hungry Caterpillar; and Green Eggs and Ham.
“They were in the cabinet, but I don’t read them anymore.”
“You’re a little beyond them, aren’t you?” He propped Dear Zoo open and upright to form two walls for a house.
The look of panic that washed over her expression caught his attention, and his heart sank again. “Those are some of my favorites, though. Do you want to read or build houses?”
“Houses.”
Yet once the village of book houses covered his living room floor, Becca’s questioning eyes returned to the books.
“Do you want to read any of those?”
“I can’t.” She pursed her lips and her eyes held a sheen of tears that cracked Jeremy’s heart. “There’s something wrong with me.”
“No . . . Ladybug. Who said that?”
Becca shook her head.
Knowing the answer could be as obvious as classmates’ taunts on the playground or as subtle as unspoken gestures—even ones given unwittingly by him—he lifted Becca into his lap and tucked them both into a corner of the couch. “I’ll start.”
He opened Green Eggs and Ham first and Guess How Much I Love You second.
Then, without noticing the shift, Becca read the book he had settled in her lap. The Snowy Day.
Yes, they were board books others might deem too young, he conceded, but Becca finally enjoyed their time together. She read slowly, sounding out each word as if it was new, and hard to chew and swallow. But listening, Jeremy sensed his daughter loved to read. She kept at it with diligence as if a treasure awaited her on each page. That was all that mattered.
Jeremy couldn’t remember the years when he was Becca’s age. In fact, he remembered nothing before the age of ten, but he certainly remembered everything after that. There wasn’t a time his own insufficiencies, real or imagined, hadn’t embarrassed him, so to watch his daughter openly struggle, with no fear, nestled next to him, broke his heart and lifted it at the same time.
They had ended the evening with one of Becca’s favorites, Mo Willem’s My Friend Is Sad. She read the entire book herself and giggled as Elephant told Piggy about all the wonderful things he’d seen, completely unaware it had been Piggy in disguise each time trying to cheer him up.
Becca had gone to bed pleased and at ease. Jeremy, on the other hand, tossed and turned all night. Becca needed help, and that meant going up against Krista. But it was more than that. He had felt struck anew, despite reading the story countless times before, that Elephant had never seen Piggy clearly, that he never understood what he missed, what was right before him all along. That thought—what was he missing?—led to the uncomfortable questions that always spoke in the still, dark night.
Now he carried his cup into Becca’s room and sat on the edge of her bed.
“Hey, sleepyhead. I gotta get you back to Mom this morning. She said you have a doctor’s appointment.”
“For dyspexa.” Becca’s eyes clouded.
“Dyslexia. And it’s going to be fine, Bug.” He watched her a moment, trying to listen to what wasn’t said. “How do you feel?”
Jeremy winced. Endless social workers and lawyers asked him that same question after his parents died. How at ten, fifteen, or even seventeen could he tell them how he “felt”? He’d had no way to articulate the swirling pressures, colors, emotions, and forces he couldn’t separate and understand, much less name.
Becca gave the answer he expected. The same one he gave all those years ago. She shrugged. Then she pushed herself up against the headboard. She wore her latest Christmas ladybug pj’s, already too small.
“You need new pajamas. I might not be able to wait till next Christmas.” He plucked at the sleeve that, six months before, circled her wrist rather than her forearm.
“Mommy says I grow too much.”
“Sorry, Ladybug. That’s my fault.” He laughed, stood to his full six five, and patted his head.
