Whole Latte Life (14 page)

Once finally seated at a tiny round table near the white fireplace with a massive vase of twigs and branches on the mantle, she orders. “The Forbidden Broadway Sundae. With extra hot fudge? And coffee.”

“Extra fudge. Celebrating something?” her waiter asks.

Well why not? She’ll try celebrating her decision to move forward, to paint the layers of Sara, to find her story in an antique journal. And sitting there in the crowded restaurant, she feels it. Waiting for her sundae, cupping her coffee with the hum of people and clatter of dishes around her, someone’s with her. There’s a ghost at the table. Its presence is almost tangible. How many times did she communicate with her with nothing more than a look? How many times did the phone ring just as she was about to call her? That same ghost is with her now, calming her, drying her tears. Just waiting with her, a presence, as she works through these days alone. Sara Beth reaches into the velvet beaded hobo bag she bought earlier and finds the leather bound journal.

Dear Mom,

Layers, layers. Layers of color on a painting, layers of your existence, layers of me. I got a second ear piercing. It feels like a layer, maybe of someone I used to be. Someone coming back again. By going back, will I find anything of you there too? Anything?

Chapter Nine

T
he wind from eighty-six floors up doesn’t reach down to the street. They decide to walk up Fifth Avenue toward The Plaza. Rachel feels more visible to Sara Beth that way. Spring is in the air and other pedestrians have the same idea, filling the sidewalks with clipping footsteps and scraps of conversation. She glances at the passing faces, especially the women together talking. It is early still, just after nine, and that type of spring night when she can feel summer coming.

“They’re showing a lot of navy,” Rachel comments on the dimly lit store window displays. Has Sara Beth walked past these stores and critiqued the styles? Is she still in town? She reaches to hit the walk button at the corner.

“Don’t bother,” Michael says. “They don’t work.”

“They’re broken?”

“No. Believe me, the city would be gridlock if the lights turned red every time a pedestrian wanted them to. They’re all on timers. Out of your control.”

“You’re kidding. Then why have them?”

“A legality. And if the timed system fails, then these work.” He checks both ways, then back again before taking her hand and crossing quickly. “I’d like to make you a home cooked meal. At my house.” Michael pauses. “In Queens.”

Rachel can’t believe it. He cooks too. And would, for her. But is it too much, too soon?

“You’re tired,” he goes on, “and a person can take only so much restaurant food.”

“I’m not too hungry right now. But thanks.”

“I make a pretty mean tomato sauce, you know? Pop, he liked to garden. Got me hooked on growing tomato plants. I put the seedlings in last week, but there’s sauce in the freezer. Sometimes it’s nice to be in a comfortable home for a change.”

“It’s just that I can’t leave the city now. I have to get back to the hotel.”

Michael takes her elbow and checks traffic before letting her step off another curb. “I understand.” They walk a block before speaking. “Coffee then? I think you lost a wager I’d like to cash in.”

“That sounds better,” she says, aware of someone approaching. She glances over her shoulder as the lone woman passes.

“Did you ever get your wish?”

“My what?” she asks.

“Your wish. On the beach.”

“Yes, I did. Carl and I bought a summer place with his brother and wife. We split July and August with them, one month each. In the spring and fall, we’d divvy up the weekends. For a few years I did have my own piece of heaven.”

“So tell me about this cottage of yours.” With walls of concrete and granite and glass towering around them, he links his arm through hers, slowing their pace.

Rachel takes a deep breath, clearing Sara Beth from her mind and letting her summer memories surface, the way heat waves rise, wavering, easy. “There was a lagoon behind our yard, with tall grasses and a stream of the sea winding through it. From our back porch, we had a perfect view of the swans or a blue heron fishing on the banks. It was like living in the middle of a watercolor painting. Or, going crabbing with Ashley out on the rocks and our biggest problem was a criminal seagull who liked to steal the bait.”

“Wish my criminals were that bad.”

“You see? Even sitting under the beach umbrella late afternoons was enough, feeling the waves at my feet.” She pauses as Michael steers her off the avenue and into a coffee shop. After contemplating the full menu, they walk out into Manhattan’s night holding two large cups and one cinnamon cruller.

“Do you still go?” Michael asks, then bites into the cruller.

On the street corner, she cups her coffee with two hands as though its steam becomes the salt air, the cup the warm beach sun, the sidewalk the long sandy boardwalk. “After Carl died, I sold out my half to his brother. I didn’t want to go back there alone with Ashley. It felt too sad.”

“Maybe some day,” Michael says. It is warm, and when she slips out of her leather bomber, he uses his cruller-free hand to drape it loosely over her shoulders. “Better?”

She nods and starts walking back toward The Plaza. “That’s why I teach.” What she doesn’t say is that she lost so much more than just Carl when he died. The cottage, summers with Ashley, peace, the sea.

“Teach?”

She pauses for a moment, lingering with thoughts of the sea. “I’m a long-term sub for a fifth grade class. If the permanent teacher doesn’t return from maternity leave, the job’s mine.”

Michael finishes the cruller and throws her a sidelong glance. “I never pictured you a teacher.”

“This is my first year. I stayed home with Ashley before that, until Carl died. Then I went back to school for my certification. Sometimes I think I was selfish to choose teaching, but it fit.”

“I doubt there’s a selfish bone in your body.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she explains. “I like kids just fine. But I couldn’t stand thinking I’d never get back to the shore. That’s why I teach. I’ll have the summers off.”

“Still wishing then?”

“A little.” She takes another sip of coffee. “Do you go to the beach?”

“Sometimes I rent a cottage for a week. There’s a place out on Long Island I like.”

Their pace slows when Rachel looks at a large store window where two mannequins sit at a tiny table, legs crossed beneath it, the women leaning in close to each other. It is so them in the restaurant, she thinks. Is Sara Beth close by, waiting round the bend, her Huckleberry friend?

When The Plaza stands before them, she’s not really ready to leave. But staying out feels like a betrayal to Sara Beth because it won’t be about Sara. Staying out means something else.

What started as a police matter has changed. It feels like turning the corner on the observation deck a hundred and two floors up. Though hoping you’ll see your lost friend waiting there, the reality of her absence still startles. This feels the same way. They turned a corner somewhere between a bowling alley and the Empire State Building, and the reality of it startles her. A relationship was the farthest thing from her mind this weekend.

And like being up on that hundred and second floor, although she knows she is safe, it is still scary looking out.

At the last docking, there was a mother in her thirties, old enough to know better, disembarking holding a baby with no hat on its head. At this late hour, in the damp air out on the water. Sara Beth wanted to tell her that her baby should have been home, warm, fed and put early to bed.

Who was she to talk? She, who effectively walked away from her own children. Did they sense it, back home? Did they lose an innate connection when she disappeared, like losing a signal for a radio station when you’ve travelled out of its range? Her gaze falls on the city that took her into its fold, its skyscraper lights an anchor. She then looks at her hands and slips off a gold bracelet, curious to see how it would feel to lose a part of her self. She doesn’t fling it into the water, but lets it drop in.

And it’s like a floodgate opens, the black water sweeping over it wanting more. She knows the feeling. It’s the same way life swept in, other people’s lives, and death too, drowning her. The old Sara Beth, the bohemian girl who backpacked Europe in college, who lived with a guy there, who dressed in flowing skirts and grew her hair long, who painted watercolors on the Seine and later on local rivers, who never missed a music festival, who made beaded jewelry with her mother and lived on a whim, that Sara Beth would’ve been there for her mother that day. So she reaches in her purse, feels around for her antique journal and writes in the dark.

I feel lost Mom. Like I can’t find a way, some way, back to you. There has to be a path, but I can’t see it. There’s so much clutter blocking my way, and it makes me so mad. It’s the same clutter that got in my way the day you died, and I could’ve helped you otherwise.

Then she grabs a lipstick and tosses it overboard. Gone. And paper, yes, paper from The Plaza, stationery she used for Rachel’s note. They flutter away into the dark. She pulls herself close to the railing, looking straight down into the water as her sunglasses go next, disappearing instantly. Her wallet comes out and she fumbles with it. Her identification cards. Yes. First she takes her library card and flings it sidearmed. Her driver’s license is next. Heck, she’ll need a new picture now anyway with this haircut. She throws that one straight up into the night sky, losing sight of it before it hits the water.

There’s a small photograph of her three kids in the wallet. It’s there every time she opens it. She takes that out and squints at it in the dark, her thumb running over the surface like it’s erasing something: motherhood, responsibility, cooking, cleaning, caring. That one makes her gasp when she almost drops it, catching herself and tucking it back into the wallet.

The thing is, she knows why she feels lost, and so incredibly angry, long before dumping these things overboard, and she’s crying now. It surprises her when she accepts completely the root of her loss on a ferry boat pushing through deep water. The only one who can help is her mother and she’s sure not showing up on the Hudson River tonight. And it gets her even angrier, the crying and her mother and struggling, enough for her to finally place the blame of her mother’s death where it belongs. Enough for her right hand to move to her wedding rings, and reach them.

It was Tom’s fault.