The Owl & Moon Cafe: A Novel (No Series) (11 page)

“Gammy’s fixing up the attic just for you. She’s having a phone jack installed, your very own DSL line. You can plug into that.”

Lindsay picked up her lukewarm pizza slice. “When do we have to be out of here?”

“Actually,” Mariah said, “by the end of this weekend.”

The lump in her belly burned and she set the pizza down. “But that’s the day after tomorrow! What are we going to do? Stay up all night and pack?”

Mariah smiled weakly. “I brought boxes home. They’re in the back of the car. After you finish eating, go get them and we’ll pack the living room. It won’t take that long if we do it together.”

“I don’t want to move.”

Her mother reached across the table and brushed Lindsay’s hair behind her ears. “Change is never easy, kiddo. Especially at your age, with hormones surging through your body. I’m afraid there really isn’t a choice. Not if you want to stay at Country Day.”

Hormones. Like one would ever happen to her! Lindsay sat folding her clothes into the box marked “attic.” She’d already filled one with books, and carefully rolled her posters inside mailing tubes. Her maps were trickier.
National Geographic
magazine could turn the simple act of folding a map into origami torture. She filled a trashbag with clothes that still fit her, but looked really babyish: pink shorts, ballet shoes, and assorted sweatshirts with stupid designs on them. She wanted to wear Gap clothes now, plain things, and all one solid color. She put her stuffed animals in the “donate” sack, too. Mostly they had taken up space and collected dust, but knowing she’d never see them again was hard. Lots of kids moved, sometimes really often, like if their parents were in the military or criminals or spies, even. But those people weren’t moving to a house where other people already lived. And her mom wasn’t starting some great new job. No matter how positive her mom tried being about it, this was a step backward.

“I forgot I owned this skirt,” Mariah said from her bedroom when Lindsay lugged her boxes down the hall. “I found it squished between some other stuff, so it kind of ironed itself.” She held it up, this pale blue denim thing that was way too short for a mom to wear. “I’m going to wear this to work tomorrow.”

Lindsay pictured how sexy her mother would look in a short skirt and the white apron she wore when she waitressed. “Why? So Fergus Crabapple will ask you to marry him?”

Mariah laid the skirt down on her bed. She patted the mattress, indicating that Lindsay should join her, but Lindsay stayed where she was. “Do you have a problem with me having a man for a friend?”

Lindsay shrugged. “It’s your life. You can have anybody you want for a friend.”

“And so can you. Aren’t you and this Sandy getting to be pals?”

“Her name’s Sally, Mom. She’s my science project partner. That’s all. Somehow I doubt she might get me pregnant.”

Her mother quickly looked away, and Lindsay could see her jaw trembling. She set her boxes down and went to her mom, not touching her but standing close. She knew she was being a brat about all this, but did everything have to change every single week? School started in August now. It took at least a month to get used to going to classes. Cancer, moving, her mother’s job; couldn’t one good thing happen instead? “I apologize, Mom.”

“I know things are hard for you right now,” her mother said. Lindsay cringed inwardly at the hurt in her voice. “It might take a while, but I’ll find another teaching job. As soon as we’re back on our feet, we’ll move into our own place. Probably by summer.”

Which was nine whole months away. “I really am sorry, Mom. Do you forgive me?”

“Of course,” she said, and smiled, but Lindsay could see it wasn’t her relaxed smile, and as a result, Lindsay’s stomach continued hurting.

On Saturday morning, while her mother and Gammy Bess served customers, and Allegra took a nap, Lindsay began to decorate her attic room. She kind of liked the low ceiling painted a soft pink color, the single hanging light with the blue glass shade. The only place she could stand up straight was in the very center, where the two sides of the roof came to a peak. She angled her bed so there was room for her computer to sit on an orange crate. The Carl Sagan posters went up in chronological order, beginning with him in his orange wind-breaker standing next to a satellite in the desert. Next came the promotion poster for his PBS show,
Cosmos,
followed by his author photo poster from when his first book was published. After that she had the ones she’d printed off the internet: Sagan and his wife, Ann, sitting in the woods and looking so in love with each other, and the last one, him bald and his skin yellowish because he was fighting his bone marrow disease and losing, but smiling for the camera.

She thumbtacked the map of the world directly over her bed. On it she had traced a pencil line connecting where Carl Sagan had lived and where he died. She wished she could see inside his house. Sit at his desk for just a few minutes. Maybe the Smithsonian would take all his stuff and build a replica room. Or maybe by now his wife had turned his office into a guest room. That was what people did when someone was never coming back. Gave away their clothes and erased all traces of them. Like her mother had with Lindsay’s father.

Down the pull-up ladder stairs, she could hear Allegra being sick in the bathroom. Usually Gammy stayed with her, running a cool washcloth over her neck, but she couldn’t serve customers and take care of Allegra at the same time. With only one full bathroom to share among them, Lindsay knew that sooner or later she’d have to pee and the smell of chemicals and barf would make her feel faint.

This room didn’t even have a window. You only have to go up there to sleep, her mother said. But that wasn’t true. Your room was everything. It was the place you went to cry, or pretend you lived alone, and it was where great Science Fair project ideas either came to you or didn’t.

She picked up the card, put it in her pocket, and climbed carefully down the ladder. Taking Khan for a walk was her official chore now. Her feet hit the floor just as her grandmother emerged from the bathroom.

“I made this for you,” Lindsay said, handing her the card Sally had designed.

When Allegra reached for the card, Lindsay saw that her hand was shaking. She opened the card and read out loud what it said inside: “ ‘Don’t pay any attention to medical statistics / and when the doctor makes you feel like going ballistic / remember the really nice nana you are / at The Owl & Moon, you are the star.’ ”

Sally had written it. She really was a writer. Lindsay felt her cheeks stain with color while she waited for Allegra to respond.

“Oh, honey. This is the nicest thing anyone has—”

Lindsay watched her grandmother’s face go pale as she braced herself against the wall and made her way to the bathroom again. In her wake, the card fluttered to the carpet. “Do you want me to stay with you?” Lindsay asked the closed door.

“No, I’m fine,” she said, and vomited again.

Lindsay waited five whole minutes. Then she asked, “Allegra? Will you be okay by yourself if I take Khan for his walk?”

“Yes” came tiredly from behind the door.

Lindsay didn’t wait for her to change her mind.

Downstairs, even though it was Saturday, the man from plaid was there again. Her mother had already had “tea” with him twice. Tonight they were going out for dinner. Lindsay figured her mom would come home late since Lindsay was safe here with her grandmothers. Probably they were already having sexual intercourse. All the books said a woman didn’t reach her sexual peak until almost forty, which left her mother seven years. It made Lindsay sick to think of the two of them in some moldy motel. That was where adults went to have sex if they didn’t have privacy in their own homes. It could take as long as an hour, or only a few minutes, and around Pacific Grove motels cost a lot, even in winter, so he had better be paying for it.

“Hey, there, pumpkin,” Gammy Bess said, carrying two slices of apple pie to table six. “Grab me the cheese slicer, will you? I must be going senile to forget the cheddar. Pretty soon you’re going to have to help me remember to put my shoes on the right feet.”

Lindsay cut two equally sized hunks. “I’m going to take Khan for a walk, okay?”

Gammy nodded. Lindsay wasn’t even sure she’d heard her. Well, it wasn’t like anyone would miss her. Her mom was leaning over the counter talking to Scotland. She had her shirt unbuttoned lower than usual. The denim skirt—she’d worn it twice this week—was really cute and for some reason that made her angry. She harnessed up Khan and was headed out when the phone rang.

“Get that, will you, Linds?” her mother said.

Maybe before dinner they would go to his house and do it right then. How many times in a day could you have sexual intercourse before you got tired of it? Did you have to rest after? “Owl and Moon, may I help you?” she said.

“Hey, Lindsay! It’s Sally. Do you work at the Owl and Moon? How come you didn’t tell me?”

Lindsay paused, not wanting to lie or say too much. “I don’t work here. My family owns it. I’m just—It’s super busy and they asked me to get the phone.”

“That’s so cool! Do you get free snacks?”

“Sometimes,” Lindsay said, thinking of how gross all the pastry looked at the end of the day. It would take being really starved to want to eat Danish for dinner.

“I got this great idea for our project. Can you come over?”

An invitation to Sally’s house? Lindsay wanted to run across the highway right this second, not even look out for cars. “I don’t think I could get anyone to drive me.”

“No biggie. We’ll come get you. Hey, you want to spend the night?”

Lindsay’s world stopped. The words rang out like the Mayflower church pealing Sunday bells. She had a friend who liked her so much
she wanted her to spend the night.
“Let me ask.” She took hold of her mother’s arm. “Sally wants me to spend the night so we can work on our science project. You don’t have to take me or anything. She’s on the phone right now, so you can talk to her mother. Here.” She handed her the phone.

The Scotsman grinned and she noticed his teeth weren’t very straight. Or white. She hoped her mother was brushing her teeth after she kissed him because gingivitis could happen to anyone.

“How are you, Lindsay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she answered.

“Are you having a good weekend?”

“So far.”

He kept on smiling. “Your mum tells me that the school you attend has a rigorous curriculum. One hopes the weekends offer respite.”

One hopes? Lindsay stared and said nothing.

“I hear you fancy science. Sounds like a crack idea, collaborating on a project with your friend.”

“Sally’s the smartest girl at Country Day,” Lindsay said.

“Now, you see, that surprises me,” Fergus said. “I would have bet my last shilling that honor would belong to you. Has anyone ever told you how like a Robert Burns poem your hair is?”

“I have to go,” she said, and bent to untangle Khan’s leash.

Mariah talked for a while. Lindsay waited, taking sly looks at the Scotsman. His nose was long. He had eye wrinkles. His name was stupid. Who could look down at their newborn baby and call it Fergus? Fergus the Freak. He could have been as old as Allegra or as young as her mother, but there was no way to tell without talking to him, which she did not intend to do, especially when he said dumb things like that about her hair. Try it on my mother, she wanted to say.

Mariah hung up the phone. “Don’t forget your toothbrush, okay?”

Don’t you forget that condoms are only ninety-seven percent effective, she wanted to tell her mother, but didn’t. “I’ll pack as soon as I get back.”