Universal Blend

Thanksgiving at Bella Luna was always a boisterous affair. I don’t remember when my parents began hosting their private party on that day - I was probably five or six - but I vaguely recall it having something to do with a couple of young employees who were in school and didn’t have the money to fly home to be with their families. My father, was probably the instigator. It would be just like him to wipe his hands on his apron, leaving traces of milk and cocoa powder, run his fingers through his sandy curls, and say, “Here’s what we’ll do…”

From that phrase were born million of ideas. Every school project I ever had to do, for example, my father inspired. “Here’s what we’ll do…we’ll see if you can measure the pressure from the espresso machine.” “Here’s what we’ll do…you can pick three of our family recipes and use them in our report, and we can make samples for your classmates…” The list went on as far back as memory and time.

All this is not to say that my mother wasn’t completely on board. She was - she just wasn’t quite so impulsive about it. “Ben,” she’d say, about a week before the holiday arrived, “I think that we should invite people to help trim the Christmas tree, after dinner.” Or, “I know he’s just the milk man, but I think we should have Dave join us this year. His wife died last winter, and he’s been lonely.”

And so, on Thanksgiving day we would be open from six am to ten am, only, for people to pick up their pies and rolls from our bakery, and grab a cup of coffee, and then we would close, and we’d push all the tables together in three long rows across the main floor, and my job would be to set them.

All the while my mother would be babysitting the roasting turkeys, while Aunt Molly would be back at the inn, in charge of the trays of lasagna - you couldn’t have any kind of holiday without lasagna. It was a rule.

The mix of people changed every year. The first year it was us, Aunt Molly, a couple of the college kids who worked in the café, and my best friend Vanessa and her mother. The next year, Vanessa’s mom had a new boyfriend - a very sweet man with dark eyes who read “A Visit to St. Nicholas” to us in Spanish accented English, and gave us carob drops to hold on our tongues til they melted. He had a long pony-tail, like a hippy, and ran the health-food store, and we could always count on him for interesting snacks - carob drops, dried fruit, little bars made from sesame and honey. His name was Manolo, and he was from Cuba, and everyone called him Manny.

My favorite Thanksgiving was probably the year I turned thirteen. Vanessa and her family had gone to visit her grandmother in Iowa or Idaho that year - someplace cold that began with “I,” anyway, and I’d had a crush on a boy in our class, Ethan. Ethan’s hair was sandy blond like my father’s, and he had big liquid blue eyes, and the first time I met him, Vanessa liked him, and I didn’t because he scored better than me on a math quiz. I made a point of beating him on the spelling test the next day, however, and we’d settled into a healthy rivalry, with classmates even “betting” on which of us would come out at top of the class.

When I found out that Ethan and his parents were new in town, I invited them to our dinner. Of course, then I had to tell my parents there were three extra people coming.

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“Coffee’s ready!”

My earliest childhood memories are filled with the sound of my great-aunt Molly singing out those words at the top of her voice, early each morning, sometimes before the sun was even fully awake.

When I was very small, I would be strapped into my high-chair at the end of the dining room table closest to the kitchen so she could bustle around making breakfast for us, and for any guests at her inn, and still keep an eye on my. My parents would either already be at their cafe, making their own morning brew, or on rare days, still asleep. One of Aunt Molly’s greatest gifts to them was the stray morning off here and there, usually on holidays when the cafe was closed anyway.

As I grew older, and no longer needed the high chair, I would get out of bed based on the sound of Aunt Molly’s announcement, wash my face and brush my hair, dress in something comfortable and go downstairs to help. Once or twice I’d been up before her call, but she’d always shooed me away. I learned, eventually, that the wee hours were her time, and that the first mug of her brew - my father’s blend but her ancient percolator - was hers alone. She would sit on the kitchen step and watch the sun rise, or watch the stars fade, or sit inside (if it was too cold out on the porch) and have some alone-time. From her, I learned that being alone is a blessing when you choose it, but a curse when you don’t.

I had specific duties: set the table, arrange the condiments, broil bagels ever so carefully - people think you can toast them, and you can, I guess, but they’re better if you pop them into the broiler for a minute or so. English muffins are the same way. I would join the guests at the table, but Aunt Molly wasn’t above letting me clear it after our breakfast was over. I didn’t mind. It gave me the chance to hear the stories of the men and women - couples mostly, but sometimes single folks - who stayed with us. We added all their names to our holiday card list, and would always get postcards or greeting cards in return, addressed to “Aunt Molly and the blonde elf” or “Aunt Molly and her helper Marin.” I liked that.

On school days, I rode my bike to school, unless it was raining, when I caught a ride from my friend Vanessa - well, really from her father. Vanessa and I had met in kindergarten, bonding over the fact that we both had weird names, when everyone else seemed to be Carol or Susan or Beth or Anne, though, a couple years behind us there was quite the crop of Stars, Rainbows and Birdsongs.

On weekends, I’d ride my bike in the other direction, out toward the beach, and the point. That’s where the cafe sat, at the very end of town, right above the beach, with faded gray wooden steps leading down to the coarse white sand, and the bay beyond. Drake’s Bay - where the moon, my parents said, was more beautiful than anywhere else in Northern California. That’s actually why they renamed “Joe’s Diner, ” to “Cafe Bella Luna,” when they came to take it over and start a life. Well, that and the fact that “Joe’s Diner” has a completely different cachet. They gave up making fried eggs and scary hamburgers and started churning out coffee and pastries, adding sandwiches after a while, and desserts. Simple stuff, that you can eat quickly, and then still go surfing without it feeling like lead. Or soup. Soup and hot coffee after being in the cold ocean waters were just the thing.

I liked the cafe better than the inn. I would plant myself at one of the tables, and fill napkin dispensers or salt and pepper shakers, or whatever, and listen to the conversations. People say things over coffee that you wouldn’t expect to hear in public, as if the hot beverage melts whatever usually glues their lips together. I heard women complain about their husbands, men complain about their wives, men and women bragging about their partners’ prowess, mothers and daughters arguing over prom dresses and which boys could be brought home, and fathers and sons debating the best fishing grounds or the merits of longboards over short. And of course, there were endless conversations about money, jobs, education, and affairs. Drakesville is a small town, after all, and the cafe on the beach is everyone’s second home.

My parents heard everything, as well, and more, since they often got pulled into conversations, or treated as confidantes. They were always discrete, however, like the best bartenders, listening sympathetically, and injecting levity where they could.

In the afternoons, when I was done with my cafe chores, I would wander out to the beach with half a tuna sandwich and explore the tide pools, or the cliff-side caves, which weren’t very deep, but intriguing nonetheless. That’s how I met Max.

Max was a scruffy, sand colored dog of indeterminate breeding, and I found him tied to an eye-hook someone had screwed into the rock wall of one of the caves. They must’ve been trying to kill him, because the tide would have drowned him after dark, and it was well known that we had dog tie-ups at the cafes for animals who didn’t like the sand, or for owners who brought their dogs when getting their to-go orders. He was whining and shivering and straining at the rope tie, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

I untied him, and brought him to the back door of the cafe, and then into my mother’s office, and smiled up at my parents. “Look what I found.”

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The evening was cold and thick with fog, but Ben didn’t care. He had a plan, and he was going to execute it. “Come for a ride with me,” he said to his girlfriend.

Anna shook her head. “It’s almost midnight. I need to sleep.”

“Just a short ride,” he coaxed. “Just to the beach.”

“One hour,” Anna said firmly, though her eyes were dancing as she spoke. She twisted her hair into a loose knot at the nape of her neck and pulled a ratty cotton sweater on over her tank top and jeans, slid her feet into canvas sneakers without bothering to untie them first. “Let’s go.”

Ben was quiet as they drove through the city, down Fulton all the way to the beach. He parked, and they ran across the pavement, ducked under the chain barrier, and raced down the stairs. He let Anna win, so she wouldn’t notice his backpack.

“Okay,” she said, “We’re here. What’s so important we had to go to the beach in the middle of the night?”

“Wait.”

He swung the pack off his shoulder, unzipped it, and pulled out a faded cotton blanket bought on one of many summer trips to Mexico as a kid. He spread it on the cool, damp sand, and sat on it, then patted the space next to him. “Sit with me.”

Anna stared at him, then complied, sinking onto the blanket and crossing her legs beneath her. “Indian style” they used to call it at camp. Ben wondered if they still did. “Okay.”

Another dip into the pack and a thermos was presented, then two paper coffee cups, the kind with the handles that unfolded. Paper handles. “Drink this,” he said, pouring steaming dark liquid into each cup.

“You dragged me out here to give me coffee?”

“Just drink it.”

He watched as Anna gingerly tasted the dark brew. He knew she generally preferred milk in her coffee, but he knew she’d play along, because she was supportive, but also curious. She’d want to know what he was thinking. “It’s good…deep.”

“Deep?”

“Yes. Deep. Layered. What is it?”

“The future.”

“The future?”

“Mmhm. Our future. The perfect blend. Moka java, Columbian supremo, a little bit of French. We’re going to open a café. You and me, and we’re going to sell the perfect coffee, and those strawberry tarts you make.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes I am. Drink more. It’s the perfect blend.”

She sipped more of the coffee, slowly this time, really tasting it. After several seconds she raised her head. “Cinnamon rolls,” she said.

“What?”

“Strawberry tarts aren’t the right flavor for this. Cinnamon rolls are. Can’t you see it? A café near the beach, joggers coming in at dawn, already sweaty. And the dog walkers - we’ll have a bowl of biscuits on the counter…and you’ll be at the espresso pump, and I’ll take the money and serve them. And our daughter will play with the dogs.”

“Yes, yes, exactl - daughter?”

“Or son,” Anna said, and her voice sounded oddly flat to his ears.

“Anna?”

“I mean I hope it’s a girl, kind of, but I know guys always want boys, and if he looked like you, that wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Anna?”

She kept babbling. “As long as it’s not twins. That would be a bit much. But there aren’t any twins in my family. Are there twins in yours.”

“You’re pregnant.” He made it a statement.

“I think so. I mean…I haven’t been to the doctor.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Is it?” Her chin was trembling, and she looked smaller than usual, and not just because the ratty sweater she’d put on was one of his. “Is it?” her voice was quiet.

“Of course it is.” He put his arm around her, and drew her against him, and they sat under the stars, and listened to the dark waves crashing against the dark sand.

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She liked to watch his hands move over the pieces. Between games, he would pick up a pawn or a rook, sometimes a knight, and caress the carved details. The other patrons played with the plastic pieces the café provided, she noticed, but he brought his own wooden ones. The white ones were made of some light wood she couldn’t identify, the black, well, they weren’t black, but a deep shade of rosewood. Somehow, they suited him, with their reddish warmth.

He played against the students most often. Many waited hours to meet him across the chessboard, watching other games in progress, taking notes. She’d known he was good, of course, but not that he was great. Not until the students started approaching their table during their informal lessons.

“May I play against you,” they would ask, so politely, their eagerness showing in the shifting of their feet and the brightness of their eyes. “I could learn so much, even by losing.”

“I am with a friend right now,” he would say, leaving no room for discussion. The students would shrug, and shuffle off.

“You should play with them,” she would say, gesturing at the board, at her lame attempts to hold her own. “I don’t have the knack for this game, and I shouldn’t waste your time.”

“You are not wasting my time,” he would growl. “Never think that.”

Finally she chose the tack that worked. “I’d like to watch you play against someone who knows what they’re doing.”

And so she would watch, and he would play, game after game, late into the evening. Mug after mug of tea would be delivered to his side of the table by one of the young servers in their blue aprons. Mug after mug of tea would be ignored. He won every game, but the students always left smiling.

“Who are you?” she asked one night, when the café was beginning to close around them.

“You may call me Andre,” he had answered. “And you are Elizabeth. May I call you Beth?”

“Yes, of course. But, how did you - ?”

“I asked. As you could have done. But you prefer the mysterious stranger to the prosaic reality of a chess master, don’t you?”

She had blushed and looked away. Then she had looked back, and found those liquid black eyes concentrating on her. She met his gaze, fell into it. “I could learn to prefer the reality,” she said. “But I don’t think I can learn to play chess.”

“No,” he had said. “I was waiting for you to become frustrated and demand to know why I insisted upon continuing.”

“You take pity on hopeless cases?” she had suggested.

“I like to watch your hands on the pieces.” He had guided her to the door as he spoke to her. “The way your bracelet catches the light, the way your touch is like a feather, the way our fingertips meet as we both reach toward the board.”

He had escorted her to her car, given her a card with his name and number on it. “There is a piano bar a few blocks from here. A friend of mine plays there Thursdays. Call me, if you’d like to go.”

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She woke on Tuesday to gray skies that promised rain, but would, she knew, renege on the promise by the end of the day. An empty wine bottle greeted her when she entered her kitchen, it’s label taunting her with a cheery Italian greeting, though the women depicted thereupon seemed French with her pink beret, pink skirt, and pink motor scooter. Athough, she supposed, Vespas were more Italian than French, and there was an earthiness about the cartoon figure that Parisian women could never posses.

The color pink suddenly seemed just the thing, so after a breakfast of black coffee and an English muffin with butter and dark marmalade, she dug through the hat boxes in her closet and pulled out a pink beret of her very own, though she did not wear a skirt to match. Instead, she clipped a fake feather to it, humming Yankee Doodle as she did so, and, after dressing in a black turtleneck, comfortably worn jeans, and black chunky-heeled boots, she set it upon her head at a jaunty angle.

The mirror told her what she already knew: pink was a good color for her. The feather bobbed cheerily, chasing the gray from her thoughts as it could not do from the skies. Still humming, she made her way out the door and down the lighthouse stairs to the kitchen of the café below. “Good morning, my friends!” she called to the opening staff, affecting an Italian accent that might have been stolen from a young Sophia Loren. “Let’s make scads of money serving espresso to our wonderful patrons!”

Pedro, the morning grill-master, looked at her as if she was crazy, but she merely blew him a kiss and winked a dark brown eye at him. He stared for a few seconds longer, then grinned, shrugged, and went back to work.

“Are you alright, Kat?” asked her morning barista, as the feather bobbed into view beyond the counter. “Were you experimenting with rum balls again?”

“I’m fine.” Katya told her young staffer. “I just felt like we needed a punch of color around here today.” She re-arranged the vase of flowers that always stood at the end of the bar, and wrote the daily trivia question on the white board hanging above them.

“Victor’s back from Europe, then?”

“No.” And her glow faded a bit. “Next week. But he sent a card.”

“Isn’t he kind of old?”

“Older than I am,” Katya agreed, paraphrasing something her lover had often told her, when their relationship was just beginning. “Tell Pedro to make a second pot of chili today. We always sell more soup on gray days.”

“I hope it rains,” the younger woman said, before disappearing into the kitchen.

Katya faced the window that looked onto the street, and caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the slightly tinted glass. “I hope so, too,” she said.

But she knew it wouldn’t.

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Thursdays with Caroline were a regular occurrence at the café. The regulars would all sit around the big table between the end of the bar and the magazine rack, and watch as the small blond woman spread the local underground paper in front of her. One by one, she would ask each person their sign, and read their horoscope in a mystical voice. It was a rule, she said, that your horoscope must be read to you.

Gregory, lean, balding, and favoring corduroy jackets and tweed “newsboy” caps, would always take the position at Caroline’s immediate right. Last in the circle, he was the one who had the honor of reading her horoscope, after his own had been completed.

The regulars knew that Gregory carried a torch for Caroline, that the widower was waiting for the right moment to approach the divorced mother of two college students. It was obvious, not just in the way his voice quavered as he read to her, but in his generally solicitous behavior. Always polite to customers and staff alike, he was somehow more so when it came to the object of his affections. Her mochas would be delivered to her by his hand, her bagels always came with extra cream cheese at his insistence, and her place at the big table was always reserved.

They’d been dating for less than a year when she discovered that she had ovarian cancer. He asked her to marry him anyway, but she demurred. It was generally thought that she didn’t want him to suffer, but those closest to the pair knew that with our without rings and a vow her eventual death would hurt him just as badly.

The women among the horoscope circle regulars took it in turns to visit Caroline, when she could no longer stop in every morning, and the men took turns picking her up in the café’s delivery van each Thursday, and wheeling her to her customary place at the table. Gregory would be there, waiting with an impossibly small mocha, and an infinitely tender expression, and she would accept his help with grace.

It was a Thursday in November, a week before Thanksgiving, when the delivery van returned and the men came to the table without Caroline. “Her daughter was waiting for us,” one of them shared, his usually boisterous bass voice softened by grief. “Caroline died last night.”

As one, the regulars looked to Gregory, who had arrived at the café coming straight from the airport. “I had a business trip,” he confessed. “I offered to reschedule, but she insisted I go.”

“Her children and the care taker were all away last night, as well,” one of the baristas added quietly. “I think…she must have planned it. I know she’d been talking about morphine.”

As one, the group took their seats, leaving the center chair open. “Let’s take turns reading,” one of them said. Each person read the horoscope for the person next to them, with the barista reading for the first person. Then, Gregory took the paper, and read Caroline’s scope, a note of disbelief mixing with the sadness in his tone. “You will find peace, though those around you may not recognize it as such.”

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“Well,” he said when he reached the counter, and then he paused, clearly expecting a response.

“Deep subject,” Rebecca responded, noting as she did so that his eyes were a startling shade of blue, brighter than she remembered eyes ever being on Earth.

“I deserved that,” he said.

“You did,” she agreed amiably. “I’m Rebecca. Did you come in here just to traipse red dust across my freshly swept floor and trade puns, or can I offer you a coffee?”

“Double latte,” he answered, and she detected a hint of an accent in his voice. Something between Chicago and Minnesota. He tacked on, “Please,” as an afterthought.

“No problem,” she said. Then, noting the insignia on his chambray shirt, and the fact that the sleeves were rolled part-way up, revealing tanned forearms, she guessed, “You’re one of the ‘viners, aren’t you?”

“Chief of Crew,” he answered. “Doug Roth. Do you mind if I ask - “

“What someone like me is doing on Mars?” the petite blond asked, a smile curving the corners of her mouth upward. She waited for “My Grandfather was career Army,” she said. “I guess I’m just used to men in uniform.”

“They have those back home, you know.”

She nodded. “They do, at that.” She moved behind the espresso machine, measuring grounds, and pulling the manual pump while she talked. “But where’s the challenge in running a cafe in a place where there are five per block? And where’s the adventure in living a predictable life?”

“Is that why you came to Mars?” he asked, moving to the other end of the espresso machine so he could watch her hands on the metal pitcher as she steamed milk. “For adventure?”

“It was that or the bottom of the sea,” she said. “And I can’t swim. Here’s your latte. There’s sugar and cinnamon on the counter over there.” Their hands touched when she passed him the mug.

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She was in the kitchen when it happened. The night was stormy, but it was November, so that wasn’t at all unusual. She was experimenting with a pear torte, which was. She wasn’t really a fan of pears, but she had been reading a novel in which they figured prominently, and so, here she was, covered in flower, and happy as the proverbial clam, and utterly alone. Well, almost. Though the night was quiet enough that she’d sent the staff home, and put a bell on the counter, Katya didn’t have the heart to close, because to do so would have meant sending Victor home.

He’d refused, when she had invited him to move to the homey warmth of the kitchen, and use her desk. “No thank you,” he’d said in his accented English. “If you will humor an old man, I think of this table as my office. It has good energy.”

“You’re not old,” she’d countered, flashing him her cheekiest grin.

“I am older than you are, my dear.”

She had no argument for that, but as she left his cappuccino with the customary bar of chocolate noire on the saucer, she took a moment to look at him. His hair was dark, but not black, though it wasn’t truly brown either, with bits of grey showing, the way the white threads poke through black fabric as it ages. His eyes, too, were dark, though light from within. On the occasions when she took the seat opposite him, she often found herself staring into his eyes.

Her brief stock-taking continued. Face, clean-shaven with just a trace of shadow by the time he left, clothes, comfortable - generally bulky sweater over a collared shirt, though tonight the former was navy blue and cable-knit and the latter was a black turtleneck. He never wore jeans, always khakis, and while his shoes were scuffed suede, there was also something extremely masculine about them.

He stopped writing, and the silence of his pen brought her back to herself. “Something wrong?”

“No,” she’d said, and returned to the kitchen, but her cheeks were flaming.

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From CafeWriting.com:

Option Four: Timed Writing

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Marin Speaks:
I was born in the back of a VW bus on a breezy August night in 1970, with the full moon welcoming me to the world.

My parents had parked in front of the burnt out husk of an old beach snack-bar on a postage-stamp sized piece of land they’d inherited when my father’s Uncle Joe had died. Aunt Molly, his wife, had retained ownership of the Pegleg Motor Inn back in town, but she had a soft spot for my father the Golden Guinea, with blue eyes and golden curls and a complexion that looked more Irish than Italian, until he was out in the sun for more than five seconds, at which point he tanned a deep bronze color, and all the girls swooned.

She ceded him the land and the remains of the diner, which had gone up like dry grass the summer before when Uncle Joe had started forgetting things. “Little things, at first,” Aunt Molly would tell me, many years later, when I was having to deal with the fact that my own father was a mere mortal, “like where he’d put his keys, or whether the deposit bag had been dropped at the bank. “But when he tried to warm up a slice of pizza on a paper plate by putting it on a gas burner, I knew this next adventure would be a toughy.”

Aunt Molly, perpetually perky, thought of each part of her life as a series of adventures. I often imagined her in a pith helmet and khaki shorts making her way through a jungle, pausing every few days to make a new batch of crescent moon cookies. She makes the best crescent moon cookies, with just the right amount of lemon.

But I digress.

Family legend says that my father, Ben, met my mother, Anna, when she was waiting tables at a funky little cafe in the Haight in San Francisco. She was tiny - just over five feet tall - with dark hair, dark eyes, and (according to my father) “hands that seemed to move faster than humanly possible.” He and his friends would eat there because the food was cheap and plentiful, and the waitresses didn’t wear bras. He’d made it a game to try and catch one of my mother’s hands, as if by touching her he could connect with her.

On the day that they met, the earth moved. Literally. It was a minor temblor, no more than a 2.5 or 3 on the Richter scale, but it was enough to send a plate of spaghetti sailing from my mother’s tray to my father’s lap.

She apologized profusely.

He accepted. Then he tried to look down her shirt.

She voided his check and took him upstairs to her flat above the cafe, where she apologized, and he accepted, in completely non-verbal ways.

“She smelled intensely of spicy perfume. It was intoxicating,” my father told me once, over a late night espresso in our own cafe, but that conversation would be years later, and my mother, catching the end of it as she entered the room, laughed and responded.

“That wasn’t perfume, that was Margie’s marinara sauce.”

But again, that was later.

A year and a half after the Great Pasta Passion, Ben and Anna were happily married, and expecting a baby - me - and Aunt Molly had insisted that a one bedroom flat over a cafe was “no place to raise a child, and anyway, stability can be it’s own adventure.” She’d invited them to come stay at the Inn, and rebuild the cafe, and they’d accepted.

Which brings us to August, 1970. My parents had finally settled at the Pegleg, and this was their first trip out to survey the damage. The building was pretty much destroyed, though the kitchen at the back seemed okay, and the plumbing was intact. “I have an idea,” my father said.

“Tell me,” my mother encouraged.

“We can tear down the ruined structure, build a sort of shed over the kitchen, and modify the bus to serve and sell from. We’ll start simple. Coffee, pastry, no real food. But it should give us enough to rebuild with, and Aunt Molly said we can stay at the Pegleg indefinitely.”

“What about bathrooms?”

“There are the two porta-potties out by the steps to the beach,” my father said. “We can use those until the bathroom’s sound.”

“Water,” my mother said, and something in her voice made my father really look at her.

“You’re thirsty?

She slugged his arm. “No. Water broke. We’re having a baby.”

My father left the bus and raced across the parking lot to where a lone telephone booth was still standing. There was a dial tone, and he called for an ambulance, then ran back to my mother. By the time the paramedics got there, it was too late to go anywhere, so I was born in the bus, under the full August moon, with salt air from Tomales Bay wrapped around me like a blanket.

My father told me later that the ambulance didn’t need directions, they just followed the sounds of her screams down the beach.

“Because it hurt?” I’d asked.

“Partly,” he’d said. “And because it was my fault. I learned that early. Everything was my fault.”

* * *

“What are you naming her?” Aunt Molly asked my mother, hours later in the hospital room. “Antonia, like your mother?”

“Marin,” my mother said, leaving no room for discussion.

And that was that.
Except it wasn’t.
It was just the beginning.

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