The Seaside Café

by Rochelle Alers

  “Are you saying I’d have to make the first move?”

  “No, Kay. I’m not going to put that responsibility on you. If we do share a bed, then it will be because both of us want it. I’m much too old to play head games, and I’m not going to apologize for being direct and up front when it comes to my feelings about you.”

  “Why me, Graeme, and not some other woman?”

  “Why not you? Do you believe you’re unworthy, that a man can’t want you for yourself and not what you can give him?”

  “I’ve never believed that I’m unworthy. Folks around here have always said that Johnson women have been blessed with an overabundance of confidence, and that’s why men have always had a problem convincing them to become their wives. Do you realize how many men are intimidated by strong, independent women?”

  “Too many, but I’m not one of them, Kay.”

  “It wouldn’t bother you if I controlled our relationship?”

  He chuckled softly. “Don’t get me wrong, beautiful. I am not a punk!”

  It was Kayana’s turn to laugh. “You sound like Nixon when he claimed he was not a crook.”

  “But he was a crook.”

  “And you’re not a punk.”

  “I’m definitely not a coward or a quitter,” Graeme confirmed.

  “So once you’re in, you are all in.”

  “One hundred and ten percent.”

  “If your wife hadn’t died, do you believe you still would’ve been married to her?”

  Graeme went completely still. Kayana had asked him a question he wasn’t able to answer, yet knew he owed it to her to be truthful if he hoped to have an open relationship with her.

  “I can’t answer that because we had been separated for five months at the time she was murdered.” A slight gasp escaped Kayana with this revelation. She knew his wife was dead, but not how she’d died.

  “That must have been very traumatic for you.”

  “It was more of a shock than traumatic,” Graeme admitted. “She’d left me and moved back to Springfield to live with her mother. Her mother, who was a chain smoker, asked Jillian to go a convenience store to buy her a carton of cigarettes, where she’d walked in on a robbery. Jillian temporarily distracted the robbers, allowing the shopkeeper to pull his own gun from behind the counter, and gunshots were exchanged. What followed was a bloodbath. One of the robbers was struck in the chest, the shopkeeper lost an eye, and Jillian, shot in the head, died instantly.” He saw Kayana’s eyes well with unshed tears. He hadn’t meant to upset her.

  “I’m sorry for you and her mother that her life had to end like that.”

  Graeme ran a hand over his face. “I carried around a lot of guilt because I blamed myself for her leaving me.”

  “It wasn’t the first time she’d left you.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I’ve counseled women who’ve had issues with their boyfriends or husbands and will occasionally leave to check into a motel or stay with their girlfriends for a day or two, but they rarely travel distances to live with their mothers for five months unless they intend to end the marriage or relationship.” A beat passed. “Had she filed for divorce, Graeme?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Suddenly Graeme felt as if he was on a therapist’s couch answering questions about his volatile marriage. Then he remembered Kayana had been and by profession was still a therapist. “Jillian was a devout Catholic and didn’t believe in divorce.”

  “Are you Catholic, Graeme?”

  “Yes, but not a practicing one.”

  “How many times during your marriage did Jillian leave you and go back to her mother?”

  “At least three or four times. But the last was the longest.”

  “That’s because Mama finally got to her, Graeme. There had to be a reason your mother-in-law sought to control her daughter.”

  “Should I assume you’ve had cases that are similar to mine?”

  “Yes. Your marriage mirrors the film Now, Voyager, in which a domineering mother turns her daughter into a neurotic. You probably would’ve never had a stable marriage as long as your mother-in-law was alive to control your wife.”

  Graeme was astounded that Kayana was that perceptive. He told her how his wife’s death had so dramatically affected Susan Ellison that she finally had to be institutionalized after several suicide attempts, the last one of which resulted in her being declared brain-dead. “She was hooked up to a ventilator for more than a year, until her brother requested that she be taken off life support. Susan had lost her husband, son, and a daughter in a horrific vehicular traffic accident, which made her cling to Jillian because she feared losing her too. I believe Susan blamed me for depriving her of her last surviving child, and that was why she tried to destroy our marriage.”

  “What about children? Do you think Susan would’ve reacted differently if you’d made her a grandmother?”

  “No. I didn’t know until after we were married that Susan had brainwashed Jillian not to have children because the women in their family had been cursed and would invariably bury their children before they reached adulthood.”

  “That’s crazy. Doesn’t the Church want married couples to be fruitful and multiply?”

  “Yes. But Susan was referring to prior generations where children died from diseases that now have been totally eradicated with vaccines. I dated Jillian for more than a year, and it wasn’t until days before we were married that she introduced me to her mother. She must have known Susan would have done everything she could to prevent her from marrying me.”

  “Didn’t you think it strange that you hadn’t met your future mother-in-law before that?” Kayana questioned.

  “No, because Jillian lied when she told me her mother had moved to a little town outside of London to live with her widowed sister and had promised to come to the States in time for our wedding.”

  “Meanwhile her mother was living in the States?” Graeme nodded. “That’s some crazy . . .”

  “You can say it,” he urged, when her words trailed off. “Yes, it was some crazy shit, and I didn’t know what I’d been caught up in until it was too late. But I’d married Jillian for better or worse, so I intended to stick it out. I’d tried to convince her to go into therapy, but she refused with the excuse that they were quacks out to change people into what they wanted them to be. After a while, I was grateful we didn’t have children because she probably would’ve messed them up, as her mother had done with her.”

  “Did you think that maybe you could’ve been the voice of reason and the one to offset her neurosis?”

  “I wasn’t willing to take that risk once I met her mother. Susan’s influence was just too strong to ignore, and the older Jillian got, the more she became her mother in looks and temperament.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Twelve years.”

  “That’s a long time, Graeme.”

  He flashed a wry smile. He wanted to tell Kayana that it was a dozen years of craziness that he never wanted to experience again in his lifetime. No one at the hospital where Jillian was employed as an ER nurse was aware that the friendly, outgoing, empathic medical professional practiced rhythm as a means of contraception and would only permit her husband to make love to her during her safe cycle. After being denied his wife’s body, Graeme tired of being put on a sex diet and stopped making love to her altogether, which seemed to please Jillian. He refused to sleep with other women and masturbated to assuage his sexual frustration.

  “It is,” he agreed after a pregnant pause. “I realize now that I should’ve been more forceful, but there was something about Jillian that was so emotionally fragile that I feared she would have an emotional breakdown.”

  “At least you recognized her fragility. She could have taken her own life, and that would have left you feeling guilty and perhaps even responsible.”

  “I did feel guilty about our last disagreement because I said things t
o her I could never retract. She was in a dark place when she began complaining about feeling trapped. I suggested she put in for a leave from the hospital, and I would take her away, but she said it wasn’t her job but me. She hated me and resented the household staff because she claimed they looked down on her. A few times, I’d overhead her verbally abusing the housekeeper, and, of course, she held it against me when I warned her not to do it again. The argument escalated, and that’s when I lost it and told her she’d made my life a living hell and that there was nothing in the world I could do that would ever make her happy. That’s when she slapped me and would have hit me again if I hadn’t held her wrists. I was so enraged that I told her the wrong girl had died when her father’s car burst into flames after being hit in a head-on collision with a drunk driver who’d crossed the median, killing him, her brother, and sister. That was the last thing I’d said to her before she walked out and went to live with her mother. Five months later she was gone.”

  “We say a lot of things we don’t mean when we’re angry.”

  “I know. But I meant it at the time.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “Of course, I am. It has haunted me to this day.” Graeme knew he would carry the hateful words to his grave.

  Reaching across the table, Kayana rested her hand on his fisted one. “You have to let it go, Graeme, and go on living.”

  “So says the therapist.”

  A slight frown appeared between her eyes. “I’m not your therapist, and I don’t want to be.”

  He sobered and tried making out her expression in the waning sunlight that left the veranda in shadows. “What is it you want to be to me?”

  The seconds ticked into a full minute before she said, “A woman who will always be your equal, whatever comes of our relationship. And it’s not about love but trust. If I can’t trust you, then we’re done.”

  “If I didn’t cheat on my wife, then I won’t cheat on you.”

  “The difference is I’m not and will not become your wife. And never lie to me, Graeme. I’d prefer you tell me something I probably won’t like, and that’s better than you lying to me.” She waited, her gaze fixed on the flickering votives. “Let me know what you want from me.”

  “That’s easy. I don’t want you to change anything about you.”

  “That’s it?”

  Graeme’s laugh was low and throaty. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Kayana offered him a demure smile. “I suppose it will have to be.”

  Chapter 13

  Graeme lay in bed, his head resting on his arms feeling as if he’d experienced a rebirth once he’d revealed some details of his unhappy marriage. There were other intimate specifics he wanted to tell Kayana, but he did not want to kiss and tell as to what had or hadn’t occurred in his bedroom while he’d been married to Jillian.

  Kayana had insisted she wasn’t his therapist, but he’d felt she was because she’d remained objective and nonjudgmental. But it had been so easy to open up to her and disclose things he’d only revealed to the therapist he’d paid to help him work through his lingering issues of guilt.

  She had also set the ground rules if they were to have a relationship, while reminding him that she wasn’t his wife and did not want to be. Graeme understood her reluctance to remarry after only being divorced for two years. Some of the men he knew who were divorced had remarried within two years, while he had been single for eight years. This was not to say he was opposed to marrying again but just that he hadn’t found the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life. And he’d promised himself the next time he married, it had to be different from his first one. At his age, he felt too old to father a child; however, he wasn’t opposed to marrying a woman with children or grandchildren.

  Barley’s barking echoed from the first floor. It was apparent his dog had quickly switched his loyalty from him to Kayana. She walked, cleaned up, and fed the puppy, who she said had become her constant companion. Graeme wanted to warn Kayana not to spoil his pet or Barley would become incorrigible, and he would be forced to enroll him in obedience school. Shifting on the bed, he stared at the screen on the sliding door. He hadn’t bothered to draw the drapes, and the light of a full moon silvered the bedroom.

  He shifted again in an attempt to get into a more comfortable position. Spending so much time in bed made him jittery, uneasy. And it wasn’t about resuming writing but being able to take care of his basic needs without wondering whether he’d be able to stand for any period of time without falling. It was the dizziness that would come and go without warning that he feared most. Kayana had suggested he see a doctor, but he wanted to wait another day to see if the dizziness continued or abated before seeking medical attention.

  A light tapping on the bedroom door got his attention. Kayana stood in the doorway, holding Barley, who was squirming to get out of her grasp. “He wanted to see if his daddy is okay.”

  Graeme pushed into a sitting position. “You can put him down.” He smiled when his pet trotted over to his side of the bed and rose on his hind legs to be picked up. “Sorry, boy. You know you’re not allowed on the bed.” Barley let out a plaintive howl as if he was in pain. “Okay, just this one time,” he said, and glared at Kayana before leaning over to pick up the dog. “Your foster mama knows my bedroom is off-limits to you.”

  “Who are you calling foster mama?”

  “You, Miss Johnson. I should’ve warned you about spoiling my dog because once you leave, he’s not going to listen to me.”

  “Then I’ll take him,” Kayana countered. “He’s housebroken and obedient, and I’d never banish him from my bedroom.”

  “You are not taking my dog.”

  “This is the second time you’ve gone off on me about Barley. You don’t have to worry, Graeme. I’m just teasing about taking your dog. First, I don’t have a place where he can run free. And he’s certainly won’t be allowed in the restaurant, where we serve food, and it would be cruel to keep him cooped up in my apartment while I’m working.”

  Graeme felt properly chastised. Kayana was right. He tended to overreact when it came to Barley. He’d even changed his route for walking the dog because he didn’t want Barley to encounter the aggressive Jack Russell terrier bitch.

  “I’m sorry, and I want you to know that I really appreciate you taking care of him.”

  Kayana approached and sat down at the foot of the bed. Barley climbed over Graeme’s chest to lie beside her. The puppy stayed outside the kitchen, watching her as she prepared meals, but shadowed her relentlessly in other areas of the house. Whenever she sat to read or watch television, Barley whined until she settled him on her lap, where he promptly went to sleep.

  “He’s really a good puppy, and lucky to live in a wonderful forever home.”

  “We adoptees have to stick together.”

  Kayana registered something in Graeme’s voice that hadn’t been there, even when he’d talked about his dysfunctional marriage—vulnerability. Did he still have unresolved issues about his adoption, despite his declaration that his adoptive parents had given him a wonderful life? Was he like many adoptees who ruminate about the woman who’d carried them to term and then handed them over to strangers with the hope their baby would have a better life? Had he spent years searching the faces of strangers, while looking for similarities between theirs and his; had he accessed AncestryDNA for a possible match to his biological parents? And had he resented Patrick and Lauren for telling him that he’d been adopted when it was something they could’ve elected not to disclose.

  His adopted parents had rescued him from a college student who’d had an affair with a married man; if she’d kept her baby, there is no doubt his life would’ve turned out very differently. Graeme had rescued Barley from a shelter where, if he hadn’t been adopted, he could have been put down.

  “Maybe I should adopt you both,” she said glibly.

  Graeme chuckled. “Did you hear that, buddy? We’re going to be adopted.”
He winked at Kayana. “When can we make it official?”

  Kayana ran a fingertip down the tight curls on Barley’s back. Smiling, she decided to go along with his playful bantering. “There is a thirty-day waiting period before we’ll be able to finalize the paperwork.”

  “That’s much too long. It’s now mid-July, which means everything should be official on August eighteenth.” Graeme paused. “What about ten days from now? You worked for bureaucrats, so you should have some juice at the agency.”

  Kayana laughed. “What do you know about juice?”

  It was Graeme’s turn to laugh. “Do you think I’m totally oblivious to today’s vernacular? You forget I teach high school, and it’s as if teenagers speak in code, so I’m forced to decipher what they’re saying.”

  “I know what you’re talking about, because I will occasionally see clients for a friend with a family counseling practice, and I must look like a deer in the headlights when some of the teenagers talk about their issues. It always takes me a while to translate what they are saying.”

  “Okay, then. Ten days it is.”

  Kayana lay with Barley, listening to Graeme recount some of the antics of his students until his voice trailed off and then stopped completely when he fell asleep. Getting off the bed, she closed the sliding doors and drew the drapes. Graeme was snoring lightly when she scooped up the puppy and descended the staircase.

  “Your daddy’s sleeping, and now it’s time for us to turn in for the night. I must get up early and take care of you before I go to work.” It hadn’t taken Kayana long to grow attached to the puppy. It brought back memories of her childhood, when she’d been a pet parent. “But I promise,” she said, continuing with her monologue, “to come back tomorrow afternoon.”

  Barley barked as if he understood what she was saying. She would stay overnight at Graeme’s house until his temperature was normal, and then she planned to go home and sleep in her own bed.