Life After Coffee

by Virginia Franken

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 by Virginia Franken

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-10: 1503939375

  ISBN-13: 9781503939370

  Cover design by Janet Perr

  For Ella Mermaid and Max Morris, King of the Salmon

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE BIT ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Bacon. Peter always cooks bacon for breakfast on Departure Days.

  We all know you can’t really compensate two children for their mother disappearing on a six-week work trip with three rashers of thick-cut streaky and an elephant-shaped pancake—but my husband is giving it his best shot anyhow. I have no idea how he makes the pancakes. Some secret technique involving a turkey baster and a couple of measuring cups. The man’s a modern-day hero. I just wish he could display his culinary gifts whilst not wearing The Apron.

  The Apron.

  It was a gift from my mother two Christmases ago. My husband, bless him, didn’t read a thing into it. I, however, having known my mother almost thirty years longer than Peter has, saw the gift for what it was: a bold-faced comment on the gender roles within our marriage. Mom’s from England and likes to make her remarks on our unconventional setup nice and indirect. So indirect that most people would miss it. Not me, however.

  “Oh, well done, Amy, dinner smells wonderful!” was the first thing she said as she walked in the door on her last visit.

  “Don’t look at me. Peter cooked it.”

  That Christmas The Apron arrived. And now Peter wears it when he cooks bacon, which he always does on Departure Days, emphasizing the “untraditional” element of our relationship just when I’d most like to gloss over it. Let me explain: The Apron is not a navy-and-white-striped cotton affair with white ties. No. It’s hot peach, made from some sort of faux silk, with “Kiss the Cook” printed on it. Peter wears it so he doesn’t get covered in bacon-fat splash back.

  Despite the emasculating apron, and the fact that his fuzzy-wuzzy beard could use a healthy trim, Peter is looking straight-up handsome today. He is classically beautiful, all heavy dark brows with a strong, flat nose sitting between a pair of broad, rosy cheekbones. Roman centurion meets Colin Farrell. I would quite like to have kissed the cook (plus a whole lot more) this morning, but I didn’t get the chance. Things move into hyperdrive on Departure Day.

  The first rule of Departure Day is: you do not talk about Departure Day. We both know that if we started really thinking or talking about any of this, it might trigger an emotional landslide that’d bury us so far under we’d never be able to find our way back up. The only reference to my leaving so far today has been a potentially sarcastic “And she’s off to save the world again” from Peter after the alarm went off this morning. In the past I have saved some people’s worlds, or at least their livelihoods. I’m a buyer. A coffee buyer. And where do you buy coffee beans? Developing nations. I source the good stuff. Organic, high-quality, high-altitude, tasty. And I make sure my farmers get well compensated for it, better than if they’d gone with some faceless conglomerate anyway. But what happens to those beans after I’ve purchased them? They come to America, where they get ground up and served in fancy stores to fancy folks. Peter doesn’t see the farmers I’ve helped. Or the desperate worlds they live in. He just sees the latte art, the skinny jeans, the baristas with earlobes you could drive a train through. And I may be wrong, but I think to him it makes my job seem not that worthwhile.

  Of course, I could be working for Doctors Without Borders, on the cusp of finding the frickin’ cure for Ebola, and it wouldn’t make it any easier for my family that I’m about to leave them for six weeks to travel to the depths of the Ethiopian cloud forest.

  And despite the not talking about it—of course the children know. The North Face backpack propped up against the bedroom door says it all. And the bacon.

  Violet, the youngest, is sitting on my lap nibbling the edges around her elephant-shaped pancake. She’s been attached to my side ever since the backpack came out of the closet. It’s been a long three days. She’s even insisted on joining me when I take a shower, just in case I’ve figured out a way to vamoose myself down the drain. At this moment she’s busy entangling her hand into my hair. I shuffle her butt right up close to my body and squeeze her tight into a tiny ball of toddler.

  I try to finish my pancake. Peter made me one in the shape of Africa. I watch him as he flies around the kitchen, rinsing dishes, scrubbing down surfaces. He was not like this when I met him. What has happened here? He darts out of the kitchen and a few moments later we hear it: nervous vacuuming. The carpets are never cleaner than in the days leading up to one of my trips. Poor Peter.

  I gently untangle Violet’s hand from my hair and slip her off my lap. I don’t have much time left. I drain the last of my coffee and dump the cup in the sink. I’d better go weigh my backpack again for the last time to see if it’s surreptitiously gained a couple of pounds overnight—I swear it happens.

  “Mommy?” My exit is blocked. It’s Billy, the just-turned-five-year-old. If he were just one day younger, he’d have been ineligible for kindergarten this year. Peter was all for starting him, but I put my foot down and we’re sending him next year. I won Peter over with the argument that he’d have a better chance at getting on sports teams if we held him back, but my secret reasoning is this: if he starts school one year later, I get one year more of him in my life before he disappears off to college. And maybe somewhere over the course of that extra magical year, I’ll somehow make up for all the time I’m missing with him now. However, Billy’s attitude toward me recently has been less than pleasant, and I’m starting to wonder if Peter’s idea might actually have been the better way to go . . . I brace myself.

  “Y-es.”

  “Do you know how many inches there are between the sink and the dishwasher?”

  “I do not.”

  “Twelve.”

  “Is that so?” I ask, rather flatly.

  “Twelve inches. I measured it with my ruler.”

  “Your point being?” Billy’s not one of those kids who likes to spout random facts just for the thrill of it. Billy always has a point.

  “Point being, why don’t you move your arm the extra twelve inches and put your cup in the dishwasher?”

  “Um . . .”

  “You know, things are pretty hard for Dad when you leave. He has to do everything by himself. The cooking
, the driving, my party . . .”

  “The vacuuming,” adds Violet.

  “The least you could do is clean up after yourself before you go. Especially as you’re going for such a long time. What do you think would happen if you came back six weeks from now and that cup was still sitting there?”

  “I dunno. It would be dry?”

  “Nope. It would be moldy. There would be so much mold it would fill up the sink, then fill up the house, then break down the front door and start oozing down the street.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Positive.” In case you skipped the reference to my missing his birthday party earlier, I didn’t. I’ve got a feeling that’s what’s really at the bottom of this “can’t you move your arm twelve inches” business.

  “Listen, bud. Do you know how sad I am that I’m missing your party today?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m very sad. I’m super sad. But you know I don’t have a choice, right?”

  How am I supposed to properly explain it to him? That I’ve thought and thought about how I could do this differently since he was six weeks old and I boarded a plane to Guatemala with engorged boobs and a hole in my heart that never resealed. Almost five years later and I’ve still got no answers.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’d rather you were gone than Daddy,” he says. The vacuuming stops and he runs off to find his father. No one has the ability to slice my heart in two quicker than my son when he puts his mind to it. But surely he doesn’t really mean it? He’s just hurting, right? I watch his white-blond head disappear upstairs.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes, Violet.”

  “When you leave us to go away, do you go to heaven?”

  “No! If you go to heaven, you don’t come back. Mommy always comes back.”

  “You sometimes come back.”

  “What? When did I not come back?” But for the first time in three days she’s left my side and has run off after Billy. “Wait, Violet! When have I ever not come back?!”

  I hurry after her. I have to clear this up—she’s the last one on my side! I follow Violet upstairs, but before I get to her I see the cat from next door on top of my open backpack, tail up, poised to deliver a hot stream of urine over my freshly laundered and folded clothes. Three days from now those clothes will be unrecognizably caked in mud, sweat, and mosquito repellent, perhaps even donkey poop, but somehow that all seems so much more sanitary than suburban diabetic-cat pee.

  “Banksy, no!” I leap toward my bag, but a millisecond before I get there, Billy scoops the cat up, half balances him on the sill, and then lightly tips Banksy out the open window. “Oh God!”

  I power hurdle over the top of my backpack, thrust most of my body out the window, and somehow manage to grab a wad of fur and fat right in the center of the cat’s back. Banksy would not survive a fall from the second floor. I haul him back in the window, his demented cat claws rotating a thousand miles a minute.

  “Billy! What on earth were you thinking?”

  “He was going to pee on your clothes,” he says, all the explanation that’s needed in his preschooler’s mind. Banksy has clawed his way up my body and is painfully balancing himself on my shoulder.

  “For God’s sake, Billy, you could have killed him! That means DEAD forever. No coming back!” Maybe it’s the spiteful nip of cat claws in my skin, or maybe I’m still rubbed the wrong way about the whole dishwasher discussion; whatever it is, it’s completely crushed the delicate balance of emotion that is Departure Day, and I am yelling. Violet’s little face starts to scrunch up till she looks just like a cartoon duck and then she starts to wail. Billy pushes past me and zooms down the corridor toward his room. He doesn’t want me to see him crying.

  “Billy. I’m sorry! I love you—” He slams his bedroom door and I feel the shock waves in my knees. What’s wrong with me? I’m supposed to be the grown-up here. I pull Banksy off my shoulder and he shoots off under the bed. One more soul traumatized by Departure Day. I scoop up Violet and she wraps herself around the front of my body, her feet hanging down almost to my knees. I give her cheek a kiss and one plump tear rolls down to meet my lip. I love this girl.

  Peter walks in and picks up my backpack. “All set?”

  “Already?” Surely I’ve got more time.

  “You’re gonna be late.” He smiles. I’m notorious for trying to eke out the last droplet from the last microsecond of Departure Day. I suddenly realize with a welt of guilt that Peter didn’t get to take a shower this morning. Parents of under-fives can generally only shower by special appointment, and I snuck one in while he was making breakfast. He was supposed to go in after me, but it didn’t happen. God knows when he’ll get to take one now. Possibly tonight if he’s not too walking-dead exhausted.

  Given the crushing pressure our relationship comes under every time I take one of these epic work trips (and there are plenty of them), it amazes me that Peter and I are still together. Because as I watch the families of the other green bean buyers I know get ripped in two under the weight of “you’re never here,” somehow our marriage remains intact. Sometimes I wonder how we’ve done it, but that would require thinking—which, I already told you, I don’t dare do. But if I had to give it a flicker of a thought, I’d say it’s because Peter is able to do all this. Most spouses can’t. Or just choose not to.

  I check the alarm clock by the side of the bed. Peter’s right, I am suuuper late. I’ve got to go. Like, now. I can feel my brain and my heart automatically freeze over. That’s part of the routine. I can’t think or feel when I’m saying good-bye. It only makes the kids more hysterical when I cry, and that helps no one. Plus, it destroys the illusion that I’m okay with this situation. That this is the life I purposefully chose. What else is there to do? I give a quick nod to Peter and we walk out to the car in silence.

  I carefully lower Violet to the ground. Peter hugs me in close and we touch our foreheads together for a split second. I look into his eyes, but he’s already looking down toward Violet. This is our bastardized version of a Hawaiian kiss. Prior to kids, it used to be our standard kiss good-bye before one of my trips. Foreheads touching, staring deeply into each other’s eyes, our breath and tears all mixed together. These days it’s a quick head bump and on to the next thing. We look more like a couple of fighting stags than Hawaiian lovers.

  Violet knows that the head bump means my departure is imminent.

  “Mommy. NO.” She sounds so deeply scared that it’s all I can do not to hold on to her just as tightly and run. Run away from this situation.

  “I’ll see you soon,” I say to Peter and kiss Violet hard on the top of her head. Peter and I have both learned from experience that there’s no happy way out of this. The end result is always a screaming, distraught child. The only choice we get in the matter is whether to rip off the Band-Aid quickly or slowly. Today it has to be quick.

  “Let’s do this,” says Peter. And we do. Just like we’ve done one hundred times before. He grabs her around the waist, I firmly detach her arms from me and then swerve to avoid her legs as they come windmilling out from underneath her. Half in defiance, half trying to grab me and pull me back toward her.

  I get in the front seat, put on my seat belt, and then I hear her. “Mommy! One more hug. Just one more hug. Please!” I go to start the engine. And then I pause. Am I really doing this? I’m an idiot. I get back out of the car. Back over to the nucleus of two fusing bodies that is Peter and Violet. I lift her out of his arms and I squeeze her for all she’s worth. One final, strong hug. I kiss her cheek as hard as I dare, clenching my teeth to absorb the magnitude of the kiss I really want to give her. And then I hand her back over. And we do the whole windmill-limb thing from scratch. She’s even madder the second time around.

  Halfway through it all, I turn again and I leave.

  I start up the engine, silencing the sound of Violet’s meltdown. Without looking back I drive off down the street, her screams still
reverberating at full volume around the inside of my head. And I know it’s the only thing I’ll hear all the way to Africa.

  As soon as I turn left at the end of the block and I know they can’t see me, I start to cry. Heavy, body-shaking tears. This is also part of the routine. It’s also strangely therapeutic: I’ve never handed my passport over at departures without having froggy eyes that look like a pair of golf balls.

  Suddenly my whole body goes light with panic. Billy. I didn’t say good-bye to Billy! I can’t go back and do it for the third time. Peter will kill me. Plus I’ve left it so late already that I would miss my plane for certain. Oh God. I am a terrible mother. As the traffic lights turn red, I pull to a stop and just let it go. Hard-core sobbing. Double bubbles in my nostrils. The works. I’m trying to force myself to take some breaths in when I feel the driver in the car next to me watching. How bloody rude. My car is my own private biosphere. You may be able to see in through my windows, but that doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to look. I’ve stopped myself from staring plenty of times when some guy’s been cleaning out his nostrils with the end of his pinky or singing like he forgot that he did actually leave the shower this morning. I glance over. He catches my eye and mimes a “roll down the window” sign. Really? No one’s actually had roll-down car windows since 1992. Snot trails now at upper-lip level, I lower my window. What does this man think he can say to me that’s possibly going to make my life any better between now and when the lights turn green?

  “I’m trying to find the 210?”

  “Huh?”

  “The 210 Freeway?”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Um . . . Sure. Straight on past Glen Avenue, then make a right at Fair Oaks. No . . . I’m sorry, I mean Sunset. The signs will tell you to go straight on at Washington but don’t do that. They’ve closed it halfway down for roadwork, and you’ll only have to turn around and come back up again.”

  “Okay,” he says. The lights turn green and he’s off. He didn’t even offer me a tissue. And come to think of it, I’m not sure I have a clean one. Or even one at all. Sleeve wipe it is. Oh, like you’ve never done it before. Someone behind me gives a hearty honk. I slowly raise the window and start off again, taking enough time to make my point that I consider the honk, under general circumstances, to be very rude indeed.