Life After Coffee

by Virginia Franken

  “We” not meaning “me,” of course. I give her my own coat-hanger smile. It is not returned.

  “Well, I’d say I’ve definitely had a positive impact on some people. On a smaller scale, of course.”

  “Oh, of course,” I say. And there I see it. The chink in her armor of self-confident righteousness. She’s a little paranoid that she hasn’t made big enough waves in the world because she never had a career. I realize this woman’s as bitten up about her choices as I am. We’re both mothers in the year 2016, two women confronted with nothing but impossible expectations and unsatisfying choices. Neither of us has taken the “correct” option. I’ve abandoned my children to spend the majority of their infancy overseas, playing the role of female Indiana Jones, and she’s let the side down. She’s embraced motherhood for all it is, because it’s all she’s got. It’s all she’s done. She didn’t “achieve,” which if you’re living in the great plains of Wyoming is probably just fine, but here in LA she has on some level failed at least as much as I have.

  We are two sides of the same objectified coin. Approaching exactly the same problem from two different vantage points. Under slightly tweaked circumstances we each could have made the other’s choices. The choices we’re attacking each other for right now. Realizing this, I should raise the white flag. Explain to her that we are just two star-crossed mothers. Make peace.

  Do I?

  I do not. Once my hackles have been raised, only the passage of time will lower them. Jasmine, meanwhile, has exposed the throbbing pulse of her vulnerability. I’m considering going in for the kill, perhaps asking her where she sees herself fifteen years from now. And then I hear it. And I can’t imagine why I haven’t put this together till now. Unlike Violet, who’s clinging close, Jasmine’s son is hanging off her arm without a care in the world. He’s singing.

  “Winkle winkle wittle star.” The tone’s instantly recognizable. Loud, high-pitched, with a certain grating quality . . . This is Roth Ellis’s son. And Jasmine is Roth Ellis’s wife.

  “Actually, my husband and I own a coffee business, and we do do a lot of work with fair trade so . . .” She trails off. If this wasn’t Roth Ellis’s wife, I’d be giving her some pretty hard data on why equal trade in actual fact sucks, but I’ve spent the last week desperately hoping that her husband—who, incidentally, never mentioned that he “co-owns” his company with his wife—is going to be giving me a job pretty soon. Perhaps there’s a way I can back out of this entanglement without her figuring out who I am and reporting the whole thing back to Roth.

  “Wait,” she says, tilting her head, “what did you say you did for a living again?”

  As one of only three female green bean buyers in the entire United States, and certainly the only one with bright-blonde hair, I’m a pretty recognizable face in the coffee world. If she really does have any working knowledge of the coffee business, she should be putting two and two together any second now. I am screwed.

  At my side Violet suddenly makes a deep upchucking sound and then deftly vomits all down herself. I silently thank God for the withdrawal method, without which this child would never have been conceived, and scoop her up, plastering myself in her puke. “Import, export. That kind of thing,” I murmur. “Better run! See you guys next week,” I say, and speed walk for the exit.

  Like I’m going to return to that library ever again. Even if the zombie apocalypse was upon us and the library was the only fortified structure in town, I’d rather risk my entire family becoming zombie hamburgers than enter through those swinging doors ever again.

  Time for Twos and I are done.

  I’ve just about finished wiping the worst of the puke off Violet with an old baby onesie I found on the floor of my car when Annie comes out of the library.

  “Oh my God, that was crazy!” she says. “I thought you were about to ask her how it feels to get to lie down instead of Lean In.” I give a nervous bark of laughter. I’m still pretty keyed up by the whole thing.

  One second later Jasmine walks past Annie, carrying Hendrix. She goes over to her car without acknowledging either one of us. Damn it! Did she hear us? Annie mouths, “Oh shit!” and ducks back inside. I make a big show of concentrating very hard on opening the car door and diligently buckling Violet into her seat. I pull my head out just as Jasmine drives past. I’m directly in her eyeline so I give her a quick wave, but she looks straight through me—Amber-style. It’s like I’m not even standing there.

  This is not good.

  CHAPTER 10

  I’ve just about enough time to get home and rinse us both clean from the remainder of the puke splattering before jumping back in the car, Peter’s screenplay in the passenger seat, Violet buckled in the back. I’m supposed to be meeting Matt today at an impossibly hip restaurant in Silver Lake. I’ve got the feeling it’s not exactly a family-friendly type of establishment, which is rather unfortunate seeing as I’ve got Violet in tow. She’s asleep right now. Hopefully she’ll stay napping and then I have a completely bona fide excuse not to come inside at all. We can do a quick round of niceties through the car window; I can hand over the script and get right out of there before any best-buried emotions are unhelpfully stirred up.

  As I crawl around Silver Lake in stop-and-start traffic, I try not to obsess about the moment outside the library when I think Jasmine heard Annie and me laughing about her. She probably didn’t actually hear the specifics—right? But then why didn’t she return my wave when she was driving away? Should I try to track her down and make amends? Probably a bad idea. She still may not have realized who I am, and I don’t want another flash of my fluorescent hair to trigger her memory. There’s every chance she won’t piece it together until after I’ve had my next meeting with Roth. And once he’s tasted those magic beans, he’s surely not going to let anything get between him and them. I wonder how deeply her co-ownership of the business goes. I don’t recall hearing her name come up in connection with the company. Maybe she just feels like she co-owns the business by virtue of marriage?

  Maybe I don’t need to worry about any of this. Maybe Jasmine will find out about Roth and the nanny before my interview—they’ll separate, only to communicate through their legal teams, and any supposed slights that happened at Time for Twos will just never come up. The best course of action in this situation is probably none at all. I pull up across the street from the fancy-pants restaurant and text Matt: Parked opposite in blue Honda minivan. Little one sleeping in the car. It’s important to apply the same rules to this meeting with Matt: the best course of action is no action at all.

  But even the mental declaration that Matt and I will not be having any action at all immediately takes my brain straight to where I don’t want it to go. It is, of course, completely unfair to compare prekid sex with Matt to current-day postkid, nine-years-into-a-relationship sex with Peter. Or, should I say, nonsex. It’s ironic that Violet—who herself was the result of a contraceptive faux pas—has actually become the most iron-clad form of contraception imaginable. Well, maybe that’s not a technically perfect example of irony, but it’s definitely somewhere on the irony spectrum. It’s also very annoying. It’s been weeks at least since Peter and I were alone long enough in the same room to even contemplate getting naked. And on the rare occasions that we do get time and space to ourselves, a nice nap and a snuggle seem so much more appealing. And don’t blame it all on my denying Peter his husbandly dues and squashing his God-given manly sex drive—he’s always the first to suggest we just snuggle instead.

  Matt taps on the window, and the first thing that flashes through my mind is the sensation of my underwear pulling hard against my thighs as he ripped my panties off the last time we had sex. Actually tore them in two. To be fair, the pair in question was pretty old and also rather insubstantial. But even still . . . These are not helpful thoughts. Matt knocks on the window again. I lower it and unlock the door.

  “Shh!” I hiss. “Violet’s sleeping in the back.” He opens the door a
nd gets in the front seat. The awkwardness that should hang between two lovers who haven’t spoken in almost a decade is nowhere to be seen. He pulls the screenplay out from underneath him.

  “This it?” he asks, nonchalantly picking up Peter’s brainchild.

  “Yup,” I answer.

  “Have you read it?” he asks, leafing through.

  “No, I haven’t read it. I’m not allowed to in case I tell him it’s a pile of old wank.” He leans in and kisses me on the cheek. It lands a little too close to the lips to be as aboveboard as we’re supposed to be being.

  “A pile of old wank?”

  “Not very good.”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “I don’t. I look tired.”

  “Come inside. It’s too hot in the car.”

  “I can’t stop, Matt. I’ve got to go and pick Billy up from preschool.”

  “There’s another one?”

  “Yes. Two. You?”

  “Two,” he says. “And a wife that bores me solid.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  Matt looks radically different than he did a decade ago. He used to be moderately cute in a tubby-round-the-middle, curly-haired kind of way. A bit like a grown-up cherub; the kind of unintimidating guy that girls are attracted to when they’re not ovulating. He used to dress in a uniform of whatever jeans and a black T-shirt. We both did. I still do, more or less. Matt ten years on is a much, much hotter prospect. Disturbingly so, in fact. The tubby has completely melted away, and his hair’s cropped so short I can’t tell if it’s curly or not. He’s dressed in a pair of jeans that scream money, money, money, a short-sleeved checkered shirt, a light-gray tie, and Converse sneakers. It all looks rather expensive and very pulled together. I suddenly wonder if Kimberly’s responsible for his wardrobe upgrade. Just as well he didn’t stick with me or he’d probably still be dressed in Marshalls’ finest. I hate to admit that all these external and superficial factors have an effect on how attractive I find him, but they do. He’s no longer the guy you’d chat with in a bar because you were too intimidated to talk to his gorgeous model/actor friend (how we met). Somehow he’s actually metamorphosed into the model/actor guy. Has this transition really come about solely through diet, exercise, and a new wardrobe? Is there perhaps a special Hollywood fairy that visits your house when you’ve had more than one box office hit and sprinkles magic glamour dust all over you, thus transforming you into Proper Hollywood? Whatever magic dust he’s infused with now, he’s glowing with it. I think it might be confidence. He’s a different man from the one I knew. If this guy had asked me to leave that farm in Brazil in order to accompany him to premieres and oversee his macrobiotic diet regime, I probably would have got on the first plane out of Rio de Janeiro. No, that’s not true. I’m not that shallow. At least, I wasn’t ten years ago. It would probably be a good idea to wrap up this whole catch-up-in-the-car thing now before I discover how shallow I’ve actually become.

  “I should get going,” I say.

  “So how have you been?” he asks, as if I hadn’t just spoken at all. He’s rubbing at his very neat goatee. He always used to rub his face when he got nervous. I’m kind of glad he’s a little uncertain around me. I don’t want him to think he has all the power in this situation just because he’s gotten all coated in Hollywood glow.

  “I’m good. Well, not that good. I just lost my job.”

  “Oh right. The fair trade stuff.”

  “Coffee buying, actually.” Yup. This is why he and I don’t work. He never listened with more than half an ear to what was important to me.

  “That’s it, the coffee. I heard something on NPR the other day about how the whole industry’s going down the drain. Some kind of epidemic? So I guess you never found that rust-resistant bean you were always after?” Damn it. I guess he did listen a little bit then.

  “Well, actually, I—”

  “Amy, oh my God, it’s so good to see you again,” he says, running his hand firmly back and forth over the top of his head. For some reason I find that move disconcertingly sexy. So much cuter than the way he used to carefully tuck his curls back behind his ears for safekeeping. The air between us seems to get super still. I think he might be waiting for me to say that I’m happy to see him too. “I’ve always felt horrible about the way we ended things.”

  “The way you ended things,” I say a little more hotly than I meant to. Okay, so I’ve probably still got a little bit of residual anger in there.

  “I know. Twenty-eight-year-old me was a complete dick. I wasn’t thinking straight about what was important. I want to apologize.” Again the long, still pause. “Can you forgive me?”

  “It was a long time ago, Matt. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I want to make things right between us. It’s important to me. You were important to me.” He picks up Peter’s screenplay again, flips it open to the first page, and gives me another quick, expectant look. He’s not explicitly making the connection, but he kind of is: if you say you’ll forgive me for my bizarre and unforgivable past behavior, I’ll be more likely to look favorably on your husband’s screenplay. Ew.

  “I just wish we could have talked things over, that’s all,” I say. I also wish I could extract all the “huffy” from my tone. I obviously am more bothered about this than I thought.

  “We can talk about it now, Amy.”

  “It’s too late now. It’s too long ago. None of it matters anymore.”

  “It matters to me. A lot.”

  “I’ve got to go; I’ll be late to pick up Billy.”

  “So be late.”

  “I can’t! If you show up late, they stick a sad-face sticker on his cubby. He’s already gotten four sad faces since I’ve been home. If it gets to five, you need to have a meeting with Ms. Carmen and she’s terrifying.”

  “Just say you forgive me. Even if you don’t mean it.”

  “I forgive you.” And no, I don’t mean it.

  “Do you ever think about how things could have worked out if we hadn’t split up back then?” he asks. I ponder it from time to time. But there’s no way I’m letting him know that.

  “No. I moved on pretty quickly. Just like you did.”

  “Ah, yes.” He rolls the screenplay into a telescope and looks down it at me. “The brilliant but litigious writer.”

  “And what about Kimberly? Is she brilliant?” I ask, knocking his telescope to the side.

  “Brilliant? I wouldn’t exactly call her that. You never did meet her, did you?” he asks with a secret smile.

  “No.”

  “She’s a sweet girl,” he says. “She’s what I thought I needed.” Oh dear, this is getting way too close to the mark all around. So far we’ve uncovered that I’m clearly still emotional about getting dumped out of the blue, and he’s confessing that his wife is perhaps not all that he thought she was. “I guess you’re right. It’s too late to ever make things completely okay between us,” he continues.

  Oh, man. Why does he have to get all chatty about this now? This would have been helpful nine years ago, but right now all this heart-to-heart stuff is just confusing. As he unhelpfully ruffles his hand over his cropped hair again, I’m suddenly hit with a welt of sadness over what I’ve missed out on. When Matt and I broke up, he said he needed someone to make him her full-time job. That sounded horrendous at the time, but after trekking around the world for years on end, and missing so much of my children’s childhood that they’re practically strangers to me, these days it sounds like a pretty sweet gig. I look Matt in the eyes for the first time since he got in the car and catch his gaze full on. It’s transmitting pure regret at what could have been. For a moment I’m caught up in it too, imagining the life I could have had as his Hollywood wife—a life where everything came easily, where money was no issue, where I could spend as much time as I wanted or didn’t want with my children. A life where I got to make choices. Sensing the shift, before I can move, Matt’s lips are on mine. Just for
a whisper of a second.

  “Mommy!” I flash open my eyes to see Violet staring at me from her car seat—her face full of accusation.

  “I want us to be friends again,” says Matt. Friends? He just whisper-kissed me on the lips! Does he do that to everyone he picks up screenplays from?

  “I’ll call about the script, okay?” he says, getting out of the car and slamming the door behind him. I go to wipe away his barely there kiss. Even though he didn’t make full-on contact, my lips seem to be buzzing from the near miss. I don’t think Peter’s ever given me buzzy lips.

  As I merge back into traffic, I realize that it’s a quarter to twelve. I’m supposed to make it all the way across town in fifteen minutes. It’s not going to happen. Billy’s going to get another frowny face. Right now, I’m wearing one too.

  CHAPTER 11

  I may finally have developed half a molecule of mommy instinct, because I’m making a pretty solid prediction right here and now that Billy’s about to have a massive meltdown. Even though to any outsider he probably looks like a normal, if slightly flushed, preschooler enjoying a parade, I know the truth: this isn’t going to end well for anyone who has the last name O’Hara.

  It’s hot. Hot even for Los Angeles in the fall and Billy’s face is getting redder by the second. I can see him right at the back of the parade, shuffling forward slowly, waiting for his school’s turn to do their routine. The grueling heat, the heavy energy of the crowd, the leaf costume, which I already know he considers to be highly scratchy, the boom and smash of the marching band, the two Cheerful Cheetahs squealing and pushing right next to him—how has he even made it this far? There’s got to be two hundred people all jammed together in the space between me and my son. I’m not going to be able to get to him quickly. I make the choice and start moving anyhow. With any luck I’ll get there just at the start of the breakdown. God knows what I’m actually going to do about calming him down.