Mae's Cafe (Welcome To Chance Book 1)

by Elsa Kurt

  “Elise, if you—”

  “Thanks, Brucie, I know. Listen, I’m fine. Everything will work out somehow. I just came by to pick up a pie on my way to meet my dad at his office. He can’t take my case, obviously, but he knows someone.” She tugged the front of his shirt, and he bent down obligingly so that Elise could kiss his cheek.

  Bruce watched her leave, a curious expression on his face. Then Mae crossed his line of sight, and it was if Elise Martino had never even been there. He brushed the broom forward in short sweeps and willed himself not to look in her direction again. It was like trying to pull a magnet from steel. One glance—she’s overturning chairs. Next—she’s closing blinds. Another—she’s smiling at him. The writer guy.

  “Why is he still here?” he asked as she passed by on her way back.

  “He’s walking back to the house with me, Bruce. Is that all right with you? Never mind, don’t answer that. I’m a big girl. Don’t worry.” She patted his arm. “So, what’s up with Elise? You two looked pretty chummy over there.”

  Mae smirked and nodded conspiratorially up at Bruce. It frustrated him, that nod and smirk. She was encouraging him to pursue something with Elise. How could she not know that he loved her? Was she thickheaded, or did she really not know? Or—the worst thought of all—did she simply not care?

  “It’s nothing. So how long is this guy going to be hanging around?”

  “Dunno, Bruce. Until he’s done, I guess. Why don’t you go on ahead? I’ll lock up.”

  “Yeah, all right. I gotta check on the Mitchell house, anyhow. Call me if you need anything, Mae. Seriously.”

  Mae swatted him with her dish towel. “Go on, now. Don’t worry so much. Seriously.”

  Bruce climbed in his truck parked out back in the dusty lot. He closed the door with a heavy thud, turned the key in the ignition, then slammed his palm against the steering wheel. Then again. He gripped it with both hands so tightly his knuckles turned white.

  “Fuck,” he hissed. Then, “Damn it. Fucking damn it. Get your shit together, Grady.”

  Bruce wasn’t in the habit of talking to himself, nor was he the type of guy to throw jealous fits. Not usually, at least. It was…that guy. That fricking guy coming into town out of nowhere and causing Mae to act so…un-Mae-like. Where did he get off being so familiar with her? That guy did not have history with Mae, not like Bruce had.

  William Grant couldn’t understand why Mae got a little bent out of shape when Feather Anne came around. It was complicated. Well, to her it was. To Bruce? Technically, he thought it was pretty straightforward. Crazy, but still straightforward. He understood it. He understood her. Bruce got Mae in the way people who’d known each other for a long time did. This Bill guy, he knew nothing. Jesus, listen to yourself, man. You sound unhinged. He let out a deliberately slow, calming breath and pulled out of the back lot.

  Bruce drove through town, all but ordering himself to not think about Mae and that guy. That guy in her house. That guy in her kitchen. That guy in her bedroom. Jesus, he’d better—

  A horn blared. He’d been sitting at a green light. He gave a “yeah, yeah” wave to the guy in the Honda behind him and turned onto Wyndemere Lane. The whole while, he had two tracks running simultaneously in his head. On the surface, his thoughts were, Check the Mitchell house, make sure those lazy assholes got everything into the dumpster and not on the bushes like the last job. Underneath those thoughts, river rapids ran hard. Did Mae tell him all about her dad? What did she tell him about Feather Anne? Or Gina, for that matter? Are they eating dinner together? Does she really like this guy? He’s got to be thirty years older than her. What, is she looking for, like, a father-figure or something? Maybe she was. Poor Mae, losing her dad nearly broke her. Will she tell that guy about the funeral?

  His thoughts turned to Mr. Huxley. Bruce had been one of the first people to know about his cancer, even before Mae had known. He’d also known about Feather Anne and Gina Byrd too. Those were things that were still a secret five years later, mostly because he’d been chickenshit.

  When Keith Huxley asked, no begged him to keep his secrets, it seemed easy enough to make the promise—he and Mae hadn’t been friends back then, after all. But then he’d gone to the café—just out of curiosity, he’d told himself—and saw Mae as he’d never seen her. Not long after, Mr. Huxley died, and everything changed.

  ***

  For Keith Huxley, it had begun with a persistent cough, one easily excused as a lingering chest cold. Everyone had one that winter, no big deal. But winter became spring, spring drifted into summer, and Keith Huxley’s cough had not gone away. He decided it wasn’t a cold; no, it was allergies. He was hoarse because he sang too much, talked too much. He’d lost weight because he was eating healthier. But when he coughed up blood one Sunday morning, he’d quietly decided that perhaps he should see his doctor in the morning.

  Cancer, first detected in his lungs, had spread through Keith’s body like wildfire, saving his brain for last. It was on the day that Keith learned he had months to live that he met Bruce, who had just learned that his father had not, in fact, fallen from a roof; he had jumped.

  “Hey kid, mind sharing the bench?”

  Bruce, numb from the information he’d received, glanced up absently and said, “Suit yourself, man.”

  The two men—one young, the other older but not yet old—sat in what could pass as companionable silence, staring blankly at the same flat pond water. Both sets of eyes tracked the progress of a pair of swans as they glided across the glassy surface, cutting the water into rippling lines.

  “Heard they were going to relocate them,” Keith said suddenly.

  “Oh? How come?” Bruce didn’t actually care, but he didn’t want to be rude to the guy.

  “They attacked a jogger last week. Scared her bad enough that she fell and scraped her knee. She filed a complaint with the town, and there you have it, two beautiful creatures displaced from the only home they’ve ever known because of one stupid, irresponsible, thoughtless—”

  Bruce was looking at the man now. Spots of red dotted his gaunt cheeks, and his eyes had a wet shine.

  “You, uh, you okay, sir?”

  It was Keith’s turn to look at the younger man beside him. “Just dandy—say, I know you,” he said with forced lightness, “you went to school with my daughter. Mae? Mae Huxley?”

  “Sure, yeah. I remember Mae. She was a year behind me, I think. Isn’t she taking over the lease on Wang’s Kitchen on Old Main? How she doing these days?”

  The man brightened considerably. “Quite well, thank you. Mae bought the building, actually. After she did her college courses online—degree in business management—she ran a catering business from the house. But the dream has always been a café. We’ve got big plans.” His voice caught on the word plans, and he shook his head. “What’s that quote they say about making plans?”

  “Sir?” Bruce tentatively touched his arm.

  “I’m all right, son.” Keith Huxley barked a dry laugh and added, “I’m just dying.”

  The Bruce of six months ago would’ve said something awkward and inarticulate at such a shocking and profoundly personal news. That Bruce had never known the fear of losing a parent or the burdens of responsibility. But this was a different, older, wiser Bruce. One who’d seen that bad things could happen to good people for no good reason at all. So this Bruce kept his hand on the older man’s arm a moment longer and said, “I’m very sorry to hear that, sir. I know you don’t know me, but if you want to talk, I got time.”

  Keith looked at the man next to him and saw someone who was young yet soul-old. He suddenly recalled the younger man’s story—or his father’s, really—and startled.

  “You’re Steve Grady’s boy, right? I was so sorry to hear about his fall a few months back. How is he doing?”

  It was Bruce’s turn to give an ironic laugh. “Well, depends on who you ask, I guess.” Looking back on that day, Bruce knew it was the way that Keith Huxley
looked at him at that moment—no judgment, no maudlin sympathy, just concern—that made him blurt the rest. “He’s got about a sixty percent chance of walking again, depending on surgery and how he does rehab. Although, if he does walk again, he’ll probably just try and jump again. After all, he’s only got a son, right? I mean, what’s to live for, right?”

  “I see,” said Keith with no reprove. It was common knowledge that Steve Grady’s wife—Bruce’s mother—had left them earlier that year. Keith could easily figure out the rest. “This has been a rough year for you, son, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir, you could say that it has. First, my mother runs off and shacks up with her fucking office manager, then my dad tries to…to fucking kill himself. You know, I had to drop out of college to come back here and take over everything? To fix their—their bullshit? I mean, they’re the adults, damn it. I shouldn’t have to—” Bruce stopped himself. “Sorry. I—I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this. I sound like a selfish prick too. Jesus. I offered for you to talk, and I went off on a—”

  “Easy, son. Right people at the right time is all. My guess is you’ve been bottling this up for a while now, hmm? Can’t do that, son. You need to have someplace, someone to vent to. To tell you the truth, you’ve helped me make some decisions.”

  “I have? How?” Bruce was puzzled. He couldn’t imagine how their situations could have any similarities.

  “Well, I was going to go home, sit my precious, beautiful girl down, and break her heart in a million pieces. Turn her world upside down. But I’m not going to do that now. Not for as long as I can help it, at least. I want her to stay young for a while. The burdens of the world will come soon enough, I’m afraid.”

  “Mr. Huxley, are you saying you’re not going to tell her that you—that you’re dying?”

  “No, son, I’m not. I want—I need to protect her for as long as I can. Who knows, maybe a miracle will happen in the meantime, right?”

  Unease overcame Bruce like a cold hand on the back of his neck. “Sir, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Of course, you didn’t. Listen, I’m sorry no one protected you from—well, from just how shitty life can be, but I bet you can understand better than anyone why I want to protect Mae. Can’t you?”

  Bruce was silent for a long moment. What he wouldn’t give to rewind time and go back to the blissful innocence of that time known as Before. He pictured Mr. Huxley’s daughter. Mae. They’d had a couple classes together in high school, and he recalled that she’d been something of an enigma. And not just because she was the only kid out of a five hundred and eighty-three student body that had an openly gay dad. There was just something about her that Bruce could never quite put his finger on. He suddenly had a clear memory of her in Poetry and Prose—a bullshit class he’d been assigned to because he was shy a half credit and it was the only choice left—and the poem she’d read aloud. He couldn’t remember the words, but he did recall it being about her father. It had been called “Hero”. Bruce glanced at Mr. Huxley, who watched him with cautiously hopeful eyes.

  “I understand, Mr. Huxley. I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.” Bruce stuck his hand out.

  “I will indeed,” said Keith Huxley, and he shook the young man’s hand.

  Bruce and Keith had met many more times on that bench the following months. Each took turns talking about life and troubles, using their time as a makeshift therapy session. It was on their last meeting that Keith told Bruce about Gina Byrd and Feather Anne.

  “Well,” Keith had begun, setting himself wearily onto the bench, “she knows.”

  Bruce blinked at Keith, confused. Then it hit him. “You told your daughter about the cancer? About you dying? How—it’s a stupid question, I know—how did she take it?”

  Keith gave a sad smile and said, “She took it like a Huxley girl.”

  Bruce chuckled a little and smiled. By then, Keith had regaled him with enough stories about Mae to make him feel as though he knew her well. “So, she started calling specialists and making you organic everything?”

  “You’ve been paying attention, I see. Yes, she did all that and more. Ah, Bruce, it was terrible. Just terrible to know I caused my girl that much pain. When I’m gone—” The words were choked off by a sob.

  Bruce put a hand on the man—his friend’s—pointy shoulder. It was a selfless cry, one not for himself, but for his daughter, and was surprised by the sting of tears behind his own eyes on her behalf. After a time, Keith spoke again.

  “I’ve added my burdens to yours, son. For that, I’m sorry.”

  “Nah, it’s all good, man. Really. Hasn’t that been our deal all along here? You spill your guts, I spill mine, and we both go home a little lighter. So, what else you got? I know all about Mae, and David, and your sister Katrina. Anyone or anything else?” He hesitated then asked the question burning a hole in his brain since they’d met. “You, uh, never mentioned if Mae’s got a mother out there in the universe. Does she?”

  Keith sighed and looked out across the swan-less pond. Just when Bruce thought he wasn’t going to answer, he said, “Gina Byrd. That’s who her mother is.”

  “Gina…Byrd? As in the lady who lives in the trailer on the vacant Jensen lot? But I—she—”

  “Yes, Bruce. That Gina Byrd. It’s a long story, but how ’bout I give you just the highlight reel, hmm?” And he did.

  Gina and Keith had been schoolmates but not exactly friends. She hung out with a rough crowd—the stoners and partiers—while Keith hung out with the theater crowd. Keith had gone off to college, Gina had stayed in town, and neither knew or cared one bit about the other. When he graduated, he’d felt the pull of his hometown and decided to move back. By some strange alignment of the stars, Keith and Gina Byrd found themselves at a party thrown by a mutual friend. At that party, they’d all gotten uproariously drunk. At some point in the wee hours, Keith had drunkenly decided that he should…experiment. Gina Byrd was willing to be his trial.

  Three months later, Gina showed up on the doorstep of his newly purchased house and informed him that she was pregnant and wanted him to pay for the abortion. Scarcely realizing what he was saying, he asked her to have the child and let him raise it. Gina Byrd agreed…for a fee.

  “We—well, I—had a lawyer draw up papers, and she relinquished all parental rights, duties, and obligations and agreed to never contact Mae. I see a myriad of questions on your face, son. Don’t ever play poker, kid. You’re an open book.”

  They laughed, and Bruce concurred on both points. Yes, he’d never make a good poker player, and yes, he had a lot more questions. “You got me, sir. So, why—”

  “Why Gina Byrd? Because she was easy. And willing. I’m afraid it was as simple as that. The experience did emphatically confirm that I was gay, one hundred percent. You want to know why I believed the child was mine? I didn’t, at first. I ordered a paternity test. Again, Gina didn’t care, so long as I paid for it all.”

  “Wow,” said Bruce, for lack of knowing what else to say.

  “Wow, indeed. Mae believes that her biological mother was a hired surrogate who requested anonymity. You may think ill of me for it, but I believe that is for the best. Gina Byrd has never shown one ounce of interest in her daughter. Knowing of her existence can only hurt Mae.”

  Bruce nodded but said nothing. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure if he wholeheartedly agreed. He also knew that it was little to none of his business. Keith and Bruce chatted for a while longer then parted ways with a promise to meet up again the following week. They both knew that the meeting would not happen. Two months later, Bruce heard the news of Keith’s passing.

  ***

  As Bruce put the truck in park on the Mitchells’ driveway, he absently swiped at the dampness on his cheek. If Keith Huxley’s passing had affected him so, he could only imagine what it did to Mae. She never talked about it—the cancer that rendered the man she saw as larger than life into a frail skeletal shadow of himself—nor did she ever discuss the
last days. The end, Bruce knew from Katrina, was bad. Really, really bad. He leaned against the backrest and closed his eyes, remembering.

  Gina Byrd had shown up at the reception after Mr. H’s funeral, surprising and confusing everyone. Everyone except Bruce, whose heart dropped at the sight of her. She looked strung out, like Olive Oyl on crack, he’d thought. And she had a scraggly little kid with her too. A girl that couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. She was pale and especially small—probably because Gina smoked and drank while she was pregnant with her—and she eyed everyone suspiciously. Mae had walked into the kitchen, barely aware of the new arrivals, and Gina followed her, shooting a fuck you glare at anyone she caught staring.

  As far as anyone at the funeral reception knew, there was no reason for Gina to even be there. To friends and acquaintances of the Huxleys, Gina Byrd had zero relationships.

  One woman said, “What is she doing here? I haven’t seen her since high school, have you?”

  “Talk about totally different paths in life,” hissed another.

  It was glaringly true. Mr. H was an accomplished artist and writer; Gina was the town drunk who lived in a trailer on the edge of town. Bruce wasn’t trying to be mean. It was just facts.

  Gina, in her acid-wash denim cut-offs and dingy grey Pink Floyd concert t-shirt, followed Mae into the kitchen, and Bruce followed her. Right as Mae lifted a cold cut tray, Gina announced, “I’m your mother, Mae.”

  No “hello.” No “sorry for your loss.” Just kaPOW! Bombshell. Right on Mae’s head. She was already pale and exhausted looking from everything she was going through. When she heard that, her face went chalk-white. As for Gina, her expression was—on the surface—defiant, as if braced for denial. Underneath, though, there was another look. One that Bruce could’ve sworn was hopefulness. Wistfulness, even. Before he could be sure, Mae’s aunt stormed in and took charge.

  “You, big guy, grab her before she passes out and drops that tray,” she barked at Bruce. Then she grabbed Gina by her skinny chicken wing arm and said, “You, you’re out. Let’s go.”