This Place of Wonder (13)

Maya


Since there were legal charges over my winery debacle, one of the requirements of release from rehab was that I had to have a job lined up. Obviously my previous careers as sommelier, then vintner, were out. I couldn’t face the restaurant business with all the attendant alcohol, and although Meadow offered me work at the farm, I declined. The work would break my heart, close as it was to the vines I’d lost.

But my family has long tentacles through the communities along the coast. Rory’s husband knows the owner of the coffee shop on the edge of Santa Barbara. More than a shop, actually. They roast their own artisan blends and serve light meals, salads, and pastries baked down the block by the owner’s sisters.

The day after I arrive home, I’m scheduled to start training at the café at 1:00 p.m. I need to make a meeting, in accordance with the rules of my early release. To do either, I will need to pick up my car at the restaurant, where it’s been living since Meadow fetched it after I went to rehab.

First, however, Meadow makes me a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast and then props herself on the cushiony kitchen stool. I sit at the end of the island so I can see the ocean. Cosmo is sprawled on the cool tiles next to Elvis, Meadow’s big black shepherd. He tolerates the puppy, who has sneaked up close to his belly.

Yesterday I was eating in a cafeteria with a bunch of other people in a beige room with posters on the walls with slogans like “Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes.”

Well, I think, blowing on the cheesy eggs, I have made changes. Everything has changed, actually, and a lot of it feels okay. Sunshine, the sound of the sea, the puppy at my feet. Meadow chatters brightly about the beautiful day and a friend of hers and all kinds of other inconsequential things. I’ve fallen out of the habit of small talk. A taut sense of . . . something—Impatience? Irritation? Anger?—starts to build in the connective tissue of my body. My neck starts to get tight, a clear warning signal.

“What are you even talking about?” I say aloud. The words are too sharp, and I know it the minute they leave my lips.

Her expression shows dismay for the space of a breath; then it’s gone, covered up. “Sorry. Am I babbling?”

“Kinda.”

She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. Nods. Folds her hands in front of her. “I just don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay not to talk.”

For a long moment, she stares at me. “What is this ‘not talking’ you speak of?”

I smile, as she meant me to do.

“It’s a bad habit,” she says, looking at her entwined fingers. Her ankles are tucked around the legs of the stool, and something about the girlishness pierces me. “I try to smooth things over with chatter. I know I do and tell myself not to, and then I keep—” She breaks off. Raises her brows. “Going.”

Even this admission irritates me. Looking away, I tell myself it’s mean to push her away after all she’s done. She’s trying hard to be upbeat for me.

What are you feeling?

I want her to go home. Leave me here to figure things out. But even as I think the words, think of ways to gently ask her to go back to her own house, she picks up a small statue of the Buddha in her palm. He’s fat and jolly, and I immediately think of my father laughing his big laugh at the head of the table, telling some story to entertain us all. A sudden, searing pang burns through my chest, and I raise a hand to the place.

Tears gather in Meadow’s eyes, and although she tries to blink them away, they fall down her cheeks. I try not to resist whatever it is that’s coming up, this sense of my father, the one I missed, not the one I was so furious with. I say, “No one ever laughed like him.”

Meadow shakes her head, dashes away the wet on her cheeks. “Sorry. It’s not your job to make me feel better.”

I reach for her freckled hand on the counter. “You also don’t have to pretend not to feel anything.”

“We bought this on one of our very first trips.”

“Yeah?”

Her thumb moves over the belly, intimately. “We drove up to San Francisco, following the coast, checking out a list of restaurants we wanted to try on the way. We ate so much,” she says. “Learned a lot, too. Your dad got the idea for his citrus carnitas on that trip, from a little hole-in-the-wall near Carmel.”

I’ve heard part of the story before. It’s even in her book, but one of the things I learned in rehab was to make space for people to talk. It wasn’t really my strong suit before. Maybe it never will be, but it felt good to just listen to people without judgment. I can do that here. “You met Alice Waters and she took you to one of the farms she bought produce from.”

Meadow smiles. “I’m sorry, I’ve told this before a million times.”

“It’s all good. I don’t mind.” I touch the Buddha’s head. “I haven’t heard this guy’s story, though.”

“Really?” She sets him down on the counter in a bar of light. “He was in a little Asian imports shop. I bought a blouse, and your dad bought me this and tucked it in my pocket.” She sobers. “I was so in love with him.”

“How old were you then, Meadow? Like, twenty or something?”

“Nineteen. Rory was just little.” She sighs, more fervently. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”