The Last Coffee Date

We picked a Saturday afternoon because it seemed safe. Friday nights were soaked in too many Miller Lights and glasses of house wine. Friday nights were for friends or people in love. Friday nights were not for us. Not anymore. (Were Friday nights ever for us?) I let her choose the location – a pleasant and pleasingly inconspicuous coffee shop about a fifteen minute stroll from my house. Private dick must have told her about this place. Probably where he would write up his reports. I would arrive early and wait; this was as she wanted it.  She had waited long enough for me.

         I left well in advance – just past one. She would not arrive until two-fifteen. I meandered along the way, inhaling the hint of honeysuckle in the warm May air. My fingers brushed at hanging branches, budding leaves, thrummed against chain link fences. The fences - those were symbolic. I imagined my DNA left behind, little pieces of me for the world to enjoy after I was gone. I was here. I existed. I imagined bits of dead skin, minute cells, mixing in with the soil, becoming part of ants and trees and all other manner of living creatures.

         Next May I will be in prison.

         Arriving at the door to the coffee shop, I glanced at my watch. One forty-seven. Even at my slow pace, I managed to arrive nearly half an hour early. Might as well have a smoke. I tapped out a Newport 100 and fumbled for my favorite lighter. I had been planning to quit, back when it mattered. Now I found myself sucking in great lungfuls of poison, letting the toxins enter my system and calm my nerves. I would not let her see me shake. I would not give her the satisfaction. My one cigarette turned into two and then five. (I haven’t chain smoked like this since I was seventeen years old with a pregnant sixteen-year-old girlfriend). I felt a tickle in my throat, hoped it was cancer. Cancer would be a blessing. If I die, I won’t have to spend the next twenty years in jail.

         After the fifth cigarette, I decided to find a seat inside. I still had six minutes to spare. I ordered an Americano (whatever happened to just plain coffee?) and found a seat in a booth near the back of the shop. Business was slow but steady. An elderly woman read a novel at the counter, a few students sat alone with laptops, and two young men (very well-dressed – likely one of the trendy new gay couples in the neighborhood) chatted and giggled in low voices at a table for two. The minutes passed. I took small sips (bitter – some fancy blend made of cat poop, perhaps?) and glanced over at the barista – late twenties and forever trapped in the goth style of her early college years. She picked at her eyebrow ring (rather unsanitary) as she wiped down the display case. I wondered if I should order a slice of lemon meringue pie. Something about that pie brought back a nostalgic feeling that I couldn’t quite place. Probably a childhood memory long faded from the places in my brain that stored the past.

         It was nearly two-thirty by the time she walked through the door. I was staring into my coffee cup, still three-quarters full when I heard the bell, signaling the barista that a customer had entered the shop. I wanted to imagine her old-looking – a hag – or at least thickened about the waist, matronly - like her mother. She had given birth to two children, after all. Instead, the woman who entered the room was a striking vision in brown silk and cream cashmere. Her chestnut hair cascaded past her shoulders. For some reason, a patriotic song ran through my head – "for amber waves of grain." Even the crinkles at the corners of her green cat eyes only served to enhance her beauty. She glided across the room, confident in high-heeled Italian leather boots.

Maybe in a different life…

I stood to greet her – Jennifer – and my arms opened wide, involuntarily. She recoiled and then offered her hand stiffly, reluctantly, pulling it back without so much as a squeeze.

“Nicholas.”

Stupid! Why on earth did I try to hug her?

Awkwardly I sat back down, hoping no one had noticed the way she avoided the hug.

She called me Nicholas. Not Nicky or even Nick. Not that I used any of those names anymore.

“Call me Jim. It’s what I go by now.”

“You know, my lawyer advised me against this meeting…”

“Thank you so much for coming. I just had to see you for myself.”

“I won’t drop the charges. You can’t ask…I won’t let you…”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

“…probably hurting my case by even agreeing to this.”

Her case. What about the infidelity, the boyfriend? Had she really believed I would let some lowlife guy around my little girls?

She stared across the table at me. I stared back.

“I could have run, you know.”

“But they would have caught you.”

“They didn’t catch me last time. It was you that finally found me and it took you nineteen years.”

Okay, that was a low blow.

Jennifer inhaled deeply. Her eyes seemed to mist over and for the first time I felt truly sorry for her. I waited for the floodgates, but she was too determined not to cry – at least not in front of me.

“I want to see them.”

I nodded. Of course she wants to see them. She’s their mother.

“You’re free to see them anytime you wish. They’re adults now. But you’ll have to call them first. Emily is on campus. You know where she goes to school. Lily is home with her husband. She’s expecting, but you know that already, too.”

“She’s so young.

“She’s twenty-four – older than we were. By a longshot.”

Sixteen and seventeen when she got pregnant the first time. Twenty and twenty-one for round two.

“We weren’t exactly a shining example. And youth is not an excuse for what – excuse me.” Jennifer bit hard on her lip and it was clear she could not continue.

“Jennifer, I never meant to hurt you. You know that.”

“YOU STOLE OUR CHILDREN!”

I hunched my shoulders, unprepared for the sudden burst of fury. A few customers looked up and the goth barista seemed suddenly concerned, forgetting her trademark scowl for the moment. I wondered if perhaps we would be kicked out, but people hate to involve themselves in the problems of others.

(I was justified! She had a boyfriend, damn it! It’s always the mothers’ boyfriends that end up molesting kids, beating them to death. I was protecting those girls.)

I just bowed my head in silence.

When it became apparent that Jennifer and I were not about to come to blows, our spectators settled back into their dissertations, lattes, and eyebrow rings.

“Jennifer…”

“Don’t. I mean it. You know what you did.” She had lowered her voice for the sake of appearances – appearances always mattered most to her – but the fury remained, smoldering like magma not yet ready to burst from the earth but bubbling with the ever-present potential.

I know what I did. This is true. I was twenty-three when I packed up our five-year-old and six-month-old daughters and took them on a trip to Disneyland that lasted almost twenty years. 

She knows what she did as well. She ruined our marriage and put our daughters in danger. Or at least tried to, would have if I hadn’t taken action.

We stared, wordless, at the table.

(If you don’t have anything nice to say…)

I half expected her to just leave and call the cops, to let them know where to find me. I was actually surprised she hadn’t done so already.

Maybe she planned to shoot me instead, right here in the café.

Or, worst of all, perhaps she was getting ready to ask The Questions.

Did I tell them she was dead?

That she didn’t want them?

Did they call Linda “Mom”?

(For surely she must know about Linda.)

Why did I do it?

(She should know the answer to that.)

I tensed, hoping I wasn’t trembling, that my body was not betraying my emotions.

I expected to be uncomfortable. I didn’t expect to be petrified.

Instead, when she finally regained her composure (two minutes? an hour?) she asked me something I didn’t plan for at all.

“Do they know?”

“About what?”

“About what you did to them. Do they know you took them?”

No. Of course they don’t. But they probably deserve to know the truth. Before I am arrested.

“Not yet but I guess we should tell them.”

“We should tell them soon. Now, even. You know you don’t have much time.”

Our eyes locked, and we nodded in silent agreement.

“We’ll tell them. We should do it together. Beth  - Lily - will be first. You know she’s Beth now, right? She lives nearby, but you already know that. She’s home – on bed rest. It’s been a tough pregnancy, so we need to be gentle, careful about what we say.”

Jennifer looked solemn, did not speak.

“ Then we’ll drive to campus and find Emily. Her name is now Allison. I don’t know if she’s in her dorm. We’ll have to call her cell phone. She’s the studious type. Probably in the library. Finals are coming up next week.”

Once Jennifer had hoped to be a doctor. I wondered what she ended up doing with her life. After we left.

“Okay.” Her face and voice emotionless now. Beth. Allison. That would take awhile to sink in for her.

Lily was her mother’s name, Emily my mother’s. It had been an honor. Beth and Allison were names from two of my favorite songs. Jennifer never really liked Kiss or Elvis Costello.

I decided to break the tension.

“But first you should order something to drink. You know, that barista’s been giving you evil looks since you walked into this place.”

Involuntarily, Jennifer grinned. “She can’t help it. She should still be in her coffin at this hour.”

I smiled back.

“Hey, good one!”

Jennifer immediately set her face into a hard mask once again, reminded herself that there would be no human emotion shared with The Bastard. But I had cracked her, if only a little. Got her to make a joke.

She used to tell the best jokes in high school. Before she was just the girl who got knocked up.

“I'd better order.”

Jennifer began making her way toward the register.

When she was within a few feet of the counter, she abruptly turned back.

“You know, it would be rude of me not to ask…Can I get you something?”

No longer silent fury in her eyes. It had been replaced with something else.

Something like pity.

I felt suddenly embarrassed. Blurted out the first thought in my head without thinking.

“I could go for a slice of lemon meringue pie.”

I immediately realized my error. How could I have forgotten? 

We devoured an entire lemon meringue pie in the back of the diner by our old school the day she told me about the pregnancy test. The sticky topping helped to keep us from talking and the sugar numbed our emotions as we desperately tried to think of ways to break the news to our parents.

Jennifer just stared, a faraway look in her eyes.

“I could go for a slice, too.”

As she turned back toward the counter, I took a sip of my now lukewarm coffee.

It tasted bitter but that didn’t stop me from swallowing every last drop.