The Owl & Moon Cafe - Softcover

Mapson, Jo-Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743266412 ISBN 13: 9780743266413

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2006

Synopsis

After losing her teaching position at the local university, Mariah Moon will do anything to keep her gifted twelve-year-old daughter, Lindsay, in a prestigious private school - which means moving in with her mother and grandmother in an apartment above The Owl & Moon Cafe. When her mother, Allegra, is diagnosed with leukemia, Mariah rises to the challenge of running the cafe: mastering her mother's famous fudge and chatting up customers - including a man who might just reawaken her heart. Meanwhile, Lindsay's controversial entry in a major national science contest creates a minor maelstrom in the cosseted Monterey Bay community. And Allegra, with one last great love affair in her, will revisit a man she loved so many years ago, and disclose the biggest secret of the Moon family: the identity of Mariah's father. Will the Moon women recognize this as the moment to do away with their family history of dubiously fathered children, and learn to forgive others and themselves in order to move forward? In her poignant new novel, bestselling author Jo-Ann Mapson explores the complexities of love and family with the keen eye and stylistic grace that have made her books perennial favorites.

About this title

About the Author:

Jo-Ann Mapson is the author of eight novels. She teaches fiction in the MFA program at the University of Alaska, and lives with her husband and four dogs in Anchorage, Alaska, where she is at work on a new novel. Visit her at www.joannmapson.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1

Mariah

"Hallelujah," Mariah Moon said as the endless line of cars began moving forward. Twenty feet away, the Monterey exit shimmered like a desert mirage. She flipped on her blinker and waited impatiently to turn into traffic, brave the tunnel, and make her way to Lighthouse Avenue, where her mother was no doubt already preparing for the lunch crowd. Her grandmother, bless her heart for trying, was either filling saltshakers or replacing sugar packets, stopping to rest when her legs ached. If the café was slow, she might be saying novenas for Simon, the gay cook she was certain she could get to defect to the other side. To Gammy, success hinged on bolstering his spiritual life. God and beauty products were what she believed in, which was why creams and abandoned potions cluttered the upstairs apartment. She wanted to turn back the clock, not just on her face but on the varicose veins that plagued her legs as well. To say it was hard watching someone you loved grow old didn't begin to cover it.

Traffic stopped again. Mariah rested her forehead on the steering wheel and sighed. Highway One, the two-lane scenic byway on California's Monterey coast, was two lanes too narrow to accommodate the tourists and commuters. A person could waste a whole morning here, breathing exhaust fumes and getting exposed to God knows what. And time was money. From now on every tick of the clock would remind her of that. This morning at six forty-five she had awakened as a thirty-three-year-old term assistant professor of sociology about to start the fall quarter. She had her master's, and fully intended to finish her doctoral dissertation, as soon as a chunk of time came her way -- coinciding with a blue moon, or a four-leaf clover, or a flying pig. By ten-fifteen am she was another unemployment statistic due to budget cuts. Her checking account was in the dismally low three figures. Of course it was. All summer she waitressed at her mother's café and lived on tips. When fall rolled around, the coffers were low.

And then this morning the dean had called her in and explained that the term post she'd held for eight years was being phased out. Michael Howarth, Ph.D., freshly graduated from the University of Louisiana, would now cover her classes. He was twenty-eight years old and had already published a book. After eight years of promises that her job would be made permanent as soon as they got more funding, Mariah wanted to call Michael up and tell him not to get too cozy, not to hang any pictures on the walls until he got tenure.

If Mariah were to make the monthly car payment on the Subaru, the condo she and her daughter, Lindsay, rented would have to go. She could COBRA their insurance benefits -- that is, if she could find a way to pay for them. At the heart of her worries was Lindsay's tuition for Country Day Academy for Girls.

Her twelve-year-old daughter's I.Q. tested at 175. That kind of intelligence was as much a burden as a gift. Mariah was determined to provide the right environment for her daughter's intelligence to flourish, meaning public school was not an option. The stress would be traumatic, and such a drastic change had the potential to seal Lindsay's fate as the too-smart geek girl to be avoided at all costs. Mariah knew that popularity was based on nothing more than the callow whim of youth. Other twelve-year-olds went to the movies, played soccer, slathered on fruit-scented lip gloss, and begged for trendy clothes. Not her daughter. Lindsay lived, breathed, and ate science. Quantum theory science. Bioethics science. Science fiction. Scientific essays with words longer than most sentences. The kinds of science a normal person could go a whole life without understanding and get along just fine.

The driver behind her leaned on the horn, startling her out of her daydream to pull forward maybe six inches. Since when did a measly half-foot merit blasting your horn? Control freak. Without even looking she knew it was a man at the wheel, ramming the palm of his hand into the horn. Just for that she'd drive slower.

Lindsay had her father's strawberry blond, curly hair. She was four feet five inches and had not grown in almost a year. At her checkup, the doctor joked that maybe Lindsay's intellectual growth had stunted her body's progress, but Mariah didn't think that was funny. Lindsay had skipped grades four and seven, and now she was in eighth. No way was she ready for high school, Mariah thought, picturing Lindsay's beloved posters of Carl Sagan and Lewis Thomas. Lindsay so often asked to be quizzed on the periodic table of the elements that Mariah had the poster laminated. Then there was the Darwinian theory poster, and her two-by-three-foot print of the saltwater fishes of Monterey County. When they left the condo, where would the posters go? For that matter, where would she and Lindsay go?

The condo and the car were expendable -- things -- not vital. In the immediate future she would temporarily return to waiting tables at her mother's café, The Owl & Moon. The restaurant was a Pacific Grove landmark. Francis Moon, 1883, read the painted marker on the front wall, a distant relative on her grandmother's side. The exterior was weathered cedar and peeling paint, and all summer the window boxes spilled over with geraniums, pansies, phlox, and Cecil Brunner miniature roses. The Owl & Moon Café offered a wide variety of soups, all organic. Their pastries were baked on-site, daily. On Saturday mornings, the line of people waiting for a table could spill halfway down the block, even though Pacific Grove was prone to fog year-round, even when just a few blocks up the sun was shining. Mariah hated waitressing. She looked at every customer and couldn't help placing him or her in a sociological context -- this one an upper-socioeconomic misogynist, that one an abandoned wife when her husband hit his mid-fifties. But she could keep her head down and do it until she found a better-paying job. She'd given up a lot more to meet Lindsay's needs. Men, movies, manicures; it did no good to think about it.

How could the university do that to her after eight years? How dare they wait until the last minute to tell her? Each year Mariah felt she was that much closer to a permanent hire. It was too late to apply for a teaching job anywhere else. The adjunct positions had already been snapped up. She would gather her family together and tell them...and then what? Try not to choke on her broken heart. She had sacrificed having a social life, given up time with her daughter because working hard now allowed her to invest in Lindsay's future. Mariah was a product of public schools, marking time until she could get to college. She was determined to give Lindsay the best of the best despite having no father in the picture. Gammy Bess and Mariah's mother had worked hard for Mariah to rise above their stations. And now she had failed.

Breathing car fumes was muddling her thinking. What she needed was a lemon tart and a cup of coffee. She'd tell Gammy the news first, grateful for any homespun wisdom her grandmother might have. "God shuts doors right and left, Mariah. I won't tell you He doesn't. But somewhere you least expect it, a little mouse is gnawing a hole, and right there's the gateway to freedom." Gammy was straitlaced and old-fashioned, but protective as a mother tiger.

Mariah's mother was a different story.

Mariah's head was filled with memories of her mother's embarrassing escapades. The opposite of Gammy in every way, she was a professional protester. Sit-ins, gay pride parades, testifying before the city council on chemical runoff into the bay, defending trees slated for removal. She even fought the initiative to eradicate the deer that roamed the El Carmelo cemetery, although they were truly nuisances, causing car accidents and ruining landscapes. Though she supported causes Mariah herself believed in, such as the homeless shelter and the no-kill animal shelter, Mariah still couldn't get over the way her mother told dirty jokes in the café. She'd gone topless on the beach and was issued a ticket for it -- which she fought and won -- after she pulled up her shirt to show the court that her tiny bosoms could not possibly be offensive. Later, the judge had asked her out. Her mother, in her fifties now, was moored in the "Hey, babe, what's happenin'" way of speaking. Every Friday night she went dancing, whooped it up and closed down the bars when other women her age were taking up knitting.

Her mother's name was actually Alice, but she insisted everyone call her Allegra, including Lindsay. "Gammy's the only grandmother around here," she'd said. In music, the term allegro meant quick, lively, and she was that. She didn't wear a bra. She didn't shave in any of the conventional places. "I'm a peace-loving, left-leaning hippie," she'd proudly tell anyone who asked about her political affiliation. But while hippies had a reputation for being laid-back and accepting, Allegra was bossy and loud. She drove Mariah crazy with her advice. On more than one occasion, she'd told Mariah to "loosen up, and have more sex." As if sex was nothing more than jogging, or painting your nails, and something you couldn't wait to discuss with your mother.

When Mariah was seven years old, her mother had leaned a ladder against the café building in order to reach the sign. "All the way to the top, babe," she said, and Mariah, who'd never been scared of heights, did as she was told, with her mother climbing up after her. But once up there, the world looked different. Cars on Ocean Avenue hurtled by so fast Mariah was sure they could never stop in time for a pedestrian. The cemetery across the street looked huge, dotted with dozens of gravestones that stuck up out of the earth like dead men's tongues. Just to think there was a corpse under each grave made her light-headed. What if a sudden wind came up, or an earthquake knocked her off the ladder? Mariah's stomach tied itself into a Gordian knot, but did Allegra notice? Of course not.

Her mother painted "sizing," a substance th...

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0743266412
• ISBN 13: 9780743266413
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 357