Life After Coffee (9 page)

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.

I gently work my way through. Beer bellies, small and sweaty children, electric wheelchairs, bad dye jobs, flags waving everywhere I look. Billy’s not the only one who hates crowds. At what point did I ever think that this would be a good idea? The sheet Billy brought home from school specifically said there would be “Fabulous Family Fun for Free,” but it’s pretty clear all that smug alliteration was just an ugly ploy to get us all to come out here. This isn’t even our town that we’re parading for. We’re in Monrovia, ten miles east. All this fuss because they’ve been a town for a hundred and twenty-five years. When did this become something I needed to celebrate?

Blessedly, Violet doesn’t seem to care at all. I’ve got her wrist gripped in my right hand, and I’m half dragging her behind me as I twist and squirm through the crowd. She’s still singing a song about a clever fairy who loves brown cupcakes, which is my barometer for knowing that she’s okay with all this pushing and knocking about. Not for the first time since I lost my job, I wish Peter were here to help me. He’s still holed up at HushMush, writing. He hasn’t stopped for one day since my trip was canceled. I was under the impression that after I handed off his screenplay to Matt he’d stop, at least for a moment. But no. Apparently, Peter has a backlog of ideas that he hasn’t been able to get to over the past five years, and the writing fever is upon him. He said that if he stops even for one moment, the flow will evaporate and he’ll hit another dry patch. He said he can’t handle another dry patch. Well, I can’t handle these children on my own anymore. Maybe he’s actually got some secret agenda to get me up to speed by overexposing me to all of this so I can catch up to him in the parenting ranks. Wouldn’t it just be easier for him to tell me all the information? Or write it all down?

Somehow I manage to fight my way through to the front of the crowd where I can see Billy again. I notice Regina’s mother on the other side of the street. Regina is jostling against another girl in the formation, right next to Billy. They seem on the verge of a fight. A whistle whips through the crowd and I see Regina look straight toward her mother, who demonstrates a brief hand gesture. Regina stops immediately, stands dead still, and stares straight ahead.
What
is that woman’s secret?

Billy’s now got his hands over his ears and is shouting something, probably to try and block out the rest of the sound. I’ve got mere seconds here. I trot down the sidewalk, push through one last lump of humanity blocking a crosswalk, and then I’m directly across the street from him. We’re all halfway up the street now and the Brighter Futures Preschool dance is about to begin. I get ready to dash across the front of the line, but suddenly there’s a dry, heavy hand on my arm. I turn back around. It’s Ms. Carmen. I feel completely chastised before she even says a word.

“No cutting across in front of the children, please. You’ll be able to see just fine from this side of the street.” This woman is consistently formal. I don’t even know what her face looks like when she smiles. There ain’t nothing progressive about that.

“I’m not cutting across to get a better view—I need to get to Billy.”

“Why, what’s the problem?”

“He’s not doing well with all of this.”

“This?” She actually tightens her grip. I’d have to wrench my arm out of her grasp to get away from her at this point.

“The crowd, the heat, the noise.”

“Why don’t you just wait and see what happens?” I look over to Billy. In addition to yelling with his hands clamped over his ears, he’s also started stamping his feet rhythmically. Does she want to see him have a full-blown episode before she’ll let me over there?

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say. I’m impressed with myself. This is the first time I’ve sort of stood up to Ms. Carmen. The few times we’ve met, she’s always looked at me like I’m rather lacking the necessary qualifications to be a parent of an actual child. Up till now she’s been mostly right about that.

“You have to let them fail sometimes,” she says.

“Fail?”

“You can’t always be there to catch them. Sometimes they have to fall so they can work out how to get up again. That’s how they learn. Do you intend to follow him around his whole life bailing him out of uncomfortable situations before they arise?”

I’m not going to be busting into his apartment when he’s thirty-five, asking him if he needs the air-conditioning turned up a couple of notches, if that’s what she’s asking. However, there’s a difference between letting my kid get comfortable with being uncomfortable and leaving him to try to deactivate himself when he’s a ticking time bomb of overstimulated five-year-old. Of course, I’m not brave enough to say any of this out loud, so she keeps on talking. “Billy needs opportunities to build up his tolerance for frustration. He’s too sensitive.”

“There’s no shortage of opportunities for Billy to experience frustration. He’s a five-year-old kid. He’s pretty much frustrated all day long. This time around, I’m bailing him out.” I turn away and start to twist my arm out of Ms. Carmen’s hand. Just as she’s about to give me a rope burn with the force of her grip, she remembers I’m not one of her preschoolers and lets go. Violet and I sprint across the front of the line of kids who are now just starting into their routine. Billy’s not there. I’m too late. Where is he? Did he run off? Is he missing? My flaming-hot face flashes cold with terror . . . and then I see him. It doesn’t look good. His teacher—whose name I’ve since found out and have now forgotten again—is crouched down in front of him, hands firmly on his shoulders. At least she doesn’t have him in the straitjacket hold again. Violet and I make our way over.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Oh, hey! Billy was just taking a moment away from things. It all got a bit much.”

“Yeah, I saw. We tried to get here faster, but we couldn’t get through. Is he okay?”

“Almost,” she says. “I should have taken him aside sooner.”

I crouch down to Billy’s level to look at him. His eyes seem weirdly glazed. His face is covered in sweat. Is this normal?

“Billy, are you okay, honey?” I ask. No response. “Can you hear me?” His teacher moves over to a cooler stashed against a wall and grabs a couple of ice cubes. She places one on Billy’s wrist and one on the back of his neck. After a few seconds that seems to kick-start something and Billy sort of comes back.

“Mommy, I want to leave.”

“We’re leaving,” I say. “What’s going on?” I ask his teacher.

“Overstimulated. That’s all,” she says.

“I saw that he didn’t look right from down the street. Ms. Carmen caught me on the way over. She said I should leave him to it so he could build up a ‘tolerance for frustration.’”

“She doesn’t know the right way to handle kids like Billy.”

“Kids like Billy?” I ask. I want to know. Is there a sector of kids “like Billy”? Is Billy—as I’m starting to suspect—part of a tribe of children who aren’t quite the same as all the others? His teacher gives a brief nod toward him. The nod says “he has ears and he can hear us.” My mom used to forget all the time that I could hear what she was saying. I remember playing on the floor in plain sight of her, thinking,
I can hear you! I can hear you talking about Uncle Sam wanting Auntie Joanie to watch videos of other people doing it and her not wanting to and now they’re going to have to get a divorce. Do you think I can’t hear you?
And now I do the same thing all the time, presuming that because I’m talking to another adult, my kids suddenly don’t understand a word I’m saying, when of course they’re drinking in every single syllable.

“Did you read the book?”

“No.”

“You should.”

“Is that where you learned the ice-cube trick?”

“Among other things.”

“Any other tips?”

“Always have a Band-Aid with you.”

“Is that in the book?”

“No.”

“What about hand gestures?”

“Like sign language?”

“I don’t know. Regina’s mom did this hand-gesture thing, and Regina calmed right down and immediately started behaving.”

“That’s the pinching sign,” says Billy.

“The
pinching
sign?” says his teacher.

“When her mommy shows her the pinching sign, it means she’d better behave or she’ll get pinched when she gets home.”

“Does her mommy ever really pinch her?” I ask. Am I asking out of concern for Regina? Not entirely. I’m mostly hot on the trail of some evidence that there’s a woman out there who’s potentially a worse mother than I am.

“Yeah. Sometimes she shows me the black bits under her arm where her mommy did it.” Black bits under her arm? This does not sound good. By the time they’ve reached five years of age, you can be pretty sure that your kids are going to start remembering all the messed-up stuff you do to them. What’s Regina’s mom playing at? If she still wants her kids to speak to her when they’re in their twenties, any pinching punishments should have ceased way before her kids hit four. I’m sorry, Regina. Sometimes childhood really sucks. Sometimes the adults in charge understand the world even less than you do.

“I’d better get Billy home.”

“Good idea. Get him out of this heat. And Mrs. O’Hara?”

“Yes?”

She’s going to congratulate me on developing my mommy ESP skills, perhaps give me a verbal pat on the back for knowing my own parental mind and defying the wildebeest that is Ms. Carmen, or maybe give me a shout-out for
not
pinching the hell out of my kids when others have clearly been driven to it . . .

“Read the book.”

CHAPTER 12

For coffee nerds, cupping beans is an unusual mix of science experiment and communion with the Almighty. Throw Roth Ellis and his clinical yet somehow incredibly stylish cupping lab into the mix and the whole thing also becomes the essence of hip. Today’s cupping, however, is made measurably less hip by me leaning up against the stainless steel countertops—probably the only person ever to have entered this room wearing jeans purchased at Target.

Still, Roth seems to be willing to look past all that today. And Violet’s spending the day with her dad for once, so at least he’s seeing me out of mom mode. I’ve just ground the beans and so far he likes what he smells, very much so. He’s got his flowing locks tied up in a silly little topknot right at the peak of his head. Seemingly to keep his mane from falling into the coffee when he plunges in for his first sniff. I’m sure he does enough cuppings a week that he’d be better off cutting it short. But I suppose if a man’s particular enough about his hair to dye it, he’s particular enough to go to the extra bother of tying it back umpteen times a week. Point being, in this moment, style is not the uppermost concern on everyone’s minds.

I’ve brought my own equipment with me. This is not the time to be fiddling around trying to figure out how to convert someone else’s scales back to grams. This process needs to be seamless. I’ve measured exactly twenty-three grams of ground coffee into three glass cups, which I’ve spaced out at even intervals on the counter. Roth works his way along, giving the grounds in all three cups a series of hearty and wholesome sniffs. When the thermometer on my kettle hits two hundred and eight degrees, I remove it from the flame and rush it over to the counter, where I reverently wet the grounds in my three cups. Everyone has their set of tics and habits when performing a cupping, and I’m as particular as the rest. I start a timer the moment the water hits the first cup and watch as the coffee granules bloom upward. Roth immediately dives in for another firm sniff of all three. I’ve never cupped for him before, but even still, we’re like two courtiers performing a well-known dance, instantly familiar with each other’s movements. After precisely three and a half minutes, I give him the signal, and he deftly breaks the crust of grounds on all three cups and takes yet another deep sniff. I dive in and spoon away the remaining grounds from the cups, and this is the moment when Roth takes a spoonful of liquid to his mouth for an especially aggressive slurp.

It catches him by surprise. I can see his initial reaction as the upfront lemon zest quickly pulls back to reveal the velvety soft texture underneath. And then I watch his eyes widen at the surprise of the caramel buttery essence following just behind it. He tries to hide his expression, but it’s too late. He knows it. I know it. He’s just felt the light of angels. He’s just had a sensory experience that can only have come from the divine. Roth’s already red-rimmed eyes turn a little bit redder. If I weren’t in the room, he’d probably go ahead and cry.

“Shall we talk?” I say. He carefully nods. I am about to broker the deal of the century. I can feel it. I’ll be back in Ethiopia before you can say “twenty-two-hour flight.” The status quo I’ve been struggling to get back to is about to be restored. I’m going to be able to sidestep any future confrontations with Matt, escape the realization that I’m not cut out to be a parent, and we’ll be able to pay the mortgage next month after all. I’m not going to lose my home. Did I mention that I love my house with all my heart? It’s just a modest three-bedroom Craftsman cottage, but it would just about cut me in two if I lost it.

When I’m away and it’s the kids’ bedtime, I can close my eyes and re-create every detail of their rooms. I can visualize the way the light of the streetlamp breaks through the blinds and falls across Violet’s bed, making soft lines on her Strawberry Shortcake bedspread. I know the way Billy will listen to the old groaning pipes from Peter’s “the kids are finally in bed” shower and it will comfort him to sleep. The hazy view of “my” mountains from the living room window, the way the jasmine smells at the start of spring, and the smoky scent of the inevitable forest fires before summer drags to a close. The house is the one thing I can look at, even though it’s just a physical structure, and say, “Yes. Behold. It’s all been worth it. I have
achieved
.” It’s home.

“Hey, you,” says Roth, quickly looking up at someone who’s just come in behind me. He sounds guilty. What’s going on? I swing around to see who it is.

It’s my flame-haired nemesis, Jasmine.

“What are you doing here?” he says, sounding more nervous by the second.

“Just popping by. You know. As I do,” she says. The way she says it makes it pretty clear to me that she actually
doesn’t
. “Amy,” she says. “What a surprise to see you again. Why are you here? What’s all this?” she says, looking pointedly at the tasting cups.

“Amy’s a friend of mine; she was in the area so she just came in to say hi,” he tells her. “She had some interesting Ethiopian beans with her, so we did a quick cupping.”
Why is he lying?

“I didn’t know you worked in coffee, Amy,” says Jasmine. The coat hanger is firmly back in position. “I thought you worked in imports and exports?”

“Imports of coffee, I suppose you could call it. I’m a buyer,” I say, and I watch her face freeze as it all clicks into place.

“Why don’t you taste it, Jaz?” says Roth a bit too quickly. Honestly, the guy is freaking out. It’s like she walked in on us making out or something. “Amy, did you bring enough to do another tasting?”

“Sure.”

Turns out Jasmine’s not as familiar with the ceremony as Roth is. She skips the scent test, and it’s Roth who ends up pulling the grounds away from one of the cups for her so she can have a taste.

“Hmm. It’s nice,” she says. She’s having about ten percent of the reaction Roth had. “I wouldn’t say it’s any better than our Kurimi, though.” Roth looks at her like she just said one plus one equals six.

“Did you taste the caramel at the end?” he asks.

“Not really,” she says. He takes a quick sip to confirm it’s still there. Sometimes beans can be pretty inconsistent.
It’s still there.
“My beautiful wife doesn’t have the most developed palate ever. There’s a large spectrum of coffee that all falls under the label of ‘nice’ for her,” says Roth by way of explanation. I’m surprised he said that. So is Jasmine by the look on her face.

“Are you sourcing right now, Amy?” she asks.

“No. As I told your husband, I’m looking to buy for one company.”

Jasmine looks confused by my answer.

“I’m not sure we can help you out in that case. We already have a buyer.” She catches Roth looking at her, half intense alpha male, half pleading puppy. “What?”

“This could be a great bean for us, Jazzy.”

“I’m sure it’s not so great that we’d consider ditching Darren so we can get hold of it. Why would we take a risk on a buyer we don’t know anything about? No offense, Amy.”

“None taken.” Plenty taken. If she doesn’t know about me, she should. I’m like the Nicole Kidman of the coffee world. Okay, maybe more like the Naomi Watts—but still. It doesn’t mean she has to employ me, but if she co-owns a coffee roastery, she should at least know of me.

“Darren’s been with us from the start.” She’s beginning to heat up a bit.

“I know that. Why don’t we talk about it later?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. She’s not sourcing, and we’re not getting rid of Darren for a bean that doesn’t taste any better than anything we’ve already got.”

“But it
does
taste better,” says Roth, imploringly.

“Not to normal people.”

“It’s rust resistant,” I say.

Jasmine’s large, mouth jumps into a tiny O, all thoughts of employee-employer loyalty tossed firmly out the window.

“How do you know?” she asks.

I tell her about Getu’s farm, how the rust epidemic wiped out everything he had except for the Yayu.

“So you only have his say-so.”

“I’ve been working with Getu for a long time. We’re pretty straight with each other and he knows his stuff. There’s a lab nearby where I can do some further testing, but I trust Getu completely. If he says this varietal’s clean, it’s clean.”

“Is it resistant to
all
strains?” she asks.

“There’s no possible way to know that without studying samples. As I said, there’s a lab nearby so—”

“So basically you’re asking us to fund your research trip.”

“I—”

“Where exactly is he located?”

“I . . . can’t tell you that.” That’s like asking someone to give you their ATM PIN. There’s no way I’d ever reveal that information to her. It’s completely awkward of her to even ask me.

“Can you at least tell me the size of the farm we’re talking about?”

“It’s midscale. About five hectares.” That’s pretty tiny for a farm in most places, but actually on the slightly larger size for the region.

“Five hectares? Amy, one tiny farm isn’t going to prop up our entire business.” She says it almost with relief. “We don’t have the capital to make a long-scale investment like that.”

“And what if Darren leaves, Jasmine? Then we’ve passed this up for nothing.”

“Darren isn’t going anywhere,” she says pretty decisively. Roth and I both immediately go to the same place, wondering
how
she knows that Darren isn’t going anywhere. Perhaps she’s actually closer to Darren than Roth might be comfortable with.

“My wife’s a little more sentimental than I am,” says Roth with a smile that’s never going to bridge the chasm of awkwardness here.

“I’m certainly not sentimental when it comes to money. The benefits of this don’t outweigh the risks for a business our size. We’re going to have to shift to using more Robusta until prices start evening out again. We’ve talked
and talked
about this, Roth. That’s what everyone’s doing right now, and if we want to survive, we’ll do the same.”

Roth’s disgusted. And he’s disgusted with her for even saying it out loud.

“You could run it alongside your other coffee as a single-origin artisan item,” I offer.

“I’m sorry, Amy. It’s just too difficult in the current climate. I’m sure you’ll find someone else who’ll be very interested,” says Jasmine.

“We’ll discuss it and let you know,” says Roth.

I won’t hold my breath.

“Thanks so much for meeting with me anyhow,” I say, quickly packing my stuff. I just want to get away from here. The tension between Roth and Jasmine is toxic. Roth mournfully watches as I put my magic beans back in my burlap satchel. Under normal circumstances, I’d leave the whole bag with him. After his wife’s hijacking, that’s not happening.

“We’ll be in touch!” says Roth optimistically as I walk out the door.

“Great. Can’t wait!” I reply in an equally upbeat tone. This is tragic. The door doesn’t swing closed all the way, and before I can walk back down the corridor, I hear them start yelling at each other.

“Are you crazy?” asks Roth.

“Are
you
crazy? What on earth do you think you’re doing interviewing a new buyer behind my back?”

“I don’t know—trying to radically improve our product?”

“We don’t need to radically improve our product; we need to stay above water. It’s not enough just to break even anymore. We do actually have to start making money at some point, you know.”

“How can you
not
taste how special those beans are? Do you even like coffee at all?”

“Of course I like coffee. That’s an ugly thing to say.”

“I just don’t get it. You don’t show a flicker of interest in anything going on here for weeks on end, and then you saunter in like you own the place—”

“I
do
own the place,” hisses Jasmine.

A woman wearing an apron and a headscarf suddenly turns the corner.

“Can I help you with anything?” she says, a little too loudly for me to be sure that Roth and Jasmine didn’t hear.

“Nope, I’m good,” I say, mentally scavenging around for some reason why I’m standing in the middle of this corridor listening to someone else’s highly private conversation. “My shirt got caught on the door, but I pulled it free so . . .” We both look at the smooth metallic swing door for a moment. “I’m going to go now.”

“Okay.”

I haven’t even made it back to my car before I get the call.

“You do realize this is a seriously amazing opportunity you’re passing up. This could be the next Geisha—and you know it,” I tell Roth. There’s really no reason for me to rub salt into his wounds; however, I can’t quite help myself.

“Believe me, I’m not happy about it. It kills me to say it, but why don’t you take this over to Urban Monocle?”

“Yeah, I’ll probably try that,” I say. But I have tried Urban Monocle, and several other roasteries, and it hasn’t worked. Third-wave coffee roasters seem to be going through some kind of financial implosion right now. The Arabica bean shortage has tipped their precarious business model right over the side of the cliff, and whereas before owners would have been throwing all the money they could find at me, these days I haven’t been able to get face-to-face with anyone but Roth. The third wavers are simply running out of capital.

“Let me know how you get on with it. I’d be interested to know. I wish things were different on my end, but Jasmine and I are on rough financial ground right now.”

“But think about it, Roth. This bean is good enough. It could carry your whole enterprise.”

“It couldn’t, not until there’s more of it. Jasmine doesn’t want to take the risk. Her dad’s been propping us up forever, and he’s been getting antsy about it since the downturn. We have to tread carefully. Your timing sucks, O’Hara.”

“I know.”

“I’ll keep working on her, but I doubt I’ll get anywhere—we’re moving away from quality right now, not toward it. Just like everyone else.”

“How do you sleep at night?” I’m only half joking.

“I often don’t.” He’s completely serious.

“Well, you have my number if you want to reconsider,” I say.