Cafe Soleil

Episode 3

 

It was the weekend now and thirty or so motorcycles roared past the café up the hill to the beach.  He could just see them – all in black leather, some really overweight, reliving their heyday – sad grey ponytails flapping in the wind.  Why did they have need of so much noise?  He supposed it was the masculine sense of power throbbing between their legs combined with the speed that made them feel invincible.  He hoped they weren’t going to clog up the café later with their helmets and swagger.  Not much chance of that, they weren’t the coffee drinking types anyway.

The divers were also getting ready, squirming into wetsuits that had trouble accommodating their ample middles and trying to balance those heavy tanks on their backs at the same time. It seemed like so much effort to dive to an ancient wreck. He’d seen the boats coming in to shore and bobbing on the waves as the divers clambered aboard.  It seemed to take them ages, impeded by their gigantic flippers, masks and the heavy weight on their backs.

Then there were the extrovert Middle Eastern types with their gold chains and their “Hey mate…” loud but inoffensive in their souped up jalopies or really flash SUVs - generally just out to have a good time, coming up to the Coast with their botoxed girlfriends, who were more intent on shopping the boutiques than actually swimming or surfing.

He was due at the hospital again tonight and he was dreading it.  No change meant no change.  The only bright thing in his day might be a visit from Susannah.  He didn’t like to ask who the well-dressed man was, and he was scared to ask her out on a date.  A date? He must be out of his mind.  Why would someone like her be interested in him? He was never the athlete or the brainy type either and it was a miracle Judy had ever seen any potential in him.  She was fit, watched what she ate. Who’d have thought she’d die before him? It wasn’t fair. Now they’d never be like those impossibly youthful and tanned looking sixty-something couples laughing on the deck of an enormous boat the cruise lines advertised.  At least he had a good Public Service job and looked forward to an easy if unremarkable retirement.  But a drunk driver put paid to all that, and now he spent his days working like a Trojan and his nights keeping vigil over a ghost.

                                                                        ***

 

The automatic doors opened wide as if to swallow him and he started walking down the hall.  The place was terrifyingly clean, and smelled like a cross between antiseptic and air freshener.  He passed rooms where old men and women moaned and cried.  Sometimes they were completely silent, all tidied up in pristine sheets and blankets – laid out like corpses.  He wondered whether anyone ever came to visit them.  The Filipina night nurse on a Tuesday always gave him a beatific smile – and once told him how she worked sixty hours a week to send money home to her family.  He couldn’t imagine the dedication and sacrifice that took.  She was on duty tonight.

“Hi Darryl”

“How is he?”

“He’s doing fine.  We just give him his night feed.  He is resting OK.  You can go in now.”

“Thanks”

Mark seemed to just be sleeping peacefully. Darryl stroked his hand and sat down by the bed.  He usually sang silly children’s songs to while away the time.  Sometimes it was Pop goes the Weasel or some other song – anything to try to wake up that inert grey matter inside his skull.  Anything to fire up more neurons, to get some sort of reaction,  Creatively arranging his finances, he had managed to get Mark a private room – and it was costing an arm and a leg, but it didn’t matter.  He wouldn’t want to foist his out of tune tenor on any of the other patients – even if they were gaga.  So he sang,   He’d heard miraculous stories of people waking up from comas after months and still believed that it might happen.  He hadn’t been asked to pull the plug yet – that wasn’t exactly what they called it – but that’s what it meant.  

He didn’t want to remember that time when one of the new nursing aides had left the feeding tube in and Mark choked on his own vomit.  Come to think of it, she was Vietnamese and didn’t know how to explain what had happened to the ambos.  A close call.  He’d survived that episode and kept a close watch on the staff now – as much as you could when you weren’t there all day.

The diminished form with the still vibrant red hair under the covers was really a ghost.  And how did you communicate with a ghost?  Darryl had been a sort of Catholic in his youth – everyone was something – Catholic or Protestant mostly – in those days you never heard of Buddhists or Muslims and people would never admit to being agnostics or atheists – you had to have something to belong to – even then kids would tease you depending on which side of the religious fence you were on. Catholics went for drama in a big way with incense and those ghastly bloody figures nailed to crosses.  Proddies somehow seemed more genteel – arranging flowers in church and baking cakes. His Mum always covered her head when she went to Mass although she didn’t understand the Latin, and fingered rosary beads and sometimes cooked for the priest.  

Darryl had tried to believe, had tried to hope.  His God had deserted him.  There was now a void where before at least there was ritual and habit.  He eventually began to realise his prayers were falling on deaf ears.  Or maybe he wasn’t praying hard enough? What was he now?  He was just a man and this was just his son. 

                                                            ***

 

 

 

 

                                                                     Cafe Soleil

Episode 2

Darryl woke to a leaden looking sky and wondered if he should just dispense with outside tables today.  If it rained there would be fewer fitness fanatics about.  As he started pulling the chairs from out the back, he noticed they were getting heavier.  Or was it him, piling on the pounds? He was too tired for his late evening stroll on the beach, too tired to get up any earlier and join the buff trainers on the esplanade. The café was something that occupied most of his daylight hours and if he were honest with himself, he would have sold it at a loss after the accident, rather than keep trying to hold on in the hope that something would miraculously change.

He realised his day wasn’t going to go as planned when he ducked out at lunch time and left the new waitress in charge.  He just couldn’t hack another skinny thirty-something asking for almond milk in her soy chai latte with go lo or the tattooed sinewy trainer who accompanied her rabbiting on about his glutes and lats.  The guy was handing around flyers, right in the café, without even asking.  It was blah, blah, blah and I do forty reps of those and I bench press 200 any day of the week. These biceps? I recommend this little shop in town where I get my supplements.  If you want the real thing though, give the owner a wink, sling him an extra fifty bucks and he gives you the really good stuff from UNDER the counter.

Then there were the whippet thin blondes and their Buggaboos - their precious cargo strapped inside, fat and dreaming, while their mothers chatted and compared notes about the right formulas and schools. Poor little devils, Darryl thought, let them slumber on in complete ignorance for a little while yet.  They had no idea what was being mapped out for them and certainly wouldn’t be thrown out into the backyard with a simple suggestion that they go play! Like when he was a boy. What was that, nowadays?  Every single moment of every waking hour would be organised, with some tutor teaching them higher mathematics or something while they crawled, drooling, along the carpet.  Their mothers were now sipping lattes or piccolos. 

At mid-morning the retired old farts usually came in for their raisin toast and cappuccinos nattering loudly (most of them were pretty deaf) about their super funds and shares and what was going up and coming down.  Darryl’s brain was reeling from information overload.

He had to get out of that chaos just to clear his head for a little while.  In spite of the early cloud, it was already blazing hot and the sweat was collecting around his forehead, He thought a walk on the beach, just a short one, might be the go. 

He passed the drunk who was always sitting on the same bench, swigging from an innocent looking large Coca Cola bottle.  The beach had No Alcohol signs everywhere. Darryl had to quicken his pace because up close, the unwashed stench of sweat and alcohol was unbearable.

As he ambled across the squeaky sand, he realised he should have taken his sneakers off. He bent down to untie the laces and was whacked on the back – he screamed, jumped up, ready to go on the attack.  Luckily he realised just in time it was Luke, the local blind guy who regularly swung his white can back and forth along the beach and promenade.  Darryl had to mumble sheepishly…

“Sorry”

He picked himself up, took a deep breath into his lungs and began walking again, glancing at his watch.  Mustn’t leave Rosie too long at the café by herself.  Who knows what trouble she could get into?  Three wrong orders so far this morning.

He looked up to see the woman from yesterday walking towards him – he noticed she had a slight limp.  Her beagle raced to up to give a doggy greeting. Darryl bent down and fluffed his ears.

“Hi” she said.  “Sorry, he never forgets a face.”

“Don’t be sorry.  I’m delighted to see him.” He added shyly “And you too, of course.”

“You’re not working today?”

“Had to take a break.  It’s a bit overwhelming. Actually, I’d better get back.”

She pulled on the lead. “I was just coming in for a coffee.  Can I walk with you?”

“Sure.  And I’ve put out the doggy bowls.”

“That’s good to know.”

“I’m Susannah, by the way.”

“Darryl”.

They walked companionably back to the café.  He learned she’d taken early retirement – she didn’t say why – she was an ex lawyer.  He told her as much of his own history as he thought she needed to know.

She sat down while he went out the back to fix whatever Rosie had stuffed up.  A few missed orders, customers who were never coming back again, that sort of thing.  He should have fired her weeks ago, but she had a kid to support.  He was a mug, he knew. This couldn’t go on forever.  They were losing money and there were bills to pay – now that the insurance had practically run out. Actually, he needed a miracle.  Briefly he looked up at the sky, but didn’t hold out much hope of God granting him one today. Maybe it was enough that Susannah had turned up.  There was something about her that delighted him; he’d thought most lawyers to be hard-bitten and curt.  

The café crowd was thinning now that the lunchtime run had passed and he could take Susannah’s coffee out to her.  He brought one for himself too, in case she wanted company.

“Do you mind if I join you?  I need a little break, now I’ve got Rosie sorted out.  She’s been skating on thin ice, but hopefully she’ll improve.”

“You’re very patient.”

“I’ve had to be.  Hey, you look young to be retired.  Did you just get sick of sorting out domestic dramas or defending dropkicks?  What was it?”

“I had an accident.  I couldn’t walk for six months.  Several screws in my leg.  Things just got on top of me and I had a breakdown.  Lost my relationship – no children fortunately.” She pushed back her bob and he got a glimpse of a greying temple.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”  He took her hand and she didn’t withdraw it.

Café Soleil  

 

At this hour it all looks very calm and peaceful.  A killer yellow sun is just coming up over the water, casting its spell on the lazy waves, glowing white as they sidle onto shore.   The sun rises and slowly illuminates the buildings - the swish low rise apartments have softer contours in the morning.   The beach and walkways look pristine since the mechanical street sweepers - giant tarantulas - have been swaying back and forth for hours, plucking up all the debris and tucking it inside their great whirring bodies. For hours the bakery has had its light on and cinnamon, apple and yeasty smells seep from under its as yet closed doors.  

A dairy truck lumbers up, and its driver pulls a trolley from the rear end, and starts loading it impossibly high with milk, pushing it on to the footpath up to the supermarket, where he rolls it inside. 

Across the street, portly Darryl, beads of perspiration already forming on his upper lip, wrestles piles of chairs onto the footpath, setting each one down in its place and placing menus on the tables, ready to entice the first joggers, gym junkies and personal trainers with skim soy lattes and egg white omelettes followed by mineral water chasers.  

The car park fills up with four wheel drives and sports cars as the buff trainers wait, after lugging their equipment along the beach effortlessly.  Bright red boxing gloves, pads, witches’ hats, balls, rope and chains put Darryl in mind of a medieval torture chamber.  For the relentlessly cheerful early risers it's the highlight of their day. 

Rosie, the part-time waitress he’s recently hired is late, so he’s busy taking orders, keeping an anxious eye out for her.  Darryl is not used to being front of house, and would rather be in the kitchen plating up or washing dishes, anything but dealing with the public.  Mark was the people person – he felt comfortable wherever he went. A chuckling baby, gregarious teenager and now in a persistent vegetative state, they called it.

“Can I take your order?”  

The trim young brunette checking her mobile phone barely glances up as she replies.

“Soy Skim Latte.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that’s fine.”

He wondered why young people had to be so rude.  Where were their manners?  On their iPhone – that’s why they called it an iPhone, it was always I, I, I,  iPad, I this, I that…in Darryl’s day it was not done to big note yourself.   You didn’t post selfies.  You waited until you could get your roll of film from your holidays processed and some of them would be grainy and out of focus, but that was half the fun.

He moved past a few more tables to an unremarkable middle-aged woman sitting on her own, except for a very friendly beagle tethered to the table.  He must remember to put out more doggy water bowls.

“Can I get you anything?”

She flashed him a smile. She seemed to light up from inside.  It was very attractive.

“Yes, what do you recommend?”

“Cute dog.”  Darryl ventured a pat.

“It’s alright” she smiled. “He loves people. In fact, he’d probably go home with you.”

“I’d have to get in a supply of dog food, then.”  They both laughed.

“The Eggs Benedict are really good.  Or if you’re vegan…”

“That sounds lovely.”

Rosie rushed up, sweating, slinging her bag down.

“Sorry I’m late.  I’ll just…”

“That’s alright.  I’ll take this one. Maybe you could see what those tables over there want.” To the woman he said – “Won’t be long.”

She grinned and he found himself smiling too as he went to the kitchen.

When he personally took the plate of food out to her, he was disappointed to see she had been joined by a well-dressed man.   He didn’t know what he’d hoped, that he’d engage her in conversation, what?  Was he that desperate that he had to start hitting on customers now? No.  That was not him.  Besides, there were so many other things to think about.  The daily visit to the hospital for one.  One which filled him with dread.  The tubes, the breathing apparatus, all that shiny metal.  And his son, who looked almost normal.  As though he was sleeping and would soon wake up from whatever dreamland he was in.  

 

 Wine O'Clock

 

‘Just the one’ Julie told herself, playing with the frost that had gathered on the wine bottle,

staring at the label, wondering whether it was grown on the right side of the hill – the joke

she and David used to share after their membership of the local wine club when they first

moved here. It was a way of getting to know people, David had said. You had to be a joiner,

if you wanted to win in life. It had certainly worked for him, as a sales director. For Julie,

she wasn’t so sure.

‘It can’t hurt.’

 

These excuses swirled around in Julie’s mind every time she got to ‘Wine O’Clock.

Nowadays you didn’t have to bother using the corkscrew and worry that the cork would get

stuck and you’d have to dig the thing out with your nails or a knife before you could even

take a sip.

 

No-one in Julie’s family ever drank, and because she was so painfully shy, her first glass of

champagne at a works Christmas party, gave her a confidence that was quite seductive.

Her friend Mandy’s husband was a lawyer in the city and they lived in modern concrete

boxes with manicured lawns and well-behaved shrubs behind traditional picket fences.

Whose turn was it to be under the limit to pick the kids up? They joked – they lived in the

same cul-de-sac and their husbands had good jobs. It wasn’t as if they lacked for anything.

 

Julie’s pigeon pair, Alex and Jessica, were the loves of her life. Alex was fourteen and on the

debating team. He always spoke the truth, or his truth as he saw it. Jessica who was only

eight, took after her mother, David was fond of saying – that meant pretty and compliant,

although that wasn’t quite the way he put it. Sweet and loving were the words he used.

Now it was Mandy on the phone. Julie let it go to message. She (Julie) needed to call back

urgently and she didn’t say why. Why didn’t she just call Triple O? Although, right now,

Julie was feeling headachy and she knew that just a sip would calm her down and restore her

equilibrium. She poured just half a glass. She filled up the glass and took a long gulp. Oh my

goodness, that felt great. Now she had the energy to call Mandy.

 

‘Hi Mandy, it’s Julie.

‘I just don’t know what to do. I’m beside myself.’

Julie braced herself for listening to another domestic disaster and took another sip. Julie

wanted to throttle her, making herself a mental note to avoid looking at Mandy’s throat the

next time they met, lest she be tempted to carry out the deed.

 

The kids were in bed and David was working late, so it seemed easy to pour another one

while watching the latest Scandi Noir. She’d never been particularly introspective, but

nowadays when she was alone, a pattern of asking herself how she had ended up here

emerged. It was a feeling of disconnectedness, going about her daily tasks in a robotic

fashion with an apathy she’d never encountered before. No-one had noticed, thankfully,

certainly not David, Mr Pollyanna himself. Life was a bed of roses, he himself a ray of

sunshine. It was only when the dog scrambling to the door, scraping the floor noisily with his

claws to greet his master, that she awoke with a start, realising she had finished the bottle.

She stashed it under the couch.

 

‘Oh, you’re still up love, sorry I’m so late.’

She yawned and said.

‘Oh, I just had to watch another episode, you know. They get you hooked. Do you want

anything?’

 

The sun streamed through the curtains like lightning rods at her waking eyelids making her

blink rapidly – Julie had overslept. She reached over to find David’s side empty. Where were

the kids and when had David left?

 

She stumbled down the hall to find Jessica and Alex glued to the television and crunching

through cereal. Pulling her dressing gown around her, she nonchalantly put the coffee

machine on. The children gave each other furtive glances, which she pretended to ignore.

‘So what’s happening today? I seem to remember you had a book day, Jessica? Have you got

everything packed?

Jessica grunted and kept chewing. Julie poured herself a milky coffee and drinking in large

gulps, smiling and waiting for her children to make conversation, to fill the morning silence.

‘Oh well, just give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll drop you off.’

Alex looked up from his plate, his hair flopping in his eyes.

‘Do you think you should drive today, Mum?’

She bristled.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. What do you mean?’

‘Buddy dragged the bottle out from under the couch this morning. Don’t worry, I put it in

next door’s bin.’

‘Oh well, he’s always finding strange things around the place, that dog. The cleaner probably

chucked it under there.’

 

The school route was jammed as usual with Range Rovers and the odd Porsche, clogging up

traffic as kids were deposited mothers lingered to chat. Julie was trying to keep up her usual

morning patter.

‘What have you got on today, Alex?’

He was glued to her phone, the earbuds firmly in place. Julie briefly looked back.

‘Mum!’ What are you doing?’ Alex screamed.

A little boy of about seven or eight was crossing the road aimlessly, far from the zebra

crossing. Julie braked hard.

She shot out of the car. She’d stopped just in time, the boy was walking away, the bonnet

having only nudged him. One of the mothers came racing over.

‘What are you doing, you crazy cow? I’m calling the police.’

‘He just ran out. I stopped. She said to the boy:

‘Are you OK? Where’s your Mum?’

 

The police were indeed called and Julie was under the limit. No charges were laid, but she

was given a verbal caution. Julie drove home very slowly. She spent the rest of the day

cleaning. She was good at putting everything out of her mind if she concentrated on one task

mindfully and expertly and exactly. After that, she re-ironed David’s shirts and then went out

and trimmed the already trim hedges at the front of the house.

 

By the time it came to pick the kids up – it was Mandy’s turn – she was sitting in the kitchen

watching the steam curling up from her cup of tea.

The children rumbled through the house to their bedrooms and Mandy threw her bag down.

‘Had a rough day?  I heard all about it from that snitch Bec at the canteen. Storm in a teacup.

So that’s what you’re drinking now? Tea? Where’s that marvellous Pinot Grigio you had?’

‘I just thought I’d take it easy.’

‘Oh, come on, what’s wrong with unwinding from a stressful day? I’ve got just the thing.’

She produced a bottle from her bag.

‘Not as good as the one we had last week, but just grabbed this one from the bottle-o. You

need cheering up. Come on, Julie, live a little!’

After that, Julie was honour-bound to produce said Pinot and poured them both generous

glasses. The kids were all rowdily enjoying video games upstairs and David wouldn’t be

home for ages and she ordered in a pizza. The beauty of all of them living in a cul-de-sac was

that Mandy could just walk home.

 

The following morning she asked David to drive the kids to school because she had a raging

headache. Alex looked at her strangely, grabbed his backpack and slumped out the door after

his father.

‘Bye, sweetheart, see you this arvo.’

 

She cleaned the house in a jiffy. Watching Dr Phil at lunchtime, her headache lingered. When

she saw those dysfunctional characters and their woes, she felt somewhat superior.

No, she could never see herself as that kind of victim, she who never drank before the

afternoon. She had a lovely house, a lovely husband and lovely children. Well, Alex wasn’t

so lovely these days. These days, he appeared to sneer. In fact, he’d become quite combative

and judgemental. He was meant to be learning, not judging.

She discovered the remnants of last night’s pizza. There was an unopened bottle of wine that

looked like it should be drunk. She resisted the urge and put the pizza in the microwave.

Julie sat on the deck, nibbling it. A hefty magpie was eyeing it off, edging closer. He was

about to overturn it, when Julie dropped the whole thing on the grass.

‘There you go’ she said. She went inside and took the wine from the fridge, pouring herself a

generous glass.

 

Julie entered the School of Arts building, all peeling paint and metal chairs that scraped, a

cough or two from the participants. She sat at the back while they spoke, wondering once

again why she was here, and praying for a new beginning but still feeling thirsty.

 

Tools for Tools

This is a tale told a few years ago, as part of my daily writing habit - using six randomly chosen words to write something, anything, in 30 minutes.  Raw and unedited. Enjoy!

 minute valve tweezer ruffle appetite brink

‘Julie, hand me that valve gasket cover, will you?

‘Um, what’s that?’

‘Right in front of you, dummy’

Julie never liked helping Jimmy with his car repairs. It wasn’t as if he was even a mechanic. Mostly he liked to use his short course at TAFE on car maintenance as if it were a PhD. His feathers would get ruffled if she handed him the wrong tool or part, and he would glance sideways at her, shaking his head, as if she were an idiot. Over the years she’d become a serf without even being aware of it. Handing him even the tweezers to pluck his eyebrows. You would think being a hundred kilo bogan with a long red beard and sideburns wouldn’t be so fussy about the unruly caterpillars that hovered above his placid blue eyes, but…

She handed him the somewhat cumbersome part. Wondering when she might ever get a starring role in this relationship. Of course the writing had been on the wall when she first met him, as after their first dinner he took her neatly manicured pinkie finger and used it as a toothpick. She was shocked at first but then Julie had thought it funny and quirky and as she hadn’t had much experience with blondish/reddish buff surfer boys out in the fibro wasteland of the Western Suburbs, where car wrecks and rusted playground equipment was the norm, she put up with it. 

When they’d first got married, she’d accepted his behaviour, because as her mother said ‘happy hubby, happy wife’ – she didn’t realise at the time that the expression was supposed to rhyme. Now that the kids had left home – Billy to the city to realise his dream of being a Reality tv star and Jemima also to the city to assuage her gargantuan appetite by becoming a pastry chef, it was her time – me time, as they often said in beauty ads on tv.

Now Julie was on the brink of freedom – all she had to do was pluck up the courage. Now or never – or if not actually free…her mind wandered, off into places she hadn’t been for years – sunning herself on the beach, reading a paperback without having to apply Jimmy’s sunscreen or wax his board. Going off to the country – driving off aimlessly without having to have a destination – not having to make Jimmy’s lunch and listen to him complain the bread was cut too thick – or the beer was too warm  - she was sailing off on a cloud of optimism when his voice cut through it.

‘Hand me that bloody wrench, Julie, how often do I have to ask?

When the paramedics arrived a couple of hours later, and poor Jimmy was declared non-responsive, Julie explained that the garage had always been a mess, and unfortunately the tool in question had fallen from one of the shelves Jimmy had rigged up without following the instructions on the box.