Silk pajamas seemed, to Mary, like the height of luxury.
However. Mary should be keeping busy, not judging the customers. The customers could say whatever they liked, as long as they paid their bill and (hopefully) left a tip on the table or in the tip jar on the counter.
Mary spent some time organizing the milk and cream and sugars and wiping up the cinnamon that had spilled out of the container, and then she stood, surveying the café the way a farmer might survey his fields, with a certain pride of ownership and the satisfaction of a job well done. A sensation came over her that was so pleasant she didn’t recognize it. Then she realized that for the first time since she’d taken that pregnancy test the future stretched out before her in a way that didn’t look like something she had to be afraid of. She touched her stomach. She walked over to table seven and asked the customers if they needed anything.
“All set, doll!” said the man who’d been doing the talking. Doll. Ugh. Still, she wouldn’t mind a tip, so she smiled and retreated behind the counter, where she pulled out her phone and typed How big is a baby at eleven weeks.
A quarter of an ounce. She tried to equate that to coffee beans, to whipped cream. It would take so very little of each to get to a quarter ounce. She read on. A tongue, a palate, nipples, hair follicles. Fingers and toes beginning to form. Fingers and toes! Already?
The two couples got up to leave and she saw one of the men reach into his wallet for a few bills to leave on the table. She called out, “Bye now! Have a good night!” and busied herself behind the counter so she didn’t look like she was watching for a tip.
When the door closed behind them, and when the café was silent and really truly Mary’s for the first time, Mary touched her stomach again and pictured the baby, her baby, the little bunch of coffee beans with real fingers and real toes. She felt again the twinge of joy, the possibility of a future start to form inside of her. She imagined putting the baby in a carrier and walking down to the water, her body curled protectively around him. Or her! Either one, either one would be fine. There there, she said to the imaginary baby, when the wind off the harbor picked up. Mama’s got you. Where was Josh in this picture? He was nowhere. She couldn’t in a million years imagine living with a baby in Josh’s house, the television blaring, the car shows always in the background. But it was just as hard—or maybe harder—to imagine living in her own house, with Vivienne’s hair products scattered around, the counters covered over with Vivienne’s clutter. Where would she even put the baby? Her own bedroom was tiny, and the whole house had only the two bedrooms.
It was almost official closing time; in five minutes, Mary would turn the sign from OPEN to CLOSED, then count the money in the cash register and record it in the ledger as Daphne had shown her. She’d lock the register and put the key in the secret spot that only the three of them knew about.
Mary was crouched down, peering into the second fridge, the mini, where they kept the smaller containers of half-and-half, when she heard the bell on the door ding. Shit. She should have turned the sign first. She started to call out, “We’re closed!” in her best customer service voice as she rose but then she saw that it was Josh who had come in and the words lodged themselves somewhere deep in her throat.
Josh, swaying a little bit as he moved, drunk, his eyes lined with red. Or maybe it was more than drinking, maybe it was drugs, the ones he’d hidden in her closet, or something else, worse: heroin, cocaine. She didn’t even know enough to know what to look for.
“Hey, babe,” he said. Even these two simple words slurred. Shit shit shit.
Andi and Daphne would not like this. “We’re closing,” she said. “Josh, I’m not supposed to have anyone in here. I’m closing up.”
Mary didn’t feel good about the way Josh was looking at her, squinting, like whatever he’d drunk or taken or shot up made it impossible for him to open his eyes all the way. “Closing, huh?”
What she should have said next was, “Andi’s coming right back, and then we’re closing.” She realized that after: Andi, who drove to Ellsworth for CrossFit four mornings a week, was tougher than Daphne and that might be enough to get Josh to go. But what she said instead was, “Yeah. I’m in charge tonight, Andi and Daphne went to Bar Harbor.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid Mary.
His body language changed then; he grew in front of her. Or maybe she was shrinking. She stood up as straight as she could and pressed her fingers into the countertop, hard, so that the area around the knuckles turned a bright white.
Josh came up to the counter and leaned against it, chewing his lip and looking up at the menu like he was an ordinary customer who was trying to decide between an ordinary latte and an ordinary mocha on an ordinary day.
“So you’re alone, huh?” He had a weird little smile on his face.
“Yes,” said Mary.
He was still looking at the menu and smiling the little smile when he said, “Just talked to your mom.”
“My mom?” Mary’s heart dropped to the floor.
“Your mom, that’s right. I went around to your house looking for you. She was just home from work so we got to talking and wouldn’t you know it came out that she knew about something that I didn’t.”
“What’s that?” asked Mary, and her heart was thudding hard against her rib cage. She really, really did not like Josh’s little smile. She wanted it to go away, she wanted him to go away, but she didn’t know how to make that happen.
“About the baby,” said Josh, and when he said baby he hit his fist so hard against the counter that Mary jumped.
She was breathing hard now too; it was like her body had split off from her mind and was doing its own thing.
Josh’s voice got library-quiet and she shrank back from the counter. His eyes didn’t focus on her when he said, “When were you gonna tell me?”
To compensate, she tried to speak more loudly, but her voice wouldn’t go the way she wanted it to. It wouldn’t work at all. She said, “I was, uh—”
“When were you gonna tell me? Huh?” He was no longer quiet. Again the fist slammed down. She remembered that she hadn’t locked up the cash register yet and she made a move toward it, stroking the key in her apron pocket, and Josh followed her around the counter.
Then his voice got soft again and he reached out and touched her shoulder and said, “I can’t believe it, Mary, you and me are having a baby.”
“Josh.”