Jasmine coffee

One scoop. Two scoops. Three scoops. Four scoops of coffee. 

No, that’s too much. 

One scoop. Two scoops. Three? Maybe two are enough. The woman filled the Italian coffee press. She had the water up to the level of the little screw on the side, just like her mother and grandmother taught her when she was little. That was a long time ago, though. Now, she’s lucky if she gets to fill her to-go cup with some instant Nescafe. She always picks up the Gold label, as if it makes a difference, just to pretend she’s still the same coffee aficionado as the rest of the women in the family. Years of not performing the family ritual had the best of her. Now, with her shaky hesitant hand, she was frustrated as she was screwing the top of the coffee maker, certain that she had messed up the water-to-ground coffee ratio. She knew he was going to complain and she wanted to avoid that at all costs.

She took a look at the time. 5:12pm. Her brother said he would come by around 5:30 but she knew he was going to be late - on purpose. She looked through the cupboard, moving around a multitude of old mugs who lost their twins and managed to find two identical espresso cups and their assorted saucers. She heard the coffee brewing in the background as she checked her texts. On her phone, a picture of a little boy and girl and a woman to whom they both looked alike but not just quite.

“Is it ready yet?” a grumpy old man voice cut through the clicking of the dishes and the soft growling of the brewing.

She didn’t even bother answering. Checking every minutia only betrayed her desire to stall. She poured the black liquid in the cups, put one and a half spoons of sugar in each of them, placed them on their saucers and onto the tray. She took one big breath as she carried it out to the veranda.

The man was sitting there, filling in a crossword puzzle like he has done every afternoon since he retired more than fifteen years ago. His hair was now sparse, she noticed, and the veins on his hands were protruding like they aimed to break his skin. He had lost weight. She placed a coffee cup in front of him. She was tense by his side. He seemed like he wasn’t. A few minutes passed like that: him, guessing words; her, staring at the dirt brown flowerless garden in front of her. Finally, he took a sip of the hot beverage.

“What happened to the jasmine and the roses?” “That’s cat piss.” They both spoke at the same time.

A long minute passed by before any of them said anything again.

“Well, if you don’t like my coffee, maybe you should’ve made it yourself.”

He shot her a disapproving glare.

“It’s just too light, that’s all. I’m not used to it.”

“I haven’t made it in a long time. ”

“You don’t drink coffee in that other country of yours?”

That other country of yours.

" I do. But I’m always in a rush. I get it in a shop or I drink instant at home.”

“In a rush, huh. Yes, it seems that time is always short on your end.”

Finally, she took a sip. Shit. He was right. It was too light, almost flavorless.

“It tastes good to me.”

“That’s because you forgot what good things taste like. Do fruits over there still taste like cardboard?”

She forced a smile that looked like a grimace. “They do but you’d know if you ever came over.”

“What for? Plenty of nice fruits over here but you know, you do you.”

“Is there any jasmine left? I want to put some in my coffee.”

“Why would you do that?” he asked, genuinely surprised.

“Because that’s what we do with Mom. She puts jasmine in her coffee. It just smells nice.”

Her tone suddenly turned aggressive. She was shooting daggers at him.

“But I don’t expect you to remember that,” she continued. “so, are you ever gonna tell me what happened to mom’s flowers?”

A long silence fell on them like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, the old man seemed ill at ease. She looked at him like he was fidgeting with a corner of the newspaper, folding and unfolding into dog's ears until it tore a little.

“Well?”

“I asked the gardener to cut them down. ”

“Why the hell would you do that? Does Adam know?”

“Your brother knows. He threw a fit, scared the kids, so don’t get started either!” he suddenly raised his voice at her. She didn’t expect it and sat at the edge of her seat. She looked like she was a second away from throwing the hot liquid all over him.

“I will get started. Why on Earth would you do that? You know how much she cares about those flowers. Those were her flowers.”

“They’ll grow back. They’re just flow-”

“No There were hers. It was HER thing and you know how much she didn’t like this house and you know how much she loved those flowers. Did you have to get rid of the only thing that she actually enjoyed in this place? You couldn’t just wait to get rid of anything that was hers, couldn’t you? But that’s what you always did. You criticize and you don’t say anything else. You don’t say what’s on your mind. We’re just left there to guess -whether we’re far or living next door. And you should think you’re lucky she stuck around until the end. ” 

She wanted to shout it all out and make it hurt just as much as it hurt her - but she didn’t. She sat there, boiling with anger. Instead, she just let out a tired sigh and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

“You always do this, anyway. I don’t know why I expected things to change now. I really don’t-”

She stopped mid-sentence. Her raging thoughts made her momentarily black out. She hadn’t seen her father move his chair around. She couldn’t see his face anymore. She just saw his left hand shaking on the armrest and, for the first time ever, noticed a wedding band on his finger. She never did before. Her mother had told her he had lost it once down the drain and never bothered to recover it but maybe she had been wrong about that.

Some drops colored the tile by his feet but the sun was shining bright and the summer sky was cloudless.

She leaned over and put her hand on his. He gave her a little squeeze. She stood up and started putting the dishes away on the tray again. She reached the veranda door that led to the kitchen.

“Three scoops with this coffee press. Two with the smaller one. And, you know, when you prune a tree, it makes it grow even more,” she heard him say.