Nordby: A Mindfully Unmeditated Place

By Nick Malliris

Nothing is normal in the small wine country community of Nordby on a good day. That’s why Jane Santorini’s café is equal parts therapy clinic and coffee house for a group of eccentric and deeply flawed aging lifelong friends. But when pitching sensation Seth Carpenter mistakes Viagra for a common headache remedy, it touches off a series of events sending everyone over the edge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vineyardpressltd
• Release date: Dec 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540171764

Book preview

Nordby

a Mindfully Un-Meditated Place

Nothing is normal in the small wine country community of Nordby on a good day. That’s why Jane Santorini’s café is equal parts therapy clinic and coffee house for a group of eccentric and deeply flawed aging lifelong friends. But when pitching sensation Seth Carpenter mistakes Viagra for a common headache remedy, it touches off a series of events sending everyone over the edge.

Dedication

For Christina Nicole Malliris, the smile in my heart, the light on my path.

Prologue: 1967–2005

THE RUMOR BACK in Boston was that Jane Santorini was a descendant of Arliss Nordby, the founder of a rural farming community that bore his name in Oregon’s Hamilton County. How the people of Boston could know that and how the rumor even started, no one really knew. Over the years, as she became a Hamilton County icon, the locals liked to say that whatever her background and wherever she came from, it must have been Arliss himself who sent Jane from his perch in heaven to look over his namesake town. The truth was that, even after thirty-eight years, no one in the small wine-growing community of Nordby knew much of anything about her past. Only that she’d driven cross country from Boston in a VW Bus and arrived in this small town forty minutes southwest of Portland in July of 1967.

That no one knew much about her past was exactly the way she preferred it, and she’d kept it that way for the entire time she’d been in Nordby. Everyone up and down Main Street and beyond, out into the bucolic rolling hills of the wine country of Vision Valley, had pretty much accepted that, at sixty-seven, Jane Santorini wasn’t about to cave. She was not going to reveal where she was from and what she had been doing for even one second before her twenty-ninth birthday—which happened be the same day she entered the city limits of Nordby. It’s on a need to know basis. And I’m the only one who needs to know it, so went her standard refrain.

Her conviction only served to deepen the mystery surrounding her arrival, and she kind of liked that.

In 1967, Vision Valley had become one of the most fertile farming regions in Oregon and boasted five incorporated municipalities. Nordby, the county seat, had grown to a population of 27,511, supporting the mostly hay, hazelnut, and Christmas tree farmers who inhabited the hills surrounding the pristine little town. It may have been the pre-season to free love, long hair, roach clips, and peace marches, but little of that had reached the outskirts of Nordby. In fact, five of Nordby’s best straight out of Teddy Roosevelt High School—Earl Sheppard, Hank Luchessi, Logan Cartwright, Hal Stubblefield, and Charles Chuck Grove—were serving their country in the jungles of Vietnam. Folks throughout the valley knew each of them as fine athletes of good character who also could, indeed, be characters. Locals were extremely proud to call them their own and prayed daily for their safe return.

Except for electricity, indoor plumbing, gas-powered cars, ugly shag carpet, avocado-colored appliances, three-channel broadcast television, rock-n-roll radio, and washing machines, Vision Valley looked and ran nearly the same as it did when ninety-six-year-old Arliss Nordby left planet Earth in 1911. It was only over the thirty-eight years since Jane’s arrival that the county had seen its most significant change since Arliss settled the area in 1837. The existing crops of the 1960s and 1970s eventually gave way to grapevines as Vision Valley arrived as a world-renowned bastion of viticulture excellence. Wine would become the plant and beverage of choice—economically speaking, anyway. But in 1967, to Jane Santorini’s way of thinking, it was coffee that would serve as the galvanizing drink.

***

It wasn’t that Jane had a special affinity for coffee. But she did have a passion for people and small towns. Nordby in particular. That’s what drove people crazy. Her past was completely unknown and no one had a clue as to why she picked their town.

She seemed to just materialize out of thin air like those characters who were beamed down from the transporter room in that weird, offbeat new TV show at the time called Star Trek. There she was, one day in 1967, pulling into town in a late model Volkswagen Bus with Massachusetts plates packed with literally everything she owned. Standing an erect, light and breezy, well-proportioned five feet, eight inches with soft brown eyes, a warm smile, and just slightly beyond shoulder-length fine auburn hair that blew across a perfect, no-make-up-needed natural complexion, she was girl-next-door irresistible. Wearing a yellow-and-green paisley peasant skirt with modest white linen blouse, Jane strode confidently into the coat-closet-sized office of a rookie real estate agent named Ed Hurley to announce that she wanted to buy some retail space and she had cash. She also had no permanent address.

Ed Hurley was a slightly pudgy, prematurely balding twenty-six-year-old University of Oregon dropout with a real estate license and big ambitions. Short on experience but long on gab, the future real estate mogul perked up immediately upon hearing the word he most adored—cash!

Hey, where are you from and what kind of business are you in? he asked, noting that he stood a good inch shorter than his attractive visitor.

The first answer is on a need-to-know basis and I’m the only one who needs to know it. Jane smiled. I’m going to open a coffee house and café, and I need you to help me find a suitable location. That’s what you need to know.

Fair enough. I know just the place, he answered, figuring he’d get the real scoop on her later.

Really… Jane said skeptically.

Ed self-consciously swept aside a thin strand of his rapidly disappearing blond hair and looked patronizingly at Jane’s pretty Italian brown eyes. It’s right in the heart of Main Street. Twenty-two-hundred square feet, a great kitchen, all updated, freshly painted, plenty of parking… It’s ideal.

Wow, I haven’t been here ten minutes, you know absolutely nothing about me, and you’ve already found the—what did you call it?—ideal spot for my business. You are some kind of real estate professional! she said in mock admiration.

Uh, huh…thhhhanks, Ed muttered hesitantly, narrowing his blue eyes.

The two of them eyed each other for a brief moment.

All of sudden, Ed was a touch nervous.

He didn’t know why exactly, but something told him he might have underestimated this newcomer or, at the very least, misread her. Most people he’d ever met in Nordby were pretty easy to figure out. But this Jane was clearly not from around these parts and this might take some different thinking. But then again, he just couldn’t be sure.

Well… Ed started haltingly, I’m flattered that you’re so impressed, but maybe…maybe we should look at a few places.… You know, to make sure we find something you really like. But, I think you’ll like this place I have in mind.

May I sit down? Jane asked pleasantly.

Yes, of course, Ed said, quickly pulling up an old wooden chair with no arms, a rickety back, and a worn-out, weathered finish.

Jane smiled kindly at the young man. He was only three years her junior, but he seemed much younger in terms of maturity. I don’t just want a coffee shop, or a café, or a restaurant, Mr. Hurley. I want an oasis. Can you find that?

With all his heart Ed wanted to say Sure! I can do that. But all he could do was stare. There was something about this woman that told him to be very careful about what he promised. The truth was, he never minded doing a sales job on anyone. While he was, at his core, an honest person, he’d been known to embellish here and there to close a sale. And if everyone went home happy, then…everyone went home happy! Nothing wrong with that. Right?

But somehow, he felt over-matched with this one and he wasn’t even sure why. He could feel this woman did not come off the standard assembly line. She was different.

Okay, um, please go on, he uttered beneath a knitted brow.

Thank you, Jane said, smiling with just a hint of amusement. She was in control. "The building’s got to have character and soul and as much flavor as the people who go there. The kind of character that compels people to be there. The place they can’t get out of their mind. The place they go when they want comfort and friendship, or to be alone without really being alone; a place where they can sit and talk all day, or go and not say one word for hours. A welcoming place you can go when you are confused or hurt or just need to figure things out. A place where you can just think if you want, or not have to think at all. It’s a place where dreams are born and disappointments are buried. A building…that’s not really a building so much as a destination, where you go when you don’t even know why you’re going there.… The kind of place that serves up purpose, hope, and inspiration…and a place where you can go for some comic relief, too, when you just need a genuine smile on your face. I’ve driven hundreds of miles to be here in this community to find this place, and I’d like your assistance."

"Okay. Ed paused in total bewilderment. I thought you said you were going to serve coffee."

Yes! Jane smiled. I think you’re already starting to get it.

***

Without getting a single thing and feeling more confused and helpless than he remembered being in advanced calculus in college, Ed nonetheless walked Jane out his front door. Turning left, they began walking up Main Street in the core downtown area to look at the few available small storefront locations. Pender’s Hardware, the police station, Main Street Pizza, the Nordby Gazette, the .88 Cents Store, various curio shops, antique boutiques, a barber shop, a small grocery, two hamburger joints, and City Hall were spread along five blocks lined on each side with perfectly spaced poplar trees rising up neatly from the sidewalks. The buildings, all with wood, stucco, and brick façades and wooden hand-lettered signs were neatly and colorfully painted in a variety of bright blues, fuchsias, forest greens, purples, and brick reds. It gave Main Street a warm, inviting aura with an old-fashioned, orderly, calm, almost whimsical sense of personality and character. And for the most part, it reflected the essence of Nordby itself. The street itself—uncommonly wide—had accommodated horses and buckboards seventy-five years ago, but now provided ample diagonal parking along each side. There were no parking meters. The town council had voted them down once and the issue never came up again. Local business owners felt strongly that if you wanted people to shop in their stores, inconveniencing them with a parking tax made no sense.

And Nordby-ites liked to think of themselves just that way…sensible and simple, like Arliss Nordby himself. Large in stature, with a brilliant mind and love of open spaces, the transplant from Copenhagen eschewed the lure of the loud, complex city life of his first U.S. home in Boston to seek a more rural, adventurous life out West. He had become fascinated with the Oregon Trail and the hardy souls who risked everything on nothing more than a vague promise of a more prosperous life in an unknown land. So he made his way to Independence, Missouri, set out on his own for Oregon City, and eventually ended up here in this pretty little valley fifty miles away from what would eventually become the bustling community called Portland. And it was only by virtue of a coin flip in 1845 that Portland itself had not also been named Boston—an outcome that relieved Arliss, as he much preferred the name Portland to Boston. He had no particular affinity for his former town and wanted it to stay in his past.

He called the fertile lands of Hamilton County Vision Valley’ in honor of the intrepid settlers who soon followed him to this area of unique beauty and near perfect growing climate. To his thinking, they had the vision to imagine the potential of this remarkable place, like the émigrés from Europe, with the courage to strike out on their own and build a new life.

The giant bronze plaque over the entrance of City Hall in Nordby said it all:

"If there is perfect piece of ground on this great Earth,

then surely it is Vision Valley."

—Arliss Nordby

The facts backed him up, too. To the west, the Coast Range mountains rose up like a well-constructed backyard fence separating the rich valley from the sweet salt air and watery mist of the rugged, majestic beauty of the Pacific coastline. On the other side, the Cascade Range stood an elegant guard against the weather of the picturesque Oregon High Desert, which fluctuated between harsh heat and cold winds. In between the sentinel mountains lay the lush, rolling hills and open farmlands of Vision Valley. In contrast to the harsh extremes of the desert and the buffeting winds of the Pacific Coast, Vision Valley’s splash of color blended a glorious panoply of yellow sunrises, royal-blue skies, and rich emerald-green meadows topped off by orange, pink, and purple sunsets, with soft rains, gentle breezes, warm picnic afternoons, and cool, star-filled nights.

But no matter how beautiful the landscape, fifty miles was a long way from anywhere if a person’s need was the anonymity and aloofness provided by bright lights and bustling streets. For people who needed their excitement packaged and presented to them like the daily delivery of a social media post, places like Nordby and her sister towns in Vision Valley offered little more than a quaint afternoon diversion. People who chose to live in the Valley were intelligent people of strong opinions, imagination, and curiosity, with an appreciation for simple complications and an ability to deal with them. That is to say, living a simple rural life was not always easy and uncomplicated. There was no place to hide in a place like Nordby. There were no bustling streets, or noisy clubs, or people too busy or too self-absorbed to care.

In a large city, you can live next door to a person for years and never talk to them. In Vision Valley, a person could live thirty miles from their nearest neighbor and couldn’t help but interact with them in some way half a dozen times a year. But that didn’t mean life in one place was simpler or better than another. In fact, the issues and challenges were sometimes very similar. In both environments, people had to make a living; they fell in love and fell out of love; they had to deal with temptation and insecurities, bad luck and good luck, heartache and loss, joy and fulfillment. And from time to time, they all needed someone who had their back. No, as Arliss Nordby himself came to learn over time, even life in a simple place could be full of complexity because people interacting with people was an involved process.

No one knew that better than Jane Santorini. For when she arrived in 1967, she well understood the sociological needs of a place like Nordby. She might have grown up in Boston, but as a little girl she’d spent summers working in her aunt’s café in the tiny community of West Brookfield, MA. She quickly learned that her aunt’s local enclave was a gathering place of importance nearly equal to the local churches. It didn’t take long to learn the regulars’ names and get to know their stories. She also came to understand that in a small rural town like West Brookfield, the lifestyle and the land gave the residents a communal sense of belonging, a shared interest in each other and, in each other, natural allies that functioned almost as a large, extended family. But family issues could be difficult. Often they needed to be talked out, requiring the lines of communication be open and operational on a daily basis.

Ed Hurley couldn’t know this as he walked toward the center of town, but the woman striding next to him would soon give Nordby family members one big kitchen table and each their own chair.

***

The walk through the familiar streets of Nordby settled Ed’s nerves somewhat and he felt as though he had his feet underneath him again. Okay, he thought, aside from all that crap Jane Santorini was spouting, her business was coffee and probably pie—although she hadn’t specifically mentioned anything about pie. Coffee and damn pie! Now how hard was that, for God’s sake?

Yep, he knew just the place—really the only place that made any sense. A couple thousand square feet, a five-year lease—just sign on the dotted line, Ms. Santorini, and I’ll take the day off. So right in the middle of this bustling commercial district, just after First Street intersected with Main, Ed Hurley escorted Jane Santorini into the perfect two-thousand-square-foot storefront with an upstairs loft. It had beautifully refinished oak wood floors, high ceilings, flowered wallpaper above a wainscoting rail on the wall and perfectly sculpted hand brocade plaster below. It even had a kitchen with all new appliances in the back and a Casablanca-style ceiling fan in the main dining area—a quaint feature for 1967.

This is the best commercial site in Nordby, he assured her, feeling his confidence return. Great parking, right in the center of the business district. Perfect location and set up for a coffee shop and café. I know the owner is anxious to lease or sell and we just might be able to slide in the side door on this one and pick it up for a song. He won’t even know what hit him.

Yeah, he knew his business. She’d caught him off guard, but he was back in his element now.

First of all, Mr. Hurley, Jane said, turning around and looking at him with a truncated smile, I’m not looking to take advantage of anyone. I’ll pay a fair price for whatever location strikes my fancy. After all, I don’t need to make an enemy my first day in town. Secondly, I’m not accepting any investors in my business enterprise, so I’ll be doing the buying, not ‘we,’ and finally, I will decide what is and isn’t perfect. And I have decided this is as far from perfect as it could possibly be. So let’s try again. Now, what’s the story with that building out on Highway 219 near Nordby Road? I saw it as I was coming into town?

Ed paused for a moment, starting to get that uncomfortable, flustered feeling again and desperately trying to conjure up the building to which she was referring.

Sorry, Miss Santorini…

Please, call me Jane.

Okay, Jane…but I can’t think of what you could be talking about, Ed finished.

The big structure with the loading platform and the weathered, painted wood. Says ‘Nordby’ something at the top. You can’t read all the letters.

What the hell, said Ed, forgetting himself for a moment. The sales shtick was now completely gone. Now he was just Ed Hurley, regular Nordby resident. You mean the old Nordby Feed and Fertilizer building! That thing hasn’t been inhabited for thirty years.

Does it have running water and are the pipes hooked up to the sewer? asked Jane.

Maybe, but it’s no dern place to drink coffee, let alone eat pie, unless you’re planning on serving rats, said Ed, shaking his head and chuckling at his own joke.

Some of the finest restaurants in Europe have rats. Besides, I can get rid of the rats easy enough, she said. Can you arrange for me to take a look around?

We can drive over there right now. It’s not like the place is locked up! Ed fired back, slightly exasperated. But I’m telling you it’s a dump…a big old three-story eyesore. It’s got an ancient, falling-apart sales counter, dusty, filthy brick walls, a sagging loading dock, broken windows, old creaky floorboards.… Why, it’s got no heat, no insulation, roof probably leaks…dust and filth everywhere. The whole thing should be condemned if you ask me.

Yes, I would imagine all that’s true, she said, more to herself than Ed.

Of course it’s true, Ed said, hoping for some sign of reason in her response. I mean, you’d have to buy the land and take down the whole building and start fresh.

Who owns it, Mr. Hurley? she asked politely.

Well, he started patiently, it’s part of the Nordby estate. The executor of the estate is a lawyer named Henry Penders.

Is he family?

Yep, Ed replied, "grandson of Arliss Nordby himself. His mom was Arliss’s daughter, Janine. His dad was Thomas Penders and he started the first law firm in Hamilton County. Henry’s daughter, Alice, is back east at Duke University. Gonna go to law school. She’s a sharp girl, that one. She plans to come back west and take over the family business so her dad can retire. Rumor has it she’s hankerin’ t’ buy the Nordby Gazette, too. Plenty of ambition in Alice, that’s for sure."

Wow! Sounds like quite a woman, and you really know a lot about her, Jane said admiringly. I’m impressed.

Thank you. Ed blushed slightly. But when you grow up in Nordby, you’re kind of required to learn town history.

Feeling a bit emboldened by Jane’s compliment, Ed looked around as if there might be someone else in the room.

I’ll tell you something, else, he said in a semi-gossipy tone. Some descendants, and Alice is one of them, don’t like this story being told, but it’s been long passed down that Arliss Nordby fathered an illegitimate child by his long-time mistress, Janet. Supposedly, when she became pregnant, he gave her a big wad of money and sent her off to the East Coast and she never came back again.

Is that so…and what do they say happened to her? Jane asked, absent-mindedly looking around the storefront.

Well…now remember, a lot of folks think this all just a bunch of crap—excuse my language…

But you don’t, Jane interrupted.

Well… Ed answered cautiously. "I don’t know what I believe for sure, but it’s known that Arliss Nordby had a young attractive woman named Janet who was his business manager and, as the story goes, very good at managing his money and financial affairs. And, she did mysteriously quit and leave town one day without saying goodbye. Arliss Nordby explained it by saying she needed to go tend to the needs of a sick family member and would be back. But she never was. You can read about that part of it in the archives of the Gazette."

Hmm, I see, said Jane, appearing indifferent.

Now, the other part of that whole thing, you know the sex and the baby and everything…that’s just a story some folks tell.

Mr. Hurley, will you take me to see the Nordby Feed and Fertilizer building? Jane smiled, suddenly changing the subject.

Now Jane, with all due respect…

Are you saying you won’t take me there? she interrupted.

Now, now, now, no, no…no, I’m not sayin’ that at all, Ed stammered. Anything you want.

***

The Nordby Feed and Fertilizer building was everything Ed Hurley said it was and maybe a little worse. That day thirty-eight years ago, Jane took at least three dozen photographs of the building, much to Ed Hurley’s consternation. She knew she would want to remember the building exactly as it had been the day she purchased it. As she knew it would, the fact that she was purchasing and renovating what everyone considered a blight on their charming valley community had caught the attention of everyone in Nordby and the surrounding communities within fifty miles.

That included people in Portland, Oregon’s largest city. Even the Portland Journal Review had sent a photographer and reporter out to find out the story behind a young, single woman with enough money to rehab what amounted to a dilapidated old warehouse and turn it into some kind of café. It wasn’t exactly a commonplace activity for young, attractive women in 1967.

Of course, all the publicity fueled wild stories, grand speculation, and overwhelming curiosity about this mysterious Jane Santorini who bought an old relic of a building and started immediately hiring architects and building contractors to make the place inhabitable. For a good long while before and after she opened Java Jane’s, she was the hot topic of conversation throughout Hamilton County.

Jane stood firm, however. She shared her history exactly as far back as the day she arrived in town and not one minute before. But if creating a mystery surrounding herself was some kind of marketing strategy, then it was brilliant.

By the time Jane opened for coffee…and pie…in the spacious, clean, fairly drafty, but warm and inviting old feed store adorned with historical photographs of the people and places of Vision Valley—including a large one of the mysterious Janet prominently placed above the counter—there was hardly a soul who didn’t want to make a pilgrimage to her doorstep.

And they’d been coming ever since.

For thirty-eight years, when anything of any significance happened within a ninety-minute Sunday morning pickup drive from Nordby, no one went home; they went to Jane’s. It had continued that way since 1968.

So it was as normal as coffee with breakfast for everyone to file in to discuss Earl Sheppard’s latest mishap in March of 2005. He was part of the town family, and all of Earl’s mishaps always seemed to change his life in the most profound way. But this time, no one knew just yet how much it would affect theirs, too.

Chapter 1: 2005. The Problem of Earl

His hand was bleedin’ like a slaughterhouse pig.

JAVA JANE’S WAS abuzz.

Dangdest thing I ever heard of…and I’ve heard and seen a lot in my day, said Logan Cartwright, owner of the largest John Deere dealership in Hamilton County and one of Jane’s most loyal customers. You couldn’t a bought worse luck out of a catalog…Jesus! I hear he was just tryin’ to cook some damn hot dogs.

Hey Janey, he said to the distinguished, graying, sixty-eight-year old woman standing behind the counter, no onions for me. They give me gas.

Jane Santorini, known by everyone in Nordby as simply Jane or Janey, frowned as she slid the plate over to Logan with the roast beef, tomato, bacon, lettuce, pepperoncini, olive, and picante sauce sandwich known on the menu as Death-Do-You-Part.

"You say that every time, Logan. We haven’t put onions on your food for fifteen years. Everything gives you gas, so