Meg and Jo

by Virginia Kantra

  “I can learn,” I said. “I want to learn.”

  I had always been a good student, having figured out early on that education was my ticket out of Bunyan. Always knowing there would be no money for college—not the kind of school I dreamed of attending—beyond what I earned or borrowed myself.

  “Technique, sure.” Chef slipped his feet into handmade clogs. “You have promise, March. You don’t wait for everything to be handed to you. You show up on time, you pay attention to detail, your knife skills are improving. But the good cooks, the great chefs, they have passion, you understand? Dedication.”

  Another nod. Because I did understand. I watched the other members of the kitchen team stumble in day after day, shift after shift, underpaid, overworked, sleep-deprived, sick, or hungover. Cooks, driven to cook the way writers are driven to write.

  “I like to cook,” I said. Not to mention that there were way more job opportunities for inexperienced prep cooks than downsized journalists in New York.

  Chef gave me a look, skewer bright and sharp, over his shoulder. “Why are we here, March?”

  Not like, here, in his office. Here at Gusto. “To feed people?” I ventured.

  “We feed them, yes. So simple. We take care of them, yeah? So basic. Service,” Chef said, giving the word its French pronunciation. He reached for his knife kit, gearing himself for service like a knight preparing for a tourney. “Everything is for the guest. This is our calling. To be a chef, you must love to cook. You must live to cook, yeah?”

  “Yes, Chef.”

  I couldn’t match his dedication to service. The way he poured out himself in every dish, on every plate, night after night, for every diner who came to his table . . . That wasn’t me. But I admired it—I admired him—so much. His integrity as a chef was one of the things that had drawn me to his kitchen, one of the reasons I liked talking about food, writing about food, sharing some of his enthusiasm, his passion.

  Not that I could tell him that. My blog was an anonymous insider’s view of the city’s food scene. Confessing I was a food writer would put me on the other side of a professional divide. A critic, not a cook. No longer one of Us, but one of Them.

  “Look, I know it’s not the same,” I said. “But my sister’s in North Carolina dealing with everything herself, and she’s got kids, twins, two and a half years old. And there are a ton of people invited for Thanksgiving dinner. I guess I thought . . .” That he would take my part against his sous, his second? I must have been out of my mind. “I thought if I went home, I could at least help cook.”

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  “You gave Frank the weekend off when his sons came to visit,” I said. “And Constanza . . . When her sitter quit, you let her bring Tina into work for almost a week.”

  “Where in North Carolina?”

  “Um. Bunyan.” Which nobody in New York had ever heard of. “It’s on the Cape Fear River. Near Fort Bragg? My dad was stationed there.”

  “Yes, I know. I also have family there,” Chef said.

  “Your dad, right?” I felt a prickle of hope. We were both military brats. Would that make a difference? Would he let me go?

  “My sons. Bryan and Alec.”

  “Oh.” His bio hadn’t mentioned children.

  “They live with their mother. She’s a support officer with the 82nd Airborne.”

  Or an ex-wife, either.

  “It’s not easy for families,” I ventured. “Military life, I mean.”

  “Neither is restaurant life,” Chef said.

  Right. “You must live to cook,” he’d said. No wonder he was divorced.

  A shadow appeared in the doorway. Ray, with the reservation book.

  “Thanks.” Chef took the book and flipped it open, scanning the day’s entries.

  I stood there, ignored. Dismissed?

  “The Times is coming at nine,” he said to Ray. “Move the ten-top to table twelve. VIPs in Jackie’s station.”

  “Yes, Chef.”

  “And call Aaron, see if he wants to work Thanksgiving. March, here, is out.”

  “Out?” Ray repeated.

  I held my breath. Out?

  “On vacation,” Chef clarified. “Aaron can cover her shifts.”

  Ray’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “Yes, Chef.”

  “Thank you,” I said after Ray left the office.

  “You’ll be back for Saturday service.”

  “Yes, Chef. I can be back by Friday, if you need me.” If I had to be.

  Chef regarded me, a rueful twist to his mouth. “Ray won’t be easy on you when you get back.”

  “That’s okay. It’s worth it,” I said.

  “Scheduling the staff is his responsibility. I will not intervene again. There would be . . .”

  Gossip. Resentment. Charges of favoritism.

  “Consequences,” he said.

  Good word.

  He was my boss. He was eight, maybe ten years older than me. The restaurant was a rude, crude, testosterone-fueled hierarchy. If Chef showed me any special treatment, everybody in the kitchen would talk. Hell, they were probably talking right now, wondering what I was doing in here with him.

  But Chef had always seemed above the usual bed-hopping and partner-swapping that went on between the front and back of house. Despite the notorious sexism I’d blogged about in restaurant kitchens, he treated all the women who worked under him—the runners; the bakers; Constanza, our garde-manger—with the same exacting professionalism he showed the men.

  “I understand. Thanks for giving me the time off.” Go, go, my brain urged. My feet didn’t move. “Why did you?”

  He settled on the edge of his desk, arms crossed, legs spread. “If I had said no, you must stay, would you have quit?”

  “I . . .” My heart beat faster. I should have left when I had the chance. What if I told the truth and he changed his mind? On the other hand, I’d done nothing but lie since he hired me. Maybe I owed him a little honesty. “Yes.”

  His eyes crinkled in another near-smile. “And that’s why I’m letting you go. I don’t want to lose a good prep cook.”

  I beamed back, relieved. “Yes, Chef. Thank you, Chef.” He picked up one of the menus on his desk. Definitely my cue to leave. And yet, faced with the loss of his attention, I said, “How did you know it’s the Times?”

  He looked up, his brow wrinkling.

  I tried again. “The nine o’clock reservation? I thought the Times reviewers were anonymous.”

  He grunted. “He’s been in before.”

  “Oh. Well. Congratulations. I mean . . . The New York Times. That’s a big deal.”

  “Fucking critics.” Chef shook his head. “He’ll order the fish. They always do.”

  I gaped at him.

  “It’s all right,” he said, misunderstanding my reaction. “At least he’s not an idiot hipster food blogger. Just make sure you prep those sardines for the appetizer properly.”

  Time to get while the getting was good. “What have you got against bloggers?” I asked.

  “Parasites,” he answered promptly. “They feed on the work of others.”

  “You don’t write about something unless you love it.”

  He looked amused. Like he couldn’t believe I was still standing there arguing with him. “They don’t do it for love. They do it for profit.”

  “The restaurants benefit, too, you know. From the publicity.”

  “Fine. It’s a transactional relationship.”

  “You mean, like prostitution?” I asked dryly.

  The amusement spread. “It has its place. But it’s not the real thing, yeah?”

  I opened my mouth. This was the perfect opportunity for me to Tell All. To launch into an impassioned defense of the role of food bloggers in guiding the hungry,
in creating the buzz that could make a deserving restaurant.

  And yet . . .

  He thought I had promise. He was letting me go home for Thanksgiving. Did I really want to see myself change in his eyes to an idiot hipster food blogger?

  His brow rose at my continued silence.

  Right. “I, um. I should get back to work,” I said. “On the, um . . .”

  “Sardines.”

  “Yeah. I mean, yes, Chef,” I said, and escaped, my face burning.

  CHAPTER 4

  Meg

  After thirty-six hours in the hospital being poked and prodded, x-rayed and imaged, our mother declared herself ready to go home, diagnosis or no diagnosis.

  Momma came from country stock, with no time for doctors or what her mother called fuss. Granny could butcher a hog and handle a fishing pole or a shotgun as well as Granddaddy. Every now and then for Sunday dinner, our grandmother would kill one of the chickens pecking in the yard, making Beth cry and Amy threaten to turn vegetarian. Jo and I would watch, squeamish and impressed, as she prepped the chicken for the pot, fingers and feathers flying.

  “Tough old bird,” Jo would say, meaning Granny as much as the hen, and we’d sputter with laughter.

  I’d never seen our own mother kill anything larger than a copperhead, whacking off its head with a shovel. But she had definitely inherited her mother’s toughness.

  She couldn’t drive on pain meds. So Monday morning, after dropping off the twins at preschool, I went to the hospital to fetch her.

  The discharge—against doctors’ orders—took forever. I had to call John to pick up the twins.

  “I’m fine,” Momma said as I helped her up the steps into the house. “Go home to your family.”

  “Let me just pick up your prescriptions first,” I said.

  I did her grocery shopping while I was out—Thanksgiving was only three days away—and then milked the goats. I’d never been a farm girl like Beth or a tomboy like Jo. But I was our mother’s daughter. All her life, Abby March had done for others, the perfect pastor’s wife, the perfect officer’s wife, the perfect example. The least I could do was keep things running until she was back on her feet.

  When I got home, the twins rushed to greet me the way they usually ran to John, Daisy’s bare feet thumping (where were her socks?), DJ dragging Blankie. “Mommy, Mommy! Momma’s home!” I squeezed them tight, inhaling the salty sweet smell of their necks, absorbing the comfort of their warm, wriggly little bodies. John smiled at me over their heads. A rush of love swept over me for him, for them, for this life we’d made together.

  “Thanks for watching the kids this afternoon.”

  “We had fun,” John said, a trifle smugly. “I took them to the playground.”

  “I bet they loved that.”

  I could hear the television blaring from the family room. Frozen. I could sing that soundtrack in my sleep. I settled the twins in front of their movie, adjusting the volume down. Maybe they were getting too much screen time, but at least I wasn’t damaging their ears.

  “How’s your mom?” John asked when I returned.

  “She says she’s fine. Better.”

  “Good.”

  I swallowed hard. “They’re still not sure what’s wrong with her. It could be anything.” Infection. Inflammation. Cancer.

  “They gave her something, though, right?”

  I nodded. “Some antibiotic. And Vicodin, for the pain.” I’d lined the bottles up on the windowsill, with a pencil and paper so she could keep track of her pill schedule, just like she used to do with our meds when we were little.

  “The good stuff.”

  “I’m worried about her,” I confessed. “I almost wish she’d stayed in the hospital. Who’s going to take care of her at home?”

  “Your father?”

  I gave John a doubtful glance. My father visited wounded and incarcerated soldiers all the time. But Momma was the one who took our temperature and changed our sheets, who brought us ginger ale and soup on a special “sick day” tray. “That’s not really his thing.”

  “So, Beth is coming tomorrow,” John said. “And Jo gets in Wednesday. Let your sisters take some responsibility for once.”

  It wasn’t that he didn’t care, I reminded myself. But my sisters weren’t the ones who found her writhing on the dirty straw. I was. “They don’t know what to do.”

  “They’re college-educated women. They’ll figure it out. Your mother’s laid up, not in a coma. She can tell them if she needs something.”

  Problem solved. Except I didn’t need him to solve my problems. I wanted him to sympathize.

  I caught myself. Don’t fuss. No fussing allowed.

  “You’re right.” I managed a smile. “You must be starving. I’ll get started on dinner.”

  Back when John and I started dating, he’d fixed all his meals from a can. As if he were still nine years old, earnestly heating Dinty Moore stew and chicken noodle soup for himself and his little brother. I’d promised myself that once we got married, my husband would come home to a hot dinner every night. I would cook for him the way Momma cooked for us. The way his own mother, bless her heart, never had the time to do. For the past five years I’d kept that pledge as seriously as our wedding vows. Even when our babies were born (thirty-six hours of labor followed by a C-section, thank you very much), I’d prepared all John’s meals in advance, two whole weeks’ worth of dinners with simple reheating instructions taped to each Tupperware lid. Cooking for John, caring for him in such a basic, intimate way, let him know how much I loved him.

  “No rush,” John said. “I fed the kids on the way home.”

  I took in my first full view of the kitchen. There were the twins’ winter jackets, heaped by the door. Their muddy shoes, half under a chair. Their dirty school bags, smack on the center of the kitchen table, waiting for me to unpack. And there, on the counter, were . . .

  I raised my eyebrows. “Happy Meals?”

  “Chicken nuggets and apple slices. With milk.” He shrugged, a little defensively. “They seemed okay with it.”

  Of course they were okay with it. It was McDonald’s.

  I could hear Elsa in the next room singing “Let It Go.”

  “Sounds like fun,” I said lightly. “Let me get something for you, then.”

  I opened the freezer and found a steak. John’s favorite. I popped it in the microwave to thaw.

  He turned from the fridge, beer in hand. “You want anything?”

  Pizza. A hug. A really large glass of wine. But I didn’t know how to say so without sounding selfish. “I’m good, thanks, honey.”

  No time for baked potatoes. I went back to the freezer for Tater Tots. John tipped back his bottle, watching me, a warm look in his eyes.

  I felt a little flutter of pleasure. Not that I could do anything about it now.

  While the oven preheated, I unzipped the kids’ book bags to retrieve their snack containers. The unmistakable whiff of poop wafted from a knotted grocery bag.

  “Oh, that,” John said. “DJ had an accident at school today.”

  “Thanks. I see that.”

  Gingerly, I untied the bag. There were the sweatpants DJ had worn this morning. His socks. His . . . everything. I took a deep breath—big mistake—and threw it all in the washing machine.

  “Oh, and somebody’s mom wants to know if you can send in three dozen reindeer treats.”

  The microwave beeped. Schools ran on the volunteer power of parents. Of mothers. Momma, with four daughters and a hundred goats to raise, was always baking or making or buying or selling something.

  “Of course.” I set the washer to presoak.

  “I figured that’s what you’d say.” John sipped his beer. “So . . . Treats for reindeers. What is that, like, carrots?”

  I smiled, my mind already
leaping ahead. “Carrot cake, maybe.” Carrot muffins? With powdered sugar instead of icing. Without nuts, obviously. Something kid-friendly that wouldn’t trigger allergies. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  I washed my hands and opened the dishwasher, still loaded with clean dishes. Nothing to worry about now. First we had to get through Thanksgiving. I yanked open a drawer to put the flatware away.

  John shifted out of my way. “The teacher said their class is doing some kind of skit.”

  I nodded. “Next month. They’re singing ‘Jingle Bells.’” We’d been practicing in the car all week. “With reindeer costumes.” The costumes were done, thank goodness, antler headbands and white bibs sewn onto brown sweatshirts. The twins looked adorable.

  John grinned. “I’d like to see that. I told her I’d try to take an early lunch that day, catch the performance.”

  I grabbed another handful from the dishwasher. “That’s great, honey.”

  The teachers loved it when fathers came to the preschool programs.

  John came up behind me. “So it’s a date.”

  “Sure.” I sorted flatware. Spoon, spoon, spoon, fork . . . “I’ll meet you there.”

  He rested a hand on my waist. Nuzzled my neck. His lips were cool from the beer. “You feel great.” His standard opening line for fooling around.

  I dropped a knife. “John,” I said. Amused. Protesting.

  Daisy ran into the kitchen. “Elsa, Mommy. Elsa.”

  I listened to the soundtrack from the family room. “The movie’s over, sweetie. It’s time to go upstairs now.” I stooped for the knife and laid it on the counter. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I promised John.

  He scooped up Daisy. She clung to his shoulders as he pretend-chomped her fingers, making her squeal with delight. DJ ran in, drawn by their noise, jealous of John’s attention.

  “Okay, everybody settle down,” I said mildly. “It’s bedtime.”