I glanced at the Caller ID. “It’s Evian,” I said.
Jake shrugged, annoyed. I didn’t answer the phone. The couple on the television looked at a modern Croatian house on the outskirts of town and a historic one near a bustling plaza. Neither house had enough closet space. Jake said, “Go on, listen to the message.”
I picked up my phone. There was no message. The couple on the television looked at a third house, situated on a hilltop with a fabulous view and totally enough closet space but kind of far away from restaurants.
I held my phone like a grenade. I bit my lip. After the commercial break, the couple chose the hilltop home. They were well on their way to a bright future in their new home, Zagreb! Three months later, the couple had furnished the living room and filled the closets. They chopped vegetables side by side and toasted their fabulous view. The credits rolled.
“I don’t know why I love that show, but I love that show,” I said.
“I prefer Pawn Stars,” said Jake.
“I know,” I said.
Jake stood and stretched. “I’m going to hit the hay,” he said. “The Bon Appétit reporter arrives tomorrow.” I smiled. A profile in Bon Appétit was thrilling.
“I’m so proud of you,” I said.
“You’re in the story, too,” said Jake.
“Really?” I said.
“I am pretty happy,” said Jake. “I mean, holy shit, Bon Appétit!”
“I know,” I said. Jake kissed my forehead and headed into the bedroom. I tried to read an old New Yorker but couldn’t seem to focus. I cared about jalapeño peppers, but not enough to read a ten-page treatise. I read that issue’s short story, “Robbers and Lightning,” which was translated from Korean and left me confused. I went out back, but there were no lights on at Beau and Camilla’s. I felt sorry about Evian, not sure if I should call her back or not. Finally I sent a text: Evian, I saw you called. Hope all is well?
A few seconds later, she wrote: I’m OK. Thanks for caring haha.
I wondered what “haha” meant in this situation. I was still new to text messaging, baffled by winky emoticons and weird phonetic spellings of sounds. Did “haha” mean she was feeling happy, or was she commenting ironically on the fact that I wasn’t actually caring enough? Was she saying, Thanks for caring, then adding a giggle, or was she saying, Thanks for “caring,” and adding a derisive snort?
Jake was right: I wanted to love someone, but Evian wasn’t the one I should love. I was sorry for her, but couldn’t figure out how I fit into this messy mosaic. I went outside, lay on the lawn, and watched an enormous number of bugs swarming around a streetlamp. A siren wailed. I went back inside and finished reading the article about jalapeños.
23
Carla
ERNESTO FOUND US huddled on the boxcar and explained that we should move to a safer location. Boxcars are tall, he said, so we could see la migra coming, but they offered little to hold on to. As the train lurched from side to side, gaining speed, the cars sometimes smashed into each other, jarring my head back on my neck. I could see why we needed another perch. People cowered under cars, on ledges only a foot wide, between the axles, on top of round compressors. “Inside the boxcar seems smart,” said Ernesto, “but if they close the door, you die of heat. I’ve seen it.”
Weak and very tired, we followed Ernesto to the top of a hopper, clutching the thin bar along the edge as tightly as we were able with our numb fingers.
The train was moving quickly now. I shouted with fear and excitement, crammed next to men who smelled of sweat, looking out over a sea of treetops. We were on our way! Then, as quickly as the wave of exhilaration had come, it dissipated, leaving me limp. Still, I clasped the rail with one hand and the waistband of my brother’s pants with the other. I knew what would happen if I weakened my hold.
As the train rumbled through the night, some played cards and some talked. Some smoked, and some watched the wide sky. If you slept, you put yourself at risk. Ernesto showed us how to attach our belts to the edge so we would not fall. Through the hour, we rode, tree branches whistling overhead. We watched for police (they approached at many stations, raiding the trains), and we watched for gangs, who climbed aboard to rob us. The wind reached underneath my hair to touch my scalp. Junior fell asleep; I kept my hand on him.
I was half asleep when I heard the shouting. I sat up in the dark to see a group of robbers in hooded sweatshirts, showing guns. They yelled, “Give us money! Give us everything!” I heard an awful cry and saw a man fall, pushed off the top of the train. He hit the ground with his hands at his temples. The train kept moving.
I had no money; I bent down, hoping not to be seen. I felt Ernesto’s body on one side of me, immobile. When I cut my eyes to his face, his gaze locked with mine. I could see he was scared. I clasped my brother’s pants tightly.
The robbers came closer. I heard the sound of metal hitting bone as they slammed a gun into a man’s head. I heard sobbing. And then a robber’s legs were in front of me, filthy denim an inch from my nose. A hand grabbed my chin and lifted my face heavenward. I stared into the face of an evil man. His eyes were deep gray, ice: an animal’s eyes. “Beautiful,” he said. I tried to breathe slowly, quietly. Tears ran down my cheeks.
“Lie down,” the man said. I shook my head, pulled it from his grasp. He tore some of my hair from my scalp; his grip was that tight.
“Please,” I managed.
He pushed me flat and climbed on top of me. I sobbed, and he hit me with his fist, then with his gun. I tasted blood. I could not stop shuddering.
I was surrounded by people. A hundred men, some women, my brother, Ernesto. No one did anything as the man pulled my pants down. No one intervened—not even God—as the man freed himself and entered me, tearing a wound. I bit deep into the meat of my tongue. He raped me. When he was finished, he stood up and spit in my face, calling me a whore. He fired his gun into the sky, and when the train slowed, he jumped off and ran away.
No one said anything as the train rushed forward. Not even my brother touched me.
In this way, I understood I was alone.
24
Alice
VISITING LOCKHART—BBQ CAPITAL of Texas, Jake’s hometown, and site of our over-the-top wedding—was awkward under normal conditions, though I’d finally adjusted to the weird dynamics of holiday gatherings. But barreling into town with a Bon Appétit writer riding shotgun in my Bronco (Jake drove; Pete and I were crammed in the back) made my stomach ache. The taco I’d eaten for breakfast felt like a hot balloon in my gut.
Lainey, the reporter, had spent the night with my husband, watching him tend the fires at Conroe’s and recording his every word. She was sharp-eyed, younger than me, and dressed in flowing layers that would have made me look like a bag lady but on Lainey seemed fashionable.
Lainey smoked Marlboro Reds, which lent her voice a raspy quality. I felt as if we might have been friends had she not been interviewing Jake for an article, thus making it impossible for us to speak normally. Around Lainey, Jake had a bit more of a Texas twang than usual, pausing for a while between sentences as if practicing them first in his head. I tended to say things very quickly and in a high-pitched voice, concluding with “You know?”
The drive to Lockhart took about forty-five minutes. For the first twenty, Jake had been clarifying terms. A “sugar cookie” was the caramelized edge of the meat, a sublime bite of salt and fat. The “bark” was the black crust; Jake wrapped the brisket in butcher paper as soon as it came off the smoker to preserve every inch. And the “smoke ring”—Christ, Jake could talk for an hour about that reddish-pink line, the pit master’s holy grail, a chemical reaction that occurred when the perfect moisture level in the meat was sustained at the perfect (low) temperature.
“So essentially, the meat is basting itself,” said Lainey rapturously. She turned to me. “It’s impossible, how juicy his meat is. It’s … transcendental.” She turned her worshipful gaze back to Jake, who looked pleased. I
was not sure how to respond to this statement.
“Yup,” I managed.
“He just keeps that fire at such a consistent temperature,” Lainey mused. “The collagen and fat break down in the meat, and Jake just watches the fire, moving the wood, gauging the smoke. All night, he keeps the temperature low, letting that wet goodness soak in.…”
“Low and slow,” drawled Jake, “that’s how we do it.” I wondered if, in his imagination, he was the star of some porn project. I saw him peek at his own face in the rearview mirror as he repeated, “Looow and slooow.” He was not an arrogant man; it was actually pretty wonderful to watch him bask in well-deserved attention. God, I loved him.
“His meat sure is moist,” I voiced.
“Like … a dishrag, but that’s not the right word,” Lainey continued. “Like a …”
Jake and I waited, expectant. She was the writer, after all.
“A sponge?” she said questioningly.
“There doesn’t have to be a metaphor,” I said.
“The point is, if the heat’s too high, the brisket wrings out all its water. Hence the need for sauce,” noted Jake. Jake prided himself on not needing any sauce to hide imperfections or dryness.
“But you serve sauce,” said Lainey. “Now, I know your father doesn’t allow sauce,” she said impishly. “But you and your uncle …”
Oh, now she was getting into it, hinting at Jake’s famous family feud. I saw his shoulders tense and his brow furrow, and Lainey must have noticed, for she deftly changed the subject. “We’ll get back into the sauce later,” she said suggestively. Jake loosened, and they chuckled together. I sighed. Lainey hooked her left arm around the seat and angled her microphone toward me, in the back. “What was it like the first time you visited Lockhart, Alice?” she asked.
“It was something,” I said, unsure of how to describe the utter dislocation I’d felt upon arriving in Texas. For one thing, it was hard for me to understand how seriously people took barbecue. In Colorado, we sometimes had sloppy joes (hamburger mixed with a packet of seasoning and served on a white-bread bun), and we grilled hot dogs on occasion, and of course venison or whatever my dad shot. I’m sure the nearby ski town, Telluride, had serious barbecue—they had sushi flown in daily, for God’s sake—but in Ouray we used a Weber grill, some charcoal with lighter fluid, a match, and maybe a bottle of Heinz 57. How different, I’d wondered when I first visited Jake’s family, could “real barbecue” be?
Our first stop in Lockhart had been Jake’s family’s restaurant. Harrison’s BBQ was housed in a brick building located right on the town square. We parked the U-Haul with all our belongings in front of the Caldwell County Courthouse, a looming limestone structure with a four-way clock reaching toward the blue Texas sky, a clock that reminded me of the one in Grand Central Station. Jake climbed out and stretched—we’d stayed in New Orleans the night before, and had been driving for eight hours. He pointed to Raymond’s Barbershop, where he’d had his first haircut. Jake waved to the elderly barber waiting for a customer. We passed the Ruiz Dance Studio. “Never seen that before,” said Jake, peering into the jam-packed room, where a Zumba class was under way, pouring waves of salsa beats into Main Street.
You entered Harrison’s BBQ through a dark doorway, walking down a hall stained black from decades of barbecue smoke. If you peered into a display case on your right (as I had), you’d see pictures of Jake’s family over the generations. The smell of rich smoke grew stronger as you approached the pits, brick behemoths with steel tops and wood fires burning hot, feeding smoke to the meat. Piles of oak lay next to crates of Big Red. (Across the street was an entire lot filled with stacked wood.)
You placed your order, then took the hot meat wrapped in butcher paper into a bright, large room filled with long tables and folding chairs. The place was packed with locals and “barbecue tourists” from 10:00 a.m. until closing, as it had been for decades.
“Alice?” prompted Lainey.
“Oh, Lockhart!” I screeched. “It’s really beautiful there, and I was so happy to meet Jake’s family, they’re just so great, you know?”
My words appeared in my mind in an elegant font: They’re just so great, you know? I grimaced. Lainey looked at me, unblinking. Surely she knew the story of Jake’s family, which was a long and bitter one.
Harrison’s had been established as a grocery store along the Chisholm Trail in 1900 by Jake’s great-great-grandfather Harrison Conroe. It stayed in the family, eventually transforming into a BBQ restaurant. (The grocery still existed but sold mainly Harrison’s caps and T-shirts … and beer to go with the BBQ.)
Over the years, various relatives sold their shares, or weren’t interested in the day-to-day smoking and serving. By the late 1960s, the restaurant was run by Jake’s grandfather. When he died, he left Harrison’s to his wife, with plans that she (in due time) would leave the business to their two sons—Jake’s father, Collin, and his brother, Martin.
But then Jake’s mother, Winifred, entered the picture, and all hell broke loose.
When he was in his late twenties, Jake’s uncle, Martin, met an actual beauty queen (Miss Baytown, 1968) while on a beach vacation. Smitten, he asked her to marry him and brought her home to meet the family. But when the beautiful brunette met Jake’s father at her own engagement party, she fell in love with him and they eloped to San Antonio that very night. Collin was back at work on Monday with a wedding ring and a stunned smile, and the story goes that when he walked in the door, Martin took a hot brisket right off the rack and threw it at Collin, knocking him flat.
Martin never forgave Jake’s father for stealing Winifred. Martin and Collin’s mother, Nanette, declared that Winifred was “bad news from Baytown,” and sold Harrison’s BBQ to the bank, giving half the money to Martin, who bought a giant building on the outskirts of town and opened a competing BBQ restaurant, the Lone Wolf. There was a front-page news story on the day Martin dragged a tub of hot, historic coals from Harrison’s BBQ down Main Street to fill the state-of-the-art pits at the Lone Wolf. Martin took out advertisements and bought billboards, hired the pit master away from Collin, and built a BBQ empire that eclipsed Harrison’s completely.
Then Martin’s son, Jeremy, had opened Lone Wolf franchises in Las Vegas, JFK Airport, and Dubai, and we had opened Conroe’s Austin. As the barbecue editor of Texas Meats and Sides had noted, “Were it not for family hatred, there would only be one Harrison’s BBQ, on Lockhart’s town square.”
“So you have a close relationship with Jake’s family?” said Lainey innocently. “And Jake’s uncle, Martin … you hang out with him?”
“Yes, absolutely,” I said.
“So you all spend time together?” said Lainey. “Like, when was the last time you were all in the same place?” Lainey was good. Her face impassive, she watched me and waited. I could see Jake’s hands tightening on the wheel.
In truth, I had a complicated relationship with Jake’s parents. His father lifted weights, jogged every morning, and drank a bit too much. Collin was comfortable with his small-town fame, both as a former football star and as a current restaurateur. This is not to say he didn’t work hard—smoking meat is backbreaking, and Collin had been tending the fires since he was a kid. Though he had a staff now, he was still usually at Harrison’s at midnight to put the meat in the pits, his hands red with spices, his face flush with his first few beers of the night.
When I had first met Jake’s glamorous mother, Winifred, I had adored her completely, enthralled as only a motherless girl could be. She seemed a character out of a movie, with her subtle makeup and the long hair she set each night in curlers. She knew how to hunt and fly-fish and throw large dinner parties on a dime, inviting local bigwigs and her manicurist to the same fête, building a bonfire in the backyard herself, then emerging in vintage couture to stand by the flames holding a cocktail (in one of her highball glasses painted with safari animals—she and Collin had celebrated their thirtieth anniversary with a trip to Ke
nya) and tossing her tresses over her shoulder as she laughed.
Jake was her only child, and she seemed skeptical of me, but my blind adoration of her must have been appealing. She planned and executed a gorgeous wedding in their backyard, charming all my relatives and giving a heartfelt toast to our happiness.
As it turned out, however, there were many things that were not discussed in Jake’s family. The restaurant was bankrupt, for one thing, and Collin was too proud to ask his increasingly rich brother for help. Jake had not told his parents that I was infertile, or that I had been sick at all. These issues had come up during a terrible dinner I had not attended: Jake had gone to his parents to ask them for money for an adoption. They were stunned at my infertility, and he was saddened by their disastrous financial state. Jake came home to Austin and lay next to me in bed, telling me about the whole night in excruciating detail (the crab fondue, the tears, the histrionic way his mother had said she’d “robbed him of grandchildren” and thrown herself across the settee).
In the end, Jake had called his uncle Martin, who had written a check and told Jake to use the money to get a white baby. “You think you can handle another-race child,” said Martin, who had left his long-suffering white wife for Celeste, a young Hispanic waitress at Lone Wolf. “But I’m helping you in the end, and that’s the truth.”
Were we equipped to raise a nonwhite baby? One issue, obviously, would be bigoted relatives like Martin. (We’d opened a file with a local agency and checked the box confirming we wanted a healthy baby of any color.)
I believed in my heart I would be a great mom, not perfect, but as good as I could possibly be. I worked hard and wanted to share my love, to be a part of something bigger than me. I remembered playing with my Raggedy Ann at age four, feeding her, swaddling her, holding her until she fell apart. I’d be a mother like my mom. Just there—quiet, kind, supportive. Like a warm bed beneath someone, a warm Barcalounger who smelled good. A Barcalounger who made snacks and brought them to your room, not interrupting your play date, just leaving buttered popcorn in a bowl by the door.
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