by Thomas King
“You don’t cook.”
“That’s right now. But I’ll learn. After all, the best cooks in the world are men.”
Latisha didn’t say yes. And she didn’t say no. And she figured it would last a week.
The first week, Benjamin stayed in day care while George ran around Blossom, collecting everything he was going to need to assume his new duties. When Latisha got home that first night, George was in the kitchen setting up a pasta machine.
“What do you think, Country?” he said. “It’s a beauty.”
“We don’t need a pasta machine.”
“There’s nothing like fresh pasta. Look, I got the flour and Sam Molina’s book on pasta.”
“The stuff in the packages is just as good.”
“The stuff in the packages takes twenty minutes to cook. Fresh pasta takes about a minute and it’s healthier.”
Latisha had stood there and watched George screw the clamp onto the kitchen counter. He seemed so happy, so enthusiastic.
“One minute,” he said. “That’s all. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”
By the time Latisha got out of the shower, the kids were all downstairs eating breakfast. Christian was sitting at the table, stretched over a bowl of Cheerios. Benjamin was perched on the edge of the chair; his cereal hadn’t been touched. Elizabeth was in the high chair, slapping at the bowl with her spoon.
“Stop it, Elizabeth,” said Benjamin. “You’re getting me all wet.”
“Yes, I can,” said Elizabeth.
Christian was staring at his bowl as if he had found something interesting floating about among the little O’s.
“Thanks, honey.”
“For what?” said Christian, never taking his eyes off the bowl.
“For getting the kids’ breakfast.”
“I always get the kids’ breakfast.”
“I know, and I appreciate it.”
“Elizabeth is splatting milk all over the place,” said Benjamin.
“It’s okay, honey,” said Latisha.
“Well, she is,” said Benjamin.
“Yes, I can,” said Elizabeth.
“You going to be home late again tonight?” said Christian.
Elizabeth was running the spoon through her hair. One hand was leaning on the edge of the bowl. Latisha watched as the milk and the cereal dribbled over the side, like water over a dam.
“Elizabeth is making a mess, Mummy.”
Latisha grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and rescued the bowl. She willed herself not to squeeze her daughter’s hand too hard. Benjamin’s cereal was still untouched.
“Eat your cereal, honey,” said Latisha. “We have to get going.”
“I’m full. Let Elizabeth eat it.”
“Yes, I can,” said Elizabeth.
The next day George brought home a blender and a heavy-duty mixer. The third day he found a juicer at Woodwards. Toward the end of the first week, whisks, bowls, large wooden spoons, pepper grinders, ravioli molds, bread pans, and matched measuring spoons and cups began appearing. When Latisha came home on Friday, she found an under counter convection oven waiting for her.
“It’ll cook the bread in half the time.”
“What bread?”
“It was on sale, and they gave me a great discount on David Karaway’s cookbook on breads.”
“George, we don’t need any of this stuff.”
“Wait until you smell those loaves coming out of the oven.”
The following week George started his new duties in earnest, and when Latisha arrived home, there was a meal waiting for her.
“You’re late,” George said.
“It looks wonderful.”
“If I’m going to cook, you have to be here on time.”
“What is it?”
It was pasta, and all things considered, it wasn’t bad, though not all the pasta had come through the cutter cleanly. Some sections of the pasta were very good. Other sections were lumped together like knots in a rope.
“You might try making the dough a little drier. It’ll come through the machine cleaner.”
“Come on,” said George. “Is that all you can do, criticize?”
“I’m not criticizing. This is wonderful. It’s really wonderful.”
* * *
Latisha stacked the dishes in the sink. Elizabeth was lying on her stomach on her jacket. Benjamin had hold of one of the arms and was sliding Elizabeth around on the floor.
“Whee!”
“Honey,” said Latisha, trying to knock the edge off her voice, “you’ll get her jacket dirty.”
“But she likes it.”
“I like it,” said Elizabeth.
“I suppose you want me to walk Benjamin to school,” said Christian.
“You always walk Benjamin to school.”
“Sure,” he said, “take me for granted.”
“You always walk me to school,” said Benjamin.
“Then come on, you little drip,” said Christian.
“Mummy, Christian called me a little drip.”
Benjamin leaned back and dragged the jacket around in a quick circle. Elizabeth laughed, lost her balance, and tumbled over backward, hitting her head against the wall.
“Ooops,” said Benjamin, not looking at Latisha. He took Christian’s hand and headed for the door.
Elizabeth picked herself up, rubbed her head, and pushed her lip out. There were tears in her eyes.
“I like it,” she said.
“See,” said Benjamin, “she’s all right. I don’t know what you’re getting upset for. Cheez.”
The next night there was a large pot on the stove. George was standing next to a tray of what looked to be biscuits.
“Biscuits?”
“Croissants.”
Latisha picked up one of the croissants and turned it over. The bottom had a brown, rock-hard coating that glistened in the light. There was the smell of burned onions in the air.
“Looks good,” said Latisha, putting the croissant back on the tray. “What’s in the pot?”
“Spanish ratatouille.”
“Smells good.”
“It’s my own version.”
The croissants were a three-layer affair. The first layer was crusty and somewhat flaky and somewhat resembled a croissant. The middle section was doughy and uncooked. The bottom was ceramic tile.
“Well, that’s one recipe I won’t use again,” said George as he scraped the bottom of the croissant. “I hate it when you can’t count on the recipes being right.”
The ratatouille was better.
“What’s that smell?” said Christian.
“That’s the way it smells,” said George.
“It smells like something’s burned,” said Christian.
“Really, honey,” said Latisha, “that’s the way ratatouille smells.”
That night Christian woke up with stomach cramps. The next day Benjamin had diarrhea.
The next week George left. Just left. There was a long letter that said he was going home to get his life together. To find his roots. To Michigan first. Then to Ohio, where he was born.
“When I find what I’m looking for, I’ll know it.”
It was a long letter, filled with emotion and excitement. He was sorry for leaving, but he planned to be back. In each paragraph, he said he’d be back.
At first Latisha was angry, and she spent the next two weeks at the restaurant burning eggs and banging pans until the rage passed.
Then she discovered that she was pregnant with Elizabeth, and for a while she was numb. Then the letters began arriving.
They were long letters, longer than the first one, but filled with the same enthusiasms and plans and dreams. There were poems, too, all about love and the moon and the stars and the seasons. They came at regular intervals, and for a while Latisha looked forward to them.
Then she began to laugh.
And then
she began to take them to work.
“Listen to this,” she told Rita and Cynthia. “‘I feel my spirit grow each day more clear and powerful.’”
The letters continued to come, and Latisha became bolder and bolder in her readings.
“‘How I yearn for the simplicity of the west and the perfect clarity of sunrise and sunset. I remember you always as my sunrise and know that you will forever be a part of my heaven.’”
And finally they became boring. Just like George. Even the poetry dulled. After Elizabeth was born, Latisha stopped reading them altogether, stuffed them into a brown grocery bag in her closet instead, leaving them to collect like dust in a corner.
Latisha watched Christian and Benjamin walk down the street. Elizabeth stood at the window and waved until they were out of sight.
“Come on, honey,” Latisha said. “Time for school.”
“No way,” said Elizabeth.
“You like school,” said Latisha, forcing her daughter’s arms into the jacket. “You want to see Ms. Alice and Sarah and Daniel and Agnes, don’t you?”
“No way.”
Latisha zipped Elizabeth’s jacket and pulled up the hood.“Are you fooling me? Are you just looking to make trouble?”
Under the hood tied tightly under her chin, Elizabeth was smiling. “Yes, I can,” she said.
Charlie sat in the coffee shop of the Blossom Lodge and watched a mother try to coax her three-year-old into a high chair. The woman was smiling.
“Sit down for Mummy.” The woman laughed, digging her fingers into the backs of her daughter’s knees. “We can’t sit down if we don’t bend our knees.”
In the far corner, three men were signing forms and passing papers back and forth as they ate. Across the room, under the canopy of ferns and green latticework, four old Indians were discussing the menu. One of the Indians was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt. From the back, the Indian reminded Charlie a little of C. B. Cologne.
Or was it Polly Hantos?
“Good morning,” said the server. “Have you decided or would you like a little more time?”
Charlie glanced at the menu. “Maybe a couple of eggs and some toast. Hash browns.”
“You’re not a movie star or something like that, are you?”
Charlie didn’t hear the server at first.
“I mean, you look . . . you know, sort of familiar.”
“No,” said Charlie, trying to work up a smile. “That was probably my father.”
“Oh, wow!” said the server. “You want some coffee?”
Charlie nodded and handed the server the menu. “Is there a pay phone around?”
“Out through the lobby and to your right. You want whole wheat or white?”
The old Indian in the Hawaiian shirt was looking at him, grinning,
As Charlie stood, the Indian said something to the other Indians, and they all looked at him, too.
Barry Zannos? Sally Jo Weyha?
“Hello, Charlie,” said the Indian in the Hawaiian shirt. The other Indians smiled and waved.
As he passed the table, Charlie nodded and smiled back, as if he knew them, and it was only after he was in the lobby that he realized that one of the Indians was wearing a black mask. Definitely Hollywood.
Johnny Cabot?
The line was busy. He checked his watch and tried the number again. Busy.
Of course, the old Indians couldn’t be from Hollywood. Now that he thought about it, it made better sense that they were probably from the reserve, were friends of the family, perhaps even relatives. Uncle Wally from Browning. Auntie Ruth from Brocket. Something like that.
Charlie put the phone on the cradle and walked back into the coffee shop. He’d say hello. Ask how the folks were, and if he was lucky, someone would drop a name and everything would come together.
The table was empty. The old Indians were nowhere to be seen.
“Your food’s up,” said the server.
“The Indians who were sitting here. Do you know where they went?”
“What Indians?”
“They were fairly old. One of them was wearing a mask.”
“No kidding,” said the server. “You want me to keep your breakfast under a heat lamp until you’re ready?”
Charlie went back into the lobby. Nothing. He walked to the plate glass window and looked out. No Indians. Maybe they had gone to the bathroom. Maybe they had gone back to their room. Maybe he would see them later. No big deal.
Charlie stood at the window, thinking about what he was going to say to Alberta, when he noticed, quite by accident, that the car he had rented was missing.
At first, he thought he had forgotten where he had parked it, but as he looked from car to car, he remembered the flat tire and the puddle.
The puddle was still there. The car was not.
Alberta stood in the shower and let the water rise around her calves. It was a trick she had learned at university. Take a quick shower, soap, shampoo. Put the plug in the bathtub. Turn the hot water on until you could hardly manage it. Stand under the spray until the tub filled up. If you did it just right, the bathroom would fill up with warm steam, and you could slide into the water and disappear.
Most times Alberta would close her eyes and dream of having a baby in the tub with her. Of course, the water was too hot for a baby, but that was the nice thing about dreams. The baby would be all wet and slippery and it would slide about on her body. She would wash its head as it nursed, and they would stay there forever. It was generally a short dream. Alberta would conjure up the baby, and just as she got it settled on a breast, she would discover that the baby had somehow turned into Lionel.
Or Charlie.
Sometimes she could block out both men, but even then there was always the sense of impending disaster, of something gone horribly wrong, and she found she could not look at the child in her arms for fear of discovering that it had died or been cooked or had disappeared beneath the water and drowned.
Showers were safer. But today Alberta let the water rise, and she turned off the shower and sat down in the tub and leaned back.
Alberta’s father was a great believer in dreams. As a young man he had gone to the mountains to dream. If he dreamed, he never talked about it, but he liked to tell stories about the coming and going, as if these journeys were fishing trips or hunting trips. Or vacations.
“It’s all forest, right up until you get to the mountains. There’s deer and elk all over the place.”
“What do you do, Dad?”
“Why, hell, you walk. That’s half the doing, the walking.”
“What do you see?”
“Deer and elk. Isn’t that what I said? Sometimes you see a coyote or two.”
“No. I mean, what do you see?”
“The world. You can see the whole world.”
Women didn’t go to the mountains, so Amos told her, and as she got older, her father stopped telling her and her sisters the stories and began taking the boys for trips into the trees.
Alberta asked her mother about the mountains and the dreaming, and her mother shook her head and went back to what she was doing.
“But why can’t women go to the mountains?”
“No reason why they can’t.”
“Dad says they can’t.”
“Your father has his ideas on the subject.
“What if I wanted to go?”
“Pack a lunch,” said her mother. “It’s a long walk.”
This time Alberta didn’t dream at all. Not about the baby. Not about Lionel. Not about Charlie. Not about Amos. She soaked, lay in the tub until her skin bubbled up white and the water ran cold.
Lionel would be at work. There was no rush. She would have a leisurely breakfast, maybe stop by the Dead Dog and see Latisha, and wander over to Bursum’s in the early afternoon. Actually, what she really felt like doing was going back to bed. She felt exhausted, drained, nauseous. As she pulled h
er slip over her head, she went over the plans for the day to see if there was any real reason why she should not go back to bed.
Lionel could wait.
Charlie was in Edmonton.
As she held that thought, she found that she felt better already. Smiling, Alberta closed the curtains, took off her slip, and slid back into bed.
When Alberta was thirteen, the family went across the line to Browning. Just south of Cardston, Amos pulled into the border crossing. The American border guard was a young kid, skinny, a student probably, someone they had hired on for the summer. He stood at the window of the pickup and then walked around the side of the camper, while Alberta’s brothers and sisters pressed their noses against the windows.
“You want to park your truck over there and come inside,” said the kid.
“We’re just on our way to Browning,” said Amos.
“Park it there,” said the kid, and he pointed to a spot along the chain link fence. “And bring everyone in with you.”
The inside of the building was air conditioned. Alberta roamed around the room looking at the brochures in the wood racks, at the magazines on the tables, at the pictures of serious-looking men hanging on the walls. Her father and mother talked to an older man at the front counter.
“Where you folks headed?”
“Browning,” Amos told the man.
“You got any presents for your friends in Browning? You know, cigarettes. Maybe a little something to drink?”
“Nope.”
“You folks Indians, that right?”
“Blackfoot.”
“You aware we got laws that cover certain things . . . for instance, parts of animals.”
Amos shrugged. Alberta’s mother shook her head.
“Certain kinds of feathers. They’re covered, too.”
Amos didn’t say a thing.
“What about feathers?” said the guard, looking past Amos.“What about it, kids? Your parents got any feathers in the truck?”
The older guy and the skinny kid made Amos take everything out of the truck. They unwrapped the dance outfits and laid them on the asphalt.
“Shouldn’t put the outfits down like that,” said Amos. “It isn’t right.”
“Guess we’re the ones to say what’s right and what’s not right,” said the guard. “Isn’t that right?”