Kitchens of the Great Midwest

by J. Ryan Stradal

  “The RA said it’s OK, after you locked me out of my bathroom.”

  Braque dropped her bag on the floor. “I have so many problems with that statement, I don’t know where to begin. For starters, Katelyn, you’re rich. Put her in a hotel.” This was true; her dad was a corporate lawyer in Minnesota and they lived on a lake in Orono, which were facts Katelyn seemed proud of when boys were around.

  “I’m not rich. My family is relatively successful, but I am not personally financially capable of buying hotel rooms for my guests.”

  “Well, maybe she can spring for it herself. It’s what adults do.”

  “You’re just being selfish because you’re being inconvenienced. You can’t stand one tiny little inconvenience in your life, ever.”

  “This isn’t tiny,” Braque said, standing in the open doorway. She was running late, which meant that she was not going to get to class as early as she usually did. “You’re trying to kick me out of my bed during finals week. How about I kick you out of your bed?”

  “You already owe me four nights in here alone for the four nights I had to sleep outside in the hall because you were boning some dude in here.”

  “To be continued,” Braque said, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind her. The entitled little twat kind of had a point. But whatever her past grievances, however, there was absolutely no reason Katelyn’s sister couldn’t stay in a hotel during finals week. And who visits during finals week anyway? The sisters of rich girls who don’t give a shit about their grades, because they’ll never have to worry about money in their entire lives.

  Northwestern’s roommate assignment policy was sadistic: Incoming first-year students on financial aid were always paired with someone not on financial aid, and it only served to teach Braque how cheap rich people were. Katelyn went to Vail over spring break and she didn’t even ski, but then she came back a week later and used all of Braque’s Seventh Generation detergent without asking. And now she was giving away Braque’s bed like it was hers to give. Fuck these rich kids in the face.

  12:50 P.M.

  To Braque, both the Micro 1 and U.S. History discussion groups were an ambient fog of vaguely familiar nouns. She could concentrate on only about every fifth word. Walking out of Kresge Hall, she felt even worse than before.

  Braque sort of didn’t want to turn her damn phone back on after the weird thing that happened earlier. But if her cousin Eva had actually run away from home, which seemed likely, Braque knew she might get a call from her—especially if she wasn’t with Randy.

  She had one text message and two missed calls. The voice mails were from Mom; she’d endure them while walking to the Stucco Palace to have lunch with her teammates.

  The text was from Patricia: hey BD, every1 here supports & luvs u. C U soon <3

  She thought about texting back something smart-ass like tell everyone to think of me when they rub one out, or something equally profane and Braque-ish, like she normally would when confronted with sincere sentiment, but this time, she just went with: thx.

  12:59 P.M.

  After missing both her morning workout and her first lunch, Braque felt her blood sugar falling off a goddamn cliff, and she could smell the turkey grilling even half a block from the Stucco Palace. Ann Richards—their six-foot-three starting pitcher from Texas, no relation to the former governor—opened the door. “Pony” by Ginuwine was playing on their stereo, and Ann instantly started dancing alone on the hardwood floor as Braque followed her inside.

  “Come on, B.D.!” Ann said, as Maya Cromartie, their junior center fielder, joined Ann in the living room. The best players on the team lived in the Palace, and it had been that way as long as anyone could remember. Braque would be living there now if Northwestern didn’t have that dumb rule that first-years had to live on campus.

  “I can’t, I’ve been sick all day,” Braque said. She waved at first baseman Tangela Bass, who was typing on her laptop with headphones on, and walked into the kitchen to put her arm around Patricia, who was standing over the stovetop, sprinkling a tiny pinch of pungent diced garlic onto the almost-done turkey patties.

  “So, what’s the latest?” Patricia asked.

  “I don’t even know where to start,” Braque said. “But I made up my mind. I wanna get rid of this thing.”

  Patricia put her arm around her younger friend. “You’re a hundred percent sure?”

  Braque nodded.

  “Eat something,” Patricia said, and handed Braque a plate and lifted the lid over a steamer basket full of broccoli and carrots. The fresh garlic on the turkey burger smelled to Braque like the most amazing garlic in world history, and at the table, Maya Cromartie was pouring habanero sauce over all of it as if it were gravy on mashed potatoes.

  Braque winced just watching this perverse offense to the sanctity of a healthy lunch. “Do you hate the taste of food all of a sudden?” she asked.

  “We’re going to the Hell Night tonight,” Maya said. “Gotta prime myself.”

  It sounded to Braque like a stupid frat theme party, but no one in the Stucco Palace, to Braque’s knowledge, had ever been in a fraternity house in their lives. “Explain,” she said.

  “It’s at The Truth down in Wrigleyville. They have a Hell Night where they put ghost chili into everything. We are all over that shit this year.”

  Ann Richards twirled into the dining room and grabbed Braque by the shoulders. “Are you coming? You should totally come!”

  “You gotta sign a waiver just to order the food,” Maya said. “People had to go to the hospital last time.”

  “It sounds awful,” Braque said, taking another bite of her plain brown rice. “Besides, I got a French oral final at nine. While I’m standing there trying to remember verb conjugations, I don’t want my sphincter to feel like a ditch fire.”

  “I heard spicy food can cause a miscarriage,” Patricia whispered to her. “Sure’s cheaper than the alternative.”

  “Nope,” Braque said. “I want some dude’s hairy knuckles up inside me, ripping that thing out for real.” She looked over her silent teammates. “Anyone know a cheap clinic off the Red Line?”

  1:26 P.M.

  As she walked down Noyes toward campus, past the giant chirping trees and sturdy hundred-year-old homes full of twenty-year-olds, the sky was the bright, eye-stabbing silver that she hated on game days. The beautiful morning had evolved into a classic midwestern scorcher and there was no relief from any incoming low-pressure front from Minnesota. She felt that stupid unborn thing turning around in her belly, or she thought she did. Would it get heatstroke if she did?

  Oh, fuck that, though. There was no easy way out of this. Ann Richards knew a clinic that charged $445 for a medical abortion done prior to nine weeks of pregnancy; of course, Braque’s blood type was O Rh negative, so she’d also need to spend an extra $65 for Rho-Gam. Problem was, even if she totally scrapped her diet and regimen for the next two weeks, which she was not doing, she still wouldn’t have 510 bucks. She would get some stupid evening restaurant job in downtown Evanston and work however many days in a row she needed to to make the cash. She’d just crash on the couch of the Stucco Palace until then. There was no way she’d take this fetus home to Iowa. If her mom found out, that’d be the end of everything.

  • • •

  In the lobby of Chapin Hall, twenty people were clustered around the ping-pong table like ants on a wet Dorito; the finals week Beer Pong Classic was in full swing. The kids inside acknowledged her, but no one invited her to play. Not that she would’ve. She hated beer, even so-called good beer, and the prospect of drinking warm Keystone Light with a dirty ping-pong ball floating in it had about as much appeal as eating gum off the floor of a bus. But why didn’t they at least ask? Buncha space dockers.

  • • •

  The door to her room was ajar, which was weird. As Braque nudged it open with her foot,
her roommate stared at Braque from her bed, eyes as big as catcher’s mitts, and held a finger to her mouth and said, “Shhhhhhh!” as she pointed to Braque’s side of the room with her other index finger.

  “You shh, camel-toe,” Braque said, because Katelyn did have serious camel toe in those dumb high-waisted shorts. Then she saw what Katelyn was pointing at.

  Braque’s cousin Eva, eight years younger but taller than Braque, was curled up, sleeping on Braque’s bed, wearing black jeans and the Bikini Kill shirt that Braque had just bought her for her birthday.

  1:35 P.M.

  Katelyn stood in the hallway, her hands on her hips, enjoying the hell out of the moment. “So I see how it is,” she said. “Your cousin can visit during finals week but my sister can’t.”

  “I didn’t even know she was coming here,” Braque said.

  “Maybe you should check your e-mail. The poor girl takes the bus all the way from Iowa and you’re not even here to let her into the building. Do you know who let her in? I let her in. That’s the kind of person I am.”

  “No it isn’t,” Braque said.

  “I don’t suppose she came out with enough money for a hotel room, did she?”

  “She’s ten. No, eleven. So no, let’s assume she didn’t.”

  “Well, then, if she gets to stay here, then Elodie does for sure.”

  “Look, I’ll talk to her. It’ll be one night, tops. And maybe not even.”

  “That’s not what she said.”

  A wet ping-pong ball rolled down the hall toward them. A guy in horn-rimmed glasses and a red pearl-snap shirt ran after it, but he stopped when he saw the women talking. “Oh hey, Katelyn,” the guy said. Braque recognized him; it was Brian something, or maybe Brady something. He appeared to be staring at Katelyn’s camel toe.

  “Is this your game ball?” Braque asked, walking over to the wet ping-pong ball and crushing it under her right foot.

  “Fuck you!” the guy said. He looked past them, took an unsteady step back, quickly said, “No, not you! Sorry!” and scrambled off.

  Braque looked in the direction of the guy’s apology. Eva was standing in their doorway, watching the guy dash down the hall as he complained to his buddies about the bitch who had busted their ball.

  “I’ve heard worse,” Eva said.

  Braque walked over and hugged her. “You know you’re in deep crap, right?”

  “Yeah, I don’t care,” Eva said. “Let ’em sweat it out for a few days.”

  “See?” Katelyn said. “A few days?”

  “We’re going on a walk,” Braque said, leading Eva down the hall. “Now.”

  The beer pong game went silent as the cousins walked through the lobby.

  1:42 P.M.

  Behind Chapin Hall was the official campus rehearsal and practice space building for music students. Everyone called it the Beehive, because during school, the building emitted an atonal assemblage of strings, horns, and keys through its windows; Braque guessed that some imaginative people once likened it to the pleasant buzzing of insects. But to her the racket sounded like ass, so she called it the Ass Clown Palace.

  Today the milieu of the Ass Clown Palace was ideal for drowning out their conversation so none of the nosy dorks in her dorm would get the dirt on her. She and Eva sat in the grass on the south side of the building, and in her head, Braque tried to rationalize getting only forty-five to sixty minutes of study time today for tomorrow’s French oral final. She was already getting an A in French; the oral final was only 20 percent of the grade, and she could probably ace it with minimal prep. The U.S. History one was going to be much harder because it was 50 percent of the grade and she had to memorize a bunch of shit for it.

  She tried to put it out of her mind as she watched her tall cousin uncurl on the grass, staring into the punishing white sky like she was watching a movie. What a fascinating creature. How were they even related?

  “Shirt looks great on you,” Braque said.

  “Thanks,” Eva said. “What’s Bikini Kill?”

  “A punk band from Olympia, Washington, you’d like them. Our head coach listens to them.”

  “Cool. And thank you.”

  “So when did you get here?” Braque asked.

  “The Megabus dropped me off at Union Station at 6:50 a.m. I wasn’t sure if you’d be up yet so I took the train up to Ann Sather and had Swedish pancakes with lingonberries.”

  “How did you know about Ann Sather?”

  “I read about it on the Internet and it sounded cool. There’s this other place I want to go to as well but it’s not open yet. Have you ever been to a chili bar called The Truth? Can we go there later?”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. Anyway, look. I love you, and I know you want to piss your mom off, which is fine with me, because I know what she did to your plants,” Braque said. “But this is not a good time for me.”

  “I didn’t know where else to go,” Eva said. “Anyway, you also told me a couple months ago I could come visit you in Chicago sometime when it wasn’t softball season.”

  “Oh yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? Well, you’ve happened to come during finals week. And things are kinda nuts right now. And also, I’m sorry, but I don’t even know how I’m gonna feed you or anything. I got some avocados and organic almond butter and other random stuff, but not a ton of it.”

  “It’s all right. I got a hundred and sixty-eight bucks, I can figure out my own comestibles.”

  “Wow. That’s a chunk of change. Birthday money?”

  “Birthday money and chile sales. And then I won ten bucks from a guy at the bus station.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “He wasn’t eating his jalapeño peppers that came with his sandwich, and I said I’ll eat ’em, and he said I bet you can’t, and I said I bet you ten bucks I can eat ’em all, and I did.” She dug around in her pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill. “See?”

  “Nice. Have you done that before?”

  “No, but I could. I can eat things way hotter than jalapeños.”

  “For money?” Braque asked.

  1:56 P.M.

  Happily, Katelyn was out of the dorm room, off doing whatever the hell she did on campus, so Braque could type her computer passwords for Eva without worrying about her cooze of a roommate getting them. Eva was looking around the room as she waited, taking in the décor on Katelyn’s side of the room. It was the usual college girl bullshit: clever and inspirational quotes pasted onto pastel-color strips of construction paper and taped to the wall, along with a framed poster of Robert Doisneau’s Le Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville that Braque had seen in no fewer than three other dorm rooms.

  “Dormitories are even cooler than I thought they would be,” Eva said.

  “They’re like a prison, but the sex is worse,” Braque said.

  “How come you don’t have anything like this on your side of the room?” Eva asked. Braque did indeed have something on her side of the room—that year’s Big Ten softball schedule.

  “Because I don’t want my room to look like a Hallmark store, that’s why,” Braque said.

  Eva walked over and looked at one of the cutout quotes taped on Katelyn’s side. “‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing—John F. Kennedy,’” she read.

  “Total bullcrap,” Braque said, getting up from her computer and turning the chair around for Eva. “OK, I gotta study for a final and go to a class. Go ahead and look up a bunch of places where you can work the crowd.”

  “Do you have Netscape?” Eva asked.

  “Netscape is for dorks. Use Google. Maybe search for ‘spicy food Chicago,’ or something. Just log out of everything when you’re done. I’ll be back around four.”

  “OK,” Eva said, smiling at her older cousin.

  Braque gave the back of Eva’s head a l
ight slap and dashed out. She decided to go to the main library, a giant concrete thing built on Lake Michigan shoreline marshland, which—because they didn’t account for the weight of the books inside—was sinking into the ground by a few inches every year. Too bad it had the best study alcoves outside the business school.

  1:59 P.M.

  Walking through South Campus, down a chalked-up sidewalk that hyped campus a cappella groups and a stupid Battle of the Bands, she passed the Rock, a five-foot boulder on a patch of dirt boxed in by a hedge and a foot-high retaining wall. The Rock was one of those shitty campus traditions, repainted every couple of days by some student special interest group. Braque liked this school for its softball team and its academics, but hated typical college stuff like this. She wouldn’t have given it a second thought today either, but except for what the Rock said: SWET PEPER JELY.

  • • •

  Braque stared at it, looked away, and stared again. This time the message wasn’t going anywhere. She turned her head and looked back again, and there it was, still. SWET PEPER JELY.

  Was it actually there, this time?

  She waved at a woman passing by—a hunched-over, frumpy English-major type with thick glasses. Braque demanded that the woman tell her what was on the Rock, which freaked the frumpy chick out; she instantly assumed that it was a hidden-camera joke set up to make her look stupid, and scuttled away. How did people like this get through life, viewing the world as something that was constantly out to get them? What was in it for them to think like that?

  Braque stopped a too-handsome jock-looking guy wearing a pink polo shirt and board shorts. These confident types were usually straightforward in a pinch. He sighed, like he was disappointed to be stopped on the street by a woman who wasn’t his type, but at least he was helpful.

  “Sweet Puma Belly,” Polo Shirt said.

  Braque looked again. It did indeed say SWEET PUMA BELLY.

  “What the fuck is that?” Braque asked.

  “It’s a jam rock band. They’re in the Battle of the Bands,” Polo Shirt said, walking away. Now she noticed that the phrase BATTLE OF THE BANDS was painted on the front of the short retaining wall. “Get some glasses, babe.”