“Oh, I don’t think it’s that simple,” Leo said.
“Listen, she did him a favor, not marrying him. He’d never have divorced her and we’d still be dealing with her at Thanksgiving.”
“Jesus. Those weird little tempeh pie appetizers.”
They sipped their drinks, smiling. The truth was, they loved discussing Harry and felt a sort of backhanded pride in his eccentricities and the way he saw new projects where others saw only the same old systems.
For all Harry’s intellectual flexibility, however, he could be unexpectedly fierce once he’d homed in on a goal. When he was about ten, in Little League, Harry had once forced a home run out of what should have been a triple, and he still sometimes displayed the same clenched jaw and narrowed eyes he’d had then, as he rounded third and hurled himself mercilessly and foolishly into the kid at home plate. They’d ended up with bloody faces and elbows, Harry with a swollen cheekbone and a finger’s length of raw skin on the bridge of his nose. Leo had been seventeen, at the game with Britt on orders from their parents, and the two of them had exchanged a glance half of amusement, half of alarm, while next to them their parents had cried out over the dust and blood.
The only other woman in Harry’s life who’d ever seemed serious had been the one before Shelley, a Ph.D. in history whom Harry had lived with in Ann Arbor. Catherine had been reedy and dark-haired, with large eyes in a foxy, elegant face, given to slim-cut pants and striking old jewelry and heathery tweed blazers. From behind she had looked like an English schoolboy in need of a haircut. Catherine was almost freakishly brilliant but too polite to flaunt it; they understood how meteoric her career track was only when Harry mentioned that she was deciding between jobs at Oxford and Harvard. It turned out she’d wanted to set up her new life alone, however (she chose Oxford), leaving Harry bereft, in possession of a collection of arcane books he no longer wanted to own and a cat soon revealed to have feline leukemia. Not long after the cat’s demise Harry left Ann Arbor for the island. Leo and Britt assumed that he was healing, that after Harry had enjoyed the company of someone as particular and graceful and intelligent as Catherine, he would be drawn to ever greater heights of romantic accomplishment. They had waited in pleasant anticipation of some divine creature, and instead they’d gotten Shelley, she of the goat’s milk soaps and endless balls of smelly untreated wool, which she ferried about in badger-sized lumps; she of the joyless dietary theories and miasmic dinner table silence; she of the pallid limbs and midday naps and whispered arguments with Harry and hateful rye flour and maple puddings. The first time she set one before Britt, he’d looked as if she’d stabbed him through the back of his hand. When the rest of their family played a hand of poker, Shelley would meditate. When they divvied up the preparations for some elaborate holiday meal, Shelley inevitably expressed disappointment over the authenticity of the local ingredients or the source of a recipe. No one had ever seen her smile. Britt and Leo were too dismayed to discuss her even with each other until, several months earlier and right before Harry reappeared in Linden, she had finally, mercifully, removed herself, like a virus that dies off for no discernible reason.
“Can you imagine what that wedding would have been like?” Britt mused. “Instead of a toast, she would have made people stand up and confess how they’ve contributed to the patriarchy.”
“I wish Frances had met her,” Leo said. “She would have hated her.” The joy of being able to discuss Shelley, unafraid of summoning her presence, never lessened.
Britt watched Leo for a beat. “How is Frances?” he asked. “You never talk about her.”
“I don’t?” said Leo. He thought Britt was being sarcastic—he felt as if he talked about Frances all the time—but Britt’s face was open and sincere, his green eyes intent. Britt had heavy reddish gold eyebrows and deep-set eyes; they made his stare a little penetrating. “She’s in Portland,” Leo said. He shrugged. “They’re having a baby.”
Britt waited for more, but Leo only lifted his chin in the direction of Donnie and Barbara, bearing down on them with an array of dessert plates. Leo and Britt set down their drinks, picked up their forks, and braced themselves.
Leo’s ex-wife, Frances, had been in the restaurant business too, training as a sales rep for a wine importer when Leo was managing a bistro. Leo and Frances rented a little house, painted the rooms, weeded the garden, and hosted Thanksgiving. Around Frances Leo had felt as close to relaxed as he ever did. She was small, round but compact, with curling dark hair and snappy black eyes, given to showing off her olive skin with white halter dresses and a Slinky’s worth of wire-thin silver bracelets. But after five years, right about the time they were completing the build-out, Frances moved out. She said she’d come to hate the wine business and the restaurant business too, its booziness and brashness.
What seemed to clinch it was New Orleans. She and Leo had gone to a convention where the culinary community converged annually for a combination of professional development and Roman orgy. They drank Sazeracs with some new brand of absinthe, martinis showcasing new brands of gin and vodka. The drinks were usually embellished with weird striving garnishes like cantaloupe batons, which floated in the booze looking, fatally, like fingers. After several of these, Leo remembered seeing Frances gaze slowly around her for what felt like hours, from face to face to face, while people talked at her. He had been listening to her boss go around the room person by person and enumerate their professional failings. Frances had been nodding and nodding, fingering a pendant on her necklace and talking to a boy-wonder chef who’d released a cookbook that year and was now dumping the remains of abandoned cantaloupe drinks into his own glass. They’d gotten swept into a crew heading out for gumbo z’herbes and had crowded into a run-down old house turned restaurant with a bunch of strangers. After the bread pudding, the boy wonder had tried to kiss first Frances and then Leo. The next morning Leo had woken up with a vivid flash of memory, the boy wonder’s scratchy chin against his, Frances laughing, and the smell of smoke in the air. The hangover had descended on them both like a fever, and when it had gone she’d been distant and morose.
Every year they all headed down there, closed their eyes, and splashed in, and Leo actually liked the annual madness. He liked the chance to behave like a frat boy when no one even noticed, and now that he and Frances were opening a restaurant and working a staggering number of hours, he’d enjoyed it all the more. The rest of the year he was measured and calm and drank wine paired with each course, and once a year he and Frances tore the lid off and then stuffed it back on. He liked the randomness of each year, the conviviality of Frances with a few cocktails in her, when she could and did talk to anyone. He liked the gumbo. He liked the fact that Frances was the one who’d shown him around the event, since she had been attending for her job a year or two before Leo went; he associated the place with Frances in her most Circean element, three days spent eyeing her through a constant, glowing buzz. But that year she’d said she hated the whole business, actually, that she wanted to go home at six o’clock like a normal grown-up, and that she was sick of discussing food as if it were art or a cure for AIDS. “But I don’t do that,” Leo had protested on the plane ride home. “Food’s our craft, that’s all. I just want to do it well.” “But all those assholes, arguing about ramen broth,” Frances had said. “We’ll never get away from those people if we stay in it, you know. They’ll break our spirits and we’ll end up running an Olive Garden.” “I think there’s a third way,” Leo had said mildly. He’d snapped open a magazine while Frances turned toward the window. Frankly, he was insulted. He didn’t enjoy the rabid foodies any more than Frances did, but he recognized that they would provide a livelihood. Let people caress their slices of pork and argue about seasoning. What did he care? They could photograph their food all they wanted. Leo thought Frances—who’d spent a few years rolling wine around her tongue and gazing at the ceiling herself—was being snobbish and reactionary. Leo liked being out among people he knew; h
e liked to finish a shift and go out for late dinners of a few first courses and a free glass of grappa or a comped dessert. Frances just wanted to go home and wake up early to go for a run. She was a morning person. Sometimes Leo thought it all rested on that.
The rupture took on other forms, but within a year she’d gone back to school to be a teacher and moved out.
Now and again it hit Leo all at once, the fact that of the three of them, him and his brothers, not one was happily married or attached, and any lessons from their parents’ long marriage must have passed them by. Leo feared that he and Britt were just getting too old now to reorder their lives for a woman, and he feared even more that Harry would follow their example.
THE DESSERTS WERE NOT BAD. Once the Makaskis disappeared, Leo and Britt looked hard at their plates and tried to be subtle about poking around in them. The ice cream trio arrived on a black plate scattered with fruit. A tuile, rolled at the edges like a potato chip, perched on top. The roasted pear was halved and opened, filled with something creamy; the sour cherry cake a little golden loaf in a pool of compote. The chocolate quills arrived tied up in a strip of orange peel and set in an upright bundle.
They started on the ice creams: cinnamon, crème fraîche, and Damson plum.
“Ever had Damson plum ice cream?”
“Nope. Nice color.” The plum ice cream was vanilla marbled with a rich winey purple.
“By ‘cinnamon,’ do they mean cinnamon the spice?”
“As opposed to what?”
“The candy. Try it. Plus, it’s pink.”
“Oh.”
“I would have plated this differently.”
“Yeah. The plum is perfect, though. So’s the crème fraîche.”
The quills were filled with a boozy ganache. “Do we eat them with our hands?” Britt asked. Leo shrugged. They tried them both ways: Leo ate a quill as if it were a French fry, and Britt ate one with a fork. It shattered easily under the tines, and Britt found himself absorbed in trying to get every shard of chocolate. Leo’s fingers were printed with chocolate after the first bite. “It tastes pretty good,” he said. “A little uniform. But it’s kind of impossible to actually eat.”
At the other end of the bar, Barbara was in conversation with a server, her eyes trained on them. When Leo smiled at her, she inclined her head respectfully and turned away.
They set aside the quills and inspected the roasted pear, which was filled with mascarpone and scattered with pistachios. Leo considered. “The mascarpone’s a good idea,” he said. “It’s not sweet. There’s some cardamom in there too.”
Britt nodded. The tuiles that accompanied the pear were caramelized and sparkling with coarse dark sugar. He took a bite of pear and mascarpone and a bite of tuile and chewed, still nodding. Leo took one more bite. “That’s actually really good. I hate a mushy pear, but this is just right.”
They moved on to the sour cherry cake, which was moist and fragrant with almond and some herbal note that quieted both of them. They sat, tasting and thinking, for several seconds, until Leo said, “Hyssop.”
They finished all the cake, two of the ice creams, half the pear, and only a couple of the chocolate quills. Leo left a big tip and they waved to Donnie and Barbara, who were swooping down on another table with a great platter of prosciutto. Outside, Britt said, “Well?”
“I thought it was mostly pretty nice,” Leo said. “Couple missteps.” He shrugged. “I’ll file it away for now. Where you headed? Are you still seeing the brunette? Maria?”
“Maren. Kind of. I was supposed to see her tonight but I rescheduled, and now I’m not really missing it. I think we’re at that stage after three or four months where it feels a little depressing to state the obvious. Now it’s just hanging over me. You headed home?” Leo still lived in the house he’d shared with Frances.
“Yeah, it’s late.” Leo glanced at his watch. “We’ve been gone two hours, which means Camille and Harry are probably about a third of the way through that banquet you inflicted on them. You should stop back and see if they’re awake.”
CHAPTER 4
SUNDAY MORNING, BRITT DRANK AN ESPRESSO at one end of his massive barn door table, then ran six miles. Then he did a quick scan through Craigslist to see what was being sold on the cheap.
He’d reached the point at which he could discern in seconds whether there was anything of worth. His eye skipped over curlicues and egg-and-dart detailing but might pause over painted wood. This was how he’d found out where to have peeling old radiators sandblasted and freshly painted to look like new. It was where he’d unearthed a massive Wolf range—he wasn’t much of a cook, but it had been sold cheaply and he believed in the real estate value of a serious stove—as well as a Stickley chair and his beloved barn door. People had no idea what could be done on the cheap, and Britt prided himself on the fact that no one looking through his apartment or his restaurant would suspect he knew, either.
This was one of the vexations of the restaurant, and the reason Britt obsessed about his suits, treating each with as much care as if it were a royal corgi. He and Leo courted clientele who thought little of dropping hundreds of dollars on a meal, or who expensed ridiculous dinners for a gaggle of doctors in order to stuff them with steak and wine and give them free pens and logo pads. And Britt moved among them with a modicum of power, because he had the ability to make them seem more important and respected than they might actually be. But his income, though good, as was that of his busiest servers, was nowhere near that of his clients, and nowhere near what he took great care to project. The false parity was crucial, but it was a strain at times, and one felt by the entire staff. They were there, servers and cooks alike, because they knew what good wine was, what excellent food could be, and had sought out ways to obtain it despite the limits of time, education, and income. They were working at Winesap not only for tips and paychecks and even career integrity, but to get wine, fish, cheese, or the occasional white truffle at cost, to be paid to taste the lobster prep, and to dine out under the restaurant’s aegis and reap its benefits.
When any of their staff, be it backwaiter or prep cook, traveled or went to a big-name restaurant, Britt, Leo, or Thea would phone ahead and call in favors, owner to owner, chef to chef, to ensure that they were known as fellow industry people and treated accordingly: esoteric extra courses, obscure wines, and bits of culinary info to which the average diner, however wealthy, was not privy. “They’re massaged and fed beer each day,” confided a server at one astronomically priced place where Britt had eaten the previous year. She had placed the last plate of wagyu beef—scarlet meat threaded with ivory fat, ringed with a rich browned crust—before him and glanced around, lowering her voice. “But also, to ensure they aren’t stressed by the slaughter, they’re periodically thwapped with the flat of a sword. They get so used to it that when the time comes, they’re totally unfazed. And the meat, of course, stays as tender as…well, as this. Of course I can only say this to you—you’ll appreciate it.” It wasn’t just about freebies, though that helped. This was the reward for working when everyone else was relaxing, for treating the petulant and ignorant with grace, for learning to give the appearance of toadying to the kind of ass who needed it while retaining one’s self-respect through the occasional subtle retort.
There was nothing of note online today, and he didn’t need much of anything. Restless, he went out to a coffee shop to read the paper and get a snack, but the place was full and the pastry was wrapped in plastic. As he left, on impulse he turned into the bakery down the street, bought six sfogliatelle, and drove to his parents’ house.
When Britt arrived, he was relieved to see Harry’s truck at the curb; for all Britt knew, Harry might be young and energetic enough to have muscled his way through that meal and spent the night with Camille anyway. But inside he found Harry at the stove, flipping pancakes. Their parents were standing in the kitchen in matching khaki pants and plaid vests, hands on hips, watching him work. For a moment after Britt wal
ked in they seemed unable to disengage entirely, watching Harry peek at the crust on a golden cornmeal cake before being satisfied it could be turned. Their father observed until the pancake was safely flipped before he turned his attention to Britt.
“Ahh. A surprise!” He inhaled at the edges of the box. “I almost don’t want to know.”
“Sweetheart.” His mother kissed Britt’s cheek, smelling faintly of hand cream. Her hair had been the same ruffled auburn cap since they were children, though her cheeks were now downy and tender as overripe fruit. His father had taken his pocketknife from his khakis and was slicing through the red-and-white string that tied the bakery box.
“How was Hot Springs?” Harry asked.
“Good. Pretty good. A couple missteps, I guess, but some great spots too.”
“Good to know,” Harry said. “Leo leave his card on her windshield?”
“Of course not.” Britt laughed, slightly offended.
“Doesn’t mean she won’t hear you were in and wander through Winesap some evening,” Harry observed.
“True. Hector’s off harvesting cacao, so we’d better find someone.”
“Oh, Hector,” said their mother. “He did such intriguing things with fruit.”
Harry slid the last of the pancakes onto a plate. He held up a plate in Britt’s direction. “No, thanks,” Britt said. “You go ahead.”
Harry laughed. “I’m not eating. Are you kidding?”
Embarrassed, Britt picked up a corn cake and tore off a bite. Now that massive meal seemed so childish.
Their parents seated themselves at the table and busily spooned some sort of preserve onto their pancakes. The sfogliatelle were arranged prettily in a circle on a white plate. “It’s very carby in here,” Britt said. “I should have brought you lean protein. Some tofu.” His mother waved this away, pouring coffee from a carafe into his father’s cup and then her own.
“I’m going to see if anything’s left in the trees,” Harry said. “You coming?” Britt nodded, trying to come up with a reasonable excuse for the previous night’s excess. Harry had barely met his eyes so far. Maybe he was angry, maybe he was still a bit hungover, maybe he was thinking ahead to a day at the restaurant.
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