The Summer Kitchen

by Lisa Wingate

  When we drove away from the house, he laughed and pointed out that I could finally leave her and my stepfather behind for good. They hadn’t managed to foul up the wedding—not my mother, with her overconsumption of Valium and champagne; not my stepfather, with his loud, long-winded diatribes on subjects that had nothing to do with the wedding.

  We’d won. We were free.

  Did Rob realize that both of them were coming along even though we couldn’t see them? They followed me like pieces of baggage that were invisible, yet weighed everything down.

  You’re forty-nine years old, Sandra, I told myself now. It’s time to cast off the dead weight.

  Jake was fortunate to have figured it out when he was just nineteen. Sooner or later, you have to shed your family’s expectations and run the race on your own.

  “We’ll talk to Dad together,” I told Christopher. “I want you to be honest with us, and with yourself. It’s not your job to fill the space Jake left behind. It’s not your job to please us, or make us feel better, or carry on the line of Dr. Dardens.”

  Chris blinked and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple moving slowly up and down. “I don’t want you and Dad to get divorced.”

  “Fixing things between your dad and me isn’t your responsibility. We have issues to work on, but you don’t need to worry about that.”

  Chris’s gaze jerked my way, his face stricken. “I don’t want to make it worse.” The words were filled with emotion, with fear.

  “You’re not making it worse, and you can’t fix it by being a perfect kid, by working toward premed and whatever else you think we want.” I looked very directly at Christopher, at the young man he’d become. “You don’t want to major in premed, do you?”

  His lips trembled at the corners, then he pressed them flat. “No.”

  “You miss your music.”

  He nodded, but didn’t speak.

  “We’ll talk to Dad together,” I said again. “We’ll start there, all right?”

  He nodded, and we drove several miles in silence. Finally, Chris cleared his throat. “Are you going to tell him about Poppy’s house? About the café?”

  The question landed in my stomach like a lump of uncooked dough. That issue had been so easy to avoid with Rob gone. “Yes, I am.”

  Worry drew lines beneath the wisps of blond hair on Chris’s forehead. “What do you think he’ll say?”

  “I have no idea.” A hot flush burned into my skin as I tried to imagine the conversation. I couldn’t fathom where to begin. The café was so far outside the scope of our normal lives. It was like nothing I’d ever done, yet I felt as if I’d been meant to do it all my life. I couldn’t let it go, but I couldn’t keep hiding it from Rob, either.

  “You know what he’ll say,” Chris pointed out glumly. “That’s why you didn’t tell him before. That’s why you didn’t tell anyone until I ended up in the hospital.”

  “Partly,” I admitted. “But everything at Poppy’s just happened. It took on a life of its own.”

  Chris considered the answer. “I think it was Poppy’s idea. He’d like that the kids come to his house.”

  “You’re right. I’ve thought about that.” There was healing in the fact that Poppy would be pleased with the café, that it was something he would have approved of. There was closure in the café—a slow shift from dwelling on the way Poppy had died to celebrating the way he had lived. “Poppy would be very proud. He loved that neighborhood, and he wouldn’t have wanted to see it slowly fall apart.”

  Chris smiled. “We can talk to Dad about it together—about the café, I mean.”

  “Yes. I guess we can.”

  Chris cranked up the radio, and we drove the rest of the way home suddenly a team.

  We could see Rob at the kitchen window when we pulled into the driveway. Chris and I glanced at each other. He smiled, but looked as if his teeth hurt. “Are we going to talk to him right away?” he muttered, sounding nervous and uncertain, and suddenly very young. By the car door, his leg jittered up and down, the muscles seeming to be debating fight or flight.

  I considered saying, Let’s leave it until morning. Dad’s probably tired. But it would have been an excuse, my typical pattern of avoiding potential conflict. If I’d been a general, my armies would never have gone to war. They would have stayed safely in camp, keeping everything calm, and clean, and freshly painted, while our territories slowly shrank until there was nothing left.

  You’re not the powerless, scared little girl anymore, I told myself. Nobody’s going to whip you with a dowel rod and put you in your room. It’s time to grow a backbone.

  All the same, as we pulled into the garage, a small, frightened part of me remembered the way the dowel rod feels when it hits your skin. The thin pipes of wood were leftovers from one of Maryanne’s science projects, a model of the universe. They found their way all over the house, lay hidden in convenient places where they could be easily grabbed when Mother needed to straighten a picture high on the wall, or when she was in a mood… .

  Don’t muss your dress, the little girl whispered from somewhere in the dark.

  “Now’s as good a time as any,” the woman opening the door said.

  Rob was in the kitchen, in a good mood, as was usual when he returned from a conference. The time away from the hospital always did him good.

  He greeted me with a kiss on the cheek, which surprised me, then he patted Christopher on the back and offered him a slice of cheesecake from a box he’d picked up on the way home. Chris rolled a bug-eyed look at me behind Rob’s back. I had no idea how to respond—to Rob, or to the cheesecake. I hadn’t seen Rob this euphoric in a long time. Even on the best days he had a million work-related issues pressing on his mind.

  Turning with a dessert plate balanced against his chest and the fork poised, he smiled at the two of us. “I have some news.”

  He’s heard from Jake. The thought spun through me so quickly I couldn’t catch it, couldn’t contain it before it filled me with expectation. He’s heard from Jake, and it’s good news. Jake’s all right!

  Christopher slipped onto one of the stools by the island, his face grim, as if his premonitions of the news weren’t nearly so good.

  “Well, tell us,” I said. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  “Want some cheesecake?” Rob joked, delaying purposefully, allowing the anticipation to build.

  “Rob, for heaven’s sake.” His expression made me laugh. He looked so pleased with himself—as if he were waiting for us to open the gifts he always sneaked away to buy on Christmas Eve. “We’re hanging on edge here.”

  He took a bite of the cheesecake, chewed it and smiled. “I’ve made a decision.”

  “Really?” Something ominous crowded my thoughts, despite Rob’s smile. This isn’t news of Jake. “A decision about what?”

  “I’ve been offered a position at Johns Hopkins University, and I’ve decided to take it.”

  Christopher fell back against the bar stool, his head whipping toward me, his lips parted in a silent imitation of my next words.

  “Wh … what? What do you mean … you’ve been offered a position? I didn’t even know you were applying.” Over the years, Rob had occasionally received feelers about med school positions, but there was always the issue of a change in income and leaving behind friends, family, and the boys’ school for a new location. The discussions never went very far.

  Today, he was beaming. “It’s a bit of a backdoor offer right now, not official, but it will be.” As usual, he was confident, but filled with exuberance, also. He focused on me, seeming to forget that Chris was in the room. “It’ll be perfect, San. I won’t be tied up night and day, Christopher can finish high school in Baltimore and start un dergrad, and when it’s time to apply for med school, he’ll have an in. After everything that’s happened, we can all use a change in location.” There was the quick flash of something serious in Rob’s eyes, making it obvious that he’d considered this offer at length. Of cours
e he had. Rob never did anything impulsively. He’d analyzed every angle. He’d sent feelers into the university market, and he hadn’t even bothered to discuss it with us.

  “When did all this come about?” A simmering started deep inside me, like a pot that had been cool for a long while suddenly finding heat underneath.

  Rob set down the plate as if he sensed that holding something breakable wasn’t a good idea. “Within the last few weeks, in general. I’ve been considering the idea longer, but given Christopher’s … problem … it’s good timing for a move. Word of what happened … with the pills … is bound to get around. It won’t help him.”

  Christopher hunched forward, looking down at the countertop.

  Don’t talk about him as if he’s not here, I wanted to say. He has ears. He has a mind of his own. He’s not an object you can move from here to there, position in whatever way you want. “Christopher isn’t interested in medical school,” I said flatly. “We’ve just been talking about it, as a matter of fact. He has some things he’d like to say, and he’d like you to … hear him out before you answer, all right?”

  Rob’s chin did the jitterbug of a bobble-headed doll. Brows lowered, he squinted at me like a man trying to make out objects in an unfamiliar room where the light was too dim.

  Christopher’s chin jerked up, and he gaped, wide-eyed and ashen-faced. “Mom, now’s not … it’s okay, we can …”

  Now or never. Time to grow up and stand on your own two feet. No matter what, I wasn’t going to let Christopher do what I’d done at his age—bend to the wishes of everyone around me until I didn’t know who I was anymore. “This is the time, Chris. Tell your father what you told me in the car.”

  Chris surveyed the countertop, his fingers fiddling with a discarded twist tie, and his knee vibrating until the stool clacked dully on the tile.

  “Christopher.” Standing beside him, I rested my hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. You don’t have to be afraid to tell us how you feel. More than anything else, your father and I want you to be happy.” I turned to Rob, catching his gaze. Please just stand there. Please just listen to him… .

  Clearing his throat, Christopher began forming the twist tie into a knot, then spilled out, in one quick paragraph, the truths he’d shared during our drive home. He bypassed the revelations about Jake’s reasons for leaving. Perhaps he was focused on himself, or perhaps he was afraid of making things worse than they already were.

  When he was finished, Rob seemed confused and stunned. Beneath my hand, Chris’s muscles went slack, as if he’d just run a cross-country race and used everything he had.

  Rob didn’t answer, just stood there looking shocked.

  “Chris, why don’t you go on upstairs?” I suggested quietly. “Your dad and I have some more things to talk about.”

  Chris flicked an uncertain glance my way.

  “It’s all right,” I told him, and he stood up quickly, as if that were enough to convince him to bolt for the safety of his room. On the way out, he avoided looking at his father. Perhaps he didn’t want to know what Rob was thinking. Maybe Rob didn’t want him to know, either. He waited until Christopher’s footsteps had crested the stairs before he spoke.

  “Where’s this coming from, all of a sudden?” he asked finally.

  “I don’t think it’s all of a sudden. I think he’s had it on his mind for a long time. He’s been scared to put it out in the open. After everything that happened with Jake and Poppy, he was afraid that if he didn’t play the perfect son, we might fall apart, too.”

  Rob jingled the change in his pocket, then turned two coins over and over in his fingers, producing a softly rhythmic, metallic sound. “Did he say as much?” His tone, his expression, conveyed doubt, as if he believed I was being too emotional, allowing myself a reactionary response to typical teenage swings of opinion.

  “Yes, he did. He’s already lost his grandfather, his brother is gone, and now he’s afraid his parents will get divorced.” The words felt strange in my mouth. They hovered in the air like a thunderhead.

  “Where would he get that idea?”

  I was forced to pause and gather my thoughts. Could this man, whose mind dissected even the most intricate details of the human body, possibly be so blind to the workings of the human soul, to his own family? “Rob, do you think he doesn’t notice that you’re only here one or two nights a week anymore, and when you are here, you sleep in front of the TV? You don’t want to talk about anything. You don’t want to talk about what’s happened with Poppy’s case, or looking into family counseling, or where Jake might be, or whether he’s all right. You avoid the whole issue, and you avoid us. It’s as if we’re just another appointment you have to keep.”

  He drew upward, offended. “I don’t think that’s valid. Just because I’m not hovering around wallowing in it doesn’t mean I don’t feel it. Just because I don’t mollycoddle Christopher doesn’t mean I’m some kind of dictator who couldn’t care less about how he’s feeling or what he wants, or that we need to sign up for some kind of family talk therapy. Chris knows I have his best interests in mind. I want him to have all the tools he needs to be successful.”

  “Your kind of success,” I countered. “Your definition.” My hands rose palms-up in a plea. “Rob, there are all kinds of success. Titles, and diplomas, and a six-figure income are only part of it. We shouldn’t be telling the boys to live their lives to keep up appearances, or to make someone else happy. It’s hollow. It’s meaningless.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to fix!” Rob exploded, his face unchar acteristically passionate. “With the new job. With a new start for Christopher. He can leave it all behind. Nobody will know about the problems he had here … about the pills. We won’t have Poppy’s death and everything else pressing in on us.”

  Shaking my head, I looked away from Rob, watched the last rays of sun disappear behind Holly’s house. How could I make him understand? “Chris will know. We’ll know. All the stuff that caused him to try pills in the first place will still be with us. We don’t need another artificial life in Baltimore or anywhere else. Chris deserves the chance to pursue a life that’s authentic to who he is. He’s trying to tell you that. He’s been trying to tell us that—he and Jake both have—but we haven’t been listening, and now Jake’s gone. I don’t want Christopher to be next.”

  “This has nothing to do with Jake.”

  “It has everything to do with Jake.” My voice had gone quiet. Even now, it was hard to force out the truth about Jake. Rob would be wounded to the core. He’d always thought of Jake as his pro tégé, an extension of himself, plucked from a grim future in a third world country and carefully groomed for success. “Did you know Jake didn’t want to go to med school? He wanted to be a teacher. He wanted to go back to Guatemala and teach. He didn’t run away from us, he ran to something he’d been keeping inside himself for a long time.”

  Rob’s head curled upward and angled, as if he were trying to gain a view of something that made no sense. “Jake told you this?”

  “He told Christopher.”

  “When?”

  “A long time ago, apparently. They’ve both been carrying it around for years. That’s why Jake insisted on the double major. He was preparing; he just hadn’t figured out how to tell us yet.”

  Rob reeled, caught himself against the counter, crossed his arms over his chest and froze like a statue, contemplating the weight of the world. He shook his head slowly, his gaze scanning the cabinets, as if he were reviewing text in a file, trying to connect the clues, analyze the symptoms and come up with a cure that would fix everything.

  Finally, I gathered my courage and breeched the silence. Now that we’d begun, there was no reason not to go all the way. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

  “Can it wait?” Rob was off center, suddenly exhausted.

  “I think I’d better say it now.” Without allowing myself time to reconsider, I jumped into an explanation of the past
weeks, Poppy’s house, the kids in the Dumpster, Cass, Opal, and Rusty, the café. Rob didn’t react other than to lift his chin and stare at me, his eyes glazed over through the entire story.

  “I’m not sure what you want me … to … say,” he stammered.

  “I don’t want you to say anything.” I wondered whether to be comforted or concerned by his lack of reaction. “I want you to come see the café. I want you to see the kids there, to look at how they live, everything they need. There’s so much work to be done. They not only need food, but also enrichment programs, medical care, dental care. Medicaid doesn’t pay for dental, and so many of the little kids have baby teeth just rotting out of their heads, and—”

  “This is where you’ve been every day?” He pushed aside the cheesecake and rested his elbows on the island. “For how long? How long have you been doing this?”

  “A few weeks.”

  “A few weeks?” His mouth hung open. “Who knew about it?”

  I swallowed hard. The truth would hurt him. “No one, at first. Then Holly … and Christopher.”

  “Christopher?” His face conveyed surprise and then injury. “You’ve gotten Christopher involved in this?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not me.”

  “It … took on a life of its own, Rob. You have to understand.” But the truth was that Rob was right. I had chosen not to tell him. He was justified in feeling betrayed.

  “It never occurred to you to discuss it with me, particularly before you involved Christopher?”

  “Chris needed … something. I thought this might give it to him.”

  “Christopher needed his mother at home. He needs his mother at home.” Rob scratched an eyebrow roughly, watched me with his fingers pressed to his temple. “We’re not in any position to take on something so complicated, especially now.”

  “Why not now?” I countered, growing desperate. If Rob didn’t understand, what would I do, where would I go? “Why not us? We have resources, Rob. We have connections here that could be used—through our church, our friendships, the hospital. Right now, the café is feeding over sixty people a day. You can’t just stop feeding sixty people a day.”