Bread and Butter (25 page)

Inside the open doorway, he found what he’d been looking for: white-boxed pies lined up on a long table—labeled, he was saddened to see, with printed stickers. He’d expected something handwritten. He picked out a blueberry pie and a strawberry-rhubarb pie, because he couldn’t think of what else to do.

The girl at the cash register wore one of those mesh hair covers over a bun at the back of her head. One hoped an Amish girl would be fresh-skinned, her eyes luminous, bottomless, her scent that of peaches and linen, but this girl had narrow, rounded shoulders
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he tops of her ears flared pinkly in the light through the window, and her eyes were a flat, pupil-less doll blue.

“Twenty-five dollars,” she said, and gazed off beyond Harry’s shoulder at the road. He turned to look, his wallet still clutched in his hand, as a car raced past. It occurred to him that she was probably waiting for someone. Not only was this Amish girl not going to be an oasis of compassion and tranquillity, she was actively trying to get away from here herself.

“You looking for someone?” he asked. She met his eyes, startled, and then looked away. Harry blushed and began counting out his bills, trying to remember how much the pies were. He gave her a twenty, a five, and a ten. She slid the ten back across the counter at him.

“I mean, are you waiting for someone?” he clarified. It sounded like a proposition, and when the girl opened her mouth, lifting the bill from the counter, he was too embarrassed to let her speak. “Forget it. I came out here thinking that no one wants to leave, but that’s probably what everyone comes out here thinking
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ou must get sick of it
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he tourists, I mean. I’m not really a tourist, I’m just driving. I own a restaurant, but I had to make pesto today and anyway I saw your sign. I never make pies”—he’d been struggling to find his point, but here Harry began to suspect that he might be getting back on track, and he sped up, trying to catch up to his idea—“they’re too homey-looking and they don’t slice the way people think they do unless the filling is too thick. But I wanted to try yours
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our pie. I got blueberry and strawberry-rhubarb.” He opened one of the boxes, peering in at the golden circle of pastry, the ooze of filling staining the perimeter of the steam vents. He might have gotten the wrong kinds.

The girl cleared her throat
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he ten-dollar bill was still on the counter. “The strawberry-rhubarb’s good,” she said, and Harry waited for her to tell him about the blueberry. But she gave the money a little flutter instead, waiting for him to understand that it belonged to him. Finally she set the money on top of the pie box and turned away, her smile the same chilly and dismissive sort Britt was always trying to train out of his servers.

LEO HAD WON HIS CAMPAIGN
to meet Thea’s daughter, which meant that today he was having lunch with a child who for all he knew was pure hell. Maybe the daughter was a biter, a screecher, or an expert administrator of convenient lapses in potty training. Leo had gotten what he’d asked for, but now he had his doubts that he even wanted it. He kept trying to remember his brothers at that age, or at least Harry, but came up with only a lot of tickling, freckles, and wailing.

Last night he’d popped down to the line on the pretext of getting a glass of water—he was immensely well hydrated these days—and was whistling when he’d joined Thea. She had just fired a plate of buttered pasta. “Who got that?” Leo asked.

“Little kid in the house,” she said. She shook her head. “Why anyone brings their kid to a place like this is beyond me.”

“Agreed,” said Jason. He slid a plate of lamb loin into the window and spiked the ticket. “If your kid won’t eat beef heart, it doesn’t deserve to leave the house.”

“Oh, please,” said Suzanne. She was tossing the pasta in a sauté pan and had to assert this over one shoulder. “
It
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e charge them a lot for some silly buttered noodles—what’s the harm? We’re above children now?”

“It’s not about being above,” said Thea.

“Yes it is,” Jason said.

“It’s just a waste of money.”

“Maybe not,” Leo heard himself saying. “Maybe they wanted a family evening. Maybe the kid is who he is and they like having him around anyway. Or maybe buttered pasta is his favorite thing in the world and it’s his birthday. Maybe he’s a Torsini, you ever think of that?”

“The Torsinis never use their discount,” Thea said. “I get the feeling they think they can do better at home.”

“Yeah, well, I’m going out there,” Leo said, “and I bet you both a drink it’s not some little demon brat but a perfectly nice kid who has the good taste to like homemade pasta with butter and Parmigiano
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here is Parm on it, isn’t there?”

Thea nodded, one eyebrow quirked. “Aha! My point exactly.”

The server had been slightly amused to find Leo carrying the plate of pasta, but Leo insisted, feeling a mixture of giddiness and pugnacity, a weird happy buzziness in which he was drawing ever closer to doing something ridiculous and public for the sheer joy of it, like sweeping Thea into a low dip right there on the line, just for the pleasure of feeling the curve of her back beneath his palm.

The table was indeed a family, a couple, a child, a teenager, and two grandparents
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he child was about six or seven, Leo guessed, just a little boy in navy-blue pants and a white shirt, with slightly messy brown hair and—this moved Leo suddenly and unaccountably—two of those little rubber bracelets, an orange one and a blue one, showing beneath the cuff of his shirt. Leo had no idea what charitable cause the colors signified, or if these bracelets signified anything at all, since no one really wore them anymore, but for some reason he was touched by the decision of it, the fact that this boy had chosen to wear something he liked, something he thought looked nice
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ll the jangly effervescence Leo had been riding on coalesced into something else inside him, a sort of clear, suffusing warmth and calm. He delivered the plate and chatted up the table with the same aplomb as ever, as beautifully as even Britt could have done, and when he finished he headed right back to the line.

Thea looked up with a sardonic half-smile, ready to give him a hard time, but something in his face made her say nothing. She watched him approach, one hand on her towel and the other still reaching up toward the window for a plate of gorgonzola-crusted beef. For a moment her expression was strangely gentle, but then she looked away and attended to the beef, using a kitchen torch to caramelize the cheese and then wiping the plate rim in two swift motions.

“Well?” Jason said. “Cried? Wants chicken tenders?”

“Nope,” Leo said. He coughed into his hand. “Just a kid. And you’re a complete misanthrope, Jason, but I’ll buy you guys a drink tonight anyway. I just want you to briefly experience what happiness feels like.”

Later that night, Thea called him from her car. “You want to come for an early lunch tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he said uncertainly. He didn’t want to ask whether this was his invitation to meet her daughter, in case Thea’s natural contrariness reasserted itself. Maybe she’d forgotten she had Iris this weekend. “You want me to cook?”

“I miss cooking,” she said. “I just expedite most nights. I have to be at work by two, but I’ll make lunch, you bring dessert. Okay?”

Thea’s house was a little cream-colored ranch with navy trim, with a plum tree out front and a scattering of wildflowers adorning the lawn like weeds, a two-person cedar swing on the front porch. For a moment the house, compact and charming as it was, made Leo feel disheartened and lonely. It was the house where Thea had lived with her husband, who might have been the one to plant the tree or make the swing
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nd even if he was gone now, the place still bore a cozy air of someone else’s family, and it made Leo wonder suddenly how Frances was. She had e-mailed him an announcement when her baby was born, with a photo of a perplexed-looking infant with spiky black hair and black eyes. It had been a long time since he’d been married to Frances, and they’d stayed friendly enough to exchange the occasional e-mail, but the image had felt both too familiar and depressingly distant all at once
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he baby looked so much like Frances that she only reminded Leo of the infant he’d once intended to have with her. His ex-wife was further gone than ever, a state of affairs he no longer minded but that took him aback now and then with its sheer completeness.

He shook off the melancholy and paused outside the door. Normally he’d knock and open it, but now he rang the doorbell, ran a hand over his hair, and checked his grocery bag. He was sweating.

Thea came to the door in jeans and a white T-shirt. She gave him a conspiratorial smile. “Hey there,” she said. “Come on in
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e’re making gnudi.”

Her daughter was sitting at the table with a small bowl and spoon, stirring something
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hea said, “Iris, say hello to Leo.” Iris glanced his way, seemed unimpressed, and went back to work. “Iris.”

“Hello,” she said, but she said it into the bowl, into which she was peering not with sulkiness but with great concentration.

“Ricotta and herbs,” said Thea, nodding in the direction of the bowl. “Are the eggs mixed in?”

“I think so,” Iris said. “There’s a little yellow.”

“Okay, well, be gentle and mix it just enough to get rid of the yellow.”

Iris had Thea’s wonderful hair but shorter and darker, a messy headful of curls. She was wearing orange shorts and a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and when she glanced over at Leo her eyes were large and dark brown. She had Thea’s serious set to her mouth, the shape of her eyes, but it was somehow a relief to be reminded that she was not the replica of her mother that he’d had in his head. She was an actual person instead, and he found this, and her utter lack of interest in him, comforting. Some of his nervousness departed, and so did the temptation to cajole her into talking to him. He set his grocery bag on the table and began removing things from it while Thea stirred a pan on the stove.

“You brought dessert,” Iris said.

“Well, I brought the stuff to make it,” he said. “I’ll just get started.” He set out a quart of strawberries, a bunch of mint, and a glass bottle of heavy cream
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o Thea he said, “I went to the farmers’ market this morning and guess what they had? Araucana eggs.”

“No kidding
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ho had them?”

“No one I knew. Just a guy who had some honey, some eggs, some foraged stuff. I brought you a few.”

The eggs were small, not much larger than quail’s eggs, pale blue, pale pink, a nutmeg-freckled celadon green. Iris gave them careful consideration, reaching out to pick up an egg with one eye trained on him to see if he’d stop her. “Do you have a few bowls for the berries?” he asked Thea, who reached into a cupboard and handed him two
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hen he returned to the table, Iris was examining a green egg. It filled her palm perfectly. She looked up at him and carefully set the egg back in the carton. Leo didn’t touch the carton, just sat down and began sorting through the strawberries, pulling off the green stems and placing them in one bowl and the berries in another.

He worked in silence for several moments, until Thea came over and retrieved the ricotta mixture from Iris. “Do you need a cutting board?” she asked.

“It depends,” he said. “I can’t decide if I want to eat these whole or cut in half.”

“I’ll get you one just in case,” she said. A moment later she set down a cutting board and a paring knife beside him.

“Thank you,” he said, and kept stemming the berries. He could feel Iris looking at him now and then, mildly interested in the gemlike berries, the miniature pastel eggs, and the glass bottle of cream. Then she left the table and went into the next room. She was sturdy and purposeful, and she walked with her shoulders back and arms swinging, like a cowboy or a teamster. He and Thea exchanged a glance, and Thea tilted her head to see into the next room. Then, apparently satisfied by what she saw, she returned to sprinkling flour into the egg and ricotta mixture in her bowl.

Iris returned, holding a good-quality small metal saucepan and cover, both of which had clearly been repurposed for some use in a playroom. She set the pan down on the table beside the eggs and stood there expectantly. Leo forced himself not to smile. “I wonder if those eggs taste any different from regular eggs,” he said, as if to himself, “or if they just look nicer. Probably no way to tell.”

Iris took the measure of his limitations with a regretful look. “You cook one,” she explained, briskly but not without kindness, “and then you eat it and see.”

Behind them, Thea snickered. Leo told Iris that he agreed this was the only sensible way to approach it; silently he noted that this would keep him on track next time he thought he’d patronize a three-year-old. He was filling the little pan with water, letting Iris drop in the whole eggs with care, when his phone rang.

“It’s Britt,” he said to Thea, looking at the number. He went into the other room to answer it, closing the door behind him. “Britt, what’s up?”

“Where are you?” Britt said. He was breathing in an odd way, as if he were moving frantically around and talking at the same time. Something clattered in the background. “Are you at Winesap?”

“No,” Leo said. “Am I supposed to be? What’s wrong?”

“I just got here and the kitchen’s a mess but nobody’s here. It looks like he emptied all our flour into a mixer and just left it there. There’s a big pot at a full boil with a bunch of green beans or something in it. He’s not with you? Did he call you?”

Leo felt as if Britt were resuming a conversation he didn’t remember having. “You’re at Stray?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m at Stray! Jesus. I’m here and Harry’s not.”

“He’s not with me,” Leo said. “You sure he left all that? He might have just stepped out. Or maybe Hector was there and he quit.”

“No,” Britt said. “Mom and Dad haven’t seen him either. I think I freaked them out—now Mom wants me to call her back.”