by Kelly Harms
“Ladies!” he says, as though there is no one in the world he’d rather see. “What a wonderful surprise.”
“Well, hello there, Noah!” says Aunt Midge. “Are you having some of these world-famous clams?”
He raises his eyebrows at the phrase and then gives us a big grin. “Well, I believe I am. May I join you?”
“Of course!” Aunt Midge is overcome with delight. I am beginning to think she has a little crush on Noah Macallister. Too.
“Hi Noah,” calls the woman from the bar. “Same ol’?”
“Actually, Nance, I’ll have the clams today, please and thank you.” He crosses over to us and sits down next to Aunt Midge. Across from me. My armpits send out a geyser of sweat.
“So what brings you girls to this corner of civilization?” I notice he’s dressed almost exactly as he was the last time I saw him, blue jeans, white shirt, long-sleeved button-down open over it with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. I wonder what he does that he can dress like this in the middle of a weekday. Also I wonder when it got so hot in here.
Aunt Midge doesn’t know about my little barfing incident, but she seems to understand there’s no way I’ll be talking and covers my slack. “There’s a shelter and a soup kitchen nearby. We were coming in to see if they need any help.”
This seems to take Noah aback slightly, and I stop panting and sweating for a moment to consider why that might be.
“What kind of help?” he asks.
“Oh, well,” says Aunt Midge. “My niece here’s some kind of cook, and I’m an old lady with nothing to do all day. I need a mission, and feeding the hungry’s as good as any I can think of.”
He smiles at this and I watch his demeanor return to his normal relaxed chumminess. “That’s very neighborly of you,” he says in an Andy Griffith sort of voice. “I’d be happy to show you there myself after lunch. I work there.”
At this revelation, the bar lady shouts “Order’s up!” at us, and I see three red plastic baskets and three large soda glasses sitting on the bar directly in front of her, maybe a foot out of her reach. Apparently it is self-service here. I start to stand up, but Noah beats me to it and gestures for me to stay put. “Allow me,” he says and gallantly whisks away to fetch us our clams.
In the two seconds his back is turned, Aunt Midge leans over with a wad of napkins in her hands and swabs my dripping brow, God bless her. I’m so busy choking to death on anxiety that I forget what a mess I must look like. “Deep breaths,” she whispers. I inhale deeply and try not to hyperventilate.
“Clams, clams, and clams,” Noah announces as he returns to the table, arms brimming. I’m expecting little bite-size nuggets, but the baskets are heaped with enormous, squiggly blobs, glistening through their grayish batter with oil and whatever slimy goo clams excrete. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to eat these. I reach for my iced tea and take a huge gulp.
Aunt Midge, fearless as ever, breaks off a small chunk of clam and leans her head back to lower it in. After a long bout of chewing, she lowers her head, and looks back at us. There’s a grin on her face. “Mmmugh,” she says, and swallows. “Huh! Tastes good!”
I incline my head. Is she serious? Before my eyes she breaks off another piece, bigger. “Hardly chewy at all,” she adds, and then gets down to chewing.
“These aren’t your basic fried littlenecks,” Noah tells us. “They’re a variety of long skinny soft-shells called gooey ducks. Nancy cuts ’em down to what she thinks of as bite size,” he gestures to the tennis-ball-sized chunks, “and lets them rip in the fryer. Like nothing else, I can tell you that.”
“Gooey ducks?” I ask, sure I’ve heard wrong.
“Yep. G-E-O-D-U-C-K,” Noah spells. “Gooeyduck. You don’t want to see them whole, let me promise you that. Make eels look appetizing.” Noah opens wide and plops in a big piece like it’s a piece of candy.
My stomach turns over. I start taking the deepest breaths I can muster.
“They taste so … interesting,” says Aunt Midge, still working on her basket with a look of determination. “A little piece of authentic Maine flavor, right here on our table.”
“Actually,” says Noah, when he’s swallowed, “they’re West Coast clams. Parts of them are considered delicacies, but these are not those parts. Nancy ships ’em in here frozen, once a week. I guess she figures the locals don’t order ’em and the tourists don’t know any better.”
“Seriously?” she says, and violently pushes away her basket, dropping the clam she was holding like a hot potato. “Then why am I eating these things? They’re disgusting.”
Noah laughs and laughs at this, and it kills me, that sound, that long low bubbling laugh. It sounds like a hot bath.
“Well,” Noah leans in to us, like a conspirator. “You did notice this place was empty, didn’t you?”
Aunt Midge looks around in both directions, like she hadn’t noticed. “So it is! But you came to eat here…”
Noah shakes his head. “I did no such thing. I just came in to discuss something with my pal Nancy, but then I saw you in here and…” he looks right at me, “suddenly clams sounded delicious.”
I melt into a pool of embarrassment under the table.
“Plus,” he adds, more lightly, “I was impressed that Janey was up to fried clams, so soon after having that nasty stomach bug.”
Aunt Midge slowly turns her head to me. “Stomach bug?”
I go looking for my voice. “I’m not sure what I was thinking,” I hear myself say. “As soon as you brought them to the table I took one look and regretted ordering them.”
“People do that even when they’re not sick,” Noah laughs. “You know, Nancy and I go way back. I bet she’ll understand if we ask for something else … grilled cheese, maybe?”
“Oh please yes,” says Aunt Midge, and I nod too, a little fervently. Noah pops up and walks over to Nancy at the bar. Without taking her eyes off the home shopping network, she calls to us, “Couldn’t handle the clams, could ya? Tourists.” There is quite a lot of disdain in her voice for a woman who has clams FedEx-ed to Maine.
She waddles off to the kitchen to get us some grilled cheeses and I heave a sigh of relief.
When our sandwiches come, Noah tells us about the real reason he came in here. He’s the “produce guy” for the shelter, he tells us. He runs the Little Pond community farm—the bulk of which goes to the food bank and shelter kitchen—and was here to try to rope Nancy into buying some of their extra produce for the Drunken Sailor. He’s tried four times and hasn’t had any luck—apparently there are absolutely zero vegetables on the current menu.
“But this morning I saw a huge stand of celery in the garden and got an idea,” he leans back and tells us, eyes lit up. “Buffalo chicken wings. All the swankiest restaurants serve buffalo wings with celery on the side, right?”
Nancy materializes at our table. I have to respect her keen hearing. “Go on, I’m listening.”
Noah grins, and I know this is exactly how he planned to get her interested. “Think of it, Nancy, dear. Celery.” He waves his arms in the air as he paints a picture for her like he’s selling her a used car. “How many wings you putting on a plate these days?”
“A dozen,” she answers. I notice a little grease glistening on her chin and contemplate the fate of the clams we sent back.
“Make it ten, add a goodly helping of celery stalks, and you’ve got a fancier dish that costs you less,” he says. “You’ll save, what, seventeen percent on chicken wings, and the football crowd will appreciate the new gourmet approach and the reduced heartburn.”
Nancy snorts. “I don’t know about that, but I like the way you think. I could call it the ‘lighter side menu.’” I nearly cough up a noseful of iced tea.
“Perfect!” exclaims Noah. Then he turns to face Nancy full-on. “I’ll tell you what. Buy my celery for one month. If you don’t see the glory in it by then, we’ll call it a day and I’ll stop pestering you about celery for an entire year
.”
Nancy narrows her beady eyes at this. “I’ll bet you only harvest this celery of yours for a month.”
Noah opens up his arms and gives her the most adorably disarming shrug I have ever seen. I have the sudden urge to go sit on his lap. “You got me there, you clever thing. But it’ll be a good month for wing sales, I can promise you that. And then we can talk tomatoes…”
“Fine, fine.” Nancy waves him off with a smile and a shake of the head. “Go on, you rascal. Take your harem of lovely young ladies and let me watch my show.”
Aunt Midge preens at this, and I know now that, despite her dubious menu, Nancy has a new customer for life. And, as much as I try to avoid it, I let my heart soften toward Nancy, just the teeniest bit. I think of all the strangers I’ve met lately … lawyers, cops, bar owners, and, yes, Noah. It seems that in the most isolated place I’ve ever been, my world is getting bigger.
NEAN
“Ducks and squab are notable for having dark, flavorful breast meat, abundantly endowed with myoglobin-rich red muscle fibers, thanks to their ability to fly hundreds of miles a day with few stops.”
—HAROLD MCGEE, On Food and Cooking
When Janey and Aunt Midge come back from the shelter in Little Pond, they are women on a mission. I am nothing but an innocent bystander, caught in the crossfire of that mission.
“We need bread,” says Janey as she stands over the club chair I am draped in at the moment. “Or rather, the shelter needs bread. Four loaves a day.” She looks at me expectantly, like that is supposed to generate some response in me besides the course of action I’ve already decided on, which is to keep watching Deal or No Deal repeats until she goes away.
“Uh huh,” I say. I am hoping the hairdresser on the show takes the suitcase full of money she’s been offered, but I can tell by the greedy look in her eye that she’s going to keep playing.
“You’re the baker in this house,” Janey goes on.
“I made some cookies.”
“And cinnamon rolls, which are made with a yeast dough. Just like bread.”
“They sell bread at the grocery store, don’t they?”
Janey sighs like I’ve just insulted her mother. “Four good loaves a day would cost a fortune. And besides, baking bread is fun.”
“Then you do it,” I tell her. Take the deal, lady, I mentally urge the woman on screen. Don’t be crazy …
“I don’t want to do it,” Janey says. “I don’t like baking. Baking is your job.”
“I don’t want a job,” I say quickly, and then immediately realize the mistake I’ve just made.
Janey jumps on it. “Exactly my point. You want to stay here, rent free, you’ll bake the bread. And drive Aunt Midge to the shelter every day to drop it off, along with whatever I cook that day. If you’d rather not, you can get your things right now and I’ll drop you off at the bus station.”
I raise an eyebrow. That’s no way to talk to a woman who’s been deeply traumatized after killing her abusive boyfriend in self-defense. Not that I actually am that woman, but nevertheless. Sullen, I turn off the TV. “I’ll bake the bread. Jeez. When did you get so bossy?”
Janey shakes her head at me and makes for the kitchen, but my question wasn’t rhetorical. When did she get so bossy? I liked her better meek and mild.
In the kitchen, Janey is pulling out cookbooks from the tidy shelves that hang near the table. One, called The Bread Bible, is bigger than the Actual Bible, and looks equally boring. She plunks it down in front of me where I’m perching myself on a bar stool at the island. “Read and learn,” she says, and then turns back to her books like I’m not even there.
I flip open the book and glance at some of the voluptuous photos of bread, then slam it closed. “You expect me to learn how to cook from a book?”
Janey whirls around on me. “Not cook. Bake. And yes. Everything you need to know is in that book.”
I sigh. First, because my rule of thumb is that any book with a brown cover is going to be boring. And second, because I was kind of looking forward to another kitchen tutorial from Janey. The girl is a social freak, yes, but I kind of like hanging out with her. When it’s just us in the kitchen, she has sort of a calming presence. She’s like Mr. Miyagi only with food instead of kicking. I push the book aside.
“Why don’t you show me one bread recipe that you like, and I’ll start there. Then when I’m ready to hone my techniques I’ll refer back to the book.”
Janey turns to me and then looks heavenward. “Because I’m busy,” Janey says.
“Busy how? I’m not the only unemployed person in this household.”
“Busy cooking. And sewing dresses. And looking for a real job, which I will find, eventually.”
I smile. “Me too. Eventually.”
Janey looks at me squinty-eyed. “Sooner than eventually, I hope. You can’t stay here forever.”
“I know, I know…” I say, but I am thinking, Why not? “But not yet. It’s not really practical, right now. I don’t have a car or anything and we’re so isolated out here…”
Janey thinks on this. “Yeah, we are, aren’t we,” she says, slowly, and it suddenly occurs to me that she’s looking to justify her life of leisure, same as I am. “So let’s start with baking for now, and we’ll worry about real jobs later.” She puts down the book she’s been holding—American Cookery, it says on the spine—and walks toward the island where I’m sitting. “How about we start with a basic French bread—just flour, yeast, and muscles. Sound good?”
When she’s gotten me started with the food scale and I’m deep into weighing out an enormous pile of flour, she disappears out the kitchen door for a moment. When she comes back, she’s holding a duck. No really, she’s holding a big dead bird, wearing nothing but its goose-bumpy naked skin, by the neck, like you or I might hold a plunger.
“What is that?” I ask her, forgetting what ounce of flour I’m on.
“It’s a duck,” she says, as if that explains anything at all.
“I know it’s a duck.” Okay, honestly, I did think it was a giant chicken at first. “But where did you get it?”
She tilts her head at me and I know she is trying to translate my human question into her weird chef-y language. “The butcher shop?” she tries.
“Okay, that’s a start. But just now. You were standing here with me, and then you left for five seconds, and when you came back you were holding a duck.”
“Oh!” she finally understands. “I got it out of the second freezer. You didn’t know about that?”
I look at her sideways. Why would I know about that?
“I guess not. I’m defrosting it—the duck, not the freezer,” she tells me, and then moves over to the smaller sink right across from me in the island and dumps the poor duck in. It’s head spills over the side and looks at me accusingly. “We’re having duck and white bean casserole tomorrow.”
“Um, that sounds disgusting,” I inform her.
“You’ll love it,” she tells me, and I believe her because so far I’ve loved everything she’s cooked for me. She plugs up the sink and pulls a tray of ice out of the freezer, then another, and carries them over to the sink.
“And what are we having tonight?” I ask, gesturing to the sink. “Duck bill soup?”
“Very funny. Although I think I do have a recipe for that somewhere…”
“I’m eating out tonight,” I say quickly, and Janey laughs.
“You worry about your bread over there,” she tells me as she dumps the ice into the sink, then submerges the duck in water. I watch her add enough salt to choke a deer and then some leaves of something or other and use the duck’s head to swish the whole mess around. She’s not really allowing the duck much dignity.
When she turns to wash her hands and work on something else, I start over weighing my flour. I work away, mixing flour and a little salt in a big bowl, waiting patiently until Janey seems totally engrossed in another one of her cookbooks. Then I pounce. “So I hea
r that Noah guy works at the shelter.”
Janey’s whole body gets rigid and I know I’m on to something here. She turns around slowly. “Where did you hear that?”
“J.J. He told me Noah was the other kind of gardener. The food kind.”
“The useful kind,” she says with a dreamy smile. Then she straightens up and snaps out of it. “Sounds like you and J.J. did lots of talking.”
“Some,” I say. A lot, in fact, but I don’t want to let her get me off track. “J.J. says Noah just showed up out of nowhere a few months ago, just in time to plant stuff.”
“Did he say where he came from?” Janey asks, forgetting herself again.
“Nobody knows,” I say. “At least according to J.J. He seems to be something of an authority on everything that goes on here. He grew up on this cape and apparently he knows everyone and everyone’s mother. He says the house sweepstakes is the most exciting thing that’s happened in months. Which is pretty sad, considering how boring you people are.”
Janey doesn’t say anything for a second, and I think she’s lost in her crush on this Noah guy. But then she says, “You didn’t tell J.J. anything personal, did you? About … the circumstances that brought you here?”
“You mean that I thought I won the house? No way.” There is no way I’d let him know what a dolt I am.
Janey shakes her head, looking genuinely upset. “No, I mean about … what happened before you came here. With your boyfriend?”
Oh shit. For a moment I’d forgotten all about my little tall tale—I’ve got to be more careful about that or she’s going to figure out that Geoff was actually alive the last time I saw him. “No, no way,” I tell her, looking as earnest as I can. “I figure with all the people around here paying attention, I’ve got to be extra careful.”
She exhales, and I’m kind of touched that she got so worried about me. Touched, and a little guilty. “Good. Keep being careful. We just want to mind our own business,” she tells me pointedly, “in all matters. How’s that bread coming?”
