The Secret of Everything

by O'Neal, Barbara

  MOM, it said, in little sparkly letters with hearts and flowers, and Nat felt so guilty she dropped the stupid tattoo right on the floor and ran through the store, feeling the breath of her mother’s censure rushing up her neck.

  When she got home, she would go right to the altar in her bedroom and say as many Hail Marys as she could count, and she would never, ever, ever steal anything again.

  This time, she really meant it.

  Breakfast #14

  Sopa De La Mañana: Our fresh fruit soup of the day, made from locally grown peaches, cantaloupes, apples, and strawberries, mixed with fresh, lightly spiced ricotta cheese and topped with chunks of our special, secret granola. Served with sourdough toast and butter. Ask your server for today’s variety.

  SOPA DE LA MAÑANA

  6 cups peaches, peeled and sliced

  1 cup ricotta cheese

  1 cup plain yogurt

  1 T honey

  1 tsp orange zest

  ½ tsp vanilla

  ½ tsp nutmeg

  ½ tsp ground cloves

  Puree fruit in a blender or food processor, add cheese and yogurt, blend. Add honey, zest, vanilla, and spices. Chill for at least two hours. Top with granola or sour cream.

  VARIATIONS: Berries, cantaloupe, and apples are all great, too. Try it with buttermilk instead of yogurt, and omit the nutmeg and cloves.

  FOUR

  Vita Solano had three passions. The first was for food and, by extension, the café she had opened thirty years ago, a café that had become an icon in the mountain town of Los Ladrones.

  The second was for running, which had saved her life after a man tried to steal it away from her.

  The third was for extending the possibility of hope to women who had, usually because of a man, ended up in prison. In her café, she taught them to cook, and sometimes in the cooking, in the sweetness of tending those small things, they learned how to live.

  After the restaurant closed for lunch this afternoon, she finally had time to work a little more with the new parolee in her kitchen, Annie Veracruz. The woman was a waif, too thin, hands too big at the end of skinny wrists. There were scars on her face and arms, some burned, some cut, probably self-inflicted. There were others, not self-inflicted at all. A long-healed scar through the eyebrow, the crookedness of a broken nose. Tattoos circled her wrists, decorated her back, her ankles. But she was only in her mid-thirties or so. Plenty of time to make a fresh start.

  Right this minute, she was so nervous that she looked like she might nibble right through her mouth. She stepped forward with an expression of extreme concentration and took the pancake turner from Vita’s outstretched hand.

  “The trick to a perfectly cooked pancake,” Vita said, “is to let the back get full of these little holes. See?” Air bubbles rose and gently exploded on the pancakes, leaving holes for steam. “You can see that the edge is getting a little bit done. Go ahead, turn it.”

  Annie slid the big spatula beneath the pancake and turned it as carefully as if it were gossamer. The edge caught on the way down and the pancake folded over, half cooked and half splayed. “Shit.”

  “That’s all right,” Vita said. “Just takes a little practice. Try again.”

  Anxiously humming an unrecognizable tune under her breath, Annie flipped the next one without incident. The baked side showed a beautiful toasted brown, exactly perfect. “Beautiful,” Vita said. “Did anyone ever make pancakes for you?”

  “Not really,” she said, touching the edge of the next pancake with the very corner of the spatula. “I ate at the IHOP sometimes, though. I liked the pancakes there.”

  “How much have you cooked on your own?”

  Annie shot her a wary look.

  “There’s no right answer. You’re safe in the job as long as it’s working for both of us. Most of the women who come here from the penal system haven’t done much cooking. The idea is to equip you with a marketable skill.”

  “Right. Um. Not much.” Her smile, lifting on just one side, was unexpectedly winning, with straight teeth and a whimsical aspect. “I can make mac and cheese out of a box.”

  “Good for you,” Vita said with a smile. “It’s a start. Slide those babies on the plate and we’ll work with eggs. What’s your favorite?”

  “Fried, over easy,” she said. “Just that edge of crispy white, you know what I mean?”

  “Absolutely. To get that, you need a little more fat on the grill …” She dipped a brush into the square steel dish of butter at the back of the grill and slapped the bristles generously over the hot grill. “Eggs are particular,” she said. “Make sure the grill is good and hot, and let the butter start to bubble a bit. Now crack the eggs on the counter, and gently empty the shells into the fat so the whites start to cook right away. See?”

  Annie nodded.

  Vita gave her an egg. “Try it. Right next to the first one.”

  Her fingernails were bitten clear down to the quick, Vita noticed. Annie cracked the egg smartly and eased the insides onto the grill.

  “Perfect.” Vita illustrated the moment to turn for an over-easy egg, when the whites still had the slightest bit of clear to them. “Make sure your spatula doesn’t have anything clinging to it,” Vita said, scraping it clean on the edge of the grill, “then slide it under the whole egg and turn it gently. Voilà!”

  When the eggs were finished and plated, Vita fixed a slice of orange at the top of the dish, a ball of butter atop the pancakes, and said, “Go eat, babe.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s one of the fringe benefits of restaurant work.” She patted the girl on the shoulder and headed into the office to do the book work. “Call me when you’re done and we’ll go over a couple of other things before you leave.”

  “Cool,” said the woman, already forking the eggs into her mouth as if they might be stolen away.

  Oh, baby, Vita thought. Has anyone ever been good to you your whole life?

  At least she’d landed here. She would be here for a hundred days, as per the parole order. By then, maybe Vita could feed her enough love that she could make it out there in the world on her own, without trying to find another man who would abuse her.

  It was worth a try.

  After sleeping a few hours, Vince was a new man. The minute he got up, he called his mother to bring the girls home, and he was sitting on the front porch when she drove up in her sturdy, ancient Bronco. Sasha raced out of the yard, where she liked to sleep beneath an elm tree, and rushed into the curve of the drive, barking in frenzied greeting. Pedro stuck his head out of the window of the Bronco, telling his own stories.

  The girls tumbled out of the truck like little blond lemurs, making so much more noise than it seemed possible for three small beings to make. They waded through the dogs and headed for the porch with some news, two of them looking like they’d rolled in something, the other as pristine as fresh laundry.

  “Daddy! You’re back! We got to—”

  “I want to tell him!”

  “Daddy, guess what?”

  They raced to the porch and filled up his lap and arms with their sky-smelling hair and slight sleep-sweatiness and bony knees. “So what’s the news?”

  Natalie was the oldest, just turned eight, round and owlish in her little spectacles. She said, “Grandma got a kitten. He’s—”

  “I want to tell some of it, too!” Jade was the middle child, age six, with perfect long blond hair to her bottom.

  The baby was Hannah, age three, still soft and cuddly and his alone. She crawled up in his lap, dragging her blanket and sucking her thumb. Her eyes were still swollen with sleep, and he kissed her head. “Okay, Jade, you tell something now.”

  She elbowed her sister, and Natalie shoved her back. They were way too close in age—seventeen months—and lived their lives in eternal, deadly competition. “His name is Leo, and he’s six months old.”

  “He’s black and white, with super-supersoft fur.”

  “And he has these
little black mittens on his feet.”

  “He sounds really cute.” Vince bumped his shoulder against Hannah’s head. She grinned around her thumb and banged back against it. “How ‘bout you, Little Bit, do you have anything to add to this tale of the cat?”

  “He purrs. Like this—” She made a motor sound with her throat.

  As if he’d heard, Pedro trotted up the stairs and shoved his fluffy big head under Hannah’s hand. She laughed.

  Vince’s mother came up the steps carrying a duffel and two canvas bags that looked heavy.

  “I would have carried those in if you’d said something.”

  Judy, more than six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a Katharine Hepburn sort of handsomeness, pished in dismissal. “I brought your chaos back to you.”

  “Happy chaos,” he agreed.

  “I washed all their clothes.” She indicated the duffel. “And there’s a lasagna and a bag of groceries here. I didn’t think you’d have had time yet.”

  “I couldn’t do it without you,” Vince said. “Thanks.”

  “Grandma wouldn’t buy me an apple,” Natalie complained.

  “That’s because she had plenty to eat earlier, although she did refuse to eat any fish sticks last night.”

  “It’s box food! You’re not supposed to eat food like that!”

  “Who says?”

  “I watch food television,” Natalie said haughtily.

  Vince chuckled at his mother’s sigh of exasperation.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Judy said drily. “That explains it all. Gimme kisses, girls. I’ve gotta get to town and take over for my hired help.”

  “Bye, Grandma!” They all waved, and when she was headed up the road, Vince said, “Did you guys have lunch yet?”

  “We want peanut butter!” Jade cried.

  “Peanut butter!” Little Bit said around her thumb.

  Natalie groaned. “Why do we always have to eat little kid food?”

  “You’re a kid, stupe,” Jade said.

  “No name-calling,” Vince cautioned.

  “I don’t have to eat idiotic things like you!”

  “Maybe you should try eating like a kid and then you wouldn’t be such an oinker!”

  Before he could stop her, Natalie howled, “I hate you!” and shoved her sister off the porch. Jade fell in the dirt and leapt up with a screech, her perfect outfit marred by the heavy red dust of the New Mexico mountains. “Dad-dy!”

  “That’s enough, both of you.” He stood up with the baby on his hip and nudged Nat toward the house. “Go to your room, Natalie.”

  “Me? She called me a pig!”

  “Oinker,” Jade corrected.

  If Vince hadn’t held fast to her arm, Natalie would have been on her sister again and likely would have drawn blood. “Go. To. Your. Room,” he said to Natalie. “Jade, you’re going to clean the bathrooms.”

  “But she—”

  “Not another word. Go.”

  Crying, both sisters stomped into the house. Hannah patted his arm, silently sucking her thumb. Pedro had slid beneath the porch and now crawled out, covered with red dirt himself. He wagged his tail slowly as he looked to Vince for reassurance.

  “You’re a dog,” Vince said. “A big dog. You’re not supposed to be scared when little girls are having a fight.”

  Pedro, who stood as tall as the middle of Vince’s thigh, came over and leaned on him. Absently, Vince rubbed his head, looking back toward the house. Did all sisters fight like this? It seemed unnatural, evil—though his mother said not to worry about it, they would outgrow it. They’d better, or he would end up wringing their necks.

  “Peanut butter,” Hannah said.

  “You’re right. Come on.”

  Beneath her pajamas in her bottom drawer, Natalie kept a cigar box. It was made of smooth reddish wood, varnished, with a metal clasp and carved words that were painted red and said, Royal Butera vintage Premium Blended Cigars. It wasn’t very deep. She only had room for a few things. A plain black comb with a few long blond hairs clinging to it. A pair of turquoise earrings she would wear someday when she was allowed to get her ears pierced. A tarot card showing a castle tower on fire. A photo of her mother at age twelve, dressed up in a very short dress and poofy bangs. An embroidered bag that had herbs and a crystal inside. There was also a tiny crystal dish with fluted sides. It sat on a tiny metal plate and had a tiny silver spoon, carved with teensy swirls, to go with it. A salt cellar. Natalie loved it.

  They all had belonged to her mother. Natalie took them out now, lining everything up in a row on her desk, which looked out over the meadow to the mountains. Once she’d seen a bear walking through the grass, looking so ordinary she didn’t even think to be afraid until after he was gone, and then she’d been so scared she almost peed her pants.

  Everyone thought she was forgetting about her mother, just like Jade, who didn’t remember her because she was only three when Mommy died, or Hannah, who wasn’t even three months old. Natalie had been five, and it was her job to make sure Mommy never got forgotten, so every week—she used to try to do it every day, but it was hard and she sometimes had to do homework—she brought out all these things and went through her list.

  The comb made her think of Mommy’s long blond hair, which she let Natalie brush sometimes when she wasn’t too tired, and how it smelled of bacon sometimes after she finished making breakfast for everybody, or like soap after a shower, or sometimes perfume when she had gone out to dinner with Daddy. When she looked at the picture, Natalie could remember how Mommy’s mouth looked when she smiled. Natalie had stolen the tarot card off the table when her grandma Leanne—who lived in Denver, where they used to live—came in and swept all of them on the floor the day Mommy died.

  The salt cellar was the most precious of all. Her mother had it for years and years before she even met Natalie’s dad. She bought it at an antiques store in England, which was far across the ocean. Mommy thought the salt cellar was so adorable, she just had to have it, even though it meant carrying it around all over Europe in her backpack. She carried it home and kept it forever.

  Natalie would keep it forever, too. Today, with her heart stinging over getting in trouble and the hatefulness of school starting, Natalie felt empty and cold, looking at the things on her desk. It was getting hard to remember things sometimes, like exactly how Mommy sounded when she talked. She could remember the singing, because she had a tape with Mommy singing songs to help her fall asleep, but the talking voice seemed far away, and that scared her. What if she forgot?

  She was supposed to stay in her room, but she had to talk to her dad about this right now. She rushed down the stairs and found him in the kitchen, making a sandwich for Hannah, who didn’t get in trouble ever because she was the baby.

  “Dad,” Natalie said, “what did Mom’s voice sound like?”

  It was a fact that her dad was the most handsomest dad in the whole town. Even Emma Richardson, the richest girl in her class, who had a planetarium in her house, had to admit it. And right now, when Daddy’s dark brown eyes got all soft and he made an exaggerated frown to make her feel better, putting Hannah down so he could put Natalie on his lap, he was even handsomer. “You missing your mom?”

  “I just can’t remember things sometimes. You remember, don’t you?”

  He rubbed her back. “Of course I do. She had a nice soft voice, remember? Kind of like your auntie Cheryl, but a little bit higher.”

  Natalie closed her eyes. It helped. Her neck didn’t feel like it had turned into a rock anymore. “I do remember,” she said.

  “Hey!” Jade cried, coming out of the bathroom with stupid yellow gloves on her hands. “She’s supposed to be in her room!”

  Her dad patted Natalie’s arm. “It’s true. Why don’t you go back to your room and we’ll talk later, okay?”

  She shrugged off his hand. “Whatever.” In front of Jade, she bent over and whispered, “I hate you!”

  In the late afternoon, Tessa carr
ied her laptop down to the courtyard of the old hotel and ordered an ale from the extensive menu. Geraniums and marigolds bloomed in pots around a chuckling fountain. Small knots of people, twos and threes, grazed on chips and salsa and drank glasses of white wine. They were a tanned, gleaming set, with men in dark sunglasses and women who had perfect blond streaks. Not Tessa’s usual scene, but Mick always liked to choose a high-end hotel as a starting point.

  At least here she could see some others in her general tribe: hikers with hundred-dollar hydration packs on the chair beside them; runners who probably had six different pairs of trail shoes; women in sports tanks and hiking pants. They had the satisfied look of having bagged a good hike, and it made her anxious to get out on the trails. Her foot still got sore very easily, but she was anxious to find some trails and put it to the test, just to get a feeling for the landscape and area.

  The beer came, a rich amber, and Tessa took a long swallow. Beer was one of the great inventions of the universe. She loved all of them—stouts and lagers and ales—and with the explosion of microbreweries around the country, she could nearly always get something terrific. This was a hoppy, malty ale, dense and rich. Perfect for a hot late-summer afternoon.

  Feeling mellow, she turned on the computer to edit the photos she’d uploaded before coming downstairs. The raccoons made her laugh, looking straight into the camera with an expression of What? You never saw anybody eat before? She sent the picture to her father, along with the shots of the white dog in the red dust. One of them was particularly good—the dog’s white fur contrasting with the turquoise sky and brick-red earth, and she uploaded it to her Flickr account, which she’d been keeping for years now. Several times she’d taken a photo that showed up on the Most Interesting List, and her photos routinely garnered dozens of stars and favorites and invitations to post to groups.