Hot Dish

by Brockway, Connie

  Six weeks later Tess was dead, killed in a traffic accident. And Jenn had never gotten a chance to explain.

  Jenn shoved the thought away, focusing on the future because it hurt too much to do anything else. If she won this pageant, that future would mean not only that she could return eventually to her remaining friends next year but it could also make her last one at Fawn Creek High School bearable. As Buttercup Queen, she was bound to get invited to some of the things she heard the other kids talking about in Monday morning study hall. A party or two, a shopping trip to “the cities”? Hell, at this point, she’d be happy to be invited to join the debate team.

  Okay, she might have been partly responsible for her lack of a social life. She hadn’t made any huge effort to “blend.” She hadn’t really seen the need; she was only passing through. And then, after Tess had died, she’d just been too angry to care what the hell anyone thought of her. But lately, the last few months or so … well … she missed having friends.

  She missed late-night phone calls that lasted hours; swapping jeans and shoes until no one knew who the original owners were anymore; silly, ardent feuds about stupid things; and impromptu puppy piles in front of the television set. She missed Tess—

  And she missed boys! She hadn’t had a date in over a year. She missed their posturing, their crude jokes, their bravado, their flirting. She missed openmouthed kissing and steamy car windows and yearning looks behind the current girlfriend’s back.

  She missed movies, and malls, and beach parties and being someone and a part of some group. She missed not having to be careful about what she said, or how she sounded, not having to be vigilant about not appearing too urban or too Southern.

  It was like some evil magician had snuck into her house one night and disappeared her whole life and she had woken up here, in Minnesota, among strangers. But she’d found a way out of here … a way back … a way….

  “Okay, then!” the emcee announced. “We’re ready to announce the first annual Queen Buttercup. But first, I think we should assure all nine of our Buttercup Princesses that in our eyes they are all queens, eh? So let’s hear it for the Buttercup Princesses!”

  The crowd applauded, and banners waved.

  “And you all know, don’t you, that throughout the week all the Buttercup Princesses, not just the Queen, are being carved in butter over at the Emporium Building?”

  Again the crowd applauded.

  Okay, she knew it was lame, but she was sort of excited about the Butter Head thing. How many seventeen-year-old girls got their heads carved out of a hundred-pound block of butter to be displayed in front of thousands of people? And if she won the Buttercup Crown—please, oh please—then they would put that head in a specially designed, all-glass, refrigerated unit at the entrance. Her smiling butter face would be the first thing the public saw upon entering the fairgrounds, with a voice-over—her voice—saying, “The Minnesota Dairy Federation welcomes you to the Minnesota State Fair!” Which was totally cool.

  “So go have a look-see, okay?” the emcee said. “Great. Now the moment you’ve been waiting for!”

  Beneath her nosegay of artificial buttercups, Jenn crossed her fingers.

  “The second runner-up is … Miss Thief River Falls, Tiffany Gilderchrist!”

  Tiffany bolted out of her chair and jump-skipped toward the lady judge, who received her with a kiss on the cheek.

  “First runner-up is … Miss Young America, Karen Wexler!”

  Oh, God, Jenn thought, her heart pounding, she was going to win! She’d caught a glimpse of the deportment tally sheet and she’d won that—no surprise, five years of cotillion had to be good for something, didn’t it?—and the lady judge had winked at her and that had to mean something, right?

  “And here she is, ladies and gentlemen …”

  The fat pink cabbage rose decorating Jenn’s décolletage was quivering violently. She was losing sensation in her lips. Smile. Please, God! Smile.

  “Our 1984 Queen Buttercup is Miss Fa—huh?” One of the judges was tugging at the emcee’s jacket, hissing something up at him.

  There was no other princess from a town that began with an “f.” Fawn Creek. He’d been about to say Fawn Creek!

  She tucked her feet under her chair, preparing to rise. It was all going to be worth it. Her future was going to get right back on track, starting right now. This one’s for you, Tess.

  “Ah … hold on a sec.” The emcee held his hand over the mike.

  A man in plaid short sleeves had appeared out of nowhere and was leaning over the judges’ shoulders, talking excitedly. The lady judge scribbled something on a sheet of paper and handed it to the emcee, who looked at it, blinked, and uncovered the mike.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to announce the Minnesota Dairy Farmer Federation’s first ever Buttercup Queen …

  “… Miss Trenton Mills, Kimberly Dawn Ringwald!”

  Jenn froze halfway to her feet as Kimberly Dawn erupted from her chair, squealing with delight. The lady judge stomped over, stuck the rhinestone crown on Kimberly Dawn’s head, and shoved an enormous bouquet of silk buttercups into her arms.

  The crowd went wild. The princesses exploded out of their seats, bouncing and crying as they swarmed Kimberly Dawn, who was whooping into the mike the emcee had thrust in her face. Somehow, Jenn made it to her feet and managed a few face-saving hops.

  The emcee had been about to say, “Fawn Creek,” she knew he had!

  “Would you like to say a few—”

  Kimberly Dawn grabbed the microphone from the emcee, and sobbed, “Thank you! This is so cool! Thank you! I don’t believe this!”

  Neither did Jenn.

  Chapter Two

  12:15 p.m.

  The Hippodrome tunnel entrance

  Dismissed, the princesses fell into line and trudged across the arena toward the tunnel leading from the Hippodrome. At the door, the line broke as a sea of jubilant Trenton Millsians engulfed Kimberly Dawn and swept her away while smaller, and somewhat less jubilant, groups carried off their own princesses, leaving Jenn alone inside the passage.

  What had just happened?

  She’d been a second away from being Miss Buttercup and then, a tug on a polyester sleeve, a whisper to some guy with a farmer’s tan, and poof! Gone. And with it all the things she’d worked for: validation for all the hours spent in the Lutheran church’s basement kitchen learning the art—and yes, it was an art!—of Scandinavian cooking; the money for Chapel Hill; maybe even some sort of social life this year.

  “You never did stand a snowball’s chance,” a familiar voice broke through her reverie.

  Two female figures, separated in age by nearly half a century, chugged purposefully toward her. Together, they composed the sum total of Jenn’s Fawn Creek social life.

  The smaller, Mrs. Soderberg, sported an orange Budweiser visor holding aloft a puff of puce-colored curls above a phlegmatic pink countenance. Jenn had spent her happiest—no, “happiest” indicated that there was a “happy” to feel “ier” about. There hadn’t—she’d spent her most content moments in Good Shepherd’s basement kitchen, watching Mrs. Soderberg mix the batter for julbrod, or trying to divine the arcane calculations by which the old Swedish lady determined exactly how many juniper berries to float atop her corned venison, and being silently watched in turn as she attempted to duplicate those recipes.

  There was something comforting in Mrs. Soderberg’s silence, her silent condemnation and silent approval being more or less interchangeable. It was reliable and uniform in-expressiveness in a world gone mad.

  Her companion, Heidi Olmsted, wore a ubiquitous uniform of overalls and a brightly colored T-shirt beneath, her brown hair hauled back from her square face into a short ponytail. Jenn and Heidi’s friendship was as unlikely as it was inevitable. Heidi, wry, self-effacing, and agonizingly private, had the dubious distinction of being Fawn Creek High’s other perennial outsider. But where Jenn’s status was the result of circumst
ances, Heidi’s was the consequence of nature.

  “But then I wouldn’t have given you a snowball’s chance of being a finalist to begin with, so you should be satisfied with getting that far, I think,” old Mrs. Soderberg finished upon making it to Jenn’s side.

  “What do you mean?” Jenn asked.

  “Just observin’, is all. Best get goin’, then,” Mrs. Soderberg said. “Gotta find Neddie before he does somet’in’ stupid.”

  Neddie was Mrs. Soderberg’s grandson, a souvenir of her daughter Missy’s summer visit to Florida years earlier. Missy had long since flown the coop, leaving her mother to raise Neddie alone. Maybe that was why Mrs. Soderberg had been a little more accepting of outsiders: she had practice accepting the unacceptable—at least by Fawn Creek standards. Although she wasn’t exactly a friend of Jenn’s, she had taken a detached interest in her cooking abilities.

  “No. Please!” Jenn grabbed the old woman’s wrist and won a “look” from Mrs. Soderberg.

  Minnesotans didn’t touch one another in public unless they were getting married and even then it was looked upon as being a little gratuitous, a handshake being considered adequate to express most heightened emotions.

  Jenn let go, and with the alacrity of a cat loosed from a Have-a-Heart cage, Mrs. Soderberg scooted off.

  “Why was she so sure I wouldn’t win?” Jenn asked Heidi, who was looking longingly after Mrs. Soderberg’s disappearing figure. Like most of the state’s natives, Heidi resisted “unpleasantness,” and from the way her broad face was contorting, Jenn suspected Heidi anticipated this conversation was going to more than qualify.

  “Well, not that it’s any of my business,” Heidi ventured, looking pained, “but I saw Carol Ekkelstahl talking to that guy in the plaid shirt while they were announcing the runners up.”

  Jenn waited. Heidi waited.

  “So?” Jenna prompted.

  “So? Wasn’t it her kid Karin that you beat out for Miss Fawn Creek?”

  “Huh? You don’t think Mrs. Ekkelstahl …” Too many days spent with no one for company except the pack of dogs the Olmsteds kept had taken their toll on poor Heidi. “Listen, even if Mrs. Ekkelstahl did want me out of the pageant, how much influence would she have with the Federation judges?”

  Heidi shrugged. “I’m just saying, is all. And there’s no ‘even’ about her wanting you out.”

  “Why would Mrs. Ekkelstahl have it in for me?” Jenn asked as confused as she was startled.

  “Because, Jenn,” Heidi said in the careful tones of one addressing the mentally challenged, “you came to town and took what she thought was little Karin’s. That Miss Fawn Creek title.”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

  Heidi let out the same deep sigh she had when Jenn asked her if the ice stayed on the lakes all summer. “You gotta remember that Fawn Creek is a small town, Jenn.”

  No shit! Jenn wanted to say.

  “People in small towns are sure outsiders, ‘specially people from the city, all think that they’re better than them. And it doesn’t help that deep down, most small-town people think so, too.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Heidi’s dour face filled with exasperation. “Look, Jenn. Most of the kids around here don’t have rich parents and they don’t have much to look forward to unless you play hockey and can get a scholarship to the university. Especially girls.

  “One of the things girls”—she caught Jenn’s questioning glance—”most girls, look forward to is thinking that someday they might maybe be Miss Fawn Creek. And their moms probably dream about it even more. Then you show up, an outsider from the city, and not even a Minnesota city, with your Seventeen magazine wardrobe and the sort of polish no one else around here has and before you can say, ‘Jack Pine Savage,’ you get yourself named Miss Fawn Creek.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Jenn said. “If everyone thought a girl from Fawn Creek should have won, why’d the judges choose me? I wasn’t holding a gun to anyone’s head.”

  “The judges were guys,” Heidi said flatly. “Guys see things different. Ken Holmberg? I’m betting he took one look at you and figured you stood a whole lot better chance of being crowned Queen Buttercup than Karin Ekkelstahl, and if you got the title, the Federation might hold its regional conference in Fawn Creek.”

  Right. She was Fawn Creek’s ticket to the Dairy Big Time. “If you thought all this, why didn’t you say something?”

  Heidi shrugged. “Wasn’t my business.”

  “So why are you telling me now?”

  “You asked. And you’re just not too bright when it comes to people, Jenn, and I didn’t think you’d figure it out by yourself. At least, you’re not too smart about small-town people—or maybe it’s small-town society. You don’t get it …” She trailed off thoughtfully. When she wasn’t playing with dogs, Heidi considered herself something of a budding sociologist.

  “So I told you.” Her face lit with one of those abrupt and transforming smiles common to native Minnesotans. It wasn’t pleasantness that engendered that smile, Jenn had learned. It was a reflex. It was one of the reasons, Jenn was sure, the whole “Minnesota nice” illusion had evolved—”Smile and keep ‘em guessing.”

  “So then, I guess I’ll be off to watch the K-9 unit,” Heidi said. “You want to come, too?”

  “No. I can’t,” Jenn said.

  “Okay, then. We’ll be seeing you later, I’m sure,” Heidi said cheerfully and took off, leaving Jenna alone in the nearly empty building.

  Jenn walked slowly, her uncomfortable thoughts swinging between undeserved guilt and righteous anger. Even if what Heidi had said was true, it wasn’t like Jenn had known she was committing some social crime. Besides, even the kindest critic would have to admit that none of the other contenders for Miss Fawn Creek would have made it as far as Jenn had.

  Outside, the sudden sun dazzled her eyes and the air smothered her like a sweat-soaked sauna towel. Noise bombarded her. She stopped in front of a human river of twenty thousand jostling, munching, slurping, sweating, stinking visitors to Minnesota’s Great Get-Together. People hollered and vendors shouted while kids yelped with delight and wailed in frustration, the racket fed by rock music blasting from the radio station booths scattered along avenues as over it all roared the amplified sound of screams siphoned from the midway rides.

  “Jenn! Sweetheart!” Like Glinda in The Wizard of Oz, Jenn’s mother seemed to float not so much out from the crowd, as above it. Even here, Nina Hallesby managed to look wealthy and feminine, from the tortoiseshell sunglasses perched atop her auburn hair to the discreet gold knots winking in her ears. “I was so proud of you.”

  “You were?” Jenn regarded Nina doubtfully. Other than expressing first disbelief (“You want to enter a Butter Pageant?”) and then fake enthusiasm (“I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful Butterball Queen!” To which she’d had to respond, “That’s Buttercup, Mom. ButterCUP!”), her mother had never said much about Jenn’s Run for the Buttercups. “But I lost.”

  “I know.” Nina patted Jenn’s shoulder. “I saw.”

  Jenn was surprised. She hadn’t realized her mom had even been there. It didn’t really seem like Nina’s thing. In Raleigh, Nina had been more likely to be holding Monte Carlo Casino Charity Nights (gambling being her favorite and most successful fund-raising endeavor) to finance the new lacrosse field than sitting in the auditorium watching the seventh-grade play. Jenn’s parents had once been high rollers, taking over the penthouse at the Bellagio, front row seats at Caesar’s Palace. Now they lived in a broken-down old hunting lodge and tried to convince themselves they were all about living the Simple, Healthy Life.

  “I’m sure the decision to crown that Mill person was strictly political, but while I’m sorry you lost, it’s not the end of the world.”

  No, Jenn thought, that had ended when they’d yanked her out of school, stealing her away from one last year with her best friend, and hijacking her into the middle of th
is … this Jack London wet dream.

  “Don’t look so glum,” her mother said. “How many times have I told you that our current situation is only temporary? Your father is just taking some time off before jumping back into things—”

  “He’s taken over a year off,” Jenn exclaimed, as startled by her uncharacteristic outburst as Nina looked. But now that the flow of words had started, she couldn’t stop them. “And while he’s taking time off, my life is falling apart! I won’t be able to stand it up there another year with the loons. I can’t! I have to get out of there before I go nuts.”

  Nina regarded Jenn with a wounded expression. “I thought you liked the Lodge.”

  “I did!” she said. “I liked the Little Pathfinders Wilderness Camp you sent me to when I was nine, too. But I don’t want to live there, either.”

  “Now, Jenn, I know it seems right now that living in Fawn Creek is the worst thing that could ever happen to you,” her mother said, “but someday you will look back and realize that ‘you cannot reach the dawn save by the path of the night.”’

  Jenn stared. “Where do you get this stuff?”

  “It was on a Kahlil Gibran poster I had in college,” her mom answered serenely.

  This was pointless. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s at something called Machinery Hill, looking at tractors.”

  Was she kidding?

  “I told him we’d meet him at the Poultry Emporium as soon as you were done with this pageant thing.” Her mother’s expression brightened. “They have these adorable chickens there that look like little Russian army officers. You know, with those tall furry hats?”