Kitchens of the Great Midwest

by J. Ryan Stradal

  Robbe looked up from his phone and nodded when she entered, but did not put down the phone, much less rise from his seat like a gentleman.

  • • •

  “I’m kinda seeing Eva,” Robbe said. “I just wanted to tell you.”

  She’d suspected this travesty was under way, but actually hearing it hit Octavia in the heart with a cast-iron skillet. “Why did you need to tell me that in person?” she asked.

  “Because I know you like me.”

  “Well yeah, as a friend, I like you as a friend.”

  “Have it your way,” he said. “I actually did think about sleeping with you at one point, but you seem like the type that would get all psycho afterwards.”

  Octavia took a deep breath. “I’m so glad we skipped all that. I have been meaning to ask you, though—how come you didn’t say anything about the succotash during the dinner yesterday?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You saw us put our succotash into bowls. You were there in the kitchen.”

  “I don’t remember that. But I’d had a few.”

  “All right.” She got the bartender’s attention and ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, which was wildly passé, but Christ, she needed it, and it wasn’t like anyone in this bar knew her.

  “So what’s going to happen to you guys when you move to Bali?”

  “What’s going to happen to who?”

  “You and Eva.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’ll come with.”

  “What kind of woman would just drop everything and run off with you?” Octavia knew she would’ve skipped town indefinitely and left for Bali with Robbe at any moment, at least until maybe five minutes ago.

  “Have you been to her place?”

  “God, no.”

  “She lives in a totally sketchy apartment with her dad off of Lake Street. I was there a few days ago, and when I was waiting for her to come down, I seriously thought I was going to get shot. If I were her, I’d get the hell out of there first chance I had.”

  “So that’s it. You think you can rescue her.”

  “Who the hell knows,” Robbe said. “But do you know who she’s bringing to the next dinner? Mitch Diego. Nobody will have to bring anything. He’s going to make all the food. How do you like that?”

  “I’m intrigued,” Octavia said.

  • • •

  For the dinner with Mitch Diego, Octavia wore her best dress, a chocolate BCBG jersey dancer dress with a plunging neckline, cinched at the waist with a red wool belt. It wasn’t a summer color—the dress was from the fall 2008 season—but it literally stopped men on the street, so screw it.

  Mitch Diego looked like a slightly heavier version of the pictures on his Web site, but he still had a look that Octavia lusted after: a beard of silver and charcoal, with slick, curly obsidian hair and dizzying brown topaz eyes. She even loved the black chest hair popping up from the neckline of his white pearl-snap shirt; not a trendy look, but she admired men who ran with it. He looked Octavia up and down but didn’t introduce himself, so neither did she, but she caught him looking so many times she started folding her arms in front of her chest.

  Eva stood in the corner of Robbe’s kitchen, next to his Kitchen Aid mixer, watching Robbe and Mitch from a distance. Robbe touched her every time he passed by her, and she touched him back, rarely speaking to him or Mitch, but obviously happy to be along for this ride, in an exquisite kitchen with a rich handsome man-friend and a legendary local chef.

  Adam Snelling froze when he walked into the kitchen and saw Octavia. “You look real beautiful,” he said to her face, in a way that seemed like it was involuntary, like he just had to say it, which was nice, and took a cigarette out of his pocket. The clean white cylinder shook between his fingers.

  “Give me one of those,” Octavia said, and led him out to the backyard. For some reason, Mitch Diego followed them.

  “Bum a smoke?” he asked Adam.

  Adam held out the pack for Mitch. “You don’t need to be in the kitchen?” Octavia asked, preemptively crossing her arms in front of her chest.

  “Dirty little secret,” Mitch said. “Eva has saved my life. She does everything I can do and people can’t tell the difference. I’m actually writing a book now, I have time to write a book.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Tapas Girls and Bottomless Sangria: Hot Times in Spanish Kitchens. You know anyone who can help me with a book proposal?”

  • • •

  Robbe sat across from Eva at the end of the table, then Sarah across from Elodie, and, in a new twist, Adam across from Octavia at the other end. She was hoping that Mitch, who’d be in the Lacey Dietsch position, would sit next to her, but when Mitch saw the table he left the room and came back in from the study with a desk chair, which he put at the head of the table. Octavia wondered why no one had thought of that before.

  “Tonight’s menu,” Mitch Diego announced, “is summer corn chowder, made from Golden Bantam sweet corn. Main course is slow-cooked organic pork shoulder tacos with mint, black beans, and Wisconsin feta cheese, and salsa made from Nebraska Wedding and Cherokee Purple heirlooms. Dessert is Paula Red apple crisp.”

  Everyone applauded, and Octavia watched as Eva rose and disappeared into the kitchen,

  • • •

  The meal that Eva made and Mitch Diego took credit for was predictably incredible. People begged for leftovers, Sarah Vang demanded that Mitch Diego open a food truck, Robbe claimed that it was the best meal he’d ever had in his home.

  The diners lingered over the extra salsa, a beautiful blend of yellow and purple heirloom tomatoes from Heirloom Johnny Lao at the St. Paul Farmers’ Market.

  “Why do you buy from him?” Mitch Diego complained to Eva in front of everyone. “He’s too expensive and he’s an asshole.”

  “He’s always been nice to me,” Eva said.

  • • •

  It could’ve been the ninety-degree weather, and the surfeit of Elodie Pickett’s amazing wine pairings, and the fact that Sarah had to leave early to pick someone up at the airport, but the remaining three women and three men found their way into pairs and were dancing in the living room, touching each other’s sweaty bodies and then draped on them, sitting on each other’s laps during breaks.

  Octavia recalled lying across Adam’s legs, her head arched over the armrest of the sofa, looking upside down at Elodie, Mitch, Robbe, and Eva dancing on the hardwood floor to “Kids,” by MGMT. The smile on Eva’s inverted face was so unrestrained and beautiful, Octavia actually felt herself feeling happy for the stupid girl. She still couldn’t watch Robbe kiss her, but she was starting to feel OK about how things had turned out, maybe.

  Octavia was also surprised that she’d begun to find Adam attractive; he wasn’t her type at all—gangly, with a cheap haircut and stubble and a love of cheap short-sleeved plaid shirts—she’d hardly spoken to him at all for the first few months they’d shared these meals together in this house. He hadn’t even registered to her as a sexual being. Now, all of a sudden, she wanted to lead him behind the toolshed and let him take all of her clothes off, and she wasn’t even sure exactly why.

  • • •

  If the afterglow from outdoor sex hadn’t lingered for the next few days, it would’ve been another horrifying week in Octavia’s life. First of all, how was she supposed to know that the stupid dashboard alarm on her BMW was telling her that her coolant tank was empty? Now she needed to replace the radiator and a bunch of hoses, and she didn’t have that kind of money anymore.

  Also, she got a phone call on Monday afternoon from her high school friend Jessica Mitchelette, who was a fellow front line on the volleyball team. She said that Sunday night, Lacey Dietsch was walking through her neighborhood, pushing her infant daughter in a stroller, when a guy in a pickup truck made a right turn and hit her, draggi
ng her under the truck for a hundred feet before he stopped. Her stomach was split open and her intestines were prolapsed onto the asphalt. She died before the ambulance even arrived. The stroller somehow wasn’t hit; they found it half pushed onto the center median, the baby soundly sleeping inside.

  • • •

  Later that week, Robbe announced that there was going to be just one more Sunday dinner before he and Eva moved to Bali, and it was going to be a big one—a Labor Day wine and cheese fund-raiser to raise money for Eva’s dad’s medical care and nursing home fees, to take care of him for the length of time that he and Eva would be away. They would charge a hundred dollars a plate, no exceptions, but figured that people might pay that much for an all-day, all-night party of wine and appetizers by Bar Garroxta’s famous executive chef, Mitch Diego.

  Octavia showed up early, in a sleeveless ivory dress (last chance to wear white in 2009!), having driven over in Adam’s Honda Accord, walking with him to Robbe’s front door arm in arm.

  “Have you paid in advance?” Robbe asked at the door. He was wearing a tie and holding a clipboard.

  “Paid?” Octavia asked. “We’re your friends, we get in free.”

  “No one gets in free,” Robbe said. “Eva’s dad has lots of medical bills and needs a full-time home health-care nurse. That’s what this is about.”

  Since when did Robbe Kramer get altruistic? “Wow, your girlfriend must have a magic pussy,” she said.

  Robbe frowned at her. For a famously blunt guy, he hated perverse or immodest conversation; he felt coarseness was blue-collar and beneath him. She supposed that every man, or even a four-year-old in a man’s body like Robbe, had to have a code.

  Octavia stared at him. “You know I don’t have that kind of money. I’ve been unemployed for a month. I can’t even afford to fix my car.”

  “I can spot you,” Adam said, because he was so nice.

  “No, you work at a bakery, you can’t spend two hundred dollars on appetizers.”

  “Yeah, but it’s for our friend’s dad,” he said.

  “Not really. It’s so this one can run off with his twenty-year-old girlfriend.”

  While they were talking, a large Jamaican-looking guy ambled up the sidewalk behind them. “Hey, I paid in advance,” he said. “Ros Wali from Simple Space Solutions.”

  Robbe checked the clipboard and waved the guy in. From the look of the list, it didn’t look like they were going to have any trouble making money and didn’t need to soak their friends.

  Robbe turned to Octavia and Adam. “If you guys need to run to an ATM, we’ll be going for a while.”

  “Screw it,” Octavia said, turning her back. “Come on, Adam.”

  She never saw Robbe Kramer again.

  She saw Eva Thorvald three more times. The first time was at a popular café in Loring Park, a block down from the apartment that Octavia could no longer afford. It was two weeks after Labor Day, and the leaves weren’t changing color yet, but there was already a soft bite in the breeze, and the outdoor tables were full of Minnesotans plundering the final days of summer. Inside the warm brick-walled building, full of young people on laptops and cell phones and well-dressed couples noshing over breakfast pastries, Eva sat at the thick wooden table farthest from the windows, under a vintage French poster for Lillet. Her hair looked even crappier than usual, and her face was red and blotchy.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” she said.

  “Sorry again about not making it to your fund-raiser. We couldn’t afford it.”

  “It’s OK. Have you heard from Robbe?”

  “No, not in weeks.” For some reason, Eva looked crushed when Octavia said this. “I thought you guys were leaving for Bali.”

  “He left,” Eva said, putting both of her hands over her face. Octavia watched her body shudder with deep breaths.

  “Robbe left for Bali already? I thought you were going with?”

  Eva wiped her face. “I can’t go with. We only raised sixty-seven hundred dollars. It’s not enough for everything. I can’t just leave my dad here. I just can’t.”

  As someone who hadn’t even spoken to her own dad in more than two months, Octavia was touched and confused by Eva’s loyalty to someone who apparently hadn’t done her much good and was a total money pit besides. And, more important, she also felt like she’d seriously dodged a bullet with Mr. Kramer.

  “Sixty-seven hundred dollars, that’s gotta pay for . . .”

  “We still owe forty grand for my dad’s liver transplant,” Eva said. “Plus, my dad needs someone to cook for him, and give him his insulin shots on schedule, and help him do the laundry and dishes. It’s a lot.”

  “It’s still almost seven grand, that’s gotta help.”

  Eva shook her head. “Robbe stole half of it. He said he earned it.”

  “What? That shithead. He doesn’t need your money. Sue him for it.”

  Eva held a brown paper napkin against her wet eyes. “That’s a stupid amount to hire a lawyer for. Not like I can even afford a lawyer.”

  “But it’s the principle of the thing. And maybe you can get damages.”

  “It’s gone. He stole it.”

  “You know what? Have another fund-raiser.”

  “For the same thing? Two weeks after the last one?”

  “Then don’t call it a fund-raiser, just call it a fancy meal.”

  “But there’s nowhere to even have it.”

  “Well, have it anywhere, have it outside somewhere. When the weather’s still nice. Get Mitch Diego to cook again and you’re golden.”

  “He didn’t even show up to this last one.”

  “But you still raised almost seven thousand dollars? And people were happy?”

  Eva nodded, wiping her face.

  “Then screw Mitch Diego. I don’t like him anyway.”

  “You know, what’s funny is, I think he really likes you. He talks about you all the time.”

  Such interesting food for thought, but at the time, Octavia was happy and wasn’t interested. Adam had even started biking to work so she could have his car while she looked for a job. And that was his idea, not hers. It was something to be around people who thought like that. “I’m with somebody,” she said. “A nice man.”

  “Well, I gotta go make lunch for my dad,” Eva said, finishing her water. “If you hear from Robbe, let me know, I know you guys were close.”

  What a sucker, Octavia thought as she hugged her. Of course Robbe didn’t actually love her; he had robbed her and fobbed her and tossed her aside to be stuck in Minnesota with her sickly dad while he wrote his memoir in Bali. Robbe had goals, and therefore he knew who could help him and exactly how long to keep them around. And here were Octavia and Eva, thousands of miles from him, broke, and cursing his name.

  The second-to-last time Octavia saw Eva was actually just three weeks later. Elodie Pickett, whom Octavia hadn’t heard from in forever, e-mailed that she and Eva had a business proposition and asked if she wanted to meet up somewhere. Octavia had just gotten a part-time job on Lake Street working as a discard counselor for Small Space Solutions—she had been hired by a guy named Ros Wali, who claimed to have been at Robbe and Eva’s Labor Day fund-raiser. She went into people’s homes and told them what they should get rid of, which she found she had a talent for.

  Eva’s apartment is right nearby, Elodie texted. Let’s just meet there.

  • • •

  Eva’s apartment was arguably worse than even Robbe had implied. The whole place smelled like beef stock and mold, and the one place to sit was occupied by a fat man whom Octavia assumed was Eva’s dad. He was watching one of Octavia’s favorite shows, Cater-Mania with Miles Binder, the episode where Miles and his crazy staff try to throw a Thanksgiving party for a hundred people on three hours’ notice. A classic.

  Eva kissed her dad on the head. �
��What are you watching this for?” she asked him.

  “It reminds me of you,” he said.

  She laughed. “This show annoys the hell out of me.”

  He glanced behind him at Octavia. “Who is she supposed to be?”

  Octavia, now feeling violently awkward, and not wanting that gross man to look at her, stepped into the small kitchen. It was the only room that was somewhat generously appointed, and it was crammed with beaten appliances and kitchenware—stacks of pans and pots were piled on each of the stove’s burners—but before she could really take it all in, she was pulled into the unit’s one bedroom, which was Eva’s.

  The bedroom was as spare as the rest of the house, and except for a few of the dresses and blouses hanging in the closet, there was not much to suggest it was a girl’s room, with its plain white bedsheets and white particleboard nightstand. Instead of a dresser, stacks of transparent plastic tubs held her underwear and socks. The most interesting features were the worn posters for the Smiths and Bikini Kill taped on the walls, and the stacks of cookbooks piled on the floor, many with bookmarks sticking out of them at all angles, and tags on the spines from library sales.

  For lack of anywhere better everyone sat on top of the bed, like college kids. This made Octavia feel uneasy, but not as much as the apartment did in general. Was this poverty? She’d never seen people who actually lived like this. It was almost like the apartment from the movie Trainspotting. It made her nervous, like she was holding on to the edge of an inner tube in a current, and the slightest shock might suck her down into this standard of living, with these people. Now she realized why even though poor people had the numbers, they could never start a revolution; they feared and despised the people one step below them, and for good reason.

  “So what’s up?” she asked. “I can’t stay long.”

  A voice from down the hall rattled the women’s bones. “Eva!” the man’s voice shouted. “When’s dinner?”

  “I’ll be right there,” Eva said, and scrambled off of the bed. “Sorry, guys, I’m making my dad a rosemary-shallot beef stew, I gotta go see if it’s done.”