Kitchens of the Great Midwest

by J. Ryan Stradal

  “I’ll be here,” Reynaldo said. “I’ll guard it with my life.”

  • • •

  Approaching the bus, she slapped a mosquito on her arm. Hearing the noise, a husky tattooed security guy halted his long oval path in front of the tent to stare at her.

  “Just using the ladies’,” she told him.

  She stepped inside the opulent vehicle—even in the dim light, it looked fancier than almost any place she’d ever lived—and made her way past the bathrooms to the bedroom in the back. The door was ajar. It was dark and empty.

  Once she got to the second floor, she could feel that the bus was completely unoccupied; in fact, it looked as if it had barely been used at all. The counters and tables were empty except for a copy of an insurance form and a rental agreement.

  From the window, a small flickering light caught her eye. Sitting outside around a small fire pit behind the tent were three women; the night disguised their faces, but Cindy knew who was there.

  She’d played two versions of this night—oddly, she’d always imagined it as night—hundreds of times in the intervening years between the morning at Tettegouche Winery and that evening in South Dakota. In one of those musings, she’d approach Eva Thorvald and say, Hello, I’m Cynthia Hargreaves, and the two of them would look in each other’s eyes, and the wordless mother-daughter gravity between them would instantly break the years of silence. She’d hold her daughter for the first time since she was a baby, and after wiping away each other’s tears, they’d spend all night into the morning excavating their lost memories together. Perhaps Cindy would even move to Minnesota to be closer to her daughter, and work for her impressive empire as a sommelier—everyone would be so happy, and it would be the kind of touching human-interest story that’d raise Eva’s national profile—one could now add forgiving to her impressive list of characteristics.

  The more likely scenario was that Lars had interpreted Cindy’s heartbreaking sacrifice decades ago as a bad mother’s selfish mutiny. That was easy to imagine. Perhaps he’d spent Eva’s entire life convincing her that somewhere, her cruel birth mother still existed, as distant and unremarkable as a soldier in a foreign port. That would be how Lars would see it, and a father only needed to tell a little girl once that her real mother had abandoned her for breakable things to become unfixable.

  • • •

  Downstairs, she removed her heels and spied out the bus door’s window, waiting for the security man’s loop to take him out of sight, then darted barefoot around the bus, toward the fire.

  From a distance, she could hear the three people laughing. They appeared to be drinking beer and eating. The women started laughing again, but when they sensed someone approaching them, one of them stopped and sat upright.

  “Hey, who’s that?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Hi,” Cindy said.

  “Hi,” the woman’s voice answered back. “What’s your name?”

  Cindy moved closer to the fire, and with each step could see all three of them more clearly. There was a short, plump older woman with glasses and short hair, a husky, broad-shouldered young blonde, and another woman, with a face she recognized from the Internet.

  Cindy had never seen her own eyes and cheekbones on another living person before. They were more pronounced in the firelight, and, coupled with Lars’s nose, assembled a remarkable face, from every angle. Cindy had seen that face before, when perfectly lit and airbrushed for glossy magazine pieces, but not the bags under the eyes, the smeared, messy hair, the stained cargo pants, the scars on the forearms, or the wide, dirty bare feet propped up on a milk crate. Her daughter was the most stunning human Cindy had ever seen.

  Cindy had planned what she was going to say next for several years, but now that she was here, it was difficult to open her mouth. Her blood clawed at her insides as the words fell between her teeth.

  “I’m Cynthia,” she said. “Cynthia Hargreaves.”

  The three people around the fire looked at Cindy as if she had just said that the weather forecast predicted partly cloudy skies for tomorrow.

  “Hi, I’m Pat Prager,” the older woman said, standing up and shaking Cindy’s hand. This woman had a warmth about her; when she smiled, it seemed sincere and calm.

  The blonde girl didn’t move from her chair. “Braque,” she said. She pointed to a teenage boy cleaning dishes in the kitchen tent. Cindy hadn’t noticed him before. “That’s my son Hatch over there.”

  “Hatch,” Cindy said to herself.

  “He’s named after a town in New Mexico,” Braque said, and slapped a mosquito on her arm. “Fuckin’ organic bug spray is for shit,” she said to herself.

  Eva stood up and shook Cindy’s hand. “Do I know you?”

  “I guess not,” Cindy said. Hearing this young woman’s words, seeing her face, and touching her hand, she felt like she didn’t know where she was, and that she was a thousand miles from home—both of which her mind knew were objectively true—but now her heart translated those opaque facts into something moon-white and cold.

  “No offense,” Eva said, sitting back down again. She stared back at Cindy as if studying a painting in a museum. “I meet a lot of people. And you paid today under the name Reyna.”

  “Married name,” Cindy said, staring at Eva. Her brain, now simply overwhelmed, had somehow compelled her feet to quit moving.

  The security guy appeared behind Cindy and grabbed her arms. “Come on,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “No, it’s OK, Dougie,” Eva said, and Dougie let Cindy go. “Sit down, have a Grain Belt. Cooler’s to your left.”

  Cindy took a beer from the cooler, and because there was nowhere else to sit, she sat down on its thick white plastic lid.

  “Sorry, we’re out of chairs,” Eva said.

  Pat stood up to give Cindy her chair, but Cindy pleaded for her to remain seated, claiming she was comfortable.

  “What are you eating?” was all Cindy could think to say. The food on their plates didn’t look like anything they’d had at The Dinner.

  “Steamed broccoli, mac and cheese, and a beer,” Pat said, smiling. “We just sent up the second dessert course, so we can finally eat now ourselves.”

  “You don’t want to miss Pat’s bars,” Braque said. “We drove her out here just so she could make them tonight.”

  Cindy was transfixed on her daughter, barely listening to any of this.

  “Why are you staring at me?” Eva asked Cindy. She had the tone of someone who might have been asking that question to a small child.

  “I don’t know,” Cindy said, and stood up. “I should go.”

  “No, stay,” Eva said. “You’ve been trying to get down here since you first arrived. What’s on your mind?”

  “I just wanted to say, I used to know your father.”

  “Oh, cool beans.” Eva had the vibe of a celebrity who had heard dozens of compliments and entreaties every day; this phrase had the pleasant, defensive feel of a much-used stock answer.

  Cindy took a deep breath. Maybe Lars never mentioned to her who her mother was? That seemed impossible to believe. “How is he doing?”

  “Well, he’s better. He’s in a treatment facility in Michigan.”

  “Oh,” Cindy said. She liked how Eva was like herself and didn’t bullshit—she got right to the marrow of a conversation—but this was not what she expected to hear. “Where in Michigan?”

  “Marquette.”

  “Oh, Lars is in Marquette?”

  “No, Uncle Lars died when I was a baby. My dad is Jarl.”

  Once again, not what Cindy was expecting to hear. She felt her hand over her heart. “Oh no. Lars died?”

  “Yeah, did you know him too?”

  Cindy’s eyes glistened. “He was the nicest man I’ve ever known,” she said. How could their daughter be who she was now
without Lars? It didn’t make sense. Lars had loved their daughter with such intensity, Cindy remembered feeling alienated and jealous. Lars was one of the main reasons why Cindy was able to leave and spend a lifetime not thinking about what she’d left. “He died when you were how old?”

  “I don’t know. I was a baby. I don’t really remember.” Cindy thought she saw tears in Eva’s eyes, but she wasn’t sure.

  Pat got to her feet and looked at Braque. “Maybe we should start packing up the kitchen.” She gathered her beer and plate, glancing back at Braque as she trudged into the kitchen tent.

  Braque didn’t move, saying, “This is interesting.” Cindy couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic.

  Cindy didn’t take Pat’s vacated chair, choosing to stay on the cooler, at a distance.

  “So you don’t remember him, then?”

  Eva shook her head.

  “Was your mom Fiona?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’s she these days?”

  “She died when I was fourteen.”

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” Cindy said. Fiona had been an able and enthusiastic babysitter, she remembered, but she didn’t seem to like Cindy very much. No matter, now.

  “It’s all right,” Eva said, and took a deep breath. Her rangy posture had tightened up; she was now curled up in her chair like a child.

  “Are you married?”

  “Everyone always wants to know that. No, and no plans to. Not that I’d announce it if I ever did.”

  “A boyfriend, even?”

  Eva exchanged a glance with Braque, who smiled at her. “Nothing serious.”

  Braque couldn’t help herself. “What about Adam?”

  Eva kicked her cousin’s chair. “You can go help Pat clean up the kitchen.”

  “He’s totally cute, admit it,” Braque said, standing. “And he makes awesome bread.”

  “See ya, Braque,” Eva said, and both she and Cindy watched Braque drag her ass into the kitchen tent.

  “So, there’s a cute guy who’s good in the kitchen?”

  Eva sighed. “He’s very sweet. And he makes me laugh. I’ve always been a sucker for guys who make me laugh. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  “Fair enough. And so you don’t have any kids or anything?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “You sound pretty decisive about that.”

  “I am. I think I would be a terrible mother, actually. Braque over there, I don’t know how she does it. I look at a baby and I’m like, ugh.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “So how did you know my parents and uncle?”

  • • •

  Cindy had to take a breath before she spoke. She used to know what she was going to say on this night. She’d practiced it for years, as she read about this young woman, this daughter of hers, as Eva became increasingly successful and famous. It was hard for her not to feel proud that some of herself was in that extraordinary creature on everybody’s wish list. Many times when Eva Thorvald came up in conversation somewhere, Cindy wanted to blurt out, That’s my daughter, because of what it would say about her—because, of course, acquaintances and friends would regard her differently if they knew her daughter was the iconic chef behind the most difficult dinner reservation in the world.

  And, having eaten her food, it was clear to Cindy that Eva was deserving of all the hype and the swooning. Until a mouth closed around a fork or a spoon, Eva fought for control of every variable; she seemed to conjure miracles from crops, animals, bacteria, fire, water, and even the molecules in the air, apparently leaving no detail unscrutinized. There were many chefs far more groundbreaking than her, many more daring with what they were willing to put on a plate, but no one else who could summon such astonishing results from their decisions. Cindy realized that the world where great and heavenly things like this can exist is only possible because everything cannot be known, and perfection cannot be experienced, but the work of brilliant people like Eva makes people doubt that, for just a moment.

  Eva was a part of her, yet existed in this remarkable form because Cindy had no part of her. It would’ve been something to grab her daughter’s hand like a mother back from the dead, and instantly fill the abyss that a mother’s absence might have created in her heart. But there seemed to be no knowledge in the eyes across from Cindy that such an abyss even existed.

  It was up to Cindy to remind Eva’s subconscious that she’d been abandoned, and force this complex emptiness into the center of her beautiful life, whether her daughter knew of Cynthia Hargreaves or not. Cindy realized that this was the critical action beneath the reasons she was here, and one thing that was inevitable if she were to earn what her heart had desired.

  “They loved you, didn’t they? Your parents?”

  “Yeah, very much.”

  Cindy exhaled. She felt her legs shaking and grabbed her knees. She looked at her beer bottle on the ground. “You could’ve been much worse off.”

  “I suppose. They did their best, though.”

  “No. That’s not what I mean. You could’ve been raised by a bad mother.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. The only bad part is that she died.”

  “But she loved you?” Cindy asked.

  “Yeah,” said Eva. “She did.”

  Tears blossomed and streaked Cindy’s face in bright ribbons.

  “Are you OK?” Eva asked.

  “I should go,” Cindy said, wiping her cheeks. If she was going to get on with her life, she couldn’t look at this young woman for another second. She turned her head, stood, and walked away.

  “Hey, nice to meet you!” Eva called after her.

  • • •

  Cindy sat down on the cold grass on the other side of the bus and put her head in her hands. She felt someone sit next to her.

  It was Randy. “You know, she found her birth certificate when she was fifteen,” he said. “But when you’re like her, lots of people come out of the woodwork. Claiming to be somebody to her. People who even forge documents. You’re the third Cynthia Hargreaves in two years. But she wants me to ask you. Are you somebody?”

  “That’s not for me to decide,” Cindy said.

  • • •

  “Did you talk to her?” Reynaldo asked in the Lincoln Town Car, and “Did you talk to her?” Molly and Kerensa asked before work on a rainy Monday, and to all of them she said, Eva Thorvald’s the most beautiful person in the world, and I never expect to see her again.

  • • •

  Some mornings, Cindy would be on her porch, with her dog, drinking coffee, and she’d see the family across the street wrestle with their feisty child, and wonder whether her presence or familiarity was at all provoking to Eva; if one day, that woman would seek her out, and for whatever balance of time, Cindy would have a daughter again. For now, she would return to her kitchen, wash the plate, the cup, and the fork, and just live in the world she had created, the world where the two of them existed, and nothing more.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book wouldn’t exist without these people: Brooke Delaney, Pamela Dorman, Ryan Harbage, Erin Hickey, Lou Mathews, Rob Roberge, Jeffrey Stradal.

  Thank you, so much, to 826LA, Angela Barton, Matt Bell, Doris Biel, Amy Boutell, Cat Boyd, Louise Braverman, Aaron Burch, Leigh Butler, Cecil Castellucci and the men and women of Nine Pines, Patricia Clark, Carolyn Coleburn, Tricia Conley, Kathryn Court, Winnie De Moya, Brian Dille, George Ducker, John Fagan, Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Clare Ferraro, Hal Fessenden, Susie Fleet, Spencer Foxworth, Gina Frangello, Joan Funk, Rico Gagliano, Kate Gibson, Nathan Gratz, Amelia Gray, Anthony Grazioso, Monica Howe, Sacha Howells, Meg Howrey, Alison Hunter, Julia Ingalls, Sarah Janet, Elin Johnson, Matt Kay, Jay and Amy Kovacs, Diana Kowalsky, Summer Block Kumar, Sarah LaBrie, Brad Listi, Michael Loomis, Brandon Lovejoy, Seema Mahanian, Madel
ine McIntosh, Anthony Miller, Patrick Nolan, Ana Ottman, Ashley Perez, Lindsay Prevette, Scott Rubenstein, Jim Ruland, Daniel J. Safarik, Kim Samek, Jeremy Schmidt, Roseanne Serra, Joshua Wolf Shenk, Nancy Sheppard, Connie Simonson, Jen Sincero, Olivia Taylor Smith, Aaron Solomon, Eric J. Stolze, Roger Stradal, Jacob Strunk, Dennis Swaim, Mike Tanaka, Mia Taylor, Chris Terry, Alissa Theodor, Shannon Twomey, the Westshire Drive home group, the Stradal, Johnson, and Biel families, and everyone on the hardcover and paperback sales teams at Penguin Random House.

  Very special thanks to my great-grandmother Lois Bly Johnson’s church, First Lutheran Church of Hunter, North Dakota, and all of the contributors to the 1984 edition of the First Lutheran Church Women cookbook, on which five of the recipes in this novel are based.

  Finally, eternal gratitude to Karen Stradal for a childhood full of books, for encouraging all of my “research projects,” and, most of all, for teaching me how to read at a young age. When you returned to college to finish your English degree and you read me your assignments as bedtime stories, it filled me with a lifelong love of literature and writing. This book and everything I write is because of you. You are loved and missed beyond words.

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