Bread and Butter

by Michelle Wildgen

  Britt paused. “Actually, that’s not insane.”

  Leo watched him dial his phone and asked, “You have Shelley’s number in your phone?”

  “Don’t ask,” said Britt. “She was briefly our consultant.”

  It was early in California, only seven, but Britt didn’t care, and when Shelley answered her phone, she sounded as if she’d been up for hours anyway.

  “Shelley!” he said. “It’s Britt.”

  “Hello, Britt,” she said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I’m looking for Harry. You haven’t by any chance talked to him, have you?”

  “No,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “He disappeared yesterday,” Britt said, and it sounded both melodramatic and not dramatic enough. He cleared his throat. “I got to the restaurant, and I think he’d just left in the middle of his prep work. I haven’t heard anything from him.”

  “How has he been?” she asked. “Has he seemed tense? Tenser than usual, I mean.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Why? Do you know something?”

  “I know the same things you know—how he gets in that vortex he can’t get out of. Maybe his dosage is off.”

  “What dosage?” Britt said. Leo looked up.

  “The milligrams, you mean? I can’t recall—I never take prescription drugs.”

  “Dosage of what? What’s he taking?”

  “It was an antidepressant, last I checked. But it’s been a while—for all I know he’s taking something else now. Or maybe he stopped altogether? That could be the problem. He doesn’t tell me these things. But then, I guess he doesn’t tell you either.”

  LEO LOCKED UP AFTER THEM and then stood in the Winesap parking lot, wondering what to do. He didn’t want to see his parents worried about their investment, or about the son whose exploits always seemed to have delighted them. Until Harry had come back and opened Stray, Leo had felt much the same. Perhaps the family had always operated with the tacit belief that as long as the older two remained stable and successful, Harry was free to take any risk he liked. They could feel pleased about their real estate and businesses and vicariously enjoy and be worried by Harry’s deliberate poverty, his exuberant itinerancy. Somehow it had all balanced out.

  He wondered if Thea was home and if Iris was with her. Maybe Bryan had taken her to church. Did he go to church? Leo didn’t even know if Thea did. He assumed not; he had never heard her express an ounce of religious feeling, but who knew? Who knew what his girlfriend did on Sunday mornings when he was not allowed to be with her? Maybe she and Iris had some Sunday morning ritual—waffles, a walk in the park—so dear that she told no one about it, ever. Leo despaired of ever having such a ritual with Thea himself. Any ritual at all, except sneaking out doors at separate times.

  It was a bad idea, of course, but he began to drive in the direction of her house. He understood now that it was crucial for him to see her and confirm whatever he was trying to confirm. That he could touch her, that she did indeed look at him differently outside the restaurant, that this was not all some desperate mirage he’d concocted out of loneliness or anger.

  When he reached her house, he turned off the ignition and sat in the heating car for a long moment, peering at the windows to see if she was home. Her garage door was shut, so no help there. As he got out of his car, he listened for the sound of Iris’s voice in the backyard. He looked up and down the street like a criminal, and finally went up the walk.

  At the last moment he decided to call instead, believing that phoning her from her front porch was somehow less of a breach of their code of conduct than ringing the doorbell. When she answered, he couldn’t bring himself to lead with the fact that they’d been outed. Instead he stood there on her porch, saying that no one had heard from Harry yet.

  “I think you’ll have to cook again tonight,” he said.

  “We can’t ask this of Jason for much longer. Whatever happens, I want to keep him in-house. I’m afraid if he gets all comfy there we’ll lose him altogether.”

  Leo realized that he could hear her moving on the other side of the door, her footsteps and the echo of her voice. His being out here was too creepy to continue. When she began to speak again, he interrupted her. “Thea—I’m here. I’m outside.”

  “You’re what?”

  He sighed, mortified. “I’m on your porch. I wanted to call before I rang in case Iris is there and you want me to go away.”

  “She’s at Bryan’s,” Thea said. The door swung open, and she stood there, barefoot, in cutoff jeans and a white tank top, magenta bra straps showing. She looked baffled. “Get inside.”

  He followed her in. The air smelled of fruit and sugar. “Baking?”

  “Muffins. Iris likes them. I usually send a few home with Bryan.”

  This was worse than he’d imagined: she still baked for her ex-husband; she saw him throughout the week and planned the care of their daughter with him; she probably kissed him hello and goodbye and wondered why they’d ever split when they shared such commonalities as offspring and fruit-laden baked goods.

  “Are you close with him, with Bryan?”

  “No. I get the feeling Iris likes me to cook for him in some little way, so I do. He cleans the gutters in the fall for the same reason, I’m pretty sure, but we don’t discuss it.”

  “Oh.” He sat down on the bench at her kitchen table, where two platters of blueberry muffins, sparkling with sugar, sat cooling in the center. Next to them was a bowl of bananas and nectarines. Thea placed a glass of water before him and sat beside him, facing him. She reached for his hand and asked, “Why are you here, Leo?”

  “I have something to tell you,” he said, and her hand froze over his. Her mouth went white.

  “Okay,” she said slowly.

  “I’m sorry—this must be unnerving. I’m having a hard time saying it, I guess.”

  “They’re going to be here soon,” Thea said, “and if you have something to say to me, I’d prefer to hear it alone.”

  Leo looked at her. Her lips and the tip of her nose were bleached of color. “You think I’m here to end this,” he said. She didn’t answer. He shook his head and admitted, “I’m not. I’m definitely not. But Britt knows.”

  Thea exhaled; her spine seemed to droop. After a moment she said, “Britt’s not dumb.”

  “No, but he also said everyone knows. ‘From the newest busboy to the sous chef’ were his exact words, I believe.”

  Thea looked away. Two spots of color bled into the apples of her cheeks; a flush crept up her chest.

  “I know you’re embarrassed,” he said. “I don’t know what I thought would happen. This business is like a…a beehive. Or an anthill. They all know everything without even saying it aloud, I swear to God.”

  “I’m not embarrassed,” Thea said.

  Leo continued. “I know why I did this, but why you? What do you get out of this? Even the ones who would blame me can’t really blame me.”

  “‘What the hell was I thinking’—is that it?” she said.

  Leo looked at her. “Well, yeah. It’s not too late if you regret this. No one really knows, they just think they know. It would all go away if you want it to. They’d think they were wrong, that’s all.”

  “Is that what you want?” Thea asked. “Shall we hit the reset button and forget it ever happened?”

  “It’s not at all what I want,” Leo said. “I just can’t figure out why you wouldn’t.”

  Thea picked up his hand and looked it over, as if she were examining an item before buying. She didn’t look up at him for a long time. In the silence of the kitchen he began to fear that her face was taking on the last intimate expression he would see from her, one of chagrin and farewell. He let himself hope that her eyes might be filling with tears—this might be the best that he could hope for, a regretful break.

  But when she finally did look up again, her face was composed.

  “I would offer you a blueberry muffin,” she said,
“but they’re kind of ex-husband muffins.”

  Leo’s throat was tight. He took a sip of water, coughed slightly, and finally managed, “Do you not want to share?”

  “I don’t, actually,” Thea said. “Not those, not with you. I don’t know—I’ve given these to him too many times, as in I don’t take him back, but I give him muffins. I can’t give him love anymore, but I can give him breakfast. I don’t want to give you the same thing, is my point. I want to give you the opposite. What can I make that says the opposite, Leo? You tell me.”

  “You don’t have to make me anything,” Leo said. “Just give me saltines. Ritz crackers.”

  “Is that so?”

  He cupped her face in his hands, tentatively, because she looked slightly angry, even if her eyes seemed tender. Her jaw was so narrow, he was thinking, its angles swept so steeply up from the point of her chin. He had seen the planes of this jawline in profile for years; sometimes he was still taken aback by the privilege of looking at Thea head-on, at a range so intimate that he knew the slightly uneven peaks of her lips, the faint freckles that dusted her nose.

  To his relief, she let him kiss her. It wasn’t until he felt her—her warm mouth, her satiny neck, the rough abundance of her curls where they tended to knot at the base of her skull—that he realized he had talked himself out of expecting to touch her like this ever again.

  “You don’t need some kind of reassurance?” Thea said. Her hand came to rest on his neck, her fingers curved lightly over his earlobe. She smiled very faintly. “Something a little nicer than a basket of divorce muffins?”

  “Give me unpopped popcorn,” he said, his voice a croak. “Matzo meal.”

  “You’re not a well man, Leo.”

  “Dry rice,” said Leo, still trying for lightness, for she seemed to be trying too, but neither of them quite achieved it. Their voices were tinged with shakiness and bravado. Leo tried not to sound as naked as he felt. “A bag of flour,” he said finally. “Any old flour in the world.”

  CHAPTER 21

  THE CREW AT STRAY MANAGED to do it all again that night, at slightly slower velocity. Chastened, the servers were deferential to Britt and extra-charming to the customers; the coffee was served in room-temperature cups. Jason and Jenelle worked smoothly together, and Camille came in for the busiest hours and departed again when it slowed. No one dared to ask about Harry.

  The night was nearly done, with only one last table finishing a shared portion of gelato, when Britt’s cell phone rang. He froze—he was as frightened now of answering the phone as he was of its silence.

  “Yes?” He walked swiftly back toward the office, ready to slip behind the door if it was Harry.

  “Britt?” It was a woman’s voice, one he vaguely recognized, and Britt pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the ID and frowned in confusion. “Oh, good, it’s you. This is Barbara Makaski. I’m sorry to call you so late, but I thought you’d want to know. I seem to have your brother Harry here.”

  HOT SPRINGS HAD EMPTIED OUT when Britt arrived, with only two cars left in the lot, which he assumed belonged to Barbara and maybe another staff member. Harry’s red truck was parked across two spaces.

  The front door was unlocked, but the music had been silenced and the dining room broken down for the evening: flowers gone to the cooler, candles doused, tables reset. Britt poked his head into the bar.

  Barbara Makaski was sitting on one of the barstools, her posture regal, reading a copy of Food Arts. The light cast coppery threads in her hair, which was as rich a magenta as ever. She turned with a start at Britt’s voice, then laid a hand on her chest and flapped the other in his direction. “So silly to be startled,” she said. “I knew you were coming.”

  “No, it’s late,” he said. “Thank you for calling.”

  She made a rueful face. “Well. It seemed the only real option. You’ll see.” Barbara got off her stool and brushed a few nonexistent crumbs from her black dress. “Would you like something to drink? No, no, of course not. Well. Come on back.”

  Britt followed her past the bar and toward the back of the restaurant. He was calculating how long it had been since he and Leo had been here for dessert—nine months, give or take, in which he’d taken on a new relationship, a new restaurant that was already drowning one of its owners. Not a slow rate of change for less than a year.

  They passed the windowed kitchen door, the restrooms, a server station, and finally came to the office door. Britt hesitated, suddenly hoping to stall. “Donnie here tonight?” he asked.

  Barbara observed him, her head to one side as if she weren’t sure he was serious. Her eyes were the caramel brown of a lynx or a fox, and her teeth were frighteningly white in her tanned face. In her earlobes were two flat onyx discs that, if you looked closely, were revealed to have faces carved into them. “Donnie and I split up,” she said. “I figured everyone knew by now. But perhaps you’re being polite.”

  “I don’t think I did know,” Britt said.

  “But you may have heard a rumor or two. It’s okay. We all know how this business loves to gossip.” She paused, and Britt wondered if she had heard about Leo and Thea. He waited, not sure how he’d deflect it if she had, but then she said, “We’re still working out the details, but the gist of it is that Donnie’s off doing…something else now. The restaurant stays with me.” She said this as if it were a child, Britt noted, but he understood.

  “I’m sorry, Barbara,” he said, and was taken aback at how sincerely he meant it. He had never really liked Donnie, or even Barbara for that matter, but right then it didn’t matter. A restaurant was a terribly public place to undergo a dissolution, be it of a partnership, a marriage, or both. It made you wish you were in some faceless corporate environment where no one cared whether you had limbs, much less a spouse.

  “Thank you,” she said with dignity. “I’m choosing to regard this as one bad year. When it’s done, it’s done. What Donnie will do, I can’t begin to guess.” With that, she opened the office door.

  His brother was stretched out on a brown leather couch, feet dangling over the edge. His arm was draped over his glasses. His chest rose and fell, and his mouth hung slightly open. He was wearing an old T-shirt and jeans, which Britt was relieved to see did not bear evidence of some traumatic incident, no rips or mud or blood. He looked extremely long and skinny, limp as a shot egret.

  “He came in around ten,” Barbara said, “and ordered a very odd dinner and a bottle of white wine, though he didn’t drink more than half a glass. At first I just thought he was doing a little research, but the server let me know he didn’t seem well. She didn’t realize who he was.”

  Britt nodded, appreciating the unstated assurance that at least one person might not know to publicize this, though the rest of the staff had probably told her by now anyway. Mack’s was probably already abuzz with it.

  “Anyway, I asked him if he’d like to come talk to me in the office, just industry chatter, but he looked so exhausted that I suggested he might like to lie down. I must say he seemed more than willing.”

  “What did he order?” Britt said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said it was an odd dinner.”

  “Oh, yes. He ordered two molten chocolate cakes and the sardines. He asked for the cakes first, though, and that was after he called the server back three times to change his order.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes.” Barbara glanced at Harry, seemed to reassure herself that he had done nothing to ruin her office, and withdrew discreetly to her seat at the bar.

  Britt turned back to Harry, who still appeared to be asleep. He wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to do now. It was tempting to see if Barbara could keep him overnight, but of course this wasn’t an option. He would have to wake Harry up and drag him home, install him on the couch. He realized that he didn’t even trust Harry not to bolt as soon as he awoke, but at the same time, what was Britt going to do? Lock the doors from the outside, tether him by
an ankle? He thought wearily that Harry would do whatever he was going to do, and he himself might have to proceed without him.

  He had feared that seeing Harry in person would enrage him, the way sometimes people’s physical presence—their large-pored noses, their swampy chewing sounds and braying laughter—could grate unbearably. But Britt felt only slightly more alive than his unconscious brother appeared. Harry seemed defeated and emptied out. Britt felt his own energy drain from him, as if once he had his brother safely in his sights his adrenaline could finally depart, leaving his system with only the faint memory of a staff dinner and a half glass of water. He was teetering and fragile, made of thinned blood and hollowed bones. He felt a frustrating mix of tenderness, relief, exhaustion, and stymied anger.

  Britt pulled the desk chair beside the couch and dropped into it with a sigh.

  He reached over and lifted Harry’s arm from where it lay across his glasses and set it on his belly. Harry’s nose bore a deep crimson dent from where his arm had pressed on the glasses. His brow furrowed and his eyes began to open. When he saw Britt, he blinked furiously. His eyes filled briefly with tears and then squeezed shut for a long moment. Britt waited silently until Harry’s eyes opened again.

  “It’s me,” Britt said. “Barbara called.”

  Harry nodded, raising a fist in front of his mouth to cough. He removed his glasses and wiped them on his shirt, swiped his knuckles across his eyes. He looked around the room, getting his bearings. “I figured she would,” he said finally.

  “You want to sleep at my place? I’ll drive you back if you’re not going to duck out before I get up.”

  Harry nodded and heaved himself into a sitting position. “You know Donnie’s gone?” he said.

  Britt stood up and returned the chair to the desk. “I know. You want to help me out and just not talk about that for now? I’m pretty tired, Harry.”

  “I know. I know that’s my fault.”

  Britt shrugged. No point in pretending otherwise. “Come on. You can text Leo and Mom and Dad from the car, so they know you’re alive.”