But most of all what she worried about was Gordon. His T-cell count had fallen to 130 and he had started having drenching night sweats, bad enough for him to buy a waterproof mattress pad and two extra changes of bed linens. Then there was the increasing fatigue and the more frequent bouts of what they euphemistically referred to as flu, on top of the chronically swollen glands, of course, old and familiar as cranky cell mates after two years. Was it all just more of “the process” the doctors were always referring to in L.A.? Or were they ominous portents, signs that Gordon’s decaying immunological system was about to come completely unstrung and pitch him headlong into the ranks of the fullblown? If so, the whole thing was going too fast, years too fast. Hadn’t Johns Hopkins released the statistic only recently that only fifty-three people out of one hundred would have broken through, a full ten years after seroconversion? Hell, look at Magic Johnson; doomed, obviously, but still playing exhibition basketball after learning of his own positive status.
Nadine couldn’t tell whether Petie or Rose had figured it out yet. In a city like L.A. or San Francisco, there’d have been no hiding Gordon’s HIV status, but here the plague was a distant thing happening someplace else, like famine in India. She and Gordon had agreed that they would keep his illness to themselves as long as possible, knowing that once he was widely identified as HIV positive, his involvement in the cafe would have to stop. But they had also agreed not to launch some humiliating obfuscation campaign. Both Gordon and the disease deserved greater respect than that.
Nadine took a deep breath and hopped down from her stool to put on another pot of coffee. Gordon often chided her for these kinds of fretful ruminations. Better to put the effort into solvable problems, like the fact that if the Hubbard locals would only accept Souperior’s as well as the tourists did, her troubles would be over. But they seemed to be an uncrackable nut. They liked what they liked, which is to say they liked the things they’d always had. The women had contributed all the recipes, but the men didn’t seem to want to come in and eat them. A few times she’d joked with Gordon that if she could figure out how to make a fried soup with brown gravy, they’d be rich.
Visibility—Souperior’s needed visibility. That’s what advertising did, but on Nadine’s limited budget she couldn’t afford more paid advertising. On the other hand, Gordon had offered an interesting idea last night. Christmas was coming, with all those people looking for gifts. They could put together a Souperior’s cookbook, maybe call it Local Flavor. They wouldn’t give away all their recipes, of course, but they’d use a lot of them, even a couple of the best ones, and attach the recipe’s author’s name so the local people who’d contributed them would feel famous and buy copies for gifts. Maybe they’d even do another contest for a New Recipes section. If they desktop-published the book on Gordon’s computer, had it cheaply printed in Sawyer and did the spiral binding themselves, they could make a slender profit even on a small run of, say, two hundred and fifty copies. And if they didn’t sell all the books by Christmas they’d just give them new covers and offer them to the summer tourist trade. Nadine could talk to the other Hubbard merchants about carrying the book in their gift shops, maybe even featuring it in their windows. She’d bring up the idea at the next meeting of the Hubbard Chamber of Commerce. It was worth a try.
The only other hurdle was editing the recipes, simplifying them and checking them for consistency. That, and getting a local name on the cover. Nadine picked up the phone and dialed. If Rose would help her for free, Nadine would make her associate editor.
In an hour, she and Rose and Gordon were seated in a back booth, hands folded around fresh cups of coffee, alone in the deserted gloom of afternoon. She did most of the talking. This was customary. Gordon rarely came forward except in a shy, apologetic way. He was diffident, balding, crumpled, brainy, afflicted with a mild stammer; graced with a certain softness, a delicacy of manners and approach. His eyes were as light and clear as swimming pool water.
Rose leaned far over the table, trying to follow them. “You mean you want Petie and me to write a cookbook?”
“Well, we want you to help edit one,” said Nadine. “It would just be you, since Petie’s already so busy with her bread and everything. And you don’t need to write it, exactly, at least not from scratch, because of course we have all the recipes already. Just choose, say, twenty-five. And write them down the way you cooked them, make sure they have good simple directions, what order things need to be prepared in and that. From your experience.”
“We haven’t followed a single recipe,” Rose said.
“What?”
“Well, we’ve stuck to the main parts, but we’ve adapted some things because we thought they’d taste better.”
Nadine and Gordon exchanged a look.
“Won’t it make people mad if they read we changed things?” Rose asked. “If you’re going to use their names, I mean.”
Nadine ran her hand through her hair. Sometimes she imagined she could feel the gray multiplying day by day. One morning she’d wake up and find she’d gone pure white. “We think it’s very important to use their names,” she tried to explain. “It would help in marketing the book locally, at any rate. Okay, let’s do this. You could just edit the recipes like they were written originally, like they were submitted. Even if they won’t taste quite as good.”
“You mean you just want me to copy them down.”
“Well,” said Nadine. “Just edit them, you see.”
Rose shifted uncomfortably. “I guess maybe I don’t understand what you mean, edit.”
Gordon nodded: he’d finally gotten it. “Where it says ‘teaspoon,’ you put ‘tsp.,’ where it says ‘one-half cup,’ you put ‘1-slash-2 cup.’ Like that, you just make all the measurements and abbreviations consistent, make sure the instructions make sense, so all the cooking steps are represented. And give everything the same format—the same look.”
“Oh!” said Rose, flushing. “I guess I feel stupid. That’s not hard.”
“No, it shouldn’t be,” Nadine agreed. “And then when you’re done, Gordon will put it all into his computer, and out will come a book.”
“Are you putting any of your salads in there?” Rose asked. “The cold salmon, dill and onion, maybe, or the crab and feta?” Three months ago Rose had never even heard of feta, but she knew what she liked.
Nadine frowned. “I hadn’t thought about anything but soup. What do you think?” she asked Gordon.
“She’s right. A few, though. Not enough to eclipse the soups. The soups should be the main thing.”
“And a few of Petie’s breads,” said Rose. “Maybe five of them. And five desserts.”
“All right,” said Nadine, enthusiastic now. “Yes, I think so.”
“Okay,” said Rose.
Nadine shot Gordon another look. “There are two more things, though,” she said. “The copy—the editing—needs to be finished in three weeks, if we’re going to get this done in time. And we can’t pay you.”
“You mean do it for free?”
Now Nadine flushed. “I’m sorry, Rose. We can’t afford to pay anything at all. We’re doing this as a way to make more people aware of us, to try and get some more local people in here. But you’ll be listed as editor on the cover. Everyone in town will see that. I’m sure Carissa will be very proud.”
Rose looked from one anxious face to the other. They were good people, she thought. They weren’t lying; they really couldn’t afford to pay. And if they didn’t get more people to eat here, they couldn’t afford to stay in business, either. Petie would never have done it, in Rose’s place, but Rose decided to help them. It might be fun. It might even work.
“All right,” she said. “Yes. All right.”
“Great,” said Nadine. “Oh, that’s great.”
“Imagine,” said Rose, smiling her pretty, easy smile. “Me, writing a cookbook.”
AFTER SHE left Souperior’s, Rose headed out of town, up the headland and then off ont
o a narrow, poorly maintained spur that a long time ago had been the original coast highway. Hardly anyone took the road anymore, not even locals, and Rose loved the quiet up there after the noisy highway, and the buckled, worn-out look of the asphalt as it rose and twisted and reeled around the edges of thousand-foot drops straight to the ocean. She pulled into a gravel turnout and switched off the ignition. The day was overcast and the water far below looked sullen and metallic. At the bottom of the cliff, but across a hairpin inlet from it, a sea cave had been worn into the bottom of a sheer rock face. At low tide the cave had a gleaming black sand floor; at high tide, waves sucked and boiled around its ceiling. The place was unnamed as far as she knew and unreachable from land, and had always filled Rose with dread. Now as she stood looking she imagined someone washing in there half drowned, numb with cold and crazy with relief, only to realize that there was no way out and the tide had already turned.
Rose shuddered and crossed her arms tightly. It was a wild coast and things like that were possible. But she always had morbid thoughts the first few days Jim Christie was home, possibly to make up for all the thinking she didn’t do while he was away. During his absences she wouldn’t even watch the weather reports because she didn’t want to know when there were storms. No one had ever told her she was being silly, either, not even Petie. Every year boats went down, men were lost.
Now, high above the ocean, she could see squalls gathering on the horizon. Let them come.
She climbed back into her old Ford, shabby and comfortable as a blown-out armchair, and, on a whim, headed for Sawyer. The road was quiet, nearly empty. Every day now there were fewer tourists, fewer RVs, fewer NO signs and more YES!es on the motels. It was everybody’s favorite time of year, when the coast was left to itself.
Sawyer Middle School was a brick box around which huddled a cluster of prefabricated, freestanding classrooms. There was a plant the school always reminded her of, what was it called—hens-and-chickens. The main building had been Sawyer High when Petie and Rose were young and children didn’t leave Hubbard until ninth grade. A better system. These sixth and seventh graders, so lately released from their safe little neighborhood grade schools, were too eager to be old. Rose had heard from several of Carissa’s teachers that there was a startling amount of promiscuity among the girls, particularly the ones from abusive homes. Carissa’s English teacher had confessed to Rose that she used to have her students keep journals for a semester, but that so many of them had confided terrible things, she didn’t give the assignment anymore. Even so, she said, last year one of her students had stayed after school and whispered that her mother’s boyfriend had started sneaking into her bed sometimes on the nights her mother was at work tending bar for the Elks. It hadn’t been that way when Rose and Petie were growing up. The teacher had told Rose she would be leaving the school system at the end of the year to teach at a Christian school for two-thirds the pay.
Rose pulled up to the curb, switched off her car engine and had just settled down to wait when she saw Carissa bounce out of a side door, one of the first children to appear, her backpack strapped onto her small shoulders—she was delicately made instead of roomy and soft like Rose. She was dressed to the teeth in new jeans, new shoes, a new enormous sweatshirt with an expensive brand name on the front, fancy braids—her one good back-to-school outfit. A proud, bright, healthy girl in the throes of delight. Christie was home. When she caught sight of Rose she broke into a happy smile.
“Did you bring Jim?” she said, peering eagerly in the window. She wrestled the door of the car open.
“He’ll have supper with us. He’s down at the docks.”
Carissa tossed her backpack into the rear seat, where it landed with a heavy thud. She was a diligent student. “Did you tell him I was going to cook?”
“I told him.”
“I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t fry the chicken, you know, in case he’s been eating a lot of fried chicken on the boat or something. I could bake it.”
“Even if he’s been eating fried chicken every night, sweetie, it’s not going to have been home-fried chicken, and it’s not going to have been you cooking it. Go ahead and fix it like you want. He’ll like it either way.”
“I’m so glad he’s back, Mom. Aren’t you?”
“Oh yes.”
They drove in silence for a couple of blocks. Then Carissa said, “You know Billy Wall, who got arrested over here for doing nasty things to boys?”
Rose was startled. “How did you hear about that?”
“Oh, everyone knows. One of the boys he did that to, he’s in my class.”
“Well, you stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s probably feeling real bad. He doesn’t need kids watching him.”
“I wouldn’t watch him or anything.”
“Well, you just keep some distance, all right? He’s had some bad things done to him, and sometimes children have trouble after that.”
Carissa’s thoughts had turned back to home. “Mom, when Jim’s away, do you think he misses us?”
“I don’t know. He must, in his own way.”
“I bet he can feel us missing him all the way up in Dutch Harbor. Do you think someday he might decide to just stay home?”
Rose glanced over at the small rapt face and looked away. “I don’t think so, sweetie,” she said gently. “No, I don’t think so.”
Chapter 4
HUBBARD’S POST office was at one end of town, a flimsy old box rancid with cigarette smoke and mold. Through the service window you could see into an apartment carpeted in old apple-green shag. The post office was not part of the postal service proper, but was a concession operated by Lou and Lee Boyles, who delivered the mail in a Ford Aspen station wagon with bad shocks and one taillight out. In Gordon’s opinion, whatever the Boyles were being paid by the postal service to keep zip code 97360 alive, it wasn’t enough. On days like today, when he was moderately depressed, he would gladly have paid an extra penny a stamp through the next millennium just to subsidize a fresh paint job and some new Formica.
He stepped up to the free community bulletin board, pulled a pushpin from a card in his jacket pocket and tacked up his last flyer.
Watch for it! From soup to nut breads, it’s Local Flavor, featuring the best of Hubbard’s souperior soups, breads and desserts. Edited by Rose Bundy, with contributions by Hubbard’s finest cooks. A souperb gift choice this Christmas. A Souperior’s Production.
It was not inspired copy, but every other version Gordon had come up with relied on words like connoisseur, maestro, aficionado, tour de force, unparalleled cuisine, extraordinaire—words that did not seem to address the general orientation or vocabulary of the average Hubbard resident. So he’d settled on this, and had spent the last two hours in Sawyer and now Hubbard posting the flyers on bulletin boards in supermarkets, the senior center, bakeries, bookstores, dental offices and the library. He and Nadine hadn’t intended to do flyers at all, but business was continuing to soften, the rains were here and it would be two more weeks before Rose even completed the copy: he and Nadine were getting more nervous every day about being able to make it through the winter.
Gordon had chosen the Hubbard post office as his last stop because it gave him a chance to check the post office box he had opened here recently. He had begun receiving copies of the Los Angeles Times, which he read more avidly than he ever had when he lived there. He missed L.A. He found it more and more amazing that he now lived in a place where the movie theater was really called the Bijou. And although he still found the scenery magnificent, scenery didn’t offer chamber music concerts or Thai cooking or cafes in which to read the Sunday paper. Of course, it also didn’t hit you over the head with a bat and take your shoes and billfold on a dark night, which was more or less what had happened to him several years ago. A clean-cut, well-dressed man had run at him from a doorway, eerily silent, and beaten him viciously without ever speaking above a whisper—and then
only to say, “Your wallet and shoes, please.” Please. Gordon had thrown up his arms to protect himself; otherwise, as though in collusion, he had kept mute and done what he was told. And then, just as suddenly, he had been alone, sitting on the sidewalk bleeding and ashamed. Wasn’t it somehow worse to be beaten by a polite deviant? Muggers wore grimy clothing, had dirty hair, rough speech, and you could avoid them on the street if you paid attention, which Gordon always did. But this had been impossible, without cues; it had been like being beaten by, say, a crazed accountant. His assailant had worn neat khaki pants, leather loafers; his shirt had been tucked in. Your wallet please, he’d whispered, after he had already broken Gordon’s nose with a wood baton. What on earth could have happened? Cocaine addiction? Failure to pass the CPA exam? Or had he simply been shrewd enough to cross-dress as a different stereotype, knowing it would throw his victims off? Gordon still pondered it from time to time, though now he thought of it as an odd and somewhat humorous calamity that had happened a long time ago.
In the post office, he squared the corners of his flyer with the notices for child care, firewood and lawn mower repair, collected his papers and mail, and climbed into his car, a well-loved Peugeot whose days were nevertheless numbered for lack of service opportunities. He turned up Wilson, crossed Third, then entered Wayne Street, where Rose lived. She had promised she’d have a batch of recipes ready for him to read, her first. She had sounded nervous about it on the phone, so now he was nervous, too. He and Nadine couldn’t afford any big mistakes—or even, it was possible, any little ones.
The car whined into a lower gear as he passed homes of varying degrees of squalor and disintegration, until he found the driveway Rose had described for him and pulled in behind her old car. The house turned out to be an old tan double-wide, one of the earliest models (perversely, Gordon had become something of an expert on manufactured home architecture) with none of the bay windows, novelty porches and mullions that made the newer models look so hopeful. In places the house’s metal siding was dented, as though someone had butted it with a car. But there were curtains at the windows and the yard was very tidy, with several whiskey barrels holding the remains of last summer’s annuals. On the lowest limb of a fir tree hung a wooden cutout of a bonneted little girl on a swing. Her skirt was made of real fabric trimmed in lace. For yard art, this was upper end. On the house next door, Gordon could see gargantuan pink wooden butterflies with three-foot wingspans nailed to the siding. Two doors down from Gordon’s own apartment building in Sawyer, there was a polka-dot-painted cutout of a woman’s backside bending over in the garden. Beside it was a cutout of a man’s blue-jeaned backside, his hand out to steal a feel.
Going to Bend Page 6
