If she wasn’t going to ignore Dan, she was at least going to ignore the gooey feeling in her stomach at the thought of his smile. For a judgmental ass, he had a winning smile. She could look at his smile and pretend he wasn’t a jerk for enjoying her food and not writing a new review. When the already slow kitchen slowed down for the night, she asked her sous chef to expedite—call out the orders and finish the food at the pass before it went out to the dining room.
She didn’t have a chance to question Dan about the review because the first words out of his mouth were, “This is delicious. Where did you get the quail?”
Like a fool, she answered, telling him all about the local poultry farm and her mushroom grower. Then, because he was interested, she told him about her struggles to re-create medieval Polish dishes that called for extinct or threatened wild game. Imbir would listen to her as long as she kept petting him, but Dan understood when she explained that while bison meat was probably an acceptable substitute for żubr, a European bison currently threatened with extinction, she was certain no beef approximated the flavor of tur, an extinct wild cow.
Candace stopped her before she could launch into the difficulty of finding hare, when even the finest U.S. suppliers confused hare and rabbit. Despite leaning forward and watching her intently, Dan couldn’t possibly be interested in sources of game meat. She left, a little embarrassed with herself for pouring her troubles out to Dan and monopolizing the conversation. Ticked off, too, because she’d not mentioned a new review once.
In the kitchen she learned a customer had complained about a watery salad. The proof was undeniable. Boston lettuce and cucumber were drowning in water on the plate. The vibrant red French breakfast radish looked like a flotation device for other vegetables. With so much water, the sour cream in the dressing couldn’t cling to the lettuce and rested like an oil slick in the ocean. Even the normally peppy dill drooped on the plate. She had been the last person to touch the salad and she knew it had been as fresh as a spring day when leaving the pass. Dan left her thoughts and was replaced by the uncomfortable possibility that an employee was sabotaging her restaurant.
Dan came back again on Thursday night. And Friday. Each time she tried not to let herself talk too long. He asked about her food and the farms she used, and her reluctance to talk lasted only until he smiled. Then she would ease into conversation with a man who understood that being a chef wasn’t glamorous, but involved long hours, butchering sides of beef and feeling like a mom to her employees because she had to check to make sure they all washed their hands. At least on Friday she remembered to ask him about the review again. She might be charmed, but she wasn’t charmed stupid. Or, she wondered, was there a middle ground between the two where she was stupid enough to look forward to his visits, even without a new review in the works?
In her office the next morning Tilly updated the website menu for that day. The mouse hovered over the address bar and the chance to read The Eater posts again. The knowledge was like a durian fruit, luscious and frightening at the same time. Certain doom lurked in losing herself online.
She had a restaurant to run. Cyberstalking the critic who ruined her career was not cool. It was admitting The Eater had defeated her and she wasn’t defeated yet. It was admitting Dan meant more to her than just a customer and the potential for a better review.
Her ringing cell phone decided for her.
“Tila, you haven’t called in a couple days. Should I be worried about you?”
“Good morning, Mom. How are you? I’m fine. I was working.”
“I’m sure you were. Are you coming home on Sunday?”
“Hadn’t planned on it. I have some work I have to do for Babka.”
“You should go to mass. How long has it been since you went to mass?”
“Oh, Mother, I don’t know, a couple of months.” A year? More? And now she had that petty desire to cyberstalk to feel guilty about. Just what every Catholic needed, more guilt.
She looked back at the computer and the empty address bar. If she was going to feel guilty about the thought, she should at least have the enjoyment of the action.
“Father Szymkiewicz misses you.”
Or not. She turned away from the laptop. No cyberstalking while talking on the phone with your mother about the priest missing your presence at mass. If that wasn’t a sign from God, may lightning strike her dead.
“Yes. I’m sure he does, but I need to get Babka off the ground, then I will go to mass with you and the rest of the neighborhood.”
“Monday, then. You don’t work on Monday, either. I’m taking the night off from Healthy Food and cooking dinner. Karl and Renia are coming. I expect you to come, too.”
“I’ll be there, Mom. Just let me get some work done on Sunday.”
“Good. I’ll call Renia and Karl.”
“Wait, I thought you said they were coming already.” But she was talking to an empty line.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BEFORE GOING TO her mother’s for dinner, Tilly spent the day in Western Illinois visiting one of the farms that supplied Babka with produce. The sun was shining on a neat field of green with a few wispy clouds in the sky. After a discussion about the upcoming crops, she and the farmer sat on a gravel patio near his fields and drank iced tea. As on her previous visits, he hinted she should stay the night and, like her previous visits, she casually turned him down.
Unlike her previous visits, she didn’t look at the young farmer with his broad workingman’s back and wonder, “What if I stayed?” Instead, she thought of Dan’s easy confidence and talked about going to her mom’s for dinner. Dan had crashed her dream and was now ruining her sex life. What the hell did he know about separating business and personal?
Karl picked her up and drove her to their mother’s in his BMW. Tilly was, as always, a little in awe of her much older brother and spent most of the ride in silence. He was so...put together, successful—like Renia, but with more presence. When their father, grandfather and brother had died, a teenaged Karl had pulled the family together and taken care of everything while her mother and grandmother grieved. All while maintaining perfect grades and getting into Notre Dame with a scholarship for children of Polish descent. He followed college with a law degree and had practiced corporate law until going to work for the state inspector general’s office, hunting down and prosecuting business owners who thought they could make a profit through waste, bribery and corruption. He had recently been appointed inspector general for the City of Chicago. Mom wanted him to run for a city office—alderman was acceptable, but she would prefer mayor. Karl had no interest in the dog-and-pony show. “Too dirty” was his response whenever she mentioned it.
The one complaint her mother had about him, other than his lack of interest in eventually running for president, was Karl’s divorce. Instead of pursuing a new wife, he dated beautiful women and got his picture in the paper. Their mother could only complain briefly—she loved to see her little boy in the paper. Though she still told anyone who would listen that her son was going to be president one day.
All in all, it meant Tilly felt like overcooked cabbage around her brother. She didn’t think she was a washout of a person, but her brother was enough of a success to get compared to the Kennedys in the papers. Only a Kennedy could sit in a car with the man and not feel overwhelmed.
“No hot date tonight?” Overwhelmed or not, he was still her brother, which meant she could give him a ribbing.
He didn’t even glance over at her. His handsome face stared straight ahead, looking at the road. “I can’t turn down Mom.”
“When did she call you?”
“About tonight? She called me Friday.”
Tilly snorted. “I’ll bet she told you I had already agreed.”
“Hadn’t you?”
“Yes, but she also told me you had already agreed.”
“She knew I would. I always accept her invitations to dinner.”
“What is it like to be the favorite
child?”
The only movement in her brother’s chiseled face was a slight upturn of his lip as he said, “Pretty damn good.”
Tilly huffed and turned to stare back out the window.
The instant she walked into her mom’s house, she knew something was up. Dinner was in the dining room, a special-occasion-only room, and her mom had gotten out the lace runner. She’d even decorated with candles and flowers. The wood gleamed from a fresh waxing. If Tilly was lucky, Karl was announcing a senatorial campaign when he finished his term with the city. Maybe Oprah was getting married and Renia was the photographer.
The smell of stuffed cabbage wafted into the dining room ahead of her mother. She put the dish on the table, signaled to Karl to pour some wine, and they all served themselves.
“I hear we have some news.”
Tilly looked at Karl, then at Renia. Then at her mother, who was looking straight at her.
“What? I don’t have any news.”
“I understand you are being courted.”
Tilly looked back at Renia, glaring hard enough to set her sister’s hair on fire. The tightly wound bun didn’t ignite, and Renia’s innocently raised hands meant her mom had gotten the information from somewhere else. “First, I don’t think people get ‘courted’ anymore. Second, even if they do, no one is courting me. Third, if someone were courting me, I’m a grown woman who should be able to have a boyfriend without her mother planning a celebration dinner.”
Her mother completely ignored Tilly’s outburst and focused on the information she was desperate to hear—that one of her children might get married and provide her with grandchildren. “Chuck and Sharon Biadała were at Babka for dinner on Thursday, and he said a man was sitting at the bar talking with you and it was more than just a casual conversation. Courting was his word.”
How had she missed seeing Mr. Biadała, her American History teacher in high school? And Mrs. Biadała had worked at Healthy Food as a waitress for years. The woman had had monthly arguments with Tilly’s mother about diets. If the diet was on Oprah, Mrs. Biadała tried it, making working at a Polish buffet difficult.
Tilly should’ve stood firm when she banished Dan from the restaurant. He was messing with her concentration.
“That was Dan Meier, The Eater. Do you want me to be courted by the man who said such terrible things about Babka?” That ought to shut her mother up.
“What else does Dan do for a living? I can’t imagine writing for a blog makes him any money.” Her mother must despair about getting grandchildren if her response was to ask about Dan’s income. Of course, she had resorted to a celebration dinner at just the suggestion that a man was “courting” one of her children. What would she do if one of them actually had a date? One of them besides Karl, who only ever had dates. Or Renia, who never seemed to like the men she dated. God, no wonder her mom was desperate.
Stop thinking uncharitable thoughts. This is your mother and she cares about you.
“He’s a freelance writer.”
“Does he make a good living?”
Tilly thought about the town house in a fashionable part of Chicago and the Subaru. “He seems to do fine.”
“It’s not a steady career.”
And owning a restaurant is?
“Maybe we can find some of his articles,” her mother continued.
“You’ve read some of his articles already. I’ve ripped them out of food magazines for you. I mailed you one on Eastern European dumplings three years ago. You were mad because the only Polish dumpling he talked about was the pierogi.”
Her mother humphed. “Everyone knows about the pierogi. I just thought he should introduce the world to some of the lesser-known dumplings, kluski kladzione or kluski ptysiowe. At least a sweet pierogi instead of the standard cabbage.”
“Why are you so concerned? He gave Babka a terrible review and I have no interest in him.”
Renia raised an eyebrow from across the table, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. Tilly could hear her sister’s thoughts, Tsk, tsk, Tilly. Lying to your mother.
“The Biadałas said the man wasn’t the only one doing some courting. Sharon said you looked pretty interested.”
She should’ve opened Babka in another city with a large Polish population—Pittsburgh or Cleveland—not in Chicago, where people from the neighborhood would spy on her for her mother. There were a lot of Poles in Western Massachusetts and she could escape spies by hiding in the woods. “I’ve expanded my business plan. I’m going to trade sex for a better review.”
“Tila Marta Milek, I can’t believe you would say that to your mother!”
Renia was clearly trying not to laugh. Karl’s expression didn’t change at all, but he coughed after taking a sip of his wine and his hazel eyes danced.
“Mother, we’re having a family dinner in the dining room because Mr. Biadała said a man was courting me. How do you expect me to respond?”
“You’re my baby girl and I worry about you.”
Tilly smiled through her frustration. Once the baby, always the baby.
“Dan Meier?” her brother asked.
Tilly turned to face Karl, who was looking at her with curiosity. “Yes. Do you know him?”
“Karl knows everyone,” her mom said with pride. She always said everything with pride when she talked about Karl. “You should have him look into your Dan’s background.”
“He’s not my Dan!” What a horrible thought, even if she was wondering if he’d be back at Babka on Tuesday. “Karl wouldn’t do such a thing.” She looked back at her brother. “Would you?”
Karl raised his eyebrow at her and for the first time it occurred to Tilly how much influence her brother might have in the city. My brother, political machine master. Except the point of his job was to be above all the political fray and corruption. Tilly shook those thoughts out of her mind. She liked her brother more when he was her brother than when he was big man on campus.
“You’re my sister.”
“Thank you, Karl, but I can handle my own problems.” What must her family think of her if they didn’t trust her ability to handle her own business or her own love life? And her mother, thinking she’d have to settle for a relationship with a man who defended stomping on her dreams by lecturing her about business versus personal. Did they think Babka would fail and she’d need a man to support her?
Silly Tilly. Always messing everything up but dinner.
Of course, it was easy enough for them to judge. Renia was a sought-after photographer. And Karl. Well, right now Tilly didn’t want to think about Karl. He had looked scary for a minute.
While she wasn’t feeding the famous yet and she couldn’t sound like the Godfather, she was no longer the helpless baby of the family. She had opened a restaurant in a big city. Even if Babka failed, opening it was already an accomplishment. She was the first one of her Culinary friends to reach her goal—which was why her hair was currently a vibrant shade of blue.
“Tilly, I don’t think Mom wants you to date The Eater.” Renia tried to sound soothing, but Tilly’s ire was already up. Renia sounded patronizing. “She just cares about you and wanted to know more about him.”
In front of the family? Most families were fabulous some of the time. Her family was fabulous most of the time.
This was one of those other times. She lobbed a new topic of conversation into the air and hoped for the best. “I hear the Twenty-third Ward seat is going to be open again.” After being filled by the same person for over ten years, Archer Heights’ alderman’s seat was anyone’s game.
Karl changed the subject before their mom could suggest he move back to the neighborhood and run for office. “How is Babka? I haven’t been there since before the review.”
“It’s slow. Our one regular customer has been Dan.” She didn’t want to think about what it meant that her regular customer was also her most famous critic. “But no night has been truly empty.” She sighed. “Just slow.”
&n
bsp; “Has Dan been in every night?” her mother asked, hope in her voice.
“Mo-o-om.” The whine escaped before Tilly could stop it. “Why do you keep harping on Dan? I thought you’d be leading the campaign to lynch him.”
“The way Sharon described the look on your face—oh, well...I want my children to be happy and I can forgive him if you can.”
“We are happy.” Tilly looked around the table. Scary Karl had been divorced once already and Perfect Renia never dated a man she couldn’t push around. She ignored the second point about forgiveness. Dan had to acknowledge he’d done something wrong before forgiveness was even an option. “It’s different now than it was when you and Dad married. I have a career to get established and Dan got in the way of that.”
Her mother looked up to the ceiling and sighed. “It’s only your generation that thinks there is a conflict between work and love.” When she looked across the table there were tears in the corners of her eyes. “I managed to build a small restaurant into what it is now and I couldn’t have done it without the love and support of your father. This, this is what your generation has missed.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“YOU CAN’T REEVALUATE Babka on beer alone,” Tilly said to Dan when she came out of the kitchen the following Tuesday. She wasn’t going to let him forget he was only here because she needed to prove him wrong about the review. Maybe she needed to make sure she didn’t forget that detail.
Candace coasted to the far corner of the bar without making a sound, leaving Tilly and Dan as alone as possible in an open restaurant.
“I ate dinner at another restaurant, but I still wanted to come here and see you.”
Reservations for Two Page 12
