Kitchens of the Great Midwest (20 page)

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, dragging 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.”

That explained the beef part of the smell. “No worries,” Octavia said.

“I’ll get her up to speed,” Elodie said, and looked at Octavia. “How are you?”

“Good. How are things at the nonprofit?”

“Chugging along. They promoted Sammy to take your job.”

“Ha. He can’t even write a cover letter.”

“He’s learning.” Elodie shrugged. “Anyway, Eva and I are going to start doing epicurean dinners around town and we just wanted to tell you that we could use your help.”

“What do you mean, epicurean dinners around town?”

“Eva said it was kind of your idea. Just sort of throw dinner parties at random places and charge people a flat rate of, like, a hundred dollars, for a really fancy meal, and make it kind of exclusive.”

“Why not just open a restaurant?”

“Your idea’s way better. We don’t have to rent property and pass safety codes and get a liquor license and that kind of stuff. We don’t have to be open on a Tuesday when there’s like only two people eating. We can just move in somewhere for one night and move out. Are you interested in helping us cook and make the menu?”

“I don’t know, I already have a job.” After being unemployed for two months, it almost felt ostentatious to say that.

“Well, this would just be like once or twice a month. We already have, like, thirty people coming to the first one this Friday. That’s at least three thousand bucks that we’d split three ways.”

“After expenses.”

“I suppose, yeah, but that wouldn’t be a lot. And I’m paying for the wine out of my share.”

“I don’t know, it sounds like a lot of work.” This was sounding to Octavia like a lot of labor and expense, and without Mitch Diego’s name attached, and Robbe’s money and connections, could they be sure that even thirty people would show up? They were talented chicks, sure, but it takes so much more than that; from where they were starting, in a small bedroom in a crappy apartment, sitting on low-thread-count sheets, it looked like they were going to take a bath on this one, and Octavia didn’t need any more shame in her life at that point.

The volume on
Cater-Mania with Miles Binder
got substantially louder from down the hall. Eva appeared in the doorway. “Hey, can you guys please keep it down? My dad says your conversation is bothering him.”

Elodie looked behind herself at Eva. “Was the door closed?”

“Yeah, but he said he could hear you through the door. I just don’t think he’s used to people being over.”

Octavia nodded. “You don’t say.”

“Anyway, you guys want any beef stew? It’s almost ready.”

Octavia got up from the bed. “I should get going.”

Eva watched Octavia as she passed through her bedroom doorway. “Did Elodie tell you about our dinner party on Friday?”

“I’m going to have to pass, guys. I just got too much going on.”

Eva looked sincerely disappointed. “You’re seriously one of the best chefs I know. Seriously.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” Octavia said.

“And we don’t want you as an employee or something, we want you as an actual partner.”

“I know, and I’m flattered. But thank you.”

Eva and Elodie gave each other a
What do we do now?
look that Octavia saw; it was actually kind of touching that these two kids thought so much of her. At least, they did once.

“You should at least come by and eat for free and let us know what you think,” Eva offered when Octavia was on her way out the door.

Octavia and Adam totally forgot about it by the time Friday rolled around, and neither of them even heard about how it went, so Octavia assumed it had gone poorly and those girls wouldn’t ask anything of her again.

 • • • 

The last time that Octavia saw Eva was four years later, in the produce section of the Seward Co-Op. Octavia was there because it was her lunch break and it was cheap and she’d taken to buying things in bulk for the family she now had with Adam, which included a three-year-old and a one-year-old.

“Octavia?” she heard a woman’s voice say.