Kitchens of the Great Midwest (35 page)

“Recently married?” Cindy asked.

“Yeah,” Katie Prager said. “This is our honeymoon, actually. Our friends did a Kickstarter for us, once we heard our reservation was accepted.” It turned out they’d put their names on the list long ago, and had always planned to have their wedding just before the date they’d been chosen to attend The Dinner—whenever that would be.

On the way back up, Will also mentioned that he’d dated Eva “for a minute, during a really dark time” back in high school, but that apparently had no influence in moving him up the list. “I signed up the day the reservation Web site opened,” he said.

“Maybe she just wanted a certain combination of people,” Randy said. “But I can’t speak to that.”

 • • • 

Minutes later Randy was leading Cindy across a field to where the yellow-and-green-striped hot-air balloon was landing.

A big guy with loose cotton pants the colors of the Jamaican flag and a T-shirt that read
WHERE
’
S
THE
PARTY
? hefted himself out of the basket as Randy met it with a stepladder. There were a number of Jamaicans in Charlevoix, and she really liked the ones she had gotten to know, but she certainly didn’t know enough to tell if this guy was actually Jamaican until he spoke.

“Whoa, that was somethin’ else,” the big guy said.
Nope,
Cindy thought,
American
.
Boring
. He helped his companion, a woman smaller than himself, but not small, out of the basket behind him. “So, this is the place, I take it? I was told to look for a long-haired guy in a dirty black suit.”

“If your names are Ros Wali and Rashida Williams, yes, this is the place.”

“Yeah, that’s us,” he said.

“Follow me for tea and cocktails,” Randy said. “It’s twenty minutes to the first course.”

 • • • 

While Randy led the newest couple to the tent, Cindy snuck up the hill to the tables and peeked at the names on the place cards. There were sixteen in all, and Eva Thorvald was not among them; she didn’t eat with her guests, as Cindy had hoped. Cindy had unfortunately, but inevitably, been placed next to Reynaldo, so she switched herself to the other table and put her husband next to that Holger Schmidt guy instead.

From the top of the hill, she could see both the river on one side and the sun setting on the other. She also saw two bearded men in fishing vests carrying a large blue cooler between them, and watched them as they walked the length of the tent and around the back. That must be where the kitchen was.

She started her way down the hill.

“Hey,” Randy said, appearing from nowhere with a broad-shouldered, grim-faced young woman. “If you’re not doing anything, can you help Maureen and me pick the corn for tonight’s dinner?”

“Pick the corn?” Cindy asked.

“Maureen O’Brien,” the woman said. “I’m an old friend of Eva’s.”

It was astonishing to Cindy to meet all of these people from different parts of Eva’s life. “Going back how far?”

“I met her when she was sixteen and I was twenty-four,” Maureen said. “And yeah, corn.” Maureen pointed to a small cornfield, maybe sixty stalks, on a plot of land close to the farmhouse. “Eva first planted that corn four years ago. That’s how long we’ve been planning to have dinner in this spot. Want to get to work?”

Cindy was tempted, just to ask this woman a million questions about Eva, but she’d gotten dirty enough, and she’d hated cornfields ever since junior high, when her dad got her and her brother a summer job detasseling corn. It was supposed to teach them work ethic, but the pay sucked, the early mornings were worse, and because she wore short sleeves in an attempt to get a tan, she’d sliced her arms bloody at least twice a day on the corn leaves, which cut like fresh paper.

“I was actually going to go freshen up a bit,” Cindy said. Randy called for one of the security guys, a big galoot named Dougie, to accompany her to the luxury bus. The far end of the tent, where the kitchen was, remained at a distance.

 • • • 

At 7:30, the sixteen guests were seated for dinner. Cindy found herself between Ros Wali and a stunning black-haired woman named Asgne Fihou (pronounced
AH-nay FEE-how,
she said preemptively) and across from a couple from South Korea named Ha Man-hee and Lee Mi-sun. It was clearly an international table; Holger Schmidt was now, after Cindy’s switch, the only non-American at the other one. Reynaldo, of course, expressed shock that he wasn’t next to Cindy, but when Holger told him to put a lid on it, he sat without another word.

She spotted the canoe couple, Will and Katie, at Reynaldo’s table; it looked like they’d been supplied with formal wear in their size, but
they still had the pallid, grooved faces of people who had been awake for days.

Randy pushed in Cindy’s chair, as other staff members did the same for the other guests. “I’ll be your personal attendant this evening,” he said. “There will be no substitutions or alterations to the menu, but anything else you may desire, please let me know.”

“Is Eva coming out at all during the dinner?”

“If she does, it will be sometime after the third course,” Randy said, handing Cindy a small ivory-colored vellum card. “Here is tonight’s bill of fare.”

Amuse

T
HINLY
SLICED
,
FIRE
-
TOASTED
P
ANE
DI
CASTAGNE
WITH
DRY
-
CURED
PORK
SHOU
LDER
(C
OPPA
STYLE
,
FRO
M
E
VA
’
S
B
ERKSHIRE
PI
G
, W
ILLIAM
) & A
LDERMAN
P
LUM
AND
GINGER
CHUTN
EY

PAIRING
:
2012 Luciano Saetti Lambrusco Salamino di Santa Croce

First

P
AN
-S
EARED
W
ALLEYE

SERVED
FILLETED
OV
ER
G
OLDEN
B
ANTAM
SUC
COTASH

(
SWEET
CORN
/
RE
D
ONION
/B
LUE
L
AKE
GR
EEN
BEANS
)

PAIRING
:
2009 Littorai Mays Canyon Chardonnay, Russian River Valley, CA

Second

G
RILLED
V
ENISON

SER
VED
WITH
GRILLED
M
OS
KVICH
TOMATOES
,
WILTE
D
KALE
WITH
SWEET
PEP
PER
JELLY
VINAIGRETT
E
(
HOUSEMADE
SWEET
PE
PPER
JELLY
&
SHERRY
VI
NEGAR
&
GRAPESEED
OIL
)

PAIRING
:
2005 Marcassin Blue-Slide Ridge Pinot Noir, Sonoma Coast, CA

Third

P
AVLOVA
WITH
TO
DAY
-
PICKED
S
OUTH
D
AK
OTA
BLACKBERRIES

SER
VED
WITH
A
MINI
SHOT
OF
CHOCOLATE
HABANE
RO
–
INFUSED
DARK
CHOC
OLATE
ICE
MILK

PAIRI
NG
:
1990 J. J. Prüm Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling, Trockenbeerenauslese

Finish

P
AT
P
RAGER
’
S
PRIVATE
RECIPE
DESSE
RT

WITH
(
YOUR
CHOICE
) K
OPI
L
UWAK
COFFEE
, 2002 Q
IANJIAZHAI
O
LD
G
R
OWTH
SHENG
PU
’
ER
TEA
,

AND
/
OR
A
RDBEG
1974 P
ROVE
NANCE
,
SERVED
NEAT

 • • • 

Cindy had been looking forward to the wine pairings the most; she’d hoped for more reds, but it wasn’t meant to be with this menu. Two dessert courses, that was a new one.

“Oh, fuck me!” she heard a man say at the other table, loud enough to make her turn to see who it was. It was Will, the canoe guy. He was staring at the bottom of the menu, a distressed look on his face.

It seemed to be a polite crowd, and the loud curse was met with murmurs of disapproval from both guests and staff. Will seemed like a sweet kid, but he needed to tone it down over there.

“What are the fuckin’ chances!” Will shouted.

Holger glared at Will and said, “Shut your pie hole.” God, she could propose to that man.

 • • • 

The
amuse
course came out; two perfectly browned isosceles-triangle toast points, thin as tortillas, framing a curl of bright pink ham, accompanied by a white ceramic spoon of pale red chutney. The Lambrusco followed, poured from a chilled decanter, which wasn’t 100 percent necessary if the wine was properly stored.

“What do you do?” Ros Wali asked Cindy. “Do you work here?”

“No, I’m a sommelier in Michigan. What about yourself?”

Ros Wali motioned to the woman on the other side of him. “Me and Rashida are licensed discard counselors. We can go into your home and tell you what you don’t need.”

“Wow, never heard of that. Does it keep you busy?”

“Man, you wouldn’t believe,” Ros Wali said. “Here’s my card.”

He handed her a card the colors of the Jamaican flag; on one side it read
Licensed Discard Counselor: Home or Office—Live Simply, Live Well!
and a phone number; on the other, it read
USE ROS WALI
in huge letters.

“So,” Ros Wali said. “Sommelier, huh. What can you tell us about the wines on this list?”

“Well,” Cindy said. “The 1990 vintage of this German Riesling is supposed to be one of the best in its history. The American Chardonnay I’ve had a bunch of times, and it’s very much to my liking; it’s less oaky and alcoholic than a lot of domestic Chardonnays.” Cindy realized that she was leaping down the rabbit hole of winespeak; she glanced up to make sure that her audience was still interested, and they were. “Pretty much everything from Marcassin is a home run, if a bit spendy, and this organic dry Lambrusco should be perfect with Coppa.”

“Wow, OK,” Ros Wali said. “I knew all that, I was just checking.”

She tore the cured ham in half with her knife, and used a little plum chutney as a paste to affix it to a toast point. Is that what you were supposed to do? She saw Man-hee across the table make his into a dainty sandwich.

Before raising it to her mouth, she stared at the little pink, brown, and red bite in her hand. When Cindy had last seen her daughter, she was a whiny little alien who shit all day and cried all night out of hunger. Cindy did breast-feed her a couple of times, but she hated it; it hurt like hell, and whatever mother-child bond was supposed to explode in her heart during those moments just never happened. Now, somehow, here she was, being fed by her child.

 • • • 

Objectively, it was astonishing. The tartness of the chutney, the saltiness of the cured ham, and the dry, earthy wine all locked together in a happy scrum, like brothers reuniting after a summer apart. She didn’t believe that this course alone was a thousand-dollar value, but she could’ve eaten an entire popcorn bowl full of it and not been satisfied.

She felt the woman next to her, the one with the impressively obscure name, get up and take her wineglass with her. By the time she looked
up, Reynaldo was sitting down in the empty chair, putting his napkin on his lap, setting his wineglass on the table where the woman’s was.

“There, that’s better,” he said. “Holger was hitting it off with Asgne in the drinks tent earlier, so I hope you don’t mind the switch.”

Cindy threw back the rest of her wine.

“Wow, some
amuse
plate, huh?” Reynaldo said. “You know we got to see Eva Thorvald earlier? She popped in to get some tea. I was looking for you but I couldn’t find you.”

“What?” Cindy tried to stay calm. “You got to meet her?”

“Well, not meet her exactly, but see her up close. She just said hi to everybody. Where did you go, anyway?”

“When was this? Did she say she was going to come out here?”

Ros Wali nudged her. “Hey, don’t get worked up. She just came in, got some tea, said hi, and then left. It was like ten seconds. That’s all you missed.”

“It was pretty cool, though,” Reynaldo said.

“I’ll say this,” said Ros Wali. “She’s another type of being. You can just tell. She ain’t from where you and I are from. She’s from somewhere else.”

 • • • 

The second course arrived: two glistening little rectangles of white fish on identically sized mounds of yellow and red succotash. Man-hee and Mi-sun across the table each took a bite, and Mi-sun snapped forward in her chair, clutching her head.

Ros Wali glanced at Cindy. “Maybe we should send this one back?”

Mi-sun’s face lifted, and there were tears on her cheeks, but she was smiling. Man-hee was rocking his head back and forth, eyes closed, while he chewed slowly.

Mi-sun wiped her eyes.

Reynaldo tried his. “Wow. This is supposed to be the best area in
South Dakota to catch walleye, and if that’s why we’re specifically eating here, I’d say it’s worth it.”

Cindy hadn’t even touched hers yet and Ros Wali’s plate was empty.

“That motherfucker was insane,” Ros Wali said. “But that was it? Just those two tiny pieces?” He called his personal server over, a young guy with long blond hair.

“Hey, Jordy, can I have seconds?”

Jordy pursed his lips and shook his head. “Sorry, no can do.”

Ros Wali pounded his fist against the table, rattling everyone’s wineglasses. “That’s a fuckin’ travesty, man! A fuckin’ travesty!”

Rashida put her arm around him and told him to chill.

She saw that Reynaldo was closing his eyes and touching his temples as he chewed.

“Quit being annoying,” she said.

“This is indescribable, indescribable,” he said. “The corn, it tastes like golden sugar. The fish, it’s like, it’s like . . .”

“Indescribable?”

He nodded. “I just wish Ayren was here.”

That wasn’t his wife’s name. “Now who’s that?”

“My daughter. A-Y-R-E-N. It’s an anagram of Reyna. Ayren Reyna. She’d love this.”

Oh, God. “She’s a baby,” Cindy said. “She loves her own snot.”

“But don’t you think if she had something like this now, it could maybe change the course of her life?”

“I doubt it.”

“Did you and Lars,” Reynaldo said, “ever feed . . . her anything like this? Just wondering if that explains it.”

“I sure didn’t,” Cindy said. “Maybe Lars did. He probably did.”

“Proves my point, then.”

Cindy poked Reynaldo’s leg under the table with the butt end of her knife. “Please don’t bring up Eva again.”

“You’re here at my pleasure, you know,” he said, and stabbed his last piece of fish with his fork.

 • • • 

The walleye and succotash were, in Cindy’s opinion, remarkable. The fish, maybe just an hour or two out of the river, was heartbreakingly tender, dissipating in her mouth like a spoonful of cream. Pairing-wise, the Old World–style Chardonnay was perfect; she tasted hints of gunflint and honey, just like a top-of-the-line Chablis. Still, this was all nothing that would make her openly swear at the table, but perhaps she was too distracted to submit to the unchecked enthusiasms of her fellow diners.

“Randy,” she said, calling him over, “is Eva coming out after this course?”

“If she does, it’ll be between the two dessert courses,” Randy said. “She’s way too busy in the kitchen until then.”

 • • • 

The third dish, a tiny cut of venison steak, about half the size of a playing card, with tomatoes and sweet pepper jelly, was a different matter. The venison, firm enough to meet your teeth, and soft enough to yield agreeably in your mouth, revealed subtle, steely new flavors with each bite, while the tomatoes were so full of richness and warm blood, it was like eating a sleeping animal. Their pairing, the light-bodied Pinot, didn’t erase these senses, it crept beneath their power, underlining them. It was about as much flavor as fifteen seconds were capable of; after one bite and one sip of wine, Cindy felt luminous and exhausted.

Mi-sun and Man-hee were both rocking back and forth in their chairs, weeping; Ros Wali was rattling the table with his fists, screaming, “The injustice! The injustice!” while Reynaldo was slicing the venison into nearly diaphanous slivers, perhaps to make it all last longer.

Yes, the dish was flawless, and the wine pairing was supernatural, but these people were out of control. Were they trying to emotionally justify the meal’s price tag? Did they have too many cocktails in the
drinks tent? It was a breathtaking meal, one of the best that Cindy had ever had, but the hysteria around her was making her brain red.

 • • • 

“And now, the first of the two dessert courses,” Randy announced. He placed before Cindy a pavlova the size of a mini-donut, with five blackberry halves clinging to its tiny plateau, and a copper shot glass filled two-thirds with a creamy dark brown liquid.

“That’s my personal favorite,” Randy said, indicating the liquid. “Drink it immediately after you eat.”

Reynaldo was trying to cut his pavlova into quarters. “You know this is the longest I’ve been away from my daughter?” he said. “I left home at four-thirty in the morning today. It’s been sixteen hours.”

“Fourteen,” Cindy said. “This time zone’s two hours ahead.” She put the whole thing in her mouth, chasing it with half the shot of the spicy chocolate ice milk. “Whoa,” she said involuntarily.

“It’s still the record,” Reynaldo said.

“Well, good for you,” Cindy said. “I’d love to hear more about it, but I’m having such an interesting dialogue with Ros Wali over here.”

Ros Wali, at that moment, was bent over his empty plate, licking a blackberry stain. “It gives life!” he shouted.

Cindy felt the staff behind her converging and murmuring among themselves; almost as quickly as she perceived it, Cindy turned and saw Yonas Awate standing alone between the tables.

“Eva Thorvald thanks you for coming to dinner tonight,” Yonas said, pivoting as he spoke, looking each guest in the eye. “She regrets that she is too exhausted to join you all in person, but is so happy that you could share in what she told me has been her greatest dinner of all time. She’s told me that even though you won’t meet her tonight, she’s telling you her life story through the ingredients in this meal, and although you won’t shake her hand, you’ve shared her heart. Now please, continue eating and drinking, and thank you again.”

 • • • 

Cindy couldn’t bring herself to applaud with the others. What an awful, insincere, lazy cop-out! She remained staring at Yonas, her heart gushing acid into her ears and eyes.

She looked down the hill toward the luxury bus and her eyes swept the decay of protocol around her. The Korean couple was lying on the ground, like toddlers spent by their own histrionics. Ros Wali was being physically restrained by his female companion, his arms flailing, knocking over a lit candle and a half-full wineglass.

Reynaldo remained oblivious to all of this. “I still love you, you know,” he said, slumping forward, belly full of alcohol and unrequited nostalgia. “My wife only let me go on this trip with you because I told her it’s what I needed to do to finally get over you.”

“If she believed that,” Cindy said, “she’s definitely too dumb for you.” Looking around, she saw that the other servers, including Randy and Maureen, were occupied in helping Rashida Williams get Ros Wali under control. He was really pitching a fit about injustice; everyone was captivated.

“Your secret’s safe with me, you know. Because I love you. I’ll never tell anyone.”

“If the last course comes, guard mine for me,” Cindy said. “I gotta go.” She drank the last of the spicy ice milk and got up from the table, feeling the alcohol touch her limbs as she stood and dashed down the gentle slope of the hill toward the luxury coach.

“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.