Bread and Butter (29 page)

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.”

T
HE 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
. T
he 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.”

Harry nodded, shamefaced. They headed back to the bar, where Barbara was turning off the lights.

“Let us walk you to your car,” Britt said. “It’s late.”

Barbara began to protest, but she seemed to do so out of habit and then consented to let them accompany her into the parking lot. Britt suspected she was so accustomed to walking out beside Donnie that this was one of the little ways in which she was being reminded of that absence.

The night air was warm and humid. Britt wondered what had been on the menu at Winesap that night. Cold shrimp, poached chicken, blanched snap peas?

Barbara beeped the locks on an SUV and opened the door. “Thank you,” she said formally.

“Thank you,” they replied in unison.

“I’m sorry to have been in here in this condition,” Harry added, but she shook her head.

“I’ve seen worse,” she said, and closed the door behind her.

They stood back and watched her car reverse and take a left out of the driveway. Britt wasn’t looking at Harry when his brother said, “I wanted to get in touch with you. I was just too embarrassed to do it myself.”

B
RITT HAD ALWAYS BEEN ENERGIZED
by the relentless forward motion of a restaurant, but as Harry’s disappearance was buried beneath the following week’s rhythm of preps, seatings, and closings, he found himself hoping the story would not die
. W
hen Harry returned to Stray the day after Britt picked him up from Hot Springs, he embroidered the illness story with a few vivid details of the sort that shut down further inquiry, and to Britt’s astonishment no one pressed. He barely restrained himself from dropping sarcastic comments at staff meal, and often peered around at the others’ faces, seeking a clear hint of doubt or discord, anything to suggest that it was not only him who felt as if Harry had gotten the satisfaction of flaming out in the most spectacular way possible without any of the fallout.

He had learned the details the morning after he retrieved his brother: Harry had driven into Pennsylvania Dutch country with no more plan than satisfying a craving for pie, which he had accomplished by purchasing two and picking at them with his hands and a penknife, leaving his front seat littered with pastry and jewels of baked fruit. He hadn’t slept at all; he’d simply driven around, or stopped at a gas station and stared out the windshield for a while before starting up once again. He’d had the notion to tour Hershey or Kellogg’s but ended up turning back before he reached either. Hungry, exhausted, he saw Hot Springs as he returned to town, wanting something familiar
. T
ime, he said, had seemed to stretch and leap at once, and he’d lost most of it trying to follow each potential decision toward its eventual conclusion. None of it really made sense to Britt, but it was clear that this was not unfamiliar to Harry.

“Didn’t you want to call me?” Britt had asked, imagining his brother tooling around tourist areas and chatting up Amish girls. “Or just say
something
to let us know you were okay?”

Harry had looked him in the eye. “I wasn’t okay,” he said, and Britt colored, ashamed of himself.

Now Harry finally told Britt about the times he’d needed treatment in college and on the island, but he also seemed to feel that Britt should understand how distant and implausible those events had seemed as soon as they were over, just as this one now did. He seemed genuinely aghast that he had endangered his own business and his brother’s by failing to admit or address his problems. Britt was left to wonder what else he could want from him.

Leo was so delighted to find Harry unharmed and to have his staff back in their places that he barely bothered to commiserate. (Also Harry had known about Leo and Thea and had said nothing, which infuriated Britt all the more because he had done the same thing.) Their parents were so relieved to see Harry that they might have forgotten that either restaurant even existed. And Camille, who, after Leo, should have been the one with enough restaurant experience to grasp fully just how irresponsibly Harry had behaved, had been more concerned about doctors and treatment plans. She brushed aside Britt’s comments about the depth of Harry’s failures with a cheerful opacity that managed to silence, soothe, and admonish him all at the same time.

The first Saturday after Harry returned, she appeared at the end of the evening to have a drink. Britt allowed himself a glancing touch of her shoulder blades as he kissed her hello, anticipating cool silkiness, but, more provocatively, her skin was warm and humid from the heat outside.

“So,” she asked Harry, “how’re you feeling?” She was perched on a barstool, a glass of rosé before her. Her hair was pulled into some complicated, fountainy knot at the back of her head, and she wore flat sandals and a precarious pale green dress, the spaghetti straps of which kept falling off each shoulder.

“My hair hurts,” Harry said. Her greeting to him had been a hug followed by an affectionate but vigorous tug at his hair. Somehow, with these gestures Camille conveyed more frustrated angst than anger. Every time Britt tried to clear the air with a joke, he sounded venomous.

“Yeah yeah yeah,” she said. She leaned across the bar, glancing to be sure no one was close enough to hear them. “You’re taking care of yourself?”

“Yup,” said Harry. “I’m doing what every successful chef does, eating regular meals and spending ten minutes every morning and night writing in my fear journal.”

She laughed, looking toward Britt, who nodded. “Really?” she said.

“Really,” Harry said. “It’s supposed to be better if I have a specific place to address anxieties. Other than, say, Amish country.”

Camille laughed, but Britt did not. Harry had been back a week and already his breakdown had become a comic set piece.

Britt excused himself to check on the backwaiters’ sidework and returned to find two of the servers perched beside Camille at the bar, chatting with her and Harry while a room full of dirty tables languished behind them.

“So where’d you get the batter?” Camille was asking them, but before the servers could answer they saw Britt and bustled off to clear the dining room.

“I’m still trying to figure that out. Jenelle couldn’t have made it,” Harry replied once the servers were gone. “Not out here.” He was leaning back against the counter with a seltzer.

Britt glanced toward the front of the restaurant, where the servers were stacking dinner plates. “Josh brought it from home,” he said, keeping his voice low
. T
his made the other two burst out laughing. “It’s not
funny
. W
hat would you think if you’d been the guests that night, paying a hundred bucks to watch a new chef scramble while the waitstaff acts like teenagers?”

“Did anyone notice?” Camille said, peering toward the server station.

“I hope not. They only managed a few pancakes.” Infuriatingly, this made Harry start to laugh again. As the servers passed them carrying bus tubs filled with dishes, all three of them went silent. Britt could tell his brother and Camille were fighting smiles, gazing downward in collusion, as if not only the pancakes but Harry’s disappearance were a charming prank.

When the servers were in the back, Britt said to Harry, “So now you’re all relaxed?”

Harry paused, and then seemed to decide to ignore the bitter note in Britt’s voice. “Only with your staff,” he said, finishing the last of his seltzer. “I’d already have fired one of them.”

“That seems premature,” Camille noted. “For all you know they were excellent pancakes.”

Harry smiled but said to Britt, “I support whatever you need to do to get them back in line. But I wouldn’t be surprised if no one noticed.”

“No, you could smell them,” Britt said. “I had an olfactory flashback.”

“I love pancakes,” Camille said. “They smell just like childhood.”

Harry snickered. “Just like crepes after dressage practice.”

Camille and Harry had an air of comfortable, intimate enclosure that struck Britt as more worrisome than a sexual spark. It wasn’t that Camille was attracted to his brother, he realized. It was worse. Somehow Britt had ended up being the one asking her for help in the restaurant, leaning on her for support in the madness of its early life. Harry had made him into the needy boyfriend. Now Harry was the entertaining one. It wasn’t too much to ask that his brother seem sincerely contrite instead of mining his behavior for laughs. Britt wanted Harry abject; he wanted him mortified. He wanted some fucking shame.

“I could have told them not to bother with pancakes,” Harry was saying. “Fun is roadside pie.”

Harry took a long, satisfied drink of his water, as if he needed some reward beyond Camille’s cascade of laughter—which to Britt sounded so loud and showy, so prodding, as if it were Britt who needed a cue to behave reasonably. Britt listened to the sound of the liquid sloshing around Harry’s greedy mouth, stared at the lurch of his knobby Adam’s apple.

“It’s all just funny now,” Britt said, “is that the idea?” Camille and Harry turned toward him, their expressions tentatively pleased to hear him joining in the conversation, until they realized what he’d said and their faces went still. He was gripping a water glass so hard he had to force himself to set it down carefully on the bar; the temptation was to ram it down, just to feel the tremor run up his arm.

Neither of them spoke, so Britt continued. “Everything’s happy and no one ever acted like a crazy person.” His voice came out wobbly, which only enraged him more—he didn’t want anyone mistaking this for some crying jag of relief at having his brother home. No, that tremor was the vibration of his pulse, the heart that was suddenly an uncontrollable motor inside him.

“It was just a dumb joke,” said Camille. She reached a hand to him, and he stepped back in order to prevent himself from knocking it away.

“I’m not making light of it,” Harry said. “I just want you to relax.”

“Bullshit,”
Britt spat, and Harry started. “The staff sees you laughing and they know you don’t care.”

For a moment, seeing Harry’s face bleached of its merriment felt satisfying and right. It felt like something Britt needed, like something he was owed. He saw Camille look around the room, which was empty of guests though the staff was clustered up at the front, noisily rearranging furniture and clearing tables.

He tried to keep his voice low, but he was leaning across the bar toward Harry, jabbing a finger into the zinc bar top. “You took your little holiday, your fucking little walkabout, and no one even knew if you were dead or alive, but the moment you get back it’s all perfect, it never happened, everyone’s just so glad to see your little
face
. A
nd that is the
best
part
. T
hat’s my favorite part of all
. Y
ou’ve arranged it so that all you have to do is take care of
yourself
to make it all better.”

Camille stood up, but Britt ignored her. He shoved his phone and car keys into his pockets. Let her enjoy Harry’s company now that it was so laid-back.

“So now your big progress is to remember to…to what? To have feelings? To eat when you’re hungry and sleep when you’re tired? And this is supposed to be enough for me to trust you?”

Harry hadn’t moved throughout the whole diatribe; he stood there and absorbed it. As Britt left the restaurant, he was already losing the fierce pleasure of his righteousness. However much Harry deserved it—and he did, Britt reminded himself, he did—his brother had still looked as stunned as if Britt had smiled at him before throwing a punch.

HE DROVE TO HIS OWN HOUSE
instead of Camille’s but wasn’t surprised to see her car pull in a few minutes after his. She didn’t come in, though she had a key, but knocked.

She followed him back to the kitchen and sat down beside him at the table.

He took a long drink of beer. “Sorry about that.”

She shook her head and laid one hand on the back of his neck, a gesture he’d grown used to, and had looked forward to for its sweetness and urgency, the protected sensation of a palm cupped over a vulnerable spot. But now he felt coddled, her hand seemed unpleasantly maternal, and he reached up and removed it.

Camille looked stricken. “Why are you angry at
me
?”

“I’m not,” he said automatically.

She sat back on her chair, propping one foot up on the seat. In the light from the lamp above the table her face looked sculpted and cold, and his bravado flagged. Suddenly it seemed so much more important for them to communicate calmly, kindly, for her not to look at him with this kind of chill.

He aimed for conciliation. “I wish you wouldn’t joke with him, okay? I don’t think he needs a partner in acting like everything’s fine.”

“I want to joke with him,” she said. “I was friends with him before I met you, and I’m relieved I have the opportunity to joke around with him at all.”

“You know I’m glad too, Camille,” he said. “But he’s acting like nothing happened.”

“He saw a doctor, right? He’s getting some treatment.”

“I told you he is.”

“Then isn’t that what he promised? He’s trying to put things right.”

“Well, what am I supposed to say to that?” he asked.

She looked not at him but up at the lamp above the table. “All spring he got more and more anxious,” she said, “and I kept waiting for you to do something, but you never let me talk to you about him.”

“I’m sorry it felt that way,” Britt started to say, because he could not quite apologize for anything else. Maybe he was sorry for something now—for that unfamiliar look on her face—but he no longer knew what it was. He reached out to stroke her arm, thinking they could stop this if only he could reset things somehow.

He knew that touching her was a mistake, but he couldn’t quite believe it when she pushed him away—she actually shoved his chest to get him away from her; he found himself sitting there with his palms against his chest where her hands had been. “Oh,
fuck
your fake apologies,” she said. “You didn’t care that he was struggling, not enough to do anything, and you made damn sure I knew I couldn’t talk about him. Not even when he was gone! We should have been helping each other, but you put all your energy into the restaurant
. Y
ou barely even talked about him, Britt! You just worked and acted like it was a regular busy night, like he was on vacation.”

She had gotten up and was digging through her purse as she headed toward the door, and Britt went after her. “Oh no,” he said. “What did you want me to do? Collapse? I didn’t know that the whole time I was so grateful to have you there, you were just thinking I’m inhuman. He’s my brother! It’s a given that
I’m
upset—why the fuck are you so upset?”

The keys jangled to the floor and Camille batted his hand away when he reached to retrieve them for her. She swiped them up and straightened, pointing a finger at his chest.

“Don’t even try it,” she said. Her mouth was quivering, and she tightened her lips and took a shallow, jittering breath. “Don’t you even think about trying to insinuate that I’m not trustworthy, not after I called hospitals and ran around being your gopher and your busser and I never burdened you with how frightened I was. And you didn’t even ask! I know he’s your brother, but you couldn’t just ask? When do you ever hear me talk about my family? We’ve been together for months and you haven’t seen them since the night we met, because I barely talk to them myself. But you have one and you don’t even care. If I had the relationship with my family that you have with yours, I wouldn’t be so cavalier about destroying it.”