The 100 Year Miracle (11 page)

“I haven’t been up there in years,” Harry said.

“It’s cold, and there’s almost no hot water.”

“That doesn’t seem very comfortable. Do you have to stay there?” he asked.

“The university won’t pay for hotel rooms for all of us, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I mean is there a reason, a reason other than money, to stay there?”

Rachel pinched her brows together like she didn’t quite follow. “There’s nothing special about it. It’s just cheap and big enough for all of us.”

Harry had hit upon a thought. If the idea were music, he’d be scrambling for a pencil.

“I was just thinking that the camp is a bit of a drive, and it’s not very comfortable.”

Rachel waited.

“You could stay here.”

“All of us?” Rachel asked.

“Oh, uh, no.” Harry had not foreseen this leap. He could not have been less interested in the rest of the group. “I’m afraid the house isn’t that big. I meant you. You could stay here. As repayment. For helping me tonight.” He stopped talking and then with a jolt started again. “Not just with me. With Tilda and me. I’m not suggesting—I wasn’t being inappropriate. I just hate to think of you out at that camp. It isn’t very nice.”

Rachel’s eyes were brown but not dark brown. They were a swirl of fawn and woody green and something almost golden that reminded Harry of an animal. Her pupils were quite large, and behind them, a lot of calculations were happening. He waited for whatever it was to be tabulated.

“I have a lot of equipment,” she said. “I can’t come if I can’t bring it with me.”

“Of course, feel free.”

“It’s a portable lab. There are fans and aerators. It runs twenty-four hours a day and makes noise. And I’d need to have a place to set up. Some tables.”

“I don’t sleep much anyway,” Harry said. “I can’t imagine your work would make any difference.”

“Then I accept.”

“Good.”

Rachel looked down. “We’re getting sand everywhere,” she said.

Harry was so pleased that it seemed a shame to concentrate on something as ridiculous as sand. But she was right. He could, now that he was paying attention, feel it crunching on the hardwood floor as he shuffled along. Tilda would be annoyed.

“I suppose I should’ve taken my shoes off by the back door,” he said.

“Here,” Rachel said. “I’ll do it.”

He did not resist. He sat and watched as she worked off first one shoe and then the other. The lamp behind him reflected in her shiny dark hair, making a circle of light on the crown of her head.

Rachel broke the reverie. “I’ll knock these off outside and leave them by the door on my way out.”

“Thanks,” Harry said.

She didn’t offer a platitude in response, just headed back to her work with his shoes and a bag full of his dinner.

“You’ll be back?” he called after her.

“I’ll be back,” she said.

When Rachel got outside, she took the steps down to the sand at a jog. Her heart worked harder than it should have, and her hands were tingling. She would write that down in her notebook but with an asterisk. It could just be the adrenaline. She needed to get her work away from John, and now she could. It was like a piece of unbelievable luck that fell from the sky. It was like winning a contest she didn’t know she’d entered.

She ducked under the yellow tape and took off toward Hooper. She would tell him she was driving the old man to urgent care and would be taking the truck.

*   *   *

The chef’s table was capable of seating a dozen diners, which made Tilda feel all the more conspicuous sitting there alone. Only a bar separated the kitchen from this private dining area. It was intended to put a spotlight on the cooks, but in her state, Tilda felt instead that it allowed them to peer out at her. She tried to look very appreciative of each course and had taken to giving the waiters awkward smiles as they rushed in and out for plates. The whole thing was exhausting. The only saving grace was that Tip had appeared in the window only once to give her a nod and otherwise seemed to have retreated to the far side, which was blocked from view by shelves and pans and all manner of stainless steel things. She hoped if she couldn’t see him then he couldn’t see her.

It wasn’t that the food wasn’t good. The food was excellent, if unrelenting. Tilda had expected to be presented with a menu but instead had been informed by her waiter—a man so perfectly able to blend into the background that even then she had a hard time recalling what he looked like—that it would be a tasting menu of small plates all chosen by the chef. He hadn’t even asked if there was anything she did not like, and there certainly was. Fortunately, it seemed Tip did not cook with cilantro.

As it was, she didn’t think she could take one more course. She had lost count, but there had been at least fifteen. Small plates or not, fifteen of anything leaves the average person overfull. The arrangement had made it difficult for her to divide the meal into the usual parts. She’d begun with an olive, her waiter had explained, stuffed with a very particular kind of ham taken from a very particular kind of Spanish pig that was raised entirely on hazelnuts and given regular saunas while listening to Handel. Surely that would be considered an appetizer or maybe an
amuse-bouche
. But after that, things got murky.

Tilda knew there had been a croquette made of carrots, which hadn’t tasted like carrots at all. And there was a Brussels sprout, just one, that had been pulled apart leaf by leaf and covered in a lemon foam, which looked a little like someone had spit on the plate. There had been fish, shellfish, beef, and more pork. It was a very good thing she wasn’t Jewish. At one point there had been a pureed chowder served in a demitasse cup.

With the first course, the waiter had brought out wine to go with the food and had explained to her about it as he poured. It had been a short pour, which was fine. But after three, it became clear that he intended to do this with every dish. After the first few, Tilda had begun restricting herself to a small sip from each one just so it didn’t all go to waste.

Finally, they’d made it to dessert, of which there were three. One of them had been a cookie that, when she picked it up and placed it into her mouth, crackled and zinged. She’d immediately removed it, unbitten, and stared for the two seconds it took her brain to retrieve memory of the candy Juno had eaten as a child. Pop Rocks. There were Pop Rocks in the cookie. If it had been meant to wake her from the food-induced stupor, well, she couldn’t say it had been entirely successful, but it was a very good effort.

She was, at the moment, retreating into a shot of espresso, a drink she didn’t enjoy, just for the stimulant effect. If she thought they offered it, she might have asked for TUMS. She even had some in her day bag, a sure sign of age, but they didn’t fit in the small clutch she’d taken with her that night.

Tilda finished her espresso, and the cup was removed. In fact, everything had been removed, including her napkin. As a final service, the waiter took out a small scraper to clean up any crumbs before retreating for good.

There she was, alone at an enormous table without even a single piece of cutlery to fiddle with. The cooks went on with their business, feeding whatever diners were left in the main room beyond her sight. She looked at her watch. It was after ten o’clock, an unheard of hour for a restaurant on the island, or at least it had been when she’d lived there. During her days, everyone would be at home watching
Law & Order
reruns by then.

Tilda had no idea what the protocol for this was. Did she wait for Tip to come out to chat? Did she just leave? Could she interrupt one of the cooks and ask? She regretted not asking the waiter, and now he had no reason to return, not even for crumbs. She let out a sigh and then felt guilty about it. We should all have such problems.

“Oh, crap.”

Tilda had almost forgotten to leave a tip. She pulled out her wallet and then stared at the money inside. She had no idea what her meal would have cost and, therefore, no idea how much to leave on the table. She pulled out a twenty and set it on the otherwise empty white cloth. It looked a little obscene lying there. So conspicuous.

“Hi.”

Tilda jerked. “Where did you come from?”

Tip showed his dimples. “The kitchen. That’s where we make the food.”

He was wearing black pants that fit a little too loosely and a white coat with Brasserie, the name of the restaurant, embroidered on the breast. His hair was covered with a light blue bandana that tied in the back and reminded her of a pirate.

“I didn’t see you come out.”

“You looked a little lost in there.” He pointed to his own head.

“I was trying to figure out how much of a tip to leave. Do you think that’s enough?” She gestured to the money on the table.

“I do.”

Tilda wasn’t comforted by this. He probably would’ve said that even if she’d left three singles. She pulled a ten from her wallet and laid it on top of the twenty.

“Thank you,” she said. “That was a wonderful meal. It was very kind of you to do that.”

“It was my pleasure,” he said, making a little bow, his hands clasped behind his back. “I hope you’ll convey my goodwill to your husband.”

“Ex-husband.”

“Of course.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and Tilda felt pressure to say something else. “I couldn’t even tell that croquette was made of carrots.”

“I’m sorry?” Tip said.

The desire to backpedal was intense, but there were no U-turns on compliment road.

“It was very meaty. Dense. Well, not dense like heavy, but dense like—” Tilda could feel the blush running up her neck. “Substantive. That’s what I meant. It was substantive. And unexpected. For produce.”

That hung in the air for a count of three, which was enough time for her to pray the building would catch on fire before this conversation could continue.

“Is ‘thank you’ the correct response here?” Tip asked when the moment had passed.

Tilda sagged against the back of her chair. “I really have no idea,” she admitted. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I have those days,” Tip said.

“This has been going on for a while.”

“If you give me a second to change,” he said, “we can go get a nightcap, and you can tell me about it.”

He was walking away before she could answer. A younger version of herself might have found his self-assurance attractive. This version was older and wasn’t so easy to impress. He had shown her a great kindness, but she was tired and didn’t want a nightcap. There had been fifteen kinds of wine already. She didn’t want to be rude, but it might be too late for that.

14.

Tilda had ordered coffee at the tavern, which turned out to be a mistake that could only be corrected with three packets of sugar and a whole pitcher of creamer. Still, she liked the place. In fact, she’d liked it for years. The Galley had been old and worn out even when Tilda had been local.

All the drinkers from the original island families sat at the bar or stood when the seats ran out. The men wore flannel shirts with their jeans and ball caps, and the women wore the same without the hats. Banana clips and scrunchies still held back their hair like 1985 had never left. Tilda’s ivory sweater had no place at The Galley. Tip had done better but just, trading in his chef’s coat for a pair of jeans and a blue oxford shirt. In the years Tilda had lived there, she’d never worked up the nerve to join the people at the bar, even when she could’ve matched them beer for beer. Tip must have felt the same because he steered her toward a booth.

Both the table and the cushions were cracked, and the condiments were displayed in a salvaged Heineken six-pack holder. The walls were decorated with ancient beer neon and taxidermy. Wagon wheel chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and plastic clothing hangers were hooked in the spokes, displaying the bar’s logo T-shirts for purchase. More T-shirts were stacked on the pool table, rendering it unplayable, which was fine. Tilda had never seen anyone play it. An Oklahoma Thunder basketball game was on the television, but no one was watching.

The only thing new in the place was the cook Tilda glimpsed through the pass window behind the bar. She was a young woman just on the verge of not being so young, mid-thirties maybe. She wore heavy bangs and thick-framed glasses and had tattoos up both arms. She looked like she’d double-majored in women’s studies and philosophy, and Tilda wondered how she’d come to work here where everything on the menu was passed first through the deep fryer and came with tartar sauce.

Tip was hungry. He’d spent all night cooking other people’s food, including Tilda’s, and had had almost nothing for himself. He ordered the fish and chips, which came out fast and was piled into a precarious mountain of golden batter on the plate. He offered Tilda some, but the idea of more food nauseated her. She waved him off, and he dug in. Tearing up the cod into bite-size pieces that still steamed and must have burned his fingers, he shoved the bits into paper cups of white sauce before chasing them with a handful of fries and a deep swallow of beer.

It was nice to see he wasn’t a snob about his food, Tilda thought.

Over his shoulder, one of the local women sat at the corner of the bar with three or four of the available men standing around her. They were hovering like seagulls over a fisherman gutting a catch. She’d been there awhile. Tilda could tell by the looseness in her arms and the brashness of her speech. Whatever the woman said, she said it again and again, louder and louder until someone acknowledged each whiskey-soaked piece of wisdom.

“You can’t tell you lost weight,” she was saying to one of the older women. “You know what you need? You know what you need? You need to go shopping. You should go to the mall where they have the Chico’s. You know the Chico’s? You know it? They have good stuff. You get yourself some shirts and some pants. Chico’s. C-H-I-C-O.”

The older woman patted her on the back until she stopped talking, and the men went right on hovering. It made Tilda’s heart hurt to watch.

When her mind came back to her table, Tip was watching her watch the woman.