“I’ve been baking extra and sending it to the back office every day.”
In the space marked How This Person Can Help the Campaign, I wrote: Already a major food source.
A knock on the front door. I walked down the hall to answer it.
Jillian was standing there holding her laptop.
“I’m too humble to say I’m a genius, Hope, but you’ve got to see this.”
* * *
Students for Stoop
It was huge across the computer screen. Jillian scrolled down. Several headings: The Man, The Message, The Meaning, How You Can Get Involved.
“You did this?” I asked.
“Every gorgeous word.” Jillian clicked on Students for Stoop and it morphed into bouncing letters. “And the soundtrack please.” She clicked again; rock music started playing.
“Jillian, that’s amazing.”
She was grinning and typing. “Okay, here’s how they contact us. I’m going to send mail out to kids at the high school to tell everyone what we’re doing.” Click. Up on the screen came What teens are saying about G. T. Stoop and why you should listen. “I need a major quote from you, Hope. We’ll put it right here. Say something instantly fabulous.”
“Can I think about it?”
“Time’s up. Why do you think G.T. should be mayor?”
“Because he’s totally honest, completely fair, and he cares about everyone’s welfare.”
Jillian typed that in.
“Wait a minute—”
“No, it’s good. Braverman said G.T. would bring honor and humility to the office.” She looked straight at me. “Braverman’s going to edit a Students for Stoop newsletter to promote G.T.”
“That’s nice.”
She kept looking.
“What?” I demanded.
“Hope, I have to say it. You and Braverman would be perfect together.”
My face got hot.
“I mean,” Jillian gushed, “you have this force connecting you. It’s under the surface, but it runs deep.”
I looked out the window, trying to appear casual.
Anyone who’s spent any time in food service knows the peril.
“I don’t date people I work with, Jillian. It’s disaster.”
My heart was thub-dubbing as I recited my mother’s Number One Cardinal Rule of Waitress Survival—Do NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, DATE THE COOK. Mom had been fired twice for doing this. “Cooks tend to move from thing to thing quickly,” Mom explained. “A waitress who dates the cook always gets burned.” She wrote that in her last Christmas letter.
“But if you didn’t work with him, Hope—”
I didn’t tell her the truth—that, just maybe, I’d like to go out with him, but I hadn’t let myself go there. I’d only had one boyfriend, Bobby Ray Goshen from Pensacola, but he was part-time. He cheated on me.
“I don’t live in what-ifs, Jillian. I go with what’s on the menu.” This wasn’t entirely true.
“You’re impossible.”
“I try.”
She ate one of Addie’s serious double fudge brownies that connect people instantly and told me that Braverman needed someone stalwart like me because his last girlfriend dumped him before she went off to college.
“He’s a good guy, Hope. He’s staying home to help support his mom and sisters. His dad walked out on the family. His mom had an operation and didn’t have health insurance, and the bills are pretty rough. That’s why he hasn’t gone to college yet. He was editor of the high school paper. He was going to major in journalism.”
“How do you know all this?”
“In small towns everyone knows everything.” Jillian closed her computer. “You know he cares for you.”
My heart did a back flip.
I went down to the diner to observe Braverman to see if this was true.
* * *
“So, Braverman, how’s it going?”
“Okay.” He was in the kitchen slicing carrots, not acting like he cared for anyone in particular.
“That was a really good pork-chop sandwich you made for my customer at table three earlier. He went on and on about it.” I attempted a twinkling laugh. It came out dumb.
“Good.” His right eyebrow moved slightly, his jaw tightened. He walked into the supply closet leaving me there.
I reported back to Jillian.
“Like all males, Hope, he has a code that has to be deciphered.”
“What’s the code?”
“I have no idea. But it’s probably weirder than hieroglyphics.”
11
Every day teenagers were coming in to volunteer for G.T.’s campaign, and we knew what to do with them.
Tell ten friends why you support G. T. Stoop and ask them to join you.
Make sure that people are registered to vote for G.T.
Write a letter to the Mulhoney Messenger telling why you support G.T.’s election.
Cecelia Culpepper published the letters and an editorial of her own demanding the opening of the tax assessor’s office and insisting the mayor release proof that the dairy paid its local taxes.
“We are conducting an internal investigation,” said the mayor in response. “The assessor’s office will be closed to the public until the investigation is completed.”
“Not good enough,” Braverman fumed when he read it.
Back at the diner, G.T. was driving himself too hard. Twice I’d seen him steady himself against a wall when he was walking.
Once I saw the color drain from his face when he was cornered by an irritated representative from Friends of Wildlife who said she could personally assure him of twenty-four votes, but he was going to have to “play ball with the animals.”
Sid Vole yawned, still in his decaffeinated state, and studied G.T.’s pale face. “We need to get you in front of people looking strong. Give a thumbs-up sign whenever you can. Voters love that.”
G.T. shook his head. “Let’s show the people what they’re really getting, Sid.”
You could feel the campaign heat build. Addie said it was like turning up the flame and quick-frying zucchini that could go from perfection to mush in a matter of seconds.
People were coming into the diner every day just to see what she had on the menu. A man laughed with pure joy yesterday after he’d finished his second bowl of split pea soup brimming with fat ham chunks and garlic butter croutons. That man was dining alone. I saw a marriage proposal take place at table nine. The first thing that happy woman said was, “Harold, it’s taken you seven years to ask me. Why now?”
Harold looked at his half-eaten plate of brisket piled with caramelized onions and said he wasn’t quite sure, something had come over him.
Addie had a mandate now. She raised a whisk and pointed it at Braverman.
“Now I believe that the way to anyone’s heart is through their stomach, and, my boy, I’m here to tell you, we are in the heart business. We’re going to reach deep past the menu and into the emotional power of food because a person comes back to a restaurant again and again for one reason only—to feed their soul.”
She chopped an onion fast, weeping as the aroma hit her eyes.
Braverman said, “If you light a candle near the chopped onion it takes away the eye sting—that’s what I do.”
Addie wiped her face and said that weeping just added more passion to the menu.
But she and G.T. were having trouble getting used to each other’s ways. Flo said it was like watching two dogs mark off their boundary lines in a field.
The worst face-off was when Addie was trying out a new recipe called Big-Hearted Stew, which had veal and sausage in a tomato-garlic sauce with peas and sautéed onions. She thought she’d used too many onions. G.T. had a bowl of it and said it was perfect, just perfect. Addie said that she was just beginning to reach perfection in this kitchen and she assured him there was a whole lot more to look forward to.
“This is the best cooking this town has seen. And, Lord, people are happy
when they leave. You’re too hard on yourself, Addie.”
“I’m hard on myself because that’s the only way food is elevated.”
“Maybe you’d have more fun if you backed off a bit.”
I tried to signal G.T. that this was the wrong thing to say. Addie’s definition of having fun is worrying herself silly over a recipe. She’d reached her fun apex with this veal stew.
Addie snarled, “G.T., there’s too much onion in this dish and I’m not going to serve it until I’ve got it right. I’m putting something else on the dinner menu.”
G.T. said he’d already written out the specials page for the menu for tomorrow and he’d rather not do it again.
“I’ll do it then,” Addie half shouted, and grabbed a pen and paper and started printing.
“Addie, that’s plain wasteful. We can’t afford to be throwing out perfectly good food.”
Addie looked away. I prayed to God she’d hold it together.
* * *
But everything was unraveling.
Four burglaries occurred in town in the same humid, rainy week. One of them was at Adam’s house.
“They pulled everything out of the drawers in my room,” he cried. “They took my mom’s antique clock. They took the stereo and the TV and my dad’s campaign button collection that went all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt!” He stared off, shaken.
My hands turned to fists.
“When they come into your house, it’s like … it’s so personal.” He was fighting tears. I put my hand on his shoulder.
Deputy Babcock said it seemed like the work of the same person, maybe two people working together.
“Not real swift ones either,” she commented, drinking her second cup of coffee at the counter. “They were messy jobs. Whoever it was, though, knew people’s patterns—when they’d be home, gone to work. Interesting that whoever it was only burglarized the houses of people who signed G.T.’s petition—or who worked with the campaign.”
She adjusted her shoulder holster with the very real pistol. Flo told me that Deputy Babcock used to be a police detective in Minneapolis and moved to Mulhoney to take care of her mother, who lived here and couldn’t get around by herself anymore.
“Brenda’s got connections way up the pole,” Flo told me. “Sheriff Greebs isn’t too happy about that.”
“Better get the word out,” Deputy Babcock said to me and Flo. “Batten down the hatches.”
* * *
Batten (from Webster’s): A thin narrow strip of lumber used especially to seal or reinforce a joint.
Hatch: An opening in the deck of a ship or in the floor or roof of a building.
“I’d like to know what’s being done to find those burglars!” G.T. shouted from the steps of Town Hall after Millstone refused to meet with him about the robberies.
“Sheriff Greebs is conducting a thorough investigation,” said a spokesperson for the mayor. “We have no further comments.”
“Well, I do,” G.T. shot back. “Give the mayor a message for me. Tell him that lies and dirty tricks never win in the long run. Tell him that fear is no way to govern people. He can refuse to meet with me from now until Election Day, but I will not be silent!”
Cecelia Culpepper printed it word for word in the Mulhoney Messenger.
* * *
The next day the Real Fresh Dairy canceled all their advertising with that paper. A few other small businesses pulled their ads, too.
“That’s going to hurt Cecelia financially,” G.T. said to me. “The dairy was her biggest advertiser. She’s had to run that paper on a shoestring since her husband died. My Lord, what we human beings do to each other in the name of politics.”
We were out back by the flowering trees. G.T. was holding Anastasia, telling her how he’d prune back the branches so the lush leaves could grow. He told her a story about the mustard seed that was one of the smallest seeds in the tree family, but it turned into one of the mightiest. G.T. said you just never know what can happen when you start planting little seeds.
I went back in the diner to work. Lou Ellen was delivering orders and watching G.T. and Anastasia out the window. She was a pure mess of feelings—running herself ragged trying to work and take care of her child. I wanted to help.
“Lou Ellen, you want me to take table twelve so you can go out and—”
“I need the money, Hope.”
“I wasn’t doing it for the tip.”
“I don’t need charity, okay?”
“Lou Ellen, if I can do anything to help like baby-sit, whatever, just ask.”
She looked down. “That’s real sweet of you. Everyone here’s doing so much for me. G.T. said Anastasia could stay here as long as I need.” She gripped her order book. “I’m not used to people helping. Except for my mom.”
I nodded. “It’s good you’ve got her.”
Her face just caved in. I grabbed her limp hand.
She was looking out the window at G.T., who was trying to get Anastasia to touch the flowers on the trees. He put her little hand on the leaves, but it just fell back to her side.
“I named her Anastasia because it was a really big name and I wanted her to do something big in the world. I don’t know if she’ll ever be able to do much of anything.” A tear went down Lou Ellen’s cheek. “She doesn’t have a daddy either.”
Poor kid.
“Neither do I,” I said. “Some things you learn to work around.”
Lou Ellen looked sympathetic. “Where’s yours?”
“I don’t know. Where’s hers?”
“I don’t know either.”
I smiled. “Maybe it’s some kind of virus.”
“Yeah.” She half laughed. “The jerk virus.”
A man in her station signaled for his check. Lou Ellen steadied herself and wrote it up.
“I think you’re real brave,” I told her, and for a minute her whole face lit up. She was real pretty when the light went on inside.
* * *
“It is with great joy and honor that I announce my support for Eli Millstone, the only man for Mulhoney!” Cranston Broom, president of the Real Fresh Dairy, shouted this into a microphone at his factory as a sea of dairy workers applauded and cheered and several dairy workers draped a Millstone banner across the entrance to the building. “Every dairy truck you see will proudly bear a VOTE FOR ELI poster. That’s how committed we are to this mayor.”
Braverman, Adam, and I were across the street watching. Braverman’s face looked rigid. He sipped the last of his coffee; crushed the Styrofoam cup in his hand.
Braverman was becoming Caffeine Man. In his spare time he worked on the Students for Stoop newsletter and wrote articles for the Mulhoney Messenger about the campaign that never got published. Cecelia Culpepper told Braverman that his articles sounded more like editorials. He needed to report the facts, be a “dispassionate observer of the political scene.” Braverman said that anyone who was dispassionate about this election was brain-dead.
I was getting worried about him.
“That young man’s got a deep relationship with G.T.,” Flo explained to me. “It’s killing him to hear the things Eli Millstone is saying.”
It was killing all of us.
Now, I don’t think G. T. Stoop means to be doing this town any harm, but I believe we need to let him know that running for mayor with no experience and leukemia is making a travesty out of the office and is insulting the voters. We all have to understand that this man is not only sick, he’s deluded. Every one of his accusations is bosh.
But G.T. went for broke and challenged the people: “Eli’s been going around telling you that everything I’ve said was false. Either I’m the biggest barefaced liar you’ve ever met or I’m not. You’ve got to decide.”
Braverman started following Millstone’s campaign everywhere after that, asking, “What about it, Mr. Mayor? Is G. T. Stoop the biggest barefaced liar we’ve ever met, or are you?”
* * *
The last hour on
my shift and it had truly been one of those days.
Everything went wrong in the kitchen, my orders were backed up, I had hungry people glaring at me like I was personally responsible for their starvation.
At the galley window. “I ordered that tortellini sausage soup twenty minutes ago, Braverman!”
He slammed a pan. “It was ten minutes ago.”
Oh, please!
I had a table full of gimmes (“Gimme water, gimme ketchup”). Mrs. Scarlotti was perched at the counter trying to set me up with her nephew Lewis.
“A nice, thoughtful boy,” she said. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
That means spineless in Brooklyn.
I delivered the world’s best chef’s salad with crumbled bacon and a large bowl of Too-Good Chili to the people on table seventeen who could see how busy I was and kept telling me not to rush.
Brenda Babcock was sitting at the counter drinking iced coffee. She was in street clothes today—white pants and a bright flowered shirt—she didn’t look like she crushed bad guys under her heel in that outfit.
I placed a slice of Addie’s fresh coconut layer cake in front of her. That’s when we heard the bloodcurdling scream.
“Oh God! Oh God!” The pretty woman on table seventeen shrieked it, covering her face.
I ran over. The man with her looked furiously at me. “There’s half a dead mouse in my wife’s salad!”
This had to be a joke.
The restaurant went silent.
Deputy Babcock was there next to me.
I looked in the salad bowl—saw the top half of a dead, gross rodent, mouth open, covered with Roquefort dressing.
Lou Ellen screamed.
I backed away.
The man stood up. “This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen!”
He took his soupspoon and held that thing up for everyone to see.
Wails of disgust and disbelief.
Braverman ran to help me from the kitchen. He looked in the bowl, stunned.
“I want to go!” the pretty woman cried. “I might have touched it. Oh, my God! It might be crawling with disease!”
Customers are beginning to gather around us.
“It’s really a mouse.”
“Don’t look, Bobby.”