Whatever Happens

Abstract

Whatever Happens Victoria Lancelotta (bio) When Matthew calls I’m sautéing garlic for the polenta and Joe is squeezing buttercream rosettes from a Ziploc bag onto a spice cake he made from scratch. Or trying to—we don’t have a pastry tip, and he’s snipped too wide a hole in the corner of the plastic, and the cream is oozing and running. “Shit,” Joe says when the phone rings, and lays the bag on the counter and licks a finger and goes to answer. Polenta and a mushroom ragu, asparagus with aioli, tenderloin and the cake: this is the menu planned for Christa’s birthday, this and a bottle of decent champagne and a few bottles of [End Page 132] Click for larger view View full resolution Photograph by Stuart Heath [End Page 133] more-than-decent wine. But it’s an occasion, and it’s just the four of us—Christa and Kent and Joe and me—so it’s fine; it’s an extravagance, but it’s for Christa and so it’s fine. That was what Joe and I told ourselves in the supermarket, the liquor store, the car in between. The phone is on the dining room table down the hall, and that’s where Joe picks it up; he doesn’t come back into the kitchen immediately, and I can’t hear what he’s saying over the sizzling in the pan and the staticky NPR station on our greasy old radio. It’s probably Christa, I think, begging to be allowed to bring something because that’s how she is. She can’t help it. Even after cancer, she can’t help it. “Em,” Joe says when he comes back, and that’s how I know it’s not about mini quiches or dinner rolls or ice cream. He wouldn’t call me by my name if it were. I turn off the radio. “That was Matthew,” he says. “He’s in jail. He said last night—whoever he was with, somebody new, I didn’t recognize the name—I don’t know. He doesn’t remember much. He said they were drinking and then they were fighting and now he’s in jail.” We’re facing each other across our cluttered kitchen, Joe with the phone and me with a wooden spoon, silent—two people who are rarely silent together. Hot oil spatters the back of my hand, and I move the pan off the heat. “Did he—” “I don’t know,” Joe says. “All I know is what he told me. I assume she called the cops and they took him in.” “She,” I say, and Joe shakes his head, impatient, displeased. “I don’t know, Emily; he mentioned a name, but it didn’t mean anything to me, okay?” “Okay,” I say, quiet, but he hears and puts the phone down, looks around the kitchen. Every surface is covered—the cake on a rack, the cookbook held open with a towel, the meat coming to room temperature, stacks of plates and piles of utensils, the hand blender, our two glasses of wine, the last pour from the bottle I used for the marinade. Whose warm life is this, I catch myself thinking, whose shelter? It’s almost five o’clock. Christa and Kent are coming at seven. We thought we’d have time to fuck before that. “What are you going to do?” I say. “What? Nothing. Jesus, Em.” He flips a lock of hair back and reaches for his wine. The glass is spattered with flour. “What, you mean bail him out? Find him a lawyer? Or maybe I should just go down there and keep him company?” [End Page 134] “It’s not—” “What it’s not is our problem,” he says. “Not mine and not yours. Unless you have a different take on the matter.” “I’m not saying it’s our problem, I just think—” “You just think—what, you just think they took him in for hurting her feelings, Emily?” “Of course not,” I say. “You have no idea what he did to her, and for some reason you’re fine with that...