Bread and Butter

by Michelle Wildgen

Genres: Family Life; Humor & Satire; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Britt and Leo have spent ten years establishing Winesap as the best restaurant in their small Pennsylvania town. They cater to their loyal customers, they don’t sleep with the staff, and business is good, even if their temperamental pastry chef is bored with making the same chocolate cake night after night.
 
But when their dilettante younger brother, Harry, opens his own restaurant, Britt and Leo find their lives thrown off-kilter. Important employees quit and reappear in Harry’s kitchen, their “classic” menu starts to seem overly safe, and romance threatens to bubble up in the most inconvenient of places. As the brothers struggle to find a new family dynamic, Bread and Butter proves to be a dazzling novel that’s as much about siblinghood as it is about the mysterious world behind the kitchen door. 
 

Release date: February 11, 2014

Publisher: Anchor

Print pages: 336

Sample

Bread and Butter

Prologue

Every few months, in the grips of their parents’ civic and vicarious ethnic pride, Leo, Britt, and Harry went on a forced excursion to the last Italian market in town. Most people in Linden would make a day of it and drive ninety minutes east into Philadelphia, to hit 9th Street or Reading Terminal, but Leo’s parents were diehards. As long as Moretti’s was open, they would insist it was the best.
Inside a butcher’s case, denuded rabbits curled pink and trusting in white bins, while the sheep’s heads appeared chagrined and surprised by the depth of their eyeballs, the narrow clamp of their own teeth. The display of calves’ brains and kidneys, livers and tripe, repulsed Britt, struck Leo as regrettable but unavoidable, and entranced Harry, who was six. He stood with his hands on the glass, chewed-looking mittens dangling from his sleeves.
Britt and Leo, who were twelve and thirteen, were supposed to be watching their brother but were primarily lurking several feet away near the bulk section, peering over patrons’ shoulders at the hooves and teeth.
Their father appeared beside them, holding a pink slice of prosciutto, which he did not offer. These Saturdays sometimes left their parents flushed and high-spirited in a slightly confrontational way.
“We’re not even Italian,” Britt pointed out.
“Since when are you purists?” their father asked. “Would you be happier if we were in a haggis store?”
“I was happy playing basketball,” Leo said wanly. But the store was an invigorating riot of noise and meaty fragrance, and he found it difficult not to join in the hollering and sampling as his parents did with such mortifying enthusiasm.
“It smells like death in here,” Britt said. “Death and spices.”
“That’s fennel seed,” their father said.
Eventually their parents completed their tasting and shopping and returned, each holding a large brown paper bag.
“Where’s Harry?” their mother asked. She craned her neck, peering through the crowd. Her red hair was coming out of its ponytail. “Boys? Where’d Harry go?”
“He was here,” said Britt, and he and his brother both looked down to where Harry had been. The last they had seen of him, Harry was storming off into the sea of bodies, miffed that Leo and Britt refused to emote over the case of organ meat. They had not followed.
“Well, look,” their father said. Their parents began working their way through the crowd.
The street was gray and quiet, cars rumbling past Leo on the pitted streets. What a terrible place for Harry to be wandering around, his vividness like a target. Why did their parents bring them here? Leo jogged up the block and around the corner, fruitlessly, before returning to the store, where he stood in the mass of people, sweating, his heart pounding, realizing that he had ruined his family.
And then the crowd shifted and Leo glimpsed them all: a cluster of ginger-colored heads back by the meat counter, his father’s darker head in its Eagles cap. Harry was holding something wrapped in white paper. His parents’ faces were a volatile blend of anger and relief.
As they left the store Leo glanced at Britt, who rolled his eyes in a way that conveyed complicity and gladness, the latter something Britt was clearly embarrassed to feel.
Harry refused to hold either parent’s hand and was clutching his white package. Leo took in the oblivious bounce of Harry’s shoulders, the round curve of his cheek, and the cowlick on one side of his forehead. He probably hadn’t even gotten scolded. Leo took one lengthy stride, long enough to catch the heel of Harry’s shoe, a punk-ass little gesture that almost made him feel better.
“Thanks for scaring everybody,” Britt said.
“I was talking to the meat guy,” Harry said. “He has all the good stuff.”
“It’s a lamb’s tongue, by the way,” said Britt, nodding at the white package. “He got a lamb’s tongue.”
“To eat?” Leo said to his parents. “You bought him a lamb’s tongue?”
Their mother set her bag down on the sidewalk, pulled a stocking cap out of her pocket, and tugged[LD2]  it down over Harry’s head. Then she straightened up and said, “We didn’t buy it for him.” Her eyelids lowered just slightly, slyly, because Harry hated to be laughed at, and she added, “He used his allowance.”


Part 1

Chapter 1

Leo had imagined a cavernous space filled with sunlight and flaking pillars, but as he explored his brother’s future restaurant, he feared he had overestimated Harry’s ambition.
Britt trailed behind them as Leo followed Harry into the long, narrow room. Harry’s shaggy red hair and his blue-and-green shirt were the only spots of color in the dusky room as he gestured, all lanky arms and skinny wrists, toward where he planned to put the bar, the tables, and the server station. Harry’s forearms and wrists bore short faded purplish scars from hot pans and oven edges and errant knife blades, just like the arms on the cooks in Leo’s restaurant.
Leo glanced behind him; Britt was not paying attention but was swiping at the screen of his phone and swearing under his breath about the linen service. Periodically Britt swatted his blazer, making Leo realize that he too was smeared with pale washes of dust at a knee, an elbow, and a shoulder, but he merely whacked perfunctorily at his clothes. This was why Britt ran the dining room while Leo ran the back of the house. Britt could sense a flaw from yards away—a spotty wineglass or a tablecloth scattered with pollen dropped from a centerpiece—and correct it almost without realizing he’d done so.
“What’s the name?” Leo asked. His restaurant was called Winesap, the name a nod to the apple variety that grew in their parents’ backyard.
“71 King. Same as the address,” Harry said. He pointed up at fat ducts grown minty with age. “That’s copper piping. And I think this wall is, like, three feet thick.” He demonstrated the wall’s soundness with a flick of his hand against the brick, a gesture that looked as if it hurt. But Harry shook it off and looked back over his shoulder. “You don’t like the name?”
Leo chewed the inside of his lip. “It doesn’t say a lot,” he said gently. “It might be hard for people to picture what they’ll get here just from the name.”
“I guess it doesn’t really fit,” Harry admitted, looking thoughtful. “Although what does Winesap convey, exactly?”
“Well, for a while, not much,” Leo admitted. “Heirloom apple varieties didn’t evoke much in an old mill town. But now that we have more Philadelphia transplants I think it says farmers’ markets and rarity and quality.”
“Plus it’s just a great word,” said Britt. “Maybe it lets people forget for a second that they even got priced out of the suburbs.”
“And anyway, now it evokes you, right? See, that’s the thing,” Harry said. “I’m hoping that soon this address will say something, something totally different from what it does now. I’m trying to get ahead of the curve. Or to set the curve. Call it what you will.” He looked behind Leo. “Britt. 71 King. What’s it say to you?”
Britt looked up from his phone. Whereas Harry’s long, lean face was softened by his red beard and Leo bore a coarser nose and darker, down-turned eyes, Britt’s face was elegant and spare, high-cheekboned and fine-lipped. “I picture a pit bull,” he said apologetically. “Like a fighting dog named King.”
Leo winced. Now that Britt had said it, he couldn’t picture anything else.
Harry sighed.
“Listen,” said Britt, “you haven’t made any huge announcements, you haven’t paid for any signs. You can still think about it.”
“Okay,” Harry said, but he’d lost a little of his spring as he continued the tour.
It was September now, and Harry had been back in Pennsylvania since April. He’d allowed only bits and pieces about his nascent restaurant to emerge during the basketball games the three played a couple of times a month, until the build-out began and Harry was too busy to play. He’d been secretive and cheerful on these Sunday mornings in the park, reluctant to lay bare the details until the whole thing came together. Leo had the feeling that Harry both hoped to surprise them and somewhat dreaded the opinions of two brothers who’d already logged ten years—more in Leo’s case—in the restaurant business. Harry was still quite new to it.
Leo had worked hard not to pry. He understood how fragile these early ideas could feel, how easily you could get off track if you got input too soon. Instead he had contented himself with coaxing along his own creakily returning jump shot. Britt, who in their teens had painstakingly honed a swooping outside shot until it seemed effortless, tended to lope easily around the court, more concerned with form than points, while Harry had never lost the wiry zeal that could have carried him into an athletic scholarship instead of an academic one. Neither of his brothers would ever admit this. What they said aloud was that Harry could have gone as far as second string on an emerging semipro team in Iceland.
Now they finally got to see the restaurant space and to see Harry, who’d been out of communication for several weeks. To Leo, the entire space seemed more like a hallway than a dining room, and the farther into the building they went, the darker and more forbidding it became. The ceiling seemed to descend as they walked. The west wall was brick, the east wall flaking plaster, and the wall facing the street was three-quarters glass. At the back of the rectangular space was a thick steel door painted a military green.
“That was carpeted,” Harry said, glancing down at the floor.
“That’s maple,” said Britt. “Refinish it.”
Harry looked to Leo, who shrugged. “It’s probably maple,” he said.
Britt said, “What was this space before, anyway? A bar? Apartments? If you found carpet in here, you’ve got to assume that food and crumbs were ground into it for a while before you tore it out. Could mean mice.”
Leo watched Harry gaze doubtfully at the floor for as long as he could stand it, then clapped Harry on the back. “I’ll give you the number of the exterminator we use, Hare,” he heard himself say heartily. “This is an easy decision, trust me.” Around his youngest brother he became bluff and jocular, issuing definitive statements he only occasionally believed in. Somehow he never affected the same persona with Britt; they were too close in age, had grown up playing on too many of the same baseball teams and going to the same parties.
Harry nodded. “You may be right.” It was clear he was deciding which way to go—to allocate money to a potentially mythical rodent problem, to laugh it off, or to argue. He settled for shaking his head, and then took a sip from Britt’s coffee, which had been left on top of a stepladder, and considered the mouthful. Then he said, “See, this is why I need partners, Leo. You guys know all this stuff already.”
“And I’ll tell you for free,” Leo said, deliberately keeping his tone light, “you don’t need me.”
“When this place gets huge, you’re going to wish you were in on it,” Harry said, almost matching the playful tone. “Besides, how’s it going to look if I open a restaurant without you? People will think we’re feuding. They’ll think you have no faith in me.”
“I do have faith in you,” Leo said. “You just jumped in really fast. You’ve set yourself a real climb.” This was as far as Leo would go in expressing his fears. Leo himself had worked for years in the restaurant business before he’d finally gathered financing and opened his own place. He hadn’t put together a few years in the food industry in between graduate degrees and other endeavors and then decided to start a business.
“I think it seems faster than it is,” Harry said, unperturbed. “Besides, an industry needs new blood. Britt didn’t have any experience when he started working with you.”
“I had spite,” said Britt. “That’ll carry you further than you’d think. I got to quit a job I hated and I was upset with Frances for walking out on Leo.”
Leo was circling the room, only half listening to his brothers. It made him realize how long it had been since Harry had come home.
Their parents still lived in the house where all three had grown up, a three-bedroom white Colonial with red trim perched on a sloping hillside. His father used the steep side yard as a terraced garden, green beans, tomatoes, squash, carrots, onions, and herbs all fenced in with grapevines. At the top of the yard were the two eponymous apple trees. The neighborhood was a tightly packed grid of older houses kept in careful though elderly repair, beginning to age out and turn over once again, and there would come a day when the next wave would mean renovation instead of mere upkeep. But for now their father patrolled his yard and garden and made wine in his basement. Their mother hauled out a giant wooden jack-o’-lantern sign in the fall and red and green Christmas lights in December.
They’d been older parents for their generation. Their father had retired years earlier from engineering and their mother from being the principal of a local junior high school, but well into their seventies they remained bustling and flustered, talking at one another about different topics at once and lamenting their lack of free time. The house alone seemed to require all their attention. Every time Leo spoke to his father, he was on his way to the hardware store for some minuscule item: a hinge, a flange, a yard of weather stripping.
Leo and Britt were eleven months apart, a lingering intimation of their parents’ sexuality that never ceased to cause both men some embarrassment, and perhaps because of the closeness in age their parents were forever conflating their two older sons, forgetting that Britt had not put in years of restaurant work in high school and college, thinking that Leo was alert to sales on good suits. Only Harry, six years younger than Britt and seven younger than Leo, seemed entirely distinct to them. They kept careful track of his many endeavors, enumerating his degrees, years later still talking about the goat he had served them when he was working on a farm in upstate New York. (“Gin!” their father would exclaim. “He added gin to give it a piney flavor. Who thinks of such a thing?”)
Leo noted how the sun poured into the restaurant space behind Britt and pooled on the brick before them. Britt’s closely clipped reddish blond hair was alight with it; the lines around his eyes had taken on a powdery fineness. The room was tight, but the space was not all wrong. Harry would be able to fit three rows of tables if he turned them diagonally to allow servers to swivel through. There was little room for a bar, much less the great zinc J that was currently propped up against the east wall awaiting its moment, and what Leo assumed would be the kitchen, back behind that mossy-looking door, was too cramped for more than two cooks or three at the very most, who would be elbow to elbow, knife handles knocking over each other’s prep dishes. Yet the dining room was not appalling. The length offset the width—you had the feeling of journeying deep into the old building toward a cache of ’66 Bordeaux and a scattering of dusty jewels—and the wood floors would look good refinished. There would be patched corners and spaces between some of the floorboards—try getting crumbs out of there—but it would feel welcomingly worn and intimate. This place would be more casual and rough-edged than Winesap, but Leo felt that for Harry, this made sense.
Of the three, Harry was the tallest and the truest redhead, a throwback to the great-grandmother who’d spent years lecturing all three on the meanings of the family tartan. To this day none of the brothers wore plaid. Leo favored pinstripes so faint as to be theoretical, Britt preferred some mix of charcoal or beige set off by blocks of saturated gray-greens or citrus, and Harry bought vintage cotton button-downs for ten bucks a handful, the sort that were printed with typewriters, horses, or paisley. All the brothers had gone to college, but only Harry had collected, as if by accident, several more college degrees than most people required. Leo was equally chagrined by and proud of his little brother’s roving and uncontainable intelligence. Harry had strong opinions on pierogi and loved to read terrible popular novels about werewolves or hit men for the pleasure of analyzing their mass appeal, right down to the verb choice. Harry wanted to revitalize Linden—which had long ago lost its steel and textile mills and never quite replaced them—not through its citizens’ altruism but through their appetites.
At the moment, however, Harry was exclaiming over Britt’s diner coffee, trying to get him to inhale the staleness. Leo believed that Britt drank shitty coffee for the irony of it—that he liked to be the guy in a cashmere sweater with a blue-and-white Greek-patterned coffee cup from the dingy corner pastry stand. Once a week, on Tuesdays, he also bought a square of baklava made by the wife of the Ethiopian guy who sold the coffee, and left the pastry in its butter-spotted white paper package on Leo’s desk.
“The river’s what, two blocks from here?” Leo called over the sound of his brothers’ voices. Harry joined him at the window, peering out at the Irish bar across the street and the corner store—bodega, really—down the block. A few blocks away the river ran south, and just north of them was city hall, the DMV, the restored old mansion of some robber baron where the mayor now lived, and beyond that a mix of abandoned houses, chain-link fences, and bars with plywood on the windows.
The compact city of Linden perched on a tributary of the Schuylkill, the town shaped in an arc of gentrified neighborhoods and new construction fanning outward from the struggling downtown where Harry had rented his space. Several blocks from 71 King Street, the rest of Linden was becoming aggressively charming. All those city transplants hadn’t left Philadelphia so they could be pioneers in some crumbling suburban downtown but for velvety green lawns and newly built mock Tudors. Harry’s neighborhood was forever expected to gentrify; during the time it had been poised for renewal a slew of businesses had sprouted and wilted. On some blocks, Leo could believe in the hope for a moment, but then he’d take a left turn and discover the prehistoric limbs of the industrial equipment still blocking the riverfront, or the lines of tired civil servants and spiritually battered auto owners smoking cigarettes at the DMV. Harry wanted to charge eight bucks for spiced almonds and quince paste.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “There’s talk of a new development on this block, new business to use the waterfront.”
“Mixed-use condo and commercial, right?” said Britt. Harry nodded. “It always is,” Britt continued. “I just hope it’s not just another mall.”
“Say they put in a Target,” Harry argued. “Ugly, sure, but people would come.” But his cheer had lessened once again.
“Come on,” Leo said softly. “It’s getting late.” He went back to Harry and patted him on the shoulder, momentarily surprised at the hard planes beneath his palm. As a boy Harry had been so round and freckled, until he stretched out at thirteen. Leo still found it startling sometimes. “Britt’s tired,” he said. He looked over his shoulder. Britt was leaning against the window, plucking the cuffs of his shirt so they showed beneath his jacket. “Long hours.”
Harry kept polishing. “I know,” he said. “I know the hours will be long.”
Behind them, Britt slurped his coffee pointedly. “You want me to find out the distributor for these coffee beans?” Britt asked. “Since you like it so much. I can even write up some tasting notes for the menu. ‘Boxy, with top notes of resin and defeat.’”
Harry rubbed more creamy greenish polish on the metal and didn’t look up.
“Come spring this stuff will make your name,” Britt went on. “‘Bursting with the freshness of the Linden waterfront. A lingering finish of stevedore.’”
Leo stepped to the side so he could see Harry’s profile. Harry was still covering the grimy zinc surface with polish, but Leo saw the perk at the corner of his mouth.
“An intriguing balance of sparkling acidity and robust municipal corruption,” Harry said, and Britt laughed. He crouched next to Harry, picked up an extra rag, and rubbed at the cloudy polish, opening a circlet of blurry light on the metal, glowing somewhere between silver and pewter. All three of them gazed at the circle, the shiniest spot in the whole place.
“It’ll fly,” Britt said.
“Even if it doesn’t,” said Leo, “it won’t be the end of everything.” Both brothers turned to stare at him. “Well, what business did you think this was? A lot of great places fail. Don’t think I’m all smug—a lot of successful places go downhill and fail later too.”
“I’m kind of regretting asking you guys over here,” said Harry.
“It’s just risky,” Leo said. “You weren’t living here when we were first getting Winesap off the ground.”
“Come on. You’re doing great.”
“Now we are. It takes a while. You don’t know how scary it is. I’m worried we made it sound easier than it was.”
For years Leo had admired his brother’s basic optimism and the sheer energy with which he plunged into any new endeavor. Maybe Harry’s forays into graduate school fellowships and overseas trips and a stint in a salmon cannery had been just as treacherous as this but too foreign for Leo to have realized it. But now Harry was plunging into Leo’s own business, the demands and financial cruelties of which would daunt even a veteran if he ever stopped to think about it. Maybe he should have been urging caution all along. He feared that the restaurant business, which outsiders adored and thought would be so relaxing and congenial until they waded in and found it was all oil spatter and mayhem, might spell the destruction of Harry’s many, if poorly applied, gifts. For once, Harry might have come upon a task where sheer energy and will might not be enough.
Harry leaned back on his heels and looked up at Leo. “I do know,” he said.
“Okay,” said Leo. “Hey, who’d you get for investors, anyway?”
“Mostly the landlord. He gets to have a long-term tenant for once, he hopes, and he can swan in anytime he likes.” He paused. “Then a small business loan. Mom and Dad chipped in a little too.”
Britt’s head jerked back in surprise. Leo’s eyebrows darted up as he said, “You took Mom and Dad’s money? They’re retired. It’s enough you’re staying with them.”
“They offered. Insisted, even. I didn’t clean out their savings. It was very modest. And you know I’m paying them rent, right? More than what they wanted me to pay, if you must know. I didn’t just show up and ask Mom to do my laundry.” He delivered the last part with equal measures of defensiveness and amusement, and was rewarded with a collective snort at the idea of their mother doing laundry for any of them. There’d been an individual laundry policy in place since Leo was still standing on a chair to reach the washing machine.
“But, man, Harry,” said Britt, “we never asked them to invest in Winesap.”
“I know,” Harry said. “They didn’t pay for any schooling for me, though. I did it all with scholarships and work-study. I think they felt it was unequal.”
“Oh,” said Leo. Britt, who’d also long forgotten about the expenses of his education, looked sheepish. For Winesap, Leo and Britt had cobbled together their own small business and personal loans along with money from a few wealthy investors who liked the tax break and the special treatment. No one in his right mind bet on a nonfranchised restaurant to be a moneymaking investment, but now and again people got lucky.
There was a silence until Britt said, “Tell him where you got the bar top, Harry.”
“Craigslist, for a hundred bucks,” Harry said, his voice lightening. “Some lady in Pottstown’s grandfather died and this was in his attic, can you believe it? I’m going to have people cooking behind it, since the space isn’t big enough just to use it as a straight-up bar.”
Leo shrugged, more to himself than to anyone else. It was not a bad solution. He didn’t love to watch cooks at work when he went out, but other people were into these things. He gazed at the round of light on the metal, which was widening as Harry polished.
“It’s amazing,” Leo said.
Britt hadn’t come to this neighborhood in years, and as he drove away from Harry’s restaurant space, with Leo brooding in the passenger seat, he remembered why. This section of town had always had a certain amount of . . . call it grit, he decided, but when they were kids, even teenagers, it had felt more gruff and working-class. No frills, but not dangerous. Now the bars he drove past looked not like shot-and-a-beer joints where you might go after a shift but crooked-limbed and grimy, with more than one window boarded up, the kinds of places frequented by the real alcoholics, the ones who’d made a profession of it.
“Did you try to talk him into another location?” Britt asked. He glanced toward Leo, who was peering out his window with a frown.
“He’d already signed the lease,” Leo said. “I didn’t realize the landlord was the main investor. I told him he could break it. I told him he should break it.”
“How’d that go over?”
“About like you’d expect.”
Britt nodded. Harry had waited until he was deep into this venture before bringing it to them. He suspected that Harry didn’t really want their input at all.
He hummed under his breath as they entered the greener, cleaner part of town on the way to their restaurant. The sugar maples were turning crimson and golden. Leo was quiet as they neared the gray stone façade of Winesap and pulled around the back. He seemed to become focused and inward as they began each day at the restaurant, so interior that when summoned, he often looked at Britt for a split second before he took in who was speaking to him and why.
Britt looked forward to each day’s fresh scan of the dining room, the bar, and the maitre d’ station, the straightening of its crooked tables, polishing of its liquor bottles, and dispatching of its droopy flowers. He liked a space in which flaws could be tangibly whisked away, order and grace visibly restored. He liked walls the color of some creature’s muted underside or the soft inner petal of a plant, slippery leather banquettes and a silky curl of gravlax served on a slick white plate. Britt knew that some people found the repetitiveness of the restaurant business rather crushing, but to him it was rhythmic and satisfying. Somehow Leo must have known he would find it so.
The first time the Daily Journal had covered Winesap’s opening, many years earlier, the photo that accompanied the article had showed Britt in a sand-colored linen suit and a tangerine tie, looming before the bar seeming taller and more handsome than he was in real life, a mirthful, conspiratorial expression on his face. Leo was in the photo too, hunched and rumpled on a barstool, with his dark auburn hair showing too much scalp.
The article was respectfully interested, the Journal unwilling to tip its hand before the dining critic (who was also the arts editor) had a chance to eat there. She’d attempted a bit of a disguise, but Britt had recognized her in spite of the hair stuffed beneath a hat and what appeared to be extra sweaters to add bulk.
This was the sort of thing you ended up obsessing over: not only the critic in halfhearted costume in your dining room, b