Page 26 of Hungry Like the Wolf

Robbie had learned about rhythm in kitchens and had never forgotten the lesson. Keep the rhythm? The night flowed. Lose the rhythm? You’d be in the weeds until closing, clinging to survival by your fingernails.

He’d lost his rhythm lately. The only pulse had been the pounding of his racing heart and the soft slams of his heels against the floor as he’d bounced his legs anxiously. But today, with every pounding step on the soft ground as he ran behind JJ, as he’d felt the chilly air against every bit of his body, as he’d thrown himself into the bosom of the lake, it had felt like the beginning of a new tempo.

Robbie took two plates down from the cupboard and arranged saltines on both. On one set of crackers, he spread peanut butter and drizzled honey. On the other, he flaked sardines and topped them with mustard from the fast food packets.

“Dinner is served,” he said, wiping the rim of one of the plates with a paper towel with a flourish.

Nadja sat down and studied the plates.

“What’s this?”

“Dinner,” Robbie repeated, sitting across from her and taking a sardine and mustard cracker off of the plate.

“Peanut butter and honey I get. But that?” She made a face.

“It tastes like my childhood,” Robbie said, putting the whole saltine in his mouth.

“Tell me about your childhood,” Nadja said.

He swallowed a long sip of water, clearing his throat, and said, “Oh, you know. A single mom who works too hard.”

Nadja snorted and reached for a peanut butter cracker. She nibbled on the corner, no doubt waiting to see if the honey had gone bad.

“That part is true,” he went on. “Single mom, lots of sisters, a dad who split before I was born. But we spent a lot of time at my grandparents when my mom was working during the summer. My granddad ate sardines with yellow mustard on saltines near every day.”

Nadja had finished the peanut butter cracker. Robbie reached for another sardine.

“They smell fishy,” Nadja said, staring at the plate like it might bite her. He could admit that it far from the most appetizing looking thing he’d ever assembled. In the fluorescent light overhead, the yellow mustard looked especially radioactive. But food was food, and he wasn’t about to waste it.

“They are fish,” he said with a grin. “But you don’t have to eat it. You can eat the peanut butter ones, and I’ll eat these if you don’t want them. That’s fine by me.”

“No,” she said with a sigh. “No, I’m not going to be a snob. I’ll try it.”

She reached out and took one off the plate, studying it with the same concern that she might consider a lit fuse. She took the tiniest bite from the corner, and Robbie waited expectantly. She chewed slowly, and he fought back the urge to ask her if she liked it. She took another bite.

Normally Robbie didn’t mind silence. But for some reason, the lapses in conversation tonight were making him itchy.

“My grandpa wasn’t a nice guy. I didn’t like spending time with him. Mean as a snake and just as unpredictable. He was the kind of guy who provided for his family but always held it over their heads that he had, like they should be grateful that he bothered. My grandma always blamed the war, said he came back a different man than he was when he left, but I don’t think that’s it.”

“You don’t think the war affected him?”

“Oh, I know it did. I’ve worked with plenty of vets. And I’ve read a lot. I know that war can break your brain and that you’ve got to work to put the pieces back together. Sometimes they don’t fit back the way they did when you started. But Grandpa was the kind of mean you learn from watching your dad be mean to your mom, not the kind of mean you become from being traumatized. You know?”

“I do know,” Nadja said with a far-off look on her face.

“Anyway,” Robbie said, feeling very naked all of a sudden, “the old man ate sardines and mustard, and if we were hungry, we did too.”

“I’m sorry if it’s painful to talk about.”

“It’s not,” Robbie said with a shrug. And it wasn’t. “He mostly didn’t bother with us. He spent most of his time in the den with the TV on. Once they stopped raising large livestock, he left all the work to my grandma. She took care of the chickens and goats and the big kitchen garden. We helped.”

“That all sounds really nice,” Nadja said. Robbie noticed she reached for another sardine cracker.

“It was. We helped with the animals and the garden, and then with the canning and preserving in the fall. ‘Many hands make light work,’ she’d always say. I liked it. Working with my hands has always made sense to me.”

“What do you mean?”

Maybe this was therapy. Maybe she just couldn’t turn it off. Or maybe she was actually interested. That thought was thrilling in a way that surprised him.