Near the Bone(66)

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked, making a movement like he was going to help her stand.

Mattie waved him away, closing her eyes. She could almost still smell the soup, taste the bread on her tongue.

“We don’t have to make it if you don’t want to,” C.P. said. “I just thought it might be better than cold bread.”

“We . . . can,” she said. “But . . . I . . . don’t . . . know . . . how.”

“Oh, well, I can do that. I can make four things in the kitchen without a microwave, and grilled cheese is one of them. Well, five things if you count cold cereal, but is it really making food if you just pour the cereal in a bowl and put milk on top? Sometimes I don’t even put the milk in, either, just eat the cereal out of the bowl like chips. That’s usually only if I have sugar cereal, though—you know, the stuff kids like to eat. Griff says it’s gross, that I have the habits of a four-year-old.”

He’d started buttering slices of bread while he talked, and at the mention of Griffin he faltered for a moment, his hands going slack. Then he started up again, with more energy.

“Can you put the pan over the fire, please? You’re lucky I’ve cooked over a fire before when we’ve been camping, otherwise who knows how these would turn out.”

Mattie didn’t respond as he chattered away, but he didn’t seem to need her to do so. He was filling the space with words so he wouldn’t have to think. She knew that. She placed the heavy pan on the fire on the same grate that she used to fry eggs.

He carried one plate full of cheese slices and buttered bread over to the fire. Mattie watched as he put the bread into the pan. It sizzled immediately, filling the air with the scent of browning butter, and C.P. laid a slice of cheese on each slice of bread.

“Gotta keep a good eye on it with a cast iron pan like this,” he said. “The bread could burn before the cheese melts. I need a spatula or something, and a clean plate for the sandwich.”

Mattie handed him the turner she used for the eggs and after a very brief time he flipped the two bread slices together and then took the sandwich out and put it on a plate.

“Ta-da!” he said, and handed it to Mattie before repeating the process twice more.

“I always make two sandwiches,” he said. “One isn’t enough for me. It would be awesome if you had some bacon and tomato. That’s the best way to make a grilled cheese—cheddar, bacon and tomato. Although sometimes I like to get really fancy and use mozzarella and prosciutto. Griff got this fig butter from Trader Joe’s and I put it on a mozzarella and prosciutto sandwich and it came out ah-may-zing.”

Mattie wasn’t really listening. She was staring at the sandwich he’d made for her—at the browned edges, the caramel-colored crumb, the ooze of yellow cheese over the side.

“Eat it before it gets too cold. Grilled cheese is one of man’s greatest inventions but it is not delicious when it’s cold.”

Mattie placed the sandwich on the table and sat down in her accustomed chair. She lifted the sandwich to her mouth, bit down, chewed slowly.

A moment later C.P. sat down across from her with his own plate. “How is it? Hey, are you crying? Is it that bad?”

Mattie shook her head, wiped her streaming eyes. “Been . . . so . . . long . . .”

“So long since you had a grilled cheese sandwich?”

“No. Yes,” she said. She wished she could explain. “So . . . long . . . since . . . sandwich. But . . . also . . . since . . . someone . . . made . . . for . . . me.”

Mattie was always the one who did the cooking. It was expected of her, even if she was sick or injured. William didn’t do women’s work.

But she remembered her mother standing at the stove, stirring a pot of soup, flipping sandwiches together just like C.P. had done, and when Mom put the meal in front of her it wasn’t just food to fill her up. It was love, love that made her mom buy the soup with the letters in it in the first place, love that had her standing at the stove cooking sandwiches when she was so tired all she wanted to do was shove two slices of cheese between bread and hand it to her daughter cold.

Mattie didn’t know how to explain to C.P. that she was crying because the sandwich reminded her of her mother, and of home, and William had made certain she would never have her mother or her home again.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN



It was strange having another man in the cabin. C.P. talked continuously, about everything, about things Mattie didn’t even understand. He talked about television programs she’d never seen on channels that she didn’t know existed, about countries he traveled to, about the things he studied at school, stores he liked to shop at, board games he liked to play, foods he liked to eat.

“A lot of Asians are lactose intolerant, they can’t even eat a grilled cheese or ice cream or whatever without getting a stomachache, but my grandfather—my mom’s dad—is actually French so I guess I got the French cheese-eating gene. Lucky for me. I went to France a couple of years ago, just backpacked around during the summer school break, and all I ate was cheese and pastries for two months. And wine, of course.”

Mattie had never had wine. She only had the vaguest idea of France, of where it was, of what its people were like.

The more C.P. ate, the more he talked. It was like filling his stomach released some kind of block in his brain, and he talked and talked and talked.