Small Damages by Beth Kephart

Author:Beth Kephart [Kephart, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781101572184
Publisher: Penguin Group, USA
Published: 2012-07-19T16:20:06+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

I find her in her brown dress in the kitchen, a plate of headless anchovies to one side and onions and peppers frying up on the stove. She doesn’t turn, she doesn’t scold me, she doesn’t warn me away from Esteban. She is Estela, the teacher, showing off her English.

“You see,” she says. “You watch.”

The onions are going transparent in the pan. The red and green peppers look like Christmas. When the frying is done, Estela takes a wide wooden spoon and scoops the fried things over half of the anchovies, then fits a second anchovy on top of each first, like she is making a sandwich. Onto a flat tray she pours out a little hill of flour, then drags each sandwich through, and now each sandwich is dipped into a bowl of beaten egg and put back into the pan.

“Anchoas rellenas,” she says, turning at last. “Were you watching?”

I nod.

“You will make them yourself. A few weeks, and you will make them.”

“For another party?”

“For to prove that you can. How was Seville?”

“They were throwing flowers from the rooftop.”

“Of course, and what else?”

“They put oranges in their bathtubs.”

“Not so strange, and what else?”

“And I met Adair.”

“And?”

“And,” I say. “And.” I lift my shoulders, let them drop.

Estela flips the anchovies, sandwich by sandwich; nothing sticks. The fried-oil steam rises, sags up her hair. “Everybody loves Adair,” she says, finally, and I am sure that it is true, and I understand why it is, but there is too much to say, so I say nothing, and something about Estela changes in that nothing, some wall comes down, some gentleness—some understanding, maybe. She looks at me, and I don’t look through her. She doesn’t force me to conclusions about Adair or Javier or any of it. She doesn’t say, So, have you had your questions answered?

The herbs have been rinsed and dried and cut into their pieces. The prosciutto has been slivered thin. A round of beef is sitting out, soaking in some juices. Estela finishes the last anchovy sandwich, wipes her hands down her apron, and pulls out a chair at her tiny, beat-up table. She lets her elbows drop and her big arms hang, and now she traces her finger over a long trench in the wood. “This table,” she says at last, “is old as I am. Older, maybe.” She shakes her head, pulls her fingers through her hair. “So much,” she sighs, “losting to the old days.”

“Like what, Estela?” I ask. I pull out the second chair, sit at an angle to her, grateful that she is not angry, grateful that she is talking, not instructing, grateful that she is sitting here—not banging, not slicing, not rearranging, not testing, not glaring out on the Gypsies who have messed with all her parties. Maybe the storm has washed through her. Maybe something has happened with Luis. But Estela isn’t angry, and she isn’t demanding, and I want her to tell me a story. I want us to stop bitching at each other.

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