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  For Griffin

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Recipe for Russian Salmon Pie

  Part One: Mix

  Part Two: Simmer

  Part Three: Serve

  Acknowledgments

  The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay Teaser

  About the Author

  Copyright

  HERE IS HOW YOU MAKE RUSSIAN SALMON PIE

  First you buy all the ingredients. When the only real fishmonger in Cedar Falls, Iowa, asks you what you want with an entire salmon, and you all alone and so skinny, you do not answer, because you are mortified at the mere thought of talking to strangers, even though you’ve been buying obscene quantities of seafood from the same man for five years now and so he is not technically a stranger. Still, you stammer and twitch and then eventually just give him the money and run, forgetting to ask him to take off the head and tail as you flee. Then you end up carting off a twenty-inch salmon wrapped in paper and get a nasty shock when you unwrap it at home and find it glaring at you accusingly. What’s done is done. Rest the fish on ice in your too-small apartment fridge.

  Next you must set aside a long period of time in which to work. This might be a weekday afternoon, when you’ve been sent home from work early by your manager, Tami, to work on your issues with customer service (e.g., talking to strangers).

  Now you make puff pastry from scratch, because, let’s face it, you’ve got nowhere to be. When it’s ready, you form the dough into the shape of an enormous fish—two adjoining blobs, one large body, one small tail. You edge the whole thing with a two-inch lip to keep the pie filling inside when the time comes. Put this masterpiece on a cookie sheet and bake it. Hopefully you have a big oven, because you must also bake a matching “lid” to go on top of the fish at the same time. If you do not, have you ever considered baking puff pastry in a toaster oven? It works, after a fashion.

  While this is blind baking and filling your kitchen with the scent of butter steaming, you cook an assortment of mushrooms and end-of-winter vegetables and stir them into a creamy white gravy—you do have bacon drippings in your fridge, don’t you? You’ll want a lot. Oh, and now is a good time to relieve the salmon of its extremities, because it has to fit in a poaching pot with a bottle of respectable white wine and eight lemons. Cook him (or her) to just this side of rare—s/he’s headed for the oven next.

  When the shell is mostly baked, scoop out the risen insides and replace them with the gravy and the veggies and the deboned, chunked salmon—which may not all fit, in which case, better luck next time. Seal the lid to the shell with a beaten egg, and then cut little pretty vents where the fish’s gills would be. There? Good. Bake this whole thing at the lowest temperature you can stand so that the whole mess simmers together to make something beautiful, something you will admire for a long time, and then scoop out just one portion to eat for dinner, and throw the rest away.

  Serve with hollandaise, homemade of course.

  PART ONE

  Mix

  JANEY

  “Walking a mile in another person’s shoes is nothing compared to cooking a meal in someone else’s kitchen.”

  —CHARLIE PALMER, Charlie Palmer’s Practical Guide to the New American Kitchen

  It is the middle of the afternoon and my phone has been ringing on and off for about ten minutes. I don’t want to answer it—it might distract me from the single most important thing in my life at the moment: hollandaise.

  I believe in my heart that I can make a hollandaise sauce that does not split up, like supermarket salad dressing, but stays creamy and smooth and pure like a running yellow river of butter and egg. I believe this, and yet I have not quite accomplished it to date. I feel like today will be my lucky day. Or maybe it already is: I’ve been cooking for hours, and I am only halfway done with tonight’s dish.

  The phone starts ringing again. I know who is calling. My great-aunt Midge is the only caller in my life who won’t leave me a message, but instead keeps trying until I pick up. Aunt Midge knows the likelihood of me checking my messages is very, very slim. The likelihood of me returning them is zero. Aunt Midge knows me pretty darn well.

  I pick up the receiver, pinning it under my chin as I take eggs and milk out of the fridge to start coming to temp.

  “There you are.” It is indeed Aunt Midge, her creaky old-lady voice deceptively sweet. “I tried the bridal salon and they told me you’d gone home.” She is referring to Wedding Belles Too, Iowa’s Premier Bridal Warehouse, where I sew hems and take in busts. “Have you finally gotten fired?”

  I sigh. My job at Wedding Belles Too is a good job. I am a good seamstress, and I like the sweet smell of the oil that I use on my Pfaff machine and the blue dust kicked up by my chalk hem marker. I like the swishing sound of poly-satin as it whooshes underneath my presser foot and the methodical work of moving buttons, adjusting a row of sequins, tacking on beads. But I cannot seem to handle talking to the brides about their alterations when things go wrong, and soon, soon it is going to cost me the job.

  I take out six eggs, then two more, then decide to just warm the whole dozen. You can never have too much hollandaise sauce. “No, Aunt Midge. I haven’t been fired. They just sent me home to practice my people skills.” Which I am clearly not doing.

  “Hmph. Who needs people skills when you can sew so well, I want to know.”

  “Me too,” I say, though I know exactly why my job is on the line. On the rare occasions that I come face to face with the brides, I scare them with the crippling social anxiety that causes me to stammer, and wheeze, and say either nothing or something incredibly inappropriate. And I would do anything to be able to change that. It’s just that I know I can’t.

  Aunt Midge’s voice cuts into my thoughts. “When are you coming over?”

  I sigh as loudly as possible so I know she’ll hear it. “I’m not. I’m cooking fish. You can come over here if you want.” But even as I say the words, I put away my cookbook with the salmon recipe in it. Good-bye, Russian Salmon Pie. This is as far as we go today.

  “You know they took away my driver’s license.”

  I put the hollandaise-bound eggs back in the fridge. “Yes. Yes I did know that. It makes it that much easier to extend you an invitation.”

  That remark doesn’t take Aunt Midge aback at all. She is never taken aback, not even by her hermit of a grandniece. “You just wait. One of these days I’ll just hop in a taxi and show up on your door uninvited and never leave. What do you think about that?”

  I smile a little to myself and wish for the four hundredth time that Aunt Midge would do that very thing. Aunt Midge is my oldest—well, my only—real friend. It is very worrying to have her on the other side of town in her little house getting very old and eating strange meats out of the freezer.

  “I think…” I pause and try to figure out what to do with an entire poached salmon now, since there is no time for Russian Fish Pie and a social call. “I think that it would be easier for me to just come over.”

  “Agreed. Bring food. I’ll provide the drink. And you have to be here by eight o’clock, because that’s when the show starts.”

  “What show?” I know of a show that starts at eight, every night, on the Food Network, but I also know that’s not the show Aunt Midge is talking about.
As far as I can tell, my aunt has never watched the Food Network in her life. Why bother, when there are so many episodes of Law and Order to choose from?

  “The ‘No Place Like Home’ giveaway on the Home Sweet Home Network. You know, that channel that runs House Browsers and House Browsers Global? They are giving away a big gorgeous house on the coast of Maine, and I am planning on winning it.”

  My eyebrows pop up. “Oh really? You’re going to win this house in Maine?”

  “That’s right. It’s a sure thing at this point. I am very excited, because the house has an endless pool that comes with.”

  “What is an endless pool?”

  “Only the greatest old-person invention of all time. It’s a tiny pool, only the length of one person—that person being me in this case—and it has a water current that lets you just swim in place for as long as you want. Can you imagine? Swimming … in place!” Aunt Midge really wants to hit this point home. “And the water is nice and warm, to keep your muscles lithe…”

  “Mm-hmm.” I’m not really sold yet on the idea, which is fine because I know Aunt Midge hasn’t yet finished her sales pitch.

  “It’s great for your health, you know. All that low-impact exercise. For old ladies like me with the frail bones and achy joints. And…” She pauses dramatically, and I brace myself for the punch line. “And the jets are good for massage as well.”

  Now my eyebrows shoot up. “Like a hot tub?” I groan. From the last bit of Aunt Midge’s description I now know exactly why she wants this item. My great-aunt is a dirty old bird who once got herself kicked out of a hotel pool area for “indecent use of the Jacuzzi.” It’s not the sort of thing I want to revisit.

  “Exactly. A hot tub treadmill. The house they’re giving away tonight has one, and I want it.”

  Oh boy. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re going to win it then, isn’t it?” As I say this I realize nothing tastes better with cold poached salmon than potato salad. I have plenty of time to whip up a potato salad, and my fridge is full of fresh dill to boot. This is an excuse to make homemade mayonnaise. Brilliant.

  “A very good thing. So I’ll see you at seven-thirty then?”

  “Okay. Seven-thirty. I love you, Aunt Midge.”

  “I love you, Niece Janey. Go cook.” Aunt Midge hangs up the phone. I hold the receiver by my side, gazing at the oven, wondering if it’s possible to make mustard from scratch in two hours.

  It’s not. The phone starts beeping and I hang it up, put on my favorite apron, which is printed with moose and bears, and go to the hallway right outside my apartment’s little galley kitchen, where I’ve precariously balanced a small black-and-white TV on an old collapsible tray. I turn it on and set the volume up loud enough that I can hear it over running water or sizzling oil and smile when I see who’s on the Food Network. Then I return to the kitchen to chop dill and boil potatoes and daydream about a dinner party with Ina Garten.

  NEAN

  All this time, I am at home. Trying to take a nap after a long day manning the fry station at Hardee’s. Not hurting a hair on anyone’s neck. I have my alarm clock set to 7:30 p.m. because, despite all the odds, I know I am destined to win the Home Sweet Home Network’s “No Place Like Home Free House Sweepstakes” tonight, and I don’t want to miss out on the announcement.

  I am trying to nap because I have a headache. I have a headache because of all the shouting my boyfriend Geoff likes to do. Geoff is in a band and I’m pretty sure that all the loud noise he subjects himself to is making him deaf, because he never talks in a normal tone of voice anymore. If he wants to know where he put his keys, it sounds like this: “WHERE DID I PUT MY KEYS?!” And if he is hungry he will turn to me and say “BABY, WHAT ARE WE HAVING FOR DINNER TONIGHT?!” This is when I’m sitting next to him on the couch. There isn’t really punctuation yet invented for the noise he makes when I’m in the other room. It’s just shouting, all day and all night, whether he’s angry or not, though it’s usually the former. He is one of the angriest people I have ever known.

  He—and his one-bedroom with a view of the interstate—is also the only thing standing between me and homelessness, though, so let us remain mum on Geoff’s lesser qualities for now. He is not the first jerkwad I have had to crash with just to have a place to live. But he will be the last. Soon, I will be the proud owner of a new, fully-furnished, Free House somewhere in New England, and then I will not have to put up with guys like Geoff ever again.

  They ran a TV special about the house’s features last week, as a tease for the drawing tonight, and the house is pretty damn fantastic. When I win, I won’t need another thing but the clothes on my back and a bus ticket to Maine. The whole damn house is furnished straight out of an episode of The Martha Stewart Show, with all kinds of sofas and matching lamps and books already on the shelves and all the stuff you need to live already right there, and color-coded to boot. And it has a fitness area with state-of-the-art exercise equipment and a flat-screen TV for watching Oprah while you do the Best Life Challenge on the treadmill. And it has a finished basement game room with a fifty-bottle wine refrigerator. A refrigerator just for wine, you understand. To say nothing of the real refrigerator that has a TV built right into the door so you can watch Jeopardy! while you wait for the pizza to come.

  Yessir, the house is pretty fantastic. Outside, it has two matching rocking chairs on a porch in the front and a little heated pool off to the side, surrounded by pretty hedges for privacy so you can sit in it naked if you want and no one will ever know. And then the hedges open up to the back, which has a big view of the ocean and some pretty cliffs, though they are the sort of cliffs that you can imagine people getting too drunk and dashing their brains out on, so maybe I will put up a fence before my first big party. Still, the view is pretty spectacular. On the show they panned out to the ocean, and it was full of sailboats and seabirds and various other items of extreme scenicness.

  I am really looking forward to living there.

  Listen, I’m not dumb. I know the odds are stacked against me. But I had a very clear dream about a month ago about this house. It wasn’t one of those ambiguous dreams where you have to tell someone else about it to figure out what the hell it’s supposed to mean. It was a crystal clear dream—nay, vision. In it, I won a house, dreamed every last detail of it, and then the next day while I was watching TV I saw an ad for the sweepstakes and realized it was the exact same house from my dream. So yes, I’m pretty sure I’m destined to win.

  I know it’s not a sure thing until they call my name on the live winner’s announcement show tonight, but it won’t be much longer now, and I am a very, very lucky person, if you don’t count my present circumstances, which I don’t. I probably would have won last year’s “No Place Like Home Free House Sweepstakes,” a house in Florida (which, let’s face it, is way nicer weather-wise than one in Maine) but the post office screwed up my entry postcard and it got bounced back to me after the drawing for insufficient postage. Boy was that a heartbreak. But at least it explained why I didn’t win.

  This year I didn’t take any chances with the g-d---- post office. Those jerks are always changing the price of stamps, and they expect people to somehow know what the cost is to mail a postcard on any given day, like we have nothing better to do than think about postage prices. I say, if I go in and buy a sheet of postcard stamps—and they are specifically called postcard stamps, so I know whereof I speak—which are only useful on postcards and have exactly zero other uses, then they should keep being useful on postcards until they’re all gone. You can’t just all willy-nilly change the cost of postage and not tell anyone. That’s the sort of thing that can bring down a civilization. You just watch.

  This year I went right down to that post office with my postcard and took absolutely no chances. I waited in line for nearly a half hour, and when I got to the front counter, sure enough, they had changed the postage prices again. If I hadn’t taken so much care and added a few extra dollars in stamps just to be on
the safe side, my postcard would probably be at the bottom of some pile of letters to Santa or something and not where it is, which is in a big vat of postcards at the Home Sweet Home headquarters in New York City, very near the top where it will easily be selected by celebrity guest judge Carson Jansen-Smit, the hunky chiseled carpenter who is always going around knocking down people’s dining room walls without their permission.

  When I win the dream house, I will NOT let Carson Jansen-Smit anywhere near the property with his sledgehammer. If he wants to come over he should bring only a bottle of massage oil and some condoms.

  I can’t sleep. I’m too excited about the house. The announcement is not that far away. I crawl out of bed—okay, out of mattress, because it’s just an old mattress on the floor I’m napping on—and teeter out a little dizzily to the main room of the apartment. I’m still groggy while I take in the mess. Geoff is not a tidy person, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to clean up after a man at my young stage in life. Housewifery is for women over the age of thirty, if you ask me. For now I am just tolerating the squalor and holding on for those glorious days when Geoff ’s mom comes over with a mop and bucket and glares at me until I get out of the way. After one of her visits you can see yourself in the linoleum kitchen floor and there’s no gritty sensation under your feet when you shower. She cleans up so thoroughly that dirt is afraid to come back for a couple of weeks, at least.

  But those couple of weeks have come and gone. Geoff is asleep on the couch—maybe his shouting gave him a headache too—and the floor below him is covered in random stuff. Stickers, unopened mail, clothes, fast-food cups, and an unfathomable number of socks. It is early summer in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Geoff wears black shower sandals pretty much 24/7, so I can’t for the life of me understand where all these socks are coming from. Part of me thinks they are other people’s socks, and Geoff is collecting them for some reason. Maybe he is getting his fans to give him their socks at his shows, and then planning to donate the socks to some sort of charity sock drive. I am fairly certain there are enough socks on the floor of this room to completely cover the feet of every homeless person in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Hey, that’s not a bad idea.