There were many ways to make things disappear at South Pole Station. After all, there were twenty-three different categories of waste. “Dormitory biological waste”—bloody bandages, used tampons, snot-soaked Kleenex—was stored in fifty-five-gallon open-top drums. Galley food waste—like onionskins, uneaten oatmeal, and trimmed fat—was packaged in Tri-Walls lined with three layers of polyethylene gusseted bags. But the category that Pearl found most relevant to her purposes was the “domestic combustibles,” also known as the “burnables.” This category included paper towels, cigarette butts, food wrappers—and cookbooks that had been carefully dismantled, page by page.
Enchanted Broccoli Forest was the first to go.
Still Life with Menu was the second.
Pearl wasn’t sure if Still Life would be missed, but she knew Enchanted Broccoli Forest would. It was a go-to. Vegetarians sometimes requested EBF-specific dishes. But a week had passed, and still Bonnie said nothing about the missing cookbooks. Pearl couldn’t have known that Bonnie would lose the kitchen over the inedible Carrot-Mushroom Loaf from Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd. She only knew Bonnie would lose the kitchen eventually. It was why Pearl had agreed to take the job in the first place.
No one knew that Pearl had been waiting for a Carrot-Mushroom Loaf moment since she landed at South Pole in late September. She’d been hired as production cook, the junior position to Bonnie’s head cook. Pearl had applied for the top position, of course; she hadn’t spent ten miserable years in various eateries and ship’s galleys to become second fiddle in an institutional kitchen. (Nor did she go to Antarctica to become Alice Waters, but you had to pay the bills and government work paid well, especially when room and board was free).
But Bonnie was a lifer; and after a certain number of years on the ice, lifers received the privilege of turning jobs down rather than having to reapply for them. Bonnie would never turn down a job at Pole, and it took only a couple of days on the ice for Pearl to understand that the woman would not be easily overthrown. She had allies. Those allies were other lifers, and they’d lost their taste for edible food some years earlier. Calling Bonnie to account for the state of the food at Pole wasn’t going to be an effective strategy. The operation would have to be subtler than that, requiring the actions of a person exhibiting the traits of monomania. Not all of the traits, of course—that kind of psychological profile would be peremptorily red-flagged by the VIDS team. Just a few of them.
“Can you focus obsessively on a single thing?” Tucker had asked Pearl back in Denver after the psych exam. “Can you be insane when it comes to this single thing—improving the food—and be rational about everything else?”
“What do my results say?”
“That’s why you’re in my office.”
“Then you already know the answer.”
Pearl had arrived at Pole in the midst of an overhaul—a new station was being built just hundreds of yards from the current one. The National Science Foundation had been soliciting and rejecting plans for a new geodesic dome for years. Six months before Pearl came to Pole, they’d finally approved a plan. It was a matter of some irony that the firm that had won the design contract was based in Honolulu.
One of the modules under construction would house the new galley with what Tucker had promised Pearl would be state-of-the-art appliances, stainless-steel prep tables, and more capacity—however, it wouldn’t open until next season. The kitchen in which she’d be working this season—the old kitchen—would present challenges. The galley on the Icelandic herring boat she’d crewed the summer after high school had been better equipped.
September 30, 2003
Perhaps the cramped conditions are what killed Bonnie’s creativity. Or maybe it’s the six-packs she puts away at the Smoke Bar every night. We’ll see. There’s a galley staff meeting tonight to go over the season’s menu. I’ll observe and say nothing.
By the time Pearl was aproned up and scrubbing her nails for the first meal of the season, she had only seen Bonnie a couple of times since that trust-building exercise back in Denver. Bonnie had come into training hot. She was pissed. Pissed that she’d had to go through fire school again, and even more pissed that she’d have to deal with a Fingy production cook. Her previous production cook had left for the cruise ship circuit, and Pearl sensed that the parting had not been amicable. The trust-building exercise had done little to improve Bonnie’s outlook on the season to come. Granted, the “trust facilitator” contracted by VIDS had made a poor choice when he’d picked the “eye contact with touch” exercise. Pearl and Bonnie stood across from one another in the meadow adjacent to the fire school, eyes locked, hands clasped. But Pearl saw the pride in Bonnie’s angry eyes. Pride was easily exploited.
March 12, 2003, at training
Met her today. Big woman—my height but weighing in at about two bills. Wouldn’t tell me anything about what to expect, says all “Fingys” have to fend for themselves. Wouldn’t tell me what Fingy means either. She hates my undercut, said it was “punk, fifteen years late.” I’m trying to be friendly, but she’s not having it.
The first days in the galley were like any of the first days Pearl had spent in a new kitchen, be it on land or at sea—getting used to her surroundings, examining the supply lists, memorizing her duties, and getting to know her co-workers. Kit, a skinny guy with lank brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, was the main DA—the dining assistant who was responsible for everything from cleaning tables and filling the milk machine to stocking the napkin dispensers. As head cook, it was Bonnie’s job to write up the menus and manage all kitchen operations.
“Bonnie is a loner by nature,” Tucker told Pearl the first week in. “Being at Pole goes against every fiber of her being.”
“I thought Pole was like the loner’s Disney World.”
Tucker shook his head. “You have to at least possess the capacity to enjoy the company of other loners.”
“Then why is she there?”
“Dwight, our comms tech. They met at a Sheraton in New Orleans. He was the IT guy, she was buffet cook.”
“She followed a guy down here?”
“It’s not all that uncommon. Like two negative electrons, two misanthropes can bind together with the force of—”
“Negative electrons repel each other,” Pearl said.
Tucker paused. “Huh. Well, that explains why Sal Brennan has banned me from the Dark Sector.”
Her days began with a 4:30 a.m. alarm. The sun shone as brightly then as it did at noon, which made getting up fairly easy. She’d make her way from her room in the elevated dormitory under the Dome (the galley staff received superior accommodations) to the kitchen, where she’d prepare hot breakfast for 105 people and put her proofed pastry and bread dough in the oven.
At first, Pearl adhered slavishly to Bonnie’s menu. Huge warming trays filled with bright yellow scrambled eggs, vats of gluey oatmeal, white and wheat bread. The Polies seemed unperturbed by the monotony, although Pearl did notice that those who took oatmeal loaded their bowls with raisins, brown sugar, and nuts, as if trying to bury it under an avalanche of condiments. One guy even used salsa.
October 15, 2003
Bonnie says it is acceptable to bake in quantity and freeze items after they have been double-wrapped and dated. This is bullshit. She says “acceptable” but she means “required.” I don’t freeze my pastries. It does a disservice to me, to the pastries, and to anyone who tries to choke them down. Plus, the freezers smell like fish. Trying to figure out a non-confrontational way to handle this—too early in the season for a fight over breakfast foods. I plan on bringing up the oatmeal issue soon, though. It’s pretty low-stakes. A little seasoning, cinnamon and nutmeg, maybe, or even a couple teaspoons of vanilla or almond extract—hell, even a dash of salsa—could go a long way.
Between meals, Pearl had to make the rounds of the storage units, recording temps and noting stock levels. The units outside of the galley trailer, in dark corners of the Dome, were the worst—the air was as cold there as it was outside. The giant freezer where they stored the meat products actually had to be heated. As she scanned the shelves, Pearl marveled at the quantities required for every meal. Thirty pounds of orange roughy for fish and chips. Nothing less than twenty-eight pounds of ground beef for Texas Tamale Pie. Grilled Reuben called for twenty pounds of corned beef, and the veggie Reuben needed five pounds of tempeh. Pearl glanced down at the monthly menus on the clipboard—it was like an endless repetition of the same twelve meals. She knew she could do better than polenta pie and fucking tofu nut balls.
Pearl thought the station greenhouse was a nice touch, though. It was a steaming shoe box set atop the stairs on the annex berthing building. When Pearl opened the door, she had to break about fifty pounds of suction force, but once she did, she was treated to the smell of soil and green things, smells that Pearl had already forgotten—earth, compost, ripe melon.
October 19, 2003
I told Kit I’d take over greenhouse duty and he looked like he wanted to kiss me. The greenhouse will be the key to my success. That and getting rid of the cookbooks.
Personas, not personalities, were important at Pole, so Pearl settled on being a flaxen-haired scrub with a penchant for pink bandannas and self-deprecating jokes. Her requisite edge came from her undercut, which she kept up using a pink Bic twice a week, an operation that required two mirrors and an hour of her precious time. She was a small woman with what Sal had called the “face of a Pilgrim.” The scar above her right eyebrow—courtesy of a two-hook herring rig—suggested the correct amount of toughness and allowed her to affect kindness, solicitude, even motherliness, without losing credibility. She took up knitting again, and her wares became quite popular. She knit during Movie Night, she knit at the Smoke Bar, she knit during the station lectures. The station was clearly in need of a Goody Two-Shoes. Pearl could be that Goody Two-Shoes. She could be whatever she wanted.
Meanwhile, she continued her quest to run the kitchen, which included feigning respect for the VIDS bureaucracy. But it wasn’t until the two Swedes came through the lunch line that Pearl realized the bureaucracy could help speed Bonnie’s exit. As soon as the Swedes showed up in the galley, Simon had had his eye on them.
“I’m sorry, but station rules prohibit us from serving you meals paid for by American taxpayers,” Simon told the Swedes. “If you have foodstuffs you’d like to cook in our kitchen, you are by all means welcome to do so after the kitchen has closed.”
“It’s okay, Simon,” Pearl said, “I have no problem giving them some food.”
“That’s very kind, Pearl, but that’s against protocol.”
“I’ll give them my meal—they can split it.”
“Again, that’s kind and selfless, but simply not possible.”
The Swedes smiled at her and set their trays down. Pearl had turned away in time to catch Bonnie searching the bookshelves for Enchanted Broccoli Forest. She watched as Bonnie’s fingers danced from spine to spine and back again.
Soon, lunch drew to a close, which meant it was time to stack the dirty trays on a dolly. Cooper approached Pearl with her tray, and asked about the Swedes. She wanted to ferry some food out to them. It took Pearl a minute to see the possibilities of such an operation—it wasn’t until Cooper mentioned the expired ramen that it hit her. Pearl could facilitate this breach of “protocol,” but as head of the kitchen, Bonnie would get the blame.
“Let me get the okay from Bonnie on this,” Pearl told Cooper. She walked to the back of the galley, past Kit, who was going through boxes, looking for the missing cookbooks, all the way to the back door. She stood there for a respectable amount of time, then returned to the caf line, where Cooper stood waiting.
“She says it’s okay,” Pearl said.
* * *
October 28, 2003
Bonnie got called in by HR yesterday. They said she’d violated protocols by authorizing the delivery of station food to the Swedes camping out on the plateau. She denied it, of course, blamed it all on Cooper. Cooper won’t talk, thinks she’s protecting me. VIDS can’t do anything about her—she’s NSF—so they wrote Bonnie up. Bonnie told Kit and me that it was the first violation on her record, ever. Still hasn’t mentioned the missing cookbooks to me, though. I plan on dissembling the three-ring binder (SP) tonight. There’s nothing of value in it anyway. I volunteered to take the Midrats shift from Bonnie. She seemed surprised and actually thanked me. She told me the swing shift gets harder on her as she gets older.
One day, Bonnie mentioned that Marcy had called an all-women’s meeting in the library.
“What’s it for?” Pearl asked, as she prepped for lunch.
“Seasonal Staking of Claims,” Bonnie replied, whipping a vat of minestrone into a ruby froth. Her greasy dark hair had escaped from her hairnet and was plastered to her forehead.
“What claims are we staking?” Pearl asked.
“It’s how we parse out who’s hooked up, who isn’t, and who’s fair game. It gets hairy when somebody steals someone else’s man ’cause she didn’t know there was a claim.”
Pearl didn’t have a man, unless you counted the British ex-pat, Birdie. He’d been making eyes at her since he arrived. There was nothing wrong with the guy—he was a little soppy, but his accent made him rather endearing. In fact, he was almost lovable, in a goofy kind of way. Unfortunately, he wasn’t much of a looker—balding, with beady eyes and ruddy cheeks—but that didn’t matter. Even if they struck up a friendship, they likely wouldn’t be swapping bodily fluids. Pearl had been celibate for five years on purpose. She felt that she’d reached the Bodhi Tree of sexual enlightenment, and this stint at Pole might make her a Buddha. It wasn’t that she was asexual—there had just been too many disappointments for it to be a coincidence. She felt misled about sex. They must not be doing it right, she’d thought at first. Then, You must not be doing it right. Then, Maybe you’re gay.
She’d given her virginity to a seasonal cannery worker in Cordova, Alaska, the summer between her sophomore and junior years of high school. Without her foster parents’ permission, she had followed a school friend from Portland up to Alaska to crew on a herring fishery. The friend hooked up with a deckhand, which, in hindsight, had been a far better bet. Pearl noticed too late in the game that the cannery worker had a womanish nose that quivered, and a tiny, timid mouth. When he brought her back to his rented rooms on the harbor, he told her he was an art student at University of Alaska. Later, she realized that this disclosure should have prompted a hasty exit, but she was sixteen and not well versed in the portents of bad decisions. They stood around in his rooms awkwardly, looking at his canvases. Each was a rendering of SpongeBob SquarePants engaged in lewd acts. “A concept run amok,” he told Pearl. When they finally got into bed, he went limp and would not touch her anywhere below her waist.
Back home in Portland a few years later, Pearl ran into a baseball player from high school she’d had a crush on (he was playing for Lewis & Clark College now) and after an hour-long conversation at Starbucks, he brought her back to his off-campus apartment, where they had sex: the first time to get it over with, and the second time because maybe it would be better. The sex felt to Pearl like a battering ram trying to breach a cervix. How funny, she thought as he grunted behind her, that all the electricity between them in high school—the furtive glances, the long stares—translated into this National Geographic special on the mating rituals of bonobos.
When a psychologist at VIDS headquarters had warned Pearl not to get pregnant—“selfish and avoidable,” he’d said—Pearl had announced her celibacy with pride.
The psychologist had just laughed at her. “Yeah, I saw that on your questionnaire. There’s condoms aplenty down there, but just do me a favor and pack birth control. A pregnancy puts everyone at the station at risk,” he said.
When Pearl ventured to ask how a pregnant woman put the station at risk, the guy smiled and leaned forward in his chair, as if recounting the details of an NFL game. “Spontaneous abortion. Massive blood loss. Early labor. Hypertension. You want the menu? ’Cause there’s more.”
“I don’t need the menu,” Pearl replied. “I was just curious.”
“Well, now you know.”
“Do you offer this menu to your male applicants?” Pearl asked.
The psychologist laughed again. “When men develop the ability to get pregnant I’ll consider it.”
* * *
Marcy’s meeting took place on the fourth floor of Skylab, an orange tower connected to the Dome by an underground tunnel. It housed laboratories, a music rehearsal space, and Bozer’s pool table. When Pearl arrived with Bonnie, most of the other women were already sprawled on the Naugahyde sofa. Pearl was unable to tear her eyes away from the sofa—its very presence meant that a Naugahyde couch had been approved on a cargo list, loaded onto a C-17, and ferried down to South Pole. Surely, such things could not be possible, she thought.
“You okay, Pearlie?” Marcy asked, tapping the chair next to her. Marcy’s appearance was even more disturbing than the sofa’s—her face was drawn, her eyes sunken into her face, limned by purple shadows. Her unexpected R-and-R had sparked rumors of a cancer diagnosis.
As if reading Pearl’s thoughts, Marcy yawned. “Shit, I’m tired. Bozer has us pulling double shifts three times a week.” Pearl quietly took a seat.
“Let’s lay it all out on the line tonight, girls,” Marcy said once everyone was seated. “Time to stake claims.”
“Aren’t some of you already in relationships?” Cooper asked, rubbing her swollen eye with a ball of Kleenex.
“Honey, I’m not trying to play a game of Clue here,” Marcy said. “I don’t want to end up fucking Colonel Mustard in the Library, only to find out that Mrs. Peacock blew him in the Ballroom. Look—most of you know I do this every year. There’s nine of us and about a million of them. It’s easier if we know the score before we get too far into this magical mystery tour.”
“Obviously, Dwight’s off-limits,” Pearl said, glancing over at Bonnie.
“Obviously,” Marcy said. “What about Floyd?” When no one replied, Marcy nodded. “Yeah, poor Floyd.”
“Sri would be cute with a different chin,” Cooper offered.
“Sri is married,” his lab tech replied sadly. After a pause, she added: “I like his chin.”
Someone knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” Marcy barked.
“Denise.”
“Enter.”
Denise pushed the door open with her shoulder. “Sorry, everyone. I lost track of time.” As Denise struggled out of her parka, Bonnie leaned over to Pearl. “When she’s in the room I feel like a lab rat,” she whispered.
Denise heard this and held her hands open, as if to show Bonnie she wasn’t carrying recording equipment or a gun. “I’m just here as a Pole female. Is that okay?” Bonnie grunted and crossed her arms.
“Back to the matter at hand,” Marcy said. “What about the men artists?”
Pearl felt her stomach turn over.
“The historical novelist is hooking up with the interpretive dancer,” Cooper said. “And the literary novelist has a thing going with one of the cryo techs. That leaves Birdie.”
“That the one with the birthmark on his face?” Marcy asked.
“No, that’s the historical novelist. Birdie’s the one who’s constantly mooning over Pearl,” Cooper said.
All of the women turned to look at Pearl, and her face burned with embarrassment. So others had noticed his attentions. She tried to gauge the women’s interest in him without asking outright. No one had leapt up at the mention of his name. And he seemed harmless, didn’t seem the type to wheedle or plead for sex. Pearl imagined him growing old waiting for her to take his hand—even his name suggested the gentle flutter of wings. And anyway, the Polies had advised her to ally herself with a companion for the duration; as a woman, she would have her pick, so she picked Birdie because he looked like a man who could be strung along. Pearl remained silent, but knew her raging blush made it obvious.
“Okay, Birdie’s taken,” Marcy said. She nodded at Denise. “Bozer’s spoken for. Floyd, nobody wants, and besides, he has that mail-order bride out of Novosibirsk. Sri’s got a chin problem—also, married. Everyone else is fair game, right?”
As Marcy looked around at the women, Pearl could see deep sadness etched on her face. She could see the other women saw it, too, but they said nothing. “That’s it, right?”
“What about Sal?” Cooper said quietly.
Marcy smiled for the first time since she’d walked into Skylab. “Sal’s all yours, honey,” she said. Pearl was relieved to see she wasn’t the only one whose cheeks were on fire.
* * *
Running Midrats gave Pearl a distinct advantage, though it was not without its drawbacks. On the plus side, there were fewer mouths to feed, so Pearl could spend more time on the food. The con was that the Midrats crew was made up of staunch Bonnie allies—grizzled old hands who’d formed an ironclad bond over this midnight meal. It took a few weeks before their irritation over the change in personnel faded.
Pearl hewed close to the set Midrats menu at first—irregularities raised eyebrows at Pole. Routine was vitally important to the operation of the station and to the minds of the people working there, and curveballs were not appreciated. So Pearl started by cooking exactly what was on the menu. Sloppy Joes on a Bun (Tempeh Joes on a Bun). Honey Dipt Chix with Mashed Potatoes, Gravy (Pilaf). Texas Tamale Pie (Veg. Tamale Pie). Turkey Club Sandwich w/Pasta Salad (Szechuan Rollups w/Tempeh).
Once the Midrats meal had been served, Pearl would hunch over her notebook, trying to meld flavors in her mind, to imagine what dishes might revive the long-dead taste buds of the veterans without creating resentment. She identified the foodstuffs that were lowest on the totem pole: dates, Melba toast, lentils, capers, tempeh.
November 4, 2003
Found out Bonnie has hated the plantains we get in bulk ever since she tried a Sweet Potato and Roasted Plantain gratin (Still Life p. 123) to bad reviews. She told me she tried to get the plantains off the shipment list but VIDS says they’re a cheap source of potassium and don’t get mushy as quickly as bananas do. Typically she sautés them in butter and brown sugar once a week and serves them as a breakfast side. I already have three potential dishes in mind, but since I’m charged with the daily soups, I’m going with a plantain sopa. Tucker has warned me about the “parochial tastes” of Polies, but I think he’s only talking about the repeaters. The fresher Beakers and support staff still have taste-memories of halfway decent food. Won’t take much to reawaken that.
When Bonnie had been running Midrats, she lumbered in a half hour before service, pulled the prepped ingredients from the fridge, and started cooking. Pearl rarely left the kitchen after dinner service now. She took her time with the meals, and the meals on the menu not only tasted better, they also looked better. The presentation was nothing out of the ordinary—fussiness would have resulted in ridicule. But it was just different enough to create a sense of beauty that was almost invisible.
She also started pickling vegetables. This activity was an acceptable use of the station’s vinegar stores because the supply of fresh produce would run out about a month after the station closed for the winter. Pearl pickled everything from carrots to the tiny gem-like chili peppers grown in the greenhouse. To be festive, she tied ribbons around the jars and displayed them near the condiment tray. One night, she canned an entire shipment of damaged peaches, and set one jar aside for Birdie. When she handed it to him, he was so happy, he kissed her. To Pearl’s surprise, it wasn’t horrible.
For the first meal swap, Pearl decided to start with the vegetarian meals, since they’d likely arouse less attention and because the vegetarians tended to have a more forgiving palate. The scheduled Lentil-Walnut Surprise (p. 147, MW) was bypassed in favor of a black-pepper-glazed tempeh, served with sherry-braised leeks, fried capers, and hoppin’ John. The sherry was cooking sherry a year past its expiration date and the hoppin’ John was made from a five-year-old bag of dried black-eyed peas that Pearl found in the pantry. Still, Pearl thought it stellar. No one at Midrats said a word.
A week before Thanksgiving, Pearl served her Plantain Sopa—a cream-based soup made from ripe plantains—and her pickled chili peppers. She paired it with a buckwheat flatbread. This time, three people came up for seconds, including a non-veggie maintenance specialist.
November 15, 2003
Bonnie came into the kitchen this morning furious. Someone told her about the plantain soup. I couldn’t ask if the review was good or bad because she was like the Tasmanian Devil. She said all menu changes had to be approved by VIDS, and went on and on about the importance of proper authorization. I spoke to Tucker about it this afternoon, and he hemmed and hawed for a while, but then said he’d make some calls. Tonight, right in the middle of dinner prep, he came in and told Bonnie that VIDS had authorized me to make any menu changes I wanted during Midrats. She walked out, leaving Kit and me to deal with the rest of dinner service.
Word quickly spread that Midrats meal was by far the best meal served at Pole. The ranks of midnight diners swelled, and the graveyard crew complained that they couldn’t get a table. For them it wasn’t about the food; it was about the company. For the new arrivals, it was the opposite. Pearl’s changes to the Midrats menu had now extended beyond the vegetarian option and into the main entrées. One night she took the leftover Cornish game hens from the previous year’s food stock and broiled individual birds with a glaze made from her own stash of homemade sour cherries. The desserts were beyond anything anyone had seen at Pole before: buttermilk panna cotta (in which Pearl could hide expiring milk—a perpetual problem), lemon chiboust, pumpkin tiramisu. Meringues and soufflés were out of the question due to the elevation, but Pearl could live without them, and the Polies didn’t know what they were missing.
Thanksgiving was turkey three ways—smoked, fried, and roasted—with Kit smoking seven birds outside, on the far side of the Crevasse of Death. “Fifty fucking below, ladies,” Kit reminded Bonnie and Pearl. “I think that’s enough selflessness for a day off.”
“Dream on, honey,” Bonnie replied, in a decent mood for the first time in weeks. But then Pearl felt a piece of her die as she watched Bonnie spoon jellied cranberries out of aluminum cans; the sound they made as they plopped, can-shaped, into the serving dishes was as gross as an overdubbed movie kiss.
Yet Bonnie surprised Pearl with other culinary efforts. From out of nowhere, she produced a jar of fermenting kombucha. She also delighted everyone with an enormous batch of real mashed potatoes—Bonnie had pulled some strings to get a crate of russets from McMurdo. For the holiday meal, Pearl had been relegated to pastry chef, and she did well: pumpkin and pecan pies, of course, but also a pear galette and 105 servings of pot de crème.
As Pearl looked out at the darkened galley, at the Polies stuffing their faces, at the paper turkeys and Pilgrims hanging from the ceiling and the twinkling fairy lights, she felt something strange. Not peace—the job was still unfinished—but a kind of serenity that she had not experienced in years. The feeling that, if she could make it hers, this kitchen could become a home.
* * *
After Thanksgiving, the main meals reverted to the usual, but now people were talking openly about the superiority of the Midrats meal. Bonnie was only left with the two Moosewood books: Moosewood (MW) and Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd (MWC). Pearl continued to find it strange that she said nothing about the missing cookbooks. She’d watch the woman sitting on an upended crate in her tiny office off the galley, squinting at online recipes. From time to time, she’d shout out, “We got pistachios?” or “Any starfruit from Cheech?” Invariably, they were always a few ingredients short.
One morning, during the lull between breakfast and lunch prep, Pearl was crouched in the freshie shack, tearing up pages from Moosewood and shoving them into the pockets of her parka, when the door flew open. She clumsily shoved the cookbook onto one of the produce shelves, but it was too late. Bozer had seen.
“What do you want in here?” Pearl said.
“I gotta measure the shelves for the new freshie shack,” he said, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He brushed past Pearl and reached up to the shelf where she’d hidden the cookbook. When he pulled it out, several of the torn pages fluttered to the ground. He started laughing. “I knew it. Knew it from the minute Bonnie told me those books was missing.” His narrow, unknowable eyes traveled the length of Pearl’s body. He scratched the side of his face; the sound of his nails against the wiry hairs of his reddish beard sent a shiver of disgust down her spine.
“You planning on sticking around?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” she said, trying to sound tough.
Bozer placed Moosewood back on the shelf, next to a crate of Spanish onions. “If you’re going to run a lifer out of a job, you best be prepared to become a lifer yourself.” Pearl’s cheeks burned. “Now, I’m not saying the old girl is any great shakes in the kitchen. Maybe she done run her course here. I’m just saying that you oughta plan on making this a multiyear gig if you’re gonna go to that kind of trouble. Now, meantime, here’s what I need to see from here on out: barbecue once a week, make it ribs.”
“Or what, you tell everyone I forced Bonnie out?”
Bozer spun a level in his hands. “And make it come with cornbread and potato salad.”
“We don’t get cornmeal here.”
“Then use back channels.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Honey, if the Polies find out you double-crossed Bonnie, things won’t go well for you. My requests are small.”
Pearl was annoyed, but if this was the price of intrigue, it was cheap. She nodded at Bozer, and stepped aside so he could begin measuring the shelves. On her way to the door, she reached for Moosewood, but Bozer casually moved it beyond her reach.
That night, Pearl invited Birdie to her room for the first time. She wanted to show him the notebook—not the pages in which she’d documented her plan to take over the kitchen. Just the recipes. The book had been with her for eight years. It was hardbound, indestructible. Green leather, strong binding—pockets on the inner boards that bulged with scribblings, recipe cards, and other detritus from her various gigs. It was her book of tricks. It had every recipe that had ever worked, including the ones she’d written herself. She didn’t know why she was showing it to Birdie. She hadn’t shown it to anyone.
With the clean, pink nail of his index finger, Birdie pointed to a handwritten table written in the margins of the first page. “‘Oven, liquid, sugar’—what is this?”
“A chart of high-altitude adjustments. Baking at elevation.” She leaned closer to Birdie and placed her own finger next to his. “Take sugar, for example. Because the elevation is so high at Pole, I have to remove a tablespoon of sugar from every cup I use or else everyone’s teeth will fall out. Increased evaporation increases the concentration of sugar. It makes everything taste too sweet, plus it weakens the structure of whatever I’m baking.” Gingerly, she picked up Birdie’s hand and set it in his lap so she could begin turning the pages. She flipped until she got to the recipe she wanted.
“I made this one up when I was a set-net deckhand on a tender out of Nome.”
“Seawater Bread?” Birdie said.
“It’s really basic. Dry yeast, a little sugar, four cups of flour, and a cup and a half of warmed seawater. I got it right off the deck. Let it proof overnight, drop it in the oven around five a.m., and voilà, fresh bread in the middle of the Norton Sound.”
Birdie took Pearl’s hand and placed it on his chest. “You’re the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met,” he said.
“Why, because I can make bread from seawater? Anyone can do that.”
“No,” Birdie said. “Because you did.” Pearl didn’t know why she felt embarrassed; she tried to pull away, but Birdie held her fast. Maybe it was all the things he didn’t know. The things no one knew. She thought back to the day she walked onto that longliner docked at Cordova Boat Harbor on the Orca Inlet, a seventeen-year-old foster-home runaway. She’d just talked to Captain Whitty about crewing on his March halibut trip, and she was halfway down the dock before she remembered she couldn’t take no for an answer. Not without fighting for a yes, anyway. It’s what she’d been doing her whole life by that point: seventeen years spent fighting for a yes. The ones in Cordova who didn’t fight—the former highliners, the ones who collapsed along with the herring fishery after the oil spill in ’89—they walked around town like half-people. Pearl knew she was too young to be a half-person, so she’d turned around and marched back up toward Captain Whitty’s boat and pounded on the door with her fist. “Open the door, Captain,” she’d shouted. “I gotta say my piece.” She heard him curse, but the door eventually opened, and with it came the unmistakable odor of a ruined dinner.
“Well, say it, then,” the old man growled.
“I can work on no sleep and still have a smile on my face. I can splice line, I can cook, I got a strong back and a good head on my shoulders. And I make the best damn coffee in the state. And if you don’t like how I work, you can throw me overboard. I don’t care. But you’ll give me a chance.”
They’d stood facing each other for a minute, the only sounds the waters of Prince William Sound slapping against the side of the boat. That was when Pearl glanced over Whitty’s shoulder and saw the remains of his dinner smoking on the galley stove. “Plus, it doesn’t look like you know how to cook,” she said.
“I do okay,” Whitty grumbled, but he stepped aside to let her pass. She walked into the cramped cabin and glanced at the frying pan. A black lump of something emitted a thread of smoke.
“What was it?” Pearl asked.
“Spam and white bread,” Whitty replied, as though he were saying “filet mignon.”
Pearl grabbed the pan and tossed its contents out the galley window and into the harbor. “I’ll cook for you,” she said, “but I also want to fish.”
“You’re too small,” Whitty said quickly. “Not strong enough.”
“Try me.”
After making the captain a proper dinner—chicken à la king—Pearl had walked home that night in the gathering dusk of evening, gainfully employed and free. The ghostly outline of the Chenega mountains rose up in the gloaming. And up on the hill above the harbor, the lights of Cordova turned on one by one.
* * *
Bonnie’s final mistake was the Carrot-Mushroom Loaf, a culinary disaster that occurred the third week of December. The thing sat on the serving platter like a hunk of human feces, the warming lights bouncing off its gelatinous exterior, giving it an unnatural sheen. It went untouched. The fact that Bonnie now had only one cookbook excused nothing: that the recipe was buried in the back of the book, as if even the Moosewood Collective knew it was a crime against carrots, only amplified the mistake. The kitchen at South Pole Station was built for desperate circumstances, but Carrot-Mushroom Loaf was an indisputable sign of surrender.
The next morning, Pearl and Bonnie were summoned to Tucker’s office. Pearl whistled as they walked across the Dome toward the admin module, but Bonnie remained silent. Her dark hair hung limply around her face and she kept her eyes on her boots. Pearl started in on “Free Bird,” just to see if Bonnie would say anything. It took a full minute, but Bonnie finally raised her head. “Shut the fuck up,” she said, though it sounded halfhearted.
Inside Tucker’s office, Pearl could barely sit still. Her knees bounced at sixteenth-note intervals. Bonnie sat slumped in the other chair, her hands clasped over her belly. Tucker studiously avoided looking at Pearl, and instead focused his gaze on Bonnie.
“I made a mistake,” Bonnie said sullenly. “It won’t happen again.”
“This isn’t about the Carrot-Mushroom Loaf, Bonnie,” Tucker said. “I imagine that carrots and mushrooms suspended in aspic have an interesting mouthfeel.” Pearl noticed the corners of Bonnie’s mouth turn slightly upward at this. “This is about scheduling. You know we’re constantly tinkering with schedules.”
“Not in the galley.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“That’s why she’s here, I guess,” Bonnie said. Pearl felt her heart begin to race. Now that the moment was at hand, it was proving excruciating. Tucker kept his eyes fixed on Bonnie. “You need a break from this relentless schedule. You and I both know that with construction of the new station, we’ve seen an explosion in the transient population. We’ve got staff coming and going from Palmer and McMurdo, and the fluctuations have had a major impact on kitchen operations.”
“So?”
“I think letting Pearl take on the head cook responsibilities for a while will give you a much-needed opportunity to relax, refresh—reflect.”
“I think Bonnie’s handling the kitchen just fine,” Pearl said. “I mean, with the missing cookbooks, anybody would have to get creative.”
Bonnie shot a withering look at Pearl. “Funny thing about those missing cookbooks. I never had a problem with them until you came.”
“Bonnie, this isn’t a demotion,” Tucker said. “Your salary remains the same, your contracted job title does not change. It’s just a change of pace. It’s less work for the money.”
Bonnie sat forward in her chair. “I don’t come down here to do less work, Tucker. I know this has been the plan from day one. You want me out.”
“Bonnie, please—”
“You think I’m an idiot? They tried to DQ me on the physical. Morbidly obese? Borderline hypertension? Never a problem—for four years, never a problem—and then suddenly Richard Simmons is signing off on the VIDS physicals. The union had to get involved.” Bonnie jerked her thumb at Pearl without looking at her. “So you bring her down, have her hide my cookbooks, and deliberately turn the crew against me. Her fake-ass sunshiny bullshit is unmistakable. She’s a sociopath.” Bonnie hauled herself out of the chair. “You both are.”
After Bonnie left, Tucker dropped his head into his hands. Pearl felt immobilized. Her legs had stopped bouncing. The nervous energy now seemed to bind her to the chair.
“Can you handle the winter alone?” Tucker said into his hands.
For a moment, Pearl was tempted to say, “Isn’t that why you hired me?” Instead, she nodded. “No problem.”
After leaving Tucker’s office, Pearl returned to the kitchen, where Kit was peeling radishes and humming along to his Discman. Wordlessly, she walked past him and stepped into what used to be Bonnie’s office.
It was a mess of papers, file folders, and dirty dishware. Pearl cleaned off the desk where Bonnie had mapped out so many meals, and took a seat on the wooden crate she’d used as a chair. She picked a food scab off the cover of Moosewood Cooks for a Crowd. There were so many colorful Post-its attached to the pages that it looked like a small parade float. Pearl was about to close the book and toss it on the pile of papers on the floor, when something caught her eye. An inscription on the inside of the cover.
Someone once said, “Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.” We’ve abandoned our sanity already by going down to Pole. All we’ve got is each other, and this book. Make ’em drool, honey.
Your man, Dwight
From: Warren Slownik (wslownik@nsf.gov)
Date: January 18, 2004 3:30:58 PM EDT
To: Tucker Bollinger (tbollinger@vids.com), Karl Martin (kmartin@vids.com), Carla Nicks (cnicks@vids.com), Simon Murphy (smurphy@vids.com)
Cc: Alexandra Scaletta (ascaletta@nsf.gov)
Status: URGENT
Subject: CONFIDENTIAL: Injury Incident
A quick thank-you to everyone who provided input during today’s conference call. I’ve passed your questions and concerns on to Alexandra. In the meantime, I want to reiterate the importance of protecting our grantees’ privacy by keeping this incident out of the media for as long as possible. An e-mail has been sent to all VIDS support staff and NSF grantees regarding the incident, so please be prepared for questions. I’m certain there will be many from this group. In the meantime, any press inquiries should be directed to Alexandra’s office.
I’ve attached the injury incident report, prepared by Dr. Nicks.
Warren