Chapter 6 - 7
Claire’s Potato Pancakes
6 medium potatoes, peeled 2 large eggs 1 / 4 cup flour
Salt and freshly ground black pepper Vegetable oil or canola oil Sour cream or applesauce
Grate the potatoes on the smallest setting of your grater. Rinse the grated potatoes, then squeeze them well to get out as much water as possible and place them in a large bowl.
Add the eggs, flour, and a pinch each of salt and pepper to the grated potatoes and mix together well. Line a plate with paper towels.
Place a large skillet over medium-high heat, add the vegetable oil to a depth of about 1 / 4 inch, and heat until the oil is hot but not smoking.
Add 1 / 4 cup of the potato mixture to the oil, flattening it to a small pancake about 1 / 4 inch thick. Fry until golden underneath, 3to 5minutes, then flip and repeat on the other side.
Remove the pancake from the skillet, drain it on the paper towel–lined plate, and repeat with the rest of the potato mixture. Serve the potato pancakes hot with sour cream or applesauce, and eat with someone you adore, while listening to “No Other Love”
by Perry Como.
Potato pancakes, Claire reflected, were the food of love—meaning, they were such a colossal pain in the ass to make that no one would ever take the trouble except for love. By the time your fingertips were skinned from grating tubers, your hands sticky from potato starch, and your arms flecked with oil burns, you had better have a good store of love in your heart for whoever was going to eat those little bastards.
“Goodness!”
Grace surveyed the platter in Claire’s hands, heaped high with crispy golden potato cakes, lacy at the edges and fried to perfection. “I didn’t think it was your turn to cook.”
“It’s not. But I know everyone’s coming over tonight for Halloween, so I thought you could serve up my father’s placki ziemniaczane . Dollop ’em up with sour cream or applesauce, as you like.”
“You’re not staying?”
Grace took the platter, tilting her head curiously.
“Not tonight.”
It felt like the only goodbye to the Briar Club that Claire could manage. They’d been friends, real friends, even when she hadn’t always been the best of friends to them (thinking of Reka’s stolen pendant, Grace’s filched lipstick, Fliss’s earrings). But she owed them: over the last few years they’d made living here something so much more enjoyable than she’d ever experienced in any of the cheap boardinghouses she’d called home. This place had started out as cheerless as any of those dismal flophouses, but Grace came along with her painted vine and her suppers, and now somehow there were flowers winding down all four floors of the staircase wall, and more flowers in vases in every room, and suncatchers throwing prisms of light in the windows downstairs... And the Briar Club, getting together now on more than just Thursday nights, on Halloween and the Fourth of July and end-of-the-war day, too, any excuse for a party.
And without the Briar Club Claire wouldn’t have Sydney. Because Reka had brought Sid into the house’s orbit, and Fliss had befriended her at church, and Bea had set her to playing center field in a sandlot game, and then Grace had done that thing she did and looped Sid effortlessly into the house’s fold.
No, Claire reckoned, she owed the Briarwood House ladies a lot. She just wished there was something more she could give them than potato pancakes. Because by the time they realized she was gone for good—probably on Monday, when Senator Smith would also be realizing that her most junior assistant hadn’t come in with her lapel rose, when Mr. Huckstop realized she wasn’t showing up to sit on a papier-maché warhead in a garter belt and fishnets—Claire would be long gone, looking at an entirely different ocean. A long way from these people who had somehow managed to befriend her, even when she was trying so hard not to be befriended. “Happy Halloween,”
Claire told Grace around a lump in her throat and turned to head down the stairs.
“You, too, Strawberry.”
Grace’s voice held a ripple of amusement. “A word of advice?”
“What?”
“Move around a lot the first year, you and Stretch. Avoid staying in the same place longer than three to four weeks. It’s safer.”
“How do you do that?”
Claire turned around on the landing, the lump in her throat converting a laugh into a hiccup. “Figure out everything about everyone, while giving away absolutely nothing ?”
Grace arched a brow. “Years of training?”
“What’s your secret?”
Claire asked. Because if she didn’t ask now, she’d never know, and god but she wanted to know. “What’s your secret, Grace? Because you’ve sure as hell got one.”
“You’d never believe me even if I told you.”
Grace laughed, that sound of pure enjoyment that made everyone else want to laugh too. Claire was going to miss it. “Sure you don’t want to stay, eat some placki ziemniaczane ?”
Her Polish pronunciation, Claire noticed, was flawless.
“Sorry.”
Claire started down the stairs again. “I’ve got a date.”
The twilight street was already thronged with pint-size cowboys in ten-gallon hats and plastic six-shooters, tiny fairies in rhinestone crowns and wands, miniature witches in pointy black hats. Pete was taking Lina out—of course Doilies Nilsson was too cheap to get her daughter a costume, so Lina had an old sheet with eyeholes cut in it and was pretending she wanted to be a ghost again like last year and the year before. “I’m going to see she gets the most candy in Foggy Bottom,”
Pete said, an extra pillowcase slung over his shoulder. “Say, you want help with your bags, MissClaire?”
“No, thank you.”
One bag of her own down toward the waiting cab, then three of Sydney’s—Claire had collected them earlier this week in repurposed Jelleff’s bags, under the pretext that a stack of Sydney’s dresses had to be returned for alterations. Don’t walk out that door on Halloween night with anything more than your pocketbook , Claire had warned. That’s a dead giveaway. And as soon as you get into the cab, change something about your appearance, you and Bear both. Even if it’s just taking off your coats and hats, and ditching his Lone Ranger mask. You don’t want anyone to be able to describe a woman and child arriving at the station wearing the exact same outfits you left home in. And Sydney had nodded, grim as a soldier preparing to go over the top on a suicide charge.
She’d be helping Bear with his Lone Ranger mask now. Kissing Barrett Sutherland at the threshold, maybe. See you later, darling.
“Enjoy your weekend trip, MissClaire.”
Pete threw her a salute, that freckled face of his so open and friendly. God, had he grown up. Hadn’t he only been about twelve when she came to this place? Here he was practically a grown man—but he wasn’t, not yet. Claire caught his arm, remembering something with a jolt. “Stay away from Mr.Huckstop, Pete. He asks you to come by after hours and take pictures, you tell him no, all right?”
“Why?”
“Because he’s mixed up in things you’re too young for. Steer well clear of him, all right? Promise me.”
“I-I promise?”
He still sounded uncertain.
“Good kid.”
Claire jammed the last of Sydney’s bags into the cab and got in, slamming the door. “Union Station,”
she told the driver. Maybe Sydney was hailing a cab of her own now. We’re going on an adventure, Bear.
Claire closed her eyes as the cab pulled away from Briarwood House. “I’m coming, Sid,”
she murmured. She had the train tickets, two adults and one child all the way to San Diego. She had the luggage. She had her money, cashed out neatly into banded stacks and buried at the bottom of her bag. All Sydney had to do was come. Lead her little Lone Ranger by the hand through Union Station, reach out her other hand toward Claire, and take hold of the future.
Claire closed her eyes and prayed.