Chapter 25
Our time reading Rose’s letters in the attic is cut short when Alice and I hear car doors slam and loud voices downstairs. I peek out the turret window and see a number of cars in the driveway.
“Are we having a party?” I ask.
“Looks like it.” Alice points to a white sedan. “That’s the mayor’s car.”
Downstairs we find a large group talking and laughing in the parlor—Brady, the Scandi Trio, Molly from the mill, Tom O’Brien from the dairy farm, and Sally the beekeeper, plus more than a handful of other people I don’t recognize.
I also spot Lenny. He smiles and waves from the corner, and I wave back.
“Alice and Maggie,” Brady says, spotting us. “Perfect timing. I was just about to come find you.” He gestures toward the group assembled before us. “Welcome to the first official meeting of the St. John’s Ferry Midsommar Farm-to-Table Dinner Committee.”
I smile at their eager faces, their open expressions. Wow. I’m beside myself. These are people who care enough about a cause to actually do something. I give a little wave.
“We just came up with this idea last night,” I whisper to Brady. “And you’ve already formed a committee?”
“We’ve got three weeks,” he says. “Every day counts. Every hour.”
Alice and I take seats near Brady, and I scan the room. Hannah isn’t here. But my alarm bell doesn’t sound. I trust the Scandi Trio. I know the girls wouldn’t leave Hannah fishing by herself. Before I can ask her whereabouts, Katrine taps my hand.
“In her room reading,” she explains, and I nod.
We begin with introductions; it’s a who’s who list of sorts.
In addition to the people I recognize, there’s Bob Nielsen, mayor of St. John’s Ferry; Pamela McFarland, Midsommar Festival Committee president; Miles Hardy of the St. John’s Ferry Chamber of Commerce; Mary Cooper of the county Farm Bureau; Fred Collins of Collins’s Country Meats; and Meghan Dahl of Bluff Orchards and Farmstand.
The group makes decisions quickly, including the date and time of the dinner.
Pamela will handle publicity, with Katrine assisting, as a subset of the Midsommar Festival Committee.
Ticketing procedures will be managed by the Farm Bureau, and Bob will handle permitting through the village office.
Alice, Nora, and Johanna will run production design with the baking-camp students—basically setting up the site, the tables, parking.
I can’t believe how much this group accomplishes in twenty minutes’ time.
Lenny raises his hand. “How can I help?” he asks.
Before anyone has a suggestion, I give my own. “Maybe you should work with Alice and the others on setting up the site. There’s going to be a lot of footwork there. We should have one more person on that.”
The groups agrees, and Lenny flashes a grin—my hunch is at the mention of working with Alice. Nothing wrong with fundraising and playing matchmaker.
Alice and I exchange glances; she knows what I’m trying to do, but I look away before she can give me a talking to with her eyes.
“Maggie, you and I are in charge of the menu,” Brady finally says. “Obviously, we want to feature the local food and artisans, but it’s also Midsommar. Scandinavian heritage should be reflected in the menu as well. So Scandi Trio, you’re on deck for consultation.”
“Not to pressure you,” Pamela says to Brady and me as the others start to disperse, “but the menu is the first order of business. Once we have that, we can start publicizing. The good news is I already secured Art Cavanaugh, the food editor of the Madison Gazette, as a special guest. He’s the one on the Wisconsin Eats PBS show.
That should increase ticket sales. But we also need to procure goods, et cetera.
Do you think you two could put the menu together by end of day tomorrow? ”
Brady and I smile at each other.
“I guess we know what we’re doing the rest of this weekend,” he says.
Brady and I thought developing the menu would be easy. Our shared love of food, and his expertise in the food business paired with my research and planning skills, seemed like the perfect marriage in this endeavor.
But after sitting at the kitchen table for a good twenty minutes, all we have to show for our time and energy is a blank notepad.
We toss around some ideas—an entire menu featuring one in-season ingredient, like strawberries, kale, or dill, or an old-fashioned fish boil—but nothing sticks long enough to jot down.
“You know what the problem is,” Brady says. “I’m a visual person.”
“We’re in here,” I say. “When we should be out there?”
He smiles. “Precisely.”
We quickly pack up and head to the barn for inspiration. On the way, I try to get our creative juices flowing.
“If you could sum up your goal for this dinner in one word, what would it be?” I ask.
“Memorable,” Brady says after a beat.
“Okay. What’s the most memorable meal you’ve ever eaten?” I ask.
Even though we’re only walking from the house to the barn, Brady takes my hand, and the sensation of his fingers laced with mine surprises me, as if a ladybug has just landed on my shoulder.
“Off the cuff?” he says. He shakes his head as if deciding not to tell me after all. “It’s going to sound weird.”
“What?” I ask.
“My great-grandfather’s funeral.”
“A funeral?”
“You should have seen the smorgasbord,” he exclaims. “What is it about death that makes people want to cook their hearts out? I guess food is the only practical thing anyone needs after someone dies. There is nothing you can say or do to diminish loss. You have to go through it, not around it. And meanwhile, you still have to eat.”
I nod, thinking back to when Sean passed.
My kitchen had never been so full of food.
From Sean’s family, my family, Sean’s coworkers, my coworkers, our Pakistani neighbors in the flat above, and Mrs. Lee below.
Some of it homemade, some store-bought, but all of it oozing with love.
My appetite was small; I ate only enough to get through the day, to keep my heart beating and my knees from buckling, and, of course, to sustain the baby quickly growing in my belly.
I donated some to a local shelter. Other items, I froze and ate later, a month after, when the pain was worse and fewer people were around.
“So what was on the smorgasbord?” I ask.
He closes his eyes as if watching a movie in his mind.
“Roast beef. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Fried chicken. Sliced glazed ham. Potato salad—it was salty and sweet; it had chopped bread and butter pickles in it. And dill. There was a bean salad too—with green and yellow wax beans and kidney beans and garbanzo beans—but this one didn’t have mayonnaise.
It was a sweet vinaigrette. There were rolls, warm from the oven, and butter.
And other salads made of Jell-O and cream cheese, plus sauerkraut and other pickled vegetables.
And the desserts. Bars and cookies and cakes and pies.
Oatmeal-date bars and quick breads: zucchini bread and lemon poppy seed and date nut. Iced tea and lemonade and coffee.”
I squeeze his hand. “Sounds a lot like our family picnics.”
“It was sad,” he says. “Everyone was sad. My great-grandfather—his name was William, but everyone called him Bud—was a really gregarious guy. Everybody loved him. I was about nine. But it was different than when Bryce passed. This time, I guess because we’d already lost Bryce and my great-grandfather was in his nineties, there was something almost comforting in the sadness.
Kind of like a rainy day or a sappy song playing on a record player.
I think it was all the people and all the food.
It was a reminder of all we still had—the food, each other—even though we’d lost so much. ”
And this is what I love about you, Brady, I want to say. How deeply you feel and how openly you share those feelings.
“That’s beautiful,” I say instead.
He smiles. “It’s funny, considering I’ve eaten at some of the most decorated restaurants on the planet. And my most memorable meal was essentially a Midwest potluck held at a VFW.”
I laugh. I can picture the atmosphere, including dark wood-paneled walls and linoleum floors. “Yeah, but sometimes it’s the simplest meals that we remember most,” I say.
We step inside the barn and take in the space—the high-pitched ceiling, the wooden beams. “So what about you?” Brady asks, pulling the barn doors fully open to let in the light.
“I was in college,” I say, helping him with the door.
“I’d gone back early to train as an orientation leader.
A thunderstorm came through in the late afternoon and the power went out, and those of us there—most of the school still hadn’t returned to campus—congregated in the lounge.
We had flashlights and lit candles and listened to the radio for alerts.
This was just before smartphones took over the world.
It got to be dinnertime, and we were all starving.
So we went back to our rooms to scour for supplies, and we made a meal out of what we had.
There were food combinations I never would have dreamed of—a chutney of canned peaches and pickles—on top of rye crisp crackers with cream cheese.
It was surprisingly good. When I look back, I remember the novelty of it all, the we’re all in this together mentality. It forced us to bond.”
We stand in the doorway, between the barn and the green space outside. Brady studies me for a beat.
“We’re overthinking things,” he finally says.
The realization moves through my body in goose bumps. “You’re right, because what do our most memorable meals have in common?”
“That it really wasn’t about the food,” he says.
“It was about the moment and the people. The emotion,” I say.
“The food was good,” he argues.
“It was good. Great. Amazing, even. But it was secondary to the experience. And in the end, it was simple.”
“It was simple,” Brady repeats. “So I guess it’s back to basics,” he adds, heading back into the barn. “Let the ingredients speak for themselves. Meats, starches, vegetables.”
“Open-faced sandwiches and hearty salads,” I add, visualizing people gathered around tables, chitchatting while taking hearty bites of our fare. “With bursts of flavor from sauces and dressings and pickled condiments.”
“And desserts,” he adds. “Simple desserts but lots of them. I see those on a buffet here.” He waves his hand to signal the location of the dessert bar.
“Handheld desserts,” I add. “Like brownies. Frosted, cakey ones you can hold.”
“Exactly. Nothing that requires a fork or even a plate. Just a napkin. Chunky blocks of layered fruit bars and cookies the size of your hand.” He stares at the fictitious table as if he can really see it.
“We should ask the Scandi Trio for help, to bring the Nordic flair. They’re all about cookies and pastries. ”
As we lock up the barn again, we share a smile. We’ve unblocked the obstacle. Our momentum pulses with every step back toward the farmhouse, where we find Alice on the porch swing. She’s holding a piece of paper, and her eyes are red rimmed and watery.
“What is it?” I ask, hoping it’s not another letter from the bank.
She hands me the paper. It’s one of Rose’s letters to Hank. Alice must have resumed reading without me.
“This explains why Esther wasn’t in the photograph,” she says.