Read Online Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal - Free Book Online

forgot that her parents were actually capable of doing nice things. Too often she could focus only on the horrifyingly unjust occasions when they prevented her from doing stuff, like when they told her that she couldn’t go to the downtown farmers’ market alone until she was ten, and even then didn’t let her go until she was ten and two months. Or their stupid rules regarding Randy.
    She reached for the carton, but her mom grabbed it back.
    “Tomorrow,” Fiona said. “Save it for your birthday.”
     • • • 
    Her dad, Jarl, still in his collared shirt and necktie after his day of work in the mailroom at Pioneer Seeds, grabbed a Busch Light from the door of the fridge.
    “Hey, Dad,” Eva said, and Jarl opened his beer as he sat down at the dining room table.
    “Blueberry sorbet,” Jarl said to no one in particular. “Is that something you could make at home?”
    “Yeah, I guess,” Eva said. “I hadn’t thought of it.”
    “How was school?” her mom asked. She was reheating the leftover morning coffee in the microwave; she always did that instead of making a new batch.
    “Fine,” Eva said.
    “What’d you do after school?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Did Randy pick you up?”
    “Yeah, but he just brought me straight home.”
    “Look, I can’t stop you from going to Lulu’s if you want. I personally don’t see what’s so damn special about Randy and that Mexican chef, but I know they’re your favorite people in the world. Not that they buy your food or put a roof over your head or anything.”
    “They sure don’t,” her dad said, nodding as he drank his beer.
    Eva rested her forehead on the dining room table and shook it back and forth as her mom spoke. “They’re nice people,” she said. “And they like the same stuff I like.”
    “Randy didn’t give you cigarettes or weed or anything?”
    “No! God, Mom.”
    “Well, still, maybe you should take a little break from Randy for a while.”
    “But, Mom.”
    Jarl picked at the tab of his beer can. “He used to drive while high, you know. That’s how he got busted. He coulda killed somebody. Coulda killed himself.”
    “I know that,” Eva said. “He doesn’t drive stoned anymore.”
    “Y’know, I don’t think he’s out of the woods yet,” Jarl said. “With his drug problems.”
    “How would you know?” Eva said, gathering her homework from the table and bolting off to her room, away from this awful conversation. “You never even talk to him.”
    Eva thought maybe she heard Jarl say “I just don’t wanna lose you” at her, before she closed her bedroom door, but she wasn’t sure.
     • • • 
    Alone at the too-small child’s desk in her room, Eva finished the last line of the most pointless assignment ever, and though she wanted to start on the evening’s true mission immediately, she kept the box of churro bites closed under her bed. Her parents went to sleep at ten o’clock on weeknights. Only three and a half more hours to wait out.
     • • • 
    After a brazenly lifeless dinner of fish sticks and frozen peas, Eva scurried back to her room. Fortunately, neither of her parents had brought up Randy again. If they had, Eva would’ve gotten up from the table that second.
    She was sitting on her bed reading recipes in an old copy of James Beard’s
Beard on Bread
—she found that book comforting for some reason—when her dad, smelling like sweat and warm beer, knocked on her door and opened it. He was still wearing a tie, but now also had on sweatpants cut off at the knees. Probably the dorkiest outfit of all time.
    “Yes?” Eva asked, looking at her dad’s face as his wide, soft body filled up the doorway.
    “How’s it goin’?” Jarl asked. “Is everything OK?”
    Eva nodded, not setting down her book. “Yep,” she said.
    “You don’t seem very excited about your birthday tomorrow, is all. Are things still better at school?”
    A month ago, after some girls dumped a thirty-two-ounce Pepsi on her