Life From Scratch (30 page)

“Looks great, Sasha,” Keith said.

“Did you make this?” Ryan asked, wonder in his voice. He studied the still crackling chicken skin. Juices hiccuped from within the bird and dripped onto the roasting pan. Rosemary bloomed on the air, thyme trailing behind.

“Yup.”

“How?”

“I put it in the oven and baked it for a while—maybe an hour or so. Have you ever had roast chicken before?”

“Just rotisserie from the grocery store.”

Mom raised her eyebrows. Ryan leaned closer, “What’s on it?”

“Just a few herbs … like rosemary. Thyme. Oregano?”

Keith and Ryan both had blank expressions on their faces. I opened my mouth to explain, then thought better of it.

“Well, whatever it is, it looks good,” Keith smiled. “I had no idea you could cook like this.”

“Oh, this is nothing,” I began, “you should see the stuff we made at cooking school.”

“If you can cook like that, how come you and Dad eat out all the time?” Ryan asked.

I looked down at the roast, then around the table. “I don’t know … I haven’t wanted to cook much since I got to Tulsa. I’m not sure why.”

When Mom cleared her throat and lifted her fork, we all followed suit. Bite by bite, the chicken, potatoes, and rolls disappeared. Keith ate three rolls. Between mouthfuls, he praised the soft, doughy interior, marveling that I’d made them myself.

Then I noticed that Keith and Ryan weren’t exactly eating everything. The skin, onions, and garlic languished on their plates. Neither touched the green bean salad. Keith did a better job of pushing his food around, while Ryan’s scraps were left exactly where they’d landed. From what I could tell, the only thing Ryan did eat was a bite of chicken and half a roll.

After Keith and Ryan left, Mom busied herself with the dishes. I stood at her side, patting them dry and then placing them in the cupboards. I waited for her to mention Keith. Five minutes went by, then ten.

Finally, I put down my towel, leaned on the counter, and asked, “So … what do you think?”

She passed me another wet plate without looking up.

“About what?”

Irritation tightened in my chest. When I rubbed the plate a little too hard against the terry cloth, it slipped out of my wet hand. There was a sharp clatter as the ceramic hit the corner of the counter and ricocheted into the thickest part of my thigh.

“Shoot,” I took a deep breath. “
Keith—w
hat do you think of Keith?”

“Oh. I don’t know …” She hoisted the roasting pan into the sink, scraped the congealed chicken fat into the disposal, and began scrubbing. She peered under the sink. “Don’t you have any steel wool around here?”

“It just takes a little elbow grease. A regular sponge will get the job done.” I took the pan from her, shooed her away, and started scrubbing. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I only just met him.”

“But you knew right away with all those other guys! You’ve never
not
had an opinion.”

She scowled. “That’s neither here nor there.”

“Well, you have to admit, Keith’s a real gentleman. He holds the door open for me and everything—so different from the guys up north.”

I looked at her out of the corner of my eyes, trying to decipher her expression.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Sure.”

“I’ll be honest, Mom. A twice-divorced man with a 16-year-old son wasn’t what I expected, especially at the age of 27. But I’m in love with him.”

“He’s been married twice?” she asked, furrowing her brow. “You never told me that.” She paused, considering. “Well,” she tossed her hand dismissively, “those women obviously weren’t right for him. An ordinary girl can’t hold on to a guy like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said—he’s different. Put it this way: He’s not going to put up with a bunch of nonsense. He’s
serious
about you,” she said, drawing out the words slowly. “But you’re in for a ride if you think he’s going to embrace all that cooking you did at the CIA. That’s much too fussy for him.”

“I had no idea he was picky—”

“His son’s right. That’s what happens when you eat out all the time. It’s all so … sterile. No one has to order anything they don’t like.” She nodded toward the door, “You’ve got a real Mr. Picky on your hands. The question is: What are you going to do about it?”

In that moment she gave herself away. I grinned, despite myself.

She really, really liked him.

Orange & Herb Roasted Chicken

I’ve seen many fussy ways of making roast chicken. For me, the only requirement is the crackle and hiss—a refrain heard as much in my mother’s kitchen as Patricia’s. If the orange is particularly juicy, it’ll gurgle through much of the cooking process—a comforting sound any time of year
.

A couple generous sprigs fresh thyme

A generous sprig fresh rosemary

2 tablespoons butter, melted

½ teaspoon paprika, heaping, plus more for sprinkling

1 teaspoon salt

1 orange

One pasture-roaming chicken, 4 to 4½ pounds, giblets removed

A couple garlic cloves, bruised but not peeled

A few drops vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Tear off most of the green matter from the thyme and rosemary, mince, and add to a small bowl (reserve the woody stems). Stir in the melted butter, a teaspoon of salt, a half teaspoon paprika, and the grated zest of the orange. Slice the orange in half, and set aside.

Rinse and dry the chicken. Sprinkle the cavity with salt and paprika, toss in the woody stems, the garlic cloves, and one of the orange halves (pressing it in the hand to crack it open). Truss the bird, and rub the butter and herb mixture all over the outside. Roast on a lightly oiled V-rack until the breast meat registers 175°F (1 hour for a 4-pound bird; add another 5 minutes for a 4½-pound bird). For well-done dark meat, cook an extra 10 minutes or so—until the thigh registers 180°F. Let rest 15 minutes before carving.

Enough for 4 to 6

CHAPTER 19

All That I Could W
a
nt

A
FTER
M
OM LEFT
, I tried to learn how to ride the track, but found my craving for adrenaline had a threshold: I wasn’t built for such speeds. Instead, I spent more time on the sidelines talking with Keith, filling him in on my past. When he asked about my father, I explained that there was a man who fathered me, but whose face and name I never knew. And there was a man whose face I’d seen, but who no longer acted as my father.

Keith never balked, never judged, and never changed his attitude toward me. He just accepted it all, perpetually focused. I wonder if it came from his job as a 911 telecommunications technician. Sometimes he got calls in the middle of the night to troubleshoot a failed emergency call. While he worked on the lines and computers, he occasionally had to replay the recordings of panicked spouses and petrified children in order to help identify what had gone wrong. He really knew how to listen.

It’s a rare thing to feel truly heard. Keith teared up when I cried, laughed when I laughed, and challenged me on occasion. It was as if he were channeling my every story—as though he were there with me and had been from the beginning.

Instead of telling me about his life, Keith brought me to see it with my own eyes. He was raised three hours away in Geronimo, Oklahoma, population 1,282. In all my travels, I’d never seen anything like it. Downtown Geronimo is a glorified crossroads. This is the heart of the Bible Belt; an abundance of steeples inch ever skyward. The people are settled in their homes, in their bones, in their souls. They trust their land and their God. On Sundays, they raise their hands and shut their eyes, giving in with an abandon I can only marvel at. It is the middle of nowhere, but for these people it is everywhere.

Keith’s parents, Clint and Wanda, hugged me the moment they met me. Acceptance is the Geronimo way. For the last 35 years, the two have lived several miles out of town on a forgotten piece of farmland tucked between the Lawton prison and the old creek. Keith’s younger brother Daniel lives just on the other side of town.

Wheat fields, emerald green in the winter and barren in the summer, line the quarter-mile drive that curves up to Clint and Wanda’s one-story brick house. They lease the land beyond their windows to farmers, never once sinking their teeth into bread made from that red soil.

Eight plum trees grow crooked in the south winds that push across the land, stubborn survivors of heat, hail, and whirling-dervish wall clouds (those testy harbingers of tornadoes). But the trees haven’t fruited yet. There’s no fresh produce in sight, save for the remains of the tomato bed Wanda once shackled over the cracking clay.

There’s a waiting in Geronimo, a settled acceptance that all things bear fruit with time. Baseball-size hail, howling tornadoes strong enough to flatten a town, and minor bouts of indigestion are waited out with equal patience. There’s no pining for anything more than the sun to rise, catfish to bite, dinner to be hot, and smiles to be quick and frequent.

Keith is the salt of
this
land.

Okie Catfish

I don’t like catfish, but I love the Martin family recipe. In Clint’s hands, the muddy fillets become mild, the crisp coating sweet. It’s not just that he catches the whiskered fish fresh from nearby lakes. It’s that, even before mooring his boat, Clint and Wanda rinse and pack the fresh-gutted flappers with salt and ice. Although I could add bells and whistles, there is something beautifully Oklahoman about the simplicity Clint’s recipe offers. The creole seasoning is a nod to Keith’s Louisiana-dwelling aunt—if this or the Jiffy Mix is unavailable, try the substitutes provided for an equally delicious meal
.