Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare) - Anne Tyler Page 0,14

bag from him and peered down into it. Inside were four bars of chocolate. “Well, thanks,” she said.

“Ninety percent cacao. Flavonoids. Polyphenols.”

“Pyoder’s a big believer in dark chocolate,” Dr Battista said.

“Oh, I adore chocolate!” Bunny told Pyotr. “I’m, like, addicted? I can’t get enough?”

It was lucky Bunny had gone into her bubbling-over act, because Kate wasn’t feeling all that hospitable herself. She took a fourth apple from the bowl and went off to the dining room, throwing her father a sour look as she passed him. He smiled and rubbed his hands together. “A little company!” he told her in a confiding voice.

“Hmph.”

By the time she returned to the kitchen, Bunny was asking Pyotr what he missed most about home. She was looking up into his face with her eyes all starry and entranced, still holding the extra plate and the silverware, cocking her head encouragingly like Miss Hostess of the Month.

“I miss the pickles,” Pyotr said without hesitation.

“That’s so fascinating?”

“Finish setting the table,” Kate told her. “Supper’s ready to go, here.”

“What? Wait,” Dr. Battista said. “I thought we could have drinks first.”

“Drinks!”

“Drinks in the living room.”

“Yes!” Bunny said. “Can I have a drink, Poppy? Just a teeny-weeny glass of wine?”

“No, you cannot,” Kate told her. “Your brain development’s stunted enough as it is.”

Pyotr gave one of his hoots. Bunny said, “Poppy! Did you hear what she said to me?”

“I meant it, too,” Kate told her. “We can’t afford any more tutors. Besides, Father, I’m starving to death. You were even later than usual.”

“All right, all right,” he said. “Sorry, Pyoder. The cook calls the shots, I guess.”

“Is no problem,” Pyotr said.

This was just as well, because as far as Kate knew, the only alcohol in the house was an open bottle of Chianti from last New Year’s.

She carried the meat mash into the dining room and put it on the trivet. Bunny, meanwhile, set a place for Pyotr next to her own; they all had to crowd at one end because of the income-tax papers. “How about people, Pyoder?” she asked him once he was settled. (The girl was tireless.) “Don’t you miss any people from home?”

“I have no people,” he said.

“None at all?”

“I grew up in orphanage.”

“Gosh! I never met anybody from an orphanage before!”

“You forgot Pyotr’s water,” Kate told her. She was dishing out mounds of meat mash and passing the filled plates around, exchanging them for empty ones.

Bunny pushed her chair back and started to rise, but Pyotr held a palm up and said again, “Is no problem.”

“Pyoder feels water dilutes the enzymes,” Dr Battista said.

Bunny said, “Huh?”

“The digestive enzymes.”

“Especially water with ice,” Pyotr said. “Freezes enzymes in middle of ducts.”

“Have you ever heard this theory?” Dr. Battista asked his daughters. He looked delighted.

Kate thought it was a pity he couldn’t just marry Pyotr himself, if he was so set on adjusting the man’s status. The two of them seemed made for each other.

On Tuesdays, Kate varied their menu by setting out tortillas and a jar of salsa so that they could have meat-mash burritos. Pyotr didn’t bother with the tortillas, though. He ladled an avalanche of salsa over his serving and then dug in with his spoon, nodding intently as he listened to Dr. Battista ponder why it was that autoimmune disorders affected more women than men. Kate pushed her food around her plate; she wasn’t as hungry as she had thought. And Bunny, across the table from her, seemed lukewarm about her tofu. She cut a corner off with her fork and took an experimental taste, chewing with just her front teeth. Her green vegetable—two pallid stalks of celery—lay untouched, so far. Kate predicted her meat-free phase would last about three days.

Dr. Battista was telling Pyotr that sometimes it seemed to him that women were just more…skinless than men, but he stopped speaking suddenly and looked at Bunny’s plate. “What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s tofu?”

“Tofu!”

“I’ve given up eating meat?”

“Is that wise?” her father asked.

“Is ridiculous,” Pyotr said.

“See there?” Kate told Bunny.

“Where would be her B-twelve?” Pyotr asked Dr. Battista.

“I suppose it could come from her breakfast cereal,” Dr. Battista mused. “Providing the cereal’s fortified, of course.”

“Is still ridiculous,” Pyotr said. “Is so American, subtracting foods! Other countries, when they want healthiness they add foods in. Americans subtract them.”

Bunny said, “How about, like, canned tuna? That doesn’t have a face per se. Could I get B-twelve from canned tuna?”

Kate was so surprised at Bunny’s tossing off that “per se” that it took her a moment to