Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare) - Anne Tyler Page 0,2

patience with foreign accents.

“Were you surprised that I used my cell phone?” her father asked her. He was still standing, for some reason. He pulled his phone from a pocket in his coveralls. “You girls were right; it comes in handy,” he said. “I’m going to start using it more often now.” He frowned down at it for a moment, as if he were trying to remember what it was. Then he punched a button and held it in front of his face. Squinting, he took several steps backward. There was a mechanical clicking sound. “See? It takes photographs,” he said.

“Erase it,” Kate ordered.

“I don’t know how,” he said, and the phone clicked again.

“Damn it, Father, sit down and eat. I need to get back to my gardening.”

“All right, all right.”

He tucked the phone away and sat down. Pyotr, meanwhile, was opening his lunch bag. He pulled out two eggs and then a banana and placed them on the flattened paper bag in front of him. “Pyoder believes in bananas,” Dr. Battista confided. “I keep telling him about apples, but does he listen?” He was opening his own lunch bag, taking out his apple. “Pectin! Pectin!” he told Pyotr, shaking the apple under Pyotr’s nose.

“Bananas are miracle food,” Pyotr said calmly, and he picked his up and started peeling it. He had a face that was almost hexagonal, Kate noticed—his cheekbones widening to two sharp points, the angles of his jaw two more points slanting to the point of his chin, and the long strands of his hair separating over his forehead to form the topmost point. “Also eggs,” he was saying. “The egg of the hen! So cleverly self-contained.”

“Kate makes my sandwich for me every single night before she goes to bed,” Dr. Battista said. “She’s very domestic.”

Kate blinked.

“Peanut butter, though,” Pyotr said.

“Well, yes.”

“Yes,” Pyotr said with a sigh. He sent her a look of regret. “But is certainly pretty enough.”

“You should see her sister.”

Kate said, “Oh! Father!”

“What?”

“This sister is where?” Pyotr asked.

“Well, Bunny is only fifteen. She’s still in high school.”

“Okay,” Pyotr said. He returned his gaze to Kate.

Kate wheeled her stool back sharply and stood up. “Don’t forget your Tupperware,” she told her father.

“What! You’re leaving? Why so soon?”

But Kate just said, “Bye”—mostly addressing Pyotr, who was watching her with a measuring look—and she marched to the door and flung it open.

“Katherine, dearest, don’t rush off!” Her father stood up. “Oh, dear, this isn’t going well at all. It’s just that she’s so busy, Pyoder. I can never get her to sit down and take a little break. Did I tell you she runs our whole house? She’s very domestic. Oh, I already said that. And she has a full-time job besides. Did I tell you she teaches preschool? She’s wonderful with small children.”

“Why are you talking this way?” Kate demanded, turning on him. “What’s come over you? I hate small children; you know that.”

There was another hooting sound from Pyotr. He was grinning up at her. “Why you hate small children?” he asked her.

“Well, they’re not very bright, if you’ve noticed.”

He hooted again. What with his hooting and the banana he held, he reminded her of a chimpanzee. She spun away and stalked out, letting the door slam shut, and climbed the stairs two at a time.

Behind her, she heard the door open again. Her father called, “Kate?” She heard his steps on the stairs, but she strode on toward the front of the building.

His steps softened as he arrived on the carpet. “I’ll just see you out, why don’t I?” he called after her.

See her out?

But she paused when she reached the front door. She turned to watch him approach.

“I’ve handled things badly,” he said. He smoothed his scalp with one palm. His coveralls were one-size-fits-all and they ballooned in the middle, giving him the look of a Teletubby. “I didn’t mean to make you angry,” he said.

“I’m not angry; I’m…”

But she couldn’t say the word “hurt.” It might bring tears to her eyes. “I’m fed up,” she said instead.

“I don’t understand.”

She could believe that, actually. Face it: he was clueless.

“And what were you trying to do back there?” she asked him, setting her fists on her hips. “Why were you acting so…peculiar with that assistant?”

“He’s not ‘that assistant’; he’s Pyoder Cherbakov, whom I’m very lucky to have. Just look: he came in on a Sunday! He does that often. And he’s been with me nearly three years, by the way, so I would think