In the Bleak Midwinter

Russ made what Clare always thought of as he-man burgers, the same three-inch thick monstrosities her brothers would put together at family cookouts. She asked to be made useful, and he put her to work on a salad, although when she started rummaging through the pantry, pulling out cans of artichoke hearts and mandarin oranges, he looked as if he might have regretted not limiting her to setting the table. They talked about cooking as a chore and as a means of expression, and argued about which state had the greatest barbecue, and agreed that vinegar-and-salt potato chips were better with burgers than home fries, and a lot faster, too.

She would have pegged him as a paper-plate-and-napkin guy when his wife wasn’t around, but he surprised her by laying out beautifully pieced place mats and huge cloth napkins, along with old ironware that could have come from the earliest years of the kitchen. As they ate, he listened very patiently when she got carried away describing all her gadgets from Williams-Sonoma, only laughing once, when she told him about her latest acquisition, a shrimp de-veiner. She asked him plainly if he ever missed wine with a meal, and he raised his eyebrow at her and said he had never been a wine drinker, but he sometimes missed a bottle of whisky after.

“You mean a glass,” she said.

“I mean a bottle,” he corrected. Afterwards, he washed and she dried. She made several pointed comments about historical authenticity nuts who wouldn’t have a dishwasher because it didn’t fit with the kitchen’s time period. He smiled serenely and reminded her not to leave any water spots on the glasses. When the kitchen had been restored to its pristine state—she could hardly believe it looked like this all the time, since hers wasn’t as immaculate even when it had been scrubbed for company—she grabbed another bottle of beer and he gave her the grand tour.

It was a jewel-box of a house, small and beautifully crafted. Russ told her funny stories about all the mistakes he made and had to redo when he first began its restoration. She oohed and aahed over the elaborate draperies and slipcovers and pillows, so he took her upstairs to where he had built an enormous workroom for Linda out of the old under-the-eaves space. He showed her the half-finished bathroom that was his latest project, and complained about his inability to find a tub anywhere near long enough for him.

She told him about her father, whose mechanical expertise began and ended with aircraft, and who persisted in do-it-yourself projects that had become family legends. Or horror stories. That led to a discussion on the workshop as a sacred place for the American male, and he trotted her all the way down to the cellar, where his impressive collection of power tools looked like high-tech instruments of torture hanging on metal gridwork over the original hewn-rock foundation. Just like her dad’s, Russ’s workshop had a TV and a suspiciously comfortable chair, although it lacked the dozens of model planes that hung from her father’s ceiling.

“How come I’ve never seen any pinups in one of these workrooms?” she asked. “I’d think that would be the perfect place for a little cheesecake.”

“Introducing the feminine would disrupt the whole Iron Male, sweat lodge, men’s-only aspect of the space, though,” he said. “For instance, what kind of calendar does your dad have in his workshop?”

“Uh . . . World War Two nose art.”

“Nose art?”

“Paintings on the noses of planes. Please don’t ask me to explain.”

Russ opened one of the cabinet doors. Inside was a glossy calendar showing a man in blaze orange creeping up on a twelve-point stag, who seemed to be waiting patiently to meet his fate. “See? All male, all the time.”

Clare laughed. “Okay, I get it. Do you have to blow smoke around the room when I leave, to purify it?”

“No, but if you reveal any of our secrets, the Society of Masks comes to your house in the middle of the night and plays ‘Louie, Louie’ until you repent.”

“Society of Masks?”

“Iroquois ceremonial group. Don’t tell me you don’t know anything about the Iroquois?” She went back upstairs to a lecture on Iroquois history. She snagged another beer while hearing about their political structure and made herself comfortable on the Chippendale sofa in the living room while learning about their culture, past and present. When she confessed to her abysmal ignorance on anything that had happened in the Adirondack region before, say, last March, Russ rummaged about making disapproving noises until he came up with five books she had to read, to get a grounding in her new home.

“History! That’s what it’s all about,” he said.

“I guess so,” she said, craning her neck to look at all the history titles jammed into the bookcase.

“I see a lot of police work as a kind of history,” he said, flopping into a high-backed Martha Washington chair.

“Really?” she said, her attention drawn away from the books he had handed her. “How so?”