Simple Recipes by Madeleine Thien Read Free Book Online

school.
    “Why don’t you run away, then?”
    She started crying again. “Why do you want me to leave?”
    Tom’s voice was tired. “It’s not a lack of love. I don’t want you drowning. That’s all.” He gave her five hundred dollars
     right there. Irene didn’t interfere. She sat at the kitchen table, letting Tom do what he thought was right. In the morning
     Joanne packed her things and left, caught a bus straight out of Oregon and headed north. My sister Helen moved out not long
     after. She’d met a bio-technologist from Vancouver and married him. We threw a big party for her at the house, then they drove
     away to Canada.
    These days, our town is visited by many tourists. They come from far and wide. On a Saturday during the busy season, the cars
     hail from every state, from Alaska to New Jersey, and from all across Canada.
    I am in charge of the walking tours, the 9:30, 12:15, and 3:00 groups. We start at the town hall and head east along the boulevard,
     past Flotsam & Jetsam, the Whale’s Tail, and Circus World, with its natural and unnatural artifacts — fish dishes, glass buoys,
     bone fossils. Circus World boasts the skeleton of a half-goat, half-human boy, mounted in a glass case. For one dollar, you
     can buy a snapshot of him and send it, postage paid, anywhere in the country. The tour ends at the big frying pan.
    It’s the
why
of it that nobody understands. I tell my father’s version of the story, the frying pan as warmemorial, erected as a tribute to the women who stayed behind. Then I tell my mother’s version, the frying pan for the sake
     of the frying pan, one monumental gesture. North Bend’s Eiffel Tower, the wooden handle visible for miles.
    The Japanese tourists giggle, cupping their hands to their mouths. But the big East Coast men with Hawaiian shirts and baseball
     caps tell me, “You can never have a thing too big. We’ve got the skyscrapers, you know.
Skyscrapers.
Unbelievable.” They tilt their heads back then, and focus on the air above.
    Tom and Irene own a sporting-goods store in North Bend, selling things like scuba gear, flippers, and surfboards. In the mornings,
     Tom takes a walk inland, just for the pleasure of turning around again and walking downhill to the ocean. Irene stands on
     the front steps looking out for him. She has a longing for him. I could be standing right beside her and she wouldn’t even
     know me.
    I am thirty years old and I don’t know if I will ever leave this town. I should, of course, just to see the world. But I would
     want to come back here. Some changes happen so slowly, you can’t know until it’s done — my parents aging, the beach washing
     back from the water. Maybe when I am sixty, the town itself will have receded. All of us who stay here will creep backwards
     too, watching and watching for change, then being surprised when it strikes us, out of theblue. No reason but the fact that it is all different. In our house uphill from the ocean, Irene and Tom and I sit in the
     kitchen reading books and magazines. From morning until night we can hear the water and the wind and the two mixing together.
     At night, I can hear their voices through the walls, and the past finally seems right in its place. Not everything, not large,
     but still present.

Alchemy

    I n my memory, I followed Paula to the end of the aisle, past the hair products, shampoos, the colored lights, through an empty
     mall, a parking lot, Granville Street at night with kids and adults panhandling, to a bus all lit up, down a quiet street
     to her house, where she closed the door behind her, smiling. I stood on the lawn outside. From there I could see everything:
     the back shed, the porch with the rabbit hutch, her open window with the blue curtains billowing out. Before disappearing
     she had said, “The rabbits are gone,” and I understood that as a sign.
Move on,
she was telling me.
I’m on my own now.
So I left her.
    I remembered that last night. I had wanted