How Sweet It Is (4 page)

Uncertainty lines my face; I can feel it in every pore.

Fingers gripping the mug’s handle, Regena Lorraine peers at me. “You don’t know?”

five

S
uddenly I am back in the hospital with my body covered in sterile bandages. Sally and Jeannie are giving each other glances—knowing glances.
You don’t know, Deena? Lucas has been two-timing you.

“Lay it on me, Auntie,” I want to say. I don’t think I am capable of being shocked by anything anymore. But the boldness doesn’t surface in my tone; my voice merely utters a weak, “What?”

My aunt prolongs her answer by first taking a doggy biscuit from the pocket of her dress. “Here, Handsome,” she calls. Giovanni raises his large head, jumps up, and races to her side, drool rolling off his mouth.

I wouldn’t call him handsome.

She hands him the treat, and her adoration for her pet is evident. As he chews, she gently runs her fingers over his coat. I start to ask what kind of dog he is, but then I think: Does it really matter that I know the individual breeds of the very animals I am allergic to?

When he has devoured every crumb, he searches for some under the table and, finding none, resumes his position on the rug. Only then does my aunt give me her full attention. But she still doesn’t answer my question. “How are the pigs, Shug?” Her voice penetrates the darkness that has formed over the mountains outside the sliding glass door.

“They’re fine.” I think of my parents’ farm as a strange longing curls through my stomach. I wonder if Dad is filling the troughs with dinner for the animals now. I can almost hear Clementine, the spotted sow with an attitude, quacking at him in a tone that makes us think she is part duck. I say, “Clementine had a litter of nine last month.”

“Nine? Did you say nine?” Regena Lorraine clasps her hands together as if she’s ready to applaud. Laughing, she adds, “My stars! I bet your dad was happy. Lots of cash in those.”

“He’s always happy,” I suppress the urge to say. If only some of that energy for living would rub off on Mom. And me. “So about what you said… ?” I hope to guide my aunt back to the original topic.

She nods while rubbing her fingers over her rings. Some have tiny jewels and others are plain silver. “Do you know where I got this one?” she asks, polishing a silver band with an index finger.

I shake my head. Swallowing, I want to say, “Rings make me sad.” But as surely as Giovanni likes dog treats, such a statement would cause my aunt’s interest to pique, and suddenly we’d be talking about Lucas.

She gives my hand a pat, a gesture that makes me feel that I’m five years old. “You’re supposed to teach.”

“Teach?” The word sounds hollow and foreign, like when I’m trying to repeat a word my missionary sister has taught me to say in Chinese.

“At The Center. Ernest’s request.”

“What’s The Center?”

I wait for her reply while she takes a long drink from her mug. Wiping moisture from her mouth onto a tissue she pulled from somewhere out of her robust chest, she says, “The Center is a program for middle-school-aged children. It’s held at the church along with the preschool.”

I picture a group of preadolescent kids and swallow again. The thought of preschoolers makes my nose itch. When I was small, I was known for squirming in my chair. I would move my bottom left and right, driving my mother to the point of glaring at me. “Deena, Deena, young ladies do not twist in their chairs.” The urge to twist is strong right now. I scratch my nose instead.

My aunt gently tells me, “Ernest started the program at the Presbyterian church in town. They get donations from local people and businesses.”

But what does this place have to do with me?

She tucks her tissue into her chest and smoothes her dress. “Ernest wanted you to teach there. The older kids, I mean. That’s why he left this cabin to you.”

No. No, I don’t have to teach. Teaching is not my gift. I cannot sing and I can’t teach.

“He wanted you to live here and teach.” She studies my face. “With pay, of course.”

At last I find my voice. “Teach
what
?”

“Flower arranging and martial arts.” She pauses to glimpse my expression.

I have no smile, just a solemn look.

Laughter overcomes her again. Even her glasses shake as she gives in to amusement. “Cooking, Shug! Cooking.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a cook!” Her words expand to the wooden ceiling, bounce off, and vibrate against the cedar walls. “Ernest loved to cook. Knowing Ernest, he probably had hundreds of other reasons, too.”

I wonder what plan he had in mind when he dangled kitchen utensils around the cabin. There is a whole assortment displayed in every room. There’s even a stainless steel whisk hanging over the washing machine. Did he whisk his clothes?

“He was so proud of you going to cooking school,” my aunt says warmly.

That much I know to be true. “He wrote and told me that,” I say. The letter arrived shortly after I started my first year at Chef Bordeaux’s. It was on paper decorated with drawings of figs and grapes, bananas and lemons. He wrote me many times after that, and I would reply with descriptions of my courses because that was what he wanted to hear. He seemed especially excited when I sent the recipe for mussels in tomato and garlic. Weeks later, he wrote,
I think it’s wonderful to learn that my little Georgia granddaughter is creating Greek food—clearly, some of my favorite.

My grandpa was always traveling, so I never got to see him much, but through letters and recipes, over the miles, and as he traveled around the globe, we somehow connected. Somewhere in my belongings is the picture he sent of himself standing at the miniature village called Madurodam in Amsterdam. Towering over the replica with the tiny shops behind him, he looks larger than life. I think that must be the way his daughter, Regena Lorraine, will always remember him.

“Well, my goodness.” She produces another light laugh. “Now you can share your love of cooking with the sweethearts at The Center.”

The sweethearts? I want to ask an obvious question: Why didn’t anyone mention this before? All I heard was that a cabin awaited me in the beautiful and serene Smoky Mountains. My father told me Grandpa had left the cabin to me because I was surely Ernest’s favorite grandchild—just like he was his father’s best-liked son. Mom said it was because nobody else wanted a cabin stuck on a remote mountain peak. No one ever mentioned anything about teaching children.

“I’m executor of Ernest’s estate. Have you seen a copy?”

First it’s a cabin, then teaching children at a church, and now an estate? Hesitantly, I ask, “Of what?”

“The will.”

I shake my head.

Massaging a dimpled elbow, she explains, “Well, it’s all in there. Ernest states that you are to teach cooking at The Center for six months. Then this cabin will be yours.”

“Six months?”

She lifts a hand to view her wristwatch. The face sports Minnie Mouse in her typical polka-dotted skirt. Using her elbows, Regena Lorraine pushes her body from the table. Her smile is captivating, as if she knows a secret and is clearly amused by it. “So glad you’re here safe and sound, Shug.” Standing, she adds, “Gotta go.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Time for Clue.”

“Clue?”

“Yes, the game of Clue.”

“I’ve played Clue.”

“Ernest did, too. That’s how he got most of these kitchen utensils.” She points to a spatula dangling from the edge of a cabinet. “Some of these things he got, I have no idea where they came from. What do they say about one man’s junk being another man’s treasure?”

Confusion weaves itself around my mind. “What?”

“He sure enjoyed playing to win,” she comments as she scans the decorated walls of the cabin. “We’ve played for kitchen utensils for dozens of years.” Grinning at me, she adds, “I’d tell you how it works, but really, that’s a story for another day.”

Giovanni is already standing at her side, his tail wagging like the windshield wipers on my Jeep. My aunt opens the passenger door to her truck, and the one hundred pounds of fur hops in, tail still moving.

After Aunt Regena Lorraine backs out of the gravel driveway, managing with magnificent skill not to go over the cliff, I walk around the house and spend time viewing all the cooking utensils. There’s a grater with a round rooster’s face for a handle. A three-pronged fork has
Atlantic Beach
inscribed on one of its silver tines. A red corkscrew suspended from a hook in the kitchen over the stove has
Kiss the Cook
in gold letters. A red, white, and blue plastic spatula near the sink reads
Panama.
On the wall by the Kenmore refrigerator, a large wooden spoon declares
I Left My Heart in Athens
in green and red lettering. Above the fridge is a round egg-yolk-colored form that looks to be made of plaster. I, too, wonder where Grandpa Ernest got some of these items. The piece looks like a chunk of rock from another planet. On the bottom side of it sits a metal hook. If it is a utensil, what does it do?

As I walk through the dining room and see a variety of bottle openers, pizza cutters, and corkscrews mounted on the walls, I conclude that Grandpa must have been a good Clue player. He must have known every motive Miss Scarlet had in the library with the candlestick.

————

Halfway through Vivaldi’s “Spring” concerto, I begin unpacking my Coleman cooler. To the rhythm of the instruments played by Neville Marriner’s orchestra, I place the items that were in my apartment refrigerator and freezer earlier this day in the cabin’s white Kenmore. I glide across the linoleum floor the way I used to when I was a tiny girl with the desire to become a ballerina. Vivaldi is one of my favorite composers, although my friends think I’m loony for enjoying classical music.

Grandpa’s refrigerator holds one lemon, single, alone, lying on its side on the middle shelf. I can see the faint blue word stamped against the yellow peel—
Sunkist.
I wonder if this is his lemon, one he purchased. I see him driving down the winding roads to Ingle’s to buy ingredients for a meal he planned to make—perhaps one he had invited others to. But, the question is, why it is the lone item in the refrigerator? He’s been dead three months now. I’m assuming that, like most of us, his refrigerator contained half-used jars of mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise, and a bottle or two of his favorite salad dressing. Maybe even a container of some cheese dip he bought a year ago that he wasn’t sure he really liked but kept on the back of the bottom shelf, just the same. A healthy head of lettuce, a few yellow onions, some carrots in the produce bin, and since I know he was fond of vine-ripe tomatoes, a cluster of those. Maybe the freezer held some frozen peas, lima beans, and corn. Someone emptied this refrigerator—most likely Regena Lorraine. I can picture her tossing out all the bottles, perhaps hanging on to the produce and later making a tossed salad with the vegetables, tears in her eyes, thinking that it was the last salad she’d ever eat made with Daddy’s lettuce, Daddy’s carrots, Daddy’s onions, and Daddy’s tomatoes. If she cleaned out the fridge, why did she leave the lemon? I finger its cold surface and scratch it with a fingernail. It still smells like a lemon should.

I add the contents of my Coleman. A bunch of red seedless grapes, a jar of Hellmann’s, five sticks of butter, a bag of Starbuck’s Dark Roast, and two bags of frozen corn. From a large brown sack I lift out five baking potatoes, a plastic bag of purple onions, a box of cake flour, a loaf of wheat bread, and three cans of green beans. I find places for them on the pantry shelves. In the next couple days, I’ll head to the local grocery store for milk, juice, and half-and-half for my coffee. Every cup of java needs half-and-half, an indulgence culinary school taught me.

I peer into every cupboard and into the pantry, trying to find the sugar. Finally I find the sugar bowl—a tomato-red dish with a green lid. Inside sits a tiny spoon with the word
Kos
printed on the handle.

From a lumpy box, I unpack my cake-decorating ingredients, tips, frosting bags, blender, and new pans. All were protected by items of my clothing—my worn T-shirts, my sweat pants. Finding space in a bottom cabinet for the pieces of my life—the tangible parts that help me define who I still am—I feel a small tinge of hope.

Vivaldi plays with vigor as I make the kitchen my own.

Over the instruments I can hear Chef Bordeaux’s voice from when I first studied under his tutelage: “A real chef needs a kitchen to make her own.” He must have seen this printed in a cooking magazine or heard it on some culinary video because this phrase is the only sentence the chef speaks using proper English grammar.

I sneeze, and I’m sure the cause is dog fur. Of course the only person I know in this town would have to be a dog owner.

six