The School of Essential Ingredients (16 page)

Chloe held her tortilla over a small plate, watching the drips from the tomato juice and butter land on the white china. The class was quiet, absorbed in the food in their hands. Abuelita and Lillian stood at the counter, leaning into each other, talking quietly, while Antonia removed the last of the tortillas from the griddle and placed them on the stack underneath a white kitchen towel to stay warm.

It was like a picture, Chloe thought. A recipe without words. She stood still, sensing the kitchen around her, feeling the energy the room held, would hold until the next afternoon when the cooks and bussers and patrons arrived and it would again become something more than the accumulation of its bustle and ingredients, and the food they cooked would become laughter and romance, warm and bright and golden. She smiled.

Lillian walked over and pulled one last tomato from the bag and handed it to Chloe. “I think you earned this,” she said.

Class Was over. Abuelita had gone home, claiming with a laugh that she was too old for late hours. The others had left one or a few at a time, Claire begging some tortillas to take home to her children, Ian dragging Tom outside saying he wanted to ask him a question, Helen and Carl offering Isabelle a ride.

It was quiet in the kitchen, the only sounds the rattling of the bowls as Chloe put them away, the swish of the towel as Lillian cleaned the last of the counters. The door clicked shut behind Antonia as she carried the last of the wooden folding chairs to the storage shed just outside.

“Can I ask you something?” Chloe met Antonia at the door as she reentered.

“Certo.”
Of course.

“You are so beautiful,” Chloe stumbled. “I’m not . . .”

“Ahhh . . .” Antonia smiled and turned to Lillian. “Can we borrow your restroom for a moment?” Lillian nodded, and Antonia grabbed a clean kitchen towel and took Chloe by the hand, leading her through the restaurant dining room and into the tiny green women’s restroom. Standing in front of the mirror, Antonia took the clip that had been holding the waves of her black hair, and then deftly pulled Chloe’s brown curls away from her face.

“Good,” said Antonia, as she secured the clip in Chloe’s hair. “Now, water.”

“What?”

“Your face, please.” She turned on the hot water.

Chloe filled her cupped hands with warm water and brought it up to her face. She could feel the heat meeting her skin, the smell, slightly metallic, green as the room around her. It was quiet in the space created between her hands and face, clean, safe.

“Now soap.”

Chloe rubbed the soap bar between her hands, the scent of rosemary tickling her nose, then she scrubbed, rinsed, and wiped her face on the towel Antonia handed her, appalled when she saw the thick black streaks across the white.

“Ancora.”
Again. Antonia smiled.

“She’s going to kill me for that towel.”

“Use more soap this time. And no, she won’t.”

Finally, Antonia relented and Chloe looked up into the mirror. Her face gazed back at her, open, her eyes huge and blue, her hair barely restrained.

“Essential ingredients,” Antonia observed, “only the best.”

“But
you
are beautiful,” Chloe insisted.

Antonia laughed softly. “I used to say that to my mother all the time. She would be standing in the kitchen or digging in the garden, and I would think she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. I was not a pretty teenager. And do you know what she would say to me?”

Chloe shook her head.

“She would say, ‘
Life
is beautiful. Some people just remind you of that more than others.’”

When Antonia and Chloe got back to the kitchen, they saw Lillian had pulled a tray of chocolate éclairs out of the walk-in refrigerator.

“Stacy’s specialty. There are a few left over from Sunday. Care to join me?”

“Really?” Antonia and Chloe eagerly settled in around the counter. Chloe picked up one of the éclairs and set it on a white plate that Antonia handed to her. She ran a finger along the top and felt the thick, heavy chocolate as it melted from her finger in her mouth.

“Uhmmmm. Tell Stacy these are wonderful.”

“I like the filling best,” Antonia remarked, delicately breaking the éclair in half and dipping the tip of one finger into the cream in the center. “My mother always scolded me for eating the inside of my pastries first.”

Antonia’s cell phone buzzed, and Antonia looked at the screen.

“How is it you say? Speak of the angel?” She saw their puzzled faces. “My mother,” she explained. “Excuse me for a moment.”

She opened her phone as she walked into the dining room. Chloe heard her voice as the door closed.
“Pronto? . . . Sì, ciao. Sto bene, e tu?”

Chloe watched the swinging door for a moment after it had closed. She could still hear Antonia’s voice, chattering delightedly.

“My mother and I would never talk like that,” Chloe said, her voice like coffee left too long in a pot. She looked over at Lillian. “What about you?”

“We did for a while. She died when I was seventeen.”

Chloe’s face flushed red. “I’m sorry.” Then, because she was young and incapable of not asking, “What did you do?”

“I cooked.” The motion of Lillian’s hands encompassed the kitchen and the dining room beyond. “And I was lucky—I had Abuelita in my life.” She put her hand on Chloe’s shoulder for a moment, then picked up the tray and carried it into the walk-in as Antonia came back through the swinging door, laughing.

“My mother, she likes to call me at this time,” she said to Chloe. “She says it is the only thing that is good about my living so far away—she can wish me good morning and good night at the same time. Morning for her, night for me. And always, she wants to know when I am coming home to marry Angelo.”

“Wait,” Chloe interjected. “Who is Angelo?” Lillian, exiting the walk-in, raised one eyebrow.

“Oh, he is fine. A nice man. But he does not want to marry me and I do not want to marry him.”

Lillian and Chloe looked at each other.

“I know who you want.” Chloe’s voice was mischievous. “But will he ever get up the nerve to do anything?” Antonia blushed.

“Now, Chloe.” Lillian’s admonishment was diluted by a smile she couldn’t quite control. “We all know some bread just takes more time to rise.”

Chloe laughed. “Yeah, well, I think it might be time to punch the dough, then.”

Chloe arrived home at almost midnight that night. Jake was waiting in the kitchen.

“I thought you worked Monday nights?” Chloe asked.

“Not this late.” He looked at her closely. “You look different. Where were you?”

“With friends.” She read his expression. “I’m taking a class, okay?”

“What, getting ready for college?” Sarcasm curled up like a cat in his voice.

“A cooking class.”

Jake’s face closed so fast Chloe could hear the snap in the air. “I’m the cook,” he said.

Chloe leaned against the doorframe, feeling the line of its wood along her spine. In her hand, she carried the tomato Lillian had given her, its weight solid and comforting.

“I think I might be, too.”

“There’s only one chef in a kitchen, Chloe.”

Chloe pondered his statement for a moment.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking that, too.” She put the tomato carefully on the counter, then moved past Jake into the bedroom and started putting her clothes into brown paper bags. Jake didn’t move. When she reached the front door again, bags in hand, she turned to him, nodding toward the kitchen counter.

“That’s a good tomato—you don’t need to mix it with anything.”

She walked out, shut the apartment door behind her, and leaned against the jamb.

“Oh shit,” she said, and giggled. “What am I going to do now?”

Isabelle

Isabelle entered through the kitchen door of Lillian’s restaurant and halted, puzzled. There was so much activity, so much food already sprawled across the counters. Was she late for class? But even if so, who was the young lady spinning between the stove and the sink where Isabelle always washed her hands before the lesson started? Who was the man going into the dining room with plates lined up his arm like pearls on a necklace?

Isabelle stood in confusion. This was not the first time such a thing had happened, as if life had suddenly put a different reel in the movie projector midway through a screening. People and images floating toward her, around her, leaving her hoping for a recognizable moment, a familiar voice or face upon which she could anchor the rest and thus herself. At times like these, Isabelle reverted to lessons from childhood. Her mother had always said if you are lost, just stand still until someone finds you.

“Isabelle.” Lillian was coming up to her. Then it was all right, after all; if the cooking teacher was there, it must be time for the lesson.

“Isabelle,” said Lillian, and her voice was sun on the grass. “Now, isn’t that lucky. I wanted you to try our new menu, and here you are.” Lillian’s fingers touched Isabelle’s shoulder, her smile wide and delighted. “I have the perfect table for you; we can sneak through the kitchen, like food spies.”

Lillian gently took Isabelle’s elbow and threaded her through the flying cooks and waiters, the celery tops and egg shells and tubs of clams and mussels, the smells of peppers in a hot pan and dishwasher steam, to the door that led to the dining room and sweet, soft candlelight, the clink of silverware against china, and the hush of heavy napkins dropping into waiting laps.

“Will this do?” asked Lillian, as Isabelle sank gratefully into a thickly upholstered chair. The table was small and round, set in an alcove looking over the garden. Isabelle could see there were people in the dining room; she wondered if the class was having a party.

“Is it Monday?” asked Isabelle.

“No, darling, Sunday. But you’ll stay all the same, won’t you? It would make me happy.”

ISABELLE had ALWAYS thought of her mind as a garden, a magical place to play as a child, when the grown-ups were having conversations and she was expected to listen politely—and even, although she hated to admit this, later with Edward, her husband, when listening to the particularities of his carpet salesmanship wore her thin. Every year the garden grew larger, the paths longer and more complicated. Meadows of memories.

Of course, her mental garden hadn’t always been well tended. There were the years when the children were young, fast-moving periods when life flew by without time for the roots of deep reflection, and yet she knew memories were created whether one pondered them or not. She had always considered that one of the luxuries of growing older would be the chance to wander through the garden that had grown while she wasn’t looking. She would sit on a bench and let her mind take every path, tend every moment she hadn’t paid attention to, appreciate the juxtaposition of one memory against another.

But now that she was older and had time, she found more often than not that she was lost—words, names, her children’s phone numbers arriving and departing from her mind like trains without a schedule. The other day she had spent five minutes trying to put the key in her car door, only to realize that the automobile in front of her was simply similar to one she had owned fifteen years previously. She wouldn’t have ever figured it out if the owner of the car hadn’t come out of the grocery store and helped her, pushing that fancy little button on Isabelle’s key fob, turning on the lights of her car three spots south, which was silver, not green, small, not a station wagon.

Lillian approached Isabelle’s table and poured a sparkling dry white wine in a tall fluted glass. The pale golden liquid gleamed in the candlelight, mysterious and playful.

“Bubbles for your senses,” Lillian said. “Enjoy.”

Isabelle looked around her. The room was filled mostly with couples, leaning toward each other across tables, enclosed in their own spheres of candlelit intimacy. Fingers reaching toward fingers, or flying through the air, drawing the shape of a story. It made Isabelle wonder if rhythms could hold stories within them, if movements could jog memories the way a smell or sight could. Perhaps there were pathways in the air, created by her hands over years of relating anecdotes, waiting to take her back to stories she no longer remembered. She started moving her hands experimentally, then stopped. That was what old people did. She reached for her glass and looked nonchalantly through the window to the darkened garden outside.