The Monday Night Cooking School Part 11

"With food like this, who needs an excuse?" Carl responded, and took his wife in his arms to the admiring whistles of the rest of the cla.s.s.

THEY WASHED their palates with white wine and sparkling water, and cleansed them with salads made from fresh lettuce, bursting red tomatoes, and thick, rich olive oil touched with balsamic vinegar. their palates with white wine and sparkling water, and cleansed them with salads made from fresh lettuce, bursting red tomatoes, and thick, rich olive oil touched with balsamic vinegar.

"I feel completely alive," commented Claire. "I could run five miles."

"Perhaps that was not entirely the idea," Carl noted, smiling.

"And now," Lillian announced, "it is time for dessert." She displayed a long, slim chocolate bar. "The name for the cocoa tree is theobroma theobroma, which means 'food of the G.o.ds.' I know that chocolate is meant for us, however, because the melting point for good chocolate just happens to be the temperature within your very human mouth." She broke up the chocolate into bite-size pieces and put two on each small white plate.

"This is dark chocolate, which contains the most chocolate of all. No milk and not a lot of sugar added. At first you may think it is not sweet enough, but sweetness isn't everything. Let the chocolate dissolve on your tongue and see what happens."

She started handing the small white plates to each member of the cla.s.s.

"Lillian, Helen doesn't eat chocolate." Carl spoke in a low voice as she reached him. "She gave it up years ago."

Lillian gave Helen a considering glance. "People change," she commented mildly.

Helen met Lillian's eyes, and took the plate she was offering.

THE CHOCOLATE ENTERED Helen's mouth, and the taste was there, as she remembered it-as if it was some deeper, richer part of herself, all that was mysterious and yearning and pa.s.sionate and sad somehow come together, washed up on the sh.o.r.e of her imagination. And there in her mind, as she knew he would be, in the place where she had hidden the memory apart from the rest of her life, was her lover, his eyes dark, his hands smooth as the sea, bringing her hot chocolate in bed on a cold afternoon. An image held aside like a child's last piece of Halloween candy, encapsulated, whether to protect it from her marriage or her marriage from it, she could never have said. Helen's mouth, and the taste was there, as she remembered it-as if it was some deeper, richer part of herself, all that was mysterious and yearning and pa.s.sionate and sad somehow come together, washed up on the sh.o.r.e of her imagination. And there in her mind, as she knew he would be, in the place where she had hidden the memory apart from the rest of her life, was her lover, his eyes dark, his hands smooth as the sea, bringing her hot chocolate in bed on a cold afternoon. An image held aside like a child's last piece of Halloween candy, encapsulated, whether to protect it from her marriage or her marriage from it, she could never have said.

Sitting in the restaurant kitchen, she heard as much as felt the intake of her breath, then she stilled, holding her lover in her mind, a perfect balance between pleasure and sorrow, as the bite she had taken dissolved in her mouth and the memory, released, flowed into her and became not the beginning or end of anything, but a part of who she was and had always been.

She let out her breath and brought the chocolate to her mouth again, inhaling its soft, dusty-sweet smell, like an attic hung with dried lavender. And this time, what she saw was the wide, white bed in Provence, the cool stiffness of the starched sheets against their bodies still wet from the shower, as she rolled on top of Carl and his eyes grew wide at her unexpected daring, then dark with pleasure as she moved gently, then insistently, and his hands slid up her legs to grasp her hips. The hours after, while Carl's tongue found its way across the drops of water, then the sweat on her skin, as if she was both completely new and utterly known to him.

And then another memory, as effortlessly as one wave following another-years later, Carl in her arms, his body pounded by sobs, her lips on his hair, whispering into its hot, damp depths that his father had loved him so much, that she was sorry, so sorry, that she was there would always be there, while he sobbed as if crying was a new kind of breathing and always would be until finally he slowed and she had held him, quiet, through the end of the day, while the noises of the road and houses and dinnertimes around them rose and fell.

And another-coming home one day to find a blank canvas and a box of oil paints-blue and violet and sage-green and white, terra-cotta and umber and brown-laid out on the small desk he had made for her that fit in the niche at the top of the stairs. Looking out the window above the desk she had seen an easel, set in the garden, spare and strong in front of the overgrown tangle of green and pink and white and yellow of their flowerbeds. She remembered the feel of the paint moving through the tube to the palette that first time, the brush meeting the canvas like a hand touching silk, Carl's pride when she had shown him her first painting, her own face lit with joy.

And finally-the sound of two pairs of pajama-clad feet coming to their bed early on a Christmas morning. Too small and, of course, too early. Carl's low, deep voice welcoming the toddlers into the warm circle of their two bodies, her arms reaching to enclose the sweet smell of her grandchildren, her hand touching Carl's face. And after, her thoughts too large for sleep, as she lay and watched them while Christmas morning came in through the windows.

"C'EST FINI?" Lillian was touching her shoulder gently, a stack of used plates in her hand.

Helen raised her eyes to meet Lillian's.

"Oui," she replied, her voice soft. she replied, her voice soft. "Merci." "Merci."

And pa.s.sed her plate to Lillian.

CLa.s.s WAS OVER-the chocolate long gone, several more wine bottles emptied. Claire and Isabelle were on dish-duty, elbow-deep in warm water, was.h.i.+ng the fondue pots and talking about tricks for helping a baby sleep through the night. Tom was helping Chloe with the recycling. After they finished wiping down the counters, Helen and Carl bid the rest of the cla.s.s farewell and walked down the brick pathway from the restaurant toward the gate.

Ian stood in the kitchen door, watching them. In the mixed light, it looked at first as if Carl and Helen were following each other, but then Ian saw that their hands were linked, the edges of their coats brus.h.i.+ng against the lavender bushes that lined the path.

"They are lovely together, yes?" Antonia came up next to him.

"They are." Ian paused. "I was wondering. I mean, I'd like to cook you dinner. Lillian is always saying we should practice and...."

"Yes, Ian," Antonia replied. "I think I would like that."

Ian

Lillian's." The voice that answered the restaurant kitchen phone was young and masculine. The sound of dishes and voices clattered in the background. "How can I help you?"

"Is Lillian there? Tell her it's Ian."

The phone clunked down on the stainless-steel counter and Ian listened to the voices of the cooks in the background, their conversations slipping in between the sounds of chopping knives and water running over dishes and vegetables. Lillian's voice came on the line.

"Ian? What is it?"

"She said yes to dinner-what do I do now?"

"You cook, Ian."

"I know, but what?"

"Well... how do you feel about her?"

"She's beautiful and smart and..."

"I mean," Lillian's voice was patient, "what do you want?"

"I want..." Ian paused, and then his voice cleared. "I would want her for the rest of my life."

"Then that is how you cook."

THE GIFT CERTIFICATE for Lillian's cooking cla.s.s-a thick, elegant, chocolate-colored card-had come in a birthday letter from Ian's mother the previous July. Ian had called his sister after opening the envelope. for Lillian's cooking cla.s.s-a thick, elegant, chocolate-colored card-had come in a birthday letter from Ian's mother the previous July. Ian had called his sister after opening the envelope.

"Do you know what she gave me? Cooking cla.s.ses. Is there enough irony for you there? Cooking cla.s.ses from a woman who almost never cooked-and when she did she burned what she was making because she'd get all wrapped up in some painting she was working on."

"Ian, I love you." In the background, Ian could hear the sound of toddlers claiming victory or possession, it was hard to tell. "It's your birthday. Why don't you give yourself a present and let go of some of that? She was an artist."

"But why cooking, of all things?"

"I don't know-maybe you should ask her." Ian's sister paused, and he could hear her taking the object of contention from one toddler, sending both howling companionably into the other room. "Are you going to go? To the cla.s.ses?"

"Of course"-Ian's voice sounded defiant, even to himself-"someone has to learn how to cook in this family."

WHEN I IAN WAS YOUNG, he would sneak up to the attic s.p.a.ce his mother used as a painting studio. After the darkness of the steep, narrow stairs, the light in the room glowed like suns.h.i.+ne through flower petals, luminous and golden. His mother would be standing with her profile lit by the window, brush poised in one hand, surveying the canvas in front of her with an appraising eye. Still hidden by the partly closed door, he would wait, not breathing, for the moment he knew would happen, when her expression would clear and become joyous and the brush would reach first for paint and then toward the easel.

During those early years, Ian a.s.sociated the smell of paint, thick and intoxicating, with that happiness on his mother's face. The only time Ian had ever been scolded as a child-for he was, in the main, a very good boy, never in the way, the kind of boy who would always get the straight A's his parents cared little about-was the time when he had snuck up to the attic while his mother and father were talking one evening and painted his hands so he could carry the smell with him, thinking it would bring him the elation he saw in his mother. His father was a bit taken aback by his blue-handed boy; his mother, after explaining about the need to be careful with special paint, had set him up with his own easel in her studio, where for years he had worked beside her-caught up in the swirls, the shapes, the oranges and greens and yellows and reds, the way the brush moved the paint across the thick white sheets of newsprint-until he realized that other people never saw on the paper what had been in his mind.

"It doesn't matter, darling," his mother would tell him. "That's not the point of art."

But for Ian, who wors.h.i.+ped at the altar of clarity as only a boy careering toward adolescence can, it was exactly, precisely, the point.

WHEN HE WAS TEN, Ian had discovered computers. There were no computers in his house back then; his mother was more amused than interested by the concept and his father used the one in his office at work. But a friend from school had one, and Ian was smitten from the moment his hands touched the keyboard. Here was a partner of unceasing consistency, whose rules were inviolate, if only you understood them. And Ian did.

He badgered his parents for months, until the next Christmas there was a present just the right size under the tree. Ian sat by the box from the time he spotted it at four o'clock on Christmas morning until the time his family finally opened their presents and he could take his prize from its Styrofoam packaging and bring it alive. From then on, the computer, or one of its various successors, held court in his room. Over the years, more computers entered the home, but they were mere functionaries in the life of his family-mail carriers, research a.s.sistants. Ian regarded his computer as the best of friends, one that would unselfishly step aside for a new model with a better memory, a quicker wit. In a house filled with the ambiguities of color, Ian's first computers offered a rea.s.suring world of black and white.

IAN HAD BEEN DETERMINED not to walk into Lillian's cooking cla.s.s unprepared, so he had spent the month of August in his apartment kitchen. As a software engineer, he reasoned that cooking, like any other process, could be approached as a series of steps to be mastered, fundamental skills that could be applied even, or perhaps especially, when one was confronted by the chaos of complicated recipes, sinks overflowing with pots and pans, shelves of red and silver-green spices, hiding in small, round gla.s.s jars like memory land mines. not to walk into Lillian's cooking cla.s.s unprepared, so he had spent the month of August in his apartment kitchen. As a software engineer, he reasoned that cooking, like any other process, could be approached as a series of steps to be mastered, fundamental skills that could be applied even, or perhaps especially, when one was confronted by the chaos of complicated recipes, sinks overflowing with pots and pans, shelves of red and silver-green spices, hiding in small, round gla.s.s jars like memory land mines.

He started with rice-pure, white, elemental, an expression of mathematical simplicity: 1 part rice + 2 parts water = 3 parts cooked rice. Nothing extra, nothing lost. Cooking it required only a heavy pot and discipline, both of which he had.

It was a disaster. First he had too much discipline, and the rice on the bottom of the pot scorched, sending a sad, brown smell throughout the apartment; then he had too little, and the rice was soggy, refusing to be roused no matter how much he fluffed and encouraged. He added salt and b.u.t.ter, which at least gave the mush a vague resemblance to popcorn in terms of flavor, but it still was not rice. Not the way he wanted it.

It was abundantly clear that he was going to need help.

IAN'S APARTMENT was above a Chinese restaurant that he frequented more often than he would have cared to have his mother know. The dining room was small, its walls painted a color that Ian guessed had once been red, the menus faded almost to the point of illegibility. was above a Chinese restaurant that he frequented more often than he would have cared to have his mother know. The dining room was small, its walls painted a color that Ian guessed had once been red, the menus faded almost to the point of illegibility.

The first time Ian had ventured downstairs to the restaurant was two years earlier, after a long, hot summer day spent moving into his new apartment. He had been tired and hungry, and after being seated by an ancient waitress whose formidable expression made him look surrept.i.tiously at his watch to make sure he wasn't past closing time, he had opted for the safe choice and ordered sweet and sour pork and rice. When the plate arrived, he looked down at a fragrant mix of chicken, ginger, and the brilliant green of barely cooked broccoli tips.

"This is not what I ordered," he told the waitress, as politely as he could, not yet sure how varied his eating options would be in his new neighborhood.

She raised one impressive gray eyebrow at him, and left.

It was nine p.m. and he was the only customer in the restaurant; as the swinging door closed behind the bowlegged gait of his waitress, he found himself alone with the plate in front of him. Uncertain if she would ever return and distinctly unwilling to follow the woman into the kitchen, Ian picked up his chopsticks and took a bite. The chicken was soft, delicate, the broccoli crisp and distinctly alive, ginger seasoning the mix like the provocative flip of a short skirt. The ache in his muscles from hauling and carrying moving boxes, the general anxiety that always encompa.s.sed him when he was confronted with the new and unfamiliar, left him like the last train of the day, leaving him calm and refreshed. He ate slowly and thoughtfully, disregarding any thought of a take-home container for the next day's lunch. As he finished, the old woman returned.

"Good?" she asked. He nodded gratefully.

Her hands gathered the dishes roughly together into a stack. "You come back again," she said.

He did, and never once got what he ordered. He considered acknowledging the situation and simply declaring himself at the mercy of the kitchen, but then again, he realized he already was-his order simply a line in a play already written, without which the rest would not be the same. And so, each time, he stated a request he knew would be ignored and laid his trust at the doors of the kitchen, out of which, as if in recognition of a test he had pa.s.sed, came dishes of delicate complexity and scintillating tastes, rarely if ever to be found on the actual menu.

THE NIGHT of the soggy rice, Ian left his failed culinary experiment and went down the faded red stairs of his apartment building to the restaurant below. The waitress pointed to his usual table by the window. of the soggy rice, Ian left his failed culinary experiment and went down the faded red stairs of his apartment building to the restaurant below. The waitress pointed to his usual table by the window.

"Do you know how to cook rice?" Ian blurted out as he was sitting down.

The waitress stared at him.

"I mean, of course you do; I just wondered if you could tell me how."

"Why? You eat rice here."

"I want to learn how."

The old woman noted the urgency in his voice; she looked at him more closely, nodded. "You don't cook rice, you take care of it," she stated. "I'll get your dinner now." She returned to the kitchen without even the pretense of asking him for his order.

BACK IN HIS APARTMENT, Ian held a large metal bowl with a layer of rice lying like an ocean floor underneath several inches of cool water. He dipped his hand into the liquid and swirled his fingers in a clockwise motion. He felt the delicate grains slipping between his fingers, watching pearlescent white clouds of starch enter the water like the changing of weather in the sky.

When the water was so thick with starch he could barely see the rice, he placed a colander in the sink and poured the contents of the bowl through it, the rice running out with the water like thick oatmeal until the last of it finally fell into the colander with a thud. He put the rice back in the bowl, filled it with water, and repeated the process, again and again, until the water stayed clear and he could see each grain of rice in the bottom of the bowl.

He drained the rice one last time and put the pot on the stove. He looked at the rice in the colander, plumped from its immersion, thought for a moment, then poured a bit less than two cups of water into the pot and turned on the heat.

ONCE I IAN had perfected rice, he turned to polenta, then to fish lightly grilled on the hibachi he balanced on the pint-size balcony outside his kitchen window. By the end of August, he had placed small pots of herbs out on the balcony as well, the smell of basil and oregano and chives greeting his nose when he opened the window in the morning. He discovered a farmers' market near the bus stop on his way home from work downtown. He bought a good, sharp knife at a culinary store and began experimenting, slicing vegetables straight and julienned, cutting meat with and across the grain, taking scissors to his basil, then ripping it with his fingers, to see if it varied the taste. had perfected rice, he turned to polenta, then to fish lightly grilled on the hibachi he balanced on the pint-size balcony outside his kitchen window. By the end of August, he had placed small pots of herbs out on the balcony as well, the smell of basil and oregano and chives greeting his nose when he opened the window in the morning. He discovered a farmers' market near the bus stop on his way home from work downtown. He bought a good, sharp knife at a culinary store and began experimenting, slicing vegetables straight and julienned, cutting meat with and across the grain, taking scissors to his basil, then ripping it with his fingers, to see if it varied the taste.

He found a store that sold spices in bulk, buying just as much as he needed, which allowed him the excuse to return and wander through the store, smelling containers with names he didn't recognize. One time, he took a packet of an especially intriguing spice into the Chinese restaurant and showed it to the waitress. She inhaled deeply; then, with a look of amus.e.m.e.nt, she took the packet back into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a dish redolent in its fragrance. Over time, it became a game of sorts. At first frustrating, the recipes for the dishes became something he looked forward to figuring out, a challenge keeping him company, entertaining him in the middle of a traffic jam or while he waited on hold for a service call. He found himself eating more slowly, each bite a chance to understand a part of the puzzle, until finally the puzzle wasn't pieces, simply the feel of a warm sauce sliding down his throat, the crunch of a water chestnut against the edge of his teeth.

BY THE TIME the cooking cla.s.s started, Ian had more questions than answers. He found himself reading chemistry books after the cake-baking cla.s.s, trying to make pasta on his own after the Thanksgiving dinner. Watching the other members of the cla.s.s, he found himself wondering where they had come from, what it was they brought with them, as if they, too, were recipes he might come to understand. Where Claire's face, that first night, had gotten its mixture of excitement and distrust, what made Isabelle recall the things she remembered, or what had placed Tom inside such an untouchable circle of sorrow. And then there was Antonia, always Antonia, with her olive skin and dark hair, her voice carefully finding its way around the American sounds and syllables that seemed too flat and awkward for her sensuous mouth. the cooking cla.s.s started, Ian had more questions than answers. He found himself reading chemistry books after the cake-baking cla.s.s, trying to make pasta on his own after the Thanksgiving dinner. Watching the other members of the cla.s.s, he found himself wondering where they had come from, what it was they brought with them, as if they, too, were recipes he might come to understand. Where Claire's face, that first night, had gotten its mixture of excitement and distrust, what made Isabelle recall the things she remembered, or what had placed Tom inside such an untouchable circle of sorrow. And then there was Antonia, always Antonia, with her olive skin and dark hair, her voice carefully finding its way around the American sounds and syllables that seemed too flat and awkward for her sensuous mouth.

He had found Antonia's hesitancy with his language endearing, and his desire to protect her was strong until the day he had encountered her at the farmers' market. He had recognized her from some twenty feet away and walked over, hoping he could help her past some language barrier, his a.s.sistance a worthy introduction to some other conversation. But as he got closer, he could see her hands flying, as if released. She was laughing, her words unintelligible to him but completely comprehensible to the Italian produce man in the stall, their faces beaming at the joy of playing in the waterfall of their own language.

Ian stood behind Antonia, breathing in her happiness, until the produce man sent him a sharp look and said something rapidly to Antonia, who turned to him, her face still lit from her conversation.

"Si, si," she responded. she responded. "Lo conosco." "Lo conosco."

I know him. "h.e.l.lo, Ian." And without a thought, Ian's soul stepped into the radiated warmth of her expression.

A FEW WEEKS LATER FEW WEEKS LATER, Antonia had called and asked him to help her. There were floors, she said, that needed to go away. So her clients would understand how important it was to keep things that were good and true. Ian didn't mention the apparent irony of getting rid of something in order to keep it; he just agreed and thanked the fates that had sent him a construction job that last summer before college, years earlier.

They had spent a long Sat.u.r.day, pulling up squares of linoleum, downing cup after tiny cup of the espresso that Antonia made on the big black stove and that he hardly needed to get his pulse running. Midday, they took a break, and Antonia got out the lunch she had brought for them-hard-crusted bread and prosciutto and fresh mozzarella, a bottle of red wine.

"This is how we make a picnic in Italy," she told him, beaming.

"No peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly?" he asked.

"What is that?"

Ian smiled. "So, why did you move here?" he asked, curious.

She pondered the question for a moment. "Well, Lucca-the place where I grew up-it was wonderful, like a warm bath. So beautiful and everyone so loving. All the time, I knew what to do. If someone invited me to dinner, I knew what to bring. I knew the hours for the market. I could tell you, right now, when to catch the next train to Pisa. There was nothing wrong. I just wanted-how do you say? a cold shower?-to wake up my soul."

Ian tried to imagine being so sure of what to do that he would leave everything, go somewhere else, just to be uncertain. She spoke so confidently, as if a warm bath was something you could to turn on any faucet to find. Perhaps, he thought, for her it was. Listening to her, Ian realized that he had spent his life in search of exactly what she had stepped out of. He was going to tell her this, but he stopped. Her face was changing expressions like sun moving over water, and he realized that more than telling her what he thought, he wanted to hear what she would say, wanted to watch her hands move in the air like sparrows.

"I remember," she said, "getting off the plane in New York. All those big American voices banging into each other. I had never heard so many. I thought I knew English, but I couldn't understand-the words would fly by and sometimes one would hit me and I would try to hold on to it. But they were very, very fast." She shook her head ruefully. "I felt so stupid."

"You are not stupid," Ian said emphatically.

"No," she responded, her eyes clear. "I am not. But you see, in the end, I think it is good to not know things sometimes."

"Why?"

"It makes everything... a possibility, if you don't know the answer." She paused. "I am sounding brave. I am not-I was scared. And it makes you tired, not knowing things. When I got here, I drank half-and-half for three weeks. I thought, Americans are so rich, maybe their milk is, too." She laughed.

"How is it now?" Ian asked.

"Better. I buy milk now." She smiled. "I am joking. But it is better. Every year I am here, I see more things that are familiar. I know that Americans carve pumpkins for Halloween, or send each other Christmas cards, or cook those big turkeys..." Her nose crinkled.

"You know what is best?" Antonia asked. Ian shook his head. "The cooking cla.s.s. All those people, they all want to see something in a different way, like I did, but we are together."