The Monday Night Cooking School Part 3

"WHAT'S ON FOR TONIGHT?" asked Claire from the front row of the cla.s.s. Carl noticed that Claire was leaning forward eagerly; there was something different about her tonight-a haircut? Clothes? Helen would know, if he asked her, but Helen was focused on Lillian.

The counter Lillian stood behind was free of ingredients; a mixer, a rubber spatula, and several mixing bowls were all that the cla.s.s could see reflected in the mirror that hung above the counter.

"So"-Lillian's eyes were playful-"I started you off with a pretty dramatic beginning last time, and you should be rewarded for being such good sports. Besides, fall is starting to make itself known and it seems like a good time for indulgence. Now, I want you all to tell me what you think about when I say cake."

"Chocolate."

"Frosting."

"Candles."

"Lamb cake," said Ian.

"Lamb cake?" asked Lillian, smiling. "What's that, Ian?"

Ian looked around the room and saw the others waiting, intrigued. "Well, my dad always made it for Easter. White cake shaped like a lamb, with white icing and coconut shavings." He paused, then continued in a rush. "I hated coconut, and I thought the whole thing was stupid, but after I went away to college, all I could think about was how I wasn't going to get any of the lamb cake. And then about a week after Easter I got a padded envelope in the mail from my dad. Inside was this thing that looked like a frosted cow patty. I called my dad and you know what he said? 'Well, we missed you, son, so I sent you the lamb b.u.t.t.' "

The other students laughed, and then the room quieted, waiting for the next story. The woman sitting next to Carl and his wife s.h.i.+fted slightly in her seat.

"Go on, Antonia," Lillian encouraged her, and the young woman spoke up, her accent thick and warm as suns.h.i.+ne.

"When I was growing up, in Italy, my family lived upstairs from a bakery. Every morning the smell of the bread baking would come up the stairs, under my door. When I came home from school, the gla.s.s cases would be full of little cakes, but they were always thin and flat, not so interesting. Sometimes, though, in the back, they would be making a big one, for a wedding." She sat back in her seat, smiling at the memory.

"I remember my wedding cake," said Claire. "I was so hungry-we hadn't eaten all day. Here was this incredible cake-layers of chocolate and whipped cream and all these curlicues of thick, smooth frosting-and they kept making us pose for pictures. I told my husband I was starving, and he took a fork and just stuck it in the side of the cake and fed me a bite. My mother and the photographer were furious, but I always tell James that was the moment when I married him."

Carl's and Helen's eyes met, sharing a silent joke.

"What was your wedding cake, Carl?" Lillian asked.

Carl smiled. "Ding Dongs."

The cla.s.s turned in their seats to look at him.

"Well, Helen and I were on a budget-we didn't even go home to our parents to get married. We went to the courthouse after we finished spring finals, and spent our honeymoon in a little old hotel on the beach in northern California. The only store in town that was open was a gas station, and all they had were Ding Dongs-they called them Big Wheels back then-and shriveled old hot dogs."

"We took our Ding Dongs to the beach," Helen added, "and Carl found some sticks to use as pillars between them and he made a wedding cake tower. It was a thing of beauty."

"We kept the top one for our first anniversary, too, just like they tell you to," Carl finished, "didn't even have to freeze the thing." They laughed, along with the rest of the cla.s.s.

"Well, then," said Lillian, "I think tonight we should make Carl and Helen a cake."

The cla.s.s nodded hungrily.

"What flavor should it be?" Lillian asked Helen and Carl.

"White," said Helen decisively. "For our hair color." She took hold of Carl's hand and smiled.

HELEN HAD NOT BEEN available the cherry blossom day when Carl sat down next to her-and she wasn't available for a long time after. Carl didn't mind waiting, but he didn't intend it to be a pa.s.sive experience. He chose the debate team, in which Helen was an avid member and which he saw as a better option than the campus book club or the women's soccer team, which took up the rest of Helen's free time. Helen's current boyfriend was on the debate team as well, and Carl found the prospect of a direct challenge to be more interesting. available the cherry blossom day when Carl sat down next to her-and she wasn't available for a long time after. Carl didn't mind waiting, but he didn't intend it to be a pa.s.sive experience. He chose the debate team, in which Helen was an avid member and which he saw as a better option than the campus book club or the women's soccer team, which took up the rest of Helen's free time. Helen's current boyfriend was on the debate team as well, and Carl found the prospect of a direct challenge to be more interesting.

In the end, he found he liked the debate team; he was a thorough and steadfast researcher, with arguments grounded in una.s.sailable fact, and he had a pa.s.sionate sense of righteousness that overcame any of his initial concerns about speaking in public and which not so much later caused him to contradict Helen in the midst of a mock debate. She stopped, stunned, and looked at him carefully. Then she grinned.

One evening in October, Carl walked into the Autumn Social Dance and saw Helen, standing on the side of the room talking with three of her friends. Her dark blue dress swirled out from her waist and clung at the bodice. Her hair fell to her shoulders in waves. The music began and Helen's friends were commandeered by their various beaus. Helen stood, watching them.

"Where's Mr. Debate Team?" Carl asked as he walked up.

"He's out of town. Leastways, he says he is." Helen continued watching the dancers, her face steady.

"Care to practice some steps with me?" Carl asked, lightly. Helen considered him, a question asked and discarded in her eyes, then turned into the circle of his arms.

It stunned him how easy it was, after all that time waiting, to slip his right hand along her back and feel his fingers fit perfectly into the curve of her waist, to feel her fingers slide along the palm of his left hand and then rest softly in place. She followed his lead like water and his feet moved as if answering instructions from a far better dancer. Without thinking, he pulled her closer to him and felt no resistance, only the slight incline of her forehead toward his shoulder. She was warm, and her hair smelled like cinnamon.

When the dance was over, he kept her close to him, her hand in his like a flower he had picked. She bent her head back slightly to look up at him.

"You're home," he said. She smiled and he leaned down to kiss her.

"IN MY OPINION, a cake is a lot like a marriage," Lillian began, as she brought eggs, milk, and b.u.t.ter from the refrigerator and put them on the counter. "Admittedly, I don't have a lot of experience," she remarked, holding up her ringless left hand with a wry expression on her face, "but I've often thought that it would be a great idea for couples to make their own wedding cakes, as part of the preparation for their life together. Maybe not so many couples would end up getting married"-Lillian smiled-"but I think those that did might approach it a bit differently."

She reached into the drawers below the counter and pulled out containers of flour and sugar and a box of baking soda.

"Now, cooking is all about preference-add a bit more of this or that until you reach the taste you want. Baking, however, is different. You need to make sure you have certain combinations correct."

Lillian took the eggs and separated the yolks from the whites into two small blue bowls.

"At its essence, a cake is actually a delicate chemical equation-a balance, between air and structure. You give your cake too much structure, and it becomes tough. Too much air and it literally falls apart.

"You can see why it would be tempting to use a mix"-her eyes sparkled-"but then you'd lose out on all the lessons that baking a cake has to teach you."

Lillian put the b.u.t.ter into the bowl and turned on the mixer; the paddles beat their way into the soft yellow rectangles. Slowly, in an impossibly thin waterfall of white, she let the sugar drift into the bowl.

"This is how you put air into a cake," she commented over the noise of the machine. "Back before mixers, it used to take a really long time. Every air bubble in the batter came from the energy of someone's arm. Now we just have to resist the urge to go faster and turn the mixer speed up. The batter won't like it if you do that." The waterfall of sugar ended, and Lillian stood, waiting patiently, watching the mixer.

The paddles continued their revolutions around the bowl, and the cla.s.s watched the image in the mirror above the counter, entranced, as the sugar met and mingled with the b.u.t.ter, each drawing color and texture from the other, expanding, softening, lifting up the sides of the bowl in silken waves. Minutes pa.s.sed, and still Lillian waited. Finally, when the b.u.t.ter and sugar reached the cloudlike consistency of whipped cream, she turned off the motor.

"There," she said. "Magic."

AFTER THEY WERE MARRIED, Carl and Helen decided to move to the Pacific Northwest. Helen had heard stories about tall trees and green that went on forever; she said she was ready for a change in color. Carl delighted in her sense of adventure and the idea of a new home for their new marriage. He got a job as an insurance agent-selling stability, he called it, giving his clients the luxury of sleeping through the night, knowing that no matter what happened there was a net into which they could fall, mid-dream.

The Pacific Northwest was dark and wet for much of the year, but Carl liked the mist that blanketed the trees and gra.s.s and houses. It was liquid fairy dust, he told his children when they arrived, two in quick succession starting in the third year of his and Helen's marriage. Their offspring were native north-westerners, raising their faces to the damp skies the way tulips follow the sun. Carl marveled at how the rain seemed to nourish them, watching as they sank their roots deep into the soil around them.

Helen found ways to sneak summer into the dark months of the year, canning and freezing the fruit off their trees in July and August and using it extravagantly throughout the winter-apple chutney with the Thanksgiving turkey, raspberry sauce across the top of a December pound cake, blueberries in January pancakes. And she always claimed the shorter winter days with their long stretches of cool, gray light were conducive to writing. Carl had bought her a small wooden desk, which fit as if built for the nook at the top of the stairs. Helen always said, though, that she was a sprinter when it came to writing, composing in quick s.n.a.t.c.hes at the kitchen table, in bed-although after the children arrived, the s.n.a.t.c.hes of time occasionally were marathon distances apart.

Wherever she wrote, whatever she did, she was his Helen, and Carl loved her as completely in the silvery light of the Northwest as he had on the beach in northern California where they had honeymooned. Helen, in turn, filled his life, and just when he would least expect it in those first years, there in his lunch he would find a Ding Dong. On those days, he left work early.

LILLIAN PUT A FINGER into the bowl. "I always think this is the most delicious stage of a cake." She licked her finger with the enthusiasm of a child. "I'd give you some," she teased, "but then we wouldn't have enough for the cake." into the bowl. "I always think this is the most delicious stage of a cake." She licked her finger with the enthusiasm of a child. "I'd give you some," she teased, "but then we wouldn't have enough for the cake."

Lillian took eggs out of the bowl of warm water. "So, now we add the egg yolks, bit by bit, letting the air rise into them as well." The mixer began its revolutions again as the liquid blended into the sugar-b.u.t.ter, the yolks turning the batter darker again, loose and glistening.

"After this," she noted, "no snacking on the batter. With raw eggs, it's too risky."

THE YEARS WHEN the children were small felt like a gift to Carl. He had come from a family that regarded affection with a kind of benign intellectual amus.e.m.e.nt, and the astonis.h.i.+ng physical love of his children filled him with grat.i.tude. Although he and Helen had, without speaking, fallen into the traditional roles of their generation-he left the house and earned the money, she took care of the home and children-Carl found himself breaking the rules whenever possible, waking at the baby's first noise and picking her up before Helen could rise. He sank into the warmth of his child's fragile body against his shoulder; watched in awe that a baby, still essentially asleep, could keep a death grip on the blanket that meant the world was safe and loving, marveling at the thought that it was he and Helen who gave the feeling to the blanket, and the blanket to the child. the children were small felt like a gift to Carl. He had come from a family that regarded affection with a kind of benign intellectual amus.e.m.e.nt, and the astonis.h.i.+ng physical love of his children filled him with grat.i.tude. Although he and Helen had, without speaking, fallen into the traditional roles of their generation-he left the house and earned the money, she took care of the home and children-Carl found himself breaking the rules whenever possible, waking at the baby's first noise and picking her up before Helen could rise. He sank into the warmth of his child's fragile body against his shoulder; watched in awe that a baby, still essentially asleep, could keep a death grip on the blanket that meant the world was safe and loving, marveling at the thought that it was he and Helen who gave the feeling to the blanket, and the blanket to the child.

He didn't even mind those early Christmas mornings when first one, then another toddler would climb into the bed that he and Helen had so recently fallen into themselves after a night of putting together wooden wagons, or bicycles, or dollhouses. He opened his arms and they piled in, trying to convince him that the streetlight outside really was the sun and that it was certainly time to open stockings, if maybe not presents, when in fact it was usually only two in the morning. Helen would groan good-naturedly and roll over, telling Carl all she wanted for Christmas was a good night's sleep, and he would pull the children close and whisper the story of the Night Before Christmas until they would slowly, one by one, fall asleep, their bodies draped across each other like laundry in the basket. When the children got older, self-sufficient enough to go on their own midnight exploratory missions among the boxes under the tree (where, more often than not, Carl and Helen discovered them sleeping in the morning), Carl found himself missing their warm intrusions into his dreams.

"NOW IT'S TIME to add the flour." Lillian took the lid off the container. "The way I see it," she remarked, lifting out a scoopful and letting it fall through the sifter in a fluttering snow shower into the large measuring cup. "Flour is like the guy in the movie who you don't realize is s.e.xy until the very end. I mean, be honest, when you are dividing up duties in the kitchen, who wants to be in charge of the flour? b.u.t.ter is so much more alluring. But the thing is, flour is what holds a cake together." to add the flour." Lillian took the lid off the container. "The way I see it," she remarked, lifting out a scoopful and letting it fall through the sifter in a fluttering snow shower into the large measuring cup. "Flour is like the guy in the movie who you don't realize is s.e.xy until the very end. I mean, be honest, when you are dividing up duties in the kitchen, who wants to be in charge of the flour? b.u.t.ter is so much more alluring. But the thing is, flour is what holds a cake together."

Lillian began adding some of the flour to the batter, then milk.

"There is a trick, though," she commented, as she alternated adding flour and milk one more time, ending with a last portion of flour by hand. "If you mix the flour with the other ingredients for too long you will have a flat, hard cake. If you are careful, however, you'll have a cake as seductive as a whisper in your ear.

"And now, one last step," she said. Lillian beat the egg whites into a foam, adding just a bit of sugar at the end, as the cla.s.s watched it turn into soft, then stiff peaks. When it was done, Lillian carefully folded the frothy c.u.mulus clouds into the batter, a third at a time. She looked up and gazed out at the cla.s.s. "Always save a bit of magic for the end."

CARL HAD BEEN forty-four when Helen had told him she had had an affair-over by that point, but she just couldn't keep it from him anymore, she had said. It was the most stunning thing that had ever happened to him, a rogue wave when he thought he understood the elements about him. Helen sat across from him at their kitchen table, crying, and he realized he had no idea whose life he had suddenly walked into. He remembered odd things at that moment-not the first time he had kissed Helen, but the time soon after, when he had walked up behind her as she was standing in her small dormitory kitchen and he touched his lips to the back of her neck. forty-four when Helen had told him she had had an affair-over by that point, but she just couldn't keep it from him anymore, she had said. It was the most stunning thing that had ever happened to him, a rogue wave when he thought he understood the elements about him. Helen sat across from him at their kitchen table, crying, and he realized he had no idea whose life he had suddenly walked into. He remembered odd things at that moment-not the first time he had kissed Helen, but the time soon after, when he had walked up behind her as she was standing in her small dormitory kitchen and he touched his lips to the back of her neck.

She didn't want to leave him, she said, and she didn't want him to leave her. She loved him, always had; she just needed for him to know. He found himself wis.h.i.+ng that she, who could keep a Christmas secret from their children for months without wavering, could have kept this one for herself-not forever, but for a while, as if in recognition that some announcements need antic.i.p.ation to ease their transitions into our lives, a chance to feel the wavering doubts, to note the pa.s.senger seat of the car set to measurements not our own, the last cup of coffee taken from the pot without an offer to share.

It was, as Carl would later say, a spectacular failure of imagination on his part. He, who inhabited the future every day in his job, who helped people prepare for disaster of any magnitude, hadn't seen any signs. Helen insisted that was because she had never changed how she felt about him, but he couldn't believe that was strictly true. He wondered how he hadn't known and if he hadn't-as was so obviously the case-how he would ever know anything again. He lay in bed at night next to Helen, and thought.

Carl knew the statistics for divorce, of course. It was part of his job. In fact, statistics predicted a far greater chance of divorce than automobile accident, death by violence, or the all-too-graphic possibility of "dismemberment"-which was perhaps why insurance companies didn't sell policies for marital stability. In the weeks after his conversation with Helen, Carl found himself observing the young couples who came to his office, fascinated that people would spend hundreds of dollars a year insuring against the chance that someone might slip on their front steps in ice that rarely made an appearance in the coastal Northwest, yet go to bed each night uninsured against the possibility that their marriage might be stolen the next day. Perhaps, he thought, imagination fails when the possibilities are so obvious.

CARL SAID YEARS LATER that it was his very lack of imagination that had caused his marriage to continue. As easy as it was, after Helen told him, to imagine his wife with someone else-he knew, after all, which drink she would order if she wanted courage (scotch, straight up), which stories were her favorites to tell about the children (Mark and the bunny, Laurie learning how to swim), how she might touch the tip of her nose and dip her chin if she found one of his (the other his) jokes funny-as easy as it was to imagine all that, to realize how neatly all his knowledge of his wife could be spun out into a continually rolling film he had no desire to see, he could not imagine the next forty years without her. that it was his very lack of imagination that had caused his marriage to continue. As easy as it was, after Helen told him, to imagine his wife with someone else-he knew, after all, which drink she would order if she wanted courage (scotch, straight up), which stories were her favorites to tell about the children (Mark and the bunny, Laurie learning how to swim), how she might touch the tip of her nose and dip her chin if she found one of his (the other his) jokes funny-as easy as it was to imagine all that, to realize how neatly all his knowledge of his wife could be spun out into a continually rolling film he had no desire to see, he could not imagine the next forty years without her.

What would he do with his long legs if he could no longer stretch them across the bed to warm her side while she brushed her teeth in the bathroom (thirty seconds each side, up and down, her toe tapping out the time)? Who would leave the kitchen cupboards open if she left, or catch the fragments of his sentences as they traveled across a dining room table littered with the unending commentary of their children? What would be the point of changing gears in their old we-ought-to-get-rid-of-it car, if not to touch her hand, which always rested on the gears.h.i.+ft as if (it was a family joke) to claim owners.h.i.+p?

He couldn't imagine, couldn't see, a failure of comprehension on the smallest, and thus largest, of levels. He waited for illumination and with it a direction that would lead him away from his home, his wife, but it didn't come. He tried to think forward, and simply couldn't. He and Helen lay, night after night, in bed, not touching, sat at the table and swapped plans for the day over coffee in the morning, told stories about the office or the children in the evening. And slowly, as he waited for illumination, what had happened each day-a fight with a daughter or son, the first crocuses in the garden, Helen's embarra.s.sment over a haircut-began to pile up against what he could not imagine, until the secret she couldn't keep became one more part of their lives, one more stick in the nest they had built of moments and promises, the first time he had seen her, the second time they had fought, his hand touching her hair as she nursed a baby. Carl was a bird-watcher; he knew that not all sticks in a nest are straight.

CARL'S OLDER SISTER didn't understand. She had noticed something was wrong and badgered him until he told her. Months later, at Thanksgiving, she found him in the kitchen as he was cleaning the carca.s.s of the turkey after dinner. didn't understand. She had noticed something was wrong and badgered him until he told her. Months later, at Thanksgiving, she found him in the kitchen as he was cleaning the carca.s.s of the turkey after dinner.

"How long can you live like this?" she asked him.

"We made a promise, a long time ago." Carl's fingers moved among the bones of the turkey, pulling out the pieces of meat and stacking them on the plate beside him. Helen would be making them into sandwiches, turkey hash, and pot pie for the next two weeks, until the children would come down to the dinner table making gobbling noises, declaring they were the ghosts of turkeys past.

"She broke the promise, Carl." But her tone was gentle.

"We are keeping as much of it as we can." Carl looked down at the dog waiting patiently at his feet, and dropped a small piece of turkey to the floor. "Marriage is a leap of faith. You are each other's safety net."

"People change."

Carl stopped, and let his fingers rest on the counter in front of him. "I think that's what we're both counting on."

LILLIAN LIFTED the cake pans from the oven and rested them on metal racks on the counter. The layers rose level and smooth from the pans; the scent, tinged with vanilla, traveled across the room in soft, heavy waves, filling the s.p.a.ce with whispers of other kitchens, other loves. The students found themselves leaning forward in their chairs to greet the smells and the memories that came with them. Breakfast cake baking on a snow day off from school, all the world on holiday. The sound of cookie sheets clanging against the metal oven racks. The bakery that was the reason to get up on cold, dark mornings; a croissant placed warm in a young woman's hand on her way to the job she never meant to have. Christmas, Valentine's, birthdays, flowing together, one cake after another, lit by eyes bright with love. the cake pans from the oven and rested them on metal racks on the counter. The layers rose level and smooth from the pans; the scent, tinged with vanilla, traveled across the room in soft, heavy waves, filling the s.p.a.ce with whispers of other kitchens, other loves. The students found themselves leaning forward in their chairs to greet the smells and the memories that came with them. Breakfast cake baking on a snow day off from school, all the world on holiday. The sound of cookie sheets clanging against the metal oven racks. The bakery that was the reason to get up on cold, dark mornings; a croissant placed warm in a young woman's hand on her way to the job she never meant to have. Christmas, Valentine's, birthdays, flowing together, one cake after another, lit by eyes bright with love.

With a deft, quick motion, Lillian poked the golden surface of one of the layers with a toothpick and pulled it out, clean.

"Perfect," she said. "While it cools we can make the frosting."

Lillian paused, gathering her ideas.

"When we were making the body of the cake," she began, "everything was about keeping a balance between air and structure. Now we are putting the cake and the frosting together and it is the contrast that's important, that will make you take the second bite, and the one after.

"That's why an all-white cake is especially tricky. We can't get our contrast from flavor, not in any obvious way. We have no options for chocolate in our frosting, or raspberry preserve filling. No strawberries or lemon zest scattered across the top or hiding between the layers-although any of those could be fun another time.

"A white cake is the opposite of fireworks and fanfare-it's subtle, the difference in texture between the cake and the frosting as they cross your tongue. It's a little harder to accomplish"-she smiled at Helen and Carl-"but I have to say, when it works, it is sublime."

IT WAS A S SAt.u.r.dAY AFTERNOON, almost two years after Helen first told Carl about the affair. The kids were off preparing for Mark's high school graduation. Carl came up the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs and heard a voice in French, with Helen's halting repet.i.tion afterward. He reached the door of the kitchen and looked in. Helen was standing with her back to him, a tape player balanced precariously on the window ledge, ingredients for a chocolate cake laid out on the counter around her. Helen had never been a particularly tidy cook, and the evidence was everywhere, flour dusting down to the floor, in wide streaks on her ap.r.o.n, melted chocolate dripping across the counter.

The tape stopped and Helen, deep in concentration, didn't notice. Cakes had always been an elusive prey for Helen. Diligently she had made them for every birthday and celebration-flat, misshapen, rock-hard, molten; Laurie still talked about what she called the volcano cake from her fifth birthday. And yet Carl knew Mark had begged for one; his graduation was that evening and it wouldn't be a celebration without a cake from Helen.

Carl stood at the door to the kitchen, not moving, watching the late afternoon light filtering through the window and across Helen, coming to rest on the black and white tiles of the floor beneath her feet. He looked at the flour print on her hip where she had placed her hand while reading the next step in the recipe, at the white that was beginning to slip into her hair, strands that he loved and thus didn't tell her about, as he knew she would pull them out. He looked at her, without speaking, and as he looked, he felt something s.h.i.+ft and come to rest inside him, a movement as small and quiet as the tick of a watch.

He walked up behind her and softly touched his lips to the back of her neck. Helen turned to face him, meeting his eyes for a long moment, as if measuring the weight of something within them. Then she smiled.

"You're home," she said, and reached up to kiss him.

THE CLa.s.s STOOD companionably around the wooden counter, trying to navigate forkfuls of cake into their mouths without losing a crumb to the floor. The frosting was a thick b.u.t.ter-cream, rich as a satin dress laid against the firm, fragile texture of the cake. With each bite, the cake melted first, then the frosting, one after another, like lovers tumbling into bed. companionably around the wooden counter, trying to navigate forkfuls of cake into their mouths without losing a crumb to the floor. The frosting was a thick b.u.t.ter-cream, rich as a satin dress laid against the firm, fragile texture of the cake. With each bite, the cake melted first, then the frosting, one after another, like lovers tumbling into bed.

"Oh, this is delicious!" Claire looked across the table to Carl and Helen. "I can't believe I made James choose chocolate for our wedding."

"Definitely beats lamb cake," Ian commented with a grin.

The fragile-looking older woman stood quietly, savoring the bite in her mouth. Lillian leaned over to her. "Penny for the memory, Isabelle," she said.

"Oh, my memories cost more than that these days-supply and demand, you know," Isabelle said with a chuckle, then continued. "I was thinking of Edward, my husband, when I was younger. He was so handsome on our wedding day, so solicitous. It didn't last-but it was nice remembering."

While the others continued talking, Carl and Helen stood next to each other, eating quietly. She was left-handed and he was right; as they ate, their free hands would find each other and let go, while their shoulders brushed against each other gently.

One piece of cake lay on the plate at the end of cla.s.s; Lillian wrapped it in foil and handed it to Carl and Helen as they left the cla.s.s.

"For you to take home," she said. "A symbol of a long and happy marriage."

"Or maybe..." Helen looked at Carl, who smiled and nodded. Helen took the foil package and went quickly out the door. Lillian and Carl watched as she caught up with Claire at the front gate. The two women talked for a few moments, then Helen leaned in and kissed Claire on the cheek. When Helen walked back to the kitchen, her face was radiant, her hands empty.

Antonia

Antonia drove up to the address written in her notebook and stopped, amazed. In a checkerboard neighborhood of craftsman bungalows and 1950s brick ramblers, the old Victorian house stood tall and splendid despite its obvious years of wear, the talc.u.m-powder paint and tangled rhododendron bushes, the downspout hanging loose in the air like an arm caught in mid-wave. It was impossible to look at the house without erasing the years and the houses around it, to imagine it set in the midst of a vast track of land, gazing out across a long, rolling slope of green to the water and the mountains beyond. A home built by a man besotted, for a woman to whom he had promised the world.

Around the house, arched gateways led to a series of flower-beds and doll-size orchards, moss-covered stone benches, a circular lawn. Antonia knew the gardens had nothing to do with her work as a kitchen designer. All the same, she couldn't resist wandering through them, one after another like fairy stories in a well-loved children's book, even though it meant leaving her sodden shoes at the front door when she finally did enter the house.