The Monday Night Cooking School Part 9

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

"A cooking cla.s.s."

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 s.h.i.+t," 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 cla.s.s? 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 gra.s.s. "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 sh.e.l.ls 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 cla.s.s 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 salesmans.h.i.+p wore her thin. Every year the garden grew larger, the paths longer and more complicated. Meadows of memories. 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 salesmans.h.i.+p 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, pus.h.i.+ng that fancy little b.u.t.ton 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 gla.s.s. The pale golden liquid gleamed in the candlelight, mysterious and playful. Isabelle's table and poured a sparkling dry white wine in a tall fluted gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s and looked nonchalantly through the window to the darkened garden outside.

SHE HADN'T EXPECTED the wine bubbles to reach her nose the way they did, like small, giggling children. Her children, two toddler girls, blond hair darkened almost to brown with water, in a bathtub only half full but still overflowing as they splashed, drenching her s.h.i.+rt and her stomach that held the third baby, their big, round laughter bouncing off the tile, letting out the day and leaving room for dreams. Edward arriving home, following the noise to the bathroom door, where he stood, adult and bemused, as she pushed the wet hair from her face and looked up at him. The girls later, dancing out of their towels and running through the living room, ripe-peach b.u.ms and big, proud bellies, until, finally imprisoned in pajamas, they settled on the couch, warm and sweet as new milk, while she read the story of the country bunny with the magic shoes until they quieted into sleep and she sat and thought about having golden slippers that would let her fly around the world and do extraordinary things and be back by morning. the wine bubbles to reach her nose the way they did, like small, giggling children. Her children, two toddler girls, blond hair darkened almost to brown with water, in a bathtub only half full but still overflowing as they splashed, drenching her s.h.i.+rt and her stomach that held the third baby, their big, round laughter bouncing off the tile, letting out the day and leaving room for dreams. Edward arriving home, following the noise to the bathroom door, where he stood, adult and bemused, as she pushed the wet hair from her face and looked up at him. The girls later, dancing out of their towels and running through the living room, ripe-peach b.u.ms and big, proud bellies, until, finally imprisoned in pajamas, they settled on the couch, warm and sweet as new milk, while she read the story of the country bunny with the magic shoes until they quieted into sleep and she sat and thought about having golden slippers that would let her fly around the world and do extraordinary things and be back by morning.

LILLIAN SET a plate of salad on Isabelle's table. a plate of salad on Isabelle's table.

"This is new," she commented. "I wonder what you'll think."

Isabelle dutifully took up her fork, skewering the leaves of lettuce, bright and darker green, frilly magenta, the red of dried cranberries, and the pale moons of almonds and pears. The taste was the first day of spring, with the sharp bite of the cranberries quickly following the firm crunch of nuts, the softness of pear flesh. Each taste here, defined, gone, mellowed only slightly by the touch of champagne vinegar in the dressing.

Edward. In the doorway, again, jacket off but tie still on, watching her make dinner in the kitchen. In her memories, it seemed Edward was always in a doorway, not quite there. As if she were the doorframe and the world were on either side. He wasn't leaving that time, although he would, later. When she was honest with herself, she would know he had always been on his way, either to or from her. Even after he left, he was on his way back, but by then she was gone, too, so light without the weight of his gaze upon her that she dreamed sometimes she was flying.

ISABELLE LOOKED DOWN-the empty salad plate was gone without her noticing, replaced by a dinner plate with a pool of white cannellini beans, atop of which sat a perfect piece of salmon, garnished with strips of crisp fried green leaves. Isabelle picked up one of them experimentally and brought it to her nose. Dusty green, the smell of life made out of sun and little water, the driest of perfumes. Sage.

What she had wanted in the beginning was the desert, dry, hot miles of air burned clean by the sun, the blank canvas of it after Edward and then the children were gone and she was left holding nothing and everything. She had gotten in the lumbering, wood-paneled station wagon and driven south, the fan whirring until she had turned off the highway and driven through cacti and hawks, opening the windows while the world flooded in, silver-green with the smell of sage.

At the town where she stopped to buy gas she saw a gallery, a spare, light-filled room with three white stone sculptures-smooth, white, sensual as dunes. While the gas station attendant filled the tank, she walked across the street and into the gallery. She looked at the sculptures, her eyes following the curves that made the stone seem more liquid than solid. Time slowed; there was no need to hurry-hers was the only car at the gas station. And as she studied each sculpture, she saw something else. It wasn't obvious-a line like an arm outstretched, a slope of a lower back, the hollow at the base of a neck where the collarbones meet-not a part of a person, rather the essence, the small vulnerable place where the soul lived.

"Stone poems," she said quietly to herself.

"Yes," said a voice, low and warm, and a hand touched her back, resting along the curve inside her shoulder blade.

His name was Isaac; he was younger than she, by years, his home far out in the desert, a red dirt house with faded blue shutters that held out the sun in the middle of the day, when Isaac worked with his eyes closed, smoothing the contours he had chiseled during the morning. A fountain murmured in the courtyard, under a tree, and Isabelle spent her first week sitting under its great branches, reading the books of poetry Isaac lent to her from the collection that meandered through his house, covering every available surface. They met each evening for dinner, pork stews that had simmered all afternoon, beans and rice. They talked over their meal, their conversations ranging like birds over the land around them. Isabelle slept in the second bedroom and woke each morning to the m.u.f.fled sound of metal sliding through stone in the studio.

"What are we?" Isabelle asked Isaac one night, curious. They sat in the courtyard, smoke from the fire ring rising up between them, the stars huge and uncountable.

"Why do you ask?" he responded. A real question.

She had no sense of urgency; she felt like the desert, unending, sitting there in the dark. Still, she had felt she should ask the question, make sure she wasn't somehow disappointing.

"I think," he said contemplatively into the dark, "we are each a chair and a ladder for the other." And somehow that made sense.

It was Isaac who cut her hair. She was sitting in the courtyard with her head covered in pink curlers. He came out, wiping stone dust off the legs of his jeans, and saw her. His laugh bounced off the branches of the tree.

"What?" she said. "I'm not using a hair dryer. You don't have one."

He went back into the house and came back with a pair of scissors and a straight-backed chair. "Come here," he said, patting the seat.

She sat in front of him and felt the curlers leave her head, one pin at a time, the damp, shoulder-length curls cooling in the breeze. When all the curlers lay in a pile around her, he took her hair and lifted it, cutting quickly and decisively, the weight dropping to the floor with the hair. When he was done, he ruffled her curls back in with his fingers.

"Now," he said, "just sit there in the sun and let them dry."

Her face, when she looked in the mirror later, was tan and younger than she remembered, the cheekbones stronger framed by the softness of the curls. She couldn't imagine the woman with that face having a c.o.c.ktail party, wearing a blue wool dress cinched in at the waist. Handing her husband's secretary a gla.s.s of sherry, wondering what those slim fingers had touched.

Isabelle walked into the studio. "Thank you," she said simply.

He looked up. "Now," he said, "I think it's time for you to pose for me."

IT MADE SENSE to stand naked in the studio room, her back to the open wall where the sun came in and ran down the length of her spine, the soft, rounded flesh below, the backs of her knees. She, who had never even stood naked alone in her own bathroom, welcomed the warmth, felt it center between her legs, at the base of her neck. She watched Isaac's strong brown eyes as they moved slowly and with a deepening understanding over her body, the softened angles of her collarbones, the slope of her waist rounding into her hips, the after-baby softness of her stomach, watched his hands as they moved across the stone, over the hours carving a curve that spiraled endlessly out into the world. The s.e.x, when it happened late in the afternoon, was something both wanted but neither needed, as long and slow as the sun moving outside the shutters of the cool, dark room. to stand naked in the studio room, her back to the open wall where the sun came in and ran down the length of her spine, the soft, rounded flesh below, the backs of her knees. She, who had never even stood naked alone in her own bathroom, welcomed the warmth, felt it center between her legs, at the base of her neck. She watched Isaac's strong brown eyes as they moved slowly and with a deepening understanding over her body, the softened angles of her collarbones, the slope of her waist rounding into her hips, the after-baby softness of her stomach, watched his hands as they moved across the stone, over the hours carving a curve that spiraled endlessly out into the world. The s.e.x, when it happened late in the afternoon, was something both wanted but neither needed, as long and slow as the sun moving outside the shutters of the cool, dark room.

When she left, a week later, he stood at the door, watching her put her things in the car. She looked up and saw him and they smiled, long and slow, at each other.

He walked up to her. "For you," he said, and handed her a smooth oval of white marble that slipped into the hollow of her hand.

SALMON, THICK THICK, DENSE DENSE against her teeth, a beach of smooth white beans underneath. Isabelle at six years old, throwing thin, flat rocks sideways, watching them sink and disappear while her father's floated across the surface, dipping then spinning up, like birds looking for food. The air cold and full of moisture on her face, even on a July morning, early, early, her mother and brothers still asleep, with just her and her father on the beach where she had found him, looking down the bay as if he could see what she couldn't at the other end. She had wanted to hold his hand, but her father wasn't like that, so she had picked up a rock and tried to throw it the way she had seen him do with her brothers. against her teeth, a beach of smooth white beans underneath. Isabelle at six years old, throwing thin, flat rocks sideways, watching them sink and disappear while her father's floated across the surface, dipping then spinning up, like birds looking for food. The air cold and full of moisture on her face, even on a July morning, early, early, her mother and brothers still asleep, with just her and her father on the beach where she had found him, looking down the bay as if he could see what she couldn't at the other end. She had wanted to hold his hand, but her father wasn't like that, so she had picked up a rock and tried to throw it the way she had seen him do with her brothers.

"You'll kill the fish that way," he had said, as her rock plunged into the water like a lead ball, but his laugh wasn't rough.

"Show me?" she had asked, in a burst of bravery. And they had stayed on the beach while he showed her how to position the rock in her hand and snap her wrist and she threw rock after rock, until one of hers finally skipped, dancing on the water like a child.

"Time for breakfast?" her father had said then, and they had turned and walked back up to the cabin that waited where the rock beach met the big green trees behind.

It was only later, after her father was dead and she had children herself, that Isabelle realized that parents most often know when their children are stalling to hold off the end of something they want to hold on to. When she realized that there are many kinds of love and not all of them are obvious, that some wait, like presents in the back of a closet, until you are able to open them.

IT WAS THE CABIN Isabelle headed to after she left the desert. It wasn't a straight line-she stopped in Los Angeles and sold the family home; she spent time with each of her children as she moved her way north. The girls didn't understand. Grown now, one with a baby, the other in graduate school, they contemplated her from the cool remove of their new, adult selves. Isabelle headed to after she left the desert. It wasn't a straight line-she stopped in Los Angeles and sold the family home; she spent time with each of her children as she moved her way north. The girls didn't understand. Grown now, one with a baby, the other in graduate school, they contemplated her from the cool remove of their new, adult selves.

"Mom, this is crazy. No one's been to the cabin in years. It's probably a wreck. And what are you going to do there all by yourself?"

They stood facing her like twin pillars of sensibility. Isabelle thought that if Isaac were to make a sculpture of them right now, it would hold the shape of an admonis.h.i.+ng finger.

"Mom? What are you thinking?" Her daughters were looking at her expectantly.

"I'm thinking then you'll have to come and visit me." Knowing they would not.

Isabelle reached her son's house later the next day, as dinnertime was approaching. Rory lived in a big house in Berkeley, full of college roommates, who cooked together and laughingly muscled a capacious living room chair into the dining room so she could have a place at the table. She sat, distinctly lower in height, as they placed generous servings on her plate, insisting on mothering her, because, they all teased, she looked like a girl herself, with that short hair and tan skin, like she had been out climbing trees and needed a good dinner to fatten her up. Isabelle sat back in her deep, cus.h.i.+oned chair and listened to their good-natured voices, feeling both distinctly at home and ready to move on to her own.

Isabelle told her son her plan after dinner, sitting in the same chair, now back in its proper place. Her son considered her for a long time, and then smiled.

"I've got summer break coming up," he noted, "you might need help with that roof."

THE CABIN WAS worse than even she had thought. Windows broken, the roof barely protecting the squirrels that had set up lodging inside. The first thing she did, after spending a good week cleaning, was to build a shed for tools, but also for the squirrels, who eagerly vacated their former abode for one a little more private. The lines of the shed were hardly straight; Isabelle spent a lot of time asking questions at the local hardware store and trying to remember the lessons she had overheard her father teaching her brothers. But in the end, it had four walls, a roof, and a door that shut, with a shove, and the squirrels didn't seem like picky tenants in any case. worse than even she had thought. Windows broken, the roof barely protecting the squirrels that had set up lodging inside. The first thing she did, after spending a good week cleaning, was to build a shed for tools, but also for the squirrels, who eagerly vacated their former abode for one a little more private. The lines of the shed were hardly straight; Isabelle spent a lot of time asking questions at the local hardware store and trying to remember the lessons she had overheard her father teaching her brothers. But in the end, it had four walls, a roof, and a door that shut, with a shove, and the squirrels didn't seem like picky tenants in any case.

The cabin was nothing like the solid, square-cornered house she had shared with Edward and her children, but she discovered that was just fine, too. She cooked stews on the ancient white-enameled stove and baked brilliantly yellow cornbread in the oven. She found old gla.s.s, the kind that made the world outside appear as if it were underwater, and she fixed the broken windows. She went to the not-quite-antique stores that peppered the side of the road leading to the national park nearby, and found an old bed quilt, blue and white, with st.i.tches made by a hand she didn't know but trusted all the same, and laid it across the black metal bedstead. She discovered she liked the heft of an axe in her hand, the satisfying thud as it sunk into the log in front of her, the glistening white of the exposed wood as she stacked it on the pile.

On the night she got the phone line installed she called Rory down in California. She told him of her progress, made plans for his visit the next month.

"I think the roof will hold out until then." She laughed.

"Where did you learn to do these things?" Rory sounded amused. "I don't remember you fixing any windows at our house."

"You also don't remember that I didn't know how to cook when I married your father, or drive a car, or get a colicky baby to sleep. People learn, Rory. I'd hate to think there is an age when we have to stop."

On evenings when the air was warm, Isabelle would put on one of her father's old jazz records, open the door to the cabin, and walk down to the rocky beach. As the sun slid behind the top of the mountains, the sad, sensual sound of a trumpet, the low, deep voice of a woman in love, flowed out of the cabin like light from windows, and she would sit on a drift log, her toes playing among the stones, while the seals came up to the surface of the water and listened, their eyes dark and intelligent above the water line.

RORY CAME, as he had promised, when the days grew longer, clear and warm, stretching into evenings of abalone-blue sky. He was full of philosophy, his favorite cla.s.s of the previous term, reciting pa.s.sages of Plato and Kant as if they had just been written and he the first to find them.

Isabelle listened, watching the muscles move in her son's biceps and back as he ripped s.h.i.+ngles from the roof and threw them down to her, wondering where the soft, round arms of her baby boy had gone, marveling at the beauty of her son standing above her.

"Philosophy and roofing skills," she called up to him. "You'll make some girl very happy."

"There is one," he told her, a little embarra.s.sed. And then he had sat down on the edge of the roof and talked for an hour while Isabelle craned up at him and never once mentioned the crick in her neck because it was too precious to listen to her boy telling her with such beautiful naivete about being in love, when all he had known was parents who hadn't been by the time he was born.

"MOM?" Rory asked one evening, as they sat on the beach watching the seals. Concert time, Isabelle called it.

"Yes?"

"Would you ever try marijuana?"

Isabelle laughed. "So this is what your college tuition is for?"

"Seriously, Mom. I mean, look at you. You're sure not the woman who married Dad. Have you thought about trying something really different?"

"I don't like to smoke."

"Well, we could work around that."

THE b.u.t.tER SIZZLED in the pan, the leaves emitting a soft, smoky scent, not unlike sage, Isabelle thought. As she watched, the leaves softened, releasing their oil into the b.u.t.ter, while on the other burner, a brick of chocolate melted into a molten, glistening liquid. in the pan, the leaves emitting a soft, smoky scent, not unlike sage, Isabelle thought. As she watched, the leaves softened, releasing their oil into the b.u.t.ter, while on the other burner, a brick of chocolate melted into a molten, glistening liquid.

"It's softer this way," Rory explained, "and you don't have to smoke."

They added sugar and eggs, flour. "Your father always liked brownies," Isabelle commented with a small smile as they put the pan in the big white oven.

They sat on the front steps, the smell keeping them company, thickening, deep and dense with chocolate. When the brownies were done, they ate them, still hungry from their day's work, even after a dinner of chili and cornbread.

"What are you thinking, Mom?" asked Rory after a time, wiping melted chocolate from his upper lip.

But Isabelle was flying, a mother bunny in golden slippers, looking down at her children, her husband, her house. Her cabin of her own, its roof almost finished.

"ISABELLE," said a voice at her side. Isabelle looked up. She was in a restaurant. Lillian's restaurant. Of course. It was not cooking-cla.s.s night-that had been silly of her-but then why was this young man, the sad one from the cooking cla.s.s, standing by her table with Lillian?

"Isabelle," Lillian said gently. "I'm sorry to interrupt your dinner. Tom happened by, and the tables are a bit crowded. I hoped you wouldn't mind if he shared yours with you."

"Of course not," Isabelle answered automatically, motioning to the seat across from her. Tom sat and Lillian left them to check on a nearby table.

Isabelle shook off her thoughts and looked down at the last few cannellini beans left on her plate. "I'm afraid I am almost finished."