The School of Essential Ingredients (18 page)

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 class of the previous term, reciting passages 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 shingles 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 embarrassed. 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 naiveté 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 Butter 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 butter, 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-class night—that had been silly of her—but then why was this young man, the sad one from the cooking class, 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.”

“Actually, I was hoping for just dessert and coffee. You can be my cover—that way Lillian won’t get mad because I’m not eating a whole dinner.”

“I haven’t been someone’s cover in a while,” Isabelle answered with a laugh. She looked at the tables around them, many of which had emptied over the course of the evening, so that now the restaurant was only half full.

“Do you think she’s expecting a late-night rush?” Isabelle asked, one eyebrow raised.

“I’ve Been Wondering,” Isabelle commented reflectively over dessert, “if it is foolish to make new memories when you know you are going to lose them.”

“And yet here you are, taking a cooking class,” Tom noted.

“Well, not tonight, apparently,” Isabelle pointed out wryly. Tom smiled.

They ate in an easy silence, reveling in the creamy lemon tart in front of them. After a while, Isabelle spoke again. “You know,” she said, holding up a forkful, “I am starting to think that maybe memories are like this dessert. I eat it, and it becomes a part of me, whether I remember it later or not.”

“I knew someone who used to say something like that,” Tom said.

“Is that why you are sad?” Isabelle asked, and then saw his expression. “I’m sorry. My manners are going along with my memories.”

Tom shook his head softly. “Your manners are fine—and your mind is plenty sharp.” He blew across the surface of his coffee, took a sip. “My wife. She died a little over a year ago. She was a chef, and she always used to say the same thing about food. I try to believe it, but it was easier when she was here and the food was hers.”

“Ah”—Isabelle looked at Tom thoughtfully—“so we are not so different.”

“How is that?”

“We both have a past we can’t keep hold of.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Tom looked at her, as if waiting for something more.

“I used to know a sculptor,” Isabelle said, nodding. “He always said that if you looked hard enough, you could see where each person carried his soul in his body. It sounds crazy, but when you saw his sculptures, it made sense. I think the same is true with those we love,” she explained. “Our bodies carry our memories of them, in our muscles, in our skin, in our bones. My children are right here.” She pointed to the inside curve of her elbow. “Where I held them when they were babies. Even if there comes a time when I don’t know who they are anymore, I believe I will feel them here.

“Where do you hold your wife?” she asked Tom.

Tom looked at Isabelle, his eyes full. He put his right hand to the side of his own face, then took it away and adjusted the shape slightly.

“That is her jawline,” he said softly, running his left index finger along the half-circle at the base of his hand, then along the top curve where his hand met his fingers. “And here is her cheekbone.”

Tom excused himself on the pretense of going to the restroom, and went toward Lillian, who stood by the front door, a wineglass in her hand, receiving the compliments of a departing couple. Tom looked around the dining room and was surprised to realize it was empty, except for Isabelle at their table.

Tom walked up and touched her shoulder. “I’d like to pick up Isabelle’s check,” he said.

Lillian smiled. “It’s on the house.”

“Thank you for calling me. I don’t know how you always know . . .”

“Lucky guess,” Lillian said, raising her wineglass.

It Was cool outside, after the warmth of the restaurant. The streetlights shone through the new growth on the fruit trees of Lillian’s garden. Tom walked with Isabelle along the lavender path to the gate; out on the street, people walked by, their voices animated by the prospect of spring, discussing bedding plants and summer vacation plans.

“Can I give you a ride home?” Tom asked.

“Lillian knows to call me a taxi,” Isabelle said, motioning toward the street, where a yellow cab was pulling up to the curb. “My doctor says I’m not allowed to drive anymore.”

“It was a lovely evening,” Tom said. “Thank you.”

Isabelle leaned up and kissed him softly on the cheek.

“It
was
lovely. Thank you, Rory,” she said. She moved away and walked toward the cab that stood waiting under the streetlight.

Helen

Helen and Carl walked up the main street of town to the cooking class. It was a clear, cold evening in early February, the end of a miraculously blue day blown in from the north like a celebration. People in the Northwest tended to greet such weather with a child’s sense of joy; strangers exchanged grins, houses were suddenly cleaner, and neighbors could be found in their yards in shirtsleeves, regardless of the temperature, indulging a sudden desire to dig in rich, dark dirt.

In the soft circle of lamplight ahead of them, Helen and Carl saw a man reach the gate of Lillian’s restaurant; at the same time a woman approached from the other direction. The man unlatched the gate and stood aside to let the woman enter, his hand following her, unbidden, never quite touching her back and yet seemingly incapable of returning to his own side.

Helen watched the two walk up the path between the blue-gray lavender bushes—and the hand, the movement, the longing behind it, struck her with the intensity of a perfume she had long ago stopped wearing, drifting across a room she never intended to traverse.

Helen had Been forty-one the first time she saw the man who became her lover. It was at the grocery store, a setting both absurd and logical for a woman who considered herself unequivocally married, who shied away from admiring glances at New Year’s parties or darkened symphony halls or the weddings of dear friends where emotions, everyone knew, rode on high-speed elevators to greater heights than could ever be maintained the following day.

She had come to the store for eggs (Laurie had a teenager’s addiction to egg-white facials), dog food, paper for Mark’s new school notebook, steak for dinner (Carl’s doctor said his iron count was low), and the usual—homogenized milk, Yuban coffee, Cheerios, rice, potatoes, paper napkins. She knew these aisles as well as her own kitchen, which was convenient, as a second list was running through her head—Mark to football practice, Laurie to piano, walk the dog, iron the tablecloth—a series of to-dos that moved in and out of her consciousness like breathing.

He was in the produce aisle. She wondered later whether anything would have happened if she had encountered him first among the cardboard boxes in the cereal section, spied him through the frosted glass of an opened door in the freezer department. But set amid the fecundity of late-summer melons and gauzy lettuce, swollen red peppers and plump navel oranges, he seemed simply beautiful in comparison, and any desire on her part more aesthetic than passionate. She watched his long fingers wander across the vegetables, reaching toward an onion, some carrots, opting for a bouquet of leeks. His eyes, when he looked up and saw her watching him, were infinitely brown and kind and his hair flowed in ill-kempt waves that he needed to cut but she immediately hoped he wouldn’t, an almost maternal feeling—a rationalization that allowed her to step closer to the ocean that would surely soak her shoes.

He held up the vegetables in his hand. “My mother was French,” he said to her, as if by way of explanation. “She was always asking me, ‘What do you do that makes you happy?’ Today, for me, leeks.”

Helen stood, saying nothing, her hands empty. His eyes searched hers, and then he leaned forward, more serious, his voice gentle. “What about you?”

And Helen, who had begun to feel as if her life was like the daily turning of pages filled with other people’s writing, felt as if she suddenly had come upon an illustration.

CARL CAUGHT the closing gate and pulled it open again for Helen. “Wasn’t that Ian and Antonia?” he asked.

Helen shook her head, loosening her thoughts. “Yes,” she replied, “I do believe it was.”

“That would be nice for both of them, if that could work out.”

“Don’t be getting ideas about being helpful, Carl.” The familiar rhythm of their banter was a bridge leading her back to him. “You saw how well that worked with our daughter.” She touched his arm as she passed through the gate.