Elodie and Heloise (13 page)

Heloise picked up a sixteen ounce box of brown stock and began slowly adding it to her roux while stirring it. The sauce at first did not seem to like having this new addition, instead trying to coagulate into little chunks of flour and butter, but as she stirred, it became more smooth. She continued adding more liquid and then put the stove back on the heat.

“Now let me guess. I have to whisk it while it boils?”

“
Oui
. It is
très important
that your sauce has no lumps. It must be as smooth as possible. Here.” Francis handed his daughter a whisk from one of the drawers next to the stove. “I am almost done with these mushrooms and the onions have been done for a while. Then when your sauce comes to a boil, you must let it simmer for a few minutes and it will be time to add the onions, mushrooms, cream and and veal. And then, voilà, it is all done.”

“Good. I was worried with all of these recipe components that it wouldn’t all come together.” She brushed some stray hairs from her forehead and realized that her forehead was covered in sweat. No doubt it was because of the intense lights in the kitchen and the heat of the stove she’d been standing in front of for over an hour.

“
Ne t’en fais pas, ma fille.
You have your father helping you. Nothing will go wrong. Besides, you are doing very well. You are a better cook than you think. It took me many tries to get a roux right before I could confidentially do it without burning the flour.”

“Well, I try.”

“You do not have to.”

“Sounds like something that Kyle would tell me.”

“And he is right, you know.”

Elodie placed the whisk inside her half-flour, half-stock mixture and began whisking it quickly. Her hand started hurting, so she loosened her grip. She didn’t realize sometimes just how hard she gripped her kitchen utensils sometimes. 

The sauce began to bubble a little bit as she whisked and within a few minutes, it had come to the desired boil.

“Now turn it down to low and let it simmer.”

Heloise reached out and turned the knob down from high heat to low heat. The sauce spit up for about ten seconds before it calmed down. She threw the lid on the top and laughed.

“Sorry, I just didn’t want it to spit all over me.”

Francis chuckled. “It will not hurt you,
ma fille
.”

The kitchen became silent for the first time in a while as Francis and Heloise waited around for the sauce to simmer. Francis drained the liquid from his cooked mushrooms and put the pan on the front left burner of the stove. All that was left to do was wait. Sometimes cooking these complicated French recipes, as tasty as they were when finished, required a lot of waiting around for all the components to be cooked or simmered. Cooking had certainly taught Heloise how to be more patient.

“Now put the spoon in and look to see if it has coated the back of the spoon.” Francis handed a spoon to Heloise, who lifted the lid off the saucepan and stuck the spoon in. Sure enough, the sauce had thickened enough to coat the spoon. Now it was time to add all the other ingredients together and let it reheat gently without boiling.

WIthin five minutes, they had made a complete and very delectable looking meal. 

“And that,
ma fille
, is how you make a blanquette de veau. Oh how I remember my French grandmother making this all the time when I was growing up. It was one of my favorite meals in the world.” Francis’ usually angular face took on a wistful look as if he was reliving some faraway childhood memories.

“But I thought ratatouille was your favorite meal, Papa. You even said so yourself.”

“Ah but that is a favorite meal during the summer when tomatoes, eggplants, and all those other ingredients are in season. This was my favorite winter meal. A warm recipe to warm your heart.”

Heloise and Francis served their delicious meal for the rest of the family and as always, they got nothing but positive feedback.

“Ah but Heloise made most of this. I just showed her how to do it and she followed me. Very well I might add.”

Heloise usually blushed when such accomplishments were attributed to her, even if her father was telling the truth. He helped her only a little bit as they made dinner, mostly just standing off to the side watching her and chiming in when necessary. She didn’t like to have people making a huge fuss over her.

“Heloise, have you ever thought of becoming a chef?” Elodie piped up as she stabbed at a forkful of veal and mushroom. “You’ve really become an accomplished cook for the last few months, and you seem so happy when you’re there in the kitchen making something.”

That was probably the nicest thing that Heloise could remember her sister telling her in the last couple of years. She really had not given it a lot of thought, since it was something she only liked to do for fun.

“No I really haven’t. Thank you, Elodie. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

For the rest of the meal, Heloise enjoyed her food in silence, reveling in the buttery and creamy taste of veal and onions in her mouth. It was all complex and yet so simple in how the ingredients came together. Elodie was right in how happy Heloise was in the kitchen. There was nothing she enjoyed more than creating something, losing herself in the process of bringing out the flavors of foods for others to enjoy.

Maybe there really was something to all of this. Cooking was certainly something she had always liked to do. She considered it bonding time with her father. However, she had not considered that it could be a full-time job. Ever since she was a child, science and physics were what interested her the most and she had finished all of her college applications and sent them in for that desired major. 

Maybe she needed to reconsider it.....

Homework. Done.

Chores. Done. There goes the dishwasher right now.

Elodie listened to the sound of her feet on the hardwood floors as she strolled over to the study room with her writing notebook under her arm. She placed her hand on the doorknob and opened the door, her eyes fixed on her beautiful guitar sitting in its usual corner, just waiting for Elodie’s evening practice time, while her mother tapped away on her computer.

"Coming in to practice?" Shannon briefly looked up at her daughter as Elodie entered the study room. Shannon had taken to her computer after dinner and must've been writing for about a half hour before Elodie came in.

Elodie simply nodded. "It's been a really interesting day to say the least."

"How interesting?"

"Remember Quentin Rice? The boy that I really liked back in October?"

"How could I forget? You brooded about him for at least a month after he told you he liked someone else." Shannon pressed a button on her computer and then turned to face her daughter. 

"Well, he and his girlfriend were having a fight at the park today while I was there and I'm pretty sure they broke up. I heard her call him a cheater and then Veronica stalked off. If I were him, I would’ve cheated on her too." Elodie stood in front of her mother with her arms crossed, punctuating her last thought with a dismissive gesture

"All right all right, Elodie.” Shannon disliked when her daughter spoke so negatively about other people. “Wasn’t Quentin the one that you said strung you along? Is it really any wonder then? Sometimes I really worry about you and your taste in members of the opposite sex. He’s not the first one to have done that to you.” She had that motherly look on her face like she was holding back from saying “I told you so,” her glasses balancing on the end of her nose as Shannon peered at her daughter.

Elodie wanted to dismiss her mother’s statement, but it touched her more than she expected. She knew her mother was right about her taste in boys, but then again, it was expected of her as a popular girl. Popular, attractive people had to be with their own kind. And Quentin had fit the bill. He was too attractive to not be.

"Maybe but I liked him anyway. Anyway, I had some ideas I wanted to write down and I just wanted to get away for a while." She was eager to change the subject from Quentin and her love life.

Shannon was the only person in Elodie's life who knew about her songwriting hobby. After all, Shannon was a writer herself so she was more than happy to encourage any literary pursuits in her daughter. When Elodie felt that a song was ready to share, she would pull her mom into the room and share it with her and ask for her feedback. Her first three dozen songs, made of rudimentary chords and awkward melodies, did not inspire much of a reaction in her mother. In those cases, Shannon would offer as much constructive criticism as she could, most of it talking about what Elodie could improve upon.

“The key is that you have to keep writing,” Shannon would reiterate. “You know how many stories I wrote when I first began writing that were utter crap? A LOT. The only way I have become a successful writer, or rather novelist, is because I kept writing. You have some good things going for you,
ma fille
. You have a very distinctive, throaty and booming voice that serves you well for the songs you’re writing. You just have to keep writing and practicing and you will get there.”

As an impatient sixteen year old, it frustrated Elodie at times that she felt she wasn’t improving. So it surprised her when she played a song last year for her mother and she got her first bit of all-around enthusiasm from her, when her mother told her that if Elodie ever recorded that song, she would want a copy of it. On hearing her mother give her such praise, Elodie felt truly smart for the first time in a couple of years, like there really was more to her than just makeup and clothes.

“Though I, um, have to tell you,” Elodie’s voice began to gush as Duncan’s face came into mind, “I saw someone else today at the park that I think you might remember. Remember Duncan Matos from when we were kids? He’s back in town and he was walking the family dog today. I had no idea they were back and he said he didn’t even recognize me without my glasses.” 

“Really?” Shannon looked surprised. “I knew they moved away but I didn’t know they came back here. That’s great! You two got along so well whenever he came over.”

“You could say that.” It seemed as if every bit of blood in Elodie’s body immediately rushed to her face at that moment as she flashed back to their conversation that afternoon and their memories together as kids. “We got to talking and we’re going out next weekend. I can’t, I can’t tell you just how excited I am to see him again.”

“Well it sounds like you had a very interesting day indeed then!”

All Elodie could do was nod, her face still warm and red from thinking about Duncan again.

"Go on ahead and practice. I'm just finishing up a chapter for my next book and I don't mind having something besides silence to listen to." Shannon smiled and turned back to her computer.

A huge smile broke across her face. Elodie shut the door quietly behind her and eagerly walked across the room and picked up her guitar and slung the strap over her head. She loved how smooth it felt in her hand, her beloved red glittery guitar that she had dubbed Cerise, the French word for cherry. She placed her fingers on the neck of her guitar to form the D major chord and ran her fingers over the strings, the chord resonating through the room.

“Lovely. One of my favorite chords.”

She sat down in her usual corner chair, opened her new songwriting notebook  on the ottoman in front of it, and began her warm-up routine. Her fingers flew over the fretboard as she warmed up by playing major and minor scales. As she plucked each string and moved her fingers up and down the guitar neck, Elodie looked over the words she’d written just that afternoon. After Duncan left, Elodie’s head buzzed from the conversation she’d had with him and she couldn’t leave without writing something down about it. Since the lyrics were only a first draft, various lines and stanzas were crossed out on the page, with new verses and ideas written in the margins. It looked like a mess but Elodie could read it without much difficulty.   

She placed her fingers to form her favorite chord and began a fingerpicking pattern. Elodie closed her eyes and took in the sounds coming from her guitar, the first line of her new song running through her head. It was her usual method of songwriting to begin with a chord and start singing any melody that came to mind.

“You made me feel..... like sunshine,” Elodie’s throaty voice whispered, her voice resting in the lower reaches of her range. She continued the same pattern, trying out different rhythms for that first line. “You.... made me feel like..... sunshine. You made....me.....feel like sun.....shine. You.... made me..... feeeeeeeel..... like sunshine.... And you made..... me feel like..... like a bird....”

So it continued. Within ten minutes, Elodie had a rough draft of a melody and chord progression for the first verse of her new song. She felt immensely proud of herself. She started the song again from the beginning, practicing her melody and words and getting more and more confident with her singing as she went along.

Suddenly, Elodie stopped playing so she could go back to the beginning and play the first verse. She felt she had practiced it enough that she could at least perform the first verse without looking at her paper, so she started the verse again, her eyes closed in concentration as each syllable and note flowed off her tongue.

At the end of it, Shannon interjected from across the room, “Sing that verse again.” Her eyes were still fixed on her computer screen, but she paused her typing.

Elodie closed her eyes again and took a deep breath.

You’ve made me feel, like sunshine

You’ve made me feel, like a bird

All I need to hear are your words

And all I want to do is make you mine, mine, mine

”And that’s all I have so far.”

“Keep going, keep going.”

Elodie responded with a giddy nod and continued playing around with her chord progression and the rest of the lyrics she’d written. It didn’t take her long to come up with a very rough draft of a song. Forty-five minutes must have passed between Elodie coming into the room and that moment when she had a partly finished song. After focusing so much on writing for the last two years, it did not take her as long to write a song.