Lost Art of Mixing (9781101609187) (7 page)

Lillian had grown Belgian endive herself a few times, but the labor involved was extensive. Endive was a plant grown twice—it was started from seeds, but later the plant was dug up, the vegetation cut off, and the root base, dense with energy, replanted and covered so the new growth would stay white. The resulting leaves had a distinctive, slightly bitter taste that could be used for contrast in green salads or braised into sweetness.

For the first time in six weeks, Lillian could feel her body reaching out toward a food, wanting to bring it closer. She took the endive in her hands where they nestled, quiet as eggs.

“Do you want some of the frisée as well?” the produce man asked her, holding it up, its lacey edges cascading over his hand. “A little shallot vinaigrette, a poached egg on top? A perfect Monday night dinner.”

“Just a lemon,” she said, as she put the endive in her cloth shopping bag. He handed her a lemon, but quickly reached under the counter again and brought out an orange globe, its color almost vibrating in the cool light of the produce stalls.

“Clementine,” he said, “for the end of the season.”

When Lillian was young, clementines had been a highlight of winter, the boxes arriving in stores in early December, a gastronomical equivalent of Christmas lights. Expensive, foreign, longed for throughout the rest of the year, they were something to be saved for a special occasion. She could remember the thrill of eating the first one of the season, the way her thumb would slip under the loose peel, pulling it away from the squat, juice-filled fruit inside. She would ration out the box until it was clear that mold would beat her to the rest, and then she would eat one after another until it felt as if summer ran through her veins.

Even now, when you could get clementines at almost any time of year, she restricted herself to the Christmas ones, unwilling to give up the feeling of anticipation, the taste of a fruit utterly in its season. She had stopped buying them a few weeks ago, but this one was perfect, and she took the fruit from him and placed it in her bag.

“You never know when you're going to want a little extra Christmas,” George said with a nod.

•   •   •

FINNEGAN MUST HAVE SPENT
the whole time she was gone cleaning, Lillian thought as she reentered the restaurant kitchen. The smell of bleach, of compost, even the chocolate from the previous night's cake had been replaced by the clear, bright scent of lemon. He must have chopped up a fresh one and put it down the garbage disposal, she realized, for once not worried about the waste, only glad she had succumbed to the temptation to buy another one at the market. Lemon was one of the few smells she could tolerate these days, and she had bought lemon-scented soap that she kept at home and in the bathroom at the restaurant for when the aromas of cooking grew too overwhelming.

Lillian turned on the oven and laid the yellow lemon, the clementine, and the three white ovals of endive on the wooden chopping block. Her mind had been racing for weeks, thoughts piling on one another like one of those chain-restaurant pizzas with ten ingredients too many. She liked the feel of the minimalist still life in front of her; she wanted a day like that—a few ingredients, an oven, time spent doing nothing.

She pulled out a heavy Dutch oven and collected butter from the walk-in refrigerator. The ingredients in front of her were safe, their smells neutral or clean. With a sharp knife, she carefully chopped off the hard end of the endive, leaving enough of a base to hold the leaves together. She cut the heads in half lengthwise and arranged them in a neat row in the bottom of the pot, their edges brushing against one another like delicately frilled skirts. She cut off small bits of butter, which she scattered over the leaves, finishing off with three generous squeezes of lemon and a few grinds of salt and pepper, adding just a bit of water in the bottom of the pan. She took a piece of parchment paper and ran the end of a cube of butter across it in smooth, straight strokes, watching the surface turn from matte to shine, then laid it across the top of the endive. The heavy cover of the pot settled into place with its usual grumblings, and she placed it in the oven. There.

It would take an hour or so. She could leave, run an errand, take a walk. But instead she brought a chair out of the small break room and sat down next to the oven. The kitchen was warming from its heat; the dining room on the other side of the swinging door was hushed and uninhabited. For this one moment everything was as it used to be. She sat and looked about her.

“We need to talk,” she said aloud, into the empty space.

•   •   •

BY THE TIME LILLIAN
had turned twelve years old, cooking had become her family. It had taught her lessons usually imparted by parents—economy from a limp head of celery left too long in the hydrator, perseverance from the whipping of heavy cream, the power of memories from oregano, whose flavor only grew stronger as it dried. Her love of new ingredients had brought her to Abuelita, the owner of the local Mexican grocery store, who introduced her to avocados and cilantro, and taught her the magic of matching ingredients with personalities to change a person's mood or a life. But the day when twelve-year-old Lillian had handed her mother an apple—fresh-picked from the orchard down the road on an afternoon when Indian summer gave over to autumn—and Lillian's mother had finally looked up from the book she was reading, food achieved a status for Lillian that was almost mystical.

“Look how you've grown,” Lillian's mother had said, and life had started over again. There was conversation at dinner, someone else's hand on the brush as it ran through her hair at night. A trip to New York, where they had discovered a secret fondue restaurant, hidden behind wooden shutters during the day, open by candlelight at night. Excursions to farmers' markets and bakeries and a shop that made its own cheese, stretching and pulling the mozzarella like taffy. Finally, Lillian felt like she was cooking for a mother who was paying attention, and she played in an open field of pearl couscous and Thai basil, paella and spanakopita and eggplant Parmesan. And then one day, two months after Lillian's sixteenth birthday, her mother had collapsed in the grocery store as they were shopping for Sunday dinner. A brain aneurysm, the doctors said. Too many words in her head, Lillian thought. No space left. And Lillian was alone again.

Cooking provided Lillian with homes after that. Abuelita had taken her in and taught her the art of tamales and chiles rellenos in the afternoons when Lillian got home from school, her hands finding solace in the rhythms of stirring and folding. Pierre gave Lillian her first restaurant job as a prep cook at the age of eighteen; three years later, Federico stole her away and raised her status to sous-chef, renting her the apartment above his restaurant for a ridiculously low rate. And all that time she dreamed and planned for the day when she would have her own kitchen, her own customers.

And now, here she was. She had fought for this restaurant, paid her dues—worked until two in the morning for years, demurred to the flashy egos of chefs who knew much and pretended more, just for the chance to watch them reduce a sauce into a moment of perfection. She had received burns and cuts, and, increasingly, compliments. When she was not even thirty, she had gotten the attention that opened the doors of a bank that would lend her money; she had taken over a wreck of a building and turned it into a place where people ate or took classes and remembered, or learned, why they loved each other.

This kitchen was hers. She looked out at the winter light coming in through the windows, listening to the rain-softened sound of the cars on the street. The room was warm, and the gentle scents of the braising endive reached out from the oven, welcoming her back.

She pulled out the Dutch oven and raised its lid. The leaves had melted into glistening layers, the color darker, shining. She took a knife and fork and tentatively cut off a bite. Its texture was silken, but with just the slightest bit of resistance beneath her teeth. The butter melted across her tongue. As she tasted, she thought of her customers, the expressions on their faces as they would eat the dish, the way it would bring them home to themselves. She thought of pairing the endive with a tender pork roast and a green salad with crisp apple slices and tart cranberries and pine nuts, a play off the holidays, like confetti after a party. For dessert, a creamy orange gelato, a bit of sunshine to shift their gaze forward into the coming year.

She smiled as she felt the menu come together, the world making complete and satisfying sense. This world. Her world.

She looked down.

“I can't give this up,” she said to the baby inside her.

But even as she said it, she didn't know what that meant.

•   •   •

LILLIAN PUT HER KEY
in the front door of Tom's house. She couldn't say “their” house yet, although her things had been casually migrating from her apartment over the past few months. She still kept her place, the one she'd had for fifteen years while Federico, the landlord, had evolved from boss to lover to friend and supporter. She still liked living above the bustle of a restaurant, especially one that wasn't hers, its sounds and smells comforting without demanding her attention.

It was unlikely that Federico would be thrilled about any man impregnating the woman he saw as his culinary protégée. She could just imagine his response if she told him about the baby—the lectures about the hours and dedication it took to run a restaurant.

“Your kitchen is your mistress, your wife, your home,” he would tell her, his Italian accent thickening with each word. The fact that he used to tell her this even as they were lying in his bed didn't diminish the impact of the sentiment. She understood what he meant.

No, she couldn't confide in Federico, any more than she could tell Abuelita, who had returned to Mexico a few months ago, and would have had difficulty accepting an unwed pregnancy, no matter how much she loved Lillian. This one was hers to deal with, Lillian thought as she heard her key click in Tom's front-door lock.

Tom's house was empty, although that was to be expected. Tom had been given a high-profile case at the law firm, and these days he left early in the morning, often returning even later at night than she did. While she missed him, it had made it easier to disguise her symptoms. She didn't have to cook for him, either—he ate sandwiches at the office or stepped out for a burger in the evenings before heading back to the office. If she put lemon lotion on her hands and kept them near her face, she could sleep her way through the smell of mustard and grilled meat that still clung to him when he came home.

It hadn't always been this way. In the beginning, Tom had delighted in running away from work—taking Mondays off, coming by for a slow morning in her apartment, listening to Federico singing below as he prepared for the lunch crowd, the smells of ribollita and lasagna sneaking up the stairs. Other days, Tom would leave work early and come by the restaurant, cajoling her into dining with him out at a small table he set up in the garden. Hidden from the customers by the low-hanging branches of the cherry trees, they would eat with their fingers, leaning into each other's words. Afterward, he would wait for her, sitting on a stool in the kitchen and chatting with the staff as they worked.

“You're the mascot,” Chloe would say, placing a small origami chef's hat on his head, and they laughed while Chloe made him chop onions for her, although she said he really needed to take a class in knife skills.

And when Lillian would finally lock up the restaurant at the end of the night, she and Tom would walk home through the summer, then autumn, evenings, Tom's arm around her, his hand resting on her shoulder like a promise.

The first time she had gone to his house, it was filled with photographs—Tom and his wife at the beach, Charlie laughing in a bikini, tall and golden and gorgeous. Their honeymoon in Italy. Charlie again, toward the end, with a buzz-cut and hollowed-out cheekbones, somehow more beautiful than in any of the other pictures.

“Is that her?” Lillian asked, already knowing.

“Yes,” said Tom. “I'm sorry, I can take them down.”

“No,” Lillian said. “It's all right.”

He did it anyway, photographs disappearing one at a time over the weeks. But people lingered in objects as well as pictures, Lillian found—the smell of perfume in a blue chenille blanket on the couch, a pale green woman's bathrobe hanging in the closet. One time Lillian had opened a bottle of red wine and was reaching for a pair of handblown wineglasses when she caught the expression of horror on Tom's face and quickly pulled her hand back. The next time she came over, the wineglasses were gone. She didn't know where they went, but she doubted somehow it was far.

“I don't mind if you keep things,” she told him. She knew what it was like to want to hold on to the smell, the feel of someone else. She still had her mother's pillowcase even though the lavender scent of her mother's night cream was long gone, the fabric now only a caress against her skin.

But Lillian had found even as a child that more complicated than mourning was a jealousy of someone who wasn't there and never would be. Lillian's father had left so early in her life that she had few memories of him, but Lillian's mother saw her husband in the characters of every novel she read, in the place that wasn't set at the table, in the bed where she slept only on the left-hand side, although she still always replaced both pillowcases when she did laundry. When it came to Lillian's mother, her husband was more present in his absence, and Lillian often felt as if she resented him more for the way he had taken her mother away than for his own exit.

And it was even harder with Charlie, who hadn't wanted to leave. Tom's anger, that propulsive emotion that often vaulted humans forward to the next stage, to the next person in their lives, was directed at fate, an emotion that tied him even more strongly to Charlie.