The Proof is in the Pudding (25 page)

“What do you mean?”

Eileen reminded me that while Liddy Marshall had given up acting for marriage and motherhood, now that her twin sons were in college she sometimes worked as an extra in movies and on TV shows.

“Liddy’s been on
General Hospital
several times as a nurse in the background, and she always supplies her own costumes so they’ll fit. You two are the same size,” Eileen said. “Why don’t you call her while I finish packing up.”

I grinned at Eileen and reached for the phone. “I knew there was a reason I put up with you all those years when you were a teenager.”

Liddy was delighted at my scheme for getting in to see Roland Gray.

“Of course you can have the outfit, and it comes with an authentic-looking ID badge. Don’t worry about the picture. Those things are so bad hardly anybody’s recognizable.”

“Great.”

“I’m coming with you,” Liddy said. “In case you need someone to create a diversion. Aren’t you lucky you have a best friend who’s an actress?”

I
was
lucky to have Liddy as my best friend, in more ways than one. She was the person who had set me on the path of cooking for a living.

My father had been a veterinarian and my mother was, and still is, an accountant in San Francisco. Because they both had to work full-time to support us, and I was the oldest of the four children, I’d prepared the meals from the time I was ten years old. My grandmother Nell taught me how to shop carefully for food, and how to make dinners from scratch. The fresh ingredients she showed me how to choose went into meals that were both more nutritious and cheaper than packaged dinners heated in a microwave. Learning what she called her “Nellie Campbell menu magic” was exciting. Cooking never seemed like a chore. As an adult it became my hobby, my relaxation. I enjoyed feeding people I cared about.

When I met Mack, I was a brand-new high school English teacher and he was in his third year as a police officer. I’d loved teaching English, and did it for fifteen years, until the terrible day when a student I’d given an F to for cheating brought a Glock to school and shot at me. I saw the pistol a moment before he pulled the trigger, and ducked. The bullet streaked past my head and smashed into the wall. When I saw where it had lodged in relation to where I was standing, I realized that it hadn’t missed me by much.

The school’s basketball coach had been out in the hallway when he heard the shot. He’d rushed in and subdued the boy before he could fire again. The young gunman glared at me, cursing. “Next time I’ll pop you when you ain’t looking.”

I stayed home for a week, jumping at every unfamiliar sound. At night, even with Mack’s arms around me, I dozed only in snatches. I stopped leaving the house, ordered groceries over the phone, and asked for them to be delivered. Tuffy was just a year old then. Instead of our jaunts through the neighborhood, I walked him around our backyard.

Liddy told Mack she was afraid I was becoming agoraphobic. It was her idea that I make a professional switch and teach that other thing I loved: cooking.

It took most of our modest savings, but with Mack’s and Liddy’s unwavering encouragement, I found the perfect space—in the back of a kitchen appliance store—and jumped through all the hoops that the State of California requires when someone wants to open a small business. By the time I was ready for students, I felt like my pre-gunshot self, and Tuffy and I were strolling around Santa Monica again.

Liddy rounded up most of the people who enrolled in my first classes, but within a few months word of mouth was sending students to me. Soon they were bringing their friends. The business grew to the point where I was almost breaking even. The first month when the school actually earned a tiny profit, I celebrated by treating myself to a professional manicure. That night I had another celebration, an especially sweet one, with my husband.

The next morning, Mack suffered a fatal heart attack while he was jogging. That same afternoon a vase of yellow roses arrived. They had been ordered the previous day. The card said, “Congratulations, Cookie. I knew you could do it. Love you always, Mack.” Cookie had been my nickname since the first time I’d made dinner for him when we were dating.

The little school that I called The Happy Table was barely surviving financially, until I had the good luck to be hired to host a cooking show on the Better Living Channel, replacing the previous host, who had been fired. Depending upon whom one talked to, she’d lost the job either for drinking on the air or for being impossible to get along with. Or both.

Taping three half hours a week, and doing one live hour-long show on Thursday nights, had made me cut back on the number of classes I taught, but I never wanted to give up my little school. The TV exposure had increased enrollment to the point that the weekend courses were filled, with a waiting list. The school still wasn’t making much money, but at least it wasn’t drowning me in debt any longer. While I enjoyed teaching cooking to a television audience because the shows reached a great many people, the fact was that I got the most pleasure out of watching people who were standing right in front of me learn new kitchen skills. And the excited expressions on the faces of the children, when they learned how to make something they could eat, was priceless.

My cooking school was located in the back of Country Kitchen Appliances on Montana Avenue, between Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets. The front of the building was white clapboard siding, accented by dark green shutters. Customers entered through red Dutch doors.

At ten minutes to nine o’clock on Saturday morning, Montana Avenue in front of Country Kitchen Appliances was not the busy thoroughfare it would be in another hour, so it was easy to find a parking place near the store’s entrance.

I fed a handful of quarters into the meter while Eileen removed the two cardboard boxes, one at a time, from the back of her VW and set them on the sidewalk.

“Look, there’s Mrs. Tran,” Eileen said.

I glanced up to see a tiny, gray-haired Vietnamese woman smiling and waving at us through the front window. We waved back. Mr. and Mrs. Tran owned the store.

Eileen lowered her voice. “I’m afraid to ask Mrs. Tran, but do you know how her husband is doing? He scared me half to death when he fainted last Saturday.”

“When I came to visit him on Monday he looked frail. He was supposed to have some tests on Tuesday. Mrs. Tran told me that he hasn’t been very strong since his years doing forced labor in a Communist reeducation camp.”

Eileen looked puzzled. “I don’t understand? What kind of a camp?”

I put the final quarter into the meter. “When the North Vietnamese Communists defeated South Vietnam, many, many men from the educated, professional classes were taken from their homes and families and sent away to do hard labor. The Communists called it ‘reeducation.’ Some didn’t survive. Many of those who did were never the same again.” I picked up one of the two boxes. “Mrs. Tran said it took them almost fifteen years to finally get to America. A lot of that time they had to spend in refugee camps.”

“They’re such an upbeat couple,” Eileen said. “After what they must have gone through, I’m ashamed to make such a fuss over my problems.”

“Atrocities go on every day somewhere in the world. We’ve been very lucky,” I said.

Mrs. Tran held the Dutch doors open as Eileen and I carried the boxes inside.

“Good morning,” she said brightly.

Eileen and I returned her greeting.

“How is Mr. Tran?” I asked. “Did he have the tests you mentioned?”

Her smile dimmed a bit, but she maintained a cheerful demeanor. “We are very hopeful. Good doctors here.”

I matched her positive tone. “Tell Mr. Tran that I’m sending him my best wishes.”

“That will please him,” she said.

The store’s telephone rang. Mrs. Tran excused herself to answer it.

“She has such a delicate face,” Eileen said. “She must have been lovely when she was young.”

“She still is,” I said. “It’s just a different kind of beauty now. Part her bone structure, and part her spirit.”

The Happy Table cooking school was in the back of the store; it had been converted from what had once been a storeroom. To get there, we had to carry our boxes past an array of attractive kitchen equipment. The Trans had arranged the merchandise so that it looked as though the store was divided into four separate kitchens, each in a different style, from the sleekest modern to cozy country. The layout worked to the advantage of the Trans, because many of the students bought items that caught their attention as they were walking through the displays.

“One day, when I have some extra money, I’m going to buy a new KitchenAid stand mixer,” I said. “In red. The problem is that the one I’ve had for twenty-five years refuses to wear out or break down.”

Eileen chuckled. “That company must have missed the class on ‘planned obsolescence.’ So many things start going to pieces right after the warranty runs out.”

For the past three years, Eileen had worked as my assistant at the school to earn extra money, so the two of us had set up for these classes many times. It didn’t take us long to cover the preparation tables with disposable cloths, organize the ingredients for what I was going to demonstrate this morning, and check the four stoves to make sure the burners and the ovens were working.

We finished just as the eight Mommy & Me teams began to arrive. Eileen handed out disposable aprons for them to put on.

The seven mothers, eight children, and one nanny placed themselves around the preparation tables. They were a nice ethnic mix. The two youngest mothers were about thirty, and the two oldest were deep into their forties. The rest were somewhere in between. The nanny was a Latina in her early twenties, accompanying a six-year-old girl named Alicia who didn’t want to let go of her caregiver’s hand.

The other seven children—five more girls and two boys—ranged in age from six to nine and were much bolder than little Alicia. One of Eileen’s jobs was keeping the children corralled near the prep tables where she could watch over them.

I told the class, “Today’s recipes form a theme: They’re dishes with family connections. The first one we’re going to make is Linda Dano’s Italian Meatballs recipe, which was taught to her by her mother-in-law. You moms probably know Linda Dano as an Emmy-winning actress, but when Linda’s husband, Frank Attardi, was diagnosed with lung cancer, she stopped working to be with him full-time. After he lost the battle, she became the national spokesperson for the Caregivers Survival Kit and Support Partners. Linda calls her mother-in-law, Marnie Attardi, her role model. Marnie worked in a glove factory while raising her three children. She and her husband, Anthony, never owned a home, but now, through an organization called HeartShare Human Services, and contributions from Linda and Frank, there’s a residential home for developmentally disabled adults named in their honor. It’s in Frank’s home borough of Brooklyn, New York.”

I indicated the line of ingredients we’d be using, and picked up the bottle of marsala. “Now, the unusual thing about this recipe is that while it calls for wine, we don’t put the wine into the mix. We’ll be moistening our hands with it when we roll the meatballs.”

One of the boys started making hiccupping sounds and staggered in an imitation of someone drunk. The other children giggled until the boy’s mother tugged on his shirt sleeve and shushed him.

We always ate what we made in these classes. When the meatballs had been cooked and consumed, Eileen and I gathered up the used paper plates and plastic forks, dumped them into our trash bag, and set out fresh ones.

“Because this is a Mommy & Me class, what we’re going to do next is make two dishes from a Hollywood mother and daughter. One of my favorite actors was Richard Crenna. His widow, Penni, and their daughter, Seana, are terrific cooks and they’re sharing with us Penni’s Mexican Chicken Kiev and Seana’s Quiche.