The School of Essential Ingredients (14 page)

Chloe

Chloe had met Jake at the bar and grill where she got her first job, bussing tables. Bussing wasn’t what she had set out to do, but when you’ve just graduated from high school and don’t know how you’d pay for college even if your father thought you could get in, bussing tables can seem like a good option. Unless you have a tendency to drop things, which Chloe did.

She was sitting on the back stoop of the restaurant, crying her way through her fifteen-minute lunch break when she felt someone drop down on the step beside her, and smelled meat, fresh off the grill.

“Thought you might need this,” said Jake, handing her a burger. Chloe stared at him. Jake was tall, with that black-cat grace reserved for grill cooks and high school athletes, and curls that tangled their way lazily down his neck to his collar. As a cook, he was supposed to wear a hair net, but people didn’t tell Jake things like that. Jake was the guy, the one all the waitresses hoped would snap their orders down off the revolving cook’s wheel, not just because he was gorgeous, but because he could turn around four burgers, a fish sandwich, a Caesar salad, and a clam-sauce pasta for that seven-top you forgot about until they grabbed your elbow and asked where their food was and said it better be there in the next five minutes or they were walking out, and with Jake you knew that in four and a half minutes there you would be with all those plates balanced up your arm like a conga line, smiling like God just blessed you personally, and pulling in the tip of your lifetime.

But Jake didn’t usually have anything to do with bussers. Bussers brought back the dirty dishes, the leftovers that told the cooks how good the food was or wasn’t that night. As far as Chloe could tell, bussers were just hands to the cooks, and ears to the waitresses who filled them with one harshly whispered diatribe after another.

“So, which of the prom princesses was it tonight?” Jake asked, grinning.

“What do you mean?”

“Someone got you crying. My money’s on a waitress.” He saw the expression on her face. “Don’t worry, I’m not telling. You know that wall in the kitchen between the cooks and the waitresses? I don’t owe anything to the other side.”

Chloe ate a bite of the hamburger. It was good, and messy. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Cynthia,” she said, “I knocked over a wineglass at one of her tables.”

What she didn’t mention was Cynthia’s prolonged discussion of Chloe’s ineptitude and likely dismal love life, along with something about “cleaning that black crap off your eyes while you’re at it.”

“Ah, the queen herself.” Jake’s smile came at you sideways, like a car speeding through a four-way stop. “Just don’t bus her tables for a while. She’ll get the message.”

Chloe considered discussing with Jake the vertebrae that would be required for such an undertaking, but Jake was already standing up.

“Time to get back in there. You, too, I bet. Stick around when you’re done. There’s a group of us who hang out after work.”

Chloe nodded, unable to speak.

Four weeks later she moved out of her parents’ house and into Jake’s apartment.

Living With Jake hadn’t been quite what she expected, although she didn’t really know what that was, either. For the first week or two she felt like a prom queen herself. When Jake worked the late shift, he would bring home food from the middle page of the menu—the steaks and prawns and sauté dishes that were off the list of busser-appropriate food, items found on the back page under “Sandwiches and Other Light Fare.” Jake would wake her up and feed her with his fingers, accidentally dripping sauce on her so he could lick it off, leading to all sorts of activities that left Chloe exhausted and more prone to dropping things than ever, including a particularly spectacular display of cascading silverware one Thursday evening.

The manager stopped her as she was leaving work that night.

“So, Chloe,” he said, “how are things working out for you?”

Chloe may not have gone to college, but she knew a rhetorical question when she heard one.

“You know, Jake’s a friend of mine,” the manager told her soothingly. “I’ll give you a good reference.”

And thus started Chloe’s next six months as a busser at the Bombay Grill, the Green Door, Babushka, Sartoro’s. With each transition, she felt Jake’s enthusiasm for her weaken, along with her own confidence. The bed feasts diminished over the months; he rarely woke her up when he returned, which wasn’t always. His comments became increasingly sarcastic, noting with regularity the times she tripped or knocked a glass with her elbow.

“It’ll help you,” he said. “This is a habit you have to break.”

Chloe looked to see if the pun was intentional, but apparently it wasn’t.

It had Been on Chloe’s last, memorable night at Sartoro’s that she ran into Lillian. Chloe stepped back, horrified, watching the water from the three glasses she had been carrying land in a deluge on Lillian’s shoes, followed in rapid succession by Chloe’s apologies.

Lillian smiled and reached into her purse. She handed Chloe a chocolate-colored business card with “Lillian’s” and a telephone number written in luxurious white script across the front.

“Just in case,” she said, and then shook off her shoes and returned to her table.

When Chloe had called the number three days later, mortified, but in need of a new job, Lillian answered the phone.

“This is Chloe, the busser with the water glasses . . . ?”

“Yes, Chloe, I remember. How about you come by Monday evening, at five?”

“You want to hire me? But I’m clumsy, you saw.”

“I’m not so sure about the clumsy part.” Lillian’s voice danced like water running over rocks. “And by the way, I didn’t say I’d hire you, did I? See you at five o’clock.”

When Chloe showed up that Monday, the lights were on in the dining room, but it was empty. She walked up the four front steps, listening to the slight creak in the wood, feeling for the welcoming give in the tread she hoped would be there. At the door, she knocked, feeling a little silly—it was a restaurant, after all—but there was something so private about the place that her hand simply refused to turn the knob without announcing her presence.

Lillian answered the door and ushered her inside. “Welcome,” she said. “What do you think of my restaurant?”

Chloe looked around at the tables, curled into corners, their linens white and starched and heavy, the candlesticks solid and silver. The wood floor under her feet was burnished brown and smooth from wear; the walls above the wainscoting were adorned with hand-painted plates and etchings of small towns that looked European, although Chloe couldn’t be sure.

“It’s beautiful,” Chloe said, “but can I ask why you might want me to work for you? Here?”

“Well, let’s just say that in my experience people who seem distracted can be some of the most interesting people you’ll ever meet.”

“Nobody’s ever put it that way before.”

“It all depends on what happens when you do pay attention.”

“How do you think you’ll get me to do that? I mean, my boyfriend already yells at me every time I drop something.”

“How does that work?”

“Not well.” Chloe smiled in spite of herself.

“Then I suppose we’ll have to try something else. Do you want to?”

“Yes.” Chloe’s voice surprised her in its intensity.

“All right, then. I want you to learn this room—whatever that means to you. I’ll be back in five minutes.” Lillian went through the kitchen door and disappeared.

Chloe stared after her, still wondering where the rest of the staff were, when the people might arrive, why there was no noise in the kitchen.

“By the way,” Lillian’s voice came from the kitchen, “we’re closed on Monday nights, so take your time. And don’t be afraid to touch.”

Chloe looked at the table in front of her, and then reached down to stroke the crisp finish of the linen cloth cascading off the table. She picked up the fragile flute of a pre-dinner Prosecco glass, its stem a slim twig between her fingers, and set it down again carefully. She walked to the next table, listening to the sound her feet made sliding across the wood floor, then walked to the window to look out to the garden, lit up by the last of the evening’s light, so that the roses seemed to glow and the leaves of cherry trees took on a sharp-edged definition. She lifted one of the chairs by the window table quietly and pulled it back, then sat down, looking across the room.

Lillian walked in and Chloe started to her feet.

“No,” said Lillian. “That’s the right thing to do. You want to know where you work.”

“I love it here,” Chloe said, then stopped.

“Then you’ll be careful,” Lillian said.

“I don’t know if I can. What if I break things? I couldn’t stand it.”

“Okay, let’s try this. Close your eyes and walk to the kitchen door.”

Chloe could think of many reasons why this was one of the more questionable requests anyone had ever made of her. But Lillian seemed completely unconcerned about the hundreds, probably thousands, of dollars that stood between Chloe and the door to the kitchen. So after a minute, with Lillian still patiently waiting, Chloe decided it was Lillian’s crystal and china after all, and she closed her eyes and began sliding her feet along the wooden floor, very, very slowly.

“You can go more quickly,” Lillian said, to her right. “You know where you’re going.”

And Chloe realized she did. There was the two-top near Lillian, the one closest to the front door, but next to the window that looked out to the front porch and beyond to the garden that led to the gate. There was the four-top on her left in the middle of the room, that should have felt exposed but didn’t because the lighting was softer, and there was, yes she remembered it, a chair that had been pulled out just a bit, so she moved a little closer to the two-top, feeling her fingers run across the top of a chair and out into the space where the front door would open. From there, it was a matter of going mostly forward, but weaving a bit to the right and left—you could tell, Chloe realized, when you were closer to a table because of the smell of candles and starch, and the little white bowls of spiced salt that released just the lightest touch of fennel into the air. And then, she was at the kitchen door.

“It’s not such a big room, after all,” Lillian commented.

“I want to work here,” Chloe said, simply. “I won’t drop a thing.”

It had Been a couple of months later that Chloe saw lights on in the restaurant kitchen on a Monday night when she walked past on her way home from the grocery store. The next afternoon when she arrived at work, Chloe asked Lillian about the activity in the kitchen.

“That’s my cooking class,” Lillian replied. “I teach lessons the first Monday of the month.”

“Could I come?”

“Chloe, if you want to work in the kitchen, I can start you as a prep cook.”

“I don’t want it as a job,” Chloe fumbled. “That’s what my boyfriend does. I’d just like to be able to cook sometimes. So when he comes home from work, I could do that.”

Lillian nodded. “I see. Well, a new class is starting in September. You could give it a try.”

“What do the classes cost?” Chloe was running numbers in her head. She wanted this to be a surprise, but didn’t know if she could afford it, and didn’t know how many extra shifts she could add to her schedule without Jake noticing.

“Let’s just call it on-the-job training for now, shall we?”

The first night of classes Chloe had realized quickly that she was at least a decade younger than anyone else in the room, which did nothing to reduce her sense of trepidation. Lillian saw her from across the kitchen and smiled but made no move to introduce her to any of the students. Chloe went over to the sink to wash her hands, and stood next to a fragile-looking woman with silver hair.

“Are you here with someone?” the woman asked conversationally. “Your mother, perhaps?”

“No,” said Chloe, a bit defiantly.

The woman regarded her appraisingly. “Good for you,” she said. “My name is Isabelle.”

Chloe hadn’t been sure that she could kill a crab that first night, but she took a cue from her experiment walking across the dining room and closed her eyes. In the darkened space of her mind, she had felt the life in the crab under her fingers, and mourned its end, simply and deeply, before pulling off the shell as quickly as she could. When she ate the crab later she closed her eyes again, and felt the life come into her.

At the end of the class, Lillian touched her elbow as she left. “You’re learning, Chloe. You should be proud of yourself.”

While Chloe loved the classes and the people in them, she hadn’t had the courage to try any of the lessons at home until after Tom’s night with the pasta. Chloe had watched him, the gentleness on his face as he worked, the way his hands touched the ingredients like the body of someone he cherished, and she decided this would be the dish she would make for Jake, and he would see her food as love.

It was harder getting along with Jake these days. Even though she was holding on to a regular job, the river of his commentary did not cease; it simply changed its course. Her hair (she was thinking of going natural; he thought brown was boring), her clothes (not seductive enough for him, too risqué for the outside world), her ideas (nonexistent). Sometimes Chloe felt as if he was tying her up into a tight little ball, small enough to throw far away from him.