The School of Essential Ingredients (9 page)

Antonia

Antonia drove up to the address written in her notebook and stopped, amazed. In a checkerboard neighborhood of craftsman bungalows and 1950s brick ramblers, the old Victorian house stood tall and splendid despite its obvious years of wear, the talcum-powder paint and tangled rhododendron bushes, the downspout hanging loose in the air like an arm caught in mid-wave. It was impossible to look at the house without erasing the years and the houses around it, to imagine it set in the midst of a vast track of land, gazing out across a long, rolling slope of green to the water and the mountains beyond. A home built by a man besotted, for a woman to whom he had promised the world.

Around the house, arched gateways led to a series of flowerbeds and doll-size orchards, moss-covered stone benches, a circular lawn. Antonia knew the gardens had nothing to do with her work as a kitchen designer. All the same, she couldn’t resist wandering through them, one after another like fairy stories in a well-loved children’s book, even though it meant leaving her sodden shoes at the front door when she finally did enter the house.

The sound of the door closing behind her bounced off the tall ceilings of the entry hall and up the wide, wooden staircase leading to the second story. Her clients would not be the first people to change the house, she observed as she looked about her. Black and white linoleum tile made a chessboard of the front hallway; the parlor to her right was a startling shade of fuchsia. But in the living room to her left she could see the thin strips of the original oak floors and a trio of bay windows framing a group of ancient cherry trees, their knobby branches twisting toward the sky. She crossed the formal dining room, adrift without its table and chairs, and into the kitchen that was the reason for her visit.

It was a generous room, with yet another bay for a small eating table that seemed set into the garden itself, and space in the center of the room for a large, battle-scarred wooden prep table that claimed ownership with an air of long-standing occupation. But it appeared the former owners’ remodeling urges had extended to the kitchen as well. Judging by the fake oak cabinets and the orange Formica countertop, the avocado and turquoise linoleum gracing the floor, Antonia guessed a 1970s burst of creativity. Still, cabinets could be changed and the spaces were good. Very good.

Antonia went over to the prep table, running her fingers affectionately along its worn surface, then looked beyond it to the other end of the kitchen, where a huge brick fireplace, blackened with age and use, was set in its own ten-foot-tall wall, flanked on one side by a mammoth six-burner stove and on the other by a window seat looking out to the raised beds of a deserted kitchen garden. Antonia walked to the fireplace and touched the soot gently with her fingers, bending her head to the opening and inhaling deeply, waiting for the smell of smoke and sausages, the sound of juices dripping and hissing on the hot wood below.

The front door opened and she heard the eager voices of her clients as they walked through the house.

“Antonia, are you already here?” Susan walked into the kitchen with a purposeful step. “There you are! Isn’t the house marvelous?”

Antonia nodded and straightened up, wiping her hands surreptitiously on the back of her black pants before reaching out to shake hands with Susan and her husband-to-be.

“I mean, it’s horrible.” Susan laughed. “We’re going to have to do everything over, of course. I mean, those cabinets and the floor—and that fireplace, for God’s sake—but it will be worth it when we’re done.”

Antonia nodded. She always nodded at this stage; there really wasn’t anything else to do.

“I’m thinking something minimal, industrial. Lots of stainless steel—I love stainless steel—with a concrete floor and black cabinets.” Susan’s hands gestured and pointed. “No handles—I hate handles—and maybe some rows of open metal shelves above the countertops. We could put the dishes and the new pots and pans up there.” She turned to her fiancé, who smiled and nodded.

Antonia waited, thinking perhaps there would be more, but this appeared to be the end.

“So we’ll just leave you to do your magic for a little while. Jeff and I need to go talk master bathroom, anyway. We’re going to have to take out the whole third bedroom just to get a decent master suite!” And with another laugh, she was gone.

“It’s a nice house,” Jeff said to Antonia, before he left.

“Yes,” she replied warmly. “It is.”

Antonia stood in the kitchen, trying in her mind to lay the outline of Susan’s vision over the kitchen that existed, but the straight lines kept bumping into the curve of the bay, sharp edges rumpled by the cushion on a window seat, the rounded back of an imaginary chair, warmed and softened by the fireplace that somehow, in every iteration, never seemed to give way to the image that Susan had presented.

In Antonia’s four years in America, in her four years of designing kitchens in eighty-year-old cottages and colonial mansions, contemporary condos and doll-size Tudors, this was the first fireplace she had seen in a kitchen, and she found herself circling it like a child with a dessert she knows is not for her. Antonia had grown up in a stone house, lived in by generations of families whose feet had worn dips into its limestone steps, where the smells of cooking had seeped into the walls like a marinade. It had taken her years to get used to the idea of houses made of wood, and she still found herself pacing the rooms of her rented bungalow when the wind was high and whistling. As she had watched how easily a wall could be taken down to open up a kitchen to a family or dining room, however, she had come to appreciate a certain invitation to creativity inherent in wooden structures; it offset a bit her feeling that nothing she worked on was likely to last.

But here was a fireplace. It reminded Antonia of her grandmother’s kitchen, with its stove at one end and a hearth at the other, the space in the middle long and wide enough to accommodate a wooden table for twelve and couches along the sides of the room. Her grandmother’s cooking area was small—a tiny sink, no dishwasher, a bit of a counter—but out of it came tortellini filled with meat and nutmeg and covered in butter and sage, soft pillows of gnocchi, roasted chickens that sent the smell of lemon and rosemary slipping through the back roads of the small town, bread that gave a visiting grandchild a reason to run to the kitchen on cold mornings and nestle next to the fireplace, a hunk of warm, newly baked breakfast in each hand. How many times had she sat by the fire as a little girl and listened to the sounds of the women at the other end of the kitchen, the rhythmic rap of their knives against the wooden cutting boards, the clatter of spoons in thick ceramic bowls, and always their voices, loving, arguing, exclaiming aloud in laughter or mock horror at some bit of village news. Over the course of the day, the heat from the fireplace would stretch across the kitchen toward the warmth of the stove until the room filled with the smells of wood smoke and meat that had simmered for hours. Even as a little girl, Antonia knew that when the two sides of the kitchen met, it was time for dinner.

Standing in Susan and Jeff’s kitchen, Antonia felt her stomach tighten with homesickness. She hadn’t realized how strong the feeling was, how much she longed for everything this fireplace, this well-worn wooden table meant to her—a life of language rolling off the tongue like a caress, of houses that nourished the heart as well as the eye.

“Is it going to work?” Susan asked, returning to the kitchen, her face lit with plans. “I mean, I know it’s small, but if we do it right, there will be room for both of us to cook, and . . .”

Jeff looked at Antonia ruefully. “Which means, I suppose, we’d have to learn?”

“Of course,” Susan exclaimed. “I got some great cookbooks at our wedding shower!”

Antonia smiled politely. “I’ll work up some sketches. Shall we meet here again, say in a week or so?”

“That would be fabulous.” Susan was opening cupboards, and turned with a laugh. “Really, this is just awful. I’m so glad you can see what we are looking for.”

“I don’t KNOW how to do this,” Antonia told her boss in misery.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“She doesn’t want a place to cook. She wants a kitchen for people to see her in.”

“You’ve dealt with those kind of clients before—more than once, and you’ve done beautifully.”

“But this kitchen—you’d have to see it. I can’t take it apart.”

“But it’s not your kitchen, Antonia, and they are the clients. You’ll have to see through their eyes. Or,” he added teasingly, “figure out a way to make them see through yours.”

When Antonia heard Lillian announce that that night’s cooking class was to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner, she shuddered. It had been a long weekend; she was no closer to having a design for Susan and Jeff’s kitchen than she had been when she first walked into their house, and she had been hoping to avoid Thanksgiving this year. She had been invited, every year of her four in the United States, to one Thanksgiving fest or another. Americans seemed to love sharing their cultural traditions, as if they were shiny new cars or babies. Every year Antonia sat at a table awash with food, watching serving bowls the size of laundry baskets being passed from one end to the other, dollops of mashed potatoes and creamed onions and cranberry sauce and bread stuffing and whipped yams and hunks of turkey plopping down, one after another, onto a plate already full. The point seemed to be to eat as much as possible before falling asleep. It made a certain sense for a holiday celebrating survival over starvation, and everyone seemed to revel in the excess of it all, but she couldn’t help feeling embarrassed for the food, all smashed together like immigrants in steerage class. She knew, sitting in Lillian’s kitchen, that her face had shown her thoughts and she quickly suppressed them.

“Actually, we’re going to try something a little different tonight,” Lillian said, smiling at Antonia. “I believe in traditions—they hold us together, like bones—but it can be easy to forget what they are really about. Sometimes we need to look from a different perspective to find them again.”

Lillian focused her attention on their faces. “So—what is the essence of Thanksgiving?”

“It’s about coming together,” said Helen warmly. “All these different people, with all their different lives, being a family.”

“Or at my house,” Chloe spoke up, a pinch of bitterness in her words, “it’s about everyone being the same, and if you’re not, eating enough so you won’t notice.” Chloe glanced around at the other students. “Sorry, Helen.”

“Well,” Lillian suggested, “here’s an idea: Instead of thinking about the people, how about we approach the food we will be preparing like the guest list for a dinner party—each dish invited for its own personality, all of them playing off one another to make the meal more interesting.

“And you never know,” she added, “if you treat the food that way, perhaps the people will follow.” Lillian started passing out a stack of menus written on thick white paper. “I’m going to try this at the restaurant this year. I thought it would be fun to do a dry run with the class.”

Antonia looked down at the paper that was passed to her and read:

Thanksgiving Dinner

Pumpkin ravioli

Stuffed turkey breast with rosemary,
cranberries, and pancetta

Polenta with Gorgonzola

Green beans with lemon and pine nuts

Espresso with chocolate biscotti

“It’s different, I agree,” Lillian noted, “but in the end, you’ll see that almost all the traditional Thanksgiving ingredients are there—even the original Indian corn—it’s just not the way you might expect. We’ll see what it makes you think about Thanksgiving.

“Now, this is a lot to do, so we’ll divide into teams and you can compare notes over dinner. I actually will give you recipes this time—although somehow I think you’ll still find the recipes a little atypical.” Lillian’s eyes were laughing. “Ian and Helen, I’d like you to work on the ravioli; Antonia and Isabelle, you’re on turkey; Carl and Tom, I’ll let you take over the polenta; and Claire and Chloe, you’re in charge of the biscotti. I’ve got your recipes and the ingredients laid out at different stations, and I’m here if you have questions.”

With that, Lillian opened the oven and took out a roasted wedge of pumpkin, its juices sputtering in the bottom of the pan.

“And one more thing,” Lillian added, “we’ll be eating slowly tonight—one course at a time, as they are ready. Every guest at a table should feel appreciated.”

Antonia and ISABELLE stood at their prep area, Isabelle’s silver hair and pale blue eyes making Antonia’s dark hair and olive skin seem even more vibrant. In front of them on the counter lay a mound of glistening turkey breast, deep green spikes of rosemary, creamy-white garlic cloves, wrinkled dried cranberries, slices of pink and white pancetta, salt, pepper, olive oil.

“You know,” Isabelle commented by way of introduction, “before you start cooking with me, I should tell you, I am losing my way, these days.”

Antonia’s hands stopped their movement among the ingredients. She looked at Isabelle quietly. “You are lost?” she said gently.

“No,” replied Isabelle. “I’m just not always sure where I am. Memories hold you to the ground, you know? And I”—she touched the dried cranberries with the tip of her finger—“am a bit light on my feet these days.”

Antonia picked up a sprig of rosemary and raised it to Isabelle’s nose. “Breathe in,” she suggested.

Isabelle inhaled and her face opened like a morning glory. “Greece.” The word came out with a sigh. “My honeymoon. There were rosemary hedges leading to our little stone house. The gardener came and clipped them one morning, and we made love in that green air for hours.” Isabelle stopped, embarrassed, and looked at Antonia.

“That’s lovely,” Antonia said.