Class one: A-plus.
As Holly finished cleaning up the kitchen (Mia had missed a lot), she headed out to the porch swing with a cup of tea and her grandmother’s diary. She couldn’t see the bay from here, but the sounds of water lapping and the warm rush of breeze almost lulled her to sleep. She could probably fall asleep out here and be perfectly safe, except for a raccoon poking up to steal the slice of leftover tiramisu from yesterday.
“Nonna,” she said to the dark sky. “Tonight was a success. I did it. No one stormed out and called me a fraud. No one demanded their money back.” She was dying to find out what had happened with the four women who had taken her grandmother’s class. Had they come back? Did Annette’s husband die? Holly opened the diary and read.
August 1962
Dear Diary,
They came back the following week with their ten-dollar bills, the four women full of excitement. They had each made their husbands the dishes the way I taught them, and there were changes. Big changes. Annette’s husband came home from work the day after she’d made him the veal parmigiana and said she deserved a nap after being home all day with the colicky baby. This, after telling her baby care was the mother’s responsibility. Nancy’s husband brought her a bouquet of lilies, her favorite flower, when he could just have easily chosen the cheaper carnations. Lenora Windemere’s husband booked a dinner cruise around Casco Bay. And Jacqueline’s husband made love to her for the first time in over seven months.
After a week of my recipes, they come home with different expectations than a scotch and a newspaper. They come home kinder. Peering into the mysterious pots on the stove. Sniffing the air and smiling. And at night, they were amorous. Jacqueline confessed to me in a whisper over the barrel of apples in the general store that her husband wanted her in a way he hadn’t in two years. Was there a secret ingredient she could use on his steak or baked potato, his other favorite meal? Was it the basil
?
What could I say? I had to honestly report that I truly didn’t know. There was nothing magical about my ingredients. The recipes simply called for wishes and memories and they had come true.
Or, more likely, the women were changing. Hoping for more. Expecting more. I tried to explain this, but Lenora said her husband insisted that “Eye-talian” cooking was full of aphrodisiacs, like oysters were, reportedly. I reminded them they didn’t use oysters in the recipes they copied down.
During the second class, as they prepared eggplant parmigiana and linguini in clam sauce, the wishes and memories went into the pots and pans. As Lenora pounded the eggplant, she wished for another baby. I can’t fully describe the funny feeling I got as she added the “Please, Lord, let this come true.” I just know it was a funny feeling, not quite bad, yet not good either. I’m not sure what this means. Twins, perhaps
?
As she shook salt into the big pot of boiling water, Annette wished that the birthday bash she was throwing for her husband would be a huge hit and that her snooty sister-in-law would come. I find it hard to imagine the person Annette could possibly find snooty, since she and her friends are as snooty as they come.
Nancy sliced cheese and wished her sister would move back to Maine from Florida.
And Jacqueline slid the linguini into the pot, wishing her husband would sleep in their bed again tonight.
Within a few weeks, everything had come true. Lenora learned she was six weeks pregnant. Nancy’s sister came for a visit and announced her husband was being transferred to the Boston office, which was as good to Nancy as if they were moving to Maine. Jacqueline’s husband bought her a black silk teddy.
And Annette’s snooty sister-in-law did RSVP yes to Annette’s husband’s fortieth birthday party. But two days before the party, he died of a massive heart attack while jogging. His fortieth birthday was turned into a memorial service.
I don’t know Annette well, of course, and she’s mostly unbearable and materialistic and obsessed with having what her friends and neighbors have. But now what she wants most of all is to join her husband in heaven—which is what she told me when I stopped by her house the night of the memorial, once everyone was gone. I could hear the baby crying, and when Annette didn’t answer the door, I gave the doorknob a jiggle and it opened. I found Annette sobbing on the kitchen floor, her back against the refrigerator door, containers of food on the table and counters. I let her know I was there and was going to take care of the baby, and that’s when she said she wished she were dead too, then added, “I wish I were with him. I just want to be with him.
”
I let it go at that and hurried upstairs to the baby, who I hoped had been tended to by family and friends that had come over after the funeral. The baby was wet and hungry, so I changed him and warmed a bottle and put him back down, but when he started crying again and Annette slammed her hands over her ears, I said to her, “Honey, I’m going to take the baby home with me and give you some time. You come get him when you’re ready.” She nodded and burst into tears, so I helped her upstairs to her room, where she lay down on her bed and sobbed.
I knew all about that.
I put the food away in the refrigerator, went through the nursery, and packed a bag for the baby, wrote a note to remind Annette that I was taking the baby home with me to care for until she was ready to come get him, and then left.
Luciana was thrilled to have a baby in the house and helped me diaper him, even after he sprayed right on her neck. Three days later, Annette came for her baby. Something was completely gone from her eyes, that spark of jealousy and competitiveness.
“
Thank you for helping me,” Annette said, taking the baby from the bassinet I’d bought at a secondhand shop.
“
Whenever you need some time to yourself, you just bring him here,” I told her.
I let her know I’d cancel class out of respect, but Annette shook her head and said it would be a help to be among her friends. The following week the four of them were back. Annette was still as standoffish as ever with me, as though I hadn’t done her a kindness it seemed her friends hadn’t. And when it came time for her to make a wish into the gnocchi, she wished she’d find another husband who was as good a provider as Bob had been.
Lenora smiled at Annette; it was clear Lenora had told Annette it was time to take control of her life. I would have thought Annette had a tiny heart, but when the recipe called for a happy memory, she told of her husband reading her terminally ill father the sports scores during the Super Bowl, and how she knew that despite how he seemed on the outside, he could sometimes be a caring man. It turned out that Bob, as went the American expression, was a bit of a shit.
And so that was that for Annette’s grieving period. She now wished for a new husband who would not mind a colicky baby. Lenora spent her wishes on not miscarrying, which had happened the previous year. Nancy wished her in-laws would decide to move in with her husband’s sister in New Hampshire instead of them, and Jacqueline wished that her husband was not carrying on an affair with his secretary, which would account for the previous year’s dry spell.
They came back week after week, becoming decent cooks of Italian-American food. And through it all, I can’t say I was ever really included in their little group, despite being privy to their most personal hopes, dreams and fears.
Holly closed the diary and wrapped her arms around herself, unsettled by all she’d read. The women who’d taken her grandmother’s class sounded so selfish and cold, despite tragedy, infidelity, unhappiness. Or, perhaps, because of those things. Holly shivered as the wind swirled through her sweater. She thought of Juliet, grieving someone or something, alone here in Maine, where she had no family but at least one friend.
She collected her mug and the composition book, headed inside, and picked up the phone to call Juliet, then realized she only had the number where no one called back, in Chicago. Juliet was grieving a loss. Her husband? She sounded exactly like her grandmother had described Annette—before the perky interest in finding a new husband, anyway. Why hadn’t Holly
pressed Juliet on where she was staying? Now she wouldn’t be able to find her and could only hope she’d show up next Monday for the class.
Watch over her, Nonna, will you?
Holly said, her gaze on Antonio, who sat on his perch, staring out at the inky night sky and the twinkling stars.
Six
The next morning, as Holly checked the Bolognese sauce simmering on the stove and kept an eye on the timer for the tagliatelle, one of her favorite pastas, she realized no one had come in during the three weeks since she’d been making all the takeout foods, with wide eyes and a sly smile and asking, “What was in that sauce?” She had no idea what accounted for the amorous quality of Camilla’s food, but then again, Camilla herself was the magical ingredient.
The Bolognese sauce had called for a wish, just a plain old wish, nothing fancy, and Holly’s thoughts turned back to Juliet with her grieving eyes and gray clothes. “I wish Juliet peace,” was what went into the sauce along with finely chopped pancetta.
Someone rang the doorbell twenty times in a row. Holly figured it was Mia (who else would?) and there she was, her expression frantic, shivering in the morning chill in just a thin light blue hoodie and jeans.
“Mia, honey, what’s—”
Mia burst into tears, and Holly ushered her in, closing the
door with her foot. She led her into the kitchen and sat her down in the breakfast nook, quickly making her hot chocolate, which did seem to have magical properties, at least as far as Mia was concerned.
“He’s going to propose to that moron,” Mia wailed, flinging her head down on her arms. She lifted up her head and covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe it. How could be? He knows how I feel about her.” Tears streamed down Mia’s face, and Holly hurried over and sat down beside her.
“How do you know?” Holly asked, reaching out to tuck Mia’s hair behind her ears and out of her face.
“Five minutes ago I was going into the kitchen to get some cereal, and I passed his bedroom, and he was standing by the window, with his back to me, holding an engagement ring. He was just staring at it, like he was rehearsing his proposal.” She burst into tears again and flung her head back down.
Holly stroked Mia’s hair and got up to pour the hot chocolate into a mug, which she brought back to the table.
Mia lifted her head again. “You can help me!” She picked up the mug, wrapping her hands around it. “You could come over tonight and back me up. Like, I’ll say, ‘Dad, you can’t marry that fake moron who doesn’t even like me,’ and when he says, ‘Honey,
of course
she likes you,’ you can say, ‘No, really she doesn’t, she made that clear when she was totally relieved there was no room for her in the class.’ And then he’ll say, ‘Come on, that’s crazy, she came in to take that course and there was no room.’ And then he’ll go into a half-hour discussion on what it means to
project,
which is his new word. And then you can
tell him to lose the psychobabble
and
the bobblehead, that I’m
right.
” Tears filled Mia’s eyes and Holly knew she’d have to tread carefully.
“Honey, it’s not my place to interfere in your dad’s life. I don’t even know him, really.”
“His life? It’s
my
life. And you know
me
. I’m your apprentice. Please, Holly?”
“Mia—”
She looked at Holly with those teary, blueberry-colored eyes. “All he ever says is that he’d never do anything bad for me. But he’s blinded by Jodie without an
e
’s big boobs and miniscule skirts and high heels. There’s no way she loves him. And she hates me.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you, Mia.”
She stood up, her lips tight. “You sound just like him.”
Holly’s shoulders slumped. She was out of her element here.
“Just come for dinner tonight, Holly. You don’t have to say anything if it doesn’t feel right or whatever. But should you suddenly feel like saying something, you can.”
“And I’m there because … ?”
Mia bit her lip, then her eyes lit up. “Because I’m your apprentice, and since you saw how little I know about the kitchen and its inner workings, you wanted to give me a lesson in my home. Like to familiarize me with how ovens work and what potato peelers are.”
Holly raised an eyebrow.
“Please, Holly. You don’t have to say anything if you’re not comfortable. But if my dad should say something that strikes
you as completely weird, even though you don’t know him very well, you could say something like, ‘Wow, it must be really hard to propose to a woman your daughter hates.’ And that will just get the conversation started. And he won’t be able to say, ‘When you’re an adult you’ll understand,’ because he’ll be talking to an adult. You.”
“Mia, this is not my pla—”
“Please, Holly. Just come over to teach me how a kitchen works, what to do if a pilot light goes out or whatever. Why I shouldn’t use a fork to stir scrambled eggs in a nonstick pan. That kind of stuff. I really need to learn.”
Holly sighed. “Oh, fine. You do need some pointers. But I can’t promise you I’ll say anything at all about your father’s love life. That’s
not
my business.”
Mia beamed. “Like sixish?”
“Like sixish.” With that, Mia raced out. Holly watched her dash across the road and down the path toward the bay.
Talk about sticky.
Holly had sold three tagliatellis and three quarts of Bolognese sauce and had only one returned pumpkin ravioli (too toothsome). Progress. Despite how well the class had gone, she’d been expecting the phone to ring all day with at least one of her students dropping out and demanding his or her money back, but the phone remained blessedly silent while the front door chimes happily rang. Also progress.