Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [158]
Richard places his outstretched palm on the car window as if he’s trying to keep the outside at bay a moment longer. And I let him. So we sit and watch the people trickle in, looking for ourselves in the group—the angry girl in the torn jean jacket, in some ways indistinguishable from the woman I’d become, in other ways barely recognizable; the well-dressed man with the haunted look. But the people entering Wightman School do so singly, quietly; it’s only then that I realize how lucky Richard and I have been. To have found someone to help you traverse the rough bits, to tell a joke or hold your hand or whistle in the dark when life throws you a menacing curve. Suddenly, Richard throws open the car door and swings his good leg out. I hurry around to help him.
“Life is a banquet,” he says, grandly sweeping his good arm wide. The gesture knocks him slightly off-balance, and, smiling, I grab his arm to steady him. Richard can keep himself unobtrusive only so long. “But the problem with being a cook, Mira, is you never get to be a guest at your own party. Go back to New York, rebuild Grappa. Find a great apartment and paint it yellow. But don’t forget to pull up a chair and dig right in. You’re ready. We both are.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
I hand him his cane, and he takes my arm as we begin our advance upon Wightman School, where, behind heavy oak doors, demons are lurking. This time, though, we’re both hopeful; if we tread carefully, hand in hand, we might just be able to leave them behind.
chapter 32
The meeting drains Richard, although apart from the minimal introductions required, he’d barely said a word.
When we arrive home, Fiona takes one look at him and says she thinks we’d better save our barbeque sauce tutorial for another day. Since my column is due to Enid tomorrow, I tell her I’ll take a shot at the recipe and let her know how it goes. She pats my hand, kisses Richard good night, and is gone. I help him get ready for bed, and then, by the glow of a single tiny lamp so as not to disturb him, I tape my mother’s recipe card to the hood of the stove and begin.
Although my mother was a talented cook, she wasn’t a careful recipe writer; not all good cooks are. There is an art to the written recipe, I’ve only lately begun to discover. Assume your reader only knows so much. Deliver the information clearly and in small doses. Leave just enough ambiguity to allow for interpretation. Each cook needs to find the holes, the tiny gaps that allow her to improvise, to make the dish her own. My mother had left too much to the reader’s imagination, a shortcoming that could be overwhelming to the inexperienced cook; I find that there is much I need to add, but I try to tread lightly.
Whether by chance or design, my mother hadn’t allowed me to really know her, and so I’ve been left to piece her life together from the scraps she left behind. My mother hadn’t taught me to cook any more than she had taught me to be a mother, but I take comfort in the fact that I’ve still managed to learn something from her by looking in the holes.
It’s well after 2 a.m. by the time I’ve cleaned up the kitchen and e-mailed my column to Enid, but I’m not ready to sleep. I make a cup of tea and am about to grab a couple of Bruno’s cookies when I notice a small brown paper sack propped up by the cookie jar, on which Ben has written the following in his neat block script: Have you considered cacao nibs? I bet you haven’t! Ben. Fiona must have forgotten