The Monday Night Cooking School - By Erica Bauermeister Page 0,61
spices in bulk, buying just as much as he needed, which allowed him the excuse to return and wander through the store, smelling containers with names he didn’t recognize. One time, he took a packet of an especially intriguing spice into the Chinese restaurant and showed it to the waitress. She inhaled deeply; then, with a look of amusement, she took the packet back into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with a dish redolent in its fragrance. Over time, it became a game of sorts. At first frustrating, the recipes for the dishes became something he looked forward to figuring out, a challenge keeping him company, entertaining him in the middle of a traffic jam or while he waited on hold for a service call. He found himself eating more slowly, each bite a chance to understand a part of the puzzle, until finally the puzzle wasn’t pieces, simply the feel of a warm sauce sliding down his throat, the crunch of a water chestnut against the edge of his teeth.
BY THE TIME the cooking class started, Ian had more questions than answers. He found himself reading chemistry books after the cake-baking class, trying to make pasta on his own after the Thanksgiving dinner. Watching the other members of the class, he found himself wondering where they had come from, what it was they brought with them, as if they, too, were recipes he might come to understand. Where Claire’s face, that first night, had gotten its mixture of excitement and distrust, what made Isabelle recall the things she remembered, or what had placed Tom inside such an untouchable circle of sorrow. And then there was Antonia, always Antonia, with her olive skin and dark hair, her voice carefully finding its way around the American sounds and syllables that seemed too flat and awkward for her sensuous mouth.
He had found Antonia’s hesitancy with his language endearing, and his desire to protect her was strong until the day he had encountered her at the farmers’ market. He had recognized her from some twenty feet away and walked over, hoping he could help her past some language barrier, his assistance a worthy introduction to some other conversation. But as he got closer, he could see her hands flying, as if released. She was laughing, her words unintelligible to him but completely comprehensible to the Italian produce man in the stall, their faces beaming at the joy of playing in the waterfall of their own language.
Ian stood behind Antonia, breathing in her happiness, until the produce man sent him a sharp look and said something rapidly to Antonia, who turned to him, her face still lit from her conversation.
“Sì, sì,” she responded. “Lo conosco.”
I know him. “Hello, Ian.” And without a thought, Ian’s soul stepped into the radiated warmth of her expression.
. . .
A FEW WEEKS LATER, Antonia had called and asked him to help her. There were floors, she said, that needed to go away. So her clients would understand how important it was to keep things that were good and true. Ian didn’t mention the apparent irony of getting rid of something in order to keep it; he just agreed and thanked the fates that had sent him a construction job that last summer before college, years earlier.
They had spent a long Saturday, pulling up squares of linoleum, downing cup after tiny cup of the espresso that Antonia made on the big black stove and that he hardly needed to get his pulse running. Midday, they took a break, and Antonia got out the lunch she had brought for them—hard-crusted bread and prosciutto and fresh mozzarella, a bottle of red wine.
“This is how we make a picnic in Italy,” she told him, beaming.
“No peanut butter and jelly?” he asked.
“What is that?”
Ian smiled. “So, why did you move here?” he asked, curious.
She pondered the question for a moment. “Well, Lucca—the place where I grew up—it was wonderful, like a warm bath. So beautiful and everyone so loving. All the time, I knew what to do. If someone invited me to dinner, I knew what to bring. I knew the hours for the market. I could tell you, right now, when to catch the next train to Pisa. There was nothing wrong. I just wanted—how do you say? a cold shower?—to wake up my soul.”
Ian tried to imagine being so sure of what to do that he would leave everything, go somewhere else, just to be uncertain. She spoke so confidently,