Off the Menu

by Stacey Ballis

  “Good, Chef Clara. Thank you. Next.”

  One by one we go down the line. Juan, an extremely tall, gangly boy in a walking cast, a former basketball star who had blown out his knee and had no way into college without sports. Mari, a teeny tiny firecracker of a girl with a long black braid, who admits to an obsession with food magazines, her own blog about cooking, and a desire to become a food stylist and writer. Helena, a spectacularly beautiful Indian girl who admits tearfully that her mother is very sick, and she started cooking for the family to help take the pressure off, and while she isn’t entirely sure she wants a career in food, she does want to know more about what she is doing in the kitchen. Joseph, a handsome young African American kid with a puffed-up chest, who works part-time at his uncle’s south-side diner, and who hopes to take over that business someday. He delivers his entire speech directly to Helena, who blushes, and I can tell this is either going to be a huge problem, or an adorable young love affair. Probably both, when I think of it.

  Max, a bespectacled young man with pale skin marred by angry acne, looks horribly out of place. I remember from his application essay that he went to a chichi private school his whole life, but that his folks had divorced and then his dad’s business went under and that was the end of alimony and child support and tuition money. His mom had moved them to a more affordable neighborhood, and he was in a regular public school for the first time. Clemente’s student population is 63 percent Latino, and 34 percent African American, with 95 percent low-income households. For a white, formerly rich kid, it had to be an awful place to try to fit in. He admits that college is not the guarantee he once thought it was and that when he really missed some of the fancy restaurant dishes he used to take for granted, he decided to try to learn how to make them himself and discovered he loved to cook.

  Aretha leads with announcing that she was named for the Queen of Soul, and is every bit an equal diva. Larger than life in every way, she says that she has an eighteen-month-old little boy at home, and she wants to make a better life for him. Her plan is to finish culinary school, open a soul food restaurant, and then get her own show on the Food Network and become a star, and have her restaurant become a national chain. And she indicates an intention to eventually marry Taye Diggs “when he is done with that white girl and ready for a real woman.” Can’t really blame her on that one.

  I take them through their basic equipment, which the program has provided for each of them: An eight-inch chef’s knife, and a four-inch parer. A sharpening steel and a set of whetstones. A good pair of tongs. A bandana, a chef’s coat, and a stack of five side towels. I tell them a little bit about myself and my path to cooking and culinary school. Then we jump in with basic knife skills. They can all handle a blade reasonably well, some are better than others at keeping their fingers tucked in, but by the end of our three hours together we have some basic cuts that even Patrick would not be ashamed to use on air. Their homework for next week is to decide on a favorite recipe from their family, and to e-mail us the recipes so that we can bring in the ingredients for them to cook the dish for the group, and to practice their new knife skills with proper technique.

  When class is over, I make sure to shake all of their hands and thank them for coming. They have blown me away and exhausted and exhilarated me in equal measure. I head over to Maria’s, my head reeling with stories and moments and ideas. While taking on the actual teaching wasn’t originally in my plan, as a member of the advisory board and planning committee, I realize that having this time in the trenches with the students is going to serve me and the program exceedingly well.

  Melanie is already at Maria’s, standing over the stove and stirring something that smells delicious.

  “Hey, Alana!” she says over her shoulder. “How was it?”

  “Wait, wait, dios mio, I ’ave to pipi. Do no’ tell anything before I am ’ere!” Maria zips out to the powder room off the kitchen, and I sneak over to see what smells so insanely great.

  “Zucchini pasta with chicken and lemon,” Melanie says. “I’m using whole-grain linguini, and the zucchini is shredded in long strips the same size as the noodles. Half real noodles, half zucchini noodles, so everything twirls the same on your fork, but you halve the carbs and cut down the calories significantly.” She grabs a tasting spoon and lets me taste the chicken, simmering gently in a rich lemony sauce.

  “That is amazing. So light and fresh, but still depth of flavor.”

  “I love this recipe, especially in the winter like this; it just tastes like spring to me.”

  “Well, it looks amazing. I’d love to steal it for the new healthy cookbook we’re working on.”

  “Sorry, I’m about to do a cookbook myself, and am going to need to keep it proprietary for the moment.”

  “Good for you! That is such a great idea. I bet it will be huge.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Maria comes back into the room. “That smells incredible, and I am soooooo ’ongry.”

  She walks over to the wine cooler and pulls out a gorgeous bottle of Chablis, the perfect thing for the pasta, bright and crisp and mineral. She opens the bottle and pours three glasses, just as Melanie is stirring the pasta and zucchini strands into the chicken and sauce, adding some of the pasta water to smooth it out and sprinkling with Parmesan cheese.

  Mel dishes up three shallow bowls with very rational portions of the pasta, or about a third of what I would serve, and brings them over to the table.

  “To our new program!” Mel raises her glass.

  “To changing the worl’.” Maria clinks.

  “To surviving the second class!” I toss in.

  “Tell us everything,” Maria says.

  While we eat, I share the highlights and lowlights: watching them all get very excited about their new gear, and then watching Juan and Joseph immediately start to play fencing team with their chef’s knives, completely freaking me out and immediately ruining the edge on both knives. Seeing Mari choose to partner with Max, clearly boosting his self-esteem. Watching Aretha and Clara bond as only big girls can bond. My heart going out to Renaldo when he asks if he can work alone instead of with a partner, and knowing that feeling of never being alone at home and just wanting something for yourself. Joseph and Helena making eyes at each other, and trading digits. Max watching Joseph and Helena sparkle at each other and looking dejected, while Mari watches him, equally sad. A crush triangle is never pretty, and we have a serious one abrewing.

  “You fall in loaf and you see loaf everywhere,” Maria says. “What about the cooking? Do you think any of them will benefit from this?”

  “Sorry, I guess I did get a little wrapped up in the personal stuff. I think it is a shockingly good group, and they all seem to have a genuine interest in food and cooking. I don’t know if all of them are going to want to go to culinary school, but I think they’re all participating for the right reasons, and as a pilot group, I think we chose exceptionally well. I feel like the things that drew us to them in their applications became fully revealed in person, so it feels like they were pretty honest in their essays.”

  “That is awesome, Alana, and Kai says thank you so much for covering for him,” Mel says.

  “How is he doing?”

  “Tired, but sllllloowly getting better. You know his partner, Phil, is the ultimate caregiver, so he is mostly working from home so that he can be there for Kai, and I’m delivering food every other day with immune-system boosters and lots of soothing soups. Our friend Nadia, who opened the wellness spa upstairs with our other friend Janey, keeps sending over their massage therapists and Reiki and acupuncture specialists, and our business partner, Delia, sends him caramel banana pudding and sweet potato pies, which I think are probably the best thing for him. He is very motivated to get better so that we all can stop fussing.”

  “Food people. We can’t help ourselves. The need to nurture is within us.”

  “I need to get sick so I can ’ave carrrrramel banana pudding,” Maria sa
ys.

  We all laugh.

  “So, I hear you have a fabulous new boyfriend, Alana. Maria says he is just a terrific guy.”

  “Yes, I do. And yes, he is.”

  “’E is sooooo sweet. I just loaf him,” Maria says.

  “Oh, the official Maria De La Costa stamp of approval. That is impressive,” Mel says.

  “I know. I think my friends all sort of like him more than they like me.”

  “I know the feeling.” Mel laughs. “When I first brought Jonathan around, I thought all my people would be focused on how I was doing, and instead they all just fell madly in love with him, and I was like, Hello? How about me?” Mel recently got engaged to a great guy she met a couple of years ago. He’s a personal trainer who, like Mel, went through a major personal transformation, from more than 350 pounds to a fit and trim 180. The two of them are insanely adorable together. They joke about just hanging in there to be eighty years old, and then never exercising again, and eating butter and fried food and pie all day.

  “How are the wedding plans going?”

  “Good. We’re doing it in Maine, at Jon’s family’s summer house. Pretty small.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I say.

  “Mmmm, so, you and Arrrrre Yay, you will ’ave the small wedding?” Maria teases. “Bennie tells me you will marrrrry ’im.”

  “Well, I kinda hope Bennie is right.” Ever since Andres, I never really thought of myself as a wife. I always thought of myself as more of a permanent-life-partner-living-in-sin kind of girl. But every time Bennie refers to him as my future husband, my heart skips a beat. Maybe I’m a wife kind of girl after all.

  “Good for you. Have it all, honey. If you can manage it, have it all. I highly recommend it,” Melanie says. And it sounds like good advice to me.

  I’m almost home when my cell rings.

  “Hello, beautiful.”

  “Hello, you. How was your event?” RJ had a sales meeting tonight after work, which he wasn’t really looking forward to.

  “Boring. Beer and wings do not a good dinner make.”

  “Melanie sent me home with a bucket of leftover pasta, wanna meet me at my place and have some?”

  “Um, let me think …. YES! I’ll see you there in about fifteen.”

  “Yay. I’ll be there in five.”

  That makes me so happy. I didn’t think I was going to see him today.

  I get home and let Dumpling out for a quick pee. Then I go inside to heat up the pasta, and I’m just setting a place at the kitchen counter when Dumpling starts bouncing and barking.

  I open the door and throw my arms around RJ’s neck, kissing him passionately.

  “Ouch,” he says sort of into my mouth, and I pull back, seeing him wince.

  “I’m sorry, honey, did I hurt you?”

  “Wasn’t you, my love. I wracked my back today.”

  “Oh, no, what happened?”

  “I was going down the El steps this morning, and the woman in front of me tripped and started to take a header. So I instinctively lunged forward and grabbed her, but I was sort of twisted sideways, and I had my briefcase over my other shoulder, so I essentially took her whole weight on that one arm and something just popped.”

  The man is an actual superhero. “That is amazing; she could have really gotten hurt. How bad is it?”

  He looks at me, and I know from his eyes that he is in a lot of pain. This is a man who was an All State linebacker in high school. He has had both shoulders operated on to rebuild them. All of his joints creak and pop when he exerts himself, and his ankles can slip out of socket just from his crossing his feet on the ottoman. He has a pretty high tolerance for pain. And I can see that he is really hurting.

  “Its, um, very uncomfortable.”

  “My hero. Shall I fetch you a handful of Advil?”

  “Please.”

  “Okay. And there is a big ice pack designed for backs in the freezer, lean on it.”

  I head to the bathroom and shake four Advil out of the bottle. I bring them back to him and he swallows them dry. “This cold pack is amazing. Why do you have it?”

  “I threw my back out a few years back, so I know how you feel. It is so horrible.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  Oy. “Not saving some damsel in distress, I can tell you.”

  “So, lifting with your back and not your legs? Overdoing the weightlifting at the gym? Picking up a niece or nephew?”

  “A fork.”

  “A fork?”

  “Yep. I was picking up a fork.”

  He looks puzzled. I plate the now-warm pasta for him, giving it an extra grating of Parmesan, and hand it to him.

  “Was it some world-record enormous fork?” he asks thoughtfully around a mouthful of pasta and chicken. “Man this is good. Thank you, honey.”

  “Nope, a fork not unlike the one you have in your hand right now. In fact, that could be the very one.”

  He examines the utensil in his hand.

  “Doesn’t seem terribly threatening.”

  “It isn’t. I dropped it on the floor, and when I was bent over to pick it up, I sneezed.”

  “You sneezed.”

  “I sneezed. Really hard. And popped something in my back. I was out of commission for a week.”

  He looks at me with a combination of sympathy and amusement. “My poor, delicate flower.”

  “I know. It was almost as bad as the time I broke my toe.” Might as well share all the embarrassing injuries.

  “Did you drop a fork on it?”

  “Nope. Got into a hot bath, sat down, realized it was way too hot when I scalded my girl parts, and my leg shot out from under me trying to stand back up again, and I kicked the faucet.” True story. I am the klutziest person on the planet. And I like a hot bath.

  RJ laughs really hard. I love his laugh. “Ow, ow, ow, you can’t make me laugh like this, it hurts too much ….”

  “I’m sorry, honey.” But I love that I can make him laugh like that.

  I keep him company while he finishes his pasta, and then he goes to the living room and lies down on the floor. Dumpling wanders over, sniffs him, and curls up next to his shoulder, gently licking his head.

  “Awww. He’s trying to make you feel better.” It is so sweet to see them.

  “I know. So I’m going to try not to be grossed out.” RJ winks at me, and lifts one arm up to pet Dumpling, who is apparently going to give RJ’s head a thorough cleaning.

  “Don’t be grossed out by his love.”

  “It isn’t his love really, it’s more his breath.”

  “Ooops. Sorry about that.”

  “What did you have for dinner, hmmmm, handsome? Was it the dead warthog in Limburger cheese sauce again?”

  “Ewww. It isn’t that bad.”

  “And yet, it is.” RJ slowly rises from the floor, wincing, petting Dumpling as he goes. “Okay honey, it’s late, and I have to scamper home. But thanks for letting me come by for a bit and for giving me delicious dinner and making me giggle.” He comes over and kisses me.

  “Are you okay? Are you sure you don’t want to stay?”

  “The spirit is willing, love, but the body needs to be flat out and still. And you are something of a flopper. I have a little bit of work to do, have to throw in a load of laundry, and want to see the end of the basketball game, then crash.”

  This is true. I’m a side sleeper, and I do shift from side to side with regularity. I can see how that bouncing around would not be good in his current condition. “Okay.” I walk him to the door. “But call me when you get home?”

  “Will do.”

  Ever since that first date, whichever of us leaves to go home has to call the other so that we know we are safe. And if we aren’t together, RJ calls before he goes to bed.

  He kisses me one more time, and heads out.

  I clean up the kitchen, take Dumpling for his last walk of the night, come back and get into my pajamas. I turn on the TiVo and play an episode o
f The Killing, an amazing police procedural that Lacey turned me on to, and which I am catching up on. The end credits are rolling when I realize that RJ still hasn’t called, and he left well over an hour ago. I check my watch. Eleven fifteen. I check my cell, in case he called while I was walking Dumpling. Must have gotten caught up in the game. I dial his cell.

  “Hey, this is RJ, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Hey, it’s me, you forgot to call. I’m going to call your house phone.”

  I dial his land line. It rings and rings. Eventually it beeps.

  “Hellllloooo? RJ? You there? If you are, honey, pick up. No? Maybe you’re in the bathroom. Call me when you finish.”

  Just what a guy needs, his girlfriend announcing on his machine that she suspects he may be pooping.

  I go to the kitchen and grab a Pamplemousse. I flip channels. I check my e-mail. Eleven thirty. I call his cell. It goes to voice mail. I try the house phone again. No answer.

  Now I’m a little bit worried. What if he got into a car accident? I think of how much pain he was in, and the fact that his laundry is in the basement. What if he fell down the basement stairs? What if he went to pick up the laundry basket and made his back worse and he is now lying on the basement floor in pain and not near a phone? I take a breath. He probably just fell asleep with the game on. Eleven forty. I try the cell one more time. No answer.

  “Dumpling, I can’t take it. I have to go for a ride.” My voice catches a bit, and I’m surprised by how upset I am, how worried. If something has happened to him, I just don’t know what I would do. The very idea of him in pain or something being really wrong makes my whole stomach turn over.

  I throw my coat over my pajamas and slip into my boots. I drive the two and a half miles to RJ’s house, figuring I will just peek around to make sure he is okay.

  His car is there. The lights are on. I get out of my car, and walk up the stoop and look in. I can’t see him. I walk back around the side of the house and onto the porch. Not in the kitchen or down the hall. I try to peer in the basement window, but it is dark down there, which I figure is a really good sign, since if he had headed down to do laundry he would have turned the light on. So not writhing in the basement. I walk back around the side. The light in the den is on, but I am too short to see in the window and there is no shadow moving.