The Love Goddess’ Cooking School

by Melissa Senate

The one with the auburn hair said, “I bought this pound of penne yesterday and it was overcooked. And the Bolognese sauce was . . . I don’t even know, missing something. Like not enough meat or garlic, maybe. I’d like my money back.”

  “Al dente is one thing, but rubber is something else,” her friend added.

  Holly felt her cheeks burn. This was the third time in the past two weeks that someone had complained about the pastas or the sauce and asked for her money back.

  “Really?” Liam said to the woman. “I bought the penne yesterday and thought it was great.” Those blueberry-colored eyes were sincere. “And the Bolognese? I finished the entire quart. I’d better stop coming in here so often or I’m going to have to add a mile to my running routine.”

  Damn. He was absentminded and attracted to pink bobbleheads and so distracted he didn’t notice the penne was overcooked and the sauce too bland, but he was nice. Holly felt her crush creeping back inside her heart.

  Five

  For the past few days, Holly had spent all day and night in the kitchen, channeling her grandmother by listening to Italian opera and talking to Antonio as though he cared. “Okay, Antonio, now we stuff the ravioli with the spinach and three cheeses.” She had sold half of the pastas and sauces she’d made and had only three requests for money back or another try. Her marinara sauce was still missing something (it was ironic that the simplest thing to make was among the most difficult) and her pasta always seemed either overdone or underdone, but she was getting better. Her gnocchi with crabmeat had been much, much better, so much so that she might include it for week three, after all. And now that today, tonight—the first class—had finally arrived, she wasn’t as nervous as she thought she’d be.

  Oh, who was she kidding? She was seriously nervous.

  She’d spent the afternoon scrubbing the kitchen clean and rechecking that she had all the necessary ingredients for the class. She’d opened and reopened the refrigerator ten times to check that the veal scallops were there. That the white binder was leaning against a heavy ceramic bowl full of cinnamon scented pinecones. And then at five forty-five, she went outside and moved the blackboard easel a bit closer to the road. This end of Blue Crab Boulevard didn’t attract many shoppers, since it was mostly woods and paths leading to the water, but occasionally someone would be headed out for a jog along the bay and would walk the length of the boulevard and start down at this end. So far today no one had asked about the class, not even the three people who’d stopped in to buy pasta and sauce.

  “The fall cooking course begins tonight,” she’d said brightly to those who came in, shoving brochures at them. But all she got were nice smiles and “how nice,” and “have a nice day.”

  She had four students. That made a class. It was how her grandmother had started and look where it had taken her.

  Ha. Holly would be lucky if she got through the first night without everyone demanding their money back. She took a deep breath and moved the sign even closer to the road, angling it so that it could not be missed.

  CAMILLA’S CUCINOTTA

  ITALIAN COOKING CLASS

  Starts tonight at 6:00 Spots still available!

  Each class would be devoted to an entrée and an appetizer, and if there was time, a dessert. Holly had changed the class a bit; she’d had to. She wasn’t ready to make osso buco, so shifted it to week six. Risotto alla Milanese—class seven, at least. This new course syllabus didn’t claim to be her grandmother’s, the famed Camilla Constantina’s. It only claimed to be Holly’s, who would learn as her students did.

  She went back inside and glanced around the gleaming kitchen. She lowered the opera, took another deep breath, and straightened the four aprons hanging on the wall.

  The bell jangled and a woman appeared at the archway. An unhappy woman, Holly thought, surprised at how she stopped in the archway and stared at the floor for a moment as if taking a necessary breath. She wore only shades of charcoal gray—casual cotton pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt and even gray canvas skimmers. Her fine brown hair, barely long enough for its ponytail, looked unbrushed, as if the woman had just woken up from a nap, realized she had to hurry, and slapped her hair into an elastic band. No makeup, no artifice whatsoever on her delicate, pretty features. The only thing that sparkled was her diamond ring, resting above a gold wedding band. She toyed with the gold chain around her neck, which disappeared into the V of her T-shirt.

  Holly mentally ran through the students. Juliet Frears, Tamara Bean, Simon March, and her apprentice, Mia Geller, the only one she actually knew by sight. The woman seemed familiar, though her name wasn’t. As the woman stood there, she wrapped her fingers around the pendant, then rested it above her T-shirt. A gold locket encircled with tiny rubies. Holly gasped. She knew that locket.

  “Juliet?” Holly said softly, fearing any loud or sudden movements would send the woman out the door. She was sure it was Juliet Andersen—the one friend she’d made on the island as a little summer girl. But Juliet had moved away when they were twelve and hadn’t kept in touch much past the first year.

  For the briefest moment the woman’s face almost lit up. “Holly?”

  “Yes, it’s me!” Holly walked over. Her instinct was to wrap her in a hug, but Juliet’s body language said to give her space.

  “I had no idea you’d be visiting your grandmother. Lucky for me. God, it’s been what? Fifteen years?”

  Juliet looked entirely different from what Holly remembered. She’d always had long hair, down to the bra strap (they’d both gotten their first bras together during that final summer they’d spent on Blue Crab Island). And her green-hazel eyes used to sparkle with ideas and enthusiasm. She was going to be a marine biologist and figure out why there were no blue crabs on Blue Crab Island. She was going to be a neurosurgeon and fix the synapses that made kids’ great-uncles have agoraphobia, like her great-uncle Nathaniel. And she was going to be a teacher and focus half the school day on anti-mean assemblies, showing girls like Avery Windemere what happened when they grew up being mean to others and what constituted mean.

  This woman, with her gray-yellow pallor to match her clothes, the nothing in her eyes, the resignation in the expression and slump, was hurting. Bad.

  Holly was unsure if she should initiate conversation or let her be. “Frears is your married name, then?” she asked.

  Juliet nodded and glanced away. She touched her wedding ring for a moment, then glanced at the white binder Holly had set on the large island in the center of the kitchen. “The summer my father died, your grandmother taught me how to make spaghetti and meatballs. She told me that every time I missed him like mad, I could make his favorite meal and add a happy memory of him as a special ingredient and I’d feel him close to me, and for a few fleeting seconds that would bring comfort. And then I’d have a delicious home-cooked meal to eat while remembering all the wonderful things about him.”

  Tears came to Holly’s eyes. “I remember that, Juliet. I remember when you and your mom drove away in her blue car, and I was so sad, and my grandmother told me that when I missed you and wanted to feel you with me, I should make chocolate milk. Whole milk and one heaping tablespoon of sweetened cocoa. It worked. And now I remember her telling me that day you left that one day you’d be back. I miss her so much.”

  Juliet stiffened. “Miss her? Oh, no, Holly. Don’t tell me.”

  “Three weeks now. I came here a month ago, crying over a breakup, and she passed away in her sleep. I’m glad I was here, though. I’m glad I spent those days with her before she died.”

  Juliet sucked in a breath and stared out the window.

  “I’ll understand if you want to drop out of the class, Juliet. I did call and leave two messages on your answering machine, to let you know my grandmother wouldn’t be teaching the class, but I didn’t connect your married name to you, of course. You clearly need my grandmother. I can see that. Please don’t feel that you need to stay just because I’m teaching the course.”

 
“Thanks for understanding,” Juliet said, and turned around and walked out.

  But I didn’t mean it, Holly wanted to call after her. She wanted to run after her, tell her to come back, that Camilla’s recipes were still magic, even if Camilla weren’t there. The magic is in the wishing, is in the remembering. . . .

  Go after her, Holly told herself. She needs someone to go after her.

  Holly ran outside, the October air chilly against her thin black sweater. “Juliet!” she called, glancing around. There was a man walking down the road, coming toward the house. And a car with its signal on, turning into Holly’s driveway. But no sign of Juliet.

  Holly glanced around, and there she was, sitting on the swing her grandmother had made for Holly’s mother when they’d first moved to Blue Crab Island. Juliet faced away from the house, toward the wooded edge of pines. She managed to appear both stiff and slumped at the same time.

  “Juliet, please come back in,” Holly said. “Whatever it was you needed from my grandmother, it’s in the kitchen. It’s in her recipes.”

  Juliet said nothing, and then a wail escaped her, so sad that Holly covered her hand with her mouth. What should she say? Do? She moved to the side of the swing, so as not to get in Juliet’s face.

  “The air here is just like I remember,” Juliet said, staring ahead. “I couldn’t breathe in Chicago, Holly. I couldn’t breathe. There was just no air. I wonder if it was always like that and I just never noticed. It had to have been, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Juliet stared at the ground and said nothing, and Holly had no choice but to let it go for the moment since the other students began arriving. A man walked up the cobblestone path. A woman got out of a car that she’d parked in the driveway and was heading up the three porch steps.

  Holly held out her hand, unsure if Juliet would take it or if she’d run off, get into her car, and disappear.

  She slipped her hand into Holly’s. “Okay,” she said.

  Okay, Holly seconded silently.

  The small group stood in the entryway. “Hi, everyone,” Holly said. “I’m Holly Maguire, granddaughter of Camilla Constantina, who began this cooking class in 1962. I don’t claim to be as good a cook as my grandmother, but I grew up cooking at her hip every summer, watching her every move, listening and absorbing. And I’m the keeper of her famed recipes, Camilla’s Cucinotta recipes.”

  She’d practiced that monologue last night. It was amazing how you could sound confident, like you knew what you were talking about, like you believed, when you felt like you might fall over any second.

  The other woman, who by reasons of deduction must be one Tamara Bean, was in her early thirties, Holly guessed, with long, wildly curly brown hair, narrow brown eyes the color of peppermint bark, and a long nose that made her look both regal and Eastern European. Tamara raised an eyebrow and glanced around. “Is it just us three—two women and one guy?” she asked. “My mother gave this class to me as gift certificate to meet men. She’d heard this course attracts men.”

  That would explain the fitted sweater, pencil skirt, and high-heeled, knee-high black leather boots. You can’t leave, Holly sent telepathically. No one is allowed to leave! “There’s one more student, my apprentice, but—”

  “Oh, thank God,” Tamara said, pulling her hair into a low ponytail like Juliet’s. She set her tote bag on the tasting bench and took off her boots, exchanging them for a pair of black ballet flats. “I’m willing to try, you know? The cutesy outfit, showing up. But I am so sick of my mother throwing men at me. My sister is getting married—my youngest sister. The middle one is already married and pregnant, of course. I’m so sick of meeting men.” She turned to the man standing across from her. “No offense, of course.”

  He smiled. “None taken.”

  “You’re Tamara Bean, right?” Holly said, glancing at her roster.

  Tamara nodded. “At least here I can actually learn to cook, something I enjoy doing. I’m thirty-two—so what? All my relatives do is throw men at me and make me feel like a loser for not being in a relationship. And they’re full of reasons for why my relationships don’t work out.”

  “It’s never the reasons anyone thinks,” the man said, then seemed to realize he’d spoken out loud. Simon March was tall and lanky and quite attractive, with sandy-streaked blond hair and dark blue eyes. “I mean, it’s never the things you can do something about, really. It’s always about who you are, intrinsically. Simon March, by the way.”

  “Well, that’s depressing, Simon March,” Tamara said.

  Juliet stared at her gray-clad feet.

  “Not really,” Simon said, “If you think about it.”

  Was this good? Student conversation? Tangents? The meaning of life? It had to be good. It was certainly better than awkward silence. If they kept it up, perhaps they wouldn’t notice that Holly often had to look up ingredients or certain pans and utensils on Google. She would have them do the same, though, if they didn’t know the difference between a cast iron pan and a ravioli pot.

  “Welcome, Simon, Tamara, and Juliet,” Holly said with a nod at each of them. “Mia, my young apprentice, should be along soon.” Holly glanced at her watch. It was five minutes after six. Time to get cooking.

  You can do this, she told herself. It’s not like anyone here is a home cook or a chef who’ll make everyone realize you’re totally unqualified.

  “Okay,” Holly said. “Let’s move into the kitchen and get started. Let’s all stand around the island, the perfect size for five. If your feet get tired, feel free to grab a stool and bring it over.”

  “Sorry I’m late!” a girl’s voice called as Mia came rushing in, out of breath, in jeans and, Holly counted, at least three layers of slim-fitting T-shirts. Her hair was in a loose braid that had come partially undone from her run over. “My dad insisted I finish my book report on Island of the Blue Dolphins. Isn’t it crazy there’s a book called that when we live on Blue Crab Island?”

  “You’re right on time, Mia,” Holly said with a smile. “Everyone, this is Mia Geller. Mia is almost twelve years old and will be my helper for the class. First, let’s all put on our Camilla’s Cucinotta aprons.” Her grandmother had twelve made up, in all different sizes. They were a pale yellow with a white enameled pot with Camilla’s Cucinotta written across it in blue.

  Juliet seemed about to say something but gnawed her lip and glanced around, her gaze settling on a photograph of Camilla and Holly on the counter next to a huge bowl of green apples. “I’m so sorry about your grandmother, Holly.”

  “Me too,” Tamara said. “I didn’t know her personally, but my sister speaks about her in hushed tones. Camilla Constantina had quite a reputation as a cook and a fortune-teller.”

  “Maybe Holly inherited her grandmother’s abilities,” Mia said, tying the apron behind her back. “What am I thinking, Holly?”

  “That it’s time to start class?” Holly said, trying to sound authoritative but warm. Her grandmother use to tell her how sometimes the students would get to talking to the point that some recipes never got made. She moved behind the island, her four students gathering around, eyeing the empty surface. There was nothing to indicate any cooking would be going on. “If you’re wondering why you don’t see the ingredients for tonight’s menu crowding the work area, it’s because my grandmother believed that part of learning how to cook involves learning about the ingredients and where they’re kept, as well as what types of bowls, pots and pans and utensils you’ll need. So, as we need our ingredients, we’ll fetch them and anything else.”

  So far, so good, Holly thought. She’d sat in on a couple of her grandmother’s cooking courses as a teenager and was surprised at how much she remembered of her grandmother’s lectures. About how collecting the ingredients for the recipes was part of the cooking process. How the gentle sautéing of onions and garlic in olive oil was the base of almost every Italian dish, how the final ingredient of each dish—whether a fervent wish or a
sad memory—was as essential as the first.

  “Tonight, for our first class, we’re starting with a simple, classic Italian meal, a perfect meal for fall’s chill. Chicken alla Milanese with a side of gnocchi and a salad. We’ll start with the chicken cutlets, since the gnocchi takes no time at all, as we’ll be using gnocchi I made from scratch yesterday. My grandmother often made her own pasta, but she also used boxed pastas whenever she was short on time or wanted a quick dinner. I’ve made you all copies of tonight’s recipes from the Camilla’s Cucinotta recipe binder. Mia, will you hand out the recipes?”

  Mia took the stapled sheets and handed three to each person. The chicken Milanese, the gnocchi in a cheese sauce, the salad.

  Simon flipped through the pages. “Looks quite achievable. Ah, and there it is, the famous last ingredients. For the chicken, a wish. For the gnocchi, a happy memory. And the salad, a sad memory.”

  Holly noticed Juliet stiffen. “You can add the final ingredients silently or aloud. Whichever feels right to you.”

  “So for the wish,” Mia said, “we just wish for something like when we’re blowing out birthday candles?”

  Holly smiled and nodded. “Exactly like that. Anything you want.”

  “How many wishes go into the chicken?” Mia asked. “Just one? Or do we all put wishes in?”

  “We all do,” Holly said. “The recipe calls for one wish from the person making it. As we’re all making it, we all put our wishes in. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, Mia, will you get the packages of chicken breast from the refrigerator?”

  Mia retrieved the two packages and set them on the island counter.

  “My grandmother always told me that you can buy meat fresh from a butcher or look for fresh from the supermarket, the best you can afford,” Holly said, opening the packages of chicken and setting them on the large wooden cutting board. “Tamara, can you find out from the recipe how long the chicken will take to cook?”

  Everyone glanced at their copy of the recipe, and Tamara said. “Six to eight minutes, depending on thickness.”