The Love Goddess’ Cooking School

by Melissa Senate

  “But you know what else is powerful?” he said, holding her gaze. “This amazing thing between us. I have strong feelings for you, Holly. I don’t know what the hell to do.”

  She looked at him, searching his eyes for something to hang on to here, but not knowing what that was. Was she supposed to try to pull him over the line to her side? It would be wrong.

  “I have strong feelings for you too, Liam. And I have strong feelings for Mia. So … if there’s a chance for you and her mother to get back together, to become a family again, you owe that to yourself and to Mia to at least try, right?” How she managed to say that without bursting into tears was amazing.

  He took a deep breath and let it out, his hands jammed into the pockets of his leather jacket. “You think so?”

  This time she couldn’t even nod. The tears stung and she started to cry. “Yes. I think so. Don’t you?”

  He was silent for another moment. “I’m so sorry,” he said, stepping toward her and reaching his hand out.

  She shook her head. “No, don’t. Just … go do what you have to do.”

  He stared at her and she looked away. “I am sorry. I hate to hurt you, Holly. I mean that more than I mean anything else.”

  She glanced at him but was so afraid to burst into wracking sobs that she nodded and managed some kind of rueful smile.

  “I believe that, Liam.”

  “You’re an important person in Mia’s life. I hope she can still … take the class—if you think that’s all right. You mean so much to her.”

  “Of course she can still take the class. Just go and be with your family,” she said, the tears burning.

  The moment the door clicked closed, the bells stopping their jangle, Holly slid down against the wall and sobbed.

  The next night, Holly sat at the kitchen table, facing the view of oaks and bird feeders instead of the sign Liam had made for her, writing out a binder copy recipe of her first own creation: Fusilli alla Holly, with pine nuts and black olives and sun dried tomatoes in a creamy pink sauce. She’d spent last night and today making several iterations until she got the measurements just so. Cooking had helped heal one broken heart and would have to work overtime on another.

  The bells jangled and Tamara came in, uncharacteristically dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and sleeveless puffy vest. She looked as though she might burst into tears at any second, and then she did.

  “I got the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ bullshit.” Tamara’s shoulders slumped and she dropped down in the chair beside Holly. “And what makes it even worse? I didn’t see it coming. I always see it coming—you always know when a guy is only half there, or even three-quarters there. You know when there’s the slightest thing wrong. But this time, after that amazing third date, amazing third-date sex, he dumped me. Apparently sleeping with me made him realize he still loves his ex-girlfriend and that maybe he is ready to commit to a future with her, after all. Do you believe this?”

  Yes, Holly did. She filled in Tamara on everything that had happened between her and Liam, including the bad-timing speech she’d gotten the day before.

  “Oh, Holly, I’m so sorry. Men suck.”

  “Love sucks,” Holly corrected.

  “And even love is great until it falls spectacularly apart, though. I’m never dating again. I’ve had it. I’ll happily go to my sister’s wedding alone.”

  “At least you’ll have some good Italian food,” Holly said, trying to smile.

  “Let’s make something right now. Something gooey and fattening.” She stood up. “I know. Let’s make tiramisu. If I don’t take it back for myself it’ll forever be ruined for me. I made it for that jerk on our third and last date.”

  “My grandmother always said tiramisu was the Italian version of chicken soup and could cure anything.”

  “Do you happen to have a hundred ladyfingers in the cupboard?” Tamara asked. “Because I need at least ten servings.”

  Holly squeezed Tamara’s hand. “Let’s go shopping. We can pick up a good bottle of wine and a tearjerker movie to make us feel better about our miserable love lives.”

  Ten minutes later they were at the supermarket across the bridge in Portland, their cart full of mascarpone cheese and savoiardi ladyfingers.

  “So all this with Liam happened yesterday?” Tamara asked as she selected a white wine. “I wished you would have called me. Not that I have any good advice for getting over anyone.”

  “When he left and I was all cried out, I thought about calling you, but I didn’t want to heap all that on you when you were so happy. I just threw myself under the covers and stayed there for a while, and then I got this sudden urge to make something. I wrote my first recipe—just a pasta salad, but I wrote it out and put in the binder.”

  “That’s great, Holly! What’s the final ingredient? A wish?”

  “Yeah. Just a plain old wish. And after I added the delicious sausage to the pasta, I wished that I’d wise up.”

  “You’re plenty wise, Holly. You fell in love with a great guy. Not that that’s gonna make you feel any better.” She laid their groceries on the checkout table. “I guess mine wasn’t such a jerk either. Oh, who the hell knows. Maybe he was being honest. Maybe sex with me suddenly did make him realize how empty and nothing sex with someone you barely know can make you feel and maybe it did make him realize what he had with his ex. I actually have been through that myself. It’s just so hard to know what’s real or not, what’s a bullshit excuse for ‘I’m just not that into you.’”

  “Well, I like thinking that they were being honest and we just got caught in the fallout. Makes me feel better than being all cynical.”

  Tamara nodded. “I think we should double the tiramisu recipe so we can stuff our brokenhearted faces all night.”

  “Agreed,” Holly said, grateful for her new friend.

  When they walked back into Holly’s cottage, Tamara said, “Hey, something’s different in here.” She glanced around. “What is it?”

  “I took down that big brass mirror that was on the wall by the kitchen nook and put up a bunch of smaller oil paintings. Antonio. That sweet little one of this house. And those two above the kitchen table. Look how vibrant the colors are. Oh, and there’s that sign,” Holly added, staring at Liam’s gift.

  “Holly’s kitchen,” Tamara read. She smiled. “This is your kitchen. But were you afraid to change anything? Like maybe some of your grandmother’s magic would leave with it?”

  “I think I was afraid to change anything at first, but now I’m feeling more comfortable making this place mine. And the business too. I still can’t believe I wrote my own recipe. It may not seem like such a big deal, but it never occurred to me that I could.” Holly glanced at the recipe for tiramisu and made the espresso, using Camilla’s stash of Italian Lavazza.

  Tamara opened the wine and poured two glasses. “You’re so lucky to have this place. I’ve been thinking of going into business for myself as an interior decorator but I’m not sure I could develop enough of a client base. If only I could have a list of clients as long as ex-boyfriends and third-date guys who blew me off. I’m beginning to think I shouldn’t even expect a guy to fall in love with me and that I should just settle for Mr. Okay.”

  The espresso was done, so Holly poured it into a bowl and set it aside to cool to room temperature. “I don’t think settling is the answer either, though.”

  “Then what is? It’s not like I have this stupid list of what I want in a husband. I just want a real connection. Someone I can talk to for hours, you know, like everyone says of their first date with the person they ended up marrying. And, yeah, I want to be wildly attracted to him. But that doesn’t mean he has to be gorgeous, just that I’m dying to jump his bones.” She got up, glanced at the recipe, and then added the unsweetened cocoa and then the cognac to the espresso. “I just wish I knew when the guy was the right one.”

  Holly sighed, taking another bowl and using a mixer to beat eggs and sugar, addin
g the mascarpone and another shot of cognac. “Me too.” She was beginning to think she should learn to make sa cordula and carry it around in little containers with her, so if she met a guy, she could say, “Would you mind letting me know if you like this?” Ha. It was going to be a while—a long while—before she even thought about men again. For now, there was food to think about. Dessert. In another bowl, she beat egg whites until they were fluffy, her hand about to go numb, then gently blended the egg whites into the other bowl.

  They took turns dipping the ladyfingers into the bowl of espresso, careful not to soak the delicate ladyfingers, laying each in a pretty serving bowl, then spreading a layer of the mascarpone mixture on top, then more espresso-dipped ladyfingers, then more cheese and then a fine sifting of the cocoa. The tiramisu was supposed to refrigerate for a good four hours, but Holly made coffee and added some cognac and they settled on one hour.

  The sat at the kitchen nook, where her grandmother had told hundreds of fortunes. Where Camilla had reiterated Holly’s several times. They sipped their coffee and glanced out at the darkness, the almost crescent moon casting just a bit of light on the yard.

  Tamara sighed. “I really wanted to bring my serious boyfriend to my sister’s wedding. Pathetic as that sounds.”

  “It doesn’t sound pathetic at all. Hey, why not just ask Simon? He’d go and have a wonderful time and make great small talk with all your relatives. He could even pretend to be your serious boyfriend to get everyone off your case.”

  Tears glistened in Tamara’s eyes. “That’s the thing. I don’t want to ask a friend, much as I like Simon. I don’t want some random date. I don’t want someone to pretend to be my loving boyfriend to impress everyone and make me feel okay in this annoyingly coupled world. I want my own love. Why is this so hard? Why is it so easy for everyone else? I wish you could tell fortunes like your grandmother. I’m ready to know.”

  “I don’t think I do want to know. Imagine if you did know, you’d never leave your bed. You’d just order in and watch TV and call it a day.”

  Tamara laughed. “You’re probably right.” She glanced at her watch. “Okay, it’s only been a half hour, but I want that tiramisu.”

  And so they dug in, talking men, love, family, and broken hearts long after neither could eat another delectable bite.

  At the farmer’s market on Wednesday afternoon, Holly saw Simon walking with an adorable girl with his same sandy-blond hair. She wore a school backpack with her initials monogrammed on front. He looked so flustered, trying to unwrap the tight cellophane from the lobster-shaped chocolate lollipop he’d just bought her from the chocolate vendor, one of Holly’s favorite booths. Her heart went out to him at how hard this all must be, seeing his daughter every Wednesday after school and alternate weekends a month, trying to earn the girl’s fragile trust when he hadn’t been the one who’d broken up the marriage, the family.

  “Simon, hi,” she called out, waving, just as he slid down the knotted cellophane and handed the treat to his daughter, who took a big bite out of the lobster’s claw.

  When he spotted her in the crowded market, he waved back and brought his daughter over. “Cass, this is one of the very talented people who helped me decorate your room. My Italian cooking teacher, Holly Maguire.”

  His cute daughter smiled up at her. “You taught my dad how to make the spaghetti and meatballs?” she asked, her lollipop pratically covering her face.

  “I did. Hope they were good.”

  “So good. Last night for dinner we made meat loaf out of them, using my grandmother’s recipe, and it was so amazing. And we even had spaghetti on the side. Have you ever had meat loaf and spaghetti? It’s awesome.”

  Holly laughed. “I haven’t but it sounds delicious.”

  Cass nodded. “Tonight we’re making a castle out of the recipe and using the spaghetti to make the moat.”

  Holly stared at Simon. “You could be writing your own cookbook for kids. Meatcastle and spaghetti? Brilliant.”

  “I didn’t even know my dad knew how to make this stuff, but we got a kids’ cookbook out of the library, and we’ve been making everything,” said Cass. “And we’re going to make a spaceship out of construction paper and hang it from the ceiling. Isn’t that cool?”

  “Very,” Holly agreed.

  “Dad, there’s my friend Amy. Let’s go say hi.” She was pulling him away, no sign of the unhappy girl he’d described four weeks ago.

  “See you in class,” Simon called out as his daughter proudly marched her father over to her friend.

  Happy for Simon, Holly watched them for a moment, then got out her list and examined the tomatoes and looked over the asparagus with the eye of someone who knew what she was doing.

  “Hey, Holly,” said Robert, who was always here on weekends with his artisan breads.

  She was so touched that she knew so many of the vendors now, that many knew her and would call her over, sharing a particularly good-looking basket of onions or garlic or tomatoes. She was a regular. And she liked being a regular.

  She drove home with her ingredients, the sight of her round breads and eggplant and gorgeous tomatoes cheering her up. Perhaps she would offer a cooking class for kids, like Simon’s daughter. Meatballs and spaghetti. Macaroni and cheese. Pizza.

  Or maybe not. Kids liked to talk, liked to tell you every thought that was going in inside their heads, and once again, she would get emotionally involved and get her heart smashed, somehow, some way.

  At home, she unpacked and made herself a cup of tea, then scooped up the leftover tiramisu and sat down in the living room. The beautiful painting of the olive tree was so much nicer to look at than her great-great-grandfather’s stern face. And since Holly had come from the roots of that olive tree in Italy as much as her great-great-grandfather’s bloodline, she thought the swap more than reasonable. She loved this room now, loved sitting on the brocade camelback sofa, the kitchen barely visible. This was a good room in which to think. Especially because Liam hadn’t spent any time in it.

  Her grandmother’s diary rested on the end table and she picked it up, then put it down. Sometimes reading about her grandmother’s life was too painful, especially when it concerned her mother. But sometimes her grandmother’s words and experiences and lessons were like a soothing balm, and perhaps Holly’d find some comfort.

  October 1964

  Dear Diary,

  I haven’t written in a while. Not since that awful day when Luciana came off the big yellow school bus crying, tears streaming down her face. I kneeled down beside her to ask what was wrong and she screamed at me.

  “Amanda Windemere says you’re a witch and that she’s not allowed to play with me anymore!”

  It was a week after the funeral of Amanda’s baby brother, the first day the girl had gone back to school.

  I glanced up at the children on the bus. They stared out the window at me, some pointing and making phony faces of fear, some looking truly frightened.

  Oh, Luciana.

  “Anyone who wants to be Amanda Windemere’s friend isn’t allowed to be friends with me,” Luciana screamed through her tears. She was about say something, but then just stood there and sobbed.

  I picked her up, and though she fought me for a few moments, she finally relented and went limp in my arms, throwing her arms around my neck and sobbing into my shoulder. But then she stiffened and screamed, “Put me down! Let me go!” and ran inside. I heard a door slam.

  I knew, deep down where the knowing began, that I would lose my daughter, that she would not be able to bear being the daughter of the island witch who lived in the apricot-colored bungalow in the thicket of evergreens. I thought about moving, selling the cottage and leaving this all behind, taking Luciana and starting over somewhere fresh, somewhere no one knew. But you are who you are, and you are where you go. I knew I wasn’t meant to leave. That feeling was stronger than anything else. I was meant to stay. Leaving would reinforce for Luciana that there was something wrong w
ith her mother, that her mother had to run away. And that she, Luciana, had something to be ashamed of. Which is not true. And so I stayed, hoping by doing so, I’d teach my daughter something important.

  The women of Blue Crab Island still came, of course, wanting their fortunes told, now that everyone knew I did have the gift. Lenora had to stop blaming me because she’d been ordered by her husband to say that of course she was grateful to have had the year with her son, that of course she hadn’t wanted him to die at birth instead.

  And so my reputation was restored—and made. Luciana was once again invited to play, invited to birthday parties. Amanda Windemere continued to snub her and it was Luciana’s mission in her life, unfortunately, to gain her friendship, despite what I tried to teach her about people, about being who she was, about being herself, and about self-esteem.

  Lenora’s friends no longer took my class, of course, but they did consult with me privately to have their fortunes told. And I continued to tell the truth, what I knew, when I knew it was right to do so.

  “Why don’t you just stop telling people’s fortunes,” Luciana yelled one day. “That’s why everyone thinks you’re a witch in the first place.”

  “Luciana, I am not a witch. But I am a fortune-teller. I don’t know everything, but some things I do know. And I know it’s important and right to share it.”

  “What do you know about me?” Luciana asked, her dark brown eyes full of hope. “Will Amanda Windemere invite me to her birthday party?

  “That I don’t know for sure,” I said, which was usually the right answer in so many regards.

  “Well, then there’s hope,” Luciana said.

  That was all anyone really wanted, I knew. Whether it was right or not. The hope.

  Holly closed the diary. There were only a few more entries in the notebook, and she wanted to savor it, read it when she needed to hear her grandmother, spend time within her voice.

  She was so glad she’d called her mother last week. Before bed, she would call her again. Just to say hello, to let her mother know she was trying, that she cared. That she loved her.