The Love Goddess’ Cooking School

by Melissa Senate

  Holly stood behind the counter for support. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. She’d know those dark modelesque bangs and collagen-enhanced pouty lips anywhere. This was Mia’s mother, Veronica.

  “Um, sure,” Holly said. “Let me just go get a little cup and spoon.”

  “Oh, hell, I was going to pretend to be a customer interested in the sauce to sort of spy on you, but I should just introduce myself.” She took off her sunglasses and slid them into her huge purse. “I’m Veronica Feroux, Mia’s mother.”

  Holly appreciated the honesty. “I recognize you from the photos Mia showed me. She carries her photo album in her backpack. I’m Holly Maguire. It’s very nice to meet you.” Holly held out her hand.

  Veronica gave her hand a brief shake. “So I hear from my daughter that you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread and apparently my ex-husband likes you too.”

  Holly laughed. This woman was Mia’s mother, all right.

  Veronica smiled. “I just wanted to come in and say hi, get any awkwardness out of the way since I live here now, well, not on the island, but Portland. I closed on my house so it’s officially official. I’m here for good.”

  “I’m so glad, Veronica. That means the world to Mia.”

  She turned away for a moment. “I know. I’ve … made a lot of mistakes. Leaving Mia being the biggest. I’m working on some … issues.”

  Holly stared at her. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “I can only imagine what you must think of me,” she said, glancing at Holly.

  Holly held her gaze for a moment. “I’m just glad you’re back in Mia’s life on a daily basis, Veronica. Would you like some lunch? I could heat up one of my famous spaghetti Bologneses. And I have such a craving for bruschetta.”

  Her expression, part insecure-fragile, I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing and part glamorous I-rule-the-world, morphed into relief. “I’m starving. And I don’t know Bolognese from Tuscanese, if there is such a thing. I’ve been to Tuscany, though. Oh, well, I guess the sauce would be Tuscan, then.”

  “I don’t think there’s a sauce called Tuscan, but there should be,” Holly said, taking out the pasta and sauce, then leading Veronica into the kitchen, where she handed her a Camilla’s Cucinotta apron. Holly scooped out the pasta and sauce into two pots and set the burner on low, then grabbed an eggplant, two tomatoes, and the rest of the ciabatta bread. Holly asked Veronica to slice the bread and then lay it on a baking sheet. She put Veronica on tomato chopping duty while she sliced the eggplant.

  “He was smart not to fall for everything I was saying,” Veronica said, doing a fine job on the tomato. “After he told me he didn’t love me that way anymore, I realized it’s not really him or our marriage I wanted back. Just the security, you know? The idea of family. I thought I could just come back to Maine when things between me and my husband went so sour, and move right in with Liam and Mia, then move out to my own house when I was ready and find my soul mate. God, that sounds awful, doesn’t it.”

  Yeah, it did. “What I’ve been learning is that mistakes can bring you where you need to be,” Holly said as she stirred the Bolognese sauce.

  Veronica wiped her hands on her apron. “I know I’m where I need to be. I just have to figure out how to be. But I’ve made a vow to myself and to Mia to stay in her life. To be the mother she deserves. And I’m not just saying all this like I’m on Dr. Phil or something. None of this feels good. But it feels right. For once, putting Mia ahead of myself feels right.”

  “Good,” Holly said, pouring the Bolognese over the steaming spaghetti. She used oven mitts to slide out the tray of toasted ciabatta bread and explained to Veronica how to brush the bread with olive oil and then top it with the tomatoes, eggplant, some minced basil, and a sprinkle of Parmesan, then broil it for just a couple of minutes.

  “Thanks for being so nice to me,” Veronica said, her pretty blue eyes sincere.

  “Thanks for being so nice to me,” Holly said.

  They dug into the food, Veronica declaring it delicious, and talked about France, where Holly had never been, and after a while Holly didn’t feel so weird sitting there having lunch with Liam’s former wife.

  When Veronica left, offering an invitation for Holly to drop in at her house in the university district any time, Holly sat down on the sofa in the living room, exhausted. She liked Veronica on a certain level, but the woman was so needy, so fragile behind all that glamour, that Holly felt she had to walk and talk on eggshells. She’d been relieved to hear that Veronica had found a good therapist and saw her twice a week.

  And she could see how easy it had been for Liam to be pulled back in. Veronica was completely disarming. And under all that me, me, me was a heart. She was the type of person who could get people to do what she wanted and needed and, hopefully, she’d now start to rely on herself. If she wanted to earn back Mia’s trust in the same way she’d never lost her love, she’d have to. Veronica had insisted on washing all the dishes and the gooey pots and pans, and finally Holly had relented. Now she was glad she didn’t have that mess left to herself. She needed to get out, go for a drive to clear her head.

  She thought about going to visit the gorgeous lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth or just walking around Portland’s Old Port neighborhood and browsing the one-of-kind shops and stopping at Whole Foods for some exotic vegetables she wanted to try. But when she got in her car and started driving, she found herself heading toward Portland’s Deering Oaks Park, a beautiful oasis in the middle of the city with its duck pond and walking bridge, and then realized the cemetery where her grandmother and grandfather were buried was just minutes away. She’d been heading there all along and hadn’t realized it.

  Holly stopped at a florist and bought a bouquet of white roses, her grandmother’s favorite flowers, and drove to the cemetery. The November wind whipped her long hair around. It was still warm for the season, but Holly shivered in her wool coat anyway. Cemeteries always made her shiver. She followed the path until she saw the markers for the area in which Camilla and Armando were buried. They were shaded in spring, summer, and fall under the leaves of a stately oak. Holly liked the idea of the tree’s life, its protective branches, reaching out over the graves, the red, orange, and yellow leaves scattering like sweet offerings. Her grandmother had loved the season of fall most of all.

  The two curved headstones were so close, as her grandmother had wanted. Holly wished she could have known her grandfather, the amazing Italian man with butter-colored hair and Adriatic Sea–colored eyes. She sat down beside Camilla’s stone and laid down the roses among the brilliantly hued leaves.

  CAMILLA CONSTANTINA,

  BELOVED WIFE, MOTHER, GRANDMOTHER, FRIEND.

  RIPOSI IN PACE

  “Rest in peace, Nonna,” Holly said to the sky and closed her eyes. And indeed it was peace that Holly felt come over her.

  The hour she’d spent in the cemetery, telling her grandmother everything, about mastering the risotto, getting the catering job, teaching the class, and about Liam and Mia and even the romantic date in the rooftop garden, had her longing to spend some time listening to her grandmother. And so she drove home and drew a bath, using her grandmother’s lavender salts. She brought up a pot of Earl Grey tea and a chocolate-dipped biscotti and settled into the hot soapy water with the last of her grandmother’s diaries. She turned to the final entry, dated the day before she died.

  Dear Diary,

  It’s been a long time since I’ve written. Decades. But my dear girl is here. My Holly. And I have to write about how happy I am, how blessed.

  I’m dying. I can feel the breath leave my body in the smallest of ways, just one extra intake of breath to reach for a tomato, to pour olive oil into the pan. It’s time, finally, for me to join my Armando. My heart is at peace.

  How glad I am that my Holly is here, in this house, where I know she belongs, where I know she is meant to be. Of course, I can’t tell her that; it won’t make sense to her yet. But one day it will.

 
; She asked last night about her fortune, the one I gave her when she was just sixteen years old. I tried to explain as best I could. That the fortune didn’t come from me, just through me, that I held my stones and closed my eyes, and the notion that her great love would like sa cordula was what came out of my mouth. I didn’t make up the words; they just came. I didn’t know why. I don’t know what man could like sa cordula, especially if Armando didn’t, and Armando liked everything, even sweetbreads.

  Holly has always been afraid it meant there would be no great love in her life, and I tried to explain that it didn’t mean that at all. She’s had love in her life, and each one was great, starting with the smallest, first flicker in elementary school. A broken heart doesn’t negate the love. Doesn’t make it any less large.

  “You’ll understand when you need to, Holly,” I told her. “That’s the only thing I know for certain.”

  “Okay, Nonna,” she said and held my hand and brought it up to her cheek. And then I brought both our hands down to my heart, where I held it until I began to nod off. Holly helped me up to my room and said good night, Nonna, then stopped at the door, turned around, and came back, leaning over to press a kiss to my forehead. I smiled at her and said, “Ti amo, nipote.”

  I know I will not wake in the morning. But I also know I will be with Holly for the rest of her days and that she will find herself—and more—in this apricot-colored bungalow at the edge of Blue Crab Island. She has come home.

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, Holly turned the page, but that was it. Except for a recipe.

  Sa cordula, with its final ingredient of one fervent wish.

  The fortune had to mean something. Holly wasn’t sure what, but it meant something. If she made sa cordula for Liam and he took one bite and politely said, “Um, Holly, you can have the rest if you want,” she wouldn’t discount him as her great love. He could certainly be her great love. Stewed lamb guts wouldn’t decide that. They would. Life would.

  For the last class, Holly was holding a Camilla’s Cucinotta Italian cooking class potluck party the Sunday afternoon before. Everyone was to bring their favorite dish they’d made in class. And everyone could invite someone. Mia invited Daniel, since she knew she could count on Holly to invite her father. Tamara invited her sister. Simon invited his daughter, and even though it wasn’t his weekend to have her, her mother gave special permission.

  She would not make the sa cordula for Liam. Because when you had great love, you knew it.

  Did she know it? Could you ever know it? She’d thought John Reardon her great love. Though she’d had to ignore months of warning signs. And bury her head in the sand.

  Perhaps it was better to know, after all. To be forewarned and forearmed, as they said.

  Holly got out of the bath and put on jeans, a sweater, and her coat and drove to Portland, to one of the last old-world butchers.

  “Do you have lamb intestines?” Holly asked the butcher, a short, fifty-something man with surprisingly large biceps, as though she were asking for some shanks.

  He stared at her. “Uh, I have them, yes.”

  It was meant to be. “I’ll take enough to make an old-word Italian dish for two.”

  He shrugged and nodded. “You’re the second person this month who’s come in for lamb intestines. It’s a rare request, trust me.”

  “This month?” Holly repeated.

  “Yeah, just a couple of weeks ago. An elderly woman came in for some.”

  “Do you mean a couple of months ago?” she asked. “My grandmother was likely a regular customer.”

  “Who is your grandmother?”

  “Camilla Constantina?”

  “Oh, yes! I know Camilla. Knew her, I should say. I heard she passed. Beautiful woman.”

  Holly smiled. Yes, she was.

  “The woman who came in wasn’t Camilla,” the butcher said. “She had a big wart on her face. Heh. Like a witch. And she had long, jet-black hair, even though she must have been seventy.”

  Huh. A witch had come in for the making of sa cordula. Perhaps Holly shouldn’t make it after all.

  He wrapped up the package. “I will tell you what I told her. Clean them well. I’m not even sure I’m supposed to sell them.”

  Holly nodded and took her lamb guts home. Not sure if she’d make the sa cordula or not.

  Twenty-Three

  Holly woke at midnight, the remnants of a bad dream clawing at her. Liam had been standing amid nothing, just a grayish air with no background, and he had no face, though she knew it was him. He wore his leather jacket, his hands shoved into his jeans pocket. And there was his gorgeous, thick, sexy dark hair. But no face.

  She sat up, unsettled, and went downstairs for a glass of iced tea. Antonio was on his perch, watching her. She glanced up at the wall of little paintings by the window, of Antonio, of this house, of the three Po River stones, and of her grandmother, in her blue day dress, sitting in a wrought-iron chair by the tomato plants, a Mona Lisa smile on her stunning face.

  She took the binder of recipes and searched for sa cordula, and there it was, between the chicken cacciatore and the chicken costoletta, the same recipe that Holly had found in the diary.

  Sa cordula.

  Lamb intestines.

  Peas.

  Onions.

  Butter.

  Oil.

  One fervent wish.

  It was simple to make, a matter of rinsing the intestines well and letting them dry and then braiding them so they looked less like swirling guts and more like … Holly didn’t know. Once again she thought it looked like exactly what it was. She sautéed the lamb with the peas and onions and set it on a plate.

  She took a tiny bite. It wasn’t so bad, really, if you took a bite with the peas and onions. So the peas did help, after all. She took another tiny bite. If she didn’t know what it was, she would even like it. Maybe because she used twice the salt called for.

  Maybe that made her her own great love. Maybe that had been her grandmother’s point?

  The great love of your life will be one of the few people on earth to like sa cordula.

  So was this what her grandmother had been trying to tell her? That she needed to be the love of her own life? Perhaps her grandmother had known that Holly would one day find her way back to her kitchen, back to herself. And she’d find the meaning of great love in the process.

  The sa cordula was a mystery like her grandmother had been. And should remain.

  With that, she took the plate and dumped it in the trash. A bit stuck to the plate, so she set it down for Antonio. The old gray cat waddled over and sniffed it, then his mouth curled as if in utter distaste and he waddled away and jumped back up on his perch.

  Ha. Even an old-world cat didn’t like sa cordula. “Antonio, you may not be my great love, but I do love you. So there, fortune.”

  The weather held for the party. Sunny and sixty-one glorious degrees, Holly moved the gathering into the backyard, setting up the large outdoor table as a buffet. Antonio lay half-napping in a patch of sunlight by the withering tomatoes. Holly made a mental note to read up on Gardening 101 that night. If she could make an incredible risotto alla Milanese, she could grow a tomato.

  At one o’clock, she set out her dishes on warming trays, her saffron risotto and her spinach and three cheese ravioli, two of her new pasta salads and a large platter of antipasto. Mia, her adorable boyfriend, and her handsome father were the first to arrive. Mia brought the chicken alla Milanese. Liam made his favorite penne in vodka sauce, and Daniel Dressler came full-handed with tiramisu that his mother made for the occasion.

  As Liam and Daniel went into the little garage for the extra warming trays, a beaming Mia said, “Isn’t he so cute?”

  “Very,” Holly said. Mia and Daniel made an adorable couple.

  “And guess what? I made a new friend. A new potential best friend. She just moved to Portland, right across the bridge, so we can even walk to each other’s houses, and her dad has custody of h
er too. We have so much in common. And we totally have the same taste in boys. Not that she’d ever go after Daniel, but she has a major crush on a guy who’s kind of a loner and into music just like Daniel is.”

  “I had a feeling things would work out fine,” Holly said, popping an olive into her mouth.

  The boy in question and Liam came back out, their arms full of warming trays, which Liam set up. Simon and his daughter were next to arrive with the spaghetti and meatballs they’d worked on together that morning. And then Tamara and Francesca arrived, one with minestrone and one with Italian wedding soup.

  Holly laughed. “Perfect.”

  After introductions and oohing and ahhing at the trays of delicious-looking and -smelling Italian food, everyone sat down, their plates full of a little of this, a little of that. Holly loved Mia’s chicken alla Milanese. And Liam’s penne was as overcooked as Holly’s used to be, but the vodka sauce wasn’t bad at all. In fact, Holly had a feeling he’d used a quart he’d bought from her a few days before.

  “Oh, and I brought something else,” Mia said, reaching under her seat for a foil-wrapped plate. She peeled back the foil.

  Holly gasped. It was sa cordula. She stood up, her mind going blank, her legs feeling like rubber. She sat back down. What the—

  “Dad, try some,” Mia said, forking a bite and holding it up to him. “Don’t worry about not liking it—you won’t hurt my feelings. I didn’t make it. I’m just curious to see what you’ll think of it.”

  It was like slow motion as Liam smiled and leaned forward to take the bite with his lips.

  No. No. No. Holly didn’t want to know.

  Liam glanced at the fork Mia held before him. “Oh, it’s that dish you served me a couple of weeks ago. What did you say it was called again?

  Mia grinned at Holly. “Just an old-world dish that Holly’s nonna used to make.”

  He slid the fork into his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. “I like it,” Liam said. “I still can’t quite figure out what it is, but I like it. To Holly’s nonna, then,” he added, holding up his bottle of beer.