Elodie and Heloise

by Cecilee Linke

  “I see what this is. Let me guess. Right now, I bet you’re going online to look for those recipes we just watched, aren’t you?” Heloise got up from the couch and walked over to Noah sitting at the desk. She felt a flutter of excitement. The recipes that they’d just watched were for making a chicken dish with various Italian spices and capers and some wonderfully tasty-looking potatoes. It was all she could do to not salivate throughout the entire episode. Giada had a habit of making any food she made look absolutely beautiful and delicious.

  “Of course. Am I really that predictable?” Noah winked.

  Heloise giggled. “No, I just know you too well, that’s all. Here, I’ll go see what ingredients you have in the fridge while you print out the recipes.” She left the room and sauntered toward the kitchen, racking her brain as to which ingredients she would need to look for in the refrigerator for the recipe.

  Chicken in the adjoining freezer? Check. She grabbed the large bag of chicken cutlets and tossed them onto the counter, where the bag landed with a loud thud.

  Salt, pepper and thyme? Right there in the spice cabinet, check. She placed them on the counter, taking care to be a little more careful with those glass bottles of spices than she was with the bag of frozen chicken.

  Noah came running into the kitchen, carrying three sheets of printed paper in his hand. He set the pages out on the counter and dragged his finger down the ingredient list as he read through each one out loud. “Olive oil, bell pepper, garlic, tomatoes, white wine.....”

  “We could just use extra water or chicken stock for that,” Heloise proposed. She was allowed to try some dishes cooked in wine at home, thanks to her Papa’s French cooking, but she knew her Aunt Chelsea might not go for that kind of thing. “And I got out the chicken and spices, as you can see.”

  Noah nodded in acknowledgement, continuing to look over the ingredients list again. “Capers, parsley, all right, let’s start getting everything else out then!”

  The kitchen soon became a buzz of activity, with Noah and Heloise looking for ingredients all over the kitchen as well as pulling out different pots and pans from the kitchen cabinets and placing them on the counter. In the end, they realized they didn’t have the necessary prosciutto for the chicken dish or even the very specific cippolini onions for their potatoes and onion recipe, but they had everything else they needed.

  “I’ll start the potatoes, those are going to take the longest,” Heloise announced as she got out a cutting board and began peeling the potatoes.

  “And I’ll do the chicken.”

  With the two of them working together in the kitchen, Noah and Heloise often bumped elbows with one another. Aunt Chelsea’s kitchen wasn’t the most spacious of kitchens, so Heloise often felt a little bit crowded for space, especially with all of the ingredients on the counter and the cooking utensils everywhere, but Noah didn’t seem to mind. He was as happy as a fish in water as he peeled the onions and garlic cloves and browned the chicken in the pan while Heloise halved the potatoes and tossed all the ingredients for the potato dish together in a bowl before setting them out to bake. Though she loved these culinary activities and was very much at ease in the kitchen working, Noah was even more delighted. Heloise would look over at him stirring the chicken and tomato mixture, waiting for it to boil per the recipe instructions, and he looked so much at peace, a huge smile coming across his face as he quickly dipped his finger into the mixture and tasted it.

  “Heloise you have to taste this!” he cried, reaching for a spoon from the utensil cabinet and placing it into the pan. He blew on it to cool it down before handing it over to Heloise.

  She brought the spoon to her lips and tasted it, closing her eyes like she’d seen all the chefs do on those cooking shows. An intense tomato and herb flavor filled her mouth and she felt her eyes go wide.

  “See, what did I tell you! It’s delicious isn’t it?”

  “Oui oui, vraiment!” Heloise nodded and set the now dirtied spoon into the sink. The two of them giggled as Noah placed the top on the pan to let it simmer after all the work had been done.

  “And now all we do is wait!” he said excitedly. The chicken had to sit for a half hour simmering on the stove and there was about that much time left for the potatoes to bake in the oven.

  Noah set the timer on the oven so they wouldn’t forget about their food just as her Aunt Chelsea walked into the kitchen. Chelsea resembled Heloise’s mom Shannon in almost everything except the eyes and demeanor. Where Shannon was very outgoing and loved striking up a conversation with almost anyone, Chelsea preferred being on her own to being in a crowd. Even Heloise hardly ever saw her smile.

  She took a look around the kitchen at all the pots, pans, and spices on the counter and sniffed. The intoxicating aroma of the chicken stewing with the spices and tomatoes had filled the kitchen with such a wonderful smell that made Heloise feel like she was standing in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant.

  “Of course, I should’ve known,” Chelsea shook her head with a smile. “So what do we have here, Master Chef?” She walked over to the recipes laid out on the counter.

  “Roman-style chicken with potatoes and onions. They’re recipes from Everyday Italian. I cooked the chicken. Heloise cooked the potatoes. That’s the other smell. Yum yum yum!” Noah said proudly with his hands behind his back and his head held high. “Dinner will be served in about forty minutes.”

  “And here I was thinking we were just going to do some take-out,” Chelsea joked with a wink at her son. “That should be enough time for your father to get home then. It’s 5:05 now.”

  For the first time that Heloise even remembered, she saw her usually very reserved aunt smile at Noah. As expected, her Uncle Lawrence got home from work with only ten minutes left for their food to cook. That meal that they cooked together was one of the tastiest meals that Heloise had ever had.

  “Of course I remember that. That’s when I realized that I wanted more than ever to cook,” Noah responded when Heloise recounted that memory to him. “Some kids asked for trucks for Christmas, but I asked for a wok.”

  Suddenly, Heloise heard the sound of angry footsteps from across the room. She turned around and saw her sister Elodie standing among her friends, who were all asking her what just happened in very concerned voices. Part of Heloise was curious as to what had happened. Instead Heloise shrugged. Elodie was a big girl; she could take care of herself.

  “No damage control then?” Noah asked, gesturing toward Elodie.

  Elodie was speaking so loudly to her friends that even in a noisy room with lots of other people, Heloise could hear her voice. She heard the words “Quentin,” “jerk” and “someone else,” which were enough for her to deduce what had happened.

  “No, she can take care of herself. Give her a minute and she’ll be back to normal, I lay you odds.”

  Sure enough, as Elodie was clearly ranting about Quentin, Heloise saw Robert approach her and they exchanged a few words. Though she still looked quite upset, the two of them started dancing and soon, she was bumping and grinding away with everyone else.

  “See? All better then.” Heloise was used to these emotional outbursts from her sister by now, and all she could do was just let her be. If she asked for it, Heloise would give her a shoulder, some reassuring words, and a good ear, but for the last few years, those times were very few and far between, especially as the two of them became even more ensconced in their own circles.

  Another rap hit came up on the stereo and suddenly, Noah whooped and hollered along with everyone else in the room. “Kardinal Offishall!” he yelled. He turned to Heloise and shouted over the music to Heloise that he was going to go dance for a while, then he ran over to join the eager crowd near the stereo as everyone shouted the refrain. Heloise wasn’t as familiar with all the latest pop hits, so she was lost as to what exactly was so good about the song to inspire such a reaction. At any rate, she had enjoyed her conversation with Noah, but was glad to have a few moments alone, some
thing she usually craved in social situations like this.

  Her silence was broken when she heard someone coming up next to her holding a plastic cup of soda.

  “So, you enjoying the party?”

  Heloise looked to her right and saw one of the unfamiliar faces from earlier that evening looking at her. It was the really shy boy who had come in behind Renata and Antonio, someone whose name she couldn’t remember at the moment. When she wasn’t talking with Noah, she’d watch him hanging around the fringes of the crowd either watching TV with a few guests or getting a drink, not really engaged in dancing or conversation. Heloise had wondered if he was not a party kind of person either, but she had been too shy to introduce herself to him, so she hung around with Noah most of the evening.

  She kept trying to remember his name. Kyle something or other, she couldn’t remember how he’d introduced himself. Probably a friend of Elodie’s from school, she wasn’t sure. He was a skinny boy who a few inches taller than her with brown hair that was so dark that it could be mistaken for black and an upturned smile on his face, with dark blue jeans hanging around his thin waist and a green hoodie with pockets in the front. She could have sworn that she saw bits of hazel in his eyes, but Heloise couldn’t really tell. At any rate, he looked friendly enough.

  “Yeah it’s all right,” Heloise spoke nervously. “I’m Heloise DeGarmo, Elodie’s twin sister.” She held out her hand to shake.

  Kyle raised his eyebrows as if to show that he wasn’t used to this kind of formality, but he went with it and shook Heloise’s hand. “I’m Kyle Cayce. Twin sisters? No really, I couldn’t tell. Same face, hair, everything,” Kyle said with a smile. “Seriously, you two look practically the same.”

  “Except for that though.” Heloise gestured to the wild dance moves her sister was doing with Robert. Elodie was moving sensually with her hips and legs as everyone watched and danced around her, even cheering her on. “You won’t catch me doing that anytime soon.”

  Kyle cracked up and took another sip from his cup. “I take it you’re not much of a party person then.”

  “I’m off here in a corner chatting instead of dancing. This corner and I have gotten to know each other very well tonight,” Heloise said with a little more biting sarcasm than she had intended.

  Instead of being scared off by her sarcasm, Kyle snickered and shrugged. “That’s OK, I’m not really either. I just came figuring I could meet a few new people or something. We just moved here last week, so I don’t know anyone here. Elodie knows Andrew from math class and he asked if I wanted to come along.”

  Finally, another wallflower at this party. Heloise felt her confidence levels going up and her shyness began to give way a little. She now had someone else to talk to who felt just as awkward as she did. “Really, you just moved here? It seems like everyone is moving here lately. The Rices next door, now you guys.”

  “Yeah we moved from Wytheville. At least there seems to be more going on here than where I came from. I mean, Wytheville is nice if you like festivals and everything. But at least here, you’re closer to some of the bigger cities. Petersburg, Richmond, all that.” Kyle set his cup on the dining room table and leaned against the wall.

  “So why here anyway? I mean, people don’t just choose to move to Shady Valley. We’re a pretty small little place.”

  “Parents retiring here. They’d always wanted to retire here, someplace far enough away from the city but close enough that they could get to where they needed to,” Kyle answered matter-of-factly.

  “Well I grew up here. So I’ve never known any other place. I mean, I’ve been to Richmond to visit Aunt Marie and her family, but other than that, I’ve always lived here and haven’t been anywhere else,” Heloise responded, leaning against the dining room wall in the same manner as Kyle. “I like it here, so I’ll probably stay. You never know. So your brother, over there. Only one sibling?”

  “Nope,” he replied as he took a sip from his cup. “It goes me, Andrew, and then my younger sister Audrey. Andrew and I are just a year and a half apart and then Audrey’s only fifteen. How about you?” He leaned against the wall looking at Heloise.

  “Oh it’s just Elodie. No brothers, just my twin sister.” Heloise snickered as she watched her sister’s crazy dance moves. Elodie had almost everyone in the entire party watching her by now as she and Robert gyrated rather provocatively around each other to the loud music. “She’s more than enough for me. I don’t think I could take having another sibling.”

  Kyle smirked. “You get used to it. Andrew and I get on fine since we’re almost the same age anyway. Audrey’s in a major teenybopper phase right now, so I’ve just learned to ignore it for the most part. All she wants to talk about is the latest pop princess.” He rolled his eyes, much to Heloise’s amusement.

  “Elodie sure seems to be enjoying herself. That’s not a name you hear all the time. Elodie I mean,” Kyle remarked, taking another sip from his cup before placing it on the dining room table in front of him.

  “It’s French,” Heloise replied. “Papa met Mom while she was in France visiting with her sisters, at least that’s what Mom has told us. And Papa wanted us to know we were part-French, hence our names. I don’t mind them, it makes us unique and at least they’re easy to pronounce.”

  Kyle looked very impressed with Heloise’s story. “Well that sounds pretty cool. At least you all know where you came from. My mom was into genealogy for a time, but I don’t remember what she really found. I think she found something way back in England, but I can’t really remember. So do you speak French at all?”

  “Oui, je parle français couramment.”

  His eyes darted around as if he was unsure of what had just happened. “Sorry, I’ve only ever taken Spanish, so I have no idea what you just said.” He then laughed, making Heloise crack a smile. As soon as she smiled, his face softened in such a way that Heloise could not look at anything else except for him.

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t say anything bad or anything like that. Just that yes, I do speak French fluently. We grew up speaking it from both of our parents. Papa is a lot more fluent than Mom since he is actually French but she did teach us some of the language.”

  That was just the first of many long conversations Heloise and Kyle had that evening. At first they talked about their families, Kyle with his family of one sister and two brothers, Heloise with her sister, French immigrant father and writer mother. Even after being around him for those first few minutes, Heloise felt like Kyle was someone she could easily talk to and be open with, and she found herself laughing and chattering away with him in a way that she hadn’t really done before with anyone outside her immediate circle of friends. He not only enjoyed her sarcastic sense of humor but he also was just as sarcastic himself. She didn’t even know how much time had passed engaged in conversation, and neither did Kyle. Heloise’s head buzzed with excitement as they talked, only moving from their little corner of the room when they both wanted to refill their cups with soda, which happened at least three times during the course of their conversations.

  Sometime in the early morning hours, a slower song came up on Elodie’s iPod. It was one of the latest pop ballad hits from some singer that was all the rage, someone out of Heloise’s pop culture radar. At the first few notes of the song, Kyle immediately burst out laughing, causing Heloise to follow suit and then spilling soda all over the floor from the gulp of soda she had taken just before he started laughing. Their loud peels of laughter made everyone stare in their direction for a few moments before turning back to the party to focus on finding a dance partner.

  “Sorry, it’s just such a typical slow song. Like the kind they always play at dances when the teachers want everyone to stop getting down for a few minutes.” She shook the soda off her hand, though most of it had dried and now left a sticky residue on her hands. She wiped her hands on her jeans, but it only made it worse.

  “No no it’s fine. I was thinking something like that too. I was crackin
g up more because my sister Audrey likes to sing along to this song in her room. She knows all the words to this song and every other Rihanna song. And she sings along to them very badly, I might add.” Kyle began imitating someone singing an overdramatic song, complete with opening up his mouth as wide as he could, flailing his arms, and acting like he was reaching for the sky with his hands. “Like that. I swear, it’s the funniest thing ever.”

  Heloise and Kyle both cracked up again, Heloise more from the twisted and exaggerated way that Kyle imitated someone singing. “Well, I think we’ve both established that we have a lot in common, if you don’t mind my saying,” Heloise said in between her laughter.

  Kyle’s laughter continued for a few more moments before it tapered off. He nodded at Heloise’s statement and skimmed the rest of the crowd swaying in time to the music, then he looked back at Heloise.

  “Well I know we’ve been talking for a good while, but would you like to dance?” Kyle asked with a hint of shyness in his voice. “I mean, it is a slow song. An overdramatic one, but a slow song.”

  “Sure. Let’s engage in the wonderful teenaged art of slow dancing. I’m warning you though, I’ve got two left feet.” Heloise and Kyle stepped out into the living room with everyone else.

  “And I have at least two right and left feet,” Kyle answered, taking Heloise’s hand for the first time, making Heloise flutter with happiness. She didn’t want to say anything quite yet about Kyle as she had only just met him that evening but Heloise was really enjoying his company. She’d never felt so comfortable around anyone else her age before, and she decided to go with it and see what would happen.

  As Heloise followed Kyle, she saw her sister and Robert swaying back and forth out of time with the music. Elodie looked content. Heloise even saw Elodie and Robert whisper things in each other’s ears as they danced, things that made each of them laugh. At least Elodie seems happy. Good for her. Heloise and Kyle wrapped their arms around one another and followed everyone else in a slow dance. And for the first time all evening, Heloise felt relaxed.