The School of Essential Ingredients Read Online Free PDF Page A

interjected above the noise. “That’ll be fun, won’t it?”
    “You don’t have . . . to . . . cook . . . peanut butter.”
    “Oh, but Mommy is going to learn how to cook noodles and bread and yum, maybe even fish,” James added enthusiastically.
    Claire tensed. Lucy’s fear of the dark had only recently been mitigated by the acquisition of a friendly band of tetras that swam in the glow of an aquarium near her bed.
    “Mommy is going to cook fish?”
    “No, no, of course not,” Claire soothed, taking refuge in her ignorance, because, she realized, she didn’t actually know. The cooking class wasn’t even her idea; it was a gift from her mother, one she still wasn’t sure if she was offended or intrigued by.
    As Lucy looked up, uncertain whether to believe her mother or not, Claire took advantage of her daughter’s distraction to release herself and sprint for the car. She drove, waving in earnest cheeriness, to the end of the block and pulled over, shaking.
    “You can do this,” she told herself. “You have a college degree. You can leave your house and go to a cooking class.”
    She smelled something and looked down at her shirt. The baby had spit up on her collar. She grabbed a wadded Kleenex from the seat next to her, spat on it, and scrubbed at the residue.
     
    The cooking class was held in a restaurant named Lillian’s, on the main street of town, almost hidden by a front garden dense with ancient cherry trees, roses, and the waving spikes and soft mounds of green herbs. Set between the straight lines of a bank and the local movie theater, the restaurant was oddly incongruous, a moment of lush colors and gently moving curves, like an affair in the midst of an otherwise orderly life. Passersby often reached out to run their hands along the tops of the lavender bushes that stretched luxuriantly above the cast-iron fence, the soft, dusty scent remaining on their fingers for hours after.
    Those who entered the gate and followed the winding brick path through the garden discovered an Arts and Crafts house whose front rooms had been converted into a dining area. There were no more than ten tables in all, each table’s personality defined by nearby architectural elements, one nestled into a bay window, another engaged in companionable conversation with a built-in bookshelf. Some tables had views of the garden, while others, hidden like secrets in the darker, protected corners of the room, held their patrons’ attention within the edges of their tabletops.
    Outside, heavy wooden chairs lined the front porch, ready for overflow customers. The chairs were always full, not only because of the food, but because the restaurant staff seemed to take an almost perverse pride in never rushing anyone through a meal. First come, first served. And served, and served, muttered some patrons as they observed the length of the wait list; but they always stayed, settling into the deep Adirondack chairs with glasses of red wine, until waiting became a social event of its own and parties of two melded into four and six, which of course sped up nothing at all.
    That was how it worked at Lillian’s—nothing ever went quite the way you planned. The menu would change without notice, disconcerting those who craved familiarity, yet who later admitted that the meal they ended up eating was somehow exactly what they had wanted. And while the restaurant’s subtle lighting gave it an aura of peacefulness and its infinite wine list seemed destined for special occasions, evenings, no matter how carefully orchestrated, often detoured in surprising directions—a proposal veering into a breakup that left both parties stunned and relieved, a business meeting smoldering into a passionate grope session by the recycling bins in the back.
    Claire had been to the restaurant twice—the first time almost eight years earlier with a man replete with success, who saw in Claire’s sleek golden hair and heart-shaped face a moment he had not