How Sweet It Is (11 page)

As I long for the kitchen at the restaurant, he tells a story about how Ashley Judd came to Palacio del Rey for dinner the other night. He wants to tell me what she ordered and who she was with, but all I want to know is if her skin is as flawless as it is on the cover of
Cosmo
. Does she have wrinkles? Does she have scars on her arms?

He doesn’t tell me because I don’t ask.

————

I carry the ingredients to make brownies in my Whole Foods bag. My prayer is that all the children will be absent today.

The kids are all there when I arrive.

When I say that we will bake brownies and then eat them, there are a few cheers. Then they all wonder why I have brought sugar, cocoa, and flour.

“Don’t you just add water to a brownie box?” Dougy asks innocently.

“You can,” I say, “if you have a brownie box or brownie mix. But we are going to make brownies from scratch.”

“We get to scratch?” Bubba looks confused.

“No, dummy!” belts out Bobby. “That means…” But he doesn’t know how to explain what it means, so I tell them.

“When we cook from scratch it means we don’t use any mix or box already prepared. We measure our own ingredients.”

The class still looks confused until Lisa says, “It means we don’t use instant.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah,” Bubba and Dougy say in unison.

Lisa beams like she is the teacher’s pet; at this point, the pickings are slim for that honor, and she is the only one on my “almost good” list.

Darren sits with his notebook, not giving me any eye contact. I am sure he hates me. I should have asked Chef B how to make this kid like me. I think it will take more than brownies.

————

When the class is over and the kids run outside to play basketball, I head to the bathroom before washing the dishes. Making brownies was a good choice, but even so, the kids talked incessantly and fought over who was going to stir the batter next. I asked Darren to chop some walnuts and he refused. Dougy said Darren was afraid of knives. Darren yelled, “Shut up!” It was aimed at Dougy and not at me this time, but it still wasn’t appropriate. I told Darren to be considerate of others, and he shot me an evil glare that made me think of his mother, Felicia. So much angry resemblance.

As I come out of the bathroom, I try to conjure courage and to walk with dignity. Courage is a tough thing to conjure.

If you don’t believe you own it, you almost suffocate from feeling fake. Passing the bulletin board with the array of Bible verses, I pause.
God?
My cry is silent and yet I feel like every bone in my body is shouting for help. What does that quote say?
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”
And from Grandpa, I received,
“Put your whole hand in His.”

Yes, but how is that done? My own understanding is that this place is not for me, and I will never understand why my grandpa thought I should teach these children. Obviously, Ernest did not know me at all to place me here, or else he was just cruel, which can’t be true. Everybody adored Grandpa. Except for my mother, but that’s not my grandfather’s fault. Even Mom’s own mother told me once that “She was a stubborn child.” Dad only sees her soft hair and features, and in college he was mesmerized by her shrewd business skills. She keeps her emotions to herself while keeping the farm in profits. Her good qualities are evident—I know I’ve gained from them over the years—yet sometimes I do wish she were not a prickly pear but more like a smooth Georgia peach.

When I turn from the bulletin board, Zack is walking toward me. His look holds genuine empathy. It prods me to say, “I’m not a teacher.”

His face softens, and he gives me a small smile. “I’m not either.”

“I don’t even know if I like kids.” Surely he will tell Miriam this tidbit and she’ll oust me from The Center. I’ll be kicked out forever, which, come to think of it, would not be a bad thing. Then I can work totally on establishing my cake-decorating business and eventually turning it into a catering company. No more kids to teach!

Zack says, “I used to think the same thing.”

“You used to think you didn’t like children?” What in the world? He is a kid magnet.

“They were so young and hopeful, and I didn’t want to disappoint them.”

Well, those are not my fears at all. I continue spilling out my emotions. “They’re so… so…” What is wrong with me? I know what I mean.

Zack supplies, “Noisy? Undisciplined? Aggravating?”

Does he agree that they are? Or is he just saying this to appease me? I hate being appeased like I’m a… a child. “Yes, yes, yes,” I say. I take a breath, and we both smile. His eyes are hazel with a tint of green around the edges.

“I know. But they will grow on you. It takes time.”

“Why are you here?” I ask him. My voice is more demanding than I intended.

He looks a bit baffled and then slowly says, “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“No, not that. Why are you here at The Center?”

“Oh.” His faces relaxes. “I’m a social worker. I’m the caseworker for a bunch of these kids.”

“You’re a social worker with social services?”

“Yeah. But most of the time I spend here is volunteer. The Center is a really good program.”

“Oh.” What can I say? He
chose
a profession that deals with children. He even
volunteers
to spend time with children. He could be anything he wanted to be, I think. He’s confident and articulate and grows more handsome every time I see him. He could be posing for
Maxim
. Instead he is here in the mountains of North Carolina working with a bunch of kids.

His smile is broad, and I note his dimples.

“You’ll be okay,” he says.

You’ll be okay.
How many times have I heard that line in the last three months? If I had a penny for every time a friend, coworker, parent, or doctor said that string of words to me, I’d be rich enough to bribe the lawyer on Main Street so he’d have to let me have the cabin sans teaching cooking to wild children with no manners.

————

After a dinner of steamed broccoli and pasta seasoned with oregano, olive oil, and tomatoes, I take out the Bryson City phone book. I study the local businesses—potential places I can market my cake business. I plan to ask them if they will place my brochures in a strategic location with lots of customer traffic. That should generate some responses so I can start getting orders for custom-made cakes.

What if no one calls? What if no one even allows me to place my brochures in their shop or restaurant? The more I think about my new business, the more discouragement sets in.

Stop it. Don’t think like that.

I call Sally, just to hear a familiar voice. After the phone rings five times I leave a message on her answering machine. I hope I sound perky and well-adjusted to my new mountain life. She’s probably at a veterinary emergency, but I wish she were home. I just want to laugh with her about anything we think is funny today.

sixteen

T
he first thing that appealed to me about being a chef was the uniform. I wanted to wear the white smock and the tall white chef hat. Then, I wanted to make sauces. Cheese sauces for vegetables. Sauces for roasts, pork tenderloins, and briskets. Growing up on a pig farm gave me plenty of opportunity to watch pork being prepared. We seemed to have it every day in one form or another. Sausage or bacon for breakfast, ham sandwiches for lunch, and pork roast or tenderloin for dinner.

My mother always made her standard sauce or gravy to go with each pork dish. No matter which side of the pig she served for dinner, the gravy accompanying it was the same as the day before. This flavorless sauce was served in the family heirloom we called “the gravy bowl,” and always placed at Dad’s end of the oak dining room table. The gravy bowl is the color of mildew. My great-grandmother thought it worthy of passing down to my maternal grandmother, and then my mother inherited it when her mother died. I have let my sister know that she is welcome to it when our mother passes on. Andrea told me, “I don’t need a gravy bowl in Taipei.”

They say necessity is the mother of all inventions, and even as a kid, I knew it was necessary to create a new sauce. I was tired of Mom’s standard mixture of milk, butter, fat drippings, and salt and pepper, with a few tablespoons of flour to thicken it. I experimented in the kitchen and came up with sauce à la marmalade (a white sauce with a tablespoon of orange marmalade), sauce au garlic (adding minced garlic really spiced up the palate), and sauce au basil—my favorite—which had fresh minced basil and parsley. Andrea liked the marmalade one the best; Dad raved about the garlic. Mom said she couldn’t decide between the basil and garlic, but if I wanted to cook dinner one night a week, that would be a great help.

Pretty soon one night a week became two, and then it got so I was cooking every night. Mom was proud of my culinary talent, which delighted me. Dad was proud, too, but I could simply breathe and he’d be proud of me.

When I told my family I wanted to go to Atlanta for culinary school, they weren’t surprised. Mother did comment that she wasn’t sure I could get a real job with a degree in
cooking
. I showed her an armload of books written by gurus who were skilled in cooking—graduates of culinary institutes all across America and around the world. She then nodded and asked if I could make a dessert for the next night.

“What’s tomorrow night?” I asked.

“Friday,” she replied. “And the Jeffersons are coming by after dinner to buy Hector.”

“Daddy’s selling Hector?”

Hector was the largest sow in the history of Georgia, I was sure. She was the size of three hogs. Champion pig—that was Hector. She’d won the blue ribbon at the state fair for four years in a row. When people saw the name, they would assume Hector was a male. When they found out she was female, they’d scratch their heads, let their cotton candy stop bobbing for a moment, and wonder. Dad named the pig. Apparently, he had an uncle Hector who was rather large and pink. When Hector was born, Daddy said the pig reminded him of his uncle. He started to call her Hector, and that was that. People wondered if the real Hector was offended to know that a pig had been named after him, and not even a male pig, but a sow. “Oh, no,” my father would say, “Hector is pleased.” The truth was, Hector had died long before his namesake squealed into the world.

When my mother didn’t reply to my question, I rephrased it. “Why is Daddy selling Hector to the Jeffersons?”

“They’re offering a good price.”

The first cake I ever made and decorated was for Hector’s farewell. I used a recipe from an old Betty Crocker cookbook. I spent the entire evening icing it with a buttercream frosting, staying up till midnight. The Jeffersons made a big deal over the cake, saying it was tasty and moist.

I was sad to see Hector leave us. I patted her good-bye and felt like little Fern in
Charlotte’s Web
. It took all the strength Mr. Jefferson and Daddy had to haul Hector onto the Jeffersons’ truck. Without Hector to feed, I thought we could probably save enough to build a new barn.

The next time I baked and decorated a cake was the night before Grandpa Ernest visited. “Could you make that same cake you made for the Jeffersons?” my mother asked.

“What’s happening tomorrow night?”

“Grandpa Ernest is stopping by on his way home from Greece.”

I thought it was funny to use the phrase “stopping by.” Tifton, Georgia, is not at all a place on the way to or from anywhere. It is so out of the way that most people can’t find it even when looking for and
wanting
to come to the town.

Grandpa Ernest took one look at the frosted two-layered butter cake and gave me a hug. Then he told me that he’d just spent two weeks on Kos, and although beautiful in both scenery and food, nothing he had seen in the cake department came close to my cake. I was so nervous. I wondered if the taste could live up to his compliments. It must have; I found him at two in the morning helping himself to a second slice. “Ah, Deena,” he said, “you have a God-given talent.”

I smiled twice. Once because I was happy he was my grandfather. Twice because I had just decided I was going to make cakes for the rest of my life.

Of course, I may have had the God-given talent, but pride goeth before a fall, and after those first two cakes, I had a few disaster cakes. Daddy told me disasters in life produce character. I suppose I developed character when I had to rush to the store on three occasions because the cakes I made fell or crumbled. No amount of frosting slathered on could save them.

Later, I learned that every cook has a few failures tucked under her crisp white chef’s hat.

————

Grandpa Ernest’s deck holds a red canvas chair, two weather-beaten Adirondack chairs, and a gas grill, along with the hot tub I have yet to unveil. When I sit in one of the wooden chairs, I lean my head back and breathe in the delicate mountain air. The sun is coming out from behind a milky cloud, and as it warms my face, I watch a pair of sparrows flit around the limbs of two birch trees. The sloping mountain peaks within my view are brightened by the sun; they’re now the color of blueberries. It’s the first week of May.
May in the mountains.
That has a nice ring to it. I bet it could be set to some country music tune.