The Way Life Should Be (17 page)

“Uh—I might,” he says. “My options are limited enough as it is. Beggars can’t be picky.”

“Choosers,” I say.

“What?”

“Choosers. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“God, you’re annoying,” he says. “It makes it really hard to like you.”

“Only two shopping days till Thanksgiving,”
Lindsay announces the next day when we’re on the phone. “Who are you spending it with?”

I’ve been doing my best to ignore this holiday-of-all-family-holidays, a task made infinitely easier by the fact that my only real friend on the island is Australian. I’m feeling surprisingly unsentimental: I don’t want a turkey, stuffing, or any of the trimmings. But I decide to celebrate my own way—by teaching Flynn how to make risotto.

Which is how, at five o’clock on Thanksgiving Day, Flynn
comes to be in my kitchen, stirring minced garlic and onion in olive oil with a wooden spoon. I pour sauvignon blanc in two glasses, hand him one, and clink mine against his. “To family. Wherever they may be.”

“Far from here,” he adds.

“Don’t let the garlic burn,” I warn him.

Keith Urban is crooning some sexy country song on my CD player—I’ve never heard him before, but Flynn is an avid fan—and the Danish stove is doing its efficient thing, warming the whole place. Despite the fact that it’s just the two of us, and we’re cooking risotto, it feels somehow festive, like a real celebration.

So festive, in fact, that after one glass of wine I am moved to say, quite suddenly and without provocation, “You know what, Flynn? I am really happy.”

Flynn looks at me sideways. “Oh dear. Is this like training with a drunk flight instructor? Am I going to have to do this rice thing by myself?”

“Don’t be silly,” I say, slapping his arm, “I’m not drunk.” Eyeing my empty glass, I pour both of us a little more. “So I have a question for you. Are you living the life you always wanted to lead?”

“Oh, here we go,” he says.

“Is that a bad question?”

“I thought we were just making risotto.”

“We are,” I say, taking a sip. “I just wondered.”

“Two cups?” he asks, holding up the bag of Arborio rice.

I nod.

Flynn measures the rice into a bowl. “Well, I’ll tell ya. My only aspiration was to get out of Dodge—I mean Australia—and open a coffee shop. And find the love of my life. Not very ambitious, really.”

“But you’ve done it,” I say. “Most of it.”

“Not the most important part.”

“Who needs love when you’ve got great coffee?” I say.

“I do,” he says. “All right. Your turn.”

“Well,” I say. “I wanted to be a chef.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you ever do it? I mean, you obviously like to cook. And you’re not bad at it.”

“My dad didn’t think it was practical to cook for a living.”

“And he thinks it’s practical to move to Maine for a guy you met on the Internet?”

“Hardly.” When I pour the rice into the hot pan with the garlic and onions, plump stray grains hop and jump. “Stir that to coat the rice in olive oil,” I tell him. “Then start adding chicken broth.” Flynn stirs dutifully. “It was a long time ago,” I say. “I was in my early twenties. My dad’s opinion carried a lot more weight back then.”

“Well, it’s too bad you listened,” he says. “Though maybe things happen for a reason. You’d never have come here if you’d followed your dream back when you wanted to.”

“Keep stirring,” I say.

“I think that if you really want to do something, sooner or later you’ll find a way to do it.”

“Or not. Stir,” I say.

He stirs, and I begin adding chicken broth in a slow stream. “You should open your own restaurant,” he says.

“Flynn, I make muffins. I don’t know the first thing about running a restaurant.”

“Not yet. But you can learn. God, you weren’t kidding about all the stirring. My arm is getting sore.”

“Okay, turn it down to a simmer,” I say. “And can you see why this might not be the perfect date-night dinner?”

“Abso-bloody-lutely,” he says.

When we’re finally at the table, eating the risotto and sharing a bottle of pinot grigio, he says, “You know what? I think we should put up a sign.”

“What do you mean?”

“You should offer a cooking class. We’ll put a flyer in the shop. And the library. It’d be something to do, huh?”

“A cooking class? For who? There’s nobody around.”

“Isn’t it ‘for
whom,
’ grammar queen?” he says, pouring more wine in our glasses. “There are plenty of restless natives.”

I think for a moment. “But where would I do it?”

He sweeps his hand around with a flourish. “Here, of course.”

“Here? But I have only two burners. And a tiny oven. And no serving utensils. Or heat.”

“So what? Nobody’s going to care. Body heat, baby. You’ll get four or five people who are desperate to get out of their own houses on a cold winter night. They’re not going to care how many burners you have. You’ll make a little money. Hopefully a friend or two. Maybe even find me a boyfriend.”

“I don’t know,” I say doubtfully.

“About the idea, or about finding me a boyfriend?”

The next day Flynn tacks up a notice:

Cooking class in Dory Cove—a dinner party a week!

(Southern Italian with an American accent)

4 Wednesdays starting November 29

6–9:30 pm

$15 each class

Bring a bottle of any kind.

Sign up below, or see Angela at the Daily Grind.

(Ask for directions)

CHAPTER 17

The day of the first class I wake with my stomach in a knot. Five
people, including Flynn, have signed up, and I own three chairs and four mismatched forks. The kitchen in my shack is barely functional, the stove a glorified hot plate. I’ve never taught anybody anything in my life.

What am I thinking?

“You have nothing to worry about,” Flynn says. It’s nine fifteen, just after the morning rush. He screws the top off a glass salt shaker and dumps the contents onto a growing mound on a paper towel, then tosses the empty shaker in soapy water in the sink. I watch it plummet to the bottom with the others, a shipwreck of shakers.

“I don’t know how to teach anybody to cook,” I fret.

“Sure you do. You taught me how to make risot-
toe,
” he says.

“But the only thing you learned is that you never want to make it again.” I rinse out the shakers one by one and set them on a towel to dry.

“It had nothing to do with your skill. It was about the logistics of trying to bag a hottie and stir rice at the same time.”

“My kitchen is the size of a hamster cage,” I say. “There’s nowhere to sit and nothing to sit on. Why did I leave all my stuff in my dad’s garage? I could’ve at least brought
forks.
”

“Yeah, why didn’t you?”

“I was trying to carpe diem.”

“And you couldn’t carpe some forks on your way out?” Flynn holds his arm out straight and waggles his fingers at the window. “Look.”

I look. A thick fog hangs over the street, windswept and deserted, like a Main Street out of a black-and-white Western. An old man hurries by, half obscured by the mist, huddled in a coat with his woolen hat pulled down low.

“It’s miserable weather. Nobody wants to be outside. You don’t have to do much of anything but open the door of your humble abode and invite folks in.”

“Humble is right.”

Flynn strolls over to the sign-up sheet. “Let’s see who’s on the list.” He scans it for a moment, then says, “Why, it’s the Land of Misfit Toys! Okay, Rebecca Zinsser. You know her—mother of Josh, single mom, moved here from New York. Double tall skim cappuccino. I’m guessing she lived on sushi in the big city and now defrosts Lean Cuisine for herself and tater tots for the ankle biter. Aah—our good friend Tom Martinelli. Small coffee, black. We can fight over him. Eileen Davis. Herbal tea with a mound of sugar packets. There’s an odd gal. She showed up last summer from out of nowhere. What’s with the gray braid?”

“I like the braid,” I say. “Besides, she’s really nice to me.”

“So maybe we
won’t
be fighting over Tom,” he says. “Lance. Vanilla latte. Hmm. Is this going to put a cramp in my style?”

“Crimp,” I say. “
Crimp
in your style.”

“Mother of God, give me strength,” he says.

“Promise me you’ll come early,” I plead.

“What did I do to deserve this woman?” he says, shaking his fist at the pocked ceiling tiles.

A simple dinner,
I’m thinking, something that won’t be too stressful. Something familiar. I came up with a menu last night: chicken marsala; a salad of field greens, sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, and goat cheese, with herb vinaigrette; roasted peppers; and a
torta al limone.
As a teenager I often helped Nonna make chicken marsala—one of my father’s favorites—so I have a fairly good idea of what I’m doing, but I called her to make sure. “I’m teaching a cooking class tomorrow,” I told her.

“A class!” she said with surprise.

“Yeah, I’m kind of nervous. I posted a notice for it in the coffee shop where I work.”

“How many people?”

“Five. Six, including me.”

“What will you make?”

“Well, that’s why I’m calling. I’m thinking chicken marsala. I want to go over your recipe to make sure I’ve got it, if you have a moment.”

“I think I have a moment,” she said with a dry laugh. “But I don’t have a recipe. You know I never wrote anything down.”

“I know. But I’m not as clever as you are, Nonna. If you talk about how you make it, I can take notes.”

“Well,” she said. “Do you have a meat pounder?”

“No. I do have a Progresso soup can.”

“That will do, I suppose.”

“This is kind of improvised, Nonna,” I apologized.

“That’s all right. You know what you’re doing.”

Just hearing her say this made me feel better. “So you start with chicken breasts,” I prompted.

“Good-quality chicken breasts,” she said. “Boneless. Or you debone them.”

“Okay.”

“Slice the breasts in half through the middle, then pound the chicken pieces with a mallet—
scusilo,
can of soup—between two sheets of plastic wrap. Do you have Wondra flour?”

“I can probably get it.”

“Wondra, or regular if they don’t have it. Sifted. Dip the chicken pieces in flour and cook them in butter. Hot butter. Sizzling. Real butter, not that
roba fasulla
your stepmother uses.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh.” I scribbled notes on the back of an envelope.

“Okay, now you boil button mushrooms with a dash of lemon—just quickly—and then drain. When the chicken is no longer pink you remove it. Add the mushrooms, garlic, a few slivers of prosciutto, and the juice from the chicken to the pan, for taste. Then stir up the pieces with your spatula—you know how to do that—”

“Yes, I know.”

She told me anyway: “—you scrape the pieces up and add
liquido,
a little chicken stock and marsala wine. Add pepper and salt. When the liquid is gone, add more chicken stock and reduce some more. Add the chicken pieces and heat.
Ciò è tutto.
That’s all.”

“Then I just plate it and sprinkle parsley over it, right?”

“I serve with potatoes.”

“I know. But I’m thinking linguine for this crowd.”

“Not authentic, you know. But linguine will do,” she said. “What else are you making?”

I recited the rest of the menu, and she said, “Just remember. Only a few rules. The rest is—how do you say?—
improvvisazione.
”

“Improvisation.”

“Yes, improvisation.”

At the end of our conversation, Nonna gave me a little lec
ture. Cooking skill, she said, is as much about preparation as it is about talent. It’s about buying the right ingredients and taking time to mince the garlic fine, cut the potato into thin slivers. You must have a quality of watchfulness; you must be vigilant that the butter doesn’t burn or the garlic turn bitter. As she talked I remembered school-day afternoons sitting at the Formica table in her kitchen, cutting carrots and celery, weeping over the onions while she scolded, “I told you to peel them under running water,
la ragazza sciocca,
” silly girl. I was a clumsy, absentminded child, always spilling milk or sneezing into the sifter, trying her patience. She’d set a simple task and I’d half-finish it, trailing dirty dishes and garlic husks behind me.

When she finally decided I was ready, Nonna gave me a lump of my own bread dough to knead. For a long time I couldn’t get it right; my lump was grubby and dense. But when Nonna saw that my dough was beginning to rival hers, that I had learned the trick of patience and the rhythm of timing, she surrendered more control. She taught me to braid loaves the way she braided my hair on Sunday nights in front of
60 Minutes.

“You will be fine, Angela,” she said last night before we hung up. “
Il regalo.
The gift. You have it, remember?”

At twelve thirty,
when I leave the shop, I drive off the island to the Super Shaw’s in Ellsworth to rustle up ingredients. I can’t find marsala wine. The store clerk suggests I try the boutique wine shop in the old downtown, which is, capriciously, closed for inventory. Pine nuts are nowhere to be found, and the fresh herbs are wilted, the leaves curled and charred. Red peppers are out of season and unavailable, and inexplicably there are no fresh lemons. The only sun-dried tomatoes I can find come in a tiny jar for six dollars. I need to rethink the whole menu.

Wandering through the produce department, I stumble on
unexpected treasures: root vegetables, parsnips and turnips and organic carrots; a shipment of oyster mushrooms. I find almond paste in the international foods section. My panic subsides and I begin to enjoy myself. This reminds me of how Nonna shops, figuring it out as she goes. “Pah. Who needs a list?” she says. “You find fresh, you have your dinner.”

I hear Nonna’s voice in my head as I drift down the aisle:
It’s all by feel,
she says.
If a cantaloupe is too soft, it may have been frozen. Check asparagus to be sure that the cut ends of the stalk are damp, like a dog’s nose. Press a plum tomato; if it isn’t firm to the touch it will taste mealy. Buy only top-quality chicken; you will waste less and the flavor will be better.