Under the Table (19 page)

For the promise of a meal in the hallowed halls of one of the city's sacred temples to gastronomy, he would. Everyone has a price, and for Ben, it was the promise of a private dining room and the chef 's tasting menu. I wanted to be angry, to rage against him for going to the other side and breaking the code (not to mention our earlier truce)—brigade first, stomach and classmates second—but I knew, deep down, that there was a part of my chef 's mentality that would have done the same—selling out my family for the elusive number to a top-flight restaurant's private reservation line, making excuses to friends for holding back that truly superb bottle of Champagne. In our gluttonous heart of hearts, all chefs are the same—we are all chasing that perfect meal, and we would do anything,
anything,
to have our chance to sit at the table.

I could smell the acrid scent of defeat clearly. I knew I was beaten; my own men turned against me. I was loath to fall on my sword, however. I wanted to live to fight another day against Mimi, my new nemesis. One day, I was certain, I would have the opportunity for a rematch, and I was going to be ready.

The night that half the class trooped uptown to Le Cirque 2000 to eat, drink, and be merry, I invited Imo and Tucker over for some
wine. I opened a very nice Chablis Premier Cru that I had been holding on to for far too long. What good was a nice bottle of wine if I had no friends to share it with? The little meal we put together from the leftovers in my refrigerator was not star worthy, but it was very good, the wine was great, and the company of friends was without price.

N
o one deserves this,
I thought to myself, as once again I had earned the unwelcome attention of Assistant Chef Cyndee.

It always seemed to happen on those mornings that were particularly hectic, or when my whole team was hungover. Or worse, when things were hectic
and
we were hungover, which was pretty often. Suddenly, just as Ben was dicing leeks a micrometer too big, I had let the stock boil over on the stove, Tucker was at the storeroom requesting more potatoes, and God alone knew what Junior was doing, in would sweep Cyndee, her pug nose almost twitching with anticipation. I was never certain if she could actually smell the mounting fear or panic when the team was going slightly off the rails, but it never failed that she would be there, waiting to draw Chef Pierre's attention to the nascent disaster, if she wasn't actually spurring the disaster itself along.

I know that everyone suffered under those protuberant gimlet eyes, invariably ringed in heavy black eyeliner, which seemed to see every unofficial trip to the bathroom, every small slipup and meager mishap. Her large ears seemed tuned to catch every muttered aside, to hear even the briefest of pauses before a student could muster the obligatory “Yes, Chef” to every command. Of course, none of these venial offenses went unremarked on, even in passing, by Cyndee's acid tongue, caustic as freshly squeezed lemon juice in a new cut.

While none of the students escaped from Cyndee's evil eye, somehow I always managed to be the one whose most minor transgressions brought a wicked smile to her face. While Tucker or Ben might get away with a brief reprimand for their lack of attention
to detail or momentary lapse in discipline, if I even seemed to be thinking of a quick retort to one of her many needling questions, she would smile that serpent's smile and raise her voice to call “Chef!” Chef Pierre would always appear, listen to Cyndee's gratingly nasal voice complain about the real or imagined infraction I had committed, shrug his massive, bearlike shoulders, and say, “
Tant pis pour toi. Tout le monde!
Back to work!” Roughly translated, his comments meant: “Big deal. Let's move on.” It always seemed to please Cyndee, though, and it took me months to realize that despite the fact she was a member of the faculty (a junior member, but still a member), she could not speak or understand a word of French, even though the school sponsored French lessons for all the teaching faculty, free.

We all complained about Cyndee, but she wasn't totally without admirers. Cyndee was a chain smoker, and at every opportunity she could be found hovering outside the students' entrance, taking a long drag off a cigarette. Mimi's habit of giving away packs of Marlboro Lights ensured that the two were soon thick as thieves, a situation that could not have been more ominous for me. Ever since our tangle over dinner at Le Cirque, Mimi and I had been rivals, engaging in periodic social skirmishes in which no clear winner was ever apparent. With a chef 's assistant on her side, though, Mimi was beginning to consolidate an unfair advantage.

But Cyndee's enmity toward me needed no encouragement. It seemed that her eyes were always on me, waiting hungrily for some mistake. It could be hard to work while worrying about whether or not Chef Pierre was going to suddenly materialize at my elbow to point out some flaw in my efforts. His comments at least were always geared to be instructive and helpful, if not necessarily gentle in their critique. It became almost impossible to work smoothly and efficiently while knowing that at any moment the slightest fumble, the merest wrong twitch of a spoon at the stove, would bring Cyndee, the evil harpy, down on my head.

Michael thought I was imagining things. I was just being too sensitive to criticism. That was partly true. It
was
hard for me to take criticism, as Michael well knew, but I argued that it would be hard for anyone to take criticism well all day, every day. No one in the world could be that nasty, he told me. Maybe not in the world Michael lived in, but in the world of the kitchen, I knew it was all too possible.

Cyndee's principal job at school was to supervise the students preparing family meals, ensuring that things went smoothly and there would indeed be a hot lunch for two hundred people at noon each day. Her afternoon was spent creating new ideas for the hors d'oeuvres selection we prepared for the evening meal in the restaurant. This meant that my orbit would rarely intersect with hers—only when we were in the family meal rotation, once every ten days or so, would Cyndee and I have to interact. Somehow, though, Cyndee always managed to be around, in the doorway of the pastry kitchen as I rolled out piecrust, in line in front of me at the storeroom window, washing her knives at the sink just as I was draining a steaming cauldron of potatoes. Coincidentally, this was also when I was doing something wrong. The potatoes were too done, or too raw. The piecrust was too cold to be rolled out and would crack, or I had overworked it already and it was too warm. I couldn't win. This was the way things were, day in and day out, in Level 2, until the day I got the phone call.

Phone calls at chef school were strictly prohibited during class. During lunch and after school, cell phones could be used, but never in the kitchens, only in hallways, the locker room, or any other corner where you were unlikely to be caught by a visiting dean. That said, ever since the cataclysmic events of September 11, which occurred less than a half mile from the plate glass windows of the school's restaurant, all of the chefs and students carried their cell phones with them at all times, just in case. Like everyone else, I carried my cell phone tucked away in the deep pockets of my chef 's
pants, and lived in fear that one day I might inadvertently forget to set the damn thing to vibrate, not that anyone ever called me. I had warned Michael and my family that I was never to be reached during school hours unless it was a matter of life and death, and while I had had an occasional phone call that set my pants vibrating, it was always a wrong number.

So when my pants began to ring loudly one Wednesday morning in August, I knew it was bad. For once in my life I had forgotten to put my phone on vibrate, and who could possibly be calling? Without checking its display I reached into my pocket and switched it to manner mode, thankful that just this one time, Assistant Chef Cyndee was not lurking in some corner of the classroom to witness my most recent faux pas. But the damn phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing. It became impossible to concentrate on poaching eggs for the garde-manger dish we were working on, and the buzzing was so loud and so continuous that even Tucker finally said, “For God's sake, Katie! Just run to the bathroom and see who it is!”

Whipping off my apron (we weren't allowed to wear our hats or aprons anywhere but the kitchen, to cut down on cross-contamination), I made my excuses to Chef Pierre and ran for the ladies' room. I was angry—no one needed to call me fifty-six times in a row for any reason that I could think of. I checked my long log of missed calls. They were all from Mom, Dad, and a number I didn't recognize. Flushing the toilet and running a torrent of water into the basin to cover any telltale sounds of conversation, I called my mother to see what the fuss was all about. I imagined my brother might have finally proposed to his longtime girlfriend, which would be fantastic news, but not something I couldn't live without hearing before we broke for lunch. I could hear the long pause before it began to ring, a strange blip in technology that told me Mom was out of her cell phone carrier's range—odd. No answer.
Typical,
I thought, my mild annoyance at being bothered turning to a tiny flame of anger. The least they could do was pick
up the damn phone! I rang my father, to no avail. This was getting ridiculous! I had already been gone too long from my station, and I hadn't come any closer to finding out what the heck was going on. I crammed the offending lump of plastic and technology back in my pocket, whipped open the door to the ladies' room, and prepared to stomp back to my station. What a waste of time that had been. Inevitably, halfway down the long corridor, the phone began vibrating yet again. Without thinking I snatched it up and shouted, “What do you want?”

Big, big mistake. There was a moment of stunned silence on the other end, and then my grandmother's quavering voice.

“Honey? Is this Katie? It's your grandma. Your grandpa has had a heart attack and is in the hospital. Your mom and dad are here, and we think you should come home, if you can. We don't think Pop-Pop is going to make it.”

Oh, Lord. I knew that my grandfather had not been well for a long time, but I hadn't been expecting this. His support had meant so much to me when I was trying to decide to go to chef school. It wasn't fair—he couldn't die, not yet, not until I had made it through school and showed him I had done it, I had lived up to his expectations. I stood stock-still for a moment, trying to take it all in and decide what to do—my thoughts seesawed between the Amtrak train schedule and the recipes we had chosen to prepare for the rest of the week in class as my body automatically headed back to the bathroom, seeking a safe and relatively quiet haven from the sounds of the lunch rush already coming from the classroom.

I was almost to the door, the phone pressed so tightly to my ear it was actually cutting off the circulation while I listened to my grandmother make the sort of ineffectual conversation people create when they are facing the inevitability of death, when suddenly the phone was plucked from my clenched hand. I whirled around just in time to see Cyndee standing behind me, her pudgy paw clutching the phone, which was still emitting the tiny, tinny sounds of my
grandmother's voice, but far off, like the cries of a lost kitten. With a terrible grin, Cyndee casually hung up the phone, cutting off the faint sounds of tears with a flick of one grimy, pudgy thumb.

“You are in so much trouble,” Cyndee said, unable to keep the glee from her voice, the malicious giggles contrasting starkly with her usual Texas panhandle redneck twang.

Looking back at that moment, it was really a very good thing that I was not actually in the kitchen when this happened. Since I had originally intended to head to the bathroom, I was completely unarmed, and that is really what saved Cyndee. Otherwise, I am quite certain that in that moment, I would have stabbed her with whatever I might have had handy. Why was she doing this to me? Why did she hate me so much? And why now, when I really, really needed to use the phone?

Shocked with anger and emotion at the sad events unfolding for my family three hundred miles away, I followed Cyndee into the class, my confiscated phone vibrating occasionally in her fist. Instead of presenting me to Chef Pierre, as I had expected, Cyndee led me to the broad back and none-too-clean chef 's jacket of Dean Franco. Chef Pierre had been called away and the dean would be watching us for the next half hour. My bad luck. Chef Pierre would have yelled, but everything would have been okay. Dean Franco was another matter. Cyndee handed him my phone and reported my transgression to him.

Without even letting her finish, Dean Franco said, “Suspension. The rest of the day. And I think we should keep this,” indicating the phone, “until you can understand how to handle it properly. Not during class. Tomorrow, you may have your phone back, after class.”

I was shocked. Suspended? Me? I didn't even jaywalk, and had never ever been in trouble in school. Confiscating my cell phone was unthinkable. I had no other way to contact my family. All I could get out in my defense was a feeble “But…but…” Even Cyndee seemed slightly taken aback by the sentence Dean Franco had given. Pointing
out that my brigade was already short a member and we had not yet finished preparing the first course for the chefs' table, she was able to commute my suspension. I was sent back to my station.

I made it through the rest of the morning, trying not to mess things up too badly while my mind was occupied with thoughts of my family. Suddenly, Chef Pierre was once again at my elbow, a very serious look on his face. I have never been more relieved—I dropped my paring knife and turned to Chef, mumbling incoherently and twisting the French knot buttons on my chef 's jacket. I tried to tell my side of the story, hoping that at least Chef Pierre would listen. Chef patted my hand and told me that he had heard about what had happened, and he needed to let Franco know the gravity of the situation and we would see about getting my phone back and getting me excused from class for the next day or so for a family emergency.

 

He returned from the dean's office with my phone and a signed note excusing me from class, but he needn't have bothered. My grandfather had died that morning.

Apple-Bottom Gingerbread

This is the sort of food you really need in tough times. You can make it with a reasonably well stocked pantry without having to run out for groceries, and the recipe is just enough work to occupy your hands and mind without being taxing. It is wonderful right out of the oven, but if you are like me, and can't even think about eating when you are very upset, this actually gets better the longer it sits, so when you wake up hungry in the middle of the night, this is the perfect thing—not too sweet, with a comforting, squishy texture and delightful spiciness. Perfect with a dollop of vanilla ice cream or a big, frosty glass of cold milk.

For the apple bottom:

2 tablespoons (¼ stick) unsalted butter

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

2 apples, peeled, cored, and cut into
¹
/
₈
-inch-thick slices

For the gingerbread:

Nonstick cooking spray or butter, for the pan (see Note)

2¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¹
/
₈
teaspoon ground cloves

¹
/
₈
teaspoon ground allspice