You're Not You (39 page)

As I followed her into the kitchen she glanced over her shoulder at me. There were rubber pads on the floor, an open screen door at the back, steel tables everywhere. Pans of beef joints, browned dark, were balanced on every surface. “Make a lot of demi-glace?” she asked me.

“Just lots of stock,” I said. Thank god I’d read enough of Kate’s Julia Child books to know what I was talking about. In the hopes of showcasing this, I added nonchalantly, “I never needed to cook it down that far.”

She nodded. “I think we spend about half our time making stock,” she said. “It’s the backbone. You bring knives?”

I shook my head. It hadn’t even occurred to me. I thought they’d have them.

“Cooks bring their own knives and they watch them like hawks,” she said. “You don’t want them getting dull or dropped or whatever. You’ll need to get a couple good basics and a knife case.”

I flushed. I had told her over the phone that I had some professional cooking experience. It was not quite a bald-faced lie, since I had indeed learned to cook while on the clock, but it was clear she was going to grasp the extent of my ignorance pretty quickly. Apparently cooks brought their own knives. Who knew?

She led me to a long table near the door. There was a pile of shallots in a wooden crate sitting on it. Anna laid a hand on them and said, “These need to be peeled and trimmed. Come to me when you finish that.”

IN THE TWO WEEKS
since I’d seen Evan, I cooked every day. It had been months since I’d cooked regularly. I missed making the caregivers nightly meals, missed the rhythms of buying my ingredients, setting them out, and transforming them into something. I even missed the parts I’d enjoyed without wanting to admit it: I liked disjointing a chicken, seeing the construction of the animal and knowing how I’d change it. I began to cook again for the pleasure of seeing how new dishes would turn out, whether making my own sourdough starter was worth it, if squash ravioli were better with prosciutto and sage or just brown butter and parmesan.

My kitchen was ill-equipped to do any of this. I ended up dragging over the coffee table, balanced on some books for height, to get extra counter space.

Not everything turned out perfectly—I had to limber up. Jill and I gamely chewed a few bites of a lamb ragu, conversation dwindling, until I admitted it tasted like dirty wool and we went out for pizza. But others were flawless. Mark and I each ate huge platefuls of squash ravioli, unable to stop. We’d made more than we needed, yet at the first touch of the handmade pasta slick in our mouths with sage-scented butter, velvety squash on our tongues, there couldn’t possibly be enough of them. “I feel
insane
,” Mark had said, helping himself to another spoonful. “I think I’m going to have a big buttery aneurysm and it’s going to be fantastic.”

The day after that I had begun to look at classifieds in the restaurant section. There were quite a few diners hiring, and though I liked the fantasy of simple honest food, homemade pie, and freshly ground
burgers, I knew that wasn’t likely. I could make burritos to order in several locations. But the good restaurants never ran ads.

I was feeling very uncompromising. There was no point in going into the restaurant business if it was only to thaw a preformed burger and pour out a carton of soup into a vat. I could remain an amateur if that was all I wanted. Still a little high on the success of the handmade pasta for the ravioli, I decided to think it over while making my first batch of croissants. I thought I had it right, kneaded the butter into the dough as quickly as I could, and cut and rolled them, waiting as the smell of pastry filled the apartment. They looked stellar until I tore one open, only to find they were leaden, oozing butter.

I took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and tossed the rest. I was never going to get anywhere like this. I might stumble into a good dish 75 percent of the time, but it wasn’t the same as studying. This was too random. I needed a plan, a directed, educational plan. Somewhere in Oconomowoc my mother was probably grinning but didn’t know why.

People did these free apprenticeships, unpaid time in good restaurants, just for the experience. Though I was fairly certain I didn’t qualify even for slave labor, still it seemed worth a try. I’d bluffed my way into jobs I didn’t want, so I ought to be able to argue for one I did.

Finally, bolstered by the sight of brown pastry in my trash can, I called Le Champignon. I wasn’t sure how the titles worked, so I asked for the person in charge of the kitchen. This turned out to be someone named Anna, who was distinctly unimpressed by my skills as I described them.

“I’d like to apprentice, for free, for a week or two,” I said. My voice sounded tentative, so I sat up straighter, which seemed to help. I was sitting cross-legged on my fizzy carpet. “I have experience,” I went on. “I was a cook for a year, a private cook. The thing is, my training was a little . . . haphazard. You know, it went according to the client’s taste.”

Anna treated me to a skeptical silence, during which I blushed though I was alone.

“Oh yeah, the article,” she said. “For a while after it ran we had retired executives calling every day. I love the people who think restaurant work will be a pleasant retirement hobby.”

I laughed with her, a hearty, skeptical laugh. Amateurs. “But you’ve done a little professional cooking, huh,” she said finally. “Just privately though.”

“Yes,” I admitted. Then I continued, with a silent apology in case Kate was rolling her eyes at me, “I worked for a pretty demanding client though. She had very particular taste, but it was also pretty eclectic.” Silence hummed over the line for a moment. In the background I heard someone hollering about a ten-top. “But I’d do this for free. I’m skilled enough to be useful, and I’m cheap labor for you. The cheapest, actually. If I get in your way you kick me out again.”

“Very true,” she said, “I will. Whatever. Come in tomorrow at ten.”

After the first thirty shallots or so, I got into a rhythm, peeling and tossing them into a big metal bowl I’d found near the dishwasher. There seemed to be more shallots than they could possibly use in a day or probably a week, and I wondered if she was just trying to get me so bored I’d give up on the first day. When I had peeled them all I started on trimming. I was trying to remember to keep my fingers curled back and protected, but that was always my worst habit, one pinky sticking out as if it were begging to be sliced away. If that habit had driven Kate crazy, then for these people it would mark me as an even bigger amateur than I was.

Around me people kept squeezing by with trays of roasted walnuts and little salted crackers, beef joints and root vegetables that had been roasted and caramelized. After a while I stopped jumping in surprise when someone bellowed, “Behind!” and shoved past me. I just pressed into the table till my hip bones bruised and let them pass.

“Behind with sharp!” someone said, and a guy in a stained apron went by with a long knife gleaming in his hand. Earlier I had almost collided with someone when I misunderstood “Behind with hot!” and turned to see what it meant. It turned out to be a pan still sizzling with fat, clamped in a pair of tongs and carried by one of the cooks to the dish sink.

I got the occasional cold breeze from the open door, but the rest of the kitchen was sweltering. People dressed in jeans and ragged jackets stormed in the back doors carrying boxes of meat and vegetables. They
asked me where to set them and before I could answer that I didn’t know they put them on the nearest table, so that was what I started telling them.

No one seemed very surprised to find a stranger peeling shallots in a corner. They either ignored me completely or wiped what I hoped was beef blood off their hands and offered one to me to shake. I couldn’t remember anyone’s name.

When I finished the shallots I found Anna in the walk-in cooler with a clipboard and a marker. Without looking at me she nudged a box of carrots my way with her toe. “Peel them,” she said. I hefted the box and went back to my corner.

The whole place was much louder than I had imagined. I think I had pictured neat rows of people dicing and sautéing quietly. Instead there was a great deal of swearing and exclamation about the state of the truffle oil. “Don’t leave the fucking truffle oil on the table, people!” Anna yelled, holding up the offending bottle. “The next time I see it out here it goes in the walk-in right next to your severed head.”

Around two o’clock she walked past me and set a piece of foil bearing a small chunk of blue-veined cheese next to the carrot box and said, “Eat that.”

I was smart enough to keep peeling carrots while I ate the cheese. It was fantastic. Salty, pungent, a combination of something creamy and melting and little delicate grains along the blue threads. I wished I had a pear or some port to have with it. Or Sauternes. Kate would have known which was better.

One of the guys who had introduced himself came back and set a metal pan of water on the table. He cocked his head at me, so I went over and peered in. In the steaming water was a white ceramic dish, filled with something that looked like layers of mousse, a creamy beige color.

“Foie gras?” I asked, and he nodded.

“We’ll put a taster out for the servers after staff meal,” he said. “Fight your way in and get a smear. And I do mean fight. Fucking servers are like vultures.”

By now my legs were sore and my feet throbbed. I’d been leaning
over a table so long my back was aching all around my hips, and I wore the soreness like a sash tied around my waist. Under my cap my hair was damp and hot. It felt as though someone had stretched me on a rack.

“Dinner,” said Anna. The foie gras guy turned and practically sprinted. Anna glanced my way and said, “You staying for staff meal?”

“If it’s okay,” I said.

“Fine by me,” she said, “but then you have to get out so you don’t get in the way of dinner service. Come back tomorrow at six
A.M
. You can help with the baking.”

THE STAFF MEAL WAS
chicken in a smoky red sauce. There was also a huge pan of rice, a metal bowl of greens and a squirt bottle of vinaigrette, a loaf of bread and a couple squares of butter. I got in line and took a white plate from a pile and served myself a little too much of everything. I was starving.

I sat down near one end, giving a mute smile to the people on either side. It was like being at a very awkward dinner party, but at least by now I’d had experience with real embarrassment. This was easier than the first time I’d tried to get Kate out of bed.

“You visiting?” a woman asked. I had a mouthful of chicken and as I chewed and swallowed she took another bite of bread, watching me the whole time. She was one of the servers, who all looked too dressy to be at a plaid tablecloth at four thirty in the afternoon, gnawing chicken legs. They wore shirts and ties or crisp blouses and skirts, hair swept up and eyes lined.

“Yeah,” I said finally, swallowing. “I think Anna’s letting me see if a professional kitchen will wear me down or kill me outright.”

She grinned and took a sip from a can of Diet Coke. “Where’d you work before?”

“I worked for a couple, just cooking for them privately. And their friends, for parties. It was like being a caterer, sort of.”

The other people near us were listening in. The foie gras guy looked surprised. “Does Madison have people rich enough to hire private chefs?” A few servers chuckled. “No, I’m serious, does it? Because I’ll wear a uniform and a toque, I don’t care.”

“It wasn’t quite like that,” I told him. “She was disabled and couldn’t cook, and she had very good taste. So I learned a lot from her.”

“This must be different,” the woman said.

“It’s more chaotic. And I’m a lot more tired than I thought I would be. And I don’t have a clue what anyone is doing. But I’m told I get to try the food.”

The foie gras guy laughed. “We have to keep you around somehow. No restaurant lets go of free labor if they can help it.” He took another bite of his chicken and said conversationally, “I saw you cutting the tips off those shallots. Remind me to give you a lesson later. Your knife skills fucking suck.”

AFTER THE MEAL I
went home and left them to dinner service. They were all just getting their second wind, the servers whisking away the plastic tablecloth we’d eaten off of and rearranging and resetting the dining room tables. One by one they disappeared and returned with their neckties neatened or lipstick applied. The cooks were in high gear in the back, yelling about a béarnaise someone should have prepped. I snuck out the back door. The dishwasher waved to me.

At home I drank a beer and then took a long bath. There was a message on my machine from Jill, but I didn’t call her back. I was feeling virtuous. If I went out and got home late or drank too much, I’d look like a lightweight. Anyway, I felt warm and relaxed now that I’d bathed. I put on my thick terry cloth robe and lay down on my couch with a book and the menu I’d borrowed from the maitre d’. Coulis, ganache, mille-feuilles. I didn’t know how to make any of this stuff yet, but I planned to learn it all.

Outdoors I heard cars go by, trailed by waves of music. I missed my car stereo. Across the street my landlord’s car pulled in and rumbled to a stop. The landlords weren’t so bad, actually. They liked to talk my ear off if one of them cornered me in the laundry room, mainly about the neighborhood association. I had this place for another month, longer if I wanted it, but I was trying to think ahead. I missed living with someone, or at least having neighbors to visit. I decided I’d start looking soon, just to give myself plenty of time. I could do better than this if I tried.

I set my alarm for five, and went to bed.