The Monday Night Cooking School Part 2

"Have any of you caught your own crabs?" Lillian asked the group. In the back, Carl raised his hand.

"Then you know," Lillian nodded toward him. "There are rules about which crabs we can keep. Here in the Northwest, your crab needs to measure at least six inches across the back of the sh.e.l.l and we only keep the males-you can tell which are the males because they have a skinny triangle on their abdomen, while the females have a wider one."

"Why just the males?" said the young man with the sandy hair.

"The females are the breeders," Lillian answered. "You always need to take care of the breeders." Her smile landed, just for a flicker of time, on Claire. Claire surrept.i.tiously checked her collar, which was clean.

"Now, when I'm deciding which ingredients to put together, I like to think about the central element in the dish. What flavors would it want? So I want you to think about crabs. Close your eyes. What comes to mind?"

Claire obediently lowered her eyelids, feeling her lashes brush against her skin. She thought of the fine hairs on the sides of a crab's body, the way they moved in the water. She thought of the sharp edges of claws moving their way across the wavy sand bed of the sea, of water so pervasive it was air as well as liquid.

"Salt," she said aloud, surprising herself.

"Good, now keep going," Lillian prompted. "What might we do to contrast or bring out the flavor?"

"Garlic," added Carl, "maybe some red pepper flakes."

"And b.u.t.ter," said Chloe, "lots of b.u.t.ter."

There was a general murmur of appreciation.

"Okay, then," Lillian said, "let's break you into groups and have you learn with your hands."

CLAIRE'S GROUP STOOD at one of the big metal sinks. Four crabs skittered about, their antennae quivering as they encountered the hard surface. at one of the big metal sinks. Four crabs skittered about, their antennae quivering as they encountered the hard surface.

The man with the sandy hair came to stand next to Claire at the sink. She looked up and saw that he was watching her, smiling. She stopped, startled, recognizing an expression of casual male appraisal suddenly made visible because it had long been absent. When was the last time that had happened, Claire wondered.

It was all so very strange, she thought, being here. An hour earlier she had been with her children, the smell of their shampoo, their skin, mingling with hers until it became her own scent. She had sat in the big red chair in the living room, nursing her son and reading to her daughter, who had crawled in next to her and was playing with the b.u.t.tons on her sleeve.

She had never been touched so much in her life, never felt so much skin against her own. And yet, since she had become a mother it was as if her body had become invisible to anyone but her children. When was the last time someone she didn't know had looked at her as if she was... what? A possibility.

She remembered being pregnant, holding the quivering secret of the baby inside her. Her sensuality lay upon her, sweet and heavy as tropical air. Her hips, widening to accommodate the growing baby, swung when she walked and her skin felt every texture, every touch, until she craved James's home-coming each night.

But as the skin across her stomach tightened and expanded she developed a new ident.i.ty. "Can I?" strangers would ask, reaching toward her, as if her stomach was a charm that would change their fortune, their lives. And yet-"You are asking if you can touch me me," she wanted to tell them. But she understood that that wasn't what they were saying at all.

Then, after the children were born, it was as if no one could see further than the soft hair, the round cheeks of the babies she carried. She became the frame for the picture that was her son and daughter. Which was fine with her, Claire thought; the babies were beautiful and she was all too ready to forget her own body, which had ballooned and shrunk and which she had no time to do anything about anyway. When men did smile at her, it was with safe, benign smiles, filled with neither hope nor interest.

"You are out of circulation, honey," Claire's older sister had told her, "you might as well get used to it."

James was the one person who still saw her in the old light; he wanted the love life they'd had before children, didn't understand why, at the end of the day, she didn't want him. When he'd reach for her, after she had finished nursing the baby to sleep and was finally, finally, on her way to shower off the day, all she could think was, "Not you, too?" She couldn't tell him; it seemed too awful, but he seemed to sense it anyway and after a while he stopped trying.

Standing there by the chopping block, Claire realized that she was being looked at by a man she didn't know, for the first time in years. It wasn't an unqualified success of an experience, she thought wryly, as she realized that the sandy-haired man's gaze had moved beyond her to halt, with an air of dumbstruck infatuation, on the woman with the olive skin and brown eyes-and yet it was exciting in its own way to be visible, Claire thought, to be tossed back with the other breeders. She had thought she was past all that, thought the needs of her children's two small bodies fulfilled all of hers.

"HOW ARE WE DOING over here?" Lillian came up next to Carl at the sink. over here?" Lillian came up next to Carl at the sink.

"We're ready for the boiling water," said the man with the sandy hair.

"I know a lot of people use boiling water, but I do it differently," Lillian explained. "It's a little harder on you, but it's easier for the crab, and the meat has a more elegant taste if it's cleaned before it's cooked." Lillian reached into the sink and smoothly picked up one of the crustaceans from behind, its front pincers flailing like a drunk in slow motion. She laid the crab belly-side down on the chopping block.

"If you're going to do it this way, it's better for both you and the crab if you are decisive." She placed two fingers on the back of the crab for a quiet moment, then gripped her long, slim fingers under the back end of the crab's upper sh.e.l.l and gave a quick jerk, like a carpenter ripping a wooden shingle from a roof. The armored covering came off in her hand and the crab lay open on the block, the exposed interior a mixture of gray and dark yellow.

"Now," she said, "you take a sharp knife." She picked up a heavy, square-shaped cleaver, "and you do this." The cleaver came down with a sharp thump, and the crab's body lay in two symmetrical pieces, legs moving feebly. Claire stared.

"It's okay," Lillian said, as she carefully picked up the body and walked to the sink, "the crab is dead now."

"Perhaps we should tell that to its legs," Carl commented, smiling sympathetically at Claire's expression.

Lillian gently ran water over the crab's interior, her fingers working through the yellow and gray.

"What...?" said Claire, pointing at the gray sickle shapes that were falling into the sink.

"Lungs," replied Lillian. "They're beautiful, in a way. They feel a little like magnolia petals.

"If you want the sauce to seep into the meat, you'll need to crack the sh.e.l.ls of the legs," Lillian added. "It'll work better if you do this." She brought the crab back to the chopping block and took the cleaver once again; she made a quick, decisive cut between each of the legs, leaving the crab in ten pieces, then took the side of the cleaver and cracked each piece with a solid, rocking motion.

"I know," Lillian said, "it's a lot to take in. But what we are doing has the virtue of being honest-you aren't just opening a can and pretending the crabmeat came from nowhere. And when you're honest about what you are doing, I find care and respect follow more easily.

"Now I'll leave you to try."

The man with the sandy hair looked at Claire. "My name's Ian," he volunteered. "If you want to clean, I can do this part. I mean, if it makes you nervous."

Claire looked past Ian and saw that Carl's wife had picked up a crab and was putting it on the chopping block. The two women looked at each other. Carl's wife nodded, then resolutely reached down, scooped the underside of the sh.e.l.l, and pulled it off the body. She looked at Claire.

"You can do it," she said.

Claire turned to Ian. "No, thank you," she replied, "I'm going to try this myself." She walked over to the sink and picked up a crab. It was lighter than she had imagined, the underside of the sh.e.l.l oddly soft and fragile. She took a breath and put the crab down on the butcher block, facing away from her. Closing her eyes she slid her fingers under the side of the sh.e.l.l. The edges were k.n.o.bby, cool against her skin. She gripped the sh.e.l.l and pulled. Nothing happened. She clenched her teeth against the thought of what she was doing and yanked again. With a wrenching sound, the sh.e.l.l came off in her hand.

"Give me the cleaver," she said to Ian. With a sharp whack, she cut the crab in two. She walked over to the sink, her hands shaking.

THE LEATHERY PETALS of the crab's lungs came loose between Claire's fingers and flowed away with the cold water. As she stood at the sink, Claire's body was shivering and yet-and this ran counter to everything she thought about herself-deeply stirred. It was like jumping off the high diving board when you believed you couldn't, hitting the cold water and feeling it fly over your hot skin. Claire the bank teller, Claire the mother, would never have killed a crab. But then again, Claire thought, these days she was a lot of things she didn't recognize. of the crab's lungs came loose between Claire's fingers and flowed away with the cold water. As she stood at the sink, Claire's body was shivering and yet-and this ran counter to everything she thought about herself-deeply stirred. It was like jumping off the high diving board when you believed you couldn't, hitting the cold water and feeling it fly over your hot skin. Claire the bank teller, Claire the mother, would never have killed a crab. But then again, Claire thought, these days she was a lot of things she didn't recognize.

When exactly had she become the human bundling board in her own bed, Claire wondered. She didn't know. Well, no, that wasn't true-she did know. The first time she held her daughter and their bodies curled into each other. The forty-fifth time she read Goodnight Moon Goodnight Moon; the morning James touched her breast and teasingly told their nursing son, "Remember, those are mine," and she wondered when those b.r.e.a.s.t.s, whose firm and luxurious weight she had loved to hold in her own hands, had ceased in any way to be hers.

How could she explain to James what it was like-he who left the house every morning and cut the physical tie with his children with the apparent ease of someone slipping off a pair of shoes? He was still separate-a condition she viewed with anger or jealousy, depending on the day-and she was not.

When they were in bed at night and she felt James turn away in resignation, a movement as heavy as the flipping of a stone slab, she wanted to yell that she did remember, she did. She remembered watching James's mouth long before she knew his name, imagining her finger along the smooth upper curve of his ears, her tongue traveling the hills and valleys of his knuckles. She remembered the shock of their first kiss, although they had known it was coming for days, moving toward each other slowly until it seemed there was no s.p.a.ce left and yet still it was a surprise, how suddenly her life shifted, how certain she was that she would do anything as long as it meant she didn't have to move her lips, her tongue, her body away from James's, whose curves and rhythms matched her own until it didn't matter that they were right outside her apartment and the keys were in her hand, thirty seconds was too long to stop.

She remembered his long fingers slipping lower on her waist as they danced at her younger sister's wedding. The backyard as the sprinklers ran and the neighbors had a party next door and she had rolled on top of him while the water fell on her hair. The endless winter mornings in bed as the gray light slowly brightened and James caressed her bulging belly and a.s.sured her she was the s.e.xiest woman he had ever seen. She remembered, she did. They were the memories she played in her head these days as she soothed herself to sleep, long after his breathing told her it was safe.

It wasn't just that she was a mother now, or in need of some good lingerie, as her younger sister had recommended. She realized, standing there at the sink, that when she replayed those scenes in her head, she was trying to find someone she had lost, and it wasn't James. James was still the same.

"THAT'S PROBABLY CLEAN NOW." Carl's wife was standing next to her. "My name is Helen, by the way."

"Mine's Claire."

"Carl tells me you're a mother."

"Yes-I have a three-year-old and a baby." Claire, lost for the moment in her thoughts of James, remembered her children with a start.

"That's an interesting time," Helen replied carefully.

"It is," Claire responded, then paused. Something in Helen's expression, an openness, a sense of listening, made Claire feel bolder. "I love them," she said. "Sometimes, though, I wonder..."

"Who you are without them?" Helen offered with a gentle smile.

"Yes," Claire said gratefully.

They walked back to the chopping block, Claire carrying the crab in her hands. Helen paused. "You know, I'd like to ask you something a friend asked me once, if you don't think it's too personal."

"What is it?"

"What do you do that makes you happy? Just you."

Claire looked at Helen for a moment and thought, the crab resting on the block beneath her hands.

"I was just wondering," Helen continued. "No one ever asked me when I was your age, and I think it's a good thing to think about."

Claire nodded. Then she took the cleaver and cut the crab into ten pieces.

WHAT DID SHE DO that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn't the issue. Nor the only one, Claire realized. Because in order to consciously do something that made you happy, you'd have to know who you were. Trying to figure that out these days was like fishing on a lake on a moonless night-you had no idea what you would get. that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn't the issue. Nor the only one, Claire realized. Because in order to consciously do something that made you happy, you'd have to know who you were. Trying to figure that out these days was like fishing on a lake on a moonless night-you had no idea what you would get.

On the morning she had gone into labor with Lucy, Claire had walked about their garden, holding the hose over the rosebushes, one contraction per rosebush, ten minutes, five. The pains were slow and warm at first, like menstrual cramps. It was a gorgeous Sunday and all around her people were working on their yards, lawn mowers buzzing in preparation for backyard barbecues and pitchers of Sunday sangria. She felt completely and utterly herself, a woman about to give birth.

Over the hours, the labor pains had sharpened. When they arrived at the hospital, time changed and nurses moved with quick precision, strapping monitors onto her and plugging her into machines. Everything was gray and cold, except for the pain that began to grind into her, deeper and deeper, pulling her under. She kept thinking the waves would slow or break for a moment, but they didn't, one after another until there was nowhere left to go but in, to dive down and hope for air on the other side, but there was no air, no way out, just a desperate reaching and grasping until finally she felt something deep inside her-not physical, not emotional, simply her-break into pieces. And into the arms of that cracked-apart person that had been Claire, they placed a baby and a love came out of her, through the pieces, that she didn't even know was possible.

She remembered thinking later, as she held her newborn child in the cool darkness of her hospital room, that all she would need was one quiet moment and she would be able to find those pieces of herself and put them back the way they had been. It wouldn't be too hard. But the quiet moment hadn't happened, lost between feedings and laundry and a newfound belief that any need of hers fell naturally second to her daughter's. Over time, the pieces had found new places, not where they had been but where they could be, until the person she became was someone she barely recognized. She didn't necessarily like that person, and it stunned her that James either couldn't or wouldn't see, was willing to sleep with someone who wasn't really her. It felt-but she didn't know how she could ever explain this to him-as if he were cheating on her.

ONCE THE CRABS were cleaned, Lillian explained that they were going to be roasted in the oven. "We'll make a sauce, and it will permeate into the meat through the cracks in the sh.e.l.l. The best way to eat it is with your hands." were cleaned, Lillian explained that they were going to be roasted in the oven. "We'll make a sauce, and it will permeate into the meat through the cracks in the sh.e.l.l. The best way to eat it is with your hands."

The cla.s.s rea.s.sembled in their seats facing the wooden counter in the middle of the room. Lillian put out ingredients-sticks of b.u.t.ter, mounds of chopped onion and minced ginger and garlic, a bottle of white wine, pepper, lemons.

"We'll melt the b.u.t.ter first," she explained, "and then cook the onions until they become translucent." The cla.s.s could hear the small snaps as the onions met the hot surface. "Make sure the b.u.t.ter doesn't brown, though," Lillian cautioned, "or it will taste burned."

When the pieces of onion began to disappear into the b.u.t.ter, Lillian quickly added the minced ginger, a new smell, part kiss, part playful slap. Garlic came next, a soft, warm cushion under the ginger, followed by salt and pepper.

"You can add some red pepper flakes, if you like," Lillian said, "and more or less garlic or ginger or other ingredients, depending on the mood you're in or the one you want to create. Now," she continued, "we'll coat the crab and roast it in the oven.

"Carl, could you help me out?" Lillian handed a bottle of white wine to Carl, who pulled the cork with the skill of years of celebrations and dinners. "White wine is perfect with crab."

Lillian poured the wine into a set of gla.s.ses and motioned to Claire. "Could you pa.s.s these around?"

One by one Claire carried the gla.s.ses to the members of the cla.s.s-Carl and Helen, Ian, the woman with the beautiful brown eyes, the sad young man, Chloe with the black eyeliner, the woman with the silver hair who smiled absently as if perhaps she knew Claire. Claire returned to her seat.

"Now," Lillian said, "what I'd like you to do is relax. Listen. Be still. Smell the change in the air as the crab cooks. Don't worry; I'll give you time to get to know one another later, but for right now, I want you to concentrate on your senses."

Claire closed her eyes. The room around her quieted as the students placed notepads on the floor and settled into comfortable positions. Claire's breathing deepened, filling her lungs, slowing her heart. She felt her shoulder blades slide down the lines of her back and her chin rise, as if to bring the air more easily into her nose. The fragrance of the warming ingredients drifted across the room, seeping into her skin, scents both mellow and intriguing, like the lazy excitement of a finger running down the inside of your arm. When Claire lifted her gla.s.s to her lips, the white wine erased the other sensations in a clean, cool wave, only to allow them to return again.

"I've warmed some wine and fresh lemon juice," Lillian noted, "to add at the last minute." Claire felt the heat from the oven as the door opened and shut, heard the sizzling of the sauce on the crabs, sensed the flavors intensify and change as Lillian added the crisp, clear elements of white wine and lemon.

"Okay, you can open your eyes. Come and eat." Claire stood up and moved toward the counter with the other students. They stood one another, shoulders gently jostling, and reached into the pan, gingerly taking out pieces of crab and dropping them onto the small plates Lillian had waiting.

"This is incredible, Carl," Claire heard Helen exclaim softly next to her. "Try a piece." Helen raised her dripping fingers to Carl's mouth and fed him a bite. She turned to Claire.

"Have you tried any yet?"

Claire shook her head. "It's awfully hot, still."

Helen deftly pulled a piece of meat from the sh.e.l.l. She smiled when she saw Claire's amazement.

"Asbestos fingers, dear. From years of taking fish sticks from the oven. There are a few benefits. Now, forget all that and eat."

"Hmmm," Claire responded, and lifted the crab to her mouth, closing her eyes one more time, shutting out the room around her. The meat touched her tongue and the taste ran through her, full and rich and complicated, dense as a long, deep kiss. She took another bite and felt her feet settle into the floor and the rest of her flow into a river of ginger and garlic and lemon and wine. She stood, even when that bite, and the next and the next were gone, feeling the river wind its way to her fingers, her toes, her belly, the base of her spine, melting all the pieces of her into something warm and golden. She breathed in, and in that one, quiet moment felt herself come back together again.

Slowly, Claire opened her eyes.

Carl

Carl and Helen came to the cooking cla.s.s together. They were one of those couples that seemed to have been born within close proximity to each other, twins of a nonbiological origin. Nothing physical substantiated the thought; he was tall and tended toward thin, with astonishingly white hair and clear blue eyes, while Helen was shorter, rounder, smiling easily with the other students in the cla.s.s, pulling out pictures of her grandchildren, with the natural understanding that ice must be broken and babies do it better than most things. And yet, even when Carl and Helen were separated by the width of the room, you thought of them as standing next to each other, both heads nodding intently in response to whatever was being said or done.

It was unusual to see a couple at Lillian's cooking school; the cla.s.ses were expensive enough that most couples sent a designated representative-Marco Pololike explorers on a marital mission to bring back new spices, tricks to change meals or lives. As elected delegates, they usually arrived with clearly defined goals-one-pot dinners for busy families, a never-miss pasta sauce-occasionally undermined by the lush solidity of fresh goat cheese lingering on the tongue, a red-wine marinade left for days to insinuate itself into a flank of steak. Life at home was rarely the same afterward.

When a couple came to cla.s.s together, it meant something else entirely-food as a solution, a diversion, or, occasionally, a playground. Lillian was always curious. Would they divide their functions or pa.s.s tasks back and forth? Did they touch each other as they did the food? Lillian sometimes wondered why psychologists focused so much on a couple's life in their bedroom. You could learn everything about a couple just watching the kitchen ch.o.r.eography as they prepared dinner.

In the swirl of before-cla.s.s socializing, Carl and Helen stood together at one side of the room, watching those around them, their hands gently linked. Her face was smooth, in marked contrast to her white hair; he stood taller for being next to her, his eyes kind behind wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. There was no sense of remove to their position, no seeming desire for isolation; they seemed to exist in an eddy of calm that drew others, women first, toward them.

"Oh, no"-Helen laughed, talking to the young woman with olive skin and large brown eyes who had approached them-"we've never taken a cooking course before. It just looked like fun."

Lillian called the cla.s.s to take their seats then, and Carl and Helen chose two in the second row, against the windows. Helen took out a notepad and a slim blue pen.

"No need for me to take notes when Helen is here," Carl said quietly to the young woman, who had tentatively followed them to their seats. "My wife is the writer in the family."

HELEN HAD BEEN WRITING when Carl first met her, fifty years before, sitting in the central quadrangle of their college, surrounded by cherry trees dropping petals in great, snowy drifts. Actually, Carl always said when he told the story, Helen had not been writing, but thinking about it, chewing on her lip as if daring the words to make it past her teeth. when Carl first met her, fifty years before, sitting in the central quadrangle of their college, surrounded by cherry trees dropping petals in great, snowy drifts. Actually, Carl always said when he told the story, Helen had not been writing, but thinking about it, chewing on her lip as if daring the words to make it past her teeth.

"Are you a writer, then?" he had said, sitting down on the concrete bench next to her, hoping that his opening line was a step beyond the horrifying "What's your major?" She gave him a long, considering look, during which time he decided he was getting no points for originality. The girl was a writer, after all, if being a writer meant watching the world from the cool remove of the mind. He swallowed and waited, unwilling to leave, yet determined not to make any further attempts at eloquence.

She clicked her pen shut and looked in his eyes. "Actually," she said, "I think I'd rather be a book."

And when he had nodded, as if hers was the most logical statement in the world, she smiled, and Carl realized he would be sitting in that moment for the rest of his life.