I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and rolled up my sleeves. Ten minutes later, we were all up to our elbows in lentils, quinoa, and black beans. Eddie’s patties came out symmetrical and held together. Mine were lopsided and more square than round, but they were hefty and looked like a good meal. It was messy work, and I was glad I wasn’t in my own kitchen. The mush clung to my hands and fingers, even when I tried scraping them back into the bowl.
“How’d you get yours so perfect?”
“They’re a work of art, aren’t they?” Eddie said, admiring his own patties.
But symmetry didn’t matter when the instructor put down her phone and fired up a frying pan. She cooked a batch of meatless burgers while the others set out the promised Kaiser buns and ketchup. The room quickly carried the aroma of homemade dinner, something my house rarely smelled like anymore with the kids grown up. Dinner for me was usually oatmeal or eggs.
I’d cooked when the kids were younger, and we’d gather for family dinners in the dining room. Meatless lasagna and chicken chili were the favorites. We had a no cell phone rule that everyone respected, which meant the kids had to tell us about their school day or eat in quiet boredom—or worse, listen to their parents talk. Family dinners disappeared as Adam and I became distant. He would often take his plate into his office to work; the kids were on the run, and food was often grabbed from the small kitchen table or taken to go.
At the night class, Eddie and I and the cool-kid couples wolfed down our meatless burgers in record time. Even the yoga-pants teacher had one. We were officially stuffed. It was like the story of Jesus with the bread and fish: amazingly, there were leftover meatless burgers and rolls, even after we’d eaten so many. We happily divvied them up to take home.
“Don’t forget to fill out the class survey,” the teacher said. “Please give me five stars; I’m in grad school and need the extra money. One class gave me, like, two stars and I need to get my average up.”
It was the most she had said the entire night.
I checked off five stars and added a smiley face for the hell of it.
“Would have been better if she had actually instructed,” Eddie said as we walked to the parking lot.
Winey chicken class was the following Tuesday. When we parked and went into the high school, I looked up at the clock over the front desk out of habit to see if I would be late for class.
“I love the leggings,” Eddie told me. “Always been a big fan of werewolves howling at the moon.”
“Thanks.”
He held the door open for me when we got to the cooking room. Inside were six nearly indistinguishable grandmothers, from their cardigan sweaters buttoned all the way up, to their eyeglasses hanging from gold chains around their necks, to their odd choice of coral lipstick.
One of the grandmothers broke away from the group to introduce herself as the cooking instructor.
“Welcome to winey chicken!”
The grandmas had all planned ahead and brought aprons, all of them ruffled, one of them decorated with rolling pins, one with cherry pies.
Already clustered in a circle around the butcher-block island, the grandmothers were doing prep work. One was pounding chicken cutlets in a way that made me think she had come to the class angry. Another was daintily slicing paper-thin mushrooms.
“Those right there are restaurant quality,” the instructor said.
The mushroom-cutter beamed.
“So, let’s start with marsala, an especially dry white wine,” the instructor said.
Eddie and I looked at each other. Far from wine experts, we nonetheless knew the difference between sweet marsala and a dry white.
OK.
“So, everyone get to a stove station and heat up your frying pans,” she said.
We moved to the stoves and turned on the gas flames.
“If you can’t control your temperature, turn it off and start over,” the teacher said.
I looked at Eddie and we both shrugged. The room soon smelled of sizzling chicken
“By the way, don’t open any of the cupboards with a sticky note on them,” the instructor said.
The grandmothers, Eddie, and I all nodded without saying a word. She was the teacher, after all.
“It’s because they may have mice in them,” she added.
Our jaws dropped in unison. We looked around and saw several of the cupboards had neon yellow Post-Its on them.
“She’s kidding, right?” I asked Eddie.
He shrugged again. “Don’t know, but don’t touch them anyway.”
I had no plans to.
As we were cooking, the teacher went around to the closed cupboard doors, knocked on them lightly, then pulled out more Post-Its to stick on. Soon, most of the cupboards were contraband.
The chicken marsala came out beautifully, although maybe a little dry because the one grandma had pounded the cutlets until they were nearly transparent.
“I’ve set the table, so let’s eat,” the instructor said.
“Thought it was take-home,” I whispered to Eddie.
“I think we get to keep the leftovers.”
We sat at the round table with the grandmothers, picking up our forks to dig in.
The instructor clapped her hands, startling all of us. “Not before we say grace,” she said sternly.
We dutifully recited the Lord’s Prayer before eating.
Our plates were barely empty when the teacher jumped up, clapping her hands again. “Clean-up time!”
The grandma with the cherry pie apron raised her hand as if she were still in school. “What about the white wine chicken?”
“Oh, dearie, no time for that tonight.”
We looked at the clock. We were exactly one hour into the two-hour class. But we followed directions and washed the pans and dishes. None of us were going to touch the cupboards, so we left everything in the drying racks.
“Here are your leftovers!”
The instructor handed out Tupperware containers. What? We’d devoured every bit of the chicken marsala.
I opened the corner of the Tupperware to look inside. There were more chicken cutlets, marinating in wine, completely
