Melinda Wells - The Proof is in the Pudding

The school’s basketball coach had been out in the hallway when he heard the shot. He’d rushed in and subdued the boy before he could fire again. The young gunman glared at me, cursing. “Next time I’ll pop you when you ain’t looking.”

I stayed home for a week, jumping at every unfamiliar sound. At night, even with Mack’s arms around me, I dozed only in snatches. I stopped leaving the house, ordered groceries over the phone, and asked for them to be delivered. Tuffy was just a year old then. Instead of our jaunts through the neighborhood, I walked him around our backyard.

Liddy told Mack she was afraid I was becoming agoraphobic. It was her idea that I make a professional switch and teach that other thing I loved: cooking.

It took most of our modest savings, but with Mack’s and Liddy’s unwavering encouragement, I found the perfect space-in the back of a kitchen appliance store-and jumped through all the hoops that the State of California requires when someone wants to open a small business. By the time I was ready for students, I felt like my pre-gunshot self, and Tuffy and I were strolling around Santa Monica again.

Liddy rounded up most of the people who enrolled in my first classes, but within a few months word of mouth was sending students to me. Soon they were bringing their friends. The business grew to the point where I was almost breaking even. The first month when the school actually earned a tiny profit, I celebrated by treating myself to a professional manicure. That night I had another celebration, an especially sweet one, with my husband.

The next morning, Mack suffered a fatal heart attack while he was jogging. That same afternoon a vase of yellow roses arrived. They had been ordered the previous day. The card said, “Congratulations, Cookie. I knew you could do it. Love you always, Mack.” Cookie had been my nickname since the first time I’d made dinner for him when we were dating.

The little school that I called The Happy Table was barely surviving financially, until I had the good luck to be hired to host a cooking show on the Better Living Channel, replacing the previous host, who had been fired. Depending upon whom one talked to, she’d lost the job either for drinking on the air or for being impossible to get along with. Or both.

Taping three half hours a week, and doing one live hour-long show on Thursday nights, had made me cut back on the number of classes I taught, but I never wanted to give up my little school. The TV exposure had increased enrollment to the point that the weekend courses were filled, with a waiting list. The school still wasn’t making much money, but at least it wasn’t drowning me in debt any longer. While I enjoyed teaching cooking to a television audience because the shows reached a great many people, the fact was that I got the most pleasure out of watching people who were standing right in front of me learn new kitchen skills. And the excited expressions on the faces of the children, when they learned how to make something they could eat, was priceless.

My cooking school was located in the back of Country Kitchen Appliances on Montana Avenue, between Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets. The front of the building was white clapboard siding, accented by dark green shutters. Customers entered through red Dutch doors.

At ten minutes to nine o’clock on Saturday morning, Montana Avenue in front of Country Kitchen Appliances was not the busy thoroughfare it would be in another hour, so it was easy to find a parking place near the store’s entrance.

I fed a handful of quarters into the meter while Eileen removed the two cardboard boxes, one at a time, from the back of her VW and set them on the sidewalk.

“Look, there’s Mrs. Tran,” Eileen said.

I glanced up to see a tiny, gray-haired Vietnamese woman smiling and waving at us through the front window. We waved back. Mr. and Mrs. Tran owned the store.

Eileen lowered her voice. “I’m afraid to ask Mrs. Tran, but do you know how her husband is doing? He scared me half to death when he fainted last Saturday.”

“When I came to visit him on Monday he looked frail. He was supposed to have some tests on Tuesday. Mrs. Tran told me that he hasn’t been very strong since his years doing forced labor in a Communist reeducation camp.”

Eileen looked puzzled. “I don’t understand? What kind of a camp?”

I put the final quarter into the meter. “When the North Vietnamese Communists defeated South Vietnam, many, many men from the educated, professional classes were taken from their homes and families and sent away to do hard labor. The Communists called it ‘reeducation.’ Some didn’t survive. Many of those who did were never the same again.” I picked up one of the two boxes. “Mrs. Tran said it took them almost fifteen years to finally get to America. A lot of that time they had to spend in refugee camps.”

“They’re such an upbeat couple,” Eileen said. “After what they must have gone through, I’m ashamed to make such a fuss over my problems.”

“Atrocities go on every day somewhere in the world. We’ve been very lucky,” I said.

I try not to forget that. I appreciate the accident of birth that put me in a relatively safe part of the world.

Mrs. Tran held the Dutch doors open as Eileen and I carried the boxes inside.

“Good morning,” she said brightly.

Eileen and I returned her greeting.

“How is Mr. Tran?” I asked. “Did he have the tests you mentioned?”

Her smile dimmed a bit, but she maintained a cheerful demeanor. “We are very hopeful. Good doctors here.”

I matched her positive tone. “Tell Mr. Tran that I’m sending him my best wishes.”

“That will please him,” she said.

The store’s telephone rang. Mrs. Tran excused herself to answer it.

“She has such a delicate face,” Eileen said. “She must have been lovely when she was young.”

“She still is,” I said. “It’s just a different kind of beauty now. Part her bone structure, and part her spirit.”

The Happy Table cooking school was in the back of the store; it had been converted from what had once been a storeroom. To get there, we had to carry our boxes past an array of attractive kitchen equipment. The Trans had arranged the merchandise so that it looked as though the store was divided into four separate kitchens, each in a different style, from the sleekest modern to cozy country. The layout worked to the advantage of the Trans, because many of the students bought items that caught their attention as they were walking through the displays.

“One day, when I have some extra money, I’m going to buy a new KitchenAid stand mixer,” I said. “In red. The problem is that the one I’ve had for twenty-five years refuses to wear out or break down.”

Eileen chuckled. “That company must have missed the class on ‘planned obsolescence.’ So many things start going to pieces right after the warranty runs out.”

For the past three years, Eileen had worked as my assistant at the school to earn extra money, so the two of us had set up for these classes many times. It didn’t take us long to cover the preparation tables with disposable cloths, organize the ingredients for what I was going to demonstrate this morning, and check the four stoves to make sure the burners and the ovens were working.

We finished just as the eight Mommy & Me teams began to arrive. Eileen handed out disposable aprons for them to put on.

The seven mothers, eight children, and one nanny placed themselves around the preparation tables. They were a nice ethnic mix. The two youngest mothers were about thirty, and the two oldest were deep into their forties. The rest were somewhere in between. The nanny was a Latina in her early twenties, accompanying a six-year-old girl named Alicia who didn’t want to let go of her caregiver’s hand.