The Secret of Everything

by O'Neal, Barbara

  “Let me show you one of my favorite things,” Cherry said, leading the way into the forest.

  The smell of minerals and forest floor—pine needles rotting and warming to release their spiciness, mixed with earth and rocks and water—swamped Tessa. Dizzy, she stopped and put a hand on a tree, suddenly seeing herself holding hands with another girl.

  “Smell this one. It’s vanilla.”

  Blinking, Tessa said, “Hot springs. There’s hot springs, right?”

  Cherry turned. “Yeah. Have you been here?”

  Tessa wasn’t ready to say she had lived here. “Maybe?” she hedged. “I don’t really remember. We traveled through New Mexico when I was little. It looks very familiar.”

  “Wow. We probably knew each other. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “I’m thirty-five.” She peered at Tessa’s face, hard. “You have the look of the commune kids, actually. Do you remember when it was?”

  Tessa peered into the middle distance, trying to puzzle out the year they would have left. She had been four, so—

  A sharp pain arrowed over her left eyebrow. “I don’t remember. My dad will. I’ll ask him.”

  “Wouldn’t that be funny, if we met before?” Cherry grinned impishly, and for one long second Tessa was reminded of him, of Sam. Suggestion? Or fact?

  “You talked about your mom,” Tessa said, “but not your dad. Does he not live here?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I have no idea who my dad is. I’m sure my mother doesn’t know. We were all just the children of the tribe,” she said with exaggerated emphasis. “Everybody was my dad. And nobody.”

  Tessa squeezed her arm. “Sorry.” But she found herself peering at Cherry’s face to see if there really was a resemblance to Sam, and there was, in a way. The pale eyes. The high cheekbones and full lips.

  In a way, she realized with a start, Cherry actually kind of looked like Tessa. The high-bridged nose, the same long-limbed body type, the elliptical fold at the eyelid.

  The children of the tribe.

  “I never really knew my mom,” Tessa said. “She died when I was little and I don’t remember her at all.”

  “Well, then, I’m sorry for you, too.”

  Tessa stopped. “Despite the hippie parents, we seem to have done pretty well, huh?”

  Cherry smiled. “Yeah.” She waved Tessa along the trail. “Come on, I’ll show you another part of the unofficial reason the commune broke up.” At an open, slightly marshy spot, she paused. “Ta da.”

  Tessa blinked. “I don’t get it.”

  “These were the pot fields. It was the main source of income for the commune, and then someone came in and stole it all. They got away with kilos and kilos of weed.”

  Tessa laughed. “Wow.”

  “I get the feeling that was the beginning of the end.” Cherry gazed over the open meadow. “The thieves stole the dream.”

  “Los Ladrones,” Tessa said.

  Cherry looked at her. “Right.” Then, briskly, she turned toward the path. “Enough of the past. The present is much, much better. Come on. I’ll take you down to the school and you can see what we’re doing. It’s just getting up and running, but maybe that would be something your demographic will enjoy. Cooking with organic and local food.”

  “Perfect,” Tessa said, and glanced over her shoulder. She couldn’t wait to call Sam tonight.

  Green Gate Cooking School was housed in a long, low adobe building, built recently in the old Santa Fe style, complete with wooden window casings painted turquoise to keep out evil spirits, and corners like an old woman’s shoulders, soft and round. Deep porticos ran around the entire outside of the rectangular building, furnished with benches, and pots of marigolds and herbs faced the fields and river and mountains. Inside, the kitchens and classrooms opened onto an internal garden. Tessa stepped out of the foyer into the courtyard and stopped, this time halted by sheer delight. A fountain chuckled in the midst of a vast herb garden, and a series of traditional hornos—wood-burning outdoor ovens—graced one wall. A multicolored Siamese cat sunned himself on a bench, tail flicking. He had paws practically the size of baseball mitts, and Tessa couldn’t resist stopping to scratch his head. His eyes were bright blue.

  The air smelled of thyme and rosemary and basil, the oils heavy in the hot sun, mixing with the scent of wood smoke and roasting onions. A woman in a pale-green chef’s coat trimmed basil from a hearty plant, and she looked up with a smile. “Hello.” Her hair was pulled back beneath a purple-and-green bandana printed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Tessa liked her immediately for the whimsy. “You must be Tessa. I’m Zelda.”

  “Zelda is our head teacher and executive chef at the school,” Cherry said. “We were very lucky to lure her away from the West Coast, where she worked with some of the best organic chefs in the country.”

  “It was me who got lucky,” Zelda said, straightening. She was quite tall, and her hair, spilling from beneath the bandana, was coppery. Very pretty, Tessa thought, always a bonus.

  “Glad to meet you.” Tessa shook her hand and was pleased by the chef’s strong, confident grip. “I’m so excited about this whole idea. How long has the school been open?”

  “We taught the first quarter last spring. Just starting the third quarter at the end of October. The students are required to put in time in the fields or the farm stands, too, so we have six-week breaks during the planting and the harvest periods, with a lighter schedule through the summer.”

  “Ah!” Tessa said, “Perfect. Because, as I said on the phone, I’m very interested in talking to you about the possibility of setting up some kind of shorter, camplike experiences for adult tours.”

  “I am so onboard for that,” Zelda said. “A lot of people don’t really understand how easy it is to cook with sustainable ingredients or how much better local food will taste. It’s just a blast.”

  Tessa felt a rush of excitement, as if she’d been led right to this moment, to this woman, to this school, for some bigger purpose. She gestured toward the courtyard. “The garden is part of it?”

  “Right. This is a very extensive herb garden, and because it’s so protected in the courtyard, we can use a lot of it all year-round. We have plans for a greenhouse closer in next year, but for now we can always use the farm’s.”

  “Which reminds me,” Cherry said, lifting a finger. “I have to make a couple of calls and make sure that problem is addressed. Excuse me for a few minutes, will you?”

  “Sure,” Zelda said. “Let me show you the kitchens and tell you some ideas I had for possible short tours.”

  The courtyard was rectangular, and Zelda led Tessa into a door on one of the long ends. “This is the main teaching kitchen,” she said. Banks of gas stoves and grills lined the back wall, with stations of stainless steel counters through the center and sinks and storage along the other long wall. At the back were the doors to walk-in fridges. “As you see, there’s plenty of room here.”

  “So, could you teach a group of, say, twelve? That’s the average size of one of our tours.”

  “Perfect.” She folded her arms. “I was thinking that we could divide the basics into four or five days. We have the main kitchen here, and along the north end of the courtyard are the bakery and pastry kitchen, and opposite the kitchens here, on the other long arm of the rectangle, are living quarters.” She grinned. “They’re dorms, really, nothing fancy. Showers, bunks, lockers, in case there are housing issues. The students can rent a bunk very inexpensively—not always possible in Los Ladrones—or they can share cabins for a little more.”

  “And would it be possible to offer that kind of pricing to my tour members?”

  “Absolutely. We can work out a rate for the group. And if they’re in the cabins, they can take yoga or tai chi in the mornings.”

  “Or hike. One aspect of my tours is the hiking.”

  “Also fine.”

  Tessa nodded, looking around, imagining a group of women�
��it would almost certainly be nearly all women who booked this tour—gathering here. Windows looked out to the herb gardens, and a breeze fluttered in through the screens. She felt a strong desire to take the entire tour herself, always a good sign. “How would I pitch this to my boss, then, Zelda? What’s my slug line?”

  “My big quest is to show people how terrific vegetarian—even vegan—food can be. We’ve come a long way from the cardboard soy imitations of the seventies, and I’m not sure America knows enough about it yet.” Zelda picked up a packet of papers. “I’ve printed out some ideas. I’ve not done this before for amateur cooks, so let me know if it seems too intense or not evolved enough.”

  Tessa took the packet and looked through it. “Okay.”

  “You can take that with you, but basically we’d start with the idea of sustainability, and why it matters, and then gather food either from the greenhouse or the fields, bring it back here, and cook something beautiful and simple, like soup and bread. Then move through the basics of good nutrition for vegetarians, address some of the big myths. I’ve included some recipes I thought might work.”

  Tessa continued to leaf through the packet. Her eye caught on a recipe for spinach tortellini soup. Again, a shiver rushed up her spine. “I’m really excited about this.”

  Zelda grinned. “Me, too.”

  “I do feel obliged to mention at this point that I’m not a vegetarian.” She inclined her head. “In fact, I’m a total carnivore.”

  “That’s all right,” Zelda said, laughing, and flung an arm around Tessa’s shoulders. “Carnivores are people, too. The idea is humane and sustainable eating.”

  “Humane and sustainable,” Tessa said. “That’s kind, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Let me show you the dorms.”

  Breakfast #83

  Vegetarian Delight: One organic egg cooked to order, served with a moist and tender (really!) whole-wheat carrot muffin delivered fresh every morning directly from Green Gate Organic Farms, fresh butter or cream cheese, and coffee or tea. Try the Green Gate herbal tea blend for a rush of powerful flavor! You’ll never know it’s caffeine-free!

  MOIST AND TENDER WHOLE-WHEAT CARROT AND PINEAPPLE MUFFINS

  ½ cup + 2 T whole-wheat flour

  ¾ cup all-purpose flour

  2 tsp cinnamon

  ½ tsp nutmeg

  ½ tsp salt

  1 tsp baking powder

  ½ tsp baking soda

  1 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

  2 large eggs

  ⅔ cup honey

  ⅓ cup vegetable oil

  1 tsp vanilla

  2 cups grated carrots

  ½ cup pineapple, medium dice

  Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix dry ingredients together, including walnuts. Beat the eggs and add the other wet ingredients, including carrots and pineapple, and mix well. Quickly mix wet and dry ingredients together, just until evenly moist. The trick to quick breads is to stir as little as possible.

  Divide batter into muffin pans. Bake 20-30 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Makes 18 muffins.

  NINE

  Natalie liked to go to Pueblo, where her auntie Charmaine lived with her husband—who was a lot younger than her, though nobody seemed to care. Charmaine had a swing set, even though she didn’t have any kids, and she had a pool set up in the backyard with a platform built all around it, so you could sit kinda high and soak your feet in the water and read and nobody cared. Charmaine’s husband, Albert, would make grilled bratwursts and hamburgers and roasted vegetables on his grill, and it was really good food, which spared her having to eat Grandma’s suppers or Char maine’s, either, because neither one of them believed in salt. Grandma also thought her lasagna was good, but she just put white cheese on top of noodles with canned tomato sauce. Not even spaghetti sauce, just plain old tomato sauce with no salt added.

  In Pueblo, there was good food all over the place. Right in Charmaine’s neighborhood was a tiny store that had salty black olives and pickles and salamis. On the corner down the street was a bar that kids could go to in the daytime and eat one of the best plates of spaghetti ever. Even in the Pueblo Mall, there was really good food—a Chinese restaurant that made hot grilled vegetables right in front of you, and a Mexican restaurant that made a pork-and-avocado burrito that was one of Natalie’s favorite foods in all the world. She begged to eat the burritos at Los Tres every time they went to Pueblo.

  And since they came up here to get school clothes, they were definitely going to the mall this time. So she was in a pretty good mood when they started out shopping. Not that she liked school, but you had to go anyway, so you might as well get some new clothes for it. Jade, of course, had to try on everything in JCPenney and Sears, and Grandma had to keep telling her things were too old for her, which put Jade in a bad mood. She said, “I’m going into second grade! I’m not a baby!”

  Natalie didn’t particularly care what she wore as long as it was comfortable, so she put on the jeans her grandma picked out, and she herself chose some really pretty red cords and a floaty white blouse. When she came out to show it to Grandma, Jade snorted. “You look like a red velvet cupcake!”

  Nat turned to look at herself again, and she still liked it. Her tummy was kind of round, but it always was, so it might as well get a little poof over it. The shirt gathered around her chest and puffed out so it kinda looked like she might have breasts, and it had long fairy-tale sleeves. Lines of red and purple and yellow embroidery looped along the hems.

  “That’s not terribly flattering, Natalie. Sorry. Maybe not white, huh?”

  “What’s wrong with white?”

  “Nothing. It just might make you look a little bigger than you are.”

  Jade snickered.

  “I don’t care.” Natalie waved her hands like a flamenco dancer she’d seen on TV. The cuffs fell over her hands. “I want it anyway.”

  Grandma said, “I don’t think so.”

  Nat spun. “Why? It’s not too old for me. It doesn’t look like a grown-up girl. I like it.” She almost never found anything she really loved. She smoothed her hands over the sleeves. “Please, Grandma?”

  “Let’s think about it. Try on the other things first, and I want to check Dillard’s before we finish.”

  They all trailed from store to store, until the only person who was enjoying any of it was Jade, still trying on everything she could get her hands on, flipping her stupid hair all over the place. Nat had a headache. She’d already picked out two pairs of pants and four shirts, which was more than enough, and she more or less let Grandma pick all of them so that she had more bargaining power when it came to the flamenco shirt and red pants.

  Finally, they sat in the food court and had their lunch. Hannah ate pizza, so they got that first. Jade liked the pretzels with cheese, and Grandma ordered there, too, just because it was easy. She gave Natalie a ten-dollar bill so she could order her burrito. She felt proud and grown up, ordering at the counter. The woman didn’t seem to notice that Nat was only eight. She probably thought she was way older, like ten.

  Natalie carried the burrito carefully back to the table, but nearly everybody was already finished. Nat had been thinking about this burrito for two weeks, and she really didn’t want to rush through it. Carefully, she cut a triangle of tortilla, revealing the chunks of meat and avocado and chile inside, and took a slow, thoughtful bite.

  Salt and softness, tender meat and a chunk of tomato all exploded in her mouth. She chewed it very, very slowly, then took a small sip of water and ate another bite. She didn’t talk. She didn’t look around. She just ate her burrito.

  Grandma chuckled. “You sure know how to eat, kiddo.”

  Natalie looked up, pleased at the compliment. “Do you want to try a bite?”

  “No thanks, sweetie.” She shifted Hannah on her lap. “Finish up so we can go home.”

  Natalie said, “What about my other clothes, the ones at Penney’s?”

  “Let me think about it. Ea
t your burrito.”

  But the moment was spoiled. Nat knew she wouldn’t get them. If she were Jade, she would throw a big fat fit and cry and yell and not even care who looked at her. She put her fork down. “I’m done,” she said, but to her horror, her eyes filled up with tears and she couldn’t stop them. She folded her hands and tried really hard, but they fell out of her eyes anyway.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Grandma said. “If you want them that much, we can go get them.”

  Even Jade didn’t say anything as Natalie nodded her head. “Yes,” she said, and the word came out all sloppy because she had tears in her mouth.

  They went back to Penney’s and got the pants and blouse, and Natalie held them close to her chest, her heart singing and singing. She couldn’t wait to get them home and try them on again.

  As she drove back from the farm, Tessa had the radio on, and just as she pulled onto the main drag, a Crosby, Stills & Nash song came on—”Helplessly Hoping,” with all its beautiful alliteration. Tessa reached for the sound control to turn it up, and when she touched the button, a memory bobbed up from the murk of her brain.

  Dancing with another little girl in a room with windows all around the top. The tower. The two of them held hands and leaned back, each pulling against the weight of the other, spinning, laughing, holding on very tightly. Music played loudly, and they sang along.

  She pulled into the parking lot and turned off the car, hoping something more would follow, but there was nothing except the lingering sense of yearning, that sense of nearly getting a major piece before the window slammed shut again.

  Damn it.

  Rubbing at a slight headache at her temple, she got out and locked the car, then slung her bag over her shoulder. Ambling into the plaza, she sifted mentally through the visit at the farm, letting it all—excitement and worry and foreboding—whirl around.

  Her distracted brain didn’t notice that her feet had carried her to The 100 Breakfasts Café until she was standing right in front of it. Her stomach growled. She glanced at her watch. Only one-thirty It would be open for another half hour. Maybe she would have to try one of the cinnamon rolls. And a cup of tea.