What's Cooking

by Gail Sattler

  “See. I knew you wouldn’t be the only one crying. Just why do women cry at stuff like that?”

  Carolyn blew her nose on the last napkin and shoved it into her purse. “I can’t explain it.”

  He smiled and ran his thumb beneath her glasses, under her puffy eyes. “It was a rhetorical question. I think it’s time to take you home. Wanna order pizza for supper?”

  Twelve

  Mitchell sat at the kitchen table with the blue velvet pouch in his hand. With Jake gone and the dog asleep, the house was totally quiet, which gave him time to think before Carolyn arrived.

  He couldn’t count the times he’d tried to take her out for a quiet, romantic dinner, and each time something had happened or she’d managed to pick someplace not at all suitable to tell her what was in his heart and present her with the ring. Though often the activity was something fun—which in itself wasn’t a bad thing—every time meant yet another delay and one more missed opportunity.

  Again today, ideally they could have gone out for dinner. The competitor’s strike had been averted, and not only did he not have to work overtime, he’d managed to get off early, which was a rare occurrence in itself. However, the rehearsal party was now only a few days away, and this was his last chance to practice what he needed to know before he had to do it for real, by himself.

  Today was his last remedial cooking lesson, and Carolyn was due to arrive any minute.

  It was less than the ideal situation, but if he didn’t give Carolyn the ring today, he knew there wouldn’t be a quiet day or time until all the cooking was done, the rehearsal party over with, and then after the big day on the weekend, the actual wedding. Following that, he would have to see Jake and Ellen off on their honeymoon, and then there would be the fallout with returning rented items and cleaning up. He didn’t want to wait any longer.

  He would give her the ring today. He tucked it into his pocket and patted it again.

  Since the kitchen would be a mess when they were done, he’d prepared the living room as best he could. He’d vacuumed and dusted and done his best to pick as much dog hair off the couch as possible. For a romantic touch, he’d managed to find the one candle they owned and set it and a book of matches to the side, ready for the right moment.

  Again, Mitchell pulled the pouch out of his pocket. He’d never thought much about jewelry before, but the little heart really was a perfect indication of his feelings for Carolyn. As delicately as he could, he plucked the tiny ring out of the bag and tipped it, making the small diamond sparkle in the light. He could see why such a ring would be called a promise ring. In a way, between the gold and the diamond, the ring resembled a miniature engagement ring. Hopefully, giving it to her could signify a promise of giving her a bigger diamond in the near future, along with the commitment of forever.

  Both the kitchen and the living room were ready for Carolyn’s arrival, but first, Mitchell needed to do one more thing. He tucked the ring back into the pouch, pulled the drawstring closed, dropped it back into his pocket, then folded his hands on the table and closed his eyes.

  “Dear heavenly Father, thank You for bringing Carolyn into my life. She’s exactly who I needed, and I pray that I am exactly who she needs as a perfect mate, designed and chosen by You. Again, I pray that tonight will present the perfect opportunity to give her this ring as a symbol of what our relationship could be and that You’ll bless our time together. Amen.”

  At his closing amen, Killer started barking and ran for the door. Mitchell smiled and stood. God’s timing was always perfect.

  On his way through the living room, he could feel the pouch bouncing in his pocket. He craned his neck to look down at it and realized he could see its outline through the pocket of this particular shirt. Rather than run to his bedroom to put it in the drawer, he detoured a few steps and tucked it beside the lamp on the end table, where she wouldn’t see it until the time was right.

  She hadn’t knocked yet, but that didn’t stop him from opening the door to watch Carolyn as she walked up the sidewalk. The streetlights had come on, but the sky was still aglow with pink and purple, vivid with the beauty of God’s creation and very fitting for Carolyn’s arrival.

  “Hi,” he said, making no attempt to stop the wide smile he knew was on his face.

  Carolyn tilted her head and narrowed one eye as she walked past him. “We are cooking today, aren’t we?”

  He couldn’t stop smiling. “Of course.”

  She marched straight into his kitchen, and he trailed behind.

  “I guess this is the last time I’ll be helping you at home. Have you decided what you need help with today? I see you have a cookbook out. You told me you didn’t own one.”

  He could feel his blush warming his cheeks, and he chided himself for it. “It’s my mother’s. The thing I really wanted to make was her specialty—crab snaps. Actually, that’s why I took the course, to learn how to cook well enough to make them. No one believes that I can do this except Ellen. She knows I’m taking your classes.”

  Carolyn ran her finger down the recipe, mouthing the ingredients but not saying anything out loud. Her finger stopped moving when she got to the instructions. “This doesn’t look too difficult. I don’t see that you’ll have a problem.”

  He didn’t have to close his eyes to envision his first attempt at making his mother’s famous crab snaps. It still made him shudder to think about it. “You have no idea.”

  They both checked the clock on the stove at the same time. “I guess we better get started.” She ran her finger down the list again. “I’m going to assume you’re using canned crab and not fresh?”

  Mitchell groaned aloud. “I wasn’t going to take the chance it was like shelling shrimp. Yes, it’s canned.”

  “Okay, then go get the—”

  The light flickered once, then went out.

  Automatically, Mitchell walked to the wall switch and flicked it while Carolyn stared up at the dark fixture. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered under his breath.

  Carolyn turned her head. “The living room looks awful dark. I don’t think it’s the bulb; I think the power just went out.”

  He strode to the window. The whole street was dark, as was his entire neighborhood and farther than he could see. “Houston, we have a problem,” Mitchell mumbled and crossed his arms over his chest. He turned to Carolyn. “I don’t have time for this. I have to learn how to make these things today. The party is Friday, only four days away.”

  He pulled open a drawer and grabbed a flashlight, then opened the phone directory. “I’m calling the electric company.” A few moments later, he hung up and turned to Carolyn. “The recording said they’re aware of an outage and a crew was being dispatched to determine the cause. There will be updates on the radio. I’ll be right back.”

  Mitchell took the flashlight and retrieved his radio from the garage, where he used it when he was working on his car. He turned it on and tried to find a good station as he headed back to the kitchen.

  “Do you keep everything you own in the garage?”

  “Not everything I own fits in the pantry.”

  She sighed, then turned to study the stack of bowls and utensils he’d spread over the counters. “I don’t know what to do. We could do this at my house, but by the time we get there, the power could be back on. Besides, all the ingredients are in your fridge, and I have a real aversion to opening the fridge when the power is out, just in case it doesn’t come back for a long time.”

  Out of habit, Mitchell shone the flashlight on the battery-operated wall clock. “It’s been out for twenty minutes already. I guess this serves me right for leaving the crab snaps until the last minute.”

  “Not really. Most of these things have to be prepared within a few days of the event. They get freezer burn quickly because of the individual-size portions. Besides, I doubt you have suitable storage containers.”

  He still had a couple of plastic containers he’d forgotten to give back to his mothe
r the last time she sent him food, but other than that, whenever he had leftovers worth storing, he kept them in one of the two empty margarine containers he hadn’t thrown out. Somehow he doubted Carolyn would consider those proper. He simply shrugged his shoulders, and her cute little sigh told him he was right in not replying.

  “You shouldn’t keep a seafood filling longer than overnight before serving. It would be best to make the pastries on Thursday, and then you could mix the filling and keep it in the fridge overnight and stuff them Friday before you have to go.” She looked around the dark kitchen. “You really shouldn’t prepare any of what you’re going to serve until Wednesday or even Thursday. What else were you planning on making? Maybe we should go over your menu.”

  “I was going to make a few of the recipes we made in class and one of the things we did together. I really liked those rolled-up cheesy things that were dipped in the smashed-up nuts.”

  Carolyn sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Did I ever tell you that you have a unique way of describing these gourmet treats we’ve been making?”

  “Many times. If we’re not cooking, I guess we really don’t need a lot of light.” As if on cue, the beam of the flashlight faded, becoming slightly yellow. “It doesn’t look like this battery is going to last much longer. I’d better get a candle.”

  He started toward the doorway when Carolyn’s voice stopped him.

  “Unlike your electric mixer, I can understand storing candles in the garage.”

  “Actually, I was going to the living room.”

  “I give up.”

  Mitchell soon returned to the kitchen. The smell of sulfur filled the air as he lit the candle and set it in the center of the table while Carolyn turned off the flashlight, which was almost dead anyway.

  Carolyn pulled his mother’s recipe book across the table. “What else were you going to make?”

  He pulled up a chair and sat beside her. “Just the crab snaps. I wouldn’t dare try to make anything else in there. I thought I’d stick to stuff I did in your class.” He reached to the drawer behind him, grabbed the stack of handout sheets, and spread them over the table. “I know how to do these things, within reason. I was thinking I’d make the ones I liked best.”

  “You’re just doing this now? You haven’t decided on your menu or done your shopping yet?”

  “I just bought what I needed to make the crab snaps because that’s what I thought we were going to do today.”

  She grumbled something under her breath while she paged through the pile and pulled out the recipe he’d referred to earlier.

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “When did you expect to do this? Do you have a pen and paper?”

  Mitchell found a pen, but he couldn’t find an unused piece of paper in the dark, so he reached on top of the fridge and gave her the envelope from the phone bill. Her eyes narrowed as she accepted it from him, but she didn’t say a word. He settled into the chair beside Carolyn and sat in silence as she skimmed the ingredients on the recipe he had selected and wrote out the shopping list in the flickering candlelight.

  She slid the pile of paper back to him. “Which other ones do you want to make? And what did you do with the recipe for the dessert squares that I gave you?”

  “It’s in the pile somewhere.”

  Mitchell gave her his best smile, but it didn’t ward off the annoyed sigh he knew was coming.

  Together, they began the process of selecting the best choices for the party, and Carolyn dutifully added everything to the grocery list.

  Instead of the romantic setting the candlelight was supposed to provide for the big moment he had planned, they now struggled to read by its questionable light; and instead of being receptive to him as he prepared to bare his soul, she was mad at him because he hadn’t done his grocery shopping yet.

  He couldn’t believe how long the whole process took, nor could he believe that by the time she was finally adding the last of what they would need to the list, the power still hadn’t come back on. The battery in his radio had expired during the wait.

  Carolyn continued to write while he tried to think of a way to change the subject from cooking to how he felt about her when Killer ran to the door.

  “I think your dog wants out.”

  “Killer would go to the back if she wanted out. She’s at the front, and she’s not barking, so that means Jake is home.”

  He heard Jake’s voice before he saw him. “Wow. You should see the extent of this power failure. Did you know that it’s dark all the way to. . .” His voice trailed off as he entered the kitchen. “Hello, Carolyn. It’s nice to see you again.”

  She laid the pen down on the table. “Nice to see you, too, Jake.”

  Mitchell couldn’t begrudge his friend’s arrival. After all, Jake lived there, too. However, Jake’s arrival had just disintegrated Mitchell’s last hope of trying to have that private talk with Carolyn—unless the power failure was going to last a lot longer and they went to her house. “Did you have the radio on in the car? Any idea how much longer before the power comes back on?”

  “They said about half an hour.”

  Carolyn stood. “That’s too late to start, and it would take at least that long to pack up and move everything to my house.”

  Mitchell stood, as well. “What about grocery shopping? We can do that, now that we have a list.”

  “Sorry,” Jake said. “Everything is out. They said on the radio that twenty-five thousand homes are without power.”

  Carolyn stepped toward the door. “Then I guess I’ll be going.”

  Mitchell clenched his teeth and followed her to the door. Today, power failure or not, right moment or not, he could no longer wait. If he didn’t give her the ring now, it would be another week before he could, and he didn’t want to wait that long.

  Since Jake’s arrival meant no privacy inside, Mitchell followed her outside to her car parked on the dark street.

  She reached for the handle, but before she opened the car door, Mitchell laid his hand on top of hers and gently pulled it to him.

  “What are you doing?”

  He massaged her wrist with his thumb. “I wanted to talk to you. I have to ask you something, and I don’t know how to start.”

  Her smile made his heart flutter—something he thought only happened to women.

  “It’s okay. I know what you’re going to say.”

  “You do?” He smiled back. That she had been thinking the same things was a positive and very encouraging sign about the growth of their relationship.

  “Yes.” She reached up with her other hand and gave his hand a tender squeeze. “I’m okay now. I’m not going to be seeing Hank anymore. It was a shock at the time, but I think I’ve known for a while that we weren’t suited for each other. I’m sure that one day God will put the right man in my path. You’re a good friend, Mitchell. I appreciate your concern.”

  “But—”

  He let his hand go limp, and she moved away. “It’s really late. I have to go home. The lack of electricity isn’t going to prevent me from sleeping. Good night.”

  “Wait!” Out of habit, he reached up to his shirt pocket, but it was empty. He squeezed his eyes shut, remembering that he’d left the ring in the living room, ready for the right moment.

  “I’ll see you at class tomorrow.”

  Mitchell dropped his hand from his shirt pocket. “Yeah. Class tomorrow. Bye.”

  ❧

  Mitchell thunked his lunch pail on the counter and glanced at the clock, then at the calendar.

  Today was Tuesday. Class night. It was also three days before the rehearsal party.

  The power hadn’t come on until after midnight Monday, when the only stores open were the convenience stores. He needed to start cooking as soon as he got home from work on Wednesday. That left tonight to do his shopping.

  But tonight was cooking class. The last one he’d planned to take.

  The clock on the wall ticked audibly. />
  He should have been shopping, not watching the clock.

  Last night Carolyn called him a friend. She’d also said that one day God would put the right man in her path.

  As far as he was concerned, God had put the right man in her path. She just didn’t know it yet.

  Mitchell grabbed his jacket and ran to his car. He didn’t care if he was still at the grocery store at midnight when it closed, but he was going to class.

  Thirteen

  “Okay, class, today we’re going to make some classic hors d’oeuvres, starting with stuffed celery, and then some meat and vegetable combinations. First you need to—”

  “Sorry I’m late. Excuse me.”

  Carolyn waited until Mitchell shuffled into the last empty chair, crossed his legs, and leaned back. All eyes settled on him, then slowly everyone returned their attention to the front.

  She sighed and carried on with the lesson, but her mind was no longer fully on the food preparation. Today Mitchell should have been doing his shopping, since the power hadn’t come back on in time to do it last night. She really hadn’t expected to see him, and his presence in the class rattled her.

  It had been difficult, but she’d come to a decision on what she was going to do about Mitchell. The times he had kissed her were seared into her memory for a lifetime. They didn’t have a future together, but she couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing him again. To keep whatever was happening between them as a platonic friendship was the best solution.

  Yesterday she’d done her best to summon her courage and tell Mitchell indirectly that she considered him a friend. Mitchell was an intelligent person. She knew he would understand her meaning. It was only the shock of Hank’s proposal that made her think she was in love with Mitchell, because the more she thought about it, the more she knew it wasn’t possible. Mitchell was twenty-four years old. He’d started his first job right out of high school as a warehouseman and worked his way into the dispatch office, where he now held a junior supervisory position. And he was happy with that.

  She had to either continue to see him as a friend or not see him at all. She couldn’t do that.