Several students laugh at this.
Chef Clarke looks like he’s considering early retirement. “A Nespresso.”
“A Ristretto, I think it was.”
“Right…” Chef Clarke clears his throat once more and wrenches his attention back to the toolkit. “Uh, next we have your six-inch boning knife, and if anyone so much as snickers at that, I will have you removed from the class.” He gives the class a wry smile, and moves on to the next knife.
By the time Chef Clarke is done going through the list of tools that they’ve been given, Mebel’s head is spinning. Who knew there were so many of the damn things? And she’s supposed to lug this unsightly, heavy thing around with her every day? Unthinkable. And why are these bags so ugly? Would it kill them to reach out to Louis Vuitton and get a collaboration going? Just think of the possibilities!
But even as her mind wanders to different tool-bag designs, Chef Clarke is already droning on about how this class will teach them fundamental cooking theories and techniques.
“Over the course of this semester, we are going to develop your knife skills,” he says, “classical vegetable cuts, boning of different carcasses, and so on.”
Mebel grimaces. As a meat eater, she does not enjoy thinking of them as “carcasses.” But no one else seems to be disturbed by the chef’s choice of words, so Mebel wisely decides to keep her thoughts to herself.
“You will learn how to make various stocks and sauces. How many of you have planned an elaborate dinner party—”
Mebel’s hand shoots up. Finally, a question she can answer.
“—and lost track of time and find that your soup has boiled over, and your chicken is overcooked and dry, and you’ve burned the croutons?”
Mebel puts her hand down.
“Mebel, you’ve never had that problem?” Chef Clarke says.
“No,” Mebel says with all the sincerity in the world. “Is quite simple. All you have to do is hire enough cooks to make the dinner.”
Chef Clarke utters a long-suffering sigh. “Right. Well, in this class, you won’t be able to hire cooks. You will learn how to multitask and keep track of time so you don’t end up with a disaster on your hands. We will go through station organization, and you will learn ratios and formulas and know them like the back of your hand by the time we are done with the course.”
To Mebel’s surprise, she’s enjoying Chef Clarke’s introduction. Everything he’s saying, apart from the boning of carcasses, sounds like things that she will be good at. She is nothing if not a great hostess, and what is hosting but multitasking while wearing an uncomfortable shiny dress and putting out various fires with a winning smile on your face?
When Chef Clarke is finally done with his talk, he then begins a slideshow on food safety. Mebel takes out her notebook and jots down as many notes as she can, which is a challenge because the cold, damp English air has stiffened her fingers, but she persists, nevertheless. She marvels at the numerous guidelines there are surrounding the preparation and storage of food. Back home, she only told the helpers that they are to wash their hands before they begin cooking, and that was that. But now she’s learning that even the way she washes her hands is wrong. Who knew there were so many steps to washing one’s hands? Then she watches in horror as Chef Clarke heaves a fire extinguisher and tells them that they will have to get comfortable with using one. The only heavy thing Mebel has deigned acceptable to carry is her Monogram Louis Vuitton suitcase, and she is certainly not about to change that. By the time Chef Clarke goes over the difference between “cleaning” and “sanitizing,” Mebel’s brain has completely shut down.
They’re clearly just making things up now, because what could possibly be the difference between cleaning and sanitizing? Mebel tries to pay attention to Chef Clarke, but the thing about being a trophy wife is Mebel has never had to do cleaning or sanitizing for a single day in her life. Back home in Jakarta, the house is kept spotless, and Mebel has never once thought:I wonder what brand of cleaning solution I should buy for the sink.The irony is she often watches cleaning videos when she mindlessly scrolls on social media. In theory, Mebel knows that the best way to clean your kitchen sink is by pouring salt on a half lemon and using it as a scrub. She also knows that you should pour baking soda and vinegar down your sink once in a while. Maybe. But her sink never seems to require those things, andalso, Chef Clarke has been talking about the art of cleaning a kitchen sink for over ten minutes now, and not once has he mentioned lemons or baking soda. This whole thing is nowhere near as relaxing as a TikTok.
The class goes on for two more interminable hours, during which Mebel fidgets endlessly in her seat and half listens to the lecture. Then finally, thank god, they break for lunch. The students file out, some of them chatting with one another, down the hallway and to the dining hall. Mebel has to admit that she is pleasantly surprised by the vastness of the building. From the outside, it is a humble affair that can’t possibly be compared to the flagship school in Paris, but on the inside, it’s turning out to be much larger than she expected. The dining hall is large, easily fitting over fifty people, with large windows on either side that let in a generous amount of sunlight. There are rows of long tables where students from other courses are seated, and the food is served buffet style.
And this is where Mebel stops and appreciates, for the first time since her arrival, the fact that she is in a culinary school. There are tureen after tureen of international dishes, each one looking more delectable than the last. The first few tureens have obviously come from the Meat Identification and Preparation class. They contain roast chicken and cuts of minute steak, all of them meticulously butchered by the students and cooked to perfection. As Mebel walks on, she comes to the results of the Seafood Identification and Fabrication class. The tureens are filled with freshly shucked oysters and beautifully filleted seared fish. The baked goods section is even more impressive. The school offers a wide range of baking classes, from basicones that go over foundational methods of creaming, blending, foaming, and so on, to advanced classes that go into food science and methods that are so complicated they require a basic grasp of molecular chemistry. There is a wide selection of freshly baked breads as well as pastries that range from humble café fare to pristinely decorated little cakes that look like they belong at Harrods.
Mebel helps herself to a small piece of chicken and some roasted vegetables, then makes her way to the tables. And here, she pauses. It has been decades since she last found herself in a school cafeteria, and the last time she was in one, she was in a very different position. It was at USC, where she had long established herself as the queen bee of the Chinese-Indo society, and wherever she turned up, people would bend over backward to ensure there was a spot at the table for her.
But here, at the Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts, Mebel is not only a new student but also—ugh—the oldest student in the school. She scans the room and adjusts the thought to:Not only the oldest student here, but the oldest by at least two decades.It is official; she is at least one, if not two, whole generations older than the toddlers in here. If Mebel didn’t know any better, she would mistake the chest tightness she’s currently experiencing as social anxiety. But, no, that’s not possible, because trophy wives do not have social anxiety; they have Gucci.
Taking a deep breath, Mebel keeps her chin up and plunges into the crowd with her tray of food. She passes by a long table that is half-empty and ignores the instinctive reaction to perch at the very end of that table and eat quietly while training her eyes on nothing but her food. It would be comforting, yes, butshe did not become the president of the Chinese-Indo Club at USC by seeking comfort. And she is not about to allow herself to backslide like this, not when she’s just arrived at a whole new school. What is this place but a chance for her to establish dominance?
And so she finds the loudest table filled with the most gregarious students and slides her tray right in the center of it. She smiles. These kids are not going to know what hit them.
Chapter 7
In hindsight, perhaps one couldsay that overconfidence has been Mebel’s downfall throughout her life. Take Henk, for example. She should never have let herself become comfortable. Yes, she kept herself in excellent shape even after childbirth and menopause, but she let other things slide. Things like physical intimacy and making sure that Henk knows she thinks he’s the most attractive male organism in the known world. (He isn’t, of course. George Clooney is still alive and breathing, after all. But Mebel has always thought it’s in everyone’s best interest if Henk thought himself more attractive than George Clooney. And anyway, George wouldn’t have minded, she’s sure of that.) But it’s been years since Henk had turned to her, like the wicked queen inSnow Whiteturning to the mirror, and asked,Sweetheart, do you still find me attractive?If he did, she would’ve answered without any doubt:Of course, Henk. You are just as handsome as the day we first met. Buthe hadn’t asked, and so she hadn’t thought to answer, thinking that maybe they’d come to a stage in their marriage where they no longer needed to affirm each other like that anymore. She’d been too confident to see that he, in fact, still needed that affirmation. He was simply getting it from someone else. See? Overconfidence.
She should have known that sliding into a seat at a busy dining table and hoping it would all work out is yet another example of her overconfidence. Thankfully, since Mebel is in England, after all, the polite English people on either side of her scoot away to give her some room. The conversation at the table dies down, and all eyes turn to Mebel, who treats them to her most charming smile.
“Hello,” she says. “I am Ms. Tanadi.”
There is a long silence, then one of the students—a boy who to Mebel looks like he can’t possibly be older than fifteen years of age—raises his hand.
“Yes?” Mebel says.
