Sammy scratches the back of his head. “I don’t know that that’s the ‘entire reason’…”
“Oh please, of course it is. Have you tasted her homemade pulled noodles? I dreamed about that dish for days. Honestly, she’s so good I would turn into the lesbian for her.”
“Please don’t ever say that again.”
“Another reason I know he’s only with her for her food,” Mebel continues, “is because she is flat-chested. Your father is a breast man.”
“Oh god. No, Mami, enough. You have convinced me. Yes, Papi is only with Wendy because of her cooking prowess.”
“Therefore, all I have to do is go to culinary school, learn how to cook, and voilà, I will win him back,” Mebel says with a flourish. Despite herself, hope is dancing inside her, lighting a spark she has so desperately needed in the last few days. It’s as though when Henk had left her, he’d taken all the light in the world with him, but now one of these precious lights has found its way back and is beckoning to her to follow it out of the darkness.
“It’ll take a long time, Mami,” Sammy says.
“You young people have no patience. All things that are worth having are things worth waiting for. And your father is definitely worth waiting for.”
Sammy merely looks on with a sad expression. Mebel turns away. She can’t allow herself to be talked down, not now when she’s finally come up with an idea of her own. The thought strikes her: When was the last time she’s had an idea that was fully hers, not Henk’s or anyone else’s? She’s forgotten that feeling of being ready to fight for something she wants, and right now, all Mebel wants to do is fight—if not for Henk, then for the life she knows she deserves. The life to which she has devoted her entire being, spent all of her youth preparing herself for. The life of a trophy wife. And by god, Mebel is going to win that war.
Chapter 3
Mebel launches herself into herplan with newfound ferocity. The next few days are a flurry of research, which is no small task for someone who adapted to the use of smartphones in her fifties and still types with her index fingers “like T-rex,” Luciana observed. Mebel ignores the less-than-flattering observation and continues squinting at her phone screen through her reading glasses. The amount of information to be found at her fingertips—or her index fingertips—is staggering.
Who knew that there were so many culinary schools around the world? There’s the CIA, not the kind that trains spies, but rather the kind that trains people who feed the spies. The International Culinary Center, the International School of Culinary Arts, the Culinary School of America, and so on and so forth. To add to that, they are all over the globe, each one claiming to be the best at what it does. And, Mebel realizes, she needs to decide what kind of cuisine she wants to learn. Herfirst instinct is to gravitate toward Chinese cuisine. She and Henk are of Chinese descent, after all, and they mainly eat Chinese food at home, and on Sundays, they gather for dim sum, where they eat yet more Chinese food.
But then again, what’s the point of learning how to cook Chinese food when one can so easily get it in Jakarta? She can get excellent Chinese food by ordering it through an app, and it’ll be here in under thirty minutes. No, that won’t win Henk back. He’ll be like, “Great, now you’re on par with half the wives in Jakarta.”
Maybe Japanese food? But there’s the same problem. Too many Japanese restaurants here. Mebel dismisses the idea of Korean food and Italian food for the same reason. Then, as she scans the never-ending list of culinary schools, it comes to her so clearly that she wonders why it took this long. French food.
Yes. What could be better than learning how to make soufflés and onion soup and—uh—whatever else they eat in France? Isn’t France known as the most romantic country in the world? “I have such fond memories of Paris,” Mebel says to Sammy and Hannah. She and Henk had been a handful of times, and each time was magical. Those trips to Paris were filled with multicourse meals at Michelin-starred restaurants and hours spent at the Hermès store at Saint-Honoré, letting her fingers trail across their silk scarves and luxuriating in the richness of the fabric. Once, she and Henk were in a cab. At the red light, a man broke their window, reached in, and grabbed her handbag. She would’ve prioritized her safety and let go of the bag if it hadn’t been a quilted lambskin Chanel with vintage hardware, but as it was, she was not about to let this random man have it. Would he know to moisturize it every sixty days? Probably not.Henk had hit him over the head again and again with a box of macarons they’d bought at Ladurée while the driver shouted, “Just give him the bag!” In the end, the light turned green and Henk shouted, “Drive!” and so they did, and Mebel had clutched her purse and Henk’s arm, and they’d laughed hysterically and then popped a bottle of champagne back at their hotel room.
“Then we let off all that adrenaline by having the wildest, most passionate—”
Hannah clears her throat in what Mebel thinks is an unnecessarily aggressive way. “Right, well!” Hannah says, clapping her hands once. “Good memories from Paris, yes, point taken.”
“I felt about twenty years younger there,” Mebel says wistfully. “What a magical city.”
“It does sound exciting,” Hannah says. “And going to culinary school in Paris sounds like a dream. I would love to do something like that.”
“Please don’t,” Sammy says. “At least not until the girls are older.”
“Well, as you have pointed out yourself,” Mebel says, “you are a grown man, and now there’s nothing holding me back from realizing my lifelong dream.”
“Mami, you literally thought of this dream a few days ago,” Sammy says.
“Always such a pedant,” Mebel mutters. “You must have gotten that from your father.” She turns her attention back to her phone and taps on Paris, France, to get a list of schools there. There are so many of them, one would think there’s one on every street corner. And their names sound so fabulous. Mebel taps on each link and looks for a sign-up sheet. She rejects the first three schools because their semesters have already begun andthe next earliest course would be in four months’ time, and who has that kind of patience?
Then, finally, she finds it. A school with vacancies that is starting—oh my—next Monday. In five days’ time, in fact. Mebel can feel the large vein in her temple begin to pulse with excitement. The possibility suddenly feels so real. Oh my god, is she actually about to do this?
“Uh-oh,” Hannah says to Sammy. “I think Mami’s found one.”
“What is it?”
“The Saint Honoré School of Culinary Arts,” Mebel breathes. “Oh my god, it’s a sign.”
“Sorry, what’s a sign?” Sammy says.
“Saint Honoré! Don’t you get it?” Mebel says.
Sammy and Hannah both look blankly at her. Honestly, anyone would think she hadn’t taken the time to educate her son.
