Chapter 9
The first week of culinary school ends up being the longest and toughest week of Mebel’s life.
The classes get no better after that first day.
The second day is spent making vegetable stock, which requires yet more chopping.
Mebel, still traumatized by her accident and reminded of the pain and shock every time she looks down at her bandaged finger, chops the carrots so slowly that she misses the call to pour the vegetables into the pan and has to stay back an extra hour after everyone else is dismissed to finish cooking her stock.
The third day is spent learning about nutrition.
Chef Clarke drones on and on about basic nutrients and nutritional principles, as well as current applications of such principles.
Things only slightly look up when they are asked to do nutritional analyses of recipes, because if there’s one thing that calculating discounts and VATs in luxury stores has taught Mebel, it is basic math.
But then they move on from calculations into chemistry, and Mebel is once again lost.
The last straw comes at the end of the week, when they are presented with a surprise test. No one else seems surprised, and when at Mebel’s affronted expression, Chef Clarke says, “It is in your student handbook, Mebel. Page thirteen, second paragraph. It says: ‘Expect a test at the end of each week to review the week’s lessons.’ ”
The most irritating thing about Chef Clarke is his fancy British accent, which makes everything he says sound reasonable even when it’s not.
Obviously it is extremely unreasonable to expect anyone to read the student handbook.
The thing is at least fifty pages long, with font so small that Mebel had to squint every time she tried to read it, until she gave up because the amount of Botox she will need to erase the squint lines is simply not worth the effort.
To make the long story short, Mebel does not do well on the test. In fact, she does so badly that Chef Clarke asks her to stay back after classes end for the day.
Mebel watches the other students file out of the kitchen and feels, ironically, the fleeting sensation of youth once again.
Except this time, she doesn’t enjoy the emotion because she doesn’t feel like a carefree twenty-one-year-old.
She feels more like a five-year-old kid who just got caught drawing on the wall.
You are a sixty-three-year-old woman, she hisses silently at herself.
Chef Clarke is in his fifties. You are his elder and you must demand the respect that you deserve.
But when she stands before Chef Clarke and sees the disappointment in his face, all of Mebel’s indignant spirit leaves her body.
“Mebel,” he says, “please, take a seat.”
She does so, folding her hands on her lap. Her fingers press down on her knuckles. Is she going to be expelled? Can one be expelled from culinary school?
“I notice you are struggling in the class,” Chef Clarke says.
Aiya, he is so direct! Aren’t the British supposed to be known for being subtle?
“I think maybe is not really called ‘struggling,’ ” Mebel says.
“Oh? What would you call it then?”
Mebel purses her lips. “I think maybe I call it ‘getting used to.’ ”
“Getting used to,” Chef Clarke says dryly.
“Yes. There is a lot of things I have to get used to here, you know.”
“Such as?”
“Well, Chef, maybe you don’t know this, but back home, all this…cooking? Is usually done by helper. Is menial labor, you know. No offense, Chef.”
“None taken,” Chef Clarke says. “I understand what you are saying, but the fact remains that you are here now. You are not back home in Indonesia, where you leave all of the cooking to your helpers.”
“Why you don’t use helper here?”
Chef Clarke blinks at her, looking very confused. “I’m not quite following.”
“Well, things like chopping vegetable, that’s not good use of school hours. We don’t come here to learn to chop vegetables, we come here to learn to cook impressive dish. So I think maybe if you hire helper to chop the vegetables, then that get rid of the problem.”
Chef Clarke massages his temple with one finger. “No, Mebel. We won’t be hiring helpers to chop things up for you, because we want you to learn knife skills. It’s an essential part of being a chef.”
“But I’m not here to become chef.”
“Yes, you have made that perfectly clear.” He leans forward, clasping his hands on the table.
“Listen, I think you may be at the wrong place. I understand you want to learn how to cook for your husband. In that case, may I suggest going on YouTube or Instagram or whatever other social media platform and doing a search for hashtag-cooking? I think what you want is online recipes, not culinary school.”
Mebel leans back in her chair, feeling as though she’s just been punched in the gut. “Am I expelled?” she says finally.
Chef Clarke’s face softens. “No. We don’t expel students unless there has been a serious breach of conduct. But I am having this talk with you because I think your time could be more productively spent by just watching cooking shows. You don’t have what it takes to be a chef, Mebel.”
Mebel nods glumly. Anyone can see she doesn’t have what it takes to be a chef, even her.
“Think about it?” Chef Clarke says. He doesn’t wait for a reply before standing up. “Have a good weekend.”
They leave the kitchen, and Mebel trudges back up to her room. For a while, she lies down on her bed and stares up at the ceiling. This is such an unfamiliar feeling. To be asked to reconsider her placement in the school because she’s so bad at it? It’s truly baffling.
The thing is, Mebel has always been good at everything she’s tried her hand at.
At school, she passed her classes with minimal effort.
She graduated from USC with no honors, but she had perfectly decent grades.
Her parents had enrolled her in tennis and golf lessons as a child because they knew that she would one day become a trophy wife, and she rewarded them by being good at both sports, but not so good that it would make any man she was with feel threatened.
They didn’t bother with things like cooking or sewing, because what self-respecting trophy wife would have to do those?
Mebel had gone through sixty-three years of life applying herself steadfastly to the roles she’d been given—the filial Chinese-Indo daughter, then the pleasing Chinese-Indo trophy wife, and finally, a doting Chinese-Indo mother.
And now, she finds herself untethered, lost in a body of water that’s suddenly decided to go wild.
Chef Clarke is right. There is no place here for someone like her.
What is she even doing here? Learning how to cook French food to impress Henk?
It sounded like a fun idea back in Jakarta, but now, in Cowley, England?
It sounds ridiculous. She is ridiculous.
She needs to give this all up and take the next flight home to Jakarta. But first, a shower.
As Mebel gets up from the creaky single bed, she catches her reflection in the mirror.
She pauses, staring at herself. She has not, ever since she got married to Henk those forty years ago, gone a single day without looking her best. Every morning, even when she had no plans of going out, Mebel would apply her makeup.
Her war paint, as she thinks of it. She’s always been so proud of keeping herself looking pristine for Henk.
But this week has worn her down to her bones, and now she finds herself gazing at a naked face, and what a sight it is!
She looks, for once, like her age. Haggard and forlorn and defeated, the corners of her mouth turned down, her cheeks slack, her eyes dull. She barely even recognizes herself.
“Well, this just won’t do,” she mutters in Indonesian. If she’s going to leave, she’s going to do so looking fabulous.
With that, Mebel hops into the shower, then goes back into her room and applies a snail slime sheet mask on her face.
When the mask is done, she rubs the remnants of the slime into her skin and revels in how plump it’s made her skin feel.
She smiles into the mirror, then swipes on a layer of tinted lip balm.
There. Just those simple steps have refreshed her beautifully.
She sits there for a while, tilting her face to one side, studying her reflection.
She recalls how she’d always been the queen bee, both at school and afterward, among their friends at the country club.
But maybe she’s only ever been the queen bee because she was so good at the things she had to be good at to gain popularity, whether it be schoolwork or golf or tennis.
People are attracted to competence. And how difficult can cooking be, really?
Mebel’s mouth sets into a thin line. She will leave this place tomorrow, but before that, she is going to master just one skill.
Before Mebel can talk herself out of doing this, she walks out of her room still dressed in her pajamas with a fluffy robe on top of them and marches all the way down into the kitchen.
Not wanting to draw unwanted attention, she turns just one of the lights on.
This late at night, the ground floor is deserted, as everyone has either gone out to party in town or retired to their bedrooms upstairs, and Mebel revels in the peaceful silence.
She goes into the pantry and locates the potatoes.
She loads up her bowl with as many potatoes as it can hold, then carries them to her workstation.
There, she rolls up her sleeves, sharpens her knives, and begins to work.