Chapter 14 #3
Like hell am I going to leave anything alone, Mebel thinks now.
What if Gemma was in an accident? Maybe she was crossing the street and got knocked over by a car in a hit-and-run.
Or maybe she was eating a pastry she’d filched from the patisserie students and choked while swallowing, and now she is lying dead in her room.
The thought of this is so vivid that Mebel can almost see Gemma lying on the old maroon carpet in the bedroom, her eyes wide open with shock, her mouth frozen in a silent cry for help that nobody heard.
With a cry, Mebel rushes down the hallway, nearly falling over on the stairs in her haste to get to the first floor.
“I think Gemma is dead!” she cries as she runs toward Agatha at the front desk.
Agatha, who had a cup of tea halfway up to her mouth, freezes. Then she gently places the tea back down on the table and says, “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“I think Gemma is dead,” Mebel says, gesturing madly.
Her thoughts are so frenzied her mouth is having a hard time forming the words and putting them into a coherent sentence.
“She not show up to class today, and I just go to her room and knock the door, but she didn’t reply.
I think maybe she choke on something when she snacking last night and—aiya—quick, we need to open her door! ”
“Oh dear,” Agatha says. She looks somewhat saddened by this, though nowhere near alarmed enough, in Mebel’s opinion.
“Quickly!” Mebel snaps. My goodness, what is wrong with Agatha? Why isn’t she doing anything?
“It’s okay, Mebel, Gemma is not dead.”
“How you know?” Mebel cries.
“She withdrew from the course this morning. She’s no longer enrolled at the school, that’s why there was no answer when you knocked on her door. She’s not here anymore.”
For a moment, all Mebel can do is stare blankly at Agatha. Then the words slam through her skull and sear themselves onto her brain and she shouts, “What?”
“Shh,” Agatha says, flapping her hands at Mebel.
“Good grief, there are classes going on right now, and you are being quite distracting. Gemma dropped out, it happens all the time. Every semester, there will be a handful of students who find that they can’t actually cut it at culinary school and drop out. ”
“No,” Mebel breathes.
“Oh yes, it happens very frequently. The problem is, these kids are young, and they’re not used to hard work, and they watch too many TikToks and think that cooking is fun and easy to do.
Have you seen cooking videos on TikToks?
Some of those content creators are out there cooking the most complicated dishes, things that would take six, seven hours to make, and they do it all and then edit it into a thirty-second video, and so kids think the dishes are easy.
Then they come here and they’re dismayed to learn that, actually, it is really bloody hard to make a boeuf bourguignon fritter, and they’re like: This is no fun, I quit.
” As Agatha speaks, she grows more and more impassioned, and it becomes clear to Mebel that this is perhaps something Agatha has had a long history with.
“But you don’t understand,” Mebel says. “Gemma is not like that. Gemma is very responsible student. She knows all the things already, how difficult everything is, she knows that.”
Agatha throws up her hands. “I don’t know what to tell you, Mebel. Gemma came to me first thing this morning and told me she no longer wants to be a student here.”
“She come to you this morning…” Mebel muses, more to herself than to Agatha. “How she look? She look sad? Angry?”
“I don’t know, she looked normal, I guess,” Agatha says with a shrug.
Mebel shakes her head. “I don’t know why you are being so—so ‘I don’t care.’ ”
“I’m sorry,” Agatha says, and she truly does seem apologetic. “I guess I don’t have much sympathy for students who drop out of their courses because, well, I’ve been saving up to take a course here, and seeing students take the courses for granted is just not very nice, is it?”
“Oh.” Mebel pauses. She hasn’t spared a thought for Agatha.
To her, Agatha has always been just a receptionist at the school, and now she feels ashamed for not being more thoughtful, because of course Agatha has her own goals and dreams. Agatha is a person, not just a pleasant face at the front desk.
Just like how Mebel isn’t just a trophy wife, but a complete human being with her own hopes and dreams.
You’re getting carried away again and making this about you, her mind says.
Right, Mebel thinks, snapping herself out of her derailed train of thought.
“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Agatha says.
“No. Thank you.” With one last look at Agatha, Mebel walks out of the school building. Outside, she takes out her phone and calls Gemma. She should’ve done this earlier, now that she thinks of it.
The call doesn’t go through. Instead of ringing, it immediately goes to an automated message that says: “The number you have dialed is not in service.”
Mebel checks to make sure she has tapped on the right contact, then tries again, with the same results this time. Frowning, she goes back indoors.
“Agatha?” she says.
Agatha gives her a tight smile. “Yes?”
“Does Gemma have another number?”
“I don’t know, I’m afraid. We’re not allowed to give out contact information for privacy purposes.”
“Because I just try calling her number, but it says disconnect. Then how?”
Agatha sighs. “Yeah, well, I can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”
“What about her email address? Maybe you can give to me?”
“I can’t do that, sorry.”
Mebel is about to ask for Gemma’s home address in a last-ditch effort when Agatha holds up her hand. “I can’t give you any information about Gemma unless she expressly tells me I have permission to do so.”
A deep sense of sadness overtakes Mebel.
Now that the initial panic has ebbed away, Mebel is left feeling, well, really lonely.
And what in the world is she going to do about the dish she was supposed to cook with Gemma?
She doesn’t have what it takes to come up with an impressive duck dish worthy of a Michelin-starred restaurant on her own.
After thanking Agatha, Mebel walks to the chefs’ offices, where she knocks on Chef Clarke’s door. “Come in,” he calls out. His eyebrows rise when he sees Mebel. “Oh, hello, Mebel. This is a nice surprise. What can I do for you?”
“My partner Gemma drop out of the course.”
Chef Clarke sighs. “Ah, yes. I saw the email when I came out of this morning’s class. That’s a real shame.”
“What email? Gemma send you email?” Mebel says.
“Yes. It was quite brief. It only said how sorry she is to have to drop out in the middle of the semester.”
“She didn’t say why?”
“No.”
“And you don’t ask why?” Mebel says, her voice rising. Aiya, what is wrong with these people? How can they not see that something isn’t right? Why don’t they care enough to ask what has happened?
Chef Clarke frowns at her. “No, because, quite frankly, it’s none of my business, and neither is it any of yours. Now, what can I do for you?”
Mebel struggles with the urge to tell him off for not caring about his students.
It won’t go well, she knows. She just needs to let it go for now.
Taking a deep breath, Mebel forces herself to focus on something she knows he can fix.
“Well, I lose my partner. What should I do for the banquet? I cannot do the course by myself. It’s not fair.
” She regrets the words “It’s not fair” as soon as they come out of her mouth, because even though they’re true, they also have the maturity of a whiny toddler.
If she were speaking Indonesian, she would be so much more fluent, but, no, she is held back by her broken English.
It’s not fair! Her mind says petulantly.
“You’re right,” Chef Clarke says with a sigh. “It is most definitely unfair. Now, I can’t pair you up with anybody else since everyone is paired off—”
“Maybe I can join a pair? Make it a three-person group?”
“I’m afraid not. It wouldn’t be fair to the others.”
Mebel glowers at him. “So is okay to be not fair to me, but not to everyone else? This is discrimination!”
“How about this: you are allowed extra prep time on the day of the banquet to make up for the lack of a partner, and you can come to me to brainstorm your ideas. Those things should give you a good bit of advantage to get ahead.” He looks hopefully at Mebel.
“How much more prep time?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Impossible. Two hours.”
“One hour extra.”
“One hour and a half,” Mebel counters. Inside, she is crowing. This Caucasian man thinks he can outbargain her? A Chinese mother? Hah! Even his ancestors would be shaking their heads and saying, My dear boy, you need to know your own limits.
Sure enough, Chef Clarke seems to have realized this as well. With a defeated nod, he says, “All right. One and a half hours extra time on the day of the banquet.”
“And you give me brainstorm also.”
“That too, yes.”
They shake hands, and Mebel leaves the room feeling, if not quite victorious, then at the very least somewhat mollified that she has evened out the playing field a little.
Back in her room, Mebel sits at her desk and drums her fingernails on the wooden surface.
For the first time, her tiny room feels big.
She looks around the space and realizes what it’s missing: Gemma.
If this were any other normal day, Gemma would be in here, rummaging through Mebel’s closet shamelessly, putting on her dresses and her shoes while talking nonstop.
Mebel used to think it was irritating as hell, but now, the room feels painfully silent without Gemma.
With a sigh of frustration, Mebel gets up and goes to Bella’s room. She’ll invite Bella over for a cup of tea and a very animated discussion about Gemma’s sudden disappearance. She knocks at Bella’s door and hears footsteps. A moment later, Bella opens the door a crack.
“Oh, hey, Mebs,” she says.