Chapter 14 #4
“Bella, come talk to me. I want to come in.”
Bella opens the door wider, letting Mebel in. Her room is pristine compared to Gemma’s. She doesn’t own as much stuff, for one, and whatever she does own has been lined up neatly. “What’s up?”
Mebel perches on a chair while Bella sits at the foot of her bed. “Did you hear about Gemma leaving? Is very strange, right?”
“Yeah, I heard from the grapevine.”
“What grapevine?”
Bella shrugs. “I dunno, people were talking about it. Like you are.”
It hurts Mebel to think of people talking about this without telling her. Weren’t they friends? Fortunately, she has enough presence of mind to not ask that aloud, since it would most definitely make her sound like a petulant teen. Move on from this part of the topic, her mind warns her.
“Have you hear anything from her?” she says.
“Nope. And I’m kinda mad about it. She should’ve said something. Who leaves just like that, without even so much as a goodbye?”
“Is strange, right?” Mebel cries. “I try to message her and look, only one tick. I try to call her and it says her number is not in service. I am very worried, I think something happen to her.”
Bella blows out her breath through her mouth. “I dunno, Mebs. I think she’s just a flake. My guess is she got tired, she wanted to quit the school, and she was too embarrassed to tell us.”
“No, that doesn’t sound like Gemma. Why are you so—” Mebel shakes her head, trying to find the right words to call out how uncaring Bella is being without offending her.
Her gaze lands on Bella’s laptop, on which is a document.
Without meaning to, Mebel reads it. She gets as far as “Venison with rosemary and truffle essence smoke” before Bella snaps the laptop shut abruptly, making Mebel jump.
“That’s private,” Bella says.
“Sorry,” Mebel says, flustered. She really hadn’t meant to snoop; her eyes had settled on the screen without her brain telling them to.
But then again, why the big secret? It’s not like Mebel had stumbled upon a diary entry, for goodness’ sake.
“Why so secretive?” she blurts out. “Is for the banquet, right? Who cares if I know what you are making? I am happy to share with you what I am making for my course.”
“Mebs,” Bella groans. “Do you really not get it?” She glares at Mebel, who looks back with all the innocence in the world. Grumbling, Bella says, “Look, you’re here on a bit of a lark, aren’t you?”
“What you mean?” Mebel is trying really hard not to feel offended, but it is somewhat of a challenge in this moment.
“Well, you’re here to learn to cook fancy dishes so you can win back your philandering husband,” Bella says.
“We been married forty years,” Mebel says. “Is it so bad that I want to win my old life back?”
“I mean…I wouldn’t have made that choice myself, but whatever, not the point.
The point is,” Bella says, “you’re not here to become a chef.
But the rest of us are. This is all I’ve got, Mebs.
I was terrible at school. Failed all my subjects.
I barely scraped by with my A levels. I don’t have any prospects.
If I flunk out of culinary school, I’m fucked. ”
Mebel gapes at Bella. Bella, who with her sullen nature and straightforward, no-nonsense attitude, had led Mebel to believe that she is the most confident kid Mebel has come across. “Bella, you have such bright future ahead.”
“I really don’t. I took out loans to come here. My parents could’ve helped me out with it, but they didn’t, and you know why?” Bella crosses her arms in front of her.
Mebel shakes her head.
“Because they know I’m a fuckup. They fully expect me to do exactly what Gemma has just done and drop out in the middle of the school year. They told me they’ve ‘invested enough in me.’ ”
“Invested in you?”
“Yeah, like put me through school and all that. It is a sort of an investment when you think about it.”
Mebel supposes Bella has a point, but it seems callous to her, all the same. She has never once thought of Sammy as an investment.
“So, this banquet? The chance for a position at Canard et Vin’s kitchen?
Do you even know of the place? It’s one of Paris’s most celebrated restaurants.
Three Michelin stars. You don’t even know how hard it is to even get a single star, Mebs.
It is, like, nearly impossible to get three stars, especially in a city as competitive as Paris.
” Bella gestures animatedly, her eyes shining with passion.
“It’s the only chance I’ve got to prove my parents wrong.
To make a good living for myself. Once you’ve worked at a place like Canard et Vin, you can basically find work at any restaurant of your choice.
That’s what’s at stake for us with this banquet.
That’s why we’re taking this shit so seriously. ”
Mebel is overcome by a mix of guilt and embarrassment, because Bella’s right.
She hasn’t even spared a thought for what the reward would mean for her classmates, because it means nothing to her.
Even if she wins, she won’t take the job, because she’s never going to become a chef anyway.
Her path will always lead back to Jakarta to reclaim her spot as Henk’s trophy wife, to be placed back on the shelf, all shiny and even more impressive now that she can cook a mean steak.
She can already see it—she and Henk will throw dinner parties.
They’ll hire caterers, because of course they will, but Mebel will be in charge of the star dish, something impressive with a complicated French name, and when she brings it out of the kitchen, everyone will applaud.
Henk’s friends will clap him on the back and say, You got lucky with her, didn’t you? and Henk will smile smugly and nod.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “You are right, I don’t realize how much pressure you young people are under.”
Bella gives a forlorn nod. “It’s a lot.”
“Yes, is sound very tiring. But, Bella, you are very talented young woman. You will make it out there, even if you don’t win this one competition.”
Bella sniffs. “I don’t know about that. We’ll see, I guess.”
Mebel leaves Bella’s room with her head spinning, too much information swirling around inside. She takes out her phone and sees that there is a text from Alain. For a second, Mebel’s spirits lift, but then she reads the actual message.
Alain: Ma cherie, I am going to be in London to check on my restaurant for the next few days. x
What the hell kind of message is that? Mebel thinks huffily.
No apologies, no reassurances about when they will see each other again.
For a moment, fear slices through her like a rusty knife.
Her immediate thought is: This is because you gave the sex to him.
He has had the sex, and now he is satisfied and he is bored of you and now he will meet his lover in London and have the sex with her instead.
Stupid, she scolds herself. She should’ve known better.
Isn’t that what her upbringing was all about?
Withholding sex from men so that the power remains with her?
Women who give it up too soon are used and then discarded.
Doesn’t Mebel know that? Every good CHIP worth her salt knows that her value lies in her sex, and that once given, she also gives her worth to the man.
Mebel could just scream at the thought of how foolish she’s been.
Shame overwhelms her, and she hurries back inside her bedroom, locking it behind her.
She takes her shoes off and climbs into her narrow bed, pulling the covers over her head and cocooning herself in its soft darkness.
For a long while, Mebel lies there listening to the sounds of her own breathing, trying to calm the whirlwind of emotions rushing through her.
Don’t be so dramatic, she tells herself.
So, Gemma has quit the course abruptly. You’ve talked to people about it, and everyone agrees this is just what young people are wont to do, which is true.
When you were in your early twenties, you started a ton of projects that you left halfway through.
You picked up tennis and piano, remember?
And now you play neither. And so what if Alain has left you just because he has slept with you?
It’s not the end of the world. You’re here to win Henk back.
Your little tryst with Alain was never to go anywhere, not really.
It was a fling. What the youths would call a rebound.
Am I the sort of person to have rebounds? she wonders.
Apparently, yes.
God, she thinks. If Henk ever finds out, he will be livid. There will be no taking me back then.
What a double standard, her mind seethes. So he gets to do whatever he wants and leave you for another woman, but if you then have a little tryst of your own, he thinks you’re soiled goods?
Well, yes, Mebel thinks. That is, unfortunately, how the world works, isn’t it? Or at least the part of the world that she’s from. Argh, this is impossible.
Life, it seems, has decided to throw yet another monkey wrench into her plans, and this time, Mebel is too exhausted to try to pull it out.