Chapter 9
THE FIRST SUMMER, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Babe smiled, feeling Didion’s eyes on her.
Her daughter stood in the doorway, hands on the frame behind her, launching herself slowly off it and back again, watching her cook for the last fifteen minutes.
“Do you want to help?” When Didion nodded, Babe gently tilted her head. “Come on over. Grab an apron.”
Didion took a blue apron off the hook by the fridge and leaned her bony hip on the lower cabinets.
“How much do you know about herbs?” Babe asked.
Didion pulled a face, like a fishhook had grabbed her lip. She shrugged. “Mint?”
Babe set down her knife and scooped the slivered green tops of the scallion into a ramekin, then the more pungent white bits into another. She rinsed her hands, and then dried them on her own apron.
“Let’s go outside.”
Babe led Didion to the side garden, the little alley that spends most of the day shaded, but has glimmering sunshine in the morning, giving everything just enough of what it needs.
Babe knelt down on the ground beside the pots and her daughter copied her.
“You can’t cook if you don’t know what each ingredient tastes and smells like. Close your eyes.”
Didion did.
Babe brushed a sprig of mint under her daughter’s nose. “Can you smell it?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Do you know what it is?”
Didion squirmed. Fifteen years old, but in some ways still just a kid. “Is it mint?”
“Yep. How about this one?”
They did this with every herb in the garden. The peppery-sweet basil. Piney rosemary. Soft lavender and sage. Bright cilantro. Spicy oregano. Chives. Parsley.
Mint was the only one Didion knew. After smelling all of them, Babe had her taste them.
The black kitten who lived outside, the one Babe had named Migla, tiptoed unheard around them, at one point snaking around Didion’s bare legs. She was too concentrated to even notice—until then she’d been easily startled by the creature.
Where most teenagers would have withdrawn from the exercise, Didion took second nibbles of almost all of them. She kept her eyes shut the entire time, until Babe told her to open them again.
“You know,” said Babe. “I think you might just be a chef one day. Maybe a really good one.”
Babe’s words were casual, but she moved away too quickly to see them settling in her daughter’s mind like seeds in soil, ready to take root.