Aftertaste by Meredith Mileti

flowers and make you casseroles. But, if you’ve been jilted, and particularly when you have been spurned in favor of another woman, the underlying assumption is that you are somehow lacking. It makes me wonder, if Jake died now, would I be entitled to call myself a widow? And to all the rights and privileges thereof?
    Not if the death looks too suspicious, I suppose.
    By Wednesday evening, I’ve convinced Chloe’s peers and their parents of my cooking prowess and dutifully eaten my sweet potato and marshmallow casserole while wearing a Pilgrim’s collar and cuffs. I’ve also taken an entire roll of pictures of Chloe eating her first pumpkin pie, supervised the service of over two hundred lunches, finalized the winter menu, shopped, cooked, and cleaned the apartment. The complicated machinations that have allowed me to achieve this delicate balance between family and work have left me looking and feeling like a stale Krispy Kreme donut, glazed and pasty on the outside and filled with jelly. I’m in the midst of setting the table when Richard calls to tell me that his flight has been delayed. Instead of taking advantage of the extra time I have to sit down and relax before he arrives, I put Chloe to bed and start baking biscotti, because I think it’s a nice hostessy thing to do.
    Even though my mother had been a Cordon Bleu–trained chef, it was not she who taught me to cook—that I learned from Mrs. Favish, our next-door neighbor. It was during the first spring my mother was away, drying out at the expensive retreat center in New Hampshire. I was ten years old. Some people might have found it intimidating teaching the daughter of a professional chef to cook, but it hadn’t seemed to bother Mrs. Favish. In fact, she undertook my culinary education with extraordinary zeal, teaching me first to bake because she believed that one must learn to follow the rules, culinarily speaking, before one could break them.
    Chefs, I’ve found, can generally be divided into two groups: those who bake and those who do not. Baking is for the rule bound, the people who sat up front in cooking class and paid attention, who wrote things down, rather than relying on the feel of a recipe. I did none of those things, which was why it was unusual that I initially found my niche in the cooking world as a pastry chef. I think it was because Mrs. Favish taught me to bake first, and at a time in my life when I was craving predictability, looking for rules, for reasons why things should work.
    I bake biscotti, dozens of them. Hazelnut, pistachio, cornmeal, anise, and black pepper. Before long the soothing aroma of anise and toasting nuts fills the kitchen. While I’m waiting for Richard, I sample one of each, along with a pot of tea, strong and very sweet, because that is how Mrs. Favish taught me to drink it. Sometimes I think my only chance for happiness is in a kitchen, that any life I live outside is destined to be a shadowy, half-lived sort of life. It is, after all, where I’ve spent the better part of my adult existence, and a decent chunk of my childhood as well, a place where things both tragic and wonderful have taken place. Maybe the only place I really know how to be me.
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    I’m shaping the last of the biscotti logs when the doorbell rings. Wiping my floury hands on my jeans, I run to answer it. I open the door and fling myself into Richard’s arms.
    â€œSweetheart, watch the coat. Is that dough on your hands?” His words are light and teasing, but he holds me tightly.
    â€œYes, and I’m going to get it all over your expensive cashmere coat.”
    â€œThis old thing? So, where is she, the divine Chloe? It’s her I came to see,” he says, ruffling my hair. I can smell his cologne. Bay Rum. A smell so comforting it makes me want to bury my face into his shirt and weep.
    I take his coat and hang it on the coat rack while Richard meticulously folds his Burberry