Cooking in Belgrade
I walked by this playground on my way from the hotel to the cooking studio this morning, then returned to find a swing set and do some therapeutic back-and-forth while we’re on lunch break. The lesson on desserts was great until it wasn’t. I came to a formerly war-torn country to learn about pastry, and my instructors can’t get their shit together long enough to explain anything more than how to stabilize meringues. I already know how to do that–use cream of tartar and superfine sugar and don’t overbeat–so really, what the fuck?
I knew they were married when I signed up for the course, they just didn’t mention the recent turbulence or how they’re getting a divorce. That was what we were gossiping about before they arrived at the studio, since some of the students found out ahead of time and were ready for fireworks. They should have brought lawyers to argue in the background. I just want to learn about Baltic desserts without them airing dirty laundry. I hope they’re using this lunch break to have a cigarette and gnaw on a large chocolate bar.
I know you’ll find this ironic. Back home you’re probably deciding whether to leave since you didn’t plan to date me and a bakery. You’re a great chef, but maybe I should have expected this from someone who was thirty-one before they knew there were three and not four teaspoons in a tablespoon. I love you anyway, even if you’d say I love the bakery more.
The first two days of the class were great since the husband and wife taught separately—I learned how to make walnut sweet bread, cookies with black pepper in the dough, and round donuts filled with apricot jam and fried in lard. I forget all the names. This morning they were teaching us to make little meringue clouds that you float in a custard, but whipping egg whites brought up an old spat and they ended up screaming at each other. For a while I hid them in the empty space on my right side, the blind side where I put things I don’t want to see, though I admit sometimes after we argue it’s easy to put you there, too.
I thought you and I would get along well since you have cooking instincts and pop-up restaurants every other weekend making dinner for twenty. You exhaust yourself for one evening and spend the next two weeks planning a more elaborate meal. I’m sure you daydream hors d’oeuvres while you’re at the desk job. I never do since my life is flour, sugar, weighing ingredients on an electric scale, and getting up at four in the morning to start mixing cookie dough.
I appreciate your honesty when you give me comments on gluten free anything, and your honesty when you say you miss me. I wish you’d have come to Croatia though you said you hate planes. I said that’s why there are sleeping pills and drinks to get us to Belgrade. You could have looked at the architecture or rented a bike for the afternoon, but you shook your head and said no, not while asparagus was in season.
Because I love you, I want to honor the two meals a year when you can serve it fresh.
This afternoon we’re supposed to make chocolate cakes rolled in coconut, and dumplings made of potato dough filled with chocolate or jam, then boiled and rolled in toasted sugared bread crumbs. Tomorrow is reserved for pies made with a thin dough that you stretch like a strudel and fill with jam or potato and cheese.
When I get home I’ll cook everything for you if we’re still sharing an apartment.
How do you want me to say I love you but I want this, too? That is the space of any relationship compromise as we try to fit everything we hold dear into the psychic space we call our hearts: pets, spiritual beliefs, jobs, apartments this big or small or close to or far from your or my families. There are so many ingredients to mix into the recipe we call us, but it keeps changing, the flavor never static.
How long did they say the meringues needed to rest in the oven? Two hours with the door cracked, I think. We added rose water to the custard which they said is more of a scent than a flavor, but I’d prefer chocolate. Fewer thorns. I wonder if you’re taping up the last box, if there will be more room in the fridge when I return since you’ll have taken your green olives, sweet pickles, and sparkling water.
I don’t doubt that we still love each other though some days we have different orbits. I want to rewrite things. I wonder how we could organize joint dinners and trips to the grocery store and deep philosophical cookbook discussions, since we’re the same people and different people than we were when we met, and maybe that means different ways of caring for each other.
If you’re there when I get home, I’ll make the chocolate cakes with coconut and promise to switch a few hours with my assistant on the weekends so we can shop for palm sugar and whole nutmeg and forbidden rice, but not the rosewater. I think it’s an acquired taste.
END
Read more Fiction by Teresa Milbrodt in this issue of Wordgathering.
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About the Author
Teresa Milbrodt has published three short story collections: Instances of Head-Switching, Bearded Women: Stories, and Work Opportunities. She has also published a novel, The Patron Saint of Unattractive People, a flash fiction collection, Larissa Takes Flight: Stories, and the monograph Sexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality. Milbrodt is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Roanoke College, and teaches fiction, speculative fiction, poetry, and disability studies. She loves cats, long walks with her MP3 player, independently owned coffee shops, peanut butter frozen yogurt, and texting hearts in rainbow colors. Read more of her work at: http://teresamilbrodt.com/