To top off my day from hell, I’m forced to take a taxi home. Papi texted that he and Margo were in town getting some baby stuff. He asked what time he should pick me up. Of course, since my phone was stored inside a locker the entire day, I didn’t see his message until they’d already left the city.
I press my forehead against the cab’s cold window as we drive past the rolling hills of Bessenay. It’s raining hard and the fields have taken on an ominous shade of grayish-green. I watch a few cows skip toward the shade of a massive tree, where others have taken shelter. At least I’m not a cow standing in the rain. This becomes my consolation for such an abysmal first day.
The entire ride home, I can’t shake the omelet disaster. I tell myself it’s a matter of practice, like the soufflés. So for dinner, I decide to make everyone an omelet—four omelets, four chances to practice. The thought eases the tension welled up in my chest. These will be the best omelets anyone’s ever had. Given the appropriate amount of time, I know I can do this.
After the test fiasco, Chef Troissant explained some of the techniques we would cover during the program—all French classics. She then gave us a copy of La Table de Lyon’s menu and told us to familiarize ourselves with every dish.
“Learn to respect the ingredients,” she told us. “Memorize them. Understand how they come together.”
But I can’t figure out how to even begin to re-create dishes described in only a handful of words. Take the salmon dish, for example: confit, Roosevalt fondant, saffron pistils—that’s it. What am I supposed to do with that? The only dish on this menu I find remotely doable at home is the cherries jubilee listed in the dessert section. Mostly because the main ingredient is readily available in our backyard.
When I finally arrive at the house, I make a beeline for the kitchen. Today’s omelet lesson plays in my mind like a video on a loop. I need to get it right soon or I’ll be tossing and turning all night.
Before I can reach the kitchen, I’m sidetracked by laughter coming from the dining room and the distinct sweet, deep-fried smell of General Tso chicken.
I enter the dining room to find Papi, Margo, and Diego seated around the table, eating from paper plates with plastic utensils. The table is covered in take-out containers, and I was right about the General Tso chicken. But there’s also Mongolian beef and Singapore noodles.
“What’s this?” I ask, as if the scene before me needs an explanation.
“Chinese. You hungry?” Diego asks. It would take me two days to get through all the food piled on his plate. Has this guy ever heard of portion control?
I glance down at his feet. Even the albino dog is treating himself to a chicken wing.
“Diego picked up some takeout. We saved you some,” Papi says. He pushes out a chair for me, but I’ve lost my appetite.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” I say. “Have homework to do.”
“You have to open your fortune cookie first, even if you don’t eat. It’s tradition,” Diego says, tossing me a fortune cookie across the table. I catch it midair.
“You know these messages are mass produced, right?” I say, but tear into the wrapper anyway, hoping for one of those uplifting fortunes like All your hard work will soon pay off. I crack the cookie open and pull out the strip of paper.
“What does it say?” Diego asks.
“It says . . .” I pause, my eyes stinging. “It says . . . The fortune you seek is in another cookie.”
Diego and Papi laugh. Because this is so funny.
“I have stuff to do.” I walk away, holding my back straight until I leave the room.
“Wait, Isa,” Papi calls out. “How was your first day?”
“Great,” I respond before I disappear into the kitchen. “It was great.”
I mean, really, what does a fortune cookie know?
If I can’t make the stupid omelets—because someone decided to mess with my dinner plans—I’ll focus solely on the flambé. Today, I’ll take even the smallest victory. I can’t go to bed feeling like the world’s most incompetent cook.
I open Larousse and read all about the flambé technique—the act of pouring spirit over food and then igniting it, both to enhance flavor and “demonstrate culinary showmanship.” Perfect. I badly need some showmanship. And what’s even better, I get to use my blowtorch.
I go back to the dining room and tell everyone, “Save room for dessert.”
“Yum. What are you making?” Papi asks.
“Cherries jubilee,” I say.
“There’s a fire extinguisher under the sink. Just in case . . .” Papi chuckles to himself, reaching for what’s left of the Singapore noodles. It’s a dig at a past “incident” in Lala’s kitchen that has become family lore. Usually I laugh it off, but today the joke grinds against my very bones.
“Funny,” I say, walking back to the kitchen.
Once I get my ingredients and utensils ready, I launch into action. First, I pit the cherries, then place them in a skillet with sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla bean seeds. The cherry mixture must cook on medium to low heat until the sugar dissolves. I’m standing by the stove, stirring the skillet, when Diego comes in.
“There’s still some food left if you get hungry later,” he says, shoving a few containers into the fridge and totally messing up my color-coded storage system.
“I’m good, thanks.” I make a mental note to rearrange the fridge after he leaves.
He shuts the fridge door and then lingers next to me, forgoing any measure of personal space. “Need some help?” he asks.
I sidestep him, trying to add some distance between us, while breathing through the sudden flurry of heart palpitations that come when his arm (accidentally) rubs against mine.
“I’m good,” I repeat, clearing my throat.
“Is this that dessert with the flames?” He grabs the brandy bottle from the counter and scans the label.
“Yup.”
He twists the lid open and smells the contents.
“You use alcohol for the fire, right?”
“Um-hum.” I watch him set down the brandy and reach for my blowtorch. I resist the urge to take it away from him. For the uninitiated, a blowtorch may be something of a plaything, but for me it’s an instrument for culinary perfection.
“Is this a real blowtorch?” An amused grin takes over his face and I catch a mix of excitement and curiosity dance across his eyes.
Oh no. Heck no.
“It’s not a toy.” I grab the blowtorch from his hands and set it back on the counter, hoping he will leave it—and me—alone.
“Come on! Let me give it a whirl. I’m great with the flames.” His eyebrows shimmy over his eyes. If I wasn’t so tired, or annoyed, I might find it kinda charming.
“I bet you are.”
The cherry mixture bubbles to life, which means it’s ready for the alcohol to go on top. This whole back and forth is messing up my timing.
I turn from the pan to the counter, searching for the bottle of brandy, but again it’s in Diego’s hands.
“Are you sure you know how to do this?” he asks, waving the bottle in front of my face like this is some silly game. The childish smirk across his lips assures me he doesn’t get the skill that goes into a flambé.
“You know, usually, I like doing this on my own,” I say, nice and clear, then grab the bottle away from his hand. Mercifully, he lets go and steps back.
“Your dad said you almost burned down your grandmother’s kitchen. Is that true?”
My jaw clenches. Really, Papi? Traitor.
“It was an accident,” I say, gripping the bottle harder. “And if he had changed the batteries in the fire alarm over her stove—like she asked him to—I would have known the pie was burning.”
“I’m pretty sure the batteries in this fire alarm haven’t been changed in a while either.” He points at a round plastic disc on the ceiling. “See? No red light,” he says.
“Thanks for your concern,” I say through gritted teeth. “I think I can take it from here.”
He doesn’t leave, though. He makes himself comfortable on one of the stools around the island countertop. What do I have to say to get rid of this guy?
“I’ll be here in case you need an extra hand,” he says, leafing through the pages of Larousse.
I turn around and ignore him.
I pour a few tablespoons of alcohol into the skillet and get ready to light it. I hit the blowtorch’s ignition button and watch the blue butane flame come to life. The most thrilling thing about cooking torches is knowing I’m holding pure heat in my hand—2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact.
Every girl should have a blowtorch.
I’m about to light the pan on fire when it occurs to me that maybe I should add a pinch of cinnamon. I’ve never tried it myself, but I’ve read that the powder ignites. Bring on the showmanship!
I set the blowtorch next to the stove and dash to the pantry in search of cinnamon. When I first took over Villa des Fleur’s kitchen, I organized all the spices in alphabetical order. The effort has now paid off. I quickly find the cinnamon jar and turn back to the stove. But to my absolute horror, Diego is already there, holding my blowtorch and getting ready to ignite my flambé.
“What are you doing?” I yelp.
“The alcohol was about to evaporate,” he says plainly.
“Seriously, what do you know?” My patience for this guy—and this whole day—has run out. “Put it down!”
When I check the pan, as much as it pains me to admit it, he’s right. It needs more brandy. I reach for the bottle and pour a healthy amount, completely unaware Diego is still holding the blowtorch in his hand.
“Now for the best part,” he exclaims.
“I told you, I don’t need your help!” I call out, incredulous I’ve let this guy highjack my flambé. Then, it all happens as if in slow motion—as I’m wrestling him for the blowtorch, the butane flame hits the skillet, and the bottle I’m holding goes sideways, splashing alcohol all over the pan. In the span of half a second, the skillet goes up in flames.
I swear in two different languages and jump back, landing on Diego’s hard-rock chest.
The flames are so high, they lick the extractor hood over the stove.
“Where’s the fire extinguisher?” His hands grip the sides of my torso as he moves me out of the way. I don’t know if it’s the way his hands fit perfectly around my waist or the giant flame taking over the kitchen, but the heat becomes intolerable.
“Isa! The fire extinguisher, where is it?”
“I got it.” I open the kitchen cabinet and pull out the red canister. I’ve never used one of these before—last time, Lala put out the fire—so I get stuck reading the instructions.
Diego grabs the canister out of my hands, pulls on a red cord, and aims the hose at the skillet. Within seconds, my flambé—and the entire stove, hood, and back wall—are covered in white fire-suppressant foam.
Papi and Margo come rushing into the kitchen.
“What happened?” Papi asks, taking inventory of the damage. “Are you guys okay?”
I don’t say anything. I’m so furious, you could probably put an ignition switch on me and I’d light to 2,700 degrees.
“We’re fine. Not sure about the stove, though,” Diego says.
Diego and Papi hover over the stove, inspecting the hood. Margo watches them from a distance, scowling at the scene.
“I’m going to bed,” she finally says. Then mutters something unintelligible before the door closes behind her.
“This is exactly why I cook alone,” I snap after she leaves.
Papi and Diego exchange a glance. “I’m sure Diego was just trying to help,” Papi says.
“I don’t need help,” I say forcefully. “I made that crystal clear.” I stare hard at Papi, waiting for him to stand up for me, to tell Diego to just back off.
“I’m sure you could use some help cleaning up,” Papi says, squeezing my shoulder. “It doesn’t look like there’s any damage.”
He takes one last look at the stove, and I’m thankful he doesn’t bring up the burned pie incident.
“Do you want me to help you clean?” Papi asks, resting a hand on my shoulder.
I shake my head no. He looks way more tired than me.
He kisses the side of my head in passing as he leaves the kitchen. “Don’t stay up too late,” he says.
Diego fumbles with a sponge and a bucket he finds in the storage closet. My eyes shoot long, sharp knives in his direction. His back is turned to me. If looks could kill, he would’ve dropped dead right then and there.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Cleaning up this mess.” He reaches inside a drawer for a dish towel.
“I said I’ll take care of it. You can go now.”
I toss the burnt skillet into the sink, where it lands with a loud clank. My shoulders drop and I hear myself release a loud groan.
“I want to help—” he starts to say, but I cut him off.
“Can’t you see I don’t need your help?” I snap. “How many times do I need to say it? The only thing I want is to be left alone. Is that too much to ask?”
He drops the bucket in his hand. “Fine. Have it your way.”
I grab a sponge, squeeze some dishwashing liquid onto the pan, and start scrubbing hard against the charred bottom.
Behind me, I hear the kitchen door swing, followed by a harsh silence.
My eyelids blink open and shut a few times, forcing back the tears.
I don’t know if it’s the god-awful day, or the ruined kitchen, or this mess of a new family, or the vivid memory of the day I burned Lala’s pie that unexpectedly rushes to the forefront of my mind. Suddenly, I’m standing in a puddle of my own tears, feeling like the biggest loser.
As I scrub and scrub, harder each time, the pangs of grief I’ve spent months stuffing down threaten to choke me. Lala’s absence stabs my heart and burns the hollow of my chest, like I’ve swallowed a mountain of embers that refuse to be extinguished.
I squeeze my eyes tight, wishing I could rest my head on her shoulder. Wishing everything could go back to the way it was before, when she was still with us.
But all I see behind my closed eyelids is the stupid pie, like a big ball of fire inside her oven. An omen for the string of unfortunate events that, when summed up, could be directly linked to her death.
In middle school, when my friends asked about my plans for the summer, I’d tell them I was going to a sleepaway camp. It was kind of true, I guess. Back then, I was a little embarrassed to admit I was spending summer with my Cuban abuela on her farm in Kansas.
For one, I’d had to dive into our complicated family genealogy—Kansas farmer falls in love with a Cuban immigrant, they have a mixed-race baby who later marries a French girl and, voilá, here I am, so mixed I constantly get asked “where I’m from.” It’s not the question itself that bothers me, but the assumptions behind it. The underlying message that “you don’t belong here” and “you are other.” You’d think a second-generation American wouldn’t have to deal with this crap, but people somehow seem confused by my Midwestern accent, mostly Latina features, darker skin tone, and French-speaking mother.
Complicated family dynamics aside, none of my friends liked their grandparents as much as I loved being around Lala. I quickly learned the joy I felt in her presence wasn’t a universal teenage experience.
What they didn’t know, however, was that Lala was no ordinary granny—she was my abuela and she was my friend. Her home was like a sanctuary or a refugio. It was where I learned how to cook, how to grow my own herbs, and how to take eggs away from the chickens. And eventually where I went to escape the war between my parents.
It was also where I learned about the consequences of our mistakes, when our family pie recipe got stolen.
I was fifteen, and Mom had gone back to France for the summer to visit Mamie. Papi usually went with her for a few weeks but this time he stayed in Chicago, using the lame excuse he was too busy at work and couldn’t take time off. I should have known then that things were on a downward spiral.
I decided to head to Kansas to spend time with Lala. After Grampa Roger died, Papi and I insisted she move to Chicago, but she’d refused.
“Isabela,” she would say, pronouncing my name in Spanish, “my life is here. Why would I leave, morenita?” She would caress my long brown hair, as if addressing the parts of me that were undeniably her.
Lala always used to say we were like two cafés con leche poured from the same pot. Except she had more leche and I had more café. She taught me that it was a point of pride to be a “café con leche Cubano.” It was that simple—two Cuban coffees with milk. And I agreed, even if my friends sometimes argued that using food to compare skin color was inappropriate.
Lala’s closest friends, and a big part of the reason she didn’t want to move, were a group of ladies from her gardening club. There was eighty-year-old Hazel, an Austrian lady who made the best carrot cake I’ve ever tasted; a former beauty queen and professional quilter named Therese, whose sugar cookies were out of this world. And Barbara. Good ol’ Barbara—or so I thought at first—with her elaborately coiffed hair and her stories about coming from old family money. Barbara was the devil. I hated her as much as I hated her oatmeal raisin cookies that tasted like cardboard.
Their group would gather every week in Lala’s kitchen and bake pies for a women’s shelter in the city. In that kitchen, I watched them swap recipes like they swapped stories, with a zest for life many would envy.
It was during one of those baking sessions that Lala, for some godforsaken reason, felt the need to share the award-winning, secret apple pie recipe that had been in our family for four generations.
That recipe had made Lala the Pie Queen of the Wyandotte County Fair ten years in a row, to the dismay of many Kansas City natives, including Barbara.
“You are so brave for competing,” I heard her tell Lala once. “Who knew Cuban pies would be so popular? Is that even a thing in Cuba?”
Her tone was so condescending that it made me want to punch her in the face.
But Lala didn’t need me to defend her. That woman was fearless. Year after year, she put her “Cuban American” pies—that’s what she called them—on the judges’ table even though she was a transplant to that community and even though people sometimes treated her like she didn’t belong.
“They gave us a number,” she told me the first time she competed. “That’s how I knew they would be fair. The judges didn’t know which was my pie.”
She was so proud of her blue ribbon that she framed it and put it over the mantel.
“They didn’t see it coming. A Cuban lady making apple pies?” Lala laughed to herself. “But you tell me, nena, what does being from Cuba have to do with knowing how to work a stick of butter into the dough? Not one thing. You do what you love, mija. Jealous people are always going to try and get in your way.”
She should have known one of those jealous people lurked in her kitchen.
The day Lala gave away our recipe, I was there. It was the same day I almost burned down her kitchen.
Barbara held on to that recipe like she was holding on to one of Lala’s blue ribbons. Her eyeballs practically bulged out of her skull as her long red nails scanned the ingredients and method on the page.
As Lala explained to the group the exact technique she used to cut the apples and prepare the syrup, Barbara took copious notes. When Lala demonstrated how to trim the pie crust to form her well-known lattice pattern, Barbara made a step-by-step sketch on the back of the page. And when Lala told them her unique baking method—using a paper bag to create the crunchy top crust and the light, flaky bottom—Barbara pulled out her phone and started taking pictures.
After it was all said and done, Lala took her pie out of the oven and declared it her “best one yet.” Barbara folded the piece of paper with the recipe and slipped it into her purse.
I had a feeling Barbara was up to no good. In fact, I was so absorbed in keeping my eye on her that I forgot to set the timer for my own pie. First, I saw the billow of smoke seeping through the oven door. When I opened the oven, my beautiful pie had turned into a fireball; the paper bag had caught on fire. I grabbed a towel to smother the flames—big mistake. The blaze spread to the towel and all the way up to my gloves. Lala had to push me out of the way so she could use the fire extinguisher.
My abuela wrapped me in her arms and assured me there was no reason to cry. “No hay por que llorar, morenita.” Later, I learned she was quoting some Celia Cruz salsa song.
“Mija, el que nunca se equivoca, es porque nunca hace nada,” she said. She was always pushing me, my Lala. Not to get stuck in my mistakes but to turn them into something worthwhile.
“You have to live, mija. You can’t be afraid of making a big mess every once in a while. To make an omelet, you have to crack some eggs.”
Mistakes, she said, made you stronger.
Lala, Hazel, and Therese helped me clean the mess—but not Barbara. Barbara got into her Mercedes and left.
Later, we found out that good ol’ Barbara had taken Lala’s famous apple pie recipe to her daughter, who was opening a pie shop in Kansas City. A few months later, Lala’s pie was featured in the New York Times, under the name Granny Barb’s Apple Pie. They called it “the best pie in America.”
Papi wanted to sue. But Lala wouldn’t have it. She blamed herself for being so trusting. I blamed her too. Some mistakes, you can’t fix. Some mistakes make you wish you had never tried in the first place.