The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

need for me to take notes when Helen is here,” Carl said quietly to the young woman, who had tentatively followed them to their seats. “My wife is the writer in the family.”
     
    Helen had Been Writing when Carl first met her, fifty years before, sitting in the central quadrangle of their college, surrounded by cherry trees dropping petals in great, snowy drifts. Actually, Carl always said when he told the story, Helen had not been writing, but thinking about it, chewing on her lip as if daring the words to make it past her teeth.
    “Are you a writer, then?” he had said, sitting down on the concrete bench next to her, hoping that his opening line was a step beyond the horrifying “What’s your major?” She gave him a long, considering look, during which time he decided he was getting no points for originality. The girl was a writer, after all, if being a writer meant watching the world from the cool remove of the mind. He swallowed and waited, unwilling to leave, yet determined not to make any further attempts at eloquence.
    She clicked her pen shut and looked in his eyes. “Actually,” she said, “I think I’d rather be a book.”
    And when he had nodded, as if hers was the most logical statement in the world, she smiled, and Carl realized he would be sitting in that moment for the rest of his life.
     
    “What’s on for tonight?” asked Claire from the front row of the class. Carl noticed that Claire was leaning forward eagerly; there was something different about her tonight—a haircut? Clothes? Helen would know, if he asked her, but Helen was focused on Lillian.
    The counter Lillian stood behind was free of ingredients; a mixer, a rubber spatula, and several mixing bowls were all that the class could see reflected in the mirror that hung above the counter.
    “So”—Lillian’s eyes were playful—“I started you off with a pretty dramatic beginning last time, and you should be rewarded for being such good sports. Besides, fall is starting to make itself known and it seems like a good time for indulgence. Now, I want you all to tell me what you think about when I say cake.”
    “Chocolate.”
    “Frosting.”
    “Candles.”
    “Lamb cake,” said Ian.
    “Lamb cake?” asked Lillian, smiling. “What’s that, Ian?”
    Ian looked around the room and saw the others waiting, intrigued. “Well, my dad always made it for Easter. White cake shaped like a lamb, with white icing and coconut shavings.” He paused, then continued in a rush. “I hated coconut, and I thought the whole thing was stupid, but after I went away to college, all I could think about was how I wasn’t going to get any of the lamb cake. And then about a week after Easter I got a padded envelope in the mail from my dad. Inside was this thing that looked like a frosted cow patty. I called my dad and you know what he said? ‘Well, we missed you, son, so I sent you the lamb butt.’”
    The other students laughed, and then the room quieted, waiting for the next story. The woman sitting next to Carl and his wife shifted slightly in her seat.
    “Go on, Antonia,” Lillian encouraged her, and the young woman spoke up, her accent thick and warm as sunshine.
    “When I was growing up, in Italy, my family lived upstairs from a bakery. Every morning the smell of the bread baking would come up the stairs, under my door. When I came home from school, the glass cases would be full of little cakes, but they were always thin and flat, not so interesting. Sometimes, though, in the back, they would be making a big one, for a wedding.” She sat back in her seat, smiling at the memory.
    “I remember my wedding cake,” said Claire. “I was so hungry—we hadn’t eaten all day. Here was this incredible cake—layers of chocolate and whipped cream and all these curlicues of thick, smooth frosting—and they kept making us pose for pictures. I told my husband I was starving, and he took a fork and just stuck it in the side of the cake and fed me a