I was concerned about hiding in drawers all the many little tools I use a hundred times a day, from measuring spoons to whisks, mixer attachments to fish-bone pullers, because I could see myself getting very frustrated with the time lost opening them, closing them, keeping them orderly. As I stood in the kitchen trying to figure out how I would solve this, my eye hit upon an unmatched pair of brass shelf-supports sitting in the corner, beautiful pieces that Michael had found at our friend Magaly’s second-hand shop. I picked up one and set it on end on the raised shelf at the back of the counter-top, right near the stove. Then I hung measuring spoons, whisks, skewers and tongs on its various levels. I set the other one up on the other side of the stove and did the same. They looked gorgeous without being cluttered. When Michael came in and saw them he said, ‘They’re perfect.’
I’d come up with a schedule for cooking classes, thinking it would be good to hold the first one in June, the beginning of summer when produce is at its most gorgeous, gardens are fresh and growing, markets are taking on their festive summer air. In order to publicize the classes, I did a mailing to all of our lunch guests, to editors I’d worked with over the years, and to various other friends, colleagues and acquaintances who constituted my nascent mailing list. This must have been in February, and I figured that by June I would be well settled in the kitchen, accustomed to where everything was, ready to teach and share. I asked a young American woman who had worked with me before if she would come again for two months to help me settle into the kitchen and do the class. I planned out the schedules.
With the weeks planned and the possibility of people actually coming to take classes, I assessed my cooking equipment. I have a great deal of utensils, but I reckoned I would need more knives and more things like vegetable peelers and melon-ball makers, stiff plastic scrapers and wooden spoons, measuring cups and spoons. I would also need more cooking pans and baking sheets and more wine glasses, and I would need to find beautiful aprons and a multitude of tea towels to match.
I investigated all of the hotels and a bed and breakfast in the area to determine which were best for my ‘guests’. I settled on four places. My favourite hotel is a rambling place in the country, with charming bedrooms and a lush garden just outside the limits of Louviers, in a village called Le Haye le Comte. The most convenient, however, is a hotel in the town, five minutes on foot from our house. It is very comfortable, and it is where most people choose to stay.
I have had to work with the people at this hotel, whose attitude reflects that of shopkeepers I used to meet when I first moved to Paris twenty years ago. Those were the days when you walked into a shop and were greeted with hostility, as though your very presence was an insult, an affront. The people who run the hotel were the same. Though they agreed on a special price for anyone who reserved through me, every additional request – whether it was a reservation for two double rooms, a faxed reservation confirmation, an unlocked front door on Sunday afternoon so guests could get into the hotel, or whatever – was met with almost laughable rudeness and hostility. I suggested to the owner that we meet, thinking that if there was personal contact it would melt the ice, but she brushed me off, telling me that her assistant took care of everything. One would have thought she was the manager of Le Bristol in Paris the way she acted, though I’ve had better luck there. I spoke with the assistant who wasn’t much better. I couldn’t work it out. I sent more than thirty people to them in the first year, all of whom stayed for five days at a time. I knew they were very busy with business groups, but I also knew that they liked having the business I sent their way. I asked a well-placed friend if he knew them, and if he could help me out. ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure if I can help. He – the owner – is all right, but his wife, who takes care of the hotel, is awful, just awful.’ When I heard that, I figured there was little hope.
I haven’t pursued it any further because there has been a perceptible thaw which, in this case, amounts to enormous progress. I still haven’t had a formal meeting with the owners, but I don’t care if I do. What I care about is that everyone who stays there has a good experience and thankfully, thus far, that has been the case.
Sometimes guests choose to stay in a charming bed and breakfast in the village of Heudreville, a ten-minute trip by car. Run by a friendly and energetic woman who takes great pride in fine linens and homemade jams for breakfast, it is a little spot of country finery in the midst of a charming village.
Michael and I had discussed the dates of the first classes, thinking it was possible. But May came and he was still working in the kitchen. It looked nearly finished to me, but he said there was a long list of things to finish. By mid-May I knew that it was unrealistic to hold a class, yet I had a small group signed up. What should I do? I tossed and turned over it, then one morning when I opened up my emails I found a message from Marion, who now handled the organization of the school as well as the lunches. ‘They can’t come,’ she wrote. ‘One of them is ill so none of them are coming.’ I was relieved to hear it wasn’t a life-threatening illness, but at any other time this would have been disastrous. In the circumstances, though, and as sorry as I was that they were kept from coming, I heaved a sigh of relief. Someone was watching over me.
By this point I was getting impatient to move into the kitchen. My appetite was whetted for more space, functionality, ease. I needed to increase my productivity, too, as I had deadlines looming. How could I speed the process along?
I offered to help, suggested we hire someone to help, said I didn’t mind if all the details weren’t finished. Michael resisted and calmly went about his work. One day I walked into the kitchen to find him on his knees, calmly, carefully polishing the twenty-two brass drawer-handles we’d gone to great lengths to order. I stood there watching, realizing this was, in part, keeping me from moving into the kitchen. I asked him why he was polishing them. ‘Because they’re too shiny, they’ll look too new and the rest of the kitchen is burnished and comfortable looking,’ he said.
I left him to his polishing, and went and cried. I was convinced, then, that I would never move into the kitchen; the cooking school would never happen; Michael would always have one more detail to attend to, calmly, as if nothing but time stretched out before him.
Michael finished the series of drawer-handles, and we never said another word about them until many years later, when we could laugh about it. I had learnt, through the process of creating the kitchen, that Michael becomes so intensely involved in projects that he forgets real life is going on around him. I had seen his sense of aesthetics and perfection dictate that all drawer-handles be burnished in exactly the same way. He is right about them in one way – it’s a tiny detail that makes a difference. But the alternative would have been all right, too. After all, life is a series of compromises, isn’t it?
Michael finally pronounced the kitchen ready. I was so excited, and so nervous too. Michael had given two years of his life to creating this beautiful kitchen; we’d made many compromises, we’d argued about it, we’d changed it many times on its way to completion. When it was finished it had to work, and I had to love it. The pressure was enormous. It’s interesting how one’s basic self is challenged by something so insignificant as a kitchen remodel. I feared having to change my cooking habits, having to put things in drawers instead of on shelves or on the walls, yet I had agreed upon a ‘tidier’, more elegant kitchen. The idea of change made me very anxious, as I’ve based a lifetime of cooking and a career on my swift, sure movements in kitchens where everything is out and accessible. Then I stopped myself. I vowed to loosen up.
I put off the actual move until the American woman I’d hired joined us. She was going to be helping me test recipes and I wanted her to know from the start where everything was stored.
After she’d settled in we got to work hauling boxes and filling drawers