prologue

• A few participants had no desire for lessons at all, arriving with gift certificates in hand as if on a forced march to certain failure; they knew their cakes would always be flat, their cream sauces filled with small, disconcerting pockets of flour, like bills in your mailbox when you had hoped for a love letter. (3)

lillian

• For Lillian's mother, every part of a book was magic, but what she delighted in most were the words themselves. Lillian's mother collected exquisite phrases and complicated rhythms, descriptions that undulated across a page like cake batter pouring into a pan, read aloud to put the words in the air, where she could hear as well as see them. (8)
• 'Oh, Lily,' her mother would say, 'listen to this one. It sounds green, don't you think?' And Lillian, who was too young to know that words were not colors and thoughts were not sounds, would listen while the syllables fell quietly through her, and she would think, This is what green sounds like. (8-9)
• Perhaps, Lillian thought, smells were for her what printed words were for others, something alive that grew and changed. Not just the smell of rosemary in the garden, but the scent on her hands after she had picked some for Elizabeth's mother, the aroma mingling with the heavy smell of chicken fat and garlic in the oven, the after-scent on the couch cushions the next day. The way, ever after, Elizabeth was always part of rosemary for Lillian, how Elizabeth's round face had crinkled up into laughter when Lillian had pushed the small, spiky branch near her nose. (11)
• ...Lillian had ignored all twinges of loyalty and stood, watching the butter melt across the pan like the farthest reach of a wave sinking into the sand, then the flour, at first a hideous, clumping thing destroying the image until it was stirred and stirred, Margaret's mother's hand over Lillian's on the wooden spoon when she wanted to smash the clumps, moving instead slowly, in circles, gently, until again the image was changed by the milk, the sauce expanding to contain the liquid and Lillian thought each time that the sauce could hold no more, that the sauce would break into solid and liquid, but it never did. At the last minute, Margaret's mother raised the cup of milk away from the pot, and Lillian looked at the sauce, an untouched snowfield, its smell the feeling of quiet at the end of an illness, when the world is starting to feel gentle and welcoming once again. (11-12)
• 'Lillian, each person's heart breaks in its own way. Every cure will be different -- but there are some things we all need. Before anything else, we need to feel safe. You did that for her.' (23-24)
• At home, Lillian opened the bag and inhaled aromas of orange, cinnamon, bittersweet chocolate, and something she couldn't quite identify, deep and mysterious, like perfume lingering in the folds of a cashmere scarf. (24-25)

claire

• Set between the straight lines of a bank and the local movie theater, the restaurant was oddly incongruous, a moment of lush colors and gently moving curves, like an affair in the midst of an otherwise orderly life. Passerby often reached out to run their hands along the tops of the lavender bushes that stretched luxuriantly above the cast-iron fence, the soft, dusty scent remaining on their fingers for hours after. (37)
• That was how it worked at Lillian's -- nothing ever went quite the way you planned. The menu would change without notice, disconcerting those who craved familiarity, yet who later admitted that the meal they ended up eating was somehow exactly what they had wanted. (38)
• ...yet by then she was so infatuated with James that it didn't matter. The ring James gave her, before the wine or food had even arrived, slid onto her finger like his hands moving across her skin. They toasted with water and drank their champagne later, in bed. (40)
• Even those few times, she had been with people who knew her as a member of a nuclear family, a role as much a part of her identity as the color of her hair or the shape of her hands. When was the last time she had been someplace where no one knew who she was? ... How strange, she thought. These people here, they looked at her and thought she was alone, she whose children were with her even in her dreams. (42-43)
• 'If you think about it,' she went on, 'every time we prepare food we interrupt a lie cycle. We pull up a carrot or kill a crab -- or maybe just stop the mold that's growing on a wedge of cheese. We make meals with those ingredients and in doing so we give life to something else. It's a basic equation, and if we pretend it doesn't exist, we're likely to miss the other important lesson, which is to give respect to both sides of the equation. (45)
• She kept thinking the waves would slow or break for a moment, but they didn't one after another until there was nowhere left to go but in, to dive down and hope for air on the other side, but there was no air, no way out, just a desperate reaching and grasping until finally she felt something deep inside her -- not physical, not emotional, simply her -- break into pieces. And into the arms of that cracked-apart person that had been Claire, they placed a baby and a love came out of her, through the pieces, that she didn't even know was possible. (56)
• The meat touched her tongue and the taste ran through her, full and rich and complicated, dense as a long, deep kiss. She took another bite and felt her feet settle into the floor and the rest of her flow into a river of ginger and garlic and lemon and wine. She stood, even when that bite, and the next and the next were gone, feeling the river wind its way to her fingers, her toes, her belly, the base of her spine, melting all the pieces of her into something warm and golden. She breathed in, and in that one, quiet moment felt herself come back together again. (60)

carl

• 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 int hat moment for the rest of his life. (66)
• When the dance was over, he kept her close to him, her hand in his like a flower he had picked. She bent her head back slightly to look up at him. 'You're home,' he said. She smiled and he leaned down to kiss her. (71)
• Wherever she wrote, whatever she did, she was his Helen, and Carl loved her as completely in the silvery light of the Northwest as he had on the beach in northern California where they had honeymooned. Helen, in turn, filled his life, and just when he would least expect it in those first years, there in his lunch he would find a Ding Dong. On those days, he left work early." (74)
  • if you're thinking about the Ding Dong. don't worry about it. read the book and it'll make sense :)
• Carl found himself observing the young couples who came to his office, fascinated that people would spend hundreds of dollars a year insuring against the chance that someone might slip on their front steps in ice that rarely made an appearance in the coastal Northwest, yet go to bed each night uninsured against the possibility that their marriage might be stolen the next day. Perhaps, he thought, imagination fails when the possibilities are so obvious. (79)
• And slowly, as he waited for illumination, what had happened each day -- a fight with a daughter or son, the first crocuses int he garden, Helen's embarrassment over a haircut -- began to pile up against what he could not imagine, until the secret she couldn't keep became one more part of their lives, one mores tick in the nest they had built of moments and promises, the first time he had seen her, the second time they had fought, his hand touching her hair as she nursed a baby. Carl was a bird-watcher; he knew that not all sticks in a nest are straight. (81)
• The students found themselves leaning forward in their chairs to greet the smells and the memories that came with them. Breakfast cake baking on a snow day off from school, all the world on holiday. The sound of cookie sheets clanging against the metal oven racks. The bakery that was the reason to get up on cold, dark mornings; a croissant placed warm in a young woman's hand on her way to the job she never meant to have. Christmas, Valentine's birthdays, flowing together, one cake after another, lit by eyes bright with love. (82-83)

antonia

• It was impossible to look at the house without erasing the years and the houses around it, to imagine it set in the midst of a vast track of land, gazing out across a long, rolling slope of green to the water and the mountains beyond. A home built by a man besotted, for a woman to whom he had promised the world. (89)
• Antonia walked to the fireplace and touched the soot gently with her fingers, bending her head to the opening and inhaling deeply, waiting for the smell of smoke and sausages, the sound of juices dripping and hissing on the hot wood below. (91)
• Her grandmother's cooking area was small -- a tiny sink, no dishwasher, a bit of a counter -- but out of it came tortellini filled with meat and nutmeg and covered in butter and sage, soft pillows of gnocchi, roasted chickens that sent the smell of lemon and rosemary sliping through the back roads of the small town, bread that gave a visiting grandchild a reason to run to the kitchen on cold mornings and nestle next to the fireplace, a hunk of warm, newly baked breakfast in each hand. ... Over the course of the day, the heat from the fireplace would stretch across the kitchen toward the warmth of the stove until the room filled with the smells of wood smoke and meat that had simmered for hours. Even as a little girl, Antonia knew that when the two sides of the kitchen met, it was time for dinner. (93-94)
• Ian held the serving dish while Helen carefully placed on each white plate five squares of ravioli no thicker than paper, their edges crinkled, their surfaces kissed with melted butter, scattered with bits of shallots and hazelnuts, like rice thrown at a wedding. ... The smell from their plates rose with the last bits of steam, butter releasing whispers of shallots and hazelnuts. Antonia raised a bite to her mouth. A quick crunch of hazelnut, and then the pasta gave way easily to her teeth, the pumpkin melting across her tongue, warm and dense, with soft, spicy undercurrents of nutmeg. It felt like going home, and she relaxed into her chair with a sigh of happiness. (103)
• Antonia noticed that for the moment Tom's expression had lost the sadness that clung to him like a signature. (105)
• The linoleum in the room in front of them had been ripped up, revealing a fir floor underneath, splotched with glue, but a warm red-gold all the same. A small table covered with a yellow Provençal tablecloth was set like a secret in the bay window; an iron pot full of water boiled cheerfully on the huge black stove. In the center of the room the wooden prep table was covered with a snowstorm of flour anda series of red ceramic bowls, and in the fireplace, on a grill set over a glowing bed of fragrant sticks, marinated chicken and eggplant sizzled and cooked. (109)

tom

• On the counter, cans of tomatoes, a canister of flour, a paper-wrapped package, sat ready for the night's lesson. It was like coming home after a long day, opening a door to the certainty that someone was there, had always been there. (113)
• Something about Lillian's voice touched everyone who heard it; it left you feeling protected, forgiven for things you hadn't even figured out you had done. When Lillian told you to enter a room, you did, if only to be near her voice. (114)
• The first time he had kissed her -- it had taken six weeks -- was over hamburgers, two inches thick, juices running. ... As he brought his face up to hers, he wondered how it was that the distance between arm and mouth could take such a sweet infinity to travel. (120)
• The flavor opened like a flower across his tongue, soft and sweet. ... The meat was a whisper of salt against the dense, sweet fruit. It felt like summer in a hot land, the smooth skin in the curve between Charlie's strong thumb and index finger. The wine afterward was crisp, like coming up to the surface of water to breathe. (125)
• He remembered, as if from a long way away, a time when the world was huge; now it seemed as if he could fit all the world into such a small space -- a restaurant, a house, a table, the hem of Charlie's skirt as it brushed against her ankle. (126)
• Every lunch, every dinner, he returned to a woman who seemed to draw into her body the essence of the food she was learning to make, becoming deeper and more complicated and exciting. (132)
• He found himself yearning for days of grocery lists and difficult clients, things you could complain about because you know they would eventually go away. (137)
• As he went down the stairs he could see Charlie's profile, her cheekbones, sharp in the light, the inch or so of hair that was beginning to grow back along her skull. She had been worried about her looks, she who had been the object of so many appreciative glances, and yet her beauty had not so much changed with the loss of her hair and breasts and all the weight, but distilled, intensified -- so pure and personal he sometimes felt as if he should ask permission to look at her. (137)
• He went to the grocery store without wondering if she would be there when he returned, the churning in his stomach was replaced by a more certain and deeper ache. She was nowhere and everywhere, and he couldn't stop looking. (141-142)
• So one night a group of friends gathered and ate dinner on the beach that Charlie loved -- slices of dripping cantaloupe from the old fruit vendor who cried when he heard the news, fresh fish marinated in olive oil and tarragon and grilled over a beachfront fire, chunks of thick-crusted bread from her favorite bakery in town, a spice cake Tom made from Charlie's own recipe. ... What only Tom knew was that each of them carried a tiny bit of her home with them that night, baked into the cake they had eaten. (142)

chloe

• Chloe began again, slowly. She felt the ball of dough shifting back and forth, back and forth. Gradually, she felt the shape opening up, spreading out like another hand, warm from her own, slipping across the slim space between her palms. She quickened her pace. The rhythm was soothing, the sound of her hands like raindrops falling down a gutter. (166)
• It was like a picture, Chloe thought. A recipe without words. She stood still, sensing the kitchen around her, feeling the energy the room held, would hold until the next afternoon when the cooks and bussers and patrons arrived and it would again become something more than the accumulation of its bustle and ingredients, and the food they cooked would become laughter and romance, warm and bright and golden. (169)
• 'But you are beautiful,' Chloe insisted. / Antonia laughed softly. 'I used to say that to my mother all the time. She would be standing in the kitchen or digging in the garden, and I would think she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. I was not a pretty teenager. And do you know what she would say to me?' ... / 'She would say, ' Life is beautiful. Some people just remind you of that more than others.'' (171)

isabelle

• Isabelle had always thought of her mind as a garden, a magical place to play as a child .. Every year the garden grew larger, the paths longer and more complicated. Meadows of memories. ... She had always considered that one of the luxuries of growing older would be the chance to wander through the garden that had grown while she wasn't looking. She would sit on a bench and let her mind take every path, tend every moment she hadn't paid attention to, appreciate the juxtaposition of one memory against another. (179)
• It made Isabelle wonder if rhythms could hold stories within them, if movements could jog memories the way a smell or sight could. Perhaps there were pathways in the air, created by her hands over years of relating anecdotes, waiting to take her back to stories she no longer remembered. (181)
• In her memories, it seemed Edward was always in a doorway, not quite there. As if she were the doorframe and the world were on either side. He wasn't leaving that time, although he would, later. When she was honest with herself, she would know he had always been on his way, either to or from her. Even after he left, he was on his way back, but by then she was gone, too, so light without the weight of his gaze upon her that she dreamed sometimes she was flying. (182)
• And as she studied each sculpture, she saw something else. It wasn't obvious -- a line like an arm outstretched, a slope of a lower back, the hollow at the base of a neck where the collarbones meet -- not a part of a person, rather the essence, the small vulnerable place where the soul lived. (183)
• It was only later, after her father was dead and she had children herself, that Isabelle realized that parents most often know when their children are stalling to hold off the end of something they want to hold on to. When she realized that there are many kinds of love and not all of them are obvious, that some wait, like presents in the back of a closet, until you are able to open them. (188)
• Isabelle listened, watching the muscles move in her son's biceps and back as he ripped shingles from the roof and threw them down to her, wondering where the soft, round arms of her baby boy had gone, marveling at the beauty of her son standing above her. ... 'You'll make some girl very happy.' / 'There is one,' he told her, a little embarrassed. And then he had sat down on the edge of the roof and talked for an hour while Isabelle craned up at him and never once mentioned the crick in her neck because it was too precious to listen to her boy telling her with such beautiful naiveté about being in love, when all he had known was parents who hadn't been by the time he was born. (192)
• 'You know,' she said, holding up a forkful, 'I am starting to think that maybe memories are like this dessert. I eat it, and it becomes a part of me, whether I remember it later or not.' (195)
• 'Our bodies carry our memories of them, in our muscles, in our skin, in our bones. My children are right here.' She pointed to the inside curve of her elbow. 'Where I held them when they were babies. Even if there comes a time when I don't know who they are anymore, I believe I will feel them here. / 'Where do you hold your wife?' she asked Tom. / Tom looked at Isabelle, his eyes full. He put his right hand to the side of his own face, then took it away and readjusted the shape slightly. / 'That is her jawline,' he said softly, running his left index finger along the half-circle at the base of his hand, then along the top curve where his hand met his fingers. 'And here is her cheekbone.' (196-197)

helen

• Helen watched the two walk up the path between the blue-gray lavender bushes -- and the hand, the movement, the longing behind it, struck her with the intensity of a perfume she had long ago stopped wearing, drifting across a room she never intended to traverse. (202)
• But set amid the fecundity of late-summer melons and gauzy lettuce, swollen red peppers and plump navel oranges, he seemed simply beautiful in comparison, and any desire on her part more aesthetic than passionate. She watched his long fingers wander across the vegetables, reaching toward an onion, some carrots, opting for a bouquet of leeks. His eyes, when he looked up and saw her watching him, were infinitely brown and kind and his hair flowed in ill-kempt waves that he needed to cut but she immediately hoped he wouldn't, an almost maternal feeling -- a rationalization that allowed her to step closer to the ocean that would surely soak her shoes. (203)
• And Helen, who had begun to feel as if her life was like the daily turning of pages filled with other people's writing, felt as if she suddenly had come upon an illustration. (204)
• She looked at him watching her and she realized ... that for her somehow Carl had always been with her, in her mind, in her body, in some unconscious but completely tangible way, through all the kisses and moans and explorations of her affair, just as he was when she gardened in the yard or cut her toenails sitting alone on the edge of the bathtub. After almost twenty years she simply carried him, a part of her, like blood or bones or dreams. ... And in that moment, Helen knew exactly what the pain of her leaving would look like, how it would wash across his face and turn his eyes a gray that would never exactly leave. / I would kill anyone who did that to him, she thought, and realized how completely that was true and that she could never do it herself. (206)
• 'If you live in your senses, slowly, with attention, if you use your eyes and your fingertips and your taste buds, then romance is something you'll never need a greeting card to make you remember.' (209)
• In the mornings they woke to songbirds and church bells, then walked across the crunch of small white rocks in the courtyard of their bed and breakfast to one of the round green metal tables set under a linden tree. They poured thick black coffee from one silver pot and foaming hot milk from another into wide white cups that warmed their hands as they drank. They ate croissants that melted in their fingertips, scattering crumbs that disappeared among the rocks, only to be found by the songbirds after they had left. (212)
• And finally-- the sound of two pairs of pajama-clad feet coming to their bed early on a Christmas morning. Too small and, of course, too early. Carl's low, deep voice welcoming the toddlers into the warm circle of their two bodies, her arms reaching to enclose the sweet smell of her grandchildren, her hand touching Carl's face. And after, her thoughts too large for sleep, as she lay and watched them while Christmas morning came in through the windows. (219)

ian

• The only time Ian had ever been scolded as a child ... was the time when he had snuck up to the attic while his mother and father were talking one evening and painted his hands so he could carry the smell with him, thinking it would bring him the elation he saw in his mother. ... his mother... set him up with his own easel in her studio, where for years he had worked beside her... until he realized that other people never saw on the paper what had been in his mind. (225-226)
• She spoke so confidently, as if a warm bath was something you could turn on any faucet to find. Perhaps, he thought, for her it was. Listening to her, Ian realized taht he had spent his life in search of exactly what she had stepped out of. He was going to tell her this, but he stopped. Her face was changing expressions like sun moving over water, and he realized that more than telling her what he thought, he wanted to hear what she would say, wanted to watch her hands move in the air like sparrows. (235-236)
• He stopped, embarrassed. He realized he sounded like someone he knew, and then realized he was talking to her. (240)
• More than anyone he knew, Antonia carried these things with her, in the million sweet and careful rituals that still made up her life, no matter what country she was in. He saw it in the way she cut bread, or drank wine, in the whimsical tower she had made out of the ripped-up linoleum tiles, just for the joy of it, or perhaps for the expression on his face when he returned to the big old kitchen and saw it, a friendly welcome, a moment of creativity in the middle of a hot and dirty project. Antonia made celebrations of the things he had always dismissed as moments to be rushed through on the way to something more important. Being around her, he found even everyday experiences were deeper, nuanced, satisfaction and awareness slipped in between the layers of life like love notes hidden in the pages of a textbook. (243)
• Ian slid his finger along the edge of the tiramisù, bringing it to his mouth. The texture was warm, creamy and soft, like lips parting beneath his own, the taste utterly lacking in precision, luxurious and urgent, mysterious and comforting. Ian stood in the kitchen, waiting for Antonia, every sense in his body awake and completely alive, and thought that if the stars were suddenly to fall in a great, glorious burst into his kitchen, he would hardly be surprised. (246-247)