Skinny Matilda's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

Monday morning Matilda opened her cupboard and stared at the empty shelf beside her new bowls. She had cooked stew. She had cooked chicken and dumplings. Sunday was five days off, and Mr. Grumpypants would sit at her table again expecting something he hadn't tasted yet. She knew three recipes. She had used two. If she served stew again he would tap his spoon and say so. She put on the pink robe and walked to the church shop for ideas. The woman at the counter shook her head at the question. "No cookbooks came in this week. But there's a class up the road. They teach on Mondays. Costs nothing if you help wash up." Matilda followed the directions to a wooden building with pots and herbs on the porch. Dried garlic hung from the beams. A chalkboard by the door said TODAY: WILD MUSHROOM SOUP. She stopped at the step. Six people already stood inside at a long counter. Six people who would look at her. She counted to three and went in anyway. A woman in an apron waved her toward an empty spot and handed her a knife. On the counter sat a basket of mushrooms with fat caps and slender stems, browns and yellows and one red one set apart. Nobody looked at her twice. They looked at the mushrooms. The teacher walked the room and named each kind. She showed which to keep and which to leave. She poured cream into a pot. She melted butter. She said to slice thin and salt early. Matilda copied every step onto the back of a receipt. Her hand shook once and then steadied. She tasted the soup at the end from a small wooden spoon and understood why people paid for lessons. She left with the recipe in her pocket and a paper sack of the safe mushrooms the teacher pressed on her. On the walk home she planned the rest. Soup Sunday. Something with the roasting pan the Sunday after. She could come back next Monday for another lesson. The problem had a floor under it now. Sunday at six she set the pot between them and ladled the soup into two white bowls. Mr. Grumpypants leaned over his and sniffed. His eyebrows pulled down the way they did before a complaint. "What is it?" "Mushroom. I learned it Monday." He tried a spoonful. He tried another. He set the spoon down and looked at her across the table with his arms uncrossed. "You didn't cook this in the same pot as the stew." "No." "Good." He ate the whole bowl and held it out for more. She filled it. She sat down across from him and ate her own. She had not counted a stranger all week. She had counted mushrooms instead, and slices, and minutes on a timer, and none of it hurt.