Dear Enemy

Delilah nods slowly, her eyes still wide and on me. “It does,” she says after an awkward second. I get the feeling she’s more surprised we have something in common. I’m not. Even when being around Delilah made me want to tear out of my skin just to get away from her judging eyes, I knew we were forged from the same metal.

“Why did you become a chef?”

She visibly jolts at the question, clearly not expecting it. Her palm, still on the journal, makes a slow, smooth circuit of the leather. “Aside from loving to cook?”

She’s evading, and we both know it. I hold her gaze, letting her see that I won’t hurt her here. “Aside from that, yes. You could have cooked for yourself and done something else.”

Delilah licks her upper lip. It’s a quick nervous gesture I saw her do dozens of times when we were kids. But she never was one to shirk from answering—at least not with me—and she doesn’t disappoint this time either. “I went to college because it was what I was supposed to do, you know?”

I nod. Because I did the same. Follow the track society set for me.

“Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed it. But the closer I got to graduation, the more scared and less satisfied I became. What the hell was I going to do when I got out? I felt . . . stifled. I had this urge to create . . . something.”

“Like something’s pushing against your insides, wanting to get out.”

“Yes, exactly!” Delilah’s words flow with more ease. “I asked myself, what was it that I most enjoyed? And I realized it was cooking. Food was my joy.”

“So you followed your joy.”

Her slim finger traces the edge of the journal, the one that looks almost exactly like mine. “A mentor of mine once told me that food is a commonality that binds us all. We all need to eat to survive. But in eating, creating dishes that gave us pleasure, we developed a story of our humanity as well as the story of who we are as individuals. Food is tied to so many of our memories.”

“I once read a quote that good food heals our soul.”

“The right dish certainly can.” She leans toward me, her gaze intent and bright. “Give me a memory of food that makes you happy.”

She wants to heal me with food? Strange thing is, I’m fairly certain she’s already doing that.

I answer without thought. “Grilled cheese sandwiches your mom used to make us after school.”

She blinks, pink lips parting, but recovers quickly with a warm smile. “Yes.” In a flash, she moves to the fridge and pulls out a few packs of cheese.

“You’ve been hiding cheese in there?” I say with mock outrage.

She smirks. “I’m not going to forgo cheese. You never look in this thing, do you?”

“It makes it worse if I do.”

Delilah puts the cheese on the counter, then goes about gathering bread and butter. She has a thick loaf of farm bread that she cuts in slices.

“You’re going to make me a grilled cheese? Actually cheat?”

From under the fan of her lashes, her eyes gleam. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

I fall just a little further under her spell, my walls crumbling in places I never thought they’d weaken.

“And I’m not making it,” she adds, taking out a frying pan and turning on the stove. “We are.”

I stand and stop by her side. “I can make a grilled cheese, but not like your mama’s. They always come out too dark on the bread and too cold in the center.”

“That’s because you haven’t learned the proper way.”

Together, we construct the sandwiches, using a blend of muenster, because it was what her mother favored, and provolone, because Delilah thinks it adds a deeper flavor—and liberally buttering the bread because, Delilah informs me, it’s all about the butter.

“Now,” she says, laying two sandwiches on the hot pan. “Here is where you learn that cooking involves all the senses. Taste, yes. But also sound. Listen. The butter is sizzling. No sound means it’s not cooking the right way. The pan is either too low or too hot.”

We listen to the sizzle.

“Sight,” she says. “We need to see that beautiful butter hopping and bubbling around the edges of the pan.”

Dutifully, I watch. How can I not? She is in total command.

“Smell.” She wafts her hand over the pan, letting the warm scent of browning butter and bread wash over us. “This is more important when you’re adding herbs and spices. Does the dish smell as it should? It’s something you learn on the way. Flip the sandwiches.”

I take the spatula from her and do as asked. The bread is perfectly browned.

“Feeling. You have to feel how the food is behaving. The texture of it. Now, with grilled cheese, you don’t want to cook it too fast, or the cheese won’t melt. Hear how the sound has dimmed?”