By Dawn Dennison

We look at the frozen bread every time I go over there to make her dinner. Four loaves of sunflower whole wheat baked by her husband in the weeks before he died, along with four plastic tubs of soup. "They’re getting freezer burned," I’ll tell her. "He made them so he could take care of you. You need to let him."

"It’s too hot to eat soup," she’ll say.

It’s the same with her answering machine. I’m not the only one who hangs up on the third ring. (He answers on the fourth.) Only salespeople leave messages now.

"Look." I hold up an aluminum to-go container. "Dom sent smoked duck."

"Red or white?" she asks, pulling wine glasses from the rack. I rummage through the vegetable drawer and come up with asparagus, rabe, and red peppers. "Open white," I tell her. I’m still in what she calls my chef suit. I tend to give orders when I’m dressed like this. "Sauté these in olive oil and butter and then reduce some white wine…"

"I know, I know," she says. "Go change your clothes, I think I can handle it."

In the six months since Doug died, she’s progressed from watching me eat, to eating, to cooking with me. I call her Susan, but only since his death. She’s been Mrs. Anderson to me for 15 years, since I was 10 and became best friends with her daughter, Beth, when they moved across the street. I spent part of every day of my teenage life in this house. I know her kitchen like it’s my own.

I unload my armful of vegetables on the ancient chopping block that sits in the middle of the kitchen. I drape myself over it and wrap my arms around the soft, gorgeous wood. If it weren’t for the fact that it weighs 800 pounds, it would be the one thing I saved in case of fire.

It belongs to me. One day last fall Doug asked me to come over. He met me at the door with lemon oil, rags, and fine grit sandpaper then solemnly led me into the kitchen where we both stood bawling as he told me he wanted me to have it. It came from his grandparents’ farmhouse in Minnesota. It’s four feet thick and five feet long, made from one piece of wood. Together, we sanded out knife marks and cleaned and oiled it. He told me about early mornings spent with his grandfather sitting on low stools around the chopping block drinking coffee and sugar. His grandfather ate a raw onion every morning, just like an apple. He also told me about later, after college, after his grandparents died and how driving this huge hunk of wood from Minnesota to D.C. made the front of his station wagon sit up so high he couldn’t see the lines on the road. "I’ve caught you hugging my cutting board, lady," he said, "and I’ve seen it make you cry. I want it to live with you now." It was the last thing we ever did together.

Susan hands me a glass of wine, a gesture that used to make me both wince and smile. When we were in school, Beth and I stole a lot of alcohol from this house. Once, unable to locate the flask that my older brother gave us, we emptied out a shampoo bottle and filled it with whatever looked fullest in the liquor cabinet. We drank this at the corner, waiting for the bus, mouths foaming vodka and strawberry Herbal Essence. Not long after that Mrs. Anderson asked us to stop drinking at school—instead to stay at their house on Friday nights, where we were allowed a half carafe of watered down wine. "The way the French drink it," she assured us. We’d accessorize or conversation with ooh la la’s and mais oui’s, wearing Mr. Anderson’s underwear on our heads for berets, and smoking white bic pens.

This puny wine was consumed during and after lavish meals she made for us. Even on the rare occasion that I had a date, I ate with them before I went out. As the food editor for the Washington Post, she had access to every chef in the city, which meant that she also had access to every purveyor. In this kitchen I ate softly perfumed scrambled eggs that had slept in their shells all night, snugged up against a truffle, and I stood at the sink sucking juice out of crawfish. She showed me how to properly butcher a chicken and that kneading bread dough is one of life’s most sensual and earthly occupations. She taught me more about balance and layering of flavors than I could have learned from culinary school. She taught me how to bake and it’s now how I make my living. She indulged me with cookbooks, tart pans, pastry bags, luxurious butter from France, and for my 16^th birthday, the torch that I still use for crème brulee.

Now I make her dinner every Friday night. I start work early that day, and get to leave at six or seven. I make the pasta and desserts at Dom’s, a fancy Italian restaurant in Adams Morgan. Ask most people who cook for a living what they like to do to unwind after work, and they’ll probably say, "Cook." At the funeral I promised Beth, who lives in Germany with her army helicopter pilot husband, that I would cook for Susan at least once a week for the first year after Doug’s death. I picked Fridays because of what they meant to me in the past. I’ve been with Dom long enough that he indulges me. Friday nights off in the restaurant business is unheard of.

When Beth turned 13, Susan and Doug took us and three of our friends to 29 Jefferson, which still is one of the finest restaurants in Georgetown. I had never eaten in a restaurant before. Susan sat next to me and guided me through that night with such subtlety that I didn’t realize my hand was being held until years later, when I ate there again and relived that night in my head. As our salads were placed in front of us, and she caught me contemplating the forks, she asked, "I wonder how it came to be that you start from the outside and work your way in?" Then she winked at me. She kindled my need for the kind of warmth created by the simple act of sitting at a table and sharing a meal. Which is why I love working at this loud, large, sweet Italian man’s restaurant. We are food junkies, food enablers, completely addicted to a certain look that some people get when you set before them a meal you’ve made.

Anyway, Dom takes very good care of me and sends me home with something wonderful to cook for Susan on Fridays. He usually sneaks a bottle of wine into my backpack as I leave. I think he has a little crush on her.

When I come downstairs she’s finishing the fettuccine and packing up plastic dinnerware while we wait for the sauce to reduce. In the summer we usually eat on my boyfriend Charlie’s boat. It’s docked on the Potomac, outside of Georgetown. Often, we just sit on the boat and eat, but sometimes, like tonight, we cruise out to the edge of National Airport, where we drop anchor and watch the planes land. The approach runway starts just off the water, and the planes fly over us so close that you can read the numbers on the cockpit. The sound is overwhelming, the kind of noise you feel in your gut. The rush of air as they pass over makes little waves that rock the boat. It’s pretty crowded here on weekends, but on Friday we usually have the place to ourselves. Charlie took me plane-watching on one of our first dates.

Charlie is in a ska band and he gets home later than I do. Restaurant people date other restaurant people or musicians. It’s because of similar schedules. He doesn’t think I’m lazy when I sleep until noon and I’m not suspicious of his whereabouts at two in the morning. I prefer musicians to restaurant workers because I’d rather sleep with the smell of marijuana than kitchen grease. He says I smell like chocolate cake. He also makes me huge breakfasts while I practice guitar in bed. A restaurant guy would smoke a cigarette in bed and want to go out for breakfast.

Susan and I have a little plane watching ritual. We eat our dinner and she asks me if there is pot on the boat. There is always pot on the boat—very good pot. Charlie is the only white guy in a band full of Jamaicans. We share one joint, and then read poetry to each other. We are like an old married couple, our routine is so routine. Sometimes she paints my toenails while I read to her. I do yoga while she reads to me. Tonight she’s asked me to read Donald Hall’s "Without". We tried to read it together a month after Doug’s death, but we couldn’t get through it. These poems, about the death of his wife are still too close to home, but I always bring it along. It lives at the top on the stack of books we carry with us in a big canvas bag.

I begin to read and by the fourth poem, it’s clear that my toenails will go unpainted. We’ve placed the vinyl seat cushions on the floor of the boat and a small lantern is hanging from the entrance to the galley. We have not noticed a plane for 20 minutes. I am half-wrapped around Susan, one leg over hers, and one arm underneath her, holding the book over our heads. I can tell she is crying, even though she is one of those silent criers. I feel that this is almost cruel, to keep reading. When I was about ten and my youngest brother was just learning to walk, he used to follow me everywhere. Once, when he followed me into my room, I pushed him down on the floor into my closet. Every time he got up I pushed him down again. I must have pushed him dozens of times, and it gave me such a perverse thrill every time I shoved that huge, unwavering love to the ground. I could have done it all day, but finally he gave up and just lay there on my shoes.

I’d like to think if Susan can just stay with me through this, I can help her over to some other side. It eventually gets to me, too, and I put down the book and lay my head on her shoulder. I hold her hand while we lay there. I make soothing sounds to both of us.

I feel it before I see it coming. I do not duck. She pulls my mouth up to hers and I am kissing Beth’s mom. I don’t stop kissing her because I don’t want to talk about it. It’s that same feeling I have when I know I’m dreaming and I’m aware that I’m about to wake up, so I press myself deeper into the dream. I think I can’t open my eyes for the same reason. Kissing her mouth is the only new thing. The rest of her is familiar and easily navigated. But her mouth—I keep thinking this is what it’s like to kiss me. I trace the muscle that starts just under the point of her shoulder blade, travels from the back to the front of her ribcage and ends about a hand’s distance below her breast. I feel that her right forearm is bigger than her left from tennis; that her belly is slightly soft, from babies.

She is having no trouble finding her way around me. Everything’s gone liquid, except for the burn in the center of me, which I imagine is audible, until I realize it’s the approach of a jet. I almost hear my heart above the rumble, and lose myself to her fingers just as 350 tons of screaming 747 powers over, only 40 feet above me. I forget she’s there for a second. Then I open my eyes and tell her, "The next plane’s yours."

It’s past midnight when we pull up the anchor and head to the dock.

We go back to her house, where I will sleep in Beth’s old room because I’ve been sleeping in Beth’s room on Friday nights since I was 11. We unpack the car and I do the dishes while she drinks scotch on the back porch. I hug her goodnight in the hallway, just like always, and she says she’s going to finish the rest of the book without me. Charlie has a key and will let himself in around 3 a.m. I think I will lay awake for the rest of the night, but I fall into such a deep sleep that I don’t feel him come to bed. I don’t hear anything until the next morning when Susan knocks on the door and brings in a tray of breakfast. Coffee, orange juice, and toast--sunflower whole wheat with strawberry jam.

Dawn Dennison is a baker and horse trainer in the mountains above Boulder, Colorado.  She started writing a year ago, thanks to a writing workshop offered in her town.  She is thinking about becoming a yoga teacher, as she is extremely flexible.