The church ladies brought Norm Fairbanks casseroles for four months, and when they stopped, he set off the smoke alarm twice in one week.
The first time was a Tuesday. He'd been trying to fry an egg.
He'd seen Joanie fry ten thousand eggs in fifty-four years. She'd crack it one-handed into the cast iron skillet, and it would sizzle, and she'd tip the pan and spoon a little butter over the top, and in about two minutes there would be a perfect egg on a plate in front of him with the edges crispy and the yolk still soft.
She did it while talking on the phone. She did it with a baby on her hip.
Norm put the skillet on the big burner, turned it all the way up, and went out to the barn to check on something. When he came back in, the kitchen was full of black smoke and the alarm was screaming and the egg was a small, smoking piece of charcoal welded to the iron.
The second time was a Friday. He was trying to make toast.
He didn't want to talk about the toast.
He was seventy-nine. He'd milked cows on the Fairbanks farm in East Calder, Vermont, from the time he was six years old until the day he sold the herd at seventy-two. He could fix a tractor, deliver a calf in a snowstorm, sugar four hundred taps in March, and tell you what the weather would do by the color of the sky over Burke Mountain.
He had never once, in his entire life, cooked a meal.
He hadn't needed to. His mother had cooked until he was twenty-four. Then in 1973 he'd married Joanie Hale, the prettiest girl at the Caledonia County Fair, and she'd cooked every meal for fifty-four years.
Three a day. Breakfast at five, dinner at noon, supper at six.
Pies on Saturday. A big Sunday dinner after church, for whoever turned up.
Joanie had died in March. A stroke, in the kitchen, at the stove, with a pie in the oven.
After the funeral, the women of East Calder Congregational Church had done what they always did. They brought casseroles. Ham and scalloped potatoes.
American chop suey. Shepherd's pie.
Mrs. Gilman's macaroni and cheese. Every three or four days, someone left one on his porch with a note, and Norm ate it cold out of the dish standing at the counter, and washed the dish, and left it on the porch to be picked up.
By July, the casseroles had slowed down. By August, they'd stopped. The church ladies figured he'd had time to learn.
He hadn't.
His daughter found out about the smoke alarm from the volunteer fire chief, who was her husband's cousin. She called from Burlington that night.
"Dad," she said. "You can't live on Cheerios."
"I'm not living on Cheerios. I'm living on Cheerios and bananas."
"Dad." She sighed. "The senior center in St. Johnsbury has a cooking class. On Wednesday afternoons. It's called Cooking for One. I signed you up."
"You did what?"
"It starts tomorrow. Two o'clock. If you don't go, I'm telling Mrs. Gilman, and she'll come over and cook for you herself, and talk the whole time."
Norm went.
The kitchen at the St. Johnsbury senior center was bright and clean, with four stoves and a long steel counter. There were six people in the class. Five widows, who all seemed to know each other, and Norm, who stood in the back by the door with his hands in the pockets of his barn coat.
The teacher was sixteen years old.
Her name was Hazel Crowley. She was small and thin, with a dark ponytail and a nose ring and a green apron from the culinary program at the regional tech center.
She was doing her community service hours, she explained, for her program. She had a clipboard and a box of eggs, and she looked about as nervous as Norm felt.
"Okay," she said. "Today we're going to learn to fry an egg."
The widows laughed. Norm didn't.
"I know it sounds dumb," Hazel said. "But if you can fry an egg right, you can make breakfast, and lunch, and supper. Egg sandwich. Fried rice. Egg on toast. Egg on anything." She looked around the room and found Norm in the back. "Sir? You want to go first?"
He came forward slowly.
She showed him. Medium heat, not high. A pat of butter.
Wait till it foams. Crack the egg on the counter, not the edge of the pan, so the shell doesn't go in. Let it be.
Don't poke it. Tip the pan and spoon the butter over the top.
Norm did it. His hands were shaking a little. The egg sizzled.
Two minutes later, there was a fried egg on a plate. Crispy at the edges. Yolk still soft.
Norm looked at it for a long time.
"Well," he said finally. His voice had gone rough. "I'll be darned."
He came back the next Wednesday. And the next.
Hazel taught them scrambled eggs and grilled cheese, and how to roast a chicken thigh, and how to make a pot of soup out of whatever was in the refrigerator. She was funny and patient and very bossy for sixteen.
She called Norm Mr. F. She told him he held a knife like he was going to stab a bear.
He found out she lived with her father in a trailer outside Lyndonville. He found out she wanted to go to culinary school in New York. He found out she cooked supper for her father every night, and had since she was twelve.
He didn't ask why. He figured it wasn't his business.
On the fifth Wednesday, while the widows were washing up, Hazel leaned on the counter beside him.
"Mr. F.," she said. "Can I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"What did your wife used to make on Sundays?"
Norm went very still.
Hazel saw his face change. "Sorry," she said quickly. "I just meant. My mom used to make this pot roast on Sundays, and sometimes I make it, and it helps. I thought maybe you'd want to learn something she made."
Norm didn't answer.
He took off the senior center apron, slowly, and folded it, and set it on the steel counter. Then he picked up his barn coat and walked out of the kitchen without a word, and out to his pickup in the parking lot, and drove home.