Millie, the deputy director, offered her cabin in the Cuyamaca mountains for our managers’ retreat. It was early May, and the lilacs were just beginning to blossom, she told us; they would be in full bloom for the retreat in two weeks. We all knew about Millie’s lilacs. Their giddying fragrance would engulf us at the door on Monday mornings after she’d spent a weekend at the cabin, floating through the hallway from office to office. Five of us, Millie and the department heads, would go up on Thursday for a pre-retreat planning meeting; the program managers would join us Friday morning.

We decided to pool our culinary talents and each bring or make something for dinner at the cabin. We five often went out to lunch together on Mondays, more of a social than a business ritual. We would recount our weekends, what we’d done and seen, where and what we’d eaten. I suppose we considered ourselves “foodies,” which at the time—this was the ‘80s—was a badge of honor; now it’s pretentious and embarrassing. Our frequent food talk yielded many shared favorites, including a fervent fondness for garlic, which prompted Leah, the acknowledged gourmet in our midst, to suggest a garlic theme. “We’ll all be eating it, so there’s no one to offend with our garlic breath,” someone remarked during our unanimous assent.

Christine, Nadia, Leah, and I drove up Mount Cuyamaca together after lunch on that late-May Thursday, little more than an hour’s drive from our San Diego office. Millie took her car up that morning to get the cabin ready and because she would be staying over the weekend. The day was clear, mild, and sunny, the mountain air refreshing. The cabin was what I expected, homey and spacious, with a large, covered porch. It was old—I think it had been in Millie’s family for a few generations—but in good repair and well cared for. Rustic enough to be cozy, furnished comfortably, but with all the modern conveniences. The property was sheltered by pine, oak, and cedar trees; hugging the house were the lilac bushes, six-foot high clouds of purple. We smelled them as we neared the porch, the fragrance both strong and delicate, sweet and fresh.

We sat on the porch sipping tall, iced glasses of fresh lemonade that Millie made with lemons she’d brought from her house in San Diego. When we finished our business meeting, as the afternoon was waning, Nadia and Christine stretched out on lounge chairs, while Leah and I strolled in the woods. At five o’clock we gathered in the kitchen, lemonade glasses exchanged for flutes of Prosecco to toast the day. We set to work on our respective contributions to our communal meal.

Millie had put six garlic bulbs, drizzled in olive oil—one for each of us and one extra—in the oven earlier; now their bouquet filled the room as she took the pan out of the oven and loosened the foil around them, their aromatic steam released. Christine put out baskets of baguettes in fresh hunks and thin slices for the creamy garlic cloves and the tangy, oily, salty, briny, garlicky tapenade she’d made at home. Crackers and cheeses appeared—I recall a Camembert and a creamy blue—along with garlic-stuffed olives and cornichons. We could have feasted on the hors d’oeuvres alone, but there was more to come.

Their parts fulfilled, Millie and Christine turned the kitchen over to Leah, Nadia, and me. My specialty was Caesar salad. I’d mixed the dressing at home, anchovy paste mashed into several cloves of garlic, whisked with Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and olive oil, lots of black pepper. I tossed it with torn fresh, crisp romaine and home-made garlic and herb croutons. “Anyone averse to anchovies,” I warned, “speak now or I’m emptying this tin onto the salad.” Not a peep. How often, I wondered, do you find a group without at least one person grimacing at the very mention of anchovies? Leah had cooked up a pot of fresh fettucine from Assenti’s in Little Italy, which she mixed with her homemade pesto, topping the bowl with additional pine nuts, Parmesan, and fresh basil leaves. As if choreographed, she vacated the stove and Nadia took her place, melting a half-cube of butter in which she sauteed shrimp and garlic with white wine, lemon, and dried herbs, while Millie popped a tray of cheesy garlic bread under the broiler. The cabin was suffused with the pungent aroma, warm and comforting as the evening cooled. Our tastes were conditioned to connect the smell of garlic with appetizing food—it wouldn’t have occurred to us that anyone would take offense.

As we assembled at the table, Millie opened two bottles of Sangiovese, light-bodied and smooth, the perfect accompaniment. We ate and ate to moans of enjoyment and groans of satiation, while Mozart piano sonatas rippled in the background. We moved to the deck for dessert to delight in the night breezes and stars not visible in city skies, refreshing fruit sorbets and squares of bittersweet chocolate, tiny, thin-stemmed glasses of Grand Marnier.

We were pleased with ourselves and each other as the evening drew to a close. We’d had a productive meeting and a memorable meal. After hugs all around we retreated to our respective sleeping spaces, Millie in her bedroom, Nadia and Christine on the bunkbeds in Millie’s sons’ room, Leah and I on cots on the deck. “At least we’re protected against vampires,” I said as our ears picked up mysterious night sounds.

Early Friday, after coffee and leftover baguettes with butter and jam, we took a short stroll, then set up for the meeting around the redwood picnic tables in the yard, using rocks to hold papers down. We’d brought snacks for the morning, and the managers would be bringing sandwiches and salads from a deli near the office for lunch. The nine clinic managers arrived in two cars around 9 a.m. They were exuberant as they got out of the cars, inhaling the mountain air, the idyllic scene of the cabin and surrounding foliage. They made a beeline for the lilac shrubs, oohing and aahing as we had done the day before.

Roz was the first to approach the “porch. “Oh my god,” she said, “what’s that horrible smell?”

“What smell?” We sniffed the pine and other woodsy aromas, all mild and pleasant. We exchanged glances, puzzled, then sheepish. “We did have roasted garlic last night,” Millie said. Garlic bread, too. There may be some residual odor….”

“It’s everywhere. You’re all reeking of garlic!” Roz said, backing away. “It’s a good thing we’re meeting outside, because it must be unbearable inside.” She looked to the group behind her for affirmation, a few shy nods, a few turned-up noses, mostly suppressed grins and chuckles. No one else voiced an objection, but all of us—except outspoken Roz, who would stand up to anyone—were at least a little intimidated by Millie.  

We settled ourselves around the tables and got down to business. During breaks and at lunch, most of the group ventured inside—sniffing, shrugging, giggling as they did—to see the cabin and help bring out snacks, drinks and tableware. I didn’t see Roz go in, but she must have relented to use the bathroom, unless she squatted behind a tree.

First thing Monday morning I was at my desk when Roz passed by my door on the way to her office. A moment later I heard a shout, “It’s not funny!” I went into the hall and saw her standing in her doorway holding a long braid of garlic bulbs. She stormed to the kitchen and tossed it on the table, glaring at everyone as she harrumphed back to her office. Then she saw the gorgeous spray of lilacs in a tall crystal vase by her window. Her resolve cracked as the morning went on, and by lunchtime she was her cheery self, though for the rest of the day, she would mutter “I can’t believe you guys…” or “How could you?” when she passed one of our doors. We, however, were proud of our successful achievement, and at lunch that day we started to plan our next joint venture. Leah offered her Point Loma house with its enormous kitchen. “We need a theme,” Christine said. Seafood? A color? An ethnicity? Garlic would be a hard act to follow.

– Alice Lowe