“I’ll be okay. Have a good night.”
“Good night, sweetie. I’m proud of you.”
My stomach gurgles menacingly as I hang up the phone. I go to the computer and check my e-mail. There is a note from Gillian.
Hey, Mel.
Been crazy with work, but it is paying off. They made me a partner! Of course it is going to mean more travel and responsibility, so I’ll have to postpone my visit this spring. Maybe I’ll be able to get there in the fall. I know you understand, especially since I was just there a couple months ago.
Hope the store is good, got to run!
Cheers,
G
Gilly. I’m so proud of her. And so disappointed that she isn’t coming to visit. She keeps offering to fly me in to visit her in London, but I’m too mortified at not being able to afford the trip myself, and too scared to leave the store for any length of time. We were never as close when she got older as we were when we had our secret mac-and-cheese club. In high school she got popular, and I got fatter. I went away for college, and when I came back for law school, we barely knew each other. Her consistent dislike of Andrew solidified the distance between us for a long time, and we only really reconnected when Mom got sick, getting to know each other again and finding reasons to bond. By the time Mom died, things were pretty good between us, but she and Andrew never really got along, so we kept our tentative newfound relationship to lunches or Sunday brunches. When she got transferred to London, we began communicating almost entirely through e-mail. When Andrew and I split, she flew in to help me move, which was probably the nicest thing she ever did for me. Our first night in my new condo, surrounded by the disaster of my circumstances, she made a family-size box of macaroni and cheese, and we ate it sitting on the floor, in the middle of my messy life.
Gilly—
Honey, I’m so proud of you! I know how hard you’ve worked for that partnership, and I know that you deserve it. I totally understand about the visit, and while I’m of course disappointed, I’m behind you. Go get ’em! Come when you can, I miss you, kiddo. When you get a chance, give me a call to tell me all the details. I want to hear all about it. And everything else. Things here are fine, the store is doing pretty well, and my place is finally feeling like home. You won’t recognize it when you come! If I wasn’t such an idiot I would send you pics but I haven’t figured out how to get them out of my new digital camera and into my computer yet. ☺
Love you, hope to talk to you soon.
Mel
I get out my notebook and begin planning tomorrow. Because no matter what happens, whether we are ready for it or not, there is always tomorrow.
MEAT LOAF
My paternal grandmother was an indifferent cook. Not bad, the food tasted good and was nutritious, but was prepared with little joy, and there was no passion in the experience for her. She cooked because it was her responsibility to do so, because people needed feeding. She had a repertoire of exactly seven regular meals—one for every day of the week—one fancy meal for special occasions, and the basic holiday staples. Thursday night was meat loaf night, and the night Gilly and I spent with her and my grandfather to give my mom a night off. Even though she didn’t love to cook, and wasn’t enormously creative when she did, she did make an effort on those nights, altering the meat loaf week to week to surprise us. Sometimes with hard-boiled eggs or a hot dog hidden in the middle, a little circular bit of excitement in the center of each slice. Sometimes with a glaze of ketchup and Worcestershire sauce, or a crisp crust of Dijon and bread crumbs. The rest of the meal never changed: green peas with pearl onions, steamed white rice with a pat of butter melting on top, soft knot rolls, and for dessert, chocolate pudding, with the skin for me, without for Gilly. But the ever-changing meat loaf was her way of trying to amuse us, to delight us.
I just sat down for the littlest second. It had been such a long morning. Near-blizzard conditions had kept Kai from coming in, so I was prepping and cooking everything on my own. I had barely slept last night, obsessing about the assessment, which is due in six days, and about whether the association is going to approve my loan. I put the turkey meat loaf in the oven, unlock the door for any customer who might brave the weather, and sit at the little table in the window just for a second. But my eyes close and don’t open until the smoke alarm in the kitchen starts beeping. I leap up, and run to save the meat loaf from a fiery grave. It is too late. I dump it in the garbage, thinking about the lost income it represents, and as I am distracted, catch my inner arm with a corner of the hot sheet pan, burning myself.
It is the last straw.
I throw the pan onto the counter and run my arm under the cold water. The burn won’t be that bad. The pain barely registers. But I can feel everything welling up inside me. The sobs choke out of me, the tears hot on my cheeks, every sorrow in the world seeming to be mine.
“Um, hello? Are you all right?”
I wipe my face quickly and poke my head out of the kitchen. Standing at the counter is a young woman, wrapped in what appears to be fourteen different scarves, the angular brows above her bright green eyes furrowed in concern.
“Sorry,” I choke out. “How may I help you?”
The girl starts to unwind the first scarf, revealing sharp cheekbones, a generous mouth, calico blonde hair with random pieces of pink. The unwinding continues, and I realize that what had seemed to be several scarves of different colors and textures is actually just one monstrously long scarf, cobbled together in a series of mismatched yarns and patterns, as if someone took one-foot segments of a bunch of different scarves and sewed them together. For some reason it tickles me, this ridiculous accessory, and I begin to laugh. The girl tilts her head at me.
“I’m so sorry,” I gasp. “You must think I am insane. Or bipolar or something. You’ll have to forgive me; it’s been a long morning.”
“That’s okay. I laugh and cry all the time, sometimes at the same time. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I just ruined something in the kitchen and burned myself, which is why I was crying, and then, well, your scarf is so, um . . .”
“Insane?” She chuckles. “I know. I wanted to learn how to knit, but I don’t have much patience, so when I wanted to figure out different patterns and stuff I just started right away. And it just kept growing. Like a weird fungus. But in this weather, it is really useful.”
“It’s very fun,” I offer.
“It’s manic,” she says. “But I’m glad it amuses you. You should have it.” She finishes unwinding the thing, and gathers it into a bundle, trying to hand it to me.
“I couldn’t,” I say, not wanting to be rude, but wondering what the hell I would do with such a thing. It appears to be about twenty feet long!
“Please,” she insists. “I know it’s silly, but it is a sort of happy piece of something. I don’t ever feel blue when I wear it. It would make me very honored if you would take it.”
I don’t know what else to do, so I accept the pile she is handing me, still warm from her body and breath. “Thank you.”
“I’m Nadia,” she says.
“Melanie.”
“I’m a friend of Janey’s, I’m crashing at her place for a bit, and she is feeling a cold coming on and wanted to have some of your famous soup on hand.”
I take a deep breath, the powerful emotions I have been through this morning not quite dissipating, but at least moving into a further recess of my brain. I can feel my shoulders unclench. “I’m so sorry to hear Janey is coming down with something. I have just the thing.” I move around behind the counter. I fill one container with hearty vegetable soup, and another with a Japanese-style broth, bok choy, scallions, and udon noodles. I pack up a roasted chicken breast, and some plain steamed brown rice. Some orange slices in honey vinegar with mint. A couple of corn muffins. I put everything together in a bag, and hand it over to Nadia.
“Wow. A feast. What do I owe you?”
“On the house. Janey brings me a lot o
f business; just tell her to rest up so that hopefully it won’t be too bad.”
“That is very generous.”
She hesitates, and I do something completely out of character. “Would you like some tea? Maybe a muffin?” I blurt out in a rush, nervous and self-conscious.
She smiles, her wide mouth revealing slightly crooked eye-teeth. “That sounds great.”
“Great.”
I reach for a teapot, and wonder why I want her to stay.
I’m an idiot.
I can’t imagine what I was thinking.
I pick up the phone, and then put it down.
I get into bed, and then get out again.
I wander up the hall and look into the second bedroom, currently serving as a storage room for the boxes I still haven’t unpacked, all the things from my former life I keep meaning to sell or give away, my fat clothes and designer bags and fancy shoes.
I had sat with Nadia for nearly two hours as the storm outside boiled. I offered up my life toils, the weight struggles, the demise of my marriage, the tenuous nature of the retail food business. She dropped in tiny snippets here and there. She was bulimic as a teenager, but hasn’t purged in years. She has notoriously bad taste in men, and came to Chicago from Minneapolis with the latest, a musician who dumped her three weeks after arriving, hence her time on Janey’s couch. She has a very minor income from a trust left to her by a grandmother, but not quite enough to fully support her. She needs a job, an apartment, a way to get back on her feet.
The offer came out of me unbidden.
“What if you worked here, and rented my extra bedroom?”
“What?” Nadia asked around a mouthful of muffin, a few crumbs dropping onto the front of her ratty Mexican sweater.
I speak in a rush. “I have some temporary financial difficulties, and you need a temporary home. I have a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment, and I’m only one person. I’ll rent you my extra room for five hundred dollars a month plus half of the utilities. And I’ll give you a part-time job here in the store, twenty hours a week, minimum wage. The rent you can pay from your trust, and utilities would come directly out of your paycheck, then you keep the rest. And I’ll keep the hours somewhat flexible so that if you want to get another part-time job somewhere else, we can work around it.”
Her face lights up. “Really?”
I take a slow breath. Renting the room would help get me over the hump, give me some breathing room. Ashley had left, and because of her indifferent work, I had requested a semester off from participation in the extern program, so I was short a part-time minimum-wage helper. Nadia could use the job and housing to get on her feet and learn the city, and help me out in the process.
“Really.”
“I’ll take it!” She jumps up from her seat and throws her wiry little body into my lap in a half-hug, half-maul. I am both comforted by her genuine affectionate gratitude and completely thrown by my own un-me-like behavior. She removes her minimal weight from my lap, and sheepishly returns to her chair. “I mean,” she says, as if her Flying Wallenda act hadn’t happened, “I am very grateful for the opportunity and would love to work here and rent your room.” She grins and holds up her teacup for a toast. “To new friends and roomies!” I touch my cup to hers and feel my stomach twist itself into a pretzel.
“Cheers.”
I’m almost forty years old. I haven’t lived with anyone except Andrew since college. Nadia is twenty-four. I could practically be her mother, or at least her aunt. She is quirky and odd and has no background in food besides the eating disorder she conquered. We have nothing in common.
But she is going to move into my home, into my business.
It is the craziest thing I have ever done, and I’m regretting it with every fiber of my being. I don’t want to come home to some twentysomething and her boy problems. I don’t want to have to be someone’s boss and roommate at the same time. I don’t want to be in a life where it would even occur to me to make such an offer.
And strangely, I’m scared to death that Nadia is regretting saying yes. That she is over at Janey’s in a cold sweat wondering how long she will be able to stand inhabiting the guest bedroom of some emotional premenopausal divorcee.
We must both be crazy.
But yet, there is also something exhilarating about having reached out to her. To be fighting my own urges to be alone, and forcing myself to do something against my nature.
I turn off the light in the room, and head back to bed. And blissfully, sleep comes.
PANCAKES
Andrew was never a great cook. When it came to meals, he had four go-to dishes. The famous late-night carbonara, a treat whipped up in the burst of energy he always got after sex. In a gender cliché turnaround, I was usually the one practically in a coma after sex. He would kiss my forehead, bounce out of bed, effortless in his body, and come back with an apron around his slim waist, and a bowl with two forks. He was a whiz at cheeseburgers, having essentially lived on them in college. He made a reasonably decent black bean soup picked up from the Ecuadorian nanny who raised him, a little fiery for my more delicate palate, but well-balanced and filling. And pancakes. Andrew made the best pancakes I have ever tasted. Lazy Sunday mornings in bed with the New York Times Magazine crossword puzzle, light-as-air pancakes doused in butter and swimming in syrup, with crispy bacon on the side. Crisp around the edges, tender within, warm stacks of sweet heaven. I may miss the comfort and security of being married, however false it turned out to be, but I almost never miss Andrew himself, just the idea of him. Except on Sunday mornings. When I wonder if there will ever be pancakes, both real and metaphorical, again.
“So, Bitsy, tomorrow is the big day, yes?” Kai says, tossing a pinch of salt into the pot he is stirring and tasting the result.
“Yep. Nadia’s moving in.” We agreed to have her work for a week at the store to be sure that part of the arrangement would work for us both before having her move in, and while she doesn’t have the kind of inherent knowledge about food that Kai and I do, she is warm and kind with the customers, quick to refer questions to me, and I think that she and Delia have bonded in a surprising way. She’s an odd duck, and doesn’t talk much except to elicit information about you in such a way that after an hour you feel as if you have had this great talk with her, except you realize you don’t know any more about her than you did before.
“She’s a strange little kitten, but I like her. And I think it’s good for you to have a pet.”
“She’s not a pet, Kai. That’s a terrible thing to say!”
“I mean it in only the best sense of the word pet, something warm and furry to come home to, something to be a little bit responsible for, something that will remind you not to get too into yourself.”
“Is that the patented Kai-finition of pet?”
“Oh, yes indeed. And a much better description than some creature of lesser intellect and power that you own by controlling food and cleaning up poop.”
I laugh. “Well, when you put it like that!”
“I do, that is exactly how I put it.”
“It’s not terribly gay of you, you know. Shouldn’t you and Phil be adopting pugs and Siamese cats and writing them into your will?”
“Phil is allergic to both dogs and cats, also to walking around with plastic bags full of crap in one’s hand or having a sandbox full of crap in one’s house, and especially allergic to hair on the Montauk sofa.”
“Good to know. I’ll try not to shed the next time I’m over.”
“See that you do. Meantime, how are you doing with the whole Nadia thing? Really.”
I think, wanting to word it carefully. “I think I’m fine. It’s unexpected. But not entirely unwelcome. I do think you are right about the having something warm to come home to part. I can get too reclusive and this will help. Also, it’s very temporary, so that helps.”
“You know that if things are that tight, Phil and I could make you a loan . . .”
“Kai,
don’t even finish that sentence. I love you, and I love Phil, and it’s a generous offer that in a million years I could never take you up on. And I’m not letting her move in because I’m on the brink of financial disaster.” I try to say this lightly, as if it were true. “I’m letting her move in because it will give me just a bit of breathing room money-wise in the remaining slow winter weeks, and because I like her and want to help her out.”
“Glad to know. So tomorrow morning she’s moving in; how about tomorrow night Phil and I bring dinner by, just for a short visit? That way if she arrives with a sack of severed heads, or shows up wearing your haircut and a matching outfit, we can save you like the big strong queens we are.”
“Well, I guess that depends on what you are thinking of bringing for dinner!”
“How about we pick up Homemade Pizza Co.? We’ll get one with the whole-wheat crust and loads of veggies and light on the cheese for you, and one with eight kinds of meat for the rest of us.”
“Six o’clock?”
“We’ll be there.”
“You’re the best. Can you hold down the fort till Delia gets here? I want to go to the gym since I probably won’t get to work out tomorrow with all the bustle, and I overslept today.”
“You got it. Go sweat.”
I grab my coat and head out. I keep a packed gym bag in my car at all times. As much as I know that it has saved my life, as much as I appreciate what my body can do now that I have lost the weight and exercise is a regular part of my life, I still hate working out. I go to the gym five or six days a week, where I alternate between either forty-five minutes of cardio or forty-five of weight lifting. And I dread it every time, and check my watch a million times and am always glad when it’s over. I love to take a long walk, or do something active, but going to the gym and exercising are still the most hateful hours of my week. All those people who always told me that you get addicted to it, that endorphins kick in, that eventually you crave it and look forward to it are sick lying fucks and I want to choke them with a protein bar and pummel them about the head with a bottle of SmartWater.
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