Life From Scratch

by Melissa Ford

  And I merely deliver the next line every wanna-be New York writer feeds their first date: “Probably not. It’s just freelance stuff.”

  The fact is that I read blogs long before I wrote a blog, and honestly, say what you want to about social media, but if it weren’t for blogs, I’d probably still be trapped in my marriage. There’s something about finding someone and saying, “me too” to give you the fuel to make a similar change.

  I first discovered blogs when I started Googling, “divorce laws in New York City” (always a bad sign when your Google searches include lawyer names and mediation advice.)

  I started with the divorce blogs and then worked my way backwards through the sex blogs and Internet-dating blogs until I found a woman who called herself The Dating Diva on a relationship blog titled, “Before You Put on the Little Black Dress.”

  She offered all sorts of dating advice, analyzing the photographs of first-date outfits that readers sent her and telling women how to know when a guy is lying to them. I never commented or sent in my own questions; I just sat in our apartment every night like a heartbroken voyeur, devouring the words of other women who felt equally unhappy in their relationships.

  And then one night, she was answering a question about a boyfriend who never apologized at the end of an argument even though the girlfriend was always forthcoming in admitting to her own foibles.

  The Dating Diva wrote:

  You can’t change someone else, cookie. You can only change yourself or the way it affects you. And if you can’t honestly change the way it affects you because you’re going with your natural reaction to his lack of contrition, you need to get yourself out of that relationship. You’re never going to be happy with who he is as a person, and shoving a square peg into a round hole has never had the good makings for stable furniture that will stand the test of time.

  When I read her words and applied them to my life, I ended up sitting at the computer and sobbing, knowing bone-deep what I had to do.

  I closed the Dating Diva’s blog and sat there for several hours until Adam got home, thinking about whether or not our relationship could be fixed. I couldn’t change his behavior and make him leave his office in order to spend more time with me, and I couldn’t get past my loneliness and anger. It was better for both of us, I decided, to go our separate ways than for me to spend the next twenty years seething through every empty evening and for him to resent me.

  The cockroach incident came a week after reading the Dating Diva’s advice, which was the end of the end.

  And soon after that, I started my own blog a few weeks after moving into my new apartment, a whim one night where I signed up for a free blogging account and started posting tales of all the things I was doing to try to fill my new life. I talked about trying to mooch free yoga classes from nearby gyms and self-help books I checked out of the library.

  Learning how to cook finally gave me something to write about, because I had been itching to find a direction for my blog. I didn’t want to write solely about my divorce because frankly, I thought about it twenty-four hours a day and could use a little break from obsessing. I couldn’t write about my job because I no longer had one. I had stopped going to museums and shows because ironically, I could no longer afford them even if I had all the time in the world to attend them so a blog about Manhattan itself was out too.

  The name of my blog was already Life from Scratch, and food became a natural extension. It turned out that writing about food was the perfect jumping board to discussing the rest of my life too. If nothing interesting was happening, I could talk about how I learned to roast potatoes (the trick: put the cubed potatoes in a bag; splash in the olive oil, salt, rosemary, and garlic powder; and then shake to coat each potato evenly.) But I could also write about the night my best friend Arianna gave birth to her baby, Beckett, or muse about the idea of coloring my hair, and it all fit into the cozy space I created for myself, governed by my own rules.

  After being so silent through the end of my marriage—I was constantly biting my tongue when I was with Adam—and with no one to talk to in the apartment when he was at work, starting the blog was like the first breath of air after breaking the water’s surface while swimming. The words came out fast and furious; I had finally found my voice again, that old friend who had disappeared over the years from disuse.

  Blogging can seem a little self-indulgent; foisting your free therapy on everyone else in the world. But some of us can’t afford a vacation from life and therapy, so free isn’t half bad. Plus, the night I received my first comment was like finding life on Mars. I was this tiny voice yelling from my apartment in New York City, and someone actually heard me. And took the time to tell me so.

  The waitress brings us our bowl of edamame, and Rob opens one shell and pops the peas into his mouth. “What do you do?” I question.

  “I’m a lawyer—business law.”

  You know how your hair sometimes rises on your arms like a vestigial connection to cats on high alert? That was the reaction I had when Rob mentioned his job. The tiny bubble of hope I had been floating on since I first got his phone call popped somewhere over the table, and I came tumbling down into the bowl of steamed edamame.

  I am not going to date Adam Goldman, the extended remix version, because I am never going to date another lawyer. Or a hedge fund manager—not only because they seemed to work long hours but also because I don’t really know what a hedge fund is. I’m not even sure if I’d be a good match for a surgeon who could be unreachable in the operating room for ten hours at a time like my sister.

  It took a failed marriage to make me realize that I had had enough of being alone. First, when I was growing up, and my parents were always off at work and then second, with Adam. I didn’t need to repeat the cycle a third time.

  “You must work a lot of hours,” I say, cracking open an edamame.

  “Oh my God, I don’t get home most nights until eleven. It’s murder trying to make partner.”

  “I bet it is,” I mutter under my breath, instantly crossing Rob Zuckerman’s name out of my mental palm pilot’s address book. It is also murder, I wanted to add, to be the wife of someone trying to make partner. It actually makes you want to commit murder, if you must know.

  “I had to cut a trip short recently to Bali and come home to work on this account,” Rob went on. “I planned that trip for four months and only got to spend five hours in Bali before I came home.”

  I take a deep breath and nudge out of my head all the regret that I am feeling about how this is the person I’ll always have to remember as my first date. It is like the Hymen Fairy giving you back your virginity and then wasting it yet again on another partner-track lawyer.

  “Why don’t you order us some sashimi if the waitress comes before I get back?” I tell him, trying to at least get a good restaurant meal out of this evening if nothing else.

  I slide out of my chair and head towards the bathroom, giving Rob a small smile to let him know that all is well, and I’m not about to duck behind a wall and call my best friend mid-date. Except that is exactly what I do.

  “I hate you,” I hiss into the phone when Arianna answers.

  “I hate you too,” she responds. “How is it going?”

  “Rob Zuckerman is a lawyer trying to make partner.”

  “Well that was an unfortunate choice of first date. Didn’t you ask him what he did when you met him at the bar?”

  “It was loud in there,” I say. “I couldn’t hear anything. And now I’m stuck with Rob Zuckerman being the first post-Adam date I had for the rest of my life.”

  “You don’t have to see him again,” Arianna reminded me. I could hear her washing out baby bottles in the background.

  “I meant that saying: ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’ And Rob is my first date since the divorce—the only first date I’ll ever have again.”

  “Until the next one.”

  “You think I’m going to get married and div
orced again?” I admonish.

  “No, no, I mean that you’ll have other first dates. Sweetie, calm down. Go have some kappa maki and enjoy the night. And then call me when you get home, and we’ll talk about how you’re never seeing him again.”

  “I do hate you for pushing me to do this,” I say, only half kidding as I bite my lower lip and peek out at Rob Zuckerman testing out his chopsticks and dropping them accidentally on his plate.

  “It was time, Rach. It was really time.”

  I hang up the phone and use the decorative mirror on the wall to make sure that I don’t have lipstick on my teeth before returning to the table.

  “Rob Zuckerman,” I say brightly. “Tell me more about your five hours in Bali.”

  Blog 2

  If Fernand Point, the greatest French chef of all time, wasn’t dead, I'd slather him with his beloved butter and just eat him all up.

  I had never heard of Fernand Point until I decided to learn how to fry an egg. Which seems like an easy-enough dish, but since I trust myself less than a nearby diner, had never attempted at home. Finances, of course, changed that, since even greasy spoons are a little too greasy, sliding money out of my thinning wallet.

  It seems simple enough, right? Crack the egg into a hot pan and watch it sizzle. I always order my eggs over-medium because I can't handle even a speck of the whites uncooked, but I like the yellow part warm and runny. But my homecooked egg quickly turned rubbery except for a centimeter or so around the yolk; the edges were paper thin, clear and crisp. I tried to flip it, and it folded over onto itself as it unstuck from the bottom of the pan; the yolk broke, and I tossed the whole thing in the sink.

  I tried this with three more eggs and different things happen: sometimes I broke the yolk as I tried to move it. Sometimes I succeeded in keeping the yolk intact, but had uncooked whites because I had crumpled the whites as I folded it over. Oh, and then I did what I should have done before I cracked a single egg—which was open the damn cookbook and read what Fernand Point wrote a hundred years ago.

  Apparently, even Mr. Point knew that the simplest things were the ones that we most commonly botched. Such as cooking an egg. He made each of his apprentices slow down and fry an egg over a candle after they butter the pan.

  I forgot the love that is butter.

  Cooking spray and eggs should never mix. Sigh.

  So I started over melting a pat of butter over medium heat, and when it began to foam, I turned down the heat to low and added the egg. Yes, you read that right: I turned down the heat. No sizzle. No pop. If I had been filming a cooking show, everyone would have yawned. The whites slowly, slowly, slowly cooked. And once the whites were set, I let it go a bit longer until the yellow part slowly firmed up. And then I gently flipped it over, and, low and behold, the butter helped it release, and it slid over gracefully like a ballerina sinking down into the swan pose.

  Oh, and after the eggs were on the plate I realized that I had no bread in the apartment and was pissed off because you need bread to sop up all of that lovely yolk. They were, even without bread, the best damn eggs I had ever had. Like I said, I love Fernand Point.

  Eggs are delicate things. They deserve this much attention, if not more. Oh, and butter is my new best friend.

  Chapter Two

  Juicing the Lemon

  I push my way up the street, against the steady stream of traffic that is walking across the city towards Rockefeller Plaza and the enormous tree. Christmas is the only time of year where New Yorkers slow down and walk like zombie tourists, unable to drag their eyes away from store displays and the siren song of twinkle lights. It drives me crazy when people walk slowly.

  A few flakes of snow drift in the air, as if they’re unsure whether or not they have permission to land. If I didn’t need cake flour this badly as well as have to give Arianna back the purse that I borrowed for my date with Rob Zuckerman, I would never step outside my apartment during prime weekday shopping hours. Within three blocks, my knees are already bruised from getting thwacked by tourists’ shopping bags.

  I buzz the front desk at Arianna’s apartment building and step into the warm lobby, unwrapping my scarf as I make my way across the marble flooring. Her building always smells like too much perfume, as if they have washed the floors in Shalimar, and it’s much older than mine. It has a delightfully creepy, Red-rum feel to the place.

  Someone has wedged a plastic Santa from a Happy Meal into the ashtray by the elevator bay, and it stares at me with a frozen smile while I wait for the lift beside a mother and her preschool-aged child.

  “I ate toilet paper,” he whispers to me, apropos of nothing.

  “Honestly, Henry!” his mother exclaims, rolling her eyes as if telling a stranger that he has eaten toilet paper is the last straw. She yanks his hand to lead him into the open elevator, and he remains silent the rest of the ride until I get off on Arianna’s floor.

  The truth is that I want a little boy who eats toilet paper. Food would obviously be better, but I’d take toilet paper if push came to shove.

  Arianna is breathtakingly lovely, dressed more for the front row of Stella McCarthy’s next runway show rather than an outing to Zabar’s on the Upper West Side. Arianna is a finisher for a major fashion designer. She doesn’t design anything or cut the patterns, but she does all of the hand-stitching and bead work. The designer’s staff is thrilled to have her work out of her apartment rather than give her space in their crowded loft. So she has set up her life to be a full-time mother to Beckett as well as a full-time seamstress. She is currently wearing three inch kitten slides paired with a pair of expensive-looking designer jeans she probably got as a free sample from a friend in the industry. She kisses me on the cheek while she lets me into the apartment, taking her purse out of my hands.

  “It’s terrible out there,” I warn. “Swarms of tourists, all carrying shopping bags. Seriously, every last one of them.”

  She shrugs a baby Bjorn over her shoulders and loads Beckett into it so he’s facing outward, his matching jean-clad legs dangling in front of her. She yanks a stocking cap over his head, blindly tying the strings underneath his chin, which is sticky with drool that he has dragged out of his mouth via his hand. She puts on her own coat—a delicious, soft, moss-green pea coat, hand-sewn for her by one of her designer friends. I spend a lot of time coveting her wardrobe.

  “I know Christmas isn’t supposed to be a big deal if you’re Jewish,” I tell her as we step out of her apartment, and she locks her door. “I mean, the biggest thing I have to do that day is order Chinese food. But every single commercial is about what your husband is going to buy you.”

  “Diamonds,” Arianna agrees.

  “Or sitting on your Stainmaster carpet and opening Christmas morning gifts with your husband. Or buying a new car with your husband. This whole first-Christmas-after-the-divorce thing is making me very depressed. Television commercials are like downers.”

  “Imagine how single, Christian people feel,” she says, motioning to herself.

  “But you have Beckett,” I point out. “You’re not really alone in the true sense of the word. Like I am,” I add dramatically, throwing open the front door of her building and streaming back onto the sidewalk to join the sea of shoppers making a pilgrimage to the subway stop.

  “Seriously, you cannot borrow my feeling-sorry-for-myself holiday. You can have Valentine’s Day,” Arianna offers.

  Beckett squeals in agreement and points at the traffic lights. “Let’s just walk the four blocks to 7th,” I tell her as I wind my scarf around my neck again, the flakes of snow still cautiously testing out the air.

  Adam and I meant to have children. At least, we discussed having children before we were married, and it was a base understanding between us. When the time felt right, we would ditch the birth control and have two kids and live happily ever after. But the problem was that the time was never right.

  For instance, it turns out to have a child, one has to have sex.

 
; It really makes me cringe to admit this, but Adam and I only had sex a handful of times during the final year of our marriage. Maybe five. First and foremost, he came home so late every night that he practically turned into a stranger; and I couldn’t roll around in bed with him as if nothing were wrong.

  The other thing is that I started over-thinking whether or not we’d make good parents. I had grown up with parents who were barely around, and it sort of sucked to be their child. My parents never attended dance performances or piano recitals, and they would have missed my high school graduation due to a business trip if I hadn’t gotten my favorite teacher to persuade them otherwise. My parents loved me intensely, but I wouldn’t have called them great parents, and I seemed doomed to repeat their mistakes, since I had no other example to follow.

  Plus, Adam and I hit a point where I didn’t want to have children with him. I didn’t want to become what would essentially be a single parent, though it was hard to admit that to my friend, Arianna, who is a single parent by choice. But even she’ll tell you that if she could have found the right partner, she wouldn’t have gone about parenting alone. Still, she has always had a much stronger calling towards parenthood and, as my mother puts it, “grabs life by its balls.”

  The woman who grabs life by its balls pushes her way down the subway stairs and jiggles herself gracefully through the turnstile, carefully lifting Beckett’s legs so they clear the bar. We wait for the train next to a large group of high school students all dragging suitcases behind them.

  Arianna shocked the hell out of me three years ago when she asked if I could bring her home from a doctor’s appointment, and I ended up meeting her at a fertility clinic. “What is this?” I asked, as if I was living off-the-grid in the wilderness and had never heard of in vitro fertilization.