Life From Scratch

by Melissa Ford

  Regardless of in which language you ask the question.

  I unload the groceries I’ve purchased on the way home: a carton of milk, a bag of oranges, a steak I’ll make for dinner. I sift through the mail and set it back down on the counter unopened. I am feeling restless since I blew off Miguel. And thinking about Miguel makes me think about Adam, and the last thing I want to do is think about Adam. And yet, I can feel myself inching towards the computer to check if he’s on my site even as I am internally slapping myself into sense. It is like trying to convince yourself that your teeth aren’t sensitive when you’re craving a dish of ice cream.

  I don’t care about Adam.

  I don’t care about Adam.

  I don’t care about Adam. But I just need to check.

  I log into my Sitestalker account and blink at the screen. The number is enormous—more enormous than possible even if someone was really excited about my recent discovery of stuffed, baked apples. The visitors are nearing on one hundred thousand since midnight of the night before. I skip checking if Brockman and Young is on the list and head straight for the referrals to find the source for the tremendous traffic.

  The list is a solid stream of traffic from the Bloscars site. I click on one, and in a separate window the Bloscar website opens up, slowly, as if millions of other people are nudging to get a view of the screen. It feels like the Louvre in front of the Mona Lisa. I read the congratulations post filling the front page. Best Blog, Best Literature Blog, Best Humor Blog.

  Best Food Blog: Smitten Kitchen.

  My heart sinks, not really understanding why there would be traffic coming from the site if I wasn’t the winner. I mean, who the hell wants to go over and check out the losers?

  I keep scrolling down, and there, towards the bottom, is Best Diarist.

  Which, as you’ve probably guessed, oh my freakin’ Lord, was Life from Scratch.

  Well . . . I sort of didn't expect so many new visitors. I would have liked to have baked a cake for you all, except that I don’t really know how to bake a cake. Tidy up the typos. Scour out a few old sentences such as the one about dust on my nether regions. But you have found me straight from the figurative shower, answering the door in my bathrobe, so I guess there's nothing more to do except welcome you in and thank the Bloscar people for choosing this site as Best Diarist.

  In all seriousness, I don't really know how I won. I mean, I know how I won—you guys picked me. But I had no clue that the Bloscar people were considering me for Best Diarist because, well, I’ve always thought of myself as a food blogger. Not that I expected to win in that category. So, what I’m trying to say (poorly) is that while I’m honored, I am also feeling like this is a big April Fool’s joke a few months early.

  This has been a bit of a trippy evening. I have gotten requests for interviews and travel offers and about one hundred emails from PR people asking me to review their book, kitchen equipment, or food product (why yes, Tim's Turkey Jerky, I would love to taste your new smoky, low-fat alternative to traditional jerky.) All of this is a little new for me.

  Um, by which I mean that this whole thing has been really cool. So thank you—thank you for nominating me and voting for me and thank you to the Bloscar people for holding this contest and running it and (I'm getting all weepy now) thank you to Arianna for encouraging me to start this site and to my brother for always eating my creations and my sister for providing fodder for my anti-Park Slope posts and . . .

  Deep breath.

  Back tomorrow with more stories and recipes.

  Chapter Seven

  Cube the Potatoes

  It’s not like I had been expecting to win best food blog, but I really couldn’t wrap my mind around the “Best Diarist” moniker. That was the sort of prize reserved for bloggers such as The Pioneer Woman, Dooce, or Amalah. It only took me a few seconds to catch up and within minutes, I was standing in front of the mirror, brushing my teeth, while saying, “Hi, my name is Rachel. I’m a diarist.” It had a nice ring to it.

  Having never won an award—not even one of those bullshit “best attendance” awards in elementary school—I wasn’t sure what happened next. The prize turned out to be a check for fifty dollars, which seemed like a strange amount based on the scope of the award—several million people voted daily for a week, which must add up to some serious ad revenue on behalf of the site.

  But the money didn’t really matter because there were also the emails from the contest heads wanting me to come out to the Sundance Film Festival the next month to collect my prize as part of “the concurrent and related Sundance Technological Conference.” Not that I had the money to fly out to Utah or book a hotel, but still, an invitation to the festival was something. Their friendly email warned me to come equipped with business cards because people were going to want to learn about my brand.

  My brand? Business cards?

  Had they missed the fact that I was between jobs? A cat woman without cats? A divorcee learning to cook at thirty-four?

  Then there were the requests for interviews. I received a perky email from the technology editor of the LA. Times, one from the Chicago Tribune’s food section, and another from the Austin American-Statesman. There were emails from the people at Zagats and Chow, which would have been cool ten months ago when I was the Carryout Queen, but now were just a tad confusing. Gourmet pitched an idea to have me as one of the judges for their Easter dinner contest, despite the fact that I’m Jewish. Though, the crème de la crème, at least in my mind, came from Jen Dellman, who writes for the New York Times magazine, who wanted to meet to brainstorm ideas about an article on rebuilding your life post-divorce.

  My initial reaction was panic—what if someone I didn’t want to find me discovered my blog because it was featured in the New York Times magazine? And then I realized, the only person who mattered had already found me.

  So much for anonymity in a city of eight million people.

  The email that mattered most was a simple, sweet note that came from a junior agent at a major New York literary agency three days after I won the award.

  Hi, Rachel—

  My name is Erika Ledbetter. I’m an agent at Rooks LTD. I think your writing style is wonderful—brash, funny, unapologetic, and honest. The strength of your platform is how deeply you connect with readers. (I am actually the recipient of more than one email exchange with you, except it was under my anonymous blogging email address, Ms. Duncan-Hines.) I was wondering if you had ever thought about putting some of your experiences into a book; perhaps a hybrid cookbook/essay/advice manual. The Divorced Woman’s Guide on How to Cook Your Life from Scratch?

  Please let me know if you’d be interested in speaking further about book proposals and literary representation.

  Thanks,

  Erika Ledbetter

  Junior agent, Rooks LTD

  Rooks knows Books

  And then I realize why people care if they win this contest. It isn’t about a fifty dollar check. It is about opportunity.

  I quickly write back that I am indeed pulling a proposal together and would love to talk about representation despite the fact that the first part is a lie and the second part I want to tell her while groveling. I forward both emails over to Arianna. And then I grab my wallet, keys, and winter cap and walk over to Arianna’s with a small skip being added every few sidewalk slabs.

  “Hello, hello, Mr. Beckett, hello,” I sing as she opens the door to her apartment, child in tow.

  She raises her eyebrows at me, and I raise mine back at her. “Hello, Ms. Diarist. Ms. Bloscar-winning writer who is now getting emails from agents.”

  “So you checked your email,” I say, taking Beckett out of her arms. He snuggles down against my fuzzy sweater and sucks his binky contently for a few moments before he switches to yanking my necklace forcefully.

  “Are you going to do it? Write a book? I told you to write a book weeks ago.”

  “I wrote that back because I didn’t want to miss the opportunit
y. Ari, I have no clue how to write a book proposal.”

  “As of ten months ago, you also had no clue how to fry an egg. You’ll learn. You can go to the library and check out a book.” Arianna always has an answer to every question, and she states it in such a way that it sounds doable.

  No husband in the picture? You use donor sperm. Fertility problems found? You use IVF. No money for daycare? You just change your job around so you can work from home. Every solution looks simple, but I’ve learned from past experience with Arianna that while she may have the resolve to put plans into action, the rest of us are usually left with a huge, tangled mess when we dip our foot into solutions.

  “And then who would buy it? People want to read about what Pioneer Woman is cooking. Or Chocolate & Zucchini. Who the hell wants to hear what I have to say about divorce or cooking or how to furnish a new apartment for under one thousand dollars when you leave all your furniture with your ex-husband?”

  “There’s a blog called Chocolate & Zucchini? What a disgusting combination. Regardless, several million voters voiced their opinion that they’re interested in what you have to say. Not to mention your regular blog readers, which have now increased five-hundred fold.”

  This part is true. I thought there would be a sharp spike and then it would drop back down to my usual three thousand per day, but it has remained up near one hundred thousand for several days, only fluctuating by a thousand or two each day and sometimes climbing above the original high that came on the first day of the award announcement. About one hundred thousand people are sitting on the edge of their computer seats, waiting for me to update my feelings on the lasagna I made.

  “Listen, Rach, you have a great platform. Of course publishers are going to be interested in buying the book.”

  “‘Platform,’ listen to you. Where did you even get that term?”

  “The agent’s email, and then I Googled the term. But it’s true. Here, I have two hours before I have someone picking up their pants. Let’s go down to the bookstore, and I’ll get you a book on writing book proposals to celebrate.”

  “Do you think buying a book would jinx it? I mean, she may have sent that email out and then changed her mind and will never write back. And I could get myself all excited, working on this proposal, and have it come to nothing.”

  “Well, honestly, I think you should write a book proposal and try to sell it. Whether she ends up as your agent or someone else is beside the point. You have a good story and people love your writing and frankly, I think you need a new project. Especially if you return to the library when the money runs out. You’ll need to have something back at home to distract you—something that is entirely your own.”

  “A baby. An ink-and-paper baby,” I say softly.

  We both look at Beckett, who has returned to snuggling, and Arianna, not entirely pleased that the tone of my voice, veers towards wistfulness, grabs her purse and diaper bag before I can get too far down that path.

  When I consider how my life looked before last week, it feels a bit surreal to be going to a book store to purchase a text on writing book proposals and to have someone possibly interested in representing the book. All the clichés are true. Beckett bobs his head up and down a few times as if he can hear my thoughts, and he wholeheartedly agrees.

  Just wait until Adam sees me now, sneaky blog lurker that he is.

  It occurs to me, several minutes into reading the book on book proposals, that in order to write one, I’m going to have to lie.

  I’m supposed to ask myself if I have something to teach my future book readers? If I had any advice to give, I would follow it myself. I haven’t really moved on, or seeing Adam’s ISP on my computer wouldn’t have sent me trotting off to Arianna’s apartment that next morning. Women who have moved on just archly raise one eyebrow at their ex-husband’s shenanigans and click off the screen. Women who are still hoping for something hit refresh seven-dozen times while eating a pint of ice cream. I think we all know that I’m part of the latter more than the former.

  The author of the book on writing proposals asks me to answer this question: “Why are you the best person to write this book?”

  If I answer honestly, I’m not the best person to write this book. At least not right now. Not while I’m still thinking about my ex-husband while on dates with potential boyfriends (especially those of the sexy, Spanish persuasion. If Adam is cutting into my thoughts while I’m with someone who smells like leather and cinnamon and sex, you know there is a deep problem.) Not while I’m driven to eat a pint of ice cream while I stare at Sitestalker wondering what Adam’s presence means. Not if I am considering, even for a second, to slip out The Box.

  Which means I’m either going to have to lie in my book proposal, because I really want to get published, or I’m going to finally get rid of The Box.

  The Box contains all of the sentimental stuff I saved from my marriage. The stuff you trot out when you’re already feeling weepy and you need that extra push to get you to a good cry. The Box came from a grocery store and originally held a case of crushed tomatoes; now it holds the remains of my crushed marriage.

  I take it out from its hiding place in the back of my closet and set it next to the writing-a-proposal book. This feels like one of those positive-thinking moments, where, if you knew how to really channel The Secret, you could get rid of all these mementos that only make you feel like garbage and clear the way towards thinking up some really good fodder for writing your own self-help book.

  I open The Box. There are photos—the worst sorts of photos: vacations, unposed shots catching a moment in conversation, outtakes from snapping a picture for our engagement announcement. In all of the photos where we are conscious of the camera, we are smiling, huge dental-commercial-like smiles. These were real smiles, times that we were really happy. The photographs taken towards the end of the marriage, the ones where my shoulders look tense or my eyes do not match my mouth, were all discarded when I cleaned out our apartment. I threw them out or left them behind in drawers so Adam could find my tense, fake smile when he least expected it.

  The Box contains a smashed penny that he made for me in a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. It has an imprint of the Statue of Liberty superimposed over Lincoln’s head. We had stopped to get frozen yogurt on a drive down to Washington, D.C. I secretly thought I might be pregnant—my period was late and I was ravenous—but I hadn’t told him yet. Unprompted, he made me the penny while I was using the restroom, and when I emerged, he pressed it into my palm and said, “Lucky penny.” I carried it in my pocket until I got my period a few days later.

  There is an old concert t-shirt in the box, a button that says, “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” a postcard from Berlin when Adam went there for a conference, and a ring purchased on Portobello Road during a trip to London. I take out each item and dramatically place them in a semi-circle around me, as if I’m performing a Wiccan love ceremony.

  I ball up the concert t-shirt and throw it in the trash can. I grab a few chatty old postcards and toss them in too. But I’m not getting that cleansing high I had hoped to achieve, the one that I was going to translate into a “You can do this too!” message for the book. I fan myself with a handful of photographs and re-read an old shopping list.

  Beer

  Duck sauce (the one in the orange jar . . . do you know what I’m talking about?)

  Cheerios

  Roach killer

  Shampoo

  Toothpaste

  And then, in Adam’s loopy script under my handwriting:

  Things that make my wife horny: kisses on her neck, being fed strawberries, having her husband do the shopping so she better be ready for him when he gets home . . .

  That was true. Having him take care of things did make me horny. Perhaps that’s why we had so little sex in those later years—he never had time to do the shopping.

  I refold the paper and place it back in the box. I save half the photographs, the penny, and fish the t-shirt back
out of the trash can. The box is about one-fourth lighter than when I began, and that seems good enough for now.

  Maybe my book will be The Anti-Secret. How negative thinking and still mucking around in your past can actually be quite healthy and bring all sorts of good stuff your way. How you don’t have to let go and trust the process, but instead can do whatever you need to do to get through the day, whether it’s stare at your ex-husband’s office website for a few hours or keep a box of stuff in your closest that tortures you emotionally, or still keep your married name.

  I start jotting down notes on the inside cover of my proposal book. How to be a good divorcee: (1) do whatever you need to do to get through the day. (2) don’t get rid of stuff until you’re ready. (3) find your voice and use it. (4) learn to love IKEA.

  I decide to send another note to the agent even though she hasn’t answered my first one. I tell her how hard at work I am with the proposal, and how it will probably be finished soon. I send the note off before I chicken out and then sit down and start working on what I hope is the advice I need to hear in order to get over Adam once and for all.

  Because the reality is that if he really missed me and was reading my blog for the right reasons, he would reach out to me. The Adam I know is keen on taking action, and the fact is that we’re still in the same city. His office is near my neighborhood. We still order from the same Hunan Chow (the deliveryman tells me this every time I splurge on dinner and he drops off my order.) If Adam missed me, he could pick up the phone and call me. He could send me an email. He could even hang out around my apartment and “accidentally” bump into me; ask me out for coffee to catch up.