by Melissa Ford
Half of my brain is on the unfinished crèma catalana in the refrigerator as he tells me a story about some restaurant in Madrid that has butterflies encased in glass as their front door, and the other half of my brain is replaying how our jeans looked with their legs entwined together.
What the hell did I just do?
“Would you like to help me with something? A few weeks from now?” Gael asks, spearing one of the peppers, as if we haven’t just had sex on my living room floor. As if that whole portion of the evening was just part of my imagination. “I have this wedding to shoot; to photograph. Would you like to come with me? Help with the cameras?”
“Don’t you have a helper?”
“She can’t make this party. I just thought it would be fun. It would be interesting. You would get, of course, a meal with the rest of the staff. The same one the guests eat.”
“How fancy,” I say dryly.
“And I would take you out afterwards. We’d be dressed up so we could go somewhere dressy.” He smiles his lopsided smile and motions to his plate. “This is quite good. Not my mother’s paella, but quite good.”
Seriously, could the boy go a half hour without mentioning his mother?
When he smiles his lopsided smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkle closed, until I can only see a small sliver of deep brown beneath the folds. I need a do-over. I would like to stop eating paella and have sex on my bed. Try to last beyond a few minutes.
“I’ll go to the wedding,” I say.
“You will?” he asks.
“You sound really surprised,” I respond. What I want to ask is if the pre-dinner sex marked me as a different sort of girl; the kind who didn’t accept date invitations that were really work favors. If rolling around on my carpet and getting to use the condom he stashed in his pocket before heading over here changed how he viewed me.
“I didn’t know how you would feel about it being a wedding,” Gael admits.
“It doesn’t bother me,” I lie, waving my hand in the air as if I’m swatting away all of the bad feelings I have when I see white gowns, morning suits, or cream-colored one-hundred-and-ten-pound cardstock invitations. “Seriously, my marriage is over and done with. I’ve moved on. Anyway, you’ll make it up to me by taking me to the Guggenheim.”
“Absolutely,” Gael agrees. I wait for him to suggest a date, but we both sit there without speaking for a moment, the rock band wailing about something in the background.
“Actually, you could do me a favor and come to my friend’s open house.”
I regret it right after I say it. Why the hell did I fill the silence with that?
“Sure! When is it?”
“It’s next weekend. What I meant to say is if I go. I don’t know if I’m going yet. I mean, she’s an old work friend, and she had this desk drawer that was too neat, and she never knew where her panties were at the end of the night,” I babble.
“This is sounding better and better. Neat home and no underwear,” Gael says.
“I don’t even know how many people will be there, or if I can bring a guest. Let me talk to her first and ask her if that’s okay.”
Suddenly, I am so tense that I am getting a headache. I should be the opposite of tense. I should be jelly. I just had my first orgasm by something other than my hand in the last few years. I should be buzzing and humming and whatever else your body does when it has finally been satiated sexually. But I am tense, with a headache that is creeping around my forehead like a tight sweatband. I am missing every third word that he is saying: I didn’t . . . she was . . . to do . . . but I . . . happy anyway. I want to ask him to repeat it, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth.
“Do you feel okay?” I interrupt.
“Okay? Yes? Why?”
“I think I have food poisoning,” I gag and run to the bathroom. Except I don’t vomit. I lean against the sink and try to catch my breath and look in the mirror. I look like I am on the brink of tears. This is it: I am having a nervous breakdown. Surely this must be what movie stars mean when they sit with Barbara Walters and talk about their nervous breakdown. It must start with a panic attack over paella and end with crying in the bathroom.
“Are you okay?” Gael asks on the other side of the door. There is an edge in his voice as if he is checking for the answer. If I’m not okay, he’s going to bolt. But if I tell him I’m fine, he’ll stay for dessert.
No one wants to deal with someone having a nervous breakdown.
I promise I’m fine; that the feeling is passing. And then I silently mouth some tough love to my reflection in the mirror: you idiot, there’s no crying after sex. Old Rachel is a crier. You are the new and improved Rachel, the one who has sex before the paella she made from scratch. Who has sex, more importantly, with hot Spaniards rather than boring lawyers. Pull. Yourself. Together.
I splash some water on my face, take a deep breath and return to the kitchen table.
“Is everything okay?” Gael asks again.
“I’m fine; I don’t know what that was. I thought I was going to be sick, but I’m fine. Do you want to have dessert?
“Do you think that’s a good idea if you were just sick? You haven’t eaten your paella.” Gael asks dubiously.
I am coming off as crazier by the second.
“I wasn’t really sick,” I tell him. “Can we . . . can we just reboot? Start the night over? I’ll go place our plates in the sink and then turn around and we’ll pretend that the night is just starting. Can we do this without me coming across as completely unhinged?”
“Unhinged? I don’t know what that means.”
“I need to start over tonight.”
“Is this about the sex?” Gael asks, motioning to the space where we were rolling about a half hour ago.
“It’s everything; yes, I mean, no, it’s not just about the sex. But yes, can we start over? Can we start everything over about tonight? I made dessert and . . . ”
I turn on the broiler and pull one of the two crèma catalana dishes out of the refrigerator. I set it on the table in front of him as an explanation. “I just have to do one more thing—caramelize the sugar on top. You told me that it’s your favorite.”
For a moment, it looks like Gael Paez is going to cry. That he’ll have his own personal breakdown, and we’ll at least be on equal footing. The CD ends at that precise moment, and after a whirl and click, it is silent in the room. Without saying anything, I move our paella plates into the sink. I sprinkle sugar over the top of the custards and slide them under the broiler, opening the oven door every few seconds to make sure that it is caramelizing and not burning.
I remove the dishes from the oven and bring them back to the table along with two spoons. Gael cracks through the sugar crust and scoops up a small spoonful of custard. He turns the spoon upside down and nods at me. “Look at this—perfect. It’s your first time making it?”
“First time.”
“And you remembered that I said that?” Gael asks.
I nod my head, suddenly not trusting my voice.
“This was a really perfect night, Rachel. I’ve never had someone do that. Hear what I said and then make it like this.” He finishes the rest of the thought in Spanish, and I nod as if I understand what he’s saying.
He stands up and takes my hands and leads me from the table to my bed. I get my wish for the do-over as he undresses me, very gently, very carefully, as if I am a flower and my petals may blow away at any moment.
He finishes and sighs and sinks down onto me. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I’m not done yet, not when he is so grateful for the crèma catalana, for the attention. I want to thank him for the do-over; good things come to those who ask.
I seem to be on a rice kick as of late. First it was the risotto. Then I made paella, which is essentially Spanish risotto. Finally, I made rice pudding last night. With raisins and a little cinnamon on top. Just like . . . well . . . was going to write just like my mother used to make, but my mother neve
r made rice pudding. Just like my mother used to buy. Except that's the whole point—it wasn't.
I used to love to get rice pudding from this diner by our house. I know it's sort of a gross dessert to love, but they'd serve it in these glass sundae dishes with a long thin spoon and a graham cracker on the side. So my mother never made it, but she often bought it, and I expected Meyer's recipe to be similar to the one at the diner—a big wedge of creamy love.
Except that it wasn't. Maybe I made it wrong, but the texture was off, and the taste was different, and it wasn't what I expected at all. I'm not enough of a cook to know how to tweak a recipe to match something in my mind, but it was this strange sensation, not knowing if I liked the new rice pudding on its own merits. I mean, it was good, it was sweet, but it wasn't the rice pudding I thought would be on the spoon. My mind was expecting one thing, and my tongue was experiencing another.
I once dated a guy who said all the unhappiness in the world is tied to expectations, and if we could live without expectations, we'd live in a state of perpetual bliss because we'd always be happy with what we have.
Except if I hadn't had the expectation of how the rice pudding would make me happy, I wouldn't have tried the recipe in the first place. Whatever. That guy smelled like patchouli and wanted to be a professional hackysack player. What the hell did he know?
Chapter Nine
Splashing the Wine
I wake up in the morning to the telephone ringing. It takes a moment for my mind to untangle itself, especially since I’m trying to beat the answering machine from picking up. I had sex last night with Gael. Twice. I finished the proposal. I think. The telephone is ringing.
My sister immediately launches into what she needs. That is one of Sarah’s best traits—she doesn’t waste your time asking questions or making small talk. She tells me that her nanny has an emergency eye doctor appointment, Penelope has no ballet class due to a gas leak at the studio, and could I please come out to Brooklyn and watch my niece while Sarah opens up a man’s head.
“You want me to cross the bridge?” I ask. “Today?”
“Could you? Could you be here soon? Ethan can’t.”
I start dressing before I hang up, debating whether I have enough time to swing by the post office on my way to the subway and mail the proposal. Erika finally wrote back an apology last night for not contacting me again sooner and promised to read it as soon as it arrives. The agency office is a few blocks away, but I thought it would be creepy to show up at Rooks LTD (Rooks knows Books!) holding a stack of papers, nervously telling the receptionist, “This is my proposal,” as if I’m handing in a high school essay assignment. I swing by my local post office instead on the way to the subway and choose a nondescript manila envelope from the wall, filling in the local address and paying several dollars to have it walked a few blocks away.
“It’s a book proposal,” I tell the postmaster as he rings up the sale.
“That’s great,” he tells me, not bothering to even try to sound convincing.
I take my receipt and fold it carefully into my pocket. I’m not a big scrapbooker, but perhaps I should start—keep the receipt from the very first time I mailed something to an agent, use the scrapbook as a storage space for reviews when they come out.
Dream big.
Outside it is still bitterly cold, and I treat myself to coffee. If I’m going to provide free babysitting for Penelope, I’m going to need fortifications.
Sarah is already gone by the time I arrive, and the nanny hurries away once she has established that Sarah will be back by two. Before she leaves, she passes me Sarah’s Dos and Don’ts list.
Do make sure that Penelope fits in some form of exercise. Acceptable forms of exercise include 20 minutes of play in the park, jumping jacks, or going to the indoor playzone if it is particularly icy outside as long as I follow up the playtime with what amounts to an alcohol sanitizer bath.
Don’t allow Penelope to eat any processed foods, especially those containing dyes. I wonder if the nanny has broken her glasses on purpose—anything to get a free afternoon away from jumping jacks and dye-free foods.
I find Penelope in her room, playing with the dollhouse Ethan, and I bought her for her last birthday. “Hello, Aunt Rachel,” she says.
“Hello,” I answer back, sliding down onto the floor. She looks at me in surprise. “Can I play too?”
She stares at me without blinking and finally hands me a doll. The mommy. I fluff out the mommy’s apron and make her walk around the living room.
“She should be in the kitchen,” Penelope solemnly tells me.
“Why? Can’t she relax on the sofa? Catch up on her television shows? Can’t a mommy watch some Sesame Street?”
This makes her laugh, but she shakes her head. She pushes my hand towards the kitchen, and I oblige. I put on my best Julia Child voice and pretend the mother is chopping up chicken parts for an udon noodle dish. “La la la, red meat is better, but in a pinch, you can add chicken to your udon noodles making a most delicious dish. Lovely lovely noodles.”
“Aunt Rachel, are you a chef?” Penelope asks.
“No. Yes. I am a cook.”
“Mommy says that you think you’re a chef, but you’re not.”
“Oh, does she,” I say smoothly. I love that Penelope is still at an age where she speaks in absolute truths. “That’s because Mommy is a little jealous that she doesn’t know how to make delicious food like me. What does she say I am?”
“She says you’re a writer.”
I tuck my face down towards my shirt so she can’t tell that I’m smiling. I move the doll around the kitchen like she has suddenly broken out into an ecstatic dance. “Yeah, I’m a writer too. I’m a writer who cooks.”
“Mommy doesn’t know how to cook.”
“None of the Katz women do. Grandma Katz—terrible cook. But I am breaking that fate. I am going to be a great chef. Even better than Julia Child.”
“Is she a kid?”
“Julia Child? Oh…child . . . kid. No. She was a famous chef.”
“Why don’t you have children?” Penelope asks. She looks up at me, honestly interested rather than judging. I push her bangs out of her eyes and stare at the perfect curve of her cheek, the dark thickness of her lashes. I purse my lips together, trying to come up with an acceptable answer, one that doesn’t make me want to raid their liquor cabinet so that the nanny comes home to find me drunk on gin.
“How do you know I don’t have children?” I finally ask, to buy myself time.
“Because I’ve never seen them,” Penelope admonishes.
“That’s because I keep them in my pocket.” I slip my hand in my jeans and wiggle it around a bit. Penelope laughs. “There is Molly; no wait . . . that’s Peter.”
“Let me see,” Penelope says.
“Absolutely not. If I take them out, they’re going to want to play with your dollhouse and mess it all up. They’ll move the toilet to the kitchen and the sofa into the bathtub. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Henny Penny, let’s go out.”
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“We are going to a paint-your-own-pottery place that I just saw on the walk from the subway. And we are going to make me a big udon noodle dish. And then I am going to have you over for the most fabulous noodles you’ve ever tasted that I’ve never ever made before.”
She is easy to convince, easy to distract and malleable. She puts on her shoes and unhooks her coat from the rack by the front door. She stands politely on the welcome mat while I raid the kitchen, pushing aside the boxes of flax seed crackers to find something edible and failing that, grab a few dollars from the semi-secret envelope in my sister’s desk to buy myself a bagel at the Dunkin’ Donuts.
At the pottery place, I have Penelope sit quietly at a table—she is definitely the master of quiet sitting—while I talk to the owner and pick out a rough white dish. It has a lot of potential, the wide, shallow slope of the bowl, the unusual crimping of the edge. I bring it
back to the table, and Penelope chooses the worst colors imaginable. A murky green, a sterile grey, beige.
“This bowl is supposed to celebrate noodles,” I tell her. “You love noodles. Dark green doesn’t say noodles. It says ‘receptacle for overcooked beets.’ What about pink? What about this sparkly purple?”
“What about blue?” she says, pointing to some more palatable shades.
“What about sunshine?” I ask, pointing to a cheery yellow. She smiles and squishes her finger over the same square on the color chart. I pick up her hand and give it a kiss. “What about reds and oranges and colors that are happy?”
“How do you know if a color is happy?” Penelope asks.
“It just makes you feel happy,” I explain. “When you’re looking at it, you feel happy.”
“Dark green makes me happy. It’s my happy color,” Penelope agrees.
“Okay,” I say slowly, my artistic vision being ruined as I struggle to be the adult. “We’ll use tiny accents of dark green.”
The owner brings us the paint on a small ceramic dish, and we each tackle separate sides of the bowl, making swirls of color and dots and lines as we paint towards the middle. She tells me about how her nanny cries while she watches soap operas in the afternoon and how her best friend at the park once swallowed a goldfish. She tells me all the words she knows in Japanese and how her mother told her that she could wear lipstick to her Bat Mitzvah when she’s thirteen. And slowly, slowly, our heads come together as we both bend over the bowl, our brushes crossing, and my hair touches her, mixes together until you can’t tell where we begin and end.
I leave before my sister returns home, after having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Penelope and her nanny. I make a mental note to return to Park Slope the next week to pick up my dish and promise Penelope that I’ll take her with me to get it. The nanny lets her try on her new pair of cat-eye glasses, and Penelope waves at me from the door, her already round eyes even more enlarged behind the frames.