Life From Scratch

by Melissa Ford

  I have, for the most part, succeeded in making a home for one—it can be done. But it’s much harder to live as a single person within a marriage? What if I was the only one who has truly changed over these last ten months? And how could we ever get to that place of equilibrium if I was returning because I missed him?

  I missed the way we argued over the best section of the Times. I missed the way his back felt when I rested my hand against it in the middle of the night when I awoke from a nightmare. Seeing his presence on Sitestalker and bumping into him at the party has dialed up the sense of missing him. Increased the volume on my internal radio station tuned to longing.

  Despite the evidence that he might actually miss me if he was spending time on my blog, I couldn’t imagine what he missed about me when he barely noticed me while we were married. Did he miss having someone to do his laundry? Surely he could take it to the cleaners, or Laura would happily throw in his boxers with her cat-hair-covered sweaters. Did he miss having someone around to water the plants while he went on business trips? There were people you could pay; neighbors you could ask. Perhaps it simply came down to the fact that for some people, it is better to be able to say that you have someone and feel that appearances have been kept than it is to find that meaningful relationship—the one that will make it worth leaving the office at six and hurrying home for the intimate, homecooked meal. Maybe Laura is his stand-in for me, and he is still looking for what we had, because we did have it at one point, at least in the beginning.

  The one thing I know at this point is that I want to roast my own chicken. I never want to go back to being the helpless woman who doesn’t know how to boil water and needs to order-in even her steamed rice. Being in the kitchen makes me feel like a Titan, like I’m literally taming my life. And there is no meal that has made me prouder than the one I made a few days earlier to celebrate getting an agent.

  I roasted an entire chicken. I followed the recipe step-by-step, rubbing the skin with butter, sticking my hand inside the cavity and stuffing inside a lemon and vegetables and sprigs of aromatic herbs. It felt like I knew a secret every time I opened the door to baste the bird. From the outside, it looked like a normal bird. But inside, there was this feast going on. This infusion. And how could you go back to eating plain, rotisserie chicken from a deli after you’ve cooked one in your own oven?

  But would Adam get that? Would he agree with me when I told him how important it was to be able to cook for myself, regardless of what my mother taught me about women being enslaved in the kitchen. Once in front of him, would I be able to hold onto my own voice, state these words? Would he tell me that he’s proud of me, celebrate this new side of my being, or would he merely endure it? Would he cook with me, become the sous chef to my executive chef?

  I hand Ethan back his photograph, not trusting myself to speak. But of course, I don’t have to. My face says it all. Damn brother killing my authoring buzz.

  A little voice calls at six a.m. on Saturday. “Aunt Rachel,” she begins, solemnly stating each word as if it is the most important message she has ever had to convey. “You forgot to take me with you when you went to pick up the dish.”

  “Henny Penny? What time is it?” I ask.

  “Mommy and Daddy are still sleeping,” she admits.

  “You should be sleeping. I thought you weren’t allowed out of bed without an adult coming in the room.”

  She ignores this fact and repeats her message. “You said you would take me with you.”

  “I will,” I say, sitting up in bed, now fully awake despite the hour. Shit. I left the dish back in the store in Brooklyn. It is probably gone by this point. “I just haven’t gone yet.”

  “What about today?” Penelope suggest brightly. “You could come out here and make udon noodles in your udon noodle dish.”

  It is difficult to get frustrated with a voice that is this cheerful despite the early hour. I promise to leave the apartment within the hour and come to breakfast. “Mommy can get us whole wheat pancakes from Flipped!” she promises with undeserved excitement.

  I debate calling Gael, asking if he is up for an early morning date to Park Slope so I can introduce him to my sister and show him off. See the orchids at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He has been noticeably more reserved since the wedding disaster, as if it was a major turn-off to watch your girlfriend behave in a crazy manner after seeing her ex-husband, have a breakdown at a wedding, and then confide that a roach is why she filed for divorce. Just imagine how quickly he would have run if I had brought up The Dating Diva’s blog. Gael, and I have only had sex once since that night in the bar, during which, we barely spoke.

  Which makes me set the phone back down without dialing.

  I take my time getting out to Brooklyn, the sun fully rising as my train passes over the river. The buildings start sparkling, the water shimmering as they reflect the light and the icicles hanging under the bridge. I pass back underground, the darkness rocking the train until I almost fall asleep waiting for the doors to reopen in Park Slope.

  I hold my coat closed as I walk up the street to Sarah’s apartment. I can see Penelope’s face pressed to her window, and it feels so nice to see someone watching for me, caring about when I arrive, that I give a small wave and look around to see if any of the stores are open so I can duck inside and bring her a gift. A bar of organic chocolate, a book, a shoe horn.

  My sister is now awake and buzzes me into the building, and Penelope greets me at the door, two dolls in hand because she would like to recreate our earlier Julia Child storyline at the dollhouse. “I forgot to pick up my dish,” I explain to Sarah, glancing at a Styrofoam delivery case holding a small pile of gritty, grey pancakes in the kitchen.

  “Unfortunately, Penny has a creative movement class at ten a.m. and then Japanese lessons after lunch, followed by a nap,” Sarah says. “I’m not sure today is a good day for paint-your-own-pottery.”

  “No, I just have to pick it up,” I say, removing the ticket from my pocket. “It’s ready in the store.”

  “It’s a happy dish,” Penelope explains to her mother. “It’s for udon noodles.”

  “I needed a serving dish,” I finish.

  “Well, we can walk with you to the store before the class so Penelope can see it,” Sarah relents.

  She goes into her room to wake Richard and get ready, and I check the ticket for the store’s opening time. I settle onto the floor in Penelope’s room, and she sits down so close to me that she is practically in my lap. She laughs and falls onto the floor, playing silly for a moment, which is a nice change from the Penelope I usually get when my sister is around.

  “At creative movement, we put our feet in the air like this,” she says, flailing her legs in the air and narrowly missing my cheek bone. I grab her socks and lower her feet back towards the floor.

  “Do you do somersaults?” I ask.

  “Only if an adult is watching,” she tells me. “’Protect your neck.’”

  “When I was little, we did somersaults down a hill. Better to pick up speed that way.”

  She stares at me with her wide eyes, disbelieving that someone would so foolishly risk their life for fun. Oh sweet Penelope, when you are older, I will tell you about drinking games and dizzy bat and truth or dare, I think to myself.

  “What else did you do when you were little?” she asks.

  I think of the most benign life possible. “I read books and played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and ate whole wheat pancakes.”

  “Just like me,” she says proudly.

  “Just like you,” I repeat.

  “Aunt Rachel, I missed you.”

  She says this not as a guilt trip or because she wants something, but as a simple declaration of fact. I was here and then I was gone and now I’m back; and in between, she missed me. She had hoped I’d come along for one of their panini jaunts, but I wasn’t in Park Slope, and in turn, she missed me. I know that I am grinning like an idiot when I tell her that I missed her too,
even though it isn’t quite true. Even a four-year-old is better than I am when it comes to honesty, with stating her heart.

  Sarah pauses in the doorway to Penelope’s room, watching us with her coffee mug in hand. “Mum says that you said that you wanted to host Passover this year,” she comments.

  “I do,” I agree. “No more take-out from Jerusalem’s Catering. I’m going to make turkey and a brisket and a kugel—the whole thing.”

  Sarah doesn’t say anything, but she purses her lips in such a way that she clearly conveys that she thinks cooking is a waste of time.

  “I guess you’ll be back at work then,” she says.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that yet,” I admit.

  “I thought you were planning on going back to graphic design at the library.”

  “I was, but now that the agent is shopping my manuscript, I’m thinking about seeing if I can make writing my job for a few more months. Maybe start trying to get freelance work at a magazine or something like that,” I say, pulling this idea out of thin air. Being with Sarah is at least good for exercising my creativity.

  “Do you know what you need to do?” my sister begins. But for the first time ever, a considerable feat considering that these lectures began during our high school years, I hold up my hand and answer the question for her.

  “I need to stop thinking about what I need to do, and just do it.”

  This is a completely reasonable answer, one that even Sarah can’t argue with, and yet because she doesn’t know exactly what I intend to do, it leaves her squinting and gaping for her next piece of advice.

  Penelope grins up at me, waving her doll against mine as a reminder that we’re playing house. I move my doll back into the kitchen, making her open the tiny refrigerator while I continue my thought to myself. I need to not feel so apologetic for my nervous breakdown after the wedding, but learn from all my mistakes with Adam and tell Gael what I need. Maybe change back my name.

  I need to write my damn book and take my own advice and not feel any trace of nostalgia. I need to make my real life just as exciting and funny as my blog life. And I will start right after The Real Dish gives me my sunny, happy, hand-painted udon noodle bowl.

  My blog’s first anonymously-left comment slips into the inbox between a publicity pitch and a self-help newsletter. I wasn’t even aware that comments could be left anonymously, having dodged the harsh responses that plague bloggers writing about more emotional subjects. I mean, how much hate can someone muster for a how-to post on browning beef or musings on whether you need to use filtered water when cooking? I’ve had a few people tell me that I’m a pussy about baking, but they’re right, so it hasn’t exactly been hurtful. But now there is my first anonymous comment, staring up at me from my inbox, daring me to open it.

  The comment was left on a post about adding avocado to fresh mozzarella sandwiches. Why would anyone hide behind an anonymity function on a post as innocuous as making grilled cheese?

  “Sneaking bites of avocado?” the comment read. “I thought you didn’t like avocado.”

  I quickly yank up Sitestalker and scan through the recent visitor activity, trying to match the comment to an IP address. I switch back and forth between the email to check the timestamp and the visitor log until I triumphantly land on a single possible visitor. One who happens to be from Brockman and Young. Adam!

  The pride in my expert detective work quickly returns to fury. How dare he imply in a comment that he knows anything about me anymore? So what if I didn’t like avocado years ago? In the last few weeks I have tried it again and discovered that, when ripe, it actually isn’t bad at all.

  People change, I want to write back in all caps.

  Instead of being a man and admitting at the party that he’s dating someone new and he reads my blog, he leaves an anonymous comment, knowing full well that I would check and figure out it is him. A coward’s choice.

  It’s as if he believes that by reading my blog he has somehow bridged the chasm between us, knows something new about me. But all he knows is my catalog of recipes, a handful of opinions on New York restaurants or cookbooks, a few musings about my life before and after him. He doesn’t know the real me. Even Gael has a better sense of who I am in this moment.

  Adam may have known my past, but he certainly doesn’t know my present.

  After his anonymous comment, I squelch whatever small amount of doubt I had about my decision to put him out of my life for good, to fully close the door. He certainly won’t know my future.

  I am really not a fan of birthdays. Like most people, I quake at the idea of growing old. Secondly, you can never plan something good enough to do, and even if you do have the most kick-ass plans, there is always a chance that something sucky will happen that day. I hate my thirty-fifth birthday even when I'm not being reminded by every women's health magazine that this is the date that my ovaries are shriveling up into dusty crumbs of womanhood. Even when it's not several weeks before my first divorce anniversary.

  Arianna, God bless her little heart, has planned a fantastic birthday dinner at Quiddity, the new molecular gastronomy place in Tribeca. While I'm looking forward to trying freeze-dried grapes, it doesn't stop me from lolling about on my bed moaning out the infamous words of Prufrock: "I grow old, I grow old."

  Instead of attempting the angel food cake again, I have embraced my pussiness about baking and bought a chocolate malt cake from Momofuku. Insanely good. Insane. I popped a candle in it and sang myself the birthday song a few days early. Just because I felt like it. I decided I need to leave goals for myself. I’ve accomplished so much at thirty-four—divorce, life after divorce, macaroni and cheese. Baking is a good thing to save for thirty-five.

  Chapter Eleven

  Trussing the Chicken

  I invite Gael over for pre-birthday sex. Thirty-five seems like such a momentous age that it is worthy of a multi-day celebration. He rolls over in bed afterwards and looks at me. “You don’t look like you are turning thirty-five.”

  “I don’t?” I ask, fishing for compliments.

  “You look like you’re about forty, maybe forty-two,” he teases, and I punch him in the shoulder. “No, mi amor, you look like you are thirty, tops.”

  “I wish I were thirty,” I sigh. “Life was pretty good at thirty.”

  No, it wasn’t, I remind myself silently.

  “Tell me about thirty. What did you do for your thirtieth birthday?”

  “I didn’t have a party. Adam and I talked about having a party, but we never pulled one together,” I say, staring at the ceiling. Even before my post-wedding breakdown, I felt awkward reminiscing about my marriage with Gael. I put myself in his shoes; I would never want to hear about past birthdays with his ex-girlfriends, but even knowing that, I can’t stop myself from talking. “We went to London.”

  “That’s romantic.”

  “It was. I mean, I know Paris is the more romantic option, but we went to London and visited all these places I wanted to see. Buckingham Palace, the Tate. That was our last big trip. I mean, we did small vacations around New York, but we never went overseas again.”

  “That’s sad,” he simply says in agreement.

  “It is sad. I wanted to travel more, but after London, Adam could never get away. I wanted to go to Australia. I’ve never been there.”

  “I haven’t been there either.”

  “Next honeymoon,” I tell him as I stretch. “For the next one, I’m going to Australia. For a month. And I’m going to go scuba diving. I don’t know how to scuba dive, but I’m going to learn.”

  “Do you want to get married again?” Gael says, and I notice that his voice has gotten more careful, more cautious, as if he is creeping towards a particularly hairy spider to get a closer look.

  “Yes,” I admit, tucking my chin towards my chest so I can avoid looking at him. Even I know better than to look at a single man who is asking me questions about marriage. “One day. I liked be
ing married back when it was good, and I think I could do it better next time.”

  “What would change?”

  “I’d cook,” I tell him, and he laughs. I glance at him to show that I’m serious, while not taking myself too seriously. “I would. I know it sounds like a small thing, but I want to take care of someone. I’d make really good food, and my husband would help me, and we’d both make excuses to leave work early rather than stay really late.”

  The air in the room feels very heavy, as if we are Dorothy and Toto in reverse, moving from a world of color into the land of black-and-white. I lighten the mood by rolling onto my side and tossing my hair over my shoulder, looking demurely at him through my lashes. “And I’d wear a lot of sexy clothes. I’d cook in a merry widow and stiletto heels.”

  And even though he laughs, even though he rolls me onto my back so he can have me again, for some reason, his face looks incongruent, as if his mouth and his eyes and his cheeks have all ceased to work in unison.

  I decide definitively that I like being a writer, like sitting in front of the computer for hours at a time, like the way my mug of coffee looks on my desk, like the numerous sticky note pads I have lying around the apartment in case inspiration strikes while cooking or peeing.

  It’s a life I could definitely get used to living.

  It doesn’t feel like real time, and it is easy to look up at the clock and realize that I have been working for ten or more hours and still feel like I could keep plodding forward, not because it needs to get done now now now, but because I’m actually excited about the work. I’m excited to see words form into sentences and sentences form into paragraphs, and I keep glancing down at the tiny reminder on my Word document to see how much I’ve written, how it would translate out to pages in a real book.