Life From Scratch

by Melissa Ford

  My official birthday therefore creeps up on me gently, even though I’m not a big fan of marking time passing. Even though I’m now officially of “advanced maternal age,” if I decide to attempt procreation. I am in a higher risk group for genetic issues. A higher rate of pregnancy loss. These cheery thoughts flicker around in my head like little birthday candles. Thank you, women’s health magazine articles, for the birthday wishes.

  Arianna calls to say that she is on her way with croissants and coffee. Penelope calls separate from my sister and whispers the words to the Happy Birthday To You song into the phone, as if she’s worried about startling me into aging. My brother calls to see if he can bring over croissants and coffee too, but declines to join us when I tell him that Arianna already has it covered. He tells me he’ll see me that night at the birthday dinner.

  I check email after I’ve showered; before Arianna arrives with breakfast. Last night, I put up a blog post about turning thirty-five, and my inbox is now clogged with thousands of well-wishers leaving comments. It’s easy to write the requisite “Happy birthday,” so even the lurkers come out of the woodwork. Nestled amid all of the emails is a single, anonymous birthday wish, laden with an enormous amount of hidden meaning: “I really do want you to have a happy birthday today.”

  I immediately file it within my email account so I don’t have to see it again in my inbox.

  I will have a good day, I decide, with or without Adam’s blessing.

  Arianna shows up without Beckett but with a bag of croissants and two coffees. I take her over to the computer and search through my email to find Adam’s message. She reads it and shrugs her shoulders. “You have always known that he’s not willing to open up about his feelings. I mean, he wouldn’t even sit down and talk to you straight about the problems in your marriage.”

  “Right,” I agree.

  “Remember that time that you tried to plan a cruise? You thought that if you got him onto a ship, there would be few places where he could run away and do his own thing? You’d be forced to spend time together. And what was his response?”

  Adam had refused to even look at the cruise ship brochure, sighing that he couldn’t believe I thought he could take a three-week vacation. “He wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Or the time you wanted to take him clothes shopping for new suits after he landed a major deal for the firm, and he couldn’t even explain to you why he wouldn’t give you one afternoon—not couldn’t, but wouldn’t—of his time. He was so secretive; he shut you out.”

  Arianna sounds far angrier than necessary. She asks me if I’m going to delete his email or figure out a way to block him from leaving more comments, but I shrug my shoulders. I can’t imagine deleting it any more than I can imagine looking at it again. It’s sort of like The Box in the closet, resting in emotional purgatory.

  “I would delete it,” she insists. “I wouldn’t let him have that power over me or leave reminders of himself in my space. Your blog is your space, Rach. And insinuating himself into it through anonymous comments, reminding you that he’s still around without actually connecting with you in a meaningful manner, is just a power play. You’re letting him have power by not deleting his comment from your blog.”

  “How is that letting him have power? I think it’s much more powerful to leave it there and not react. Why are you so angry?’

  “I don’t like the way he treated you. What if he was leading a double life? Had a girlfriend on the side? Didn’t you ever wonder?”

  Of course I wondered. I had wondered about it all the time, which was why I called his workplace so often, hoping to catch him away from his desk so I could confront him on my theory that it wasn’t all work that kept him away from home. But no matter how many times I called, no matter how many times I searched his pockets looking for a forgotten receipt, or sniffed his collar for leftover perfume, I never found anything worthy of a confrontation. I’m not sure which is worse—the idea that there’s another woman or the idea that I’m not worth spending time with.

  I log out of my email account, not making a decision either way on what to do. Arianna must sense that her anger is getting on my nerves, because she softens her voice, returns to talking about the new milestones Beckett has hit, and sets up our breakfast with dishes from my cupboard.

  There is a strange tension in the air, as if time is slowly working its magic, aging me, graying my hair and crinkling my eyes. And I can’t explain why, but part of me doesn’t want to go out tonight, to mark the event. It feels like electricity. Like the moments before a storm.

  That night, Gael picks me up at the apartment. When I open the door, he is standing with his hands behind his back. He walks into my apartment strangely, twisting himself so that I can’t see what he’s holding.

  “Is it a present for me?” I ask, trying to sound cute instead of greedy.

  “It might be,” he says, his smile even more lopsided than usual.

  “Is it small?” I question.

  “Well, it can’t be that large if I’m hiding it behind my back,” he laughs.

  “Maybe you should give it to me later, after the party. I don’t want to be late. Guest of honor and all.”

  “I want to give it to you now,” he says, suddenly looking serious.

  The change in expression makes my heart start pounding—and not in a good way. In an everything-is-starting-to-sound-tinny-and-faraway-because-all-the-blood-is-rushing-away-from-my-head sort of way. I can’t help but think of our conversation a few days ago, how he asked me if I ever wanted to get married again. Was he asking for himself because was planning on proposing? We haven’t even been dating for very long. It doesn’t help when he confirms my engagement fears by pulling out a small box. A small, robin-egg blue box unmistakably from Tiffany’s.

  “Oh my God,” I hear myself say. “You shouldn’t have. I mean, you really shouldn’t have.”

  “I wanted your birthday to be special. I know you’re not happy about turning thirty-five, but I wanted to make this a day to celebrate too.”

  When Adam proposed, it was like this huge sigh of relief, like finally fitting that last piece of the puzzle in place. It wasn’t a surprise, I knew it had to be coming, we had discussed it enough times. But it didn’t make it any less romantic when he dropped down on one knee and fumbled through the question after I got out of the shower because he was too anxious to wait another hour until we were at dinner.

  I remember the drops of water staining the shoulders of his shirt as I stood over him, and how we took a second shower together after we made love on the towel I threw over the tiles in the bathroom. That proposal felt like completion, like crossing through the first event in a triathlon.

  But this moment feels entirely wrong.

  I want to tell him that he’s crazy, that we haven’t even said “I love you,” yet—that I’m honestly not in love with him yet—but he is standing there, so earnest with the tiny box, that I have no other option than to take it out of his hands.

  In all honesty, I don’t want to be remarried yet. I don’t even want to be engaged with the pressure of setting a date removed. Because I’m not sure Gael is the one. The One. He is gorgeous and sensual and thoughtful and moves slowly, showing me that I am allowed to have as much time as I want. But now, with the moment possibly before me, I wonder if that is enough. I said I want to be married again, but do I? All of my thoughts jumble on top of each other, smothering each other, and I can’t even really hear myself think after a bit because my heart is literally pounding in my ears.

  And then I open the box.

  And I stare at the anti-engagement ring—a hideous silver lobster pin with eerie turquoise stone eyes. It is so terrifying and my relief is so great, that I actually make a sound, something akin to a groan, as I remove it from the box and try to smile to show how much I love the gesture.

  Gael helps me pin it on, watching my face for signs of how I feel about it. Part of me wants to smack him, explain everything that we
nt through my head as I saw that robin-egg blue box. And the other part of me feel foolish admitting that I thought he was about to propose.

  “I know you don’t like to eat shellfish, but I thought you might enjoy wearing shellfish,” he says.

  “It’s fantastic,” I enthusiastically agree, to cover up for the fact that my hands are still shaking. “It’s unusual. No one else at the party will be wearing something like this. But you really shouldn’t have,” I say, seriously wishing that I didn’t have to attend my own birthday dinner wearing a lobster pin. Tiffany’s or not, no one wants to walk around wearing a crustacean, unless perhaps they are vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard and have a penchant for pastel pants suits.

  “Do you remember that first dinner party?” he asks. “The lobster dish you used for the salad.”

  “Right,” I say, wondering if this is his ill-fated way of being romantic. Can you teach someone romance?

  “I knew you must like lobsters. Lobster-shaped things. I figure I also owed you wages for helping with the wedding photos.”

  He is staring at me with such a strange expression on his face that it’s a little unnerving. “Payment in lobster pins,” I repeat.

  “Did you think it was something different?” he questions, which makes me think that I’m being set up somehow. That he knew that I would have a reaction to the robin-egg blue box and this was a trick to rope me into admitting that I have been secretly punching holes in our condoms in order to snare him into having a baby with me. Damn that marriage talk earlier in the week. It just confuses everything.

  “Nope,” I say. “Well, I mean, I was worried you had chosen from the Tiffany’s cute animal collection, but it was a big sigh of relief when I saw the lobster. Little claws. Good in butter.”

  We stare at each other with mutual suspicion until I remind him that I don’t want to be late for my own party. The atmosphere feels unusually thick in the cab.

  Little did I know that the lobster pin would be the best part of my night.

  Quiddity, the molecular gastronomy restaurant Arianna picked out of Zagats, is impossible to find. There is nothing at the address, no sign, no marked door, no attractive host standing outside to welcome us to the home of tiny plates. We spend a good five minutes walking back and forth over the same patch of pavement, trying to figure out which unmarked door leads into the restaurant—the locked one marked with the name of an insurance company or the locked one with the scratched-up, frosted-over window. I am getting more agitated as we search for the door, and I am aware that Gael is watching me as if he’s waiting for me to explode, tell him that I thought he had been about to sink down on one knee, and realizing that he is waiting for me to say something only makes me clam up more. Gael is acting so strange that it is unnerving, he is making my stomach twist up into itself. We finally find our way into the building and greet the others, who are waiting for us at the bar.

  Perhaps wrongness is catching, passing from person to person like a virus, because everything feels off at the bar, too. Gael slips away to the end of the bar after giving Arianna a kiss hello and Ethan a firm handshake. There is a weird tension between Ethan and Arianna, as if they had been fighting before I arrived. Sarah is looking in the opposite direction from Richard and smiles tensely at me while saying her birthday wishes through clenched teeth. It is shaping up to be a delightful evening.

  Arianna hands me an appletini while we wait to be seated, and I survey the room, and it feels so incredibly wrong. Like having your birthday in a museum. Even the other diners look like they’re chiseled out of marble. The only people who look at home are Sarah and Richard, who are standing stiffly by the bar, identical gin and tonics in hand.

  But I can’t complain because Arianna has put so much work into the evening, so instead I smile broadly, drink my appletini, and follow Gael’s gaze to the stunning brunette sipping a glass of scotch by herself at the end of the bar. We all hear her unmistakable Spanish accent at the same time, and Gael slips away to chat with her. I watch her surprised expression soften into a smile and listen to them exchange a rapid conversation in Spanish.

  My boyfriend is chatting up another woman on my birthday.

  I grab a second appletini, answering Richard’s awkward questions about the book and trying not to notice that Gael is now laughing, brushing the woman’s hair off her shoulder—in a casual manner, but for the love of God, he’s touching her, nonetheless. On my birthday.

  We are finally led to our table, and like my first dinner party back in the apartment, we start a game of musical chairs, trying to keep all of the couples together, when I hear Gael jovially ask the waiter if there is room for a seventh chair.

  Gael has brought the small brunette, who is holding her glass of scotch and grinning at us broadly. “Valentina’s date didn’t show, so I told her that she could join us.”

  “If it’s too much trouble, I could just go home,” Valentina offers, in a lilting Spanish accent.

  “That’s silly,” Gael says, answering for all of us. “You’re here, you waited a long time for the reservation. Just join us. The more the merrier, right?”

  The more is definitely merry, though the rest of us are silently staring at her in disbelief. Valentina positions herself between Richard and Gael, and I am shunted to his other side, at the end of the table, so it is difficult to speak to anyone else. I am positively livid that my boyfriend has invited along an extremely beautiful and Spanish-to-boot third wheel.

  This is gearing up to officially be the worst birthday ever.

  Despite the strange angle of my chair, Arianna and my sister attempt to pull me into the conversation, but I allow the others to carry the discussion, answering each question curtly. It is obvious that everyone is embarrassed for me, and that thought is even more embarrassing than having my boyfriend—soon to be ex-boyfriend—snag another woman at the bar at my birthday dinner.

  As I swallow the first course—a single leaf of lettuce floating on what appears to be a pool of butter—I am filled with nostalgia for Adam. I know, it feels like whiplash to be so angry with him in the morning over the email and missing him by the evening, but there is something about birthdays that take a person on a wild roller coaster of emotions between nostalgia and fears for the future.

  Adam may take hours to kill my cockroaches and be relieved to be divorced from me, but at least he didn’t embarrass me like this.

  I morosely continue to get drunk, my belly empty on the small portions but filling with appletinis, which are magically brought to the table at regular intervals despite the look of perpetual worry creasing Arianna’s face. I tune out the conversation at the table, staring dully at the salt shaker.

  My mind is on my thirtieth birthday, when Adam and I went to a tiny sushi bar in Notting Hill. He gave me a ring that we had seen on Portobello Road the day before; he had secretly doubled back to get it when I was busy inside a bookstore. It was a gold band, someone’s old wedding ring perhaps, and inside the band it was inscribed with what turned out to be a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quote: “All things must change to something new, to something strange.” We had laughed at the time because it seemed like the most unromantic inscription of all time, but now, considering it against the lobster pin, it feels strangely fateful that those words came so incredibly true.

  I miss Adam.

  I miss my home.

  I want all the things I have now—minus Gael—in my old home. It doesn’t matter if Adam’s now with Laura; he can’t be that happy with her if he’s still curious about me. I want all the knowledge I’ve gained, the insights, the blog fame, the agent, even the wider thighs and graying hair that are surely just around the corner, but I want it while sitting across from Adam. His anonymous comments are like finding our dishtowel pattern in a store and realizing how much I miss our kitchen.

  I’m like a college student who longs for her parents, forgetting all of the screaming and door slamming that went on during her tumultuous teenage years, how they stifl
ed her and gave her a ridiculous curfew and frustrated her. Suddenly, she only remembers how they gave her the Barbie doll she wanted for her eighth birthday. And, even though I’m getting progressively too drunk to remember this part too, I admit that the college student usually remembers why she was thrilled to move out in the first place when she returns home for that first Thanksgiving. It is that knowledge, that I can’t go home, that home will never be the fantasy home in my head, again, that makes me burst into tears. At my birthday dinner. With everyone watching.

  “I was just thinking about Thanksgiving,” I mumble as if this is enough of an explanation, taking the napkin that Ethan offers. I note that Gael does not make any move to comfort me, sending me into fresh tears while everyone sits there silently. He says something in Spanish to Valentina.

  “Perhaps she is drunk,” Valentina offers as an explanation.

  “I think that should be your last appletini,” Ethan agrees.

  “Don’t tell her what to do,” Arianna counters, even though all evidence points to the fact that I do not need to imbibe one more apple concoction.

  “I’m not telling her what to do, Ari. I’m just agreeing that Rachel has had enough, and we should probably ask for the check.”

  “But we haven’t even eaten dinner,” I gasp. “I’ve eaten lettuce soaked in butter. And you haven’t given me presents or sung Happy Birthday or had the waiter bring me out a piece of cake with a candle in it.”

  Ethan makes the universal sign for the check, and I struggle to get up to my feet, waiting for Gael to stand up and help me and when he watches me, with a look that straddles being bemused, concerned, and mortified simultaneously, I steady myself and totter into the bathroom, followed by Arianna. She finds me by the sink, splashing water onto my face.