Apron Anxiety

by Alyssa Shelasky

  “Take me to Ralphs” is the first thing I say to Shelley when she picks me up from the airport in her new Audi convertible with her fluffy puppy, Phoebe, on her lap. Otherwise known as Rock ’n’ Roll Ralphs, because of the freaky crowd there, it’s the only grocery store I remember being open this late.

  “Hi … love you and missed you right back,” she says, smiling.

  It’s 11:00 p.m., but I need to get into her kitchen. The last few days have been so dramatic—I’m exhausted, anxious, and shaky. Shelley wants to know why she can’t just give me a Xanax. “Because cooking works better,” I say sincerely.

  She’s already eaten dinner and uncharacteristically not hungry, so she impatiently waits in the car while I run into Ralphs. The aisles are filled with outrageous drag queens and juvenile delinquents. Hello, Hollyweird. The produce has been picked over and the butcher has gone home, so I choose the best-looking vegetables, a box of couscous, and some crumbled feta cheese with a nice, healthy Mediterranean dish in mind. I’ve made it many times for Chef and me as a fallback.

  Back at Shelley’s tiny, chic West Hollywood apartment, I unload my groceries before unpacking my suitcase. I can see that she’s tired and confused as to why I’m more interested in finding a cutting board than catching up on our lives. After all, I’ve just left my fiancé and she is my best friend. “Just go to sleep, Shellz,” I say. “We have six weeks.”

  Alone in the kitchen, preparing to roast my vegetables, Chef is in my head reminding me to chop gracefully, moving the knife in circular motions, rather than sawing back and forth, and to make sure all my cuts are even—because when I first started making this dish, some of the eggplant would wind up undercooked. It’s hard to prepare my meal without sending him pictures as I go—which has been our tradition; it’s a learned behavior, as is keeping my prep area clean.

  But tonight I’m in the kitchen for myself. I lay the perfect slices of symmetrical eggplant, peppers, and zucchini on a baking sheet, drizzle them with olive oil and sea salt, and put the tray in the hot oven. As the vegetables roast, I prepare the couscous. While everything cooks, I stretch my body, lifting my arms as far up as they can go, then bending over, pressing my fists against the floor; I extend my vertebrae, slowly twisting my waist to the right and then the left, and feeling my blood circulate. I breathe deeply and look out the window for the moon. Cooking takes the edge off in a way that nothing else can.

  I wake up early the next day to several heart-wrenching texts from Chef. He accuses me of running away instead of fighting for us, that this stupid break is not what he wanted, and that he’s dying inside. But he can’t be too beat up. While I’m gone, he’s going away for about six weeks (almost the entire duration of my trip) to shoot another cooking reality show, something I knew was in the pipeline, but we never really discussed. He makes me promise to come back home when he’s done. I coolly respond that I’ll be there, but deep down, I’m not sure what will happen past that point. “Let’s just take it day by day,” I respond.

  I pull myself together and prepare to make my first breakfast for Shelley. I contemplate making a broccoli quiche with a homemade crust, or a “sunchoke” frittata, just because I like the word, but my show-off food will be wasted on Shelley, whose password to everything from her e-mail to her bank account is “Big Mac.” As such, her fridge is stocked with the following staples: Chanel nail polish in the shade of Vendetta, the same two bottles of Veuve Clicquot she’s had for seven years, a tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, dozens of half-drunk water bottles, and last night’s leftovers.

  I’ll keep it simple, but I still need a few things, so I throw on a bra, snag Shelley’s aviator shades, and open the front door to a big buenos dias from the California sun. I walk to a ridiculously overpriced grocery store just a few blocks away, and there I sparingly shop for fruit, eggs, cheese, butter, and a baguette. If I’ve learned anything about cooking, it’s the fortitude of a few nice ingredients. With one filled bag, I can nourish us beautifully. As I walk home, I am feeling more free-spirited than I should. My relationship is on its deathbed, and all I can think about is the best way to hull a strawberry.

  As soon as I hear Shelley rumbling around her bedroom, turning on Regis and playing with Phoebe, I get to work on some scrambled eggs. I crack open four eggs the way I was taught—with one quick tap against the counter—and add salt, pepper, and a little cream. Ten minutes later, I serve them onto our two plates, each with a hearty piece of buttered baguette. I set out washed, mixed berries on a damp paper towel and pour two cups of orange blossom tea. I holler to Shelley, ecstatic to present our petit déjeuner. She’s taken me in, offered me her car, her clothes, and her unconditional support … this is one way I can give back.

  When she sees our homemade breakfast for two, it’s like she’s witnessed a miracle. She marvels again and again, “Wait, no way—you made this? Are you serious? Oh my God!” But then she gets down to business, becoming one with her breakfast, inhaling every last bite. Observing my best friend nourished by my food is a pleasure. And I know we will have many more moments like this.

  On my third day in L.A., Shelley goes to Malibu with a client and leaves me with her new car. As soon as she leaves, I scurry off to the Grove, a huge outdoor shopping mall that also hosts lots of food stands and a fabulous farmers’ market. Touristy as it may be, it’s one of my favorite places. The second I park, I grab a soy latte at the Coffee Bean and duck into Sur La Table. With summer berries in season, I am dying to make Shelley my whole-wheat berry muffins. It’s the easiest recipe, healthy too, and it will fill the apartment with a heavenly smell for when she comes home.

  To make that happen though, I need to buy a few tools—measuring cups, wooden spoons, and muffin tins. These small culinary projects placate me. I silence my phone and shut down my thoughts. My body slows in the presence of cooling racks and coffee frothers, as I bond with other home cooks searching for their own essentials. Sometimes I tell them about my blog; once, someone even bashfully asked if I was “Apron Anxiety.” She recognized me from the one picture I posted of myself frowning over a frying pan of burned rice. She told me that I made her feel so much better about her own epicurean inadequacies. I almost passed out. My whole life I thought the food scene was for food snobs, and here I am, making an impact just by being me.

  With a few shopping bags of basics, I pull into Shelley’s detached garage, top down and Eminem up. I am so excited by my purchases that I recklessly undershoot the distance between the Audi and the wooden wall, and slam the right side of her car into the structure. “No! No!! No!!!” I scream. This cannot be happening. Half the car is severely dented and all the paint has been ripped off. Dread overcomes me. Shelley loves her car and has a real temper about things like this. In less than three days in Los Angeles, I have de-pimped her ride. With no freelance work or savings to spare, and already on the brink of a breakdown, this is the last thing I need.

  All I can do is make it up to Shelley with her favorite thing besides me and Phoebe: food. So I dig out my cookbooks that I had packed in my aprons and frantically bake all day long, crossing my fingers that my self-taught pastry skills are good enough to save my ass. When she comes home predictably “starrrving,” I sit her down with an oversize muffin, glinting with mixed berries, and a coffee with frothed milk on top. I contemplate stirring in that Xanax she mentioned, but instead, I fess up. I wait for her to digest the news and lose her cool, but she barely looks up. The girl doesn’t want to stop eating. I could be off the hook.

  We go outside to assess the damage. The car runs just fine, but looks like it has been in a bad accident, and is totally reprehensible for the crowd Shelley runs with. We calmly decide that if insurance won’t cover it, I’ll compensate her for the cost in small increments at a time. “There’s just one more thing,” she suddenly says in a serious tone, standing by her busted automobile. “Can I have another muffin?”

  Around sunset, I go hiking alone in Runyon Canyon to shake off som
e stress. I’ve probably marched up that steep mountain hundreds of times in my life, and I always come down stronger and more poised than when I started. I am totally confused about Chef and me—in fact no one, not even my mother, or any of the sage women in my life, can find the right answer—but I know that on one of these cathartic walks, wisdom will find me. It always does.

  When I walk in the door after a two-hour trek, legs tight, cheeks flushed, Shelley is wrapped in a cashmere throw, looking up at me like the cat that killed the canary. As I stare closer into her face, I can see that she’s covered in crumbs. There’s a blueberry in her tooth, and I know what’s coming next. “Alyssa,” she says with gravitas. “I. Ate. Them. All.”

  My need to cook for others quickly extends past Shelley, who devours my dishes but genuinely doesn’t know or care (yet) about the difference between Iron Chef and Chef Boyardee. Even though I’m trying to keep to myself in L.A.—searching for signs and answers amid the avocados and azaleas—word spreads fast that I’m in town, taking a break from Chef, and growing my food repertoire. Everyone wants to know the scoop on my engagement, but I politely explain that I have no interest in talking about it. It’s not because of privacy; I just can’t explain what’s going on between us. He and I were so damn good at comfort and pleasure, but when real life crashed our domain, we totally self-destructed. All day long, my mind plays hopscotch between “love is all you need” and “love is not enough.”

  About a week into my L.A. trip, I get a text message from my friend Dara, a type-A TV writer who used to be a buzzed-about editrix in New York. Whip-smart, staggeringly confident, with surfergirl dirty blond hair that she’s never even touched, Dara is “a real winner,” as my mother would say, unsarcastically. She’s also the kind of friend who I can see once a year and pick up right where we left off, which is usually when she’s starting a dream job and I’m ending a relationship. In times of despair, Dara is the ultimate, no-nonsense problem solver. She won’t lick your wounds or take you for an ice-cream cone, but she’ll give you the cold, hard truth like you’ve never heard it before.

  Her text message reads as follows: “this fri, u cook dinner here for us and like ten other fab pple, k? showrunners, v. cute nabes, pple u need to know. will leave door open. take my mini-cooper for groceries. low carbs. kk?”

  I roll my eyes but crack a smile—an expression that has always accompanied our friendship. “Done,” I write back. Because of the blog, she thinks I’m the Barefoot Contessa. But hardly! This will be the first big dinner party I’ve hosted. I’ve cooked for the Boys, made cheesecake onstage, and brought lots of food to the stoops of C Street, but a large sit-down dinner is a challenge I’ve yet to tackle. Part of me thinks I’m not ready for it, but another part knows that preparing a dinner for a bunch of Hollywood hotshots is exactly the distraction I need. After all, the hardest thing about not being with Chef is filling the time and space previously reserved for loving him.

  Back on Shelley’s couch, thinking about Friday night’s dinner, which is only three days away, I obsess over the menu. I flip through French Women Don’t Get Fat, Jennifer Rubell’s Real Life Entertaining, and Mark Bittman’s How to Make Everything. I’ve also started to accumulate old columns by LA Weekly’s food writer extraordinaire, Jonathan Gold, which are stacked alongside farmers’ market maps, restaurant menus, and stolen paper placemats from Mario Batali’s Mozza, printed with silly Italian proverbs like “To avoid baldness, cut your hair during a full moon.”

  Conceptualizing a meal really turns me on. It’s one of the rare moments in life where anything is possible. Should we drink tequila, eat empanadas, and get sloppy drunk? Maybe it’s a fine-wine-and-grilled-fish kind of civilized soiree? Will deep-fried Southern food help the killer crowd loosen up? While Shelley and Phoebe doze off, I linger in the living room in my pajamas, flipping through recipes, drinking peppermint tea, and eventually deciding on an easy, elegant meal, completely within my comfort zone—herb-crusted baked chicken breasts served with mustardy, multicolored potatoes and a fun frisée salad.

  Thursday night, twenty-four hours before the dinner party, I bake a sour-cream coffee cake while wearing nothing but a towel. It’s hot these days to begin with, and I’m sweaty and jumpy about tomorrow. I take a chance with the recipe by adding an avalanche of dark chocolate chips—to me, dessert without chocolate is like sex without an orgasm. And I forbid Shelley from coming near the kitchen, which is quite cruel, considering the unbelievable smell escaping from the oven (and it is her kitchen). But she can see that I’m wound up and so she watches TV without a word.

  When the cake is cooling, I take her to the Grove to my newfound favorite restaurant, not just because it’s cheap, but because it’s phenomenally fresh and authentic: a Brazilian churrascaria buffet. “Who needs Nobu?” I say, midplantain, as she gets up for seconds.

  I’m too broke to rent a car and too scared to touch Shelley’s, so the day of the dinner party, I take the bus to the farmers’ market at the Grove. I hit it off with some Mexican housekeepers who warn me not to talk to anyone who takes public transportation in L.A., besides them, of course. I think of how my mother would rather be on that bus with the honest, hardworking people (and even the incoherent crazy folk) than anywhere else in Beverly Hills, and I miss her. The ladies made me laugh, and as I hop off at my stop and skip across the street to the butcher, I’m a little less nervous. I order twenty chicken breasts, the most meat I’ve ever purchased in my life, and pirouette over to the produce stand for some electric purple potatoes, as well as onions, lettuce, and a few other ingredients that look exciting.

  My BlackBerry starts to buzz incessantly, so after crossing everything off my list, I duck into Sur La Table to put down my bags and stand in the air-conditioning while reading my messages. There’s an e-mail from an old friend with a big job at New York magazine. I had included him in a mass mailing to friends and colleagues, letting them know I was on the West Coast in case they had assignments for me out here. I quickly open his note, which says, “We need you for the Emmy Awards in a few weeks. You around to talk?”

  New York magazine. Finally. The number one publication I’ve always wanted to work for. And the Emmys? Incredible. I’ve covered major award shows before, but not for such a respected outlet. This is a no-brainer assignment that I can kill. I’m jumping up and down in the utensil aisle, beaming in front of the pastry brushes.

  Then I realized the complication. The Emmys are two weeks after I’m supposed to fly back to Washington. Our six weeks apart would be up, and Chef would be coming back from his show. I’ve promised him that I’d be there waiting. Extending my trip would mean extending our separation and letting him down. But how many times has he let me down? How many times has he put work first? “I’ll do it,” I write back immediately.

  Before I rebundle myself with my poultry and produce, I call my sister and friends screaming, “Guess who’s reporting for New York magazine?!” Rach wants to FedEx me my favorite backless dress. Shelley texts me one “OMFG” after another. Even the security guard at Sur La Table congratulates me. I consider calling Chef, but I don’t want to ruin this happy moment with drama. The assignment is not the story of a lifetime or the cure for cancer; it’s not even going to pay for tonight’s food and flowers. But it’s nice to catch a break.

  High on life and because the bus is a real bummer, I splurge for a taxi to the El Royale, the fabulous, fabled building in Hancock Park, where Dara lives with her boyfriend. I let myself into their apartment and connect my iPod to their speakers to listen to a song called “Start a War” by the National. I’ve been listening to it nonstop. The lyrics remind me so much of Chef; how we once expected such an extraordinary life together, and now we’re barely hanging on.

  We expected something, something better than before, we expected something more. I crack open the windows and pull back my hair. I lay out the recipes for my herb-crusted chicken and mustardy potatoes. I pour a glass of wine. Do you really think you can just put
it in a safe, behind a painting, lock it up, and leave? I decide that I’ll improvise the salad. I smell the parsley and rosemary, close my eyes, and think of our garden. Walk away now and you’re gonna start a war.

  By the time Dara comes home, I’ve done most of the prep work, cleaned my dishes, and am able to display some level of composure. The hard part is over, but I’m still sort of scared. She comments on how amazing the apartment smells, which gives me a small boost of confidence, especially coming from her. We have an hour before the guests arrive. Together, we set the table with a blue-and-white-toile tablecloth and a large vase of sprouting sunflowers. We light a few unscented candles and talk about what’s been going on. As overexteneded as her own life is, Dara is the first person to help her straggler-artsy friends find apartments, land jobs, and get laid. She hands me a set of all her keys—to the house, Mini Cooper, and bike lock, as well as the membership card to the studio where she practices yoga, which she advocates that I use whenever I want. She also wants to fix me up. This is Dara’s way of showing love, and as always, I am touched.

  I tell her I don’t want to meet guys while I’m in town, and please not to push it. This is not a matter of morality; in theory, I am not above a little indiscretion (a hot kiss from a dark stranger, some meaningless sex) while Chef and I are summering in the gray. What’s wrong with a steamy one-night stand after all the hell I’ve been through? In fact, I would feel very cool acting all Parisian and polyamorous, lifting my flowery frocks high up above my head. I’m just not in the mood. Orgies of avocados, cherry tomatoes, and toasted pine nuts are all I want to fantasize about for now.