How to Change a Life

by Stacey Ballis

  I thought about this. “I really love to cook. I read old cooking magazines and cookbooks and I love food writing, and I really just love playing in the kitchen.”

  “So perhaps you should see if maybe there is a way to let that passion take center stage for you, now that you will have time to explore it more fully. The hours you’ve just gotten back that you won’t be spending in the gym, the days you won’t be going to meets and practices, maybe that is time you can spend cooking and determine if that might be a new direction to go.”

  “I never thought about that.” I always thought I would take the athletics as far as I could and then probably coach. As much as I loved cooking, I’d never thought of it being more than a hobby. But suddenly anything felt possible, because Mrs. O’Connor believed in me.

  “You can be anything because you are everything,” she said. “Don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  In that moment I felt invincible. I felt powerful and possible. How was it that I let that feeling get so diminished in me?

  I pull up in front of my house and go in to grab Simca. She gives me her special corgi smile and hops about excitedly.

  “You love me despite all my many flaws, don’t you, pupper?”

  Simca yips joyfully and does a spin.

  “Well, girl, I’m working on loving me too.”

  • • •

  They say that March comes in like a lion and leaves like a lamb, and that is almost always true in Chicago. The sun is shining in a very springlike way, but it is just in the upper forties, and the wind still bites. I’m bundled in a parka and scarf, looking like the abominable snowperson, at the dog park. But when I look up, Lynne, naturally, is in a sleek black shearling, with tall riding boots and a gray angora infinity scarf, looking like some movie star in Aspen.

  “Oh my God, he’s enormous,” I say, as Ellison leaps up at me. He has more than doubled in size since the last time I saw him.

  “I know,” she says, leaning down to scratch between Simca’s ears before joining me on the bench. “He’s a monster. You have no idea how many times I’ve put him in the car to drive by Paws and make a drop-off.”

  She laughs, but the joke lands flat. I know how many people buy dogs with no preparation and don’t commit to training and then just hand them off to a shelter when it gets annoying.

  “You can’t give him up now, Simca would miss him.” The two of them are playing happily and have found a Saint Bernard to join in the fun. The three dogs look like a Disney movie could break out at any moment.

  “Well, then, for Simca’s sake, I suppose I’ll have to put up with him.”

  “Indeed. So it looks like Teresa has the party well in hand!”

  “Leave it to T to just get it all organized,” Lynne says. We got e-mails this morning saying that she booked the private room at Stella Barra on Halsted for our joint birthday party for the Saturday night of our birthday weekend. She sent us the menus so that we can start thinking about what we want to order.

  “Well, I’m happy to let her handle it, aren’t you?”

  “For sure.”

  “Have you done your list yet?”

  “Yep. Angelique, and my assistant. A couple other people from work. Theaster and another person from the DuSable board. I’m inviting some of my West Coast girls, but I have no idea if they’ll want to make the trip in. What about you?”

  “Mine is pretty easy and small. Marcy, Lawrence, Mom, Claire, Glenn, the Farbers, Shawn.”

  Lynne narrows her eyes at me. “Seriously? Shawn?”

  “Well, yeah, of course, I mean . . .”

  “You mean, what, exactly? That the most fun way for me to celebrate my fortieth birthday will be to watch my ex-husband paw you?”

  “Come on, Lynne, he isn’t going to paw me, he’s not that kind of guy, but you can’t really expect me to not invite my boyfriend to my fortieth birthday party. How is that fair? You’ll be in a room of, like, forty people—it isn’t like some small dinner party—you can just avoid each other.”

  “He’s your ‘boyfriend’ for ten minutes.” She puts air quotes around the word and it makes something in my head snap. “How important can it be? He can celebrate with you on your actual birthday.”

  “He’s been my boyfriend for almost five months, and we love each other, and I don’t think it’s okay for you to expect me to not have him with me at such an important event. I’ve been very respectful of your past with him—I haven’t talked to you about him at all, or been gooey and glowy with you—but really, I would think that maybe we could all just be adults about this.”

  She laughs derisively. “Adults? Since when are you an adult, Eloise, really? You ran away from home to wander about Europe like you were on some never-ending gap year, had a boyfriend who was more a daddy figure, came back and hunkered down with your mommy and your auntie and your little baking pal Marcy, and essentially spend your life as a glorified au pair who cooks and a part-time fag hag! Good God, even this stupid bet! You needed to find a hobby and you picked up coloring, for chrissakes. You’re just an overgrown child, Eloise, always will be. You haven’t grown up at all since high school. Damn, the six-year-old fictional character you were named for is more of an adult than you.”

  A strange calmness comes over me. It’s like the anger gets into my blood and slows my heart and, despite the gut impulse to just run away, I hear Mrs. O’Connor’s words ringing in my head. I can be anything because I am everything. And what I need to be right now is my own best defender.

  “I hope it feels better to have gotten all that out, because clearly, it has been festering. You done, or is there anything else you want to bring up? Maybe go at me for spilling the Coke on your pink cashmere sweater back in the day?”

  “Whatever. You don’t want to have a serious look at yourself, brush it off. Maybe I just won’t come to the party at all. After all, it isn’t like I’m not going to win the bet.”

  “I know that you hate that I’m having a successful relationship with the man you lost, but seriously, I thought we were past this.”

  “Lost? I never lost him, I kicked him to the fucking curb. Because I deserved better.”

  “Yeah, how’s that working out for you? Oh, right, you haven’t had a serious relationship since your divorce, and even a professional matchmaker hasn’t been able to find someone who wants to be with you. Maybe it just really pisses you off that I’m in love and you’re not. After all, you’ve always felt so above Teresa and me, the queen bee. But here we are and we have happy lives and loving partners and all you have is, um, well, what do you have, Lynne? Oh, yeah, money. With an opportunity for more money. Jesus, Lynne, you are so self-centered you don’t even like your own dog.”

  Lynne’s eyes are shiny with angry tears, and she opens her mouth and then closes it again.

  I whistle and Simca comes running, and I snap on her collar. “You take a long hard look at who you are, Lynne Lewiston, and decide if she is the person you actually want to be. Because my life was fine when you were just a fond and distant memory. And if I met you tomorrow, I wouldn’t be exactly keen to know you. You want to apologize to me for being a hateful, conceited, superior mean girl, you give me a call and we can talk like rational adults. Because it seems to me that the need to lash out and poke at what you perceive as my soft spots, just because you don’t get what you want all the time, is about the most childlike behavior I can imagine.”

  Before she can say a thing, Simca and I leave the park. I just manage to make it into my car before the tears come.

  • • •

  I wait till the coq au vin is simmering away, the crème caramel is chilling in the fridge, and we are settled with a glass of wine in her living room before gearing up to tell Teresa what happened with Lynne this afternoon. I knew that if I told her right away, she would throw the cooking lesson out the window to just debrief, and I
needed the soothing action of the cooking to calm me down enough to discuss it with her rationally. Because whatever is going on between Lynne and me, I don’t want to use it to drive a wedge between the two of them. So I know I have to be able to share the story as calmly as possible and with little editorializing.

  Besides, I want Teresa to have a shot at winning this bet, so teaching her this classical French dinner menu helps keep her on track. It’s dead simple for a great home cook like Teresa, and it will have some familiar flavors to not scare the family: the rich chicken stew cooked with red wine, bacon, mushrooms, and onions isn’t that far off from a chicken Marsala. Served over buttered egg noodles—getting a pasta in—with a bright salad of butter lettuce in a basic Dijon vinaigrette, and a perfect custard for dessert.

  “Okay, that smells delish, my friend. I think my horde might actually love it. Thanks for the lesson. Salute.”

  “You’re a natural. And I’m super proud of how much you have really embraced this whole thing. I love being able to have food adventures with you. Cheers.”

  “So, you wanna tell me what you have been wanting to tell me since you got here?”

  Damn. “Lynne called you.”

  “You’re darn tooting she called me. I’ve never heard her so upset. What the hell happened?”

  I tell Teresa how it went down and what was said, to the best of my ability. She listens, nods, sips her wine, and doesn’t say anything till I’ve finished.

  “I am so, so sorry that you guys went through that. That is some awful nasty stuff to hear and to say, so that is a massive bucket of suck for both of you.”

  “But?”

  “But what sucks most is that both of you are sort of right.”

  This stops me in my tracks. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that both of you are so touchy and angry, and said what you said because there are small elements on both sides of this where you are right.”

  “So you think I’m not an adult?”

  “I didn’t say that. I will say, wouldn’t you have to admit that when she unleashed that nasty litany of crap at you, some of it stung because some of it wasn’t entirely wrong? You did take off and hide; you did keep your personal and professional lives small and contained; you did not stand up to be strong and move ahead with big goals. You completely checked out of having a romantic life. Now, I don’t mean that makes you somehow childlike; I don’t think it does. But the facts are not entirely untrue, even if the accusation of what it means may be.”

  I think back at what she accused me of, and while I don’t think she was right in the exaggerated way she portrayed it, a lot of what she said about my life isn’t entirely off base. “Maybe,” I say grudgingly.

  “And don’t you think that the stuff you said to her about her life—again, while delivered in a way designed to inflict the most hurt—still hit closer to home than she is comfortable with? I’ve said it before, you are asking a lot of her with the Shawn thing, and while I think you are within your rights to ask, it is too much to just expect it to be easy for her.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know what to do, T. I really don’t. I get that me and Shawn is a hard thing for her to get her head around, I do, but I’m not giving him up. And I’m not going to marginalize him in my life to manage her sensitive feelings. If she really thinks all those things about me, why would she want to be my friend? If she really thinks that about me, then why do I want her in my life? I’m sorry, I know that puts you in a terrible position, and I don’t want to put you in the middle, but I can’t see my way around it.”

  “Good Lord, woman, I’ve been the peacemaker between you two for our whole lives. Don’t worry about me in the middle, worry about the two of you back together.”

  “Why? At this point, really? Why?”

  “Because, like it or not, you guys are connected long and deep. And back in the day, when you got quiet or she got prickly, I’d tell you that you were amazing. I would tell her that she was amazing. And you know what? I was right on both accounts. You are both amazing. And you are both flawed and fucked up, the way everyone is flawed and fucked up. But you’re better with each other than without. Because she pushes you to expect more of yourself and get out of your comfort zone, and you push her to be softer and less surface.”

  “God, have you been talking to my aunt Claire? She said it’s important for me to have Lynne in my life too, not in spite of it being difficult, but in some ways because it is difficult.”

  “Your aunt is right.”

  “I don’t know how to move on from here, though, after what we both said.”

  “Let it lie for a day or so. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Are you a miracle worker now?”

  “Wasn’t I always?”

  “Absolutely. For what it’s worth, I have never had a moment’s doubt about how amazing it is to have you back in my life, not since the first moment I spotted you at the memorial.”

  “Me either.”

  “Good.” I check my watch. “I should get home before traffic is insane.”

  “And before Shawn gets there?” She winks.

  “Nope, he’s out with the boys tonight. I’ve got a date with Netflix and Simca, but he might stop by later.”

  “Are you going to tell him?” she asks.

  I think about this for a minute. “Yes, I am. I know that he will be angry with Lynne, but at the end of the day, he is my boyfriend and I want to be completely honest with him about what is going on in my life. I don’t want to hide things just because it isn’t completely comfortable.”

  “Good. That is the right answer.”

  “Thanks, Teresa, I appreciate everything so much.”

  “Hey, it’s taken me a lifetime to train you idiots to be my friends, I’m not letting all my hard work go to waste.”

  I laugh, and receive the hug she gives me with a heart that is the tiniest bit less heavy than when I arrived.

  • • •

  Simca’s happy bark wakes me from my accidental nap on the couch. After the day I had, I ordered a pizza, washed it down with half a bottle of red, and finished up with a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream. Between the heavy food and the heavy day, I conked out before the end of my first episode of The Missing.

  “Hello, Sleeping Beauty,” Shawn says, leaning down to kiss me. “Naughty pup, waking your mommy.”

  “Hey,” I say groggily. I love that he can just let himself in. “How was boys’ night?”

  “Good. Dry martinis, bloody steaks, lots of friendly ballbusting. They all want to meet you. Dave is still in town for a few days—you up for dinner? Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Of course. Any friend of yours.”

  He smooches me again. “Wonderful. And how was your day?”

  I think about this for a minute. “Hard.”

  He sits on the couch next to me, pulls my legs up into his lap, and starts massaging my feet. “Tell me about it.”

  “Okay, I’m going to, but you have to promise to wait till I’m all the way done before you say anything.”

  “Hmmm. Sounds serious. I’ll put on my good listening hat.”

  I tell him about the fight with Lynne. And about what Teresa said. I tell him about the parts of what Lynne said that I fear are more than a little true, and where that comes from. He listened, never stopped rubbing my feet, and didn’t make any faces or comments. He let me get it all out, and when the tears came, he just handed me a Kleenex. When I was done, he pulled me into his arms and held me close.

  “My poor sweet baby, I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

  I sniffle into his shirt. “You don’t think she’s right?”

  “Despite what she might tell you, Lynne is not always right. And while I don’t see any of the things that she sees or that you fear, that doesn’t make what happened today any easier.”

 
; “You don’t seem very angry.”

  He laughs. “Oh, no, baby, I’m mad as hell. If that woman were in this room right now, I’d give her a piece of my mind that would make what you said to her sound like high praise. But I promised you that I wasn’t going to let my history with her come between us, or between you two, and I intend to stick to that, no matter what.” He pauses. “Look, El. It’s easy to portray an ex as a villain. I’ve relied on that impression, maybe a bit too much, where she is concerned. But it takes two to tango, and I know that more than a little of her anger and lashing out at you is because of me. Of who I was then, of the part I played in our marriage failing.”

  Shawn has never really talked about this, and I want to hear it, so I don’t speak, hoping he will just continue. And he does.

  “I’m a people pleaser, El. Always have been. I liked being teacher’s pet, mama’s boy, coach’s favorite. It’s taken me more than a little therapy to recognize that in the process of wanting to make other people happy, I can sometimes gloss over my own needs or desires. I was always the ‘go along to get along’ guy—we’ll eat at the place you want to eat, see the movie you want to see, be the couple you want us to be.”

  This makes my stomach knot up, because to a certain extent, it validates Lynne’s impression that he wasn’t his true self until after they were married. And it makes me question who he is with me. What is real and what might be an act? What can I trust?

  “I want you to know that I’m not that guy anymore. I try very hard to own my thoughts and feelings and opinions, and trust that the people in my life can handle it if we aren’t one hundred percent aligned on every damn thing.”

  “You didn’t make any apology for hating my movie choices last weekend.” I was in the mood for some John Hughes, and Shawn suffered through both The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink before telling me in no uncertain terms that he found the movies unwatchable and making me promise not to make him see any more.