Cleaving

by Julie Powell

  But there’s no time to appreciate my handiwork now. “Congratulations, Jules.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now wrap it up and put it back in the cooler. Wipe down the table, so we can get some beef out here.” (You can’t cut beef and pork at the same time on the same surface. Josh says it causes cross-contamination and is illegal. I don’t really understand this, nor do I buy it entirely, but them’s the rules. I just work here.) “No rest for the weary, chop chop. See what I did there? ‘Chop chop’?”

  “You’re very clever.”

  We spend the rest of the afternoon frantically trying to keep the case full as a steady crowd of customers parades through the shop, chattering holiday cheer and anxiety. I need to leave and get back to my family, help my folks get settled in and give Eric a respite from Robert Duty—not such arduous work, since Robert mostly just lies around three feet away from wherever you are, occasionally farting or asking for a tummy rub, but Eric has been shouldering far more than his fair share of it lately, and it can get to be a psychological burden, the single-parent routine. But there’s no chance I’m getting away, between wholesale orders and the demand for Christmas beef. It’s nearly eight before we’ve gotten everything stowed and ready for tomorrow, the day before Christmas Eve. I dash to the car parked two blocks away in the free lot. I have two rotisserie chickens in hand for our dinner.

  Mom is already ensconced in the kitchen of their rental cottage when I pull into the driveway, has thrown together a green salad and is sitting at the dining room table, Tanqueray and juice in hand, poring over a cookbook to nail down the grocery list for our several planned blowout meals. (Mom and I have gotten better over the years at not making ourselves sick with exhaustion when cooking for family holidays. We no longer make appetizer soups with homemade breadsticks, six side dishes to go with the brined turkey, and five desserts, for a Thanksgiving dinner for six people. But we still tend to go a little loony.) Eric is outside on the back porch with Robert, who’s not allowed inside, and Dad and my brother already have the jigsaw puzzle out. “I brought chickens. We can just throw them in the oven for a few minutes to warm up.”

  “The corn bread is baking in there right now at four hundred degrees. I decided to go ahead and put that together so it can sit out tonight, so it’ll be stale enough for the dressing for the roast. But it’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  “Okay. What can I do?” I pop a bottle of red wine, pour a healthy glass. I have to catch up; it’s a little late for my first drink of the night.

  “Well, you can help me figure out the menu. I wanted to make that cranberry tart we did that Thanksgiving in Virginia, the Martha one, but I can’t find it.”

  “Okay, hold on. Let me check on Eric and Rob.”

  “Sure.” And then, as I walk by her on my way to the back door: “Wow. You really smell like meat.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  Eric is sitting on a cane chair in the dimness, bundled up in his coat and reading Dashiell Hammett by the square of yellow light streaming through the windows of the kitchen door. Robert lies on the floor beside his water bowl, looking typically melancholy with his chin resting between his paws. He manages an upward gaze and three thumps of his tail in greeting. “Hey, babe. How’s it going out here?”

  “Good. Fine.” I ruffle his hair and he sort of bounces the side of his head against my hip.

  “You want a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  “Wine? Vodka tonic? Weller?” (Weller being my father’s preferred brand of whiskey, which he carries with him on the plane when he comes up north, since it’s tough to find here.)

  “Mmm! Weller, please!”

  “Just a sec.”

  I get him his drink, a couple of generous slugs in a red plastic cup. “You know, we can’t spend the whole holiday with one or the other of us sitting out in the cold with our dog.”

  “No dogs allowed in the house. And I’m not leaving him alone at your place while we’re all here. It’s Christmas.”

  “He doesn’t know it’s Christmas. Anyway, I think we should just let him in.”

  “Don’t want to get your mom in trouble with the landlady.”

  “It’s not like he’s going to shit all over the place or get on the furniture or anything.”

  “But all the hair.” He reaches down to rub Robert’s proffered belly—Eric is a much more devoted belly-rubber than I am, a much more doting parent—and, indeed, a poof of floating pale fuzz rises up. I sigh. I’m a pretty obedient girl, as I’ve by now made clear, but sometimes Eric makes me look like a regular Johnny Rotten.

  Standing on a Greenwich Village sidewalk outside a trattoria on a mild fall evening, waiting to be seated. Leaning against a gate, nuzzling and snuffling and smiling those too-intimate-for-public smiles and generally telegraphing all too clearly that this is a couple who will be having sex within a matter of hours. We’re interrupted by a slightly sheepish middle-aged woman I’ve never seen before. “Excuse me.… Are you Julie Powell?”

  “Um… yes. Hi.” So this happens, only very occasionally. Someone who’s read my book and has somehow managed to recognize me. Generally it’s pretty thrilling. But the problem is that that first book is about, among other things, the sweet certainty of my love for my sainted husband and the particular perfection of our union. It wasn’t a lie, what I wrote. But things are not so simple anymore. It may be that they never were, that I just ignored the complications. In any case, I have either way made a mess of a relationship that people I don’t even know look to as a paragon of the genre, and being spotted making out with some strange man in front of a Mario Batali restaurant strikes me as a dread occurrence. My mind races as the woman chats about my book, how she loved it and gave it to her best friend, and asks what am I doing now? Maybe she won’t even address D.

  But of course she does. She sticks her hand out to him, saying, “And you must be the long-suffering—”

  Smoothly, instantly, D takes the woman’s hand in a firm grip with a broad, shit-eating grin that could not be more unlike my husband’s sweet, self-conscious, lopsided smile. “Eric. One and the same.”

  I almost laugh in dizzy relief, right in the woman’s face. I must look completely dazed, with hectic eyes and a plastered-on smile. D’s no wild-eyed rebel, doesn’t race hot rods or start fistfights in bars or snort lines off strippers’ asses (… much… that I know of). But he has a way of, with just a sly smile, a tiny lie, making me feel gleefully wild. I am trembling; I can’t wait to get him home.

  This entire heaving memory has washed over me and receded (leaving me drained and sodden, as these memories always do) by the time Eric has straightened up and brushed the dog hair off his pants.

  “Well,” I say, allowing the overwhelming longing to morph, unfairly, into irritation, “We have to figure something out. We can’t do this the entire time.”

  “All right, all right.” He picks up instantly on my annoyance, of course, knows how my moods turn on a dime, more lately, but really always. Once, when he was feeling generous, he called me moody and beautiful. He’s not feeling generous now, and why should he? “Maybe we can put him in the stairwell down to the basement. Block the doorway with some chairs or that bench or something.”

  “Okay. Yeah. Let’s do that.” I hate it when I snap at Eric, even when he deserves it but especially when he doesn’t, and not just because it’s not nice to snap. My mother carps in just the same way, and I despise hearing that tone come from my own throat. Again, not only because I feel defensive on my father’s behalf when my mother digs into him, though I do. It’s also because I feel in her, when she takes these unwarranted swipes, hints of a too-familiar, bone-deep unhappiness, or discontent.

  I am instantly affable again, apologetic. “That’s a good idea.”

  “Julie? You coming? I really need your input on this.”

  “Yeah, Mom, we’ll be right in. We’re going to move Rob into the basement stairwell. That’ll be okay, don’t you thin
k?”

  We move Rob over. He plods along with that familiar look of resignation with which he always suffers unexpected changes to his circumstances. By then Mom’s taken out the corn bread to cool on a trivet, turned down the oven, and put the tinfoil-wrapped chickens inside. It’s almost nine. As I sit across the table from Mom to help her decide if we want to make the green beans with shallots or the brussels sprouts with pecans and garlic, and whether the apple pie with lard crust we sometimes make is too much trouble to do in this small kitchen, I suddenly feel the weight of my exhaustion. My feet throb, and my back. As I pick up a pen to write the shopping list out on the back of an envelope—“Ow! Shit!” The pen clatters from numb fingers as I grasp my wrist, within which something or other has just popped painfully.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Jesus.” Shaking my hand out, wiggling my stiff fingers. The initial stab has already dissipated, but there’s an alarming thrumming like a piano wire vibrating from my fingers up to my elbow. “My hand has decided it’s done, I think.”

  “Let me see.” I hold out both hands to my mother, who takes them in hers and compares them, turning them to see the insides of my wrists. There is nothing subtle about it now, my left wrist is clearly thicker than the other, and of a slightly different color, paler. When Mom presses her thumb down at my pulse point, my middle two fingers spasm, jerking twitchily in toward my palm, and I wince.

  “Honey, this is carpal tunnel.”

  I shrug. “Well, not sure what to do about that.”

  “Well, what you should do is not do what you’re doing anymore until it’s better. But of course you’re not going to do that.”

  “Nope.”

  She gets up and goes over to the refrigerator, digs some ice out of the open bag in the freezer, and dumps it into a Ziploc bag. (Our family always has plenty of ice wherever we go. It’s part of the shopping list that we automatically tick off whenever we first pull into a new town: orange juice, mixed nuts, and ice, followed by a trip to the liquor store for gin, Jack Daniel’s for Dad if he hasn’t brought his Weller, Tanqueray for Mom, vodka or red wine for Eric and me.) “Well, keep it iced at least. I had to have surgery for this, you know. This is no little thing.”

  “Okay, okay.” So I do. I keep the ice on it throughout dinner. Mom is enthusiastic about the chicken, and she’s right, it’s spectacular, the aroma exquisite, the spice mix rubbed into its skin a blend perfected by Juan, a closely held secret, which I am determined to wrangle out of him one day.

  After we eat, my brother, Dad, Eric, and Mom sit on the floor around the coffee table peering at twenty-five hundred tiny puzzle pieces. The image on this year’s annual puzzle is a vintage Polynesian postcard, which seems simple enough, but the water and all the Gauguinesque shadows are a bitch. I’ve never had quite the endurance for puzzling that the rest of my family—especially my brother and Eric—has, and besides, my wrist has now sunk into a deep sulk and snaps at me whenever I try to do anything so ambitious as pinch a small piece of colored cardboard between thumb and forefinger. So instead I lie back on the couch staring at the pages of the open book resting on my tented knees, sipping my fourth or fifth glass of wine, until my eyelids start drifting rather determinedly downward and then I’m jerking awake to the sensation of my glass listing dangerously in my hand. That’s my cue: time for bed. I set the glass—emptied, luckily, down my gullet rather than onto the upholstery of the couch in my parents’ vacation rental—in the sink. Stepping away, I bump painfully into the corner of the counter. “I think we should head to bed.”

  We say our good-nights desultorily. We’re all in our evening doldrums by now; I was not the only one drifting on the couch.

  As we head out into the chill air, I realize that Eric is gripping my upper arm too tightly, which makes me angry, even though I could use the support when I stumble on the uneven ground. “What?”

  He jerks hard on my arm as if he’s the only thing keeping me from slipping to the icy pavement. Robert walks alongside us, oblivious, occasionally scooping up a mouthful of snow. “Why do you have to get so sloppy?”

  “What did I do? What? Why do you get so mean?”

  “Forget it. Never mind. Let’s just get you home.”

  We manage the cold quarter mile back to my apartment, climb the dark stairs, and tumble into bed, after Eric forces a big glass of water and a couple of aspirin on me.

  But once the booze has worn off, the pain comes back. By three a.m. I am wide awake. To riff on a Kris Kristofferson song, there’s no way to hold my hand that doesn’t hurt. My thoughts flit back and forth among the throbbing ache, obsessive mental butchering reenactments, and preoccupation with the generalized physical longing that is pretty much my home position. By the time seven a.m. comes around, and Robert has begun stretching and yawning for his walk, my eyes are itchy and red, my stomach has gone sour with sleeplessness. And my wrist still hurts like anything. I get up feeling as creaky and old as hell. A short walk around in the frosty morning with the dog, a Diet Pepsi from the supply I keep in the fridge, a hot shower; I didn’t bathe last evening, spent the whole night in my meat schmutz. It’s gotten so I don’t even notice it anymore, certainly not after a few glasses of wine. I wonder if Eric has gotten used to it or if he’s just too polite to say anything. Then I’m ready to go.

  Eric barely manages a “See you tonight, babe” when I kiss his shoulder good-bye.

  “SO, WHAT the fuck is wrong with you?”

  My knife has slipped from my hand to the floor, barely missing my leg on its way down. I’m muttering under my breath as I massage my left palm with my right thumb.

  “It’s nothing. My hand… my hand is just a little screwed up. I’ll get over it.”

  Josh grabs my hand. “Let me see.”

  Again I’m submitting to inspection, again my wrist is being turned back and forth under peering eyes.

  “Dude, your hand’s fucked up.”

  “A little,” I admit. “It’s okay. It was fine for a while. I’m just getting a little tired.”

  “Well, then sit the fuck down and rest, brain trust.”

  “I’m almost done with this—”

  Jessica, who always overhears, has come over and is looking at my wrist too. “Has this been going on long? Have you tried massage? Acupuncture really works, too.”

  “I haven’t tried anything. It’ll be fine.”

  “Well, if you wind up suing us for workers’ comp—”

  “Oh, please, I’m not going to sue you.”

  “No, I know, but you know what I’m saying. Sit. Have some soup. Get some ice on that.”

  Josh very nearly throws me into a chair. “No way you’re working anymore today.”

  “It’s fine. Look, it’s not even two, and you guys are going to need help with the—”

  “You think you’re going to win this argument?” Josh flutters his blue eyes at me. “How cute.”

  Sighing, I submit to Josh and Jessica’s smart-assed version of solicitude. I get my mug of soup, sit at the table in back, will the feeling to return to my crippled limb. But they’re right, everybody’s right. My hand has given notice.

  “Look, you oughta go spend the day with the fam anyway. Decorate trees, drink nog, do what you people do.”

  Resistance, I now realize, is futile. Besides, maybe Josh is right. I should not be hiding on Christmas Eve eve.

  Wait. Not hiding. Working. I shouldn’t be working, is what I meant.

  “Oh, fine. Fine. So you guys coming by for dinner tomorrow?”

  “Got nothing better to do, sure. What should we bring?”

  “Oh, the usual. Booze. Snacking accessories.”

  “Sounds good. And Steph and Matt coming with? That cool?” Stephanie and Matt are old friends of Josh and Jess, a couple who own a house up here and come from the city every weekend. Since I’m usually up during the week, our schedules thus completely opposed, I have met them only once or twice.

  “Sure.
More the merrier. Jesse already said he’s coming for sure.” I’ve invited everyone in the shop. I’ve already posted a map and directions, scrawled out on a big sheet of butcher paper in red Sharpie and stuck up on the wall with masking tape. “And what about you, Juan?” I call, raising my voice to reach the kitchen. “You in?”

  “What?”

  “My house? Tomorrow?”

  Juan wipes his hands on a white terry-cloth towel. He’s elbow-deep in dishes. “I’ll try.”

  “You can get a ride with us,” Josh offers.

  “Or me,” adds Jesse from the counter. “Your place is right on my way.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll try. Thanks.”

  I HEAD back to my apartment with my enormous paper-wrapped pork roast and six pounds of lamb stew meat. Rob meets me at the top of the stairs with his usual casual interest, but a “Hello?” reveals that Eric isn’t around. No doubt helping my folks with groceries, tree shopping, or some such. I’ve left him a text or two, but haven’t heard back. I wedge my meat into the refrigerator with some difficulty, fill a bag with ice, and lie down for a bit. Robert the Dog pulls himself heavily up onto the bed at my feet, as he always does when it gets cold. I should really make him get down, but I don’t.

  “Julie? You here?”

  When I open my eyes again with some alarm, the room has gone dim with evening. Of course the sun is setting early these days, but I must have slept, I don’t know, three hours at least. My ice pack has melted into a Ziploc of cool water. I sit up with a guilty start, much as I do the mornings after I black out and can’t quite recall how the night before ended or if I did something stupid like drunk-dial my ex-lover or get into some teary fight with my husband. “I’m here, yeah.”