This Is 35

by Stacey Wiedower

  The lines still hadn't disappeared from between his brows. "Yours is too," he said. "I'm sorry I can't do the list with you like I said I would. The timing of all this stuff blowing up at work is really crappy."

  "I know you can't help it," Erin said, though she was stunned by the words "can't do the list with you." Did that mean he wasn't participating in the show or her blog at all?

  She ran through the implications in her head. In the preseason interviews, they'd talked a lot about how she and Ben were doing the list challenges together. Plus, Ben had helped her craft the entire list. A lot of the items were two-person activities, including—especially—the ones she was planning for the show. Like the triathlon. She was counting on Ben to do it with her—after all, they'd already been training together. And what about ballroom dancing? She couldn't exactly pull that one off solo. He wouldn't just leave her in the lurch, would he?

  Surely she'd misunderstood.

  "Thank you, baby." Ben leaned in and kissed her again before heading for the bedroom, one hand finishing the buttons on his shirt. As she watched him leave, Erin chewed her lower lip.

  Was she being selfish or somehow unrealistic or inconsiderate by assuming Ben would be involved in her list? No, he said he wanted to do it. But has that changed? If so, what did that mean for the show?

  She perused the class listings again and thought about the items on her list. Several of the items—for instance, No. 1: Become a Big Sister and No. 20: Start a screenplay—could only be done solo. But most of the others needed a partner—No. 35: Get pregnant being the prime example. Before the wedding, Leo and his crew had traveled to Dallas to shoot Erin taking self-defense classes for No. 13: Learn Krav Maga. The clinical trial had been heating up, so Ben had bowed out of that one.

  That, Erin understood. But was he bowing out of all of them now? Disappointment and a nagging ball of worry lodged in her stomach, and she frowned. Surely not.

  And what if he was? She couldn't expect him to drop everything to accommodate her shooting schedule, even if he had agreed to go with her onto the show.

  She'd been so excited when he'd gone along with it. Usually their fields were at odds with each other—science vs. entertainment—but for this one little stretch, Ben could be involved with her work. He'd even gone with her to L.A. for the preproduction on-camera interviews, and he'd turned out to be great on-screen. When they'd asked him why he was completing Erin's list items along with her, Ben had said, "When she was writing 30 First Dates, Erin did the list items on dates, and there was a different guy for every item. This time I get to be the only guy." The interviewer had said, "You two were best friends at the time. How'd it feel to watch 30 First Dates play out?" And Ben had grinned and answered, "I was jealous as hell."

  After that, Erin knew it was going to be a great season.

  Erin smiled, remembering, and then shook off her worries. Surely Ben would do everything he could to be there for her. And she had other things to think about besides the show. For one, she hadn't called Gabby, her Little Sister, in a while. Erin had jumped on that list item right away, the week she'd written and posted the list. Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Dallas had paired her up with Gabriela Graciela Estobal, a serious, quiet fourteen year old who was struggling in math and who reminded Erin of her Northside High teaching days. At the time, Gabby was in her last year of middle school. Now she was probably starting to fill out college applications, and Erin owed her a phone call. And speaking of owing phone calls…

  I should call Dave. Her favorite former co-worker, Dave Barber, still taught history and led the drama club at Northside, with one big difference. He was now a father of four. His wife, Missy, had gone back to work after having their first daughter, Tia, but she'd quit when the triplets came along less than two years later. Dave (inspired by Erin) had a blog called Kid Poor where he told hilarious stories about life with "a diva big sis and her chorus line of troublemaking toddlers." Erin didn't know how on earth he and Missy were making it on his lone teacher's salary, though sometimes he wrote about that, too. One of Erin's favorite posts was titled "Where's the Next Kids Eat Free Night?…Yeah, I'm That Guy."

  The previous year, she and Dave had both been asked to be on a speakers' panel for a Dallas digital media conference. Their session was called "Learn to Tell Your Story: Lessons from DFW's Top Bloggers." Dave had followed her around on purpose and introduced himself to people as "Erin Crawford's protégé."

  She shook her head now just thinking about it. Everybody needed a friend like Dave.

  Maybe he can learn how to ballroom dance with me.

  Just then, Ben came back into the room. He flopped down beside Erin on the couch and plucked the remote from between the cushions, flipping through channels to find the Rangers game. If the Texas Rangers were on TV, Ben was tacitly unable to stop himself from watching or at least having it run in the background. Erin now thought of MLB Network as the backdrop to their lives. Luckily she loved the Rangers as much as he did.

  She peeked at him as he settled into the cushions of their blue Ikea sofa. They needed a new one, but Erin hated, no, loathed, shopping and wasn't bothered enough by Ben's post-college purchase to endure the torture of buying new furniture, which was why she'd made it a blog item—to make herself do it. She tried to formulate the right way to ask the question hanging on the tip of her tongue. Are you backing out of the whole blog or just the cooking classes? The latter she could handle. The former she would handle but not happily.

  No Krav Maga, no cooking classes—hell, no wedding, almost. But these things weren't the real problem. They were symptoms of a bigger problem nagging at Erin more and more these days. She and Ben were just too busy.

  When she'd written her list with Ben's input and started checking off the boxes with him, it had been for the fun of it. They were younger, less career crazed, newly in love. They'd hated being away from each other, even for work. But now the blog and the list had taken on a new purpose she hadn't even realized until this minute—it was a guarantee that they'd spend time together. Otherwise it just wasn't happening. At least, not like it used to, when they were best friends-turned-lovers who sometimes met at the apartment for "lunch" simply because they couldn't wait till that night.

  Now lunch was just lunch, and Erin was starting to feel like they existed in separate spheres even when they were in the same room. Here she was, doing work on her tablet at almost 9 p.m., Ben's eyes riveted to the TV. In ten minutes, he'd be asleep, wiped out from the long day in the lab. She'd have to wake him up just to get him to eat.

  What was he thinking right now? And how long had it been since they'd had a conversation that didn't involve work? Her lips parted, words forming on her tongue as she glanced at him. He yawned widely, oblivious to the fact that she was watching him, oblivious to anything but strikeouts and a pitching change. The words dissolved on her lips.

  Her own reticence bothered her. Since when could she not speak her mind, especially with Ben? Since when did she not feel comfortable enough with her best friend—her husband, a word she still felt weird using—to ask a question that felt vital to her life?

  But the last thing she wanted to be—ever—was a nag. She clamped her lips shut and swallowed her questions along with her disappointment.

  "Hey, hon?" She nudged him. Ben's eyes were already starting to droop.

  "Hmmnn?"

  "I got sushi. It's in the fridge. Want me to grab you a plate?"

  "Mmmm." He yawned again and stretched his arms above his head. "Nah," he said. "Melody ordered me and Nate food from Chuy's. Sorry I didn't text you."

  Erin shrugged. "No worries."

  Nope. She wasn't worried. Now, if only she could make herself believe that.

  * * *

  Date: May 31

  Age: 33

  Time to 35: 12 months, 2 weeks

  List Item: No. 17: Learn to Cook

  You've seen me sweat. If you've followed This Is 35 for a while—and especially if you've been follow
ing since the 30 First Dates days (Bless you, you dear, faithful reader.)—then you've witnessed me in various stages of duress and discomfort. But I don't think I've ever felt more under the gun than I did last night with a camera trained on my clunky fingers as I tried not to chop them off.

  I learned a very important lesson about myself: Rachael Ray I am not. I'm not even that girl who tried to cook like Julia Child and got the movie made about her book and her blog. Not even close. I have no idea how TV chefs do it! They make things look easy, and I can promise you that's a talent bigger than their culinary prowess.

  Guess what, though? I created something edible! The process might not have been pretty. (Think I'm exaggerating? Just wait till you see the YOLO footage.) But in the end, my butchered carrots, badly peeled potatoes, severed squash, and mangled brussels sprouts turned into this amazing concoction called a summer vegetable hash that was without a doubt the best thing I've ever done in the kitchen.

  This is why I stretch myself. It's why This Is 35 exists. With our busy days and ships-passing-in-the-night schedules, Ben and I could be eating salty, over-processed takeout well into the foreseeable future. But no, by God, one of these days there WILL be a summer vegetable hash with an over-easy egg and homemade salsa verde on our kitchen table.

  I'm sure I'll blog about it when it happens, and I'll let you know if Ben keels over either from my cooking or from the sheer shock of me channeling my inner domestic goddess (which, let's face it, I'm pretty sure doesn't exist). Also, since my actual 35 by 35 list item isn't Take a cooking class but Learn to cook, I plan to keep going. I can't promise how soon or how often it will happen, but I'll chronicle my experiences in the kitchen here—and every one of you is an accountability partner.

  In fact, this blog post comes with an assignment. To take part, share one bucket list item in the comments that you've always wanted to do but haven't managed to make happen for some reason (procrastination, fear of failure, busyness, discouragement from family or friends, etc), and let me and your fellow readers of This Is 35 become your accountability partners. The first 15 responders will become part of a future series of posts—and be serious about this, because I'll be checking in with you!

  In the meantime, I have three more cooking classes to go before I can comfortably put a check mark next to this item on my list—wish me and my shaky fingers luck. Tomorrow night, I'm learning how to make my own stock, then how to make mushroom risotto, and then how to whip up a chocolate soufflé. If I can swing that without setting anything on fire or making anybody sick, there might be hope for my inner domestic goddess yet.

  * * *

  "And that's a wrap."

  Leo stepped from behind the camera—a serious wheeled number that required a lighting crew in addition to the camera operator and sound guy—and Erin sighed in relief. With flour-smeared fingers, she pushed a strand of hair off her forehead and behind her ear.

  Tonight's lesson had been tougher than the first one, a crash course in knife skills in which every bit of information was new. Erin had grown up with her mom's meat-and-two-style home cooking, but she hadn't been a receptive apprentice. Before this week, she knew little more than how to open cans, make pancakes from a prepackaged mix, and locate reviews and menus on Yelp. Now, while she might not be ready to judge an episode of Iron Chef, she could at least chop an onion without taking her fingers off.

  As she fumbled to untie her apron, Erin glanced up to see Leo deep in conversation with the instructor's assistant. She'd been at both of Erin's lessons so far. Petite and curvy, her five-foot-oneish frame was dwarfed by Leo's six-foot-three one. Her long dark hair cascaded in ribbony curls down her back, as if she'd set it on hot rollers or spent an inordinate amount of time with a curling iron. Erin didn't remember her being so dolled up last time, which made her wonder if it was for the camera's benefit…or for Leo's.

  She smirked to herself, straining to hear them over the other conversations in the room. She caught the girl saying, "…one more semester of grad school, and then I'm moving to France."

  And then the student next to Erin, a tall, soft-spoken black woman named Marcella, held up a big slotted spoon. "Do you remember which drawer this came from?"

  Erin fiddled around at her work station until she found and pointed out the drawer, in the process missing several sentences of Leo's conversation. And then she heard him say, "Yeah, this gig isn't bad." Though the sentence wasn't exactly a heap of praise, at least it wasn't unflattering.

  The next snippet Erin heard was, "Which one is nicest in real life? Please don't say Kourtney."

  Ah, of course Leo had shared the Kardashian nugget of his past. That was probably his signature line, if his chiseled chest and perpetual five o'clock shadow didn't do the job thoroughly enough. She stopped listening to them and focused on the teacher who was instructing the class's participants on what to do with scraps and tools as they cleaned up their cooking stations.

  Once the utensils were gathered for washing and the individual stations were wiped clean, everybody sat down around a family-style table to eat the lesson's results, Leo and his crew included. He used a small, handheld camera to catch bits of the conversation and laughter.

  As with most of the list items she'd checked off in six years of blogging, the food in her dish reminded Erin that completing a goal was bigger than the goal itself. Yes, she was learning how to cook, and yes, that was potentially life changing. But more than that, she was expanding her horizons, and she was surrounded by others who were doing the same.

  She glanced around the table—Marcella was across from her, and next to her was Crystal McLellan, the chef-slash-instructor. Beside her was a father-daughter pair, Mark and Susannah, who took a cooking class together every month in honor of Susannah's mother who'd died of ovarian cancer a year earlier.

  There was Darren, a twenty-nine-year-old guy with ginger hair who was learning how to cook to impress dates. Across from him were two besties in their mid-thirties, both moms of young kids, and next to Erin was Arturo, a retired, grandfatherly type who said he came every week for something to do. His chopping skills were possibly better than the instructor's.

  Erin couldn't wait to tell Ben about the people she'd met.

  Her lips turned down as she wished she didn't have to tell him. I wish he was seeing it for himself. It wasn't as if this list item required world travel—it was happening ten minutes from their house, well after closing time for his lab. Does he really have to be at work right now? Yes, his work was vital, and yes, he was committed to it. But he'd made a commitment to the blog, too, and the show. He'd made a commitment to her. Try as she might, she couldn't help but feel pushed to the back burner.

  Not that he'd be using a stove anytime soon.

  Erin forked a bite of risotto and pressed it into her mouth without tasting it. She glanced around the table again, watching the smiling faces and trying to reabsorb her former good mood. Even Leo, "Loner Leo" as she'd come to think of him, wandering the world with a camera in hand, had his head tilted back in mid laugh. The way that chef's assistant was looking at him, he wouldn't be lonely tonight, anyway. I wonder if he writes their names down? Keeps their numbers? A wry smile played on her lips.

  "What do you think of the risotto, honey?"

  Erin jumped at the soft words, which came from Arturo, the older man, who was at her left side. His watery gaze peered out from under scraggly salt-and-pepper eyebrows. She wondered what he made of her silence, if he could see through the cheerfulness she'd forced for the camera.

  Here she was contemplating Leo's loneliness, but she was lonely in the middle of a fun group. How ridiculous is that?

  Erin sat up straighter and smiled at Arturo, a real smile. "You know, I'm having trouble with the idea that I made this," she said. "I mean, with help." She shrugged, giving him a crooked grin. "My extreme lack of cooking skills makes me the butt of family jokes. I'm not sure anybody'll get used to the thought of me in the kitchen. Especially my husband."

>   Arturo laughed loudly, exposing a row of even, white dentures. "I know what you mean. It would've knocked my wife's socks off to see me whip up a soufflé or even flip an omelet, for that matter." He paused, his pale eyes growing somber. "I should have done this a long time ago. I could have done this for her. I could have done this with her."

  Erin's stomach sank as Ben's missing presence loomed again. She glanced down at her food, away from Arturo's memories.

  When she looked back up, he was smiling. "Who'd-a thought I'd like this so much? I've always liked to do things with my hands—build a table, fix a boat motor. I'd never thought of cooking as another way of taking things apart and putting them together." He paused, holding a forkful of salad midair. "I'm sure Adeline knew that," he mused. "She knew things about the world just natural that it's taken me a lifetime of doing to figure out."

  Erin chewed her risotto slowly, thinking about that. She was an Arturo, not an Adeline. Ben was the Adeline in their relationship.

  "How long were you married?"

  Arturo took a sip from his water glass and glanced down at the diamond on her finger. "Forty-seven years," he said. "Good years, really good years, though it was sometimes hard to appreciate that at the time." His bushy brow furrowed, and he frowned, as if trying to figure out how to impart three decades of marital wisdom over a single meal. She wondered if he and Adeline had children and if those children were searching for something, some vague, elusive sense of fulfillment, like she was. She wondered if he could see that on her, if she wore it like a hairstyle or a particular shade of lip gloss.

  But then he just smiled, licked his lips.

  "Boy, that's some good cooking," he said. "Adeline'd be proud."

  Erin nodded and continued eating, wondering how she could convey to Ben this feeling that something had just happened, something significant. She didn't want to contemplate in thirty years all the things they hadn't done together, the missed opportunities.