Good Enough to Eat (8 page)

“I travel light. Never know when you have to pick up and go!” There is false bravado in her voice, and her eyes are dark.

“Barry kept the apartment and all your stuff?”

She smiles a winsome smile, the crooked teeth endearing. “Every pot, pan, dish, and curtain. The towels, the sheets, the lamps, and rugs. I got out with my clothes, and not much else, certainly not my furniture or my dignity.”

Nadia is otherworldly in many ways. She speaks in snippets of poetry, and is at once very childlike and very old. Her hands are always busy, fidgeting in her long, wavy strawberry-blond hair, streaked with pink. Her green eyes tend to dart around when she speaks, but lock on yours with deep intensity when you speak to her. She touches a lot, a hand on your shoulder as she passes by, an arm slipped through yours when you walk. I’m getting better at not flinching when she does this.

She is like no one I’ve ever known, and even though she has been working at the store for a week, and has just moved into my home, I’m keenly aware of not knowing her, not being fully comfortable with her, and yet, feeling somehow better when she is around, which instead of being a comfort, worries me. The last time I felt generically better in someone’s company was with Andrew, and that sense was so misplaced, that security so false, I’m now fairly certain that I’m somehow the worst barometer of human trustworthiness in the universe. I was the stupid wife offering to bring snacks to the office when he was “pulling an all-nighter with the associates” for some big case, never even suspecting that he declined my generosity because he wasn’t really at the office, but instead was sleeping around. I thought he was dedicated. Turns out, he was, but not to work, and certainly not to me.

Nadia heads to the small second bathroom, and I can hear her pee, a very strange and intimate sound that startles me. I’d forgotten what it was to have another person around, not just superficially, but deeply embedded, intimate. I hear the flush, and for some reason it embarrasses me, this awareness of her personal activity. I turn on the TV just to have some background noise.

When she comes back into the room, she is wiping wet hands on her battered cargo pants. This odd little stranger in my life.

“Mel, this place is amazing. It is the nicest place I have ever lived. I can’t believe there is a real tub in there! When I was growing up, I only had this little weird corner tub that was too small for soaking, and all the places I’ve lived since then have either had shower stalls, or tubs so disgusting you would never want to sit in them!”

I laugh at this outpouring of tub-love. “Well, I’m glad that I can provide a good tub.”

“Not a GOOD tub, Mellifluous, a MAJOR tub.”

The endearment grates the tiniest bit. I think being around Kai with his little nicknames is maybe rubbing off, but there is something about when Nadia does it that sits strange for me. I shrug it off. “Sorry, I’m glad I can provide a MAJOR tub.”

“If you ever wonder where I am, I can tell you right now . . . I am going to LIVE in that tub. I’m going to get in today and not get out till Sunday morning!”

“Let me help get all this stuff into your room,” I offer. Nadia raises a hand to stop me from getting off the couch, and then gestures for me to sit back down.

“Do not move. Sit right there. I’m going to make us some tea.” She glides into the kitchen and fills the electric kettle. I look at the pile of stuff in my living room. My clean, simple, spare living room. Nadia is babbling about some customer at the store she was talking to yesterday, but I can’t focus. Why would she just dump all the stuff here and not move it down the hall to her room? What would it take, two trips? And with my offer to help, it would have been thirty seconds! What is the immediate need for tea? I love tea, but I get tea when everything is done, reward and relaxation at the completion of a task. What is the point of relaxing when you are in the middle of something? It won’t actually be restful.

“Honey? Lemon? Agave nectar?” Nadia rouses me from my inner struggle with my more anal tendencies.

“Splash of milk, thanks,” is all I can spit out.

I take a deep breath, find rationality. She isn’t planning on leaving her stuff in the middle of the room forever. We will have a cup of tea and then she will move her stuff, and the earth will not stop turning and nothing will be amiss and my living room will still be my living room. Except it also sort of has to be her living room. And her mess, her mess in my home, is reminding me of my mess, the mess that is me, and that is troubling on a much deeper level.

“Here you go.” She hands me a steaming mug. The tea is fragrant, and the warmth from the cup generates a heat that spreads through my whole body. I take a cautious sip, and look at my new roommate. “So,” she says, “how much are you regretting ever letting me set foot in here?”

I choke slightly on my tea. “I don’t . . . I mean . . . I wouldn’t . . . You’re . . . You know . . .”

Nadia laughs, a much deeper, more knowing guttural laugh than you would expect from someone so elfin. “C’mon. If we’re going to be living together, even for just a time, we’re going to have to address the elephant in the room.” She waves her arm around and then points down at her own head. “You wouldn’t have me here if it weren’t for a desperate situation or at least something minorly desperate, and I wouldn’t be here without my own desperation. We are strangers relying on the kindness of other strangers. We are sitting in a pile of broken glass from the break-in-case-of-an-emergency box. You don’t want me here, and I don’t want to be here. Not because of us, I mean, not because we are bad people or don’t like each other, but because we don’t want to be in the situations that make us have to be here together. You’re afraid that I will mess the place up . . .” She gestures to the pile that is plaguing me. “And I’m afraid that I’ll break something or ruin something or let you down. You’re afraid that you might have to both fire and evict me, and I’m afraid that I might just do something that would give you ample cause for one or both. So I figure, let’s talk about the stuff we are both really scared of, and get it out in the open, and then if we fuck it up, at least we’ll know what we’re fucking up and why. You know. If you’re up for that . . .” She lets the thought trail off, and takes a deep draught of her tea.

And I start to laugh. Really laugh, like I haven’t laughed since I don’t know when, tears rolling down my cheeks. “Oh my god!” I say, wiping the wet from my face and trying to get my breath back. “I am so fucking freaked out!”

“I KNOW!” she yelps.

“You’re twenty-four! I have wooden spoons older than you!”

“You are going to hate all my music and not want to watch any of my shows!”

“I’m going to need to take care of you, and I can barely take care of myself.”

“You’re going to try and mother me.”

“You’re going to mess up my apartment, and I need it to be my safe place.”

“I’m always going to feel like I am walking on eggshells and am going to have to hide in my room all the time.”

“You’re going to bring boys home without any consideration about how that will affect me.”

“You’re going to never bring anyone home because you’re embarrassed that I’m here.”

“You’re going to hate me.”

“You’re going to hate me.”

This last sentiment is expressed almost simultaneously, and we stare at each other. And then she smiles. And somehow, even though I know it will be weird and probably uncomfortable at times, I also know it will be okay. At least, I want to believe that I know this.

“We’ll be okay,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take my stuff to my room.”

I think about it. “Leave it for now, I’m starving. How do you feel about pancakes?”

“Love them.”

“Perfect.”

 

 

“I’d like to propose a toast.” I’m trying to gather my thoughts as I look down at my champagne flute. “When I first found out that I had to lose weight for my health, I was terrified. Not that I couldn’t do it. I knew that I could and would. But I was afraid I would never eat another decent meal again!”

The assembled group laughs. I look around the room. Kai and Phil are standing, Kai nestled in the crook of Phil’s arm in the most natural and loving pose. Delia is sitting at a table with Benny, her favorite customer, an enormous wall of a woman with skin the exact color of chocolate pudding. Benny comes in at least once a week to tell us that she has lost a half a pound, and then buys half the display case. She is always smiling, always has a funny story about her boyfriend, Andre, a slight, light-skinned man, who sometimes stops in to pick up something to surprise her with. Nadia and Janey are sitting at the other table with Carey, who flew in for the occasion, and about ten other people are scattered around.

I take a deep breath and continue. “The idea for this store was a lifeline for me. I knew that I had to eat healthy to continue to live, but I also knew that food still had to be a delight for me if I wanted any life in that living. When I bemoaned the lack of a place like this to Carey”—I raise my glass at her and she smiles and raises hers back at me—“she told me if there wasn’t a place that was the right place, I should make one. And so I did. But I could never have done it without you. One year ago today, on a blustery March morning with a blizzard on the horizon, I walked through those doors for the first time, and I knew that this was the right space. Six months later, Dining by Design was open for business. Kai was here with me”—I tilt my glass at him and he makes a small bow—“and he brought a bottle of champagne and a bottle of bourbon, figuring that we would either be celebrating or commiserating at the end of the day. Janey was the first one to come in the door.” I smile over at her and she grins back. “And she was literally jumping up and down at what we had to offer and promised to send all her clients, and came back again at the end of the day and helped us drink that bottle of champagne. We have had plenty of days when we broke out that bottle of bourbon, but more days have been champagne days, and I’m so grateful to all of you for that. We may not be getting rich, but in a tough economy, and at a tough time of the year, we have made it through the first six months. I know most people would wait for the one-year anniversary of the opening day, but for me this dream began the first time I set foot in this room. Tonight isn’t just an anniversary for the store, it is in many ways my birthday. Because the day I committed to open this store is the day I was completely reborn. And I couldn’t have had a more wonderful group of people to spend this past year with, and I hope that you will all be here for next year’s celebration, and the tenth year, and the twentieth! Cheers!”

Everyone toasts, clinks glasses, and the hum of conversation starts up again. I’m surrounded by good people, people who love me, and who stand by me. These are good friends, family by choice, and their warmth and happiness buoy me.

“I’m so proud of you, girl!” Carey comes over and gives me a hug.

“I can’t believe you came in for this. You are so sneaky!”

“I wasn’t going to miss this, I haven’t been back to Chicago to visit in ages, and I’ve been dying to see the place. You did such an amazing job on it, Mel, truly. You should be very happy.”

“I am, you know, I really am.” Which is true. I thought it might be weird to celebrate the store. It was only six weeks after the grand opening that Andrew left me, and it was the madness of the six months of work to get the place ready that was the time my marriage fell apart without my even noticing. Andrew had been blindly supportive of my decision to buy the space, had given me carte blanche with the home equity line and the savings account to get it finished, and insisted that his name not appear anywhere, claiming at the time that it was because he wanted the store to really be my baby.