Life From Scratch (26 page)

“She was just making small talk,” Ethan insists. “I saw her at Starbucks.”

Now that I’m finished with my twenty-four-hour mope, I have no desire to rehash what got me into the mope in the first place. But Ethan has paraded out his kindly brother face, and I can tell that he’s going to make me listen to all the advice he has to offer, whether or not it’s helpful to me. I might as well just dive in and get it over with.

“Yes, I bumped into Adam, and it was all kinds of awkward. He didn’t admit that he was dating someone, even though he was there as the host’s new boyfriend. Who, yes, is my friend Laura, from work. He pretended that he isn’t reading my blog and that he has no clue what I had been doing with my life all year. And that made me . . . I don’t know.
Revert
. It made me revert back into the old Rachel, who could never tell people what she wanted.”

“Why do you let him have that power over you? Who cares, Rach? If he wants to waste his time checking your blog, let him. Ignore it. You’re over him.”

“I
am
so over him. Wait, why is reading my blog a waste of time?”

“It’s not a waste of time. You know what I mean. I know you say you’re over him, but really, you need to stop caring. What he does is his own craziness. Even if he showed up here tonight, admitting that he reads you all the time and wants to get married again, would you do it? At the heart of the matter, do you trust him? Could you trust that it would be different this time?”

I hold one of Ethan’s photographs, the question hanging in the air between us, giving it intense thought even though this really is a conversation I don’t feel like having at this moment. Ethan is killing the author-to-be buzz that I’ve been on for the past two days.

I stare at my brother, still fumbling for my answer.
 
As attracted as I was to Adam’s face back at the party, I try to imagine what it would be like to actually reconnect with him. Would I be able to bring what I learned on this leg of the journey back into our marriage, or would we forever return to our old roles as I did at the party?

Ethan’s question jars an old memory.
 
On the night that Penelope was born, Adam and I took the subway out to
Brooklyn
, giddy as we sat clutching a baby outfit we had purchased the week before. A pink number with a fake tutu around the waist. When we got to the hospital, Sarah, doped up on painkillers but still in control, with her hair tightly back in a bun and her face scrubbed before she allowed company into the room, let us hold her—Baby Penelope—and Henny-Penny was so tiny, so perfect, so fragile that my heart shattered into a million pieces inside my body.

At that point, Arianna had been trying for a while to have a baby, and here was this one, easily alive and miraculously here. It is a wonder that anyone is born at all, when you consider all the things working against conception.

As we held Penelope, Adam bent down and murmured to me, “One day, we’ll have our own,” and it was that moment, during a time that was already becoming strained with arguments, where we entered into synchronicity with each other’s mood, fit into each other like puzzle pieces. Where, in the very same moment of time, we felt the very same amount of love for one another. And though the imbalance of love was the more common state of our marriage—him more in the beginning, me more in the end—the fact that we could achieve that equilibrium makes it difficult to let go of the marriage as I cross ever closer to the one-year mark.

I have, for the most part, succeeded in making a home for one—it can be done. But it’s much harder to live as a single person within a marriage? What if I was the only one who has truly changed over these last ten months? And how could we ever get to that place of equilibrium if I was returning because I missed
him?

I missed the way we argued over the best section of the
Times
. I missed the way his back felt when I rested my hand against it in the middle of the night when I awoke from a nightmare. Seeing his presence on Sitestalker and bumping into him at the party has dialed up the sense of missing him. Increased the volume on my internal radio station tuned to longing.

Despite the evidence that he might actually miss me if he was spending time on my blog, I couldn’t imagine
what
he missed about me when he barely noticed me while we were married. Did he miss having someone to do his laundry? Surely he could take it to the cleaners, or Laura would happily throw in his boxers with her cat-hair-covered sweaters. Did he miss having someone around to water the plants while he went on business trips? There were people you could pay; neighbors you could ask. Perhaps it simply came down to the fact that for some people, it is better to be able to say that you have someone and feel that appearances have been kept than it is to find that meaningful relationship—the one that will make it worth leaving the office at six and hurrying home for the intimate, homecooked meal. Maybe Laura is his stand-in for me, and he is still looking for what we had, because we
did
have it at one point, at least in the beginning.

The one thing I know at this point is that I want to roast my own chicken. I never want to go back to being the helpless woman who doesn’t know how to boil water and needs to order-in even her steamed rice. Being in the kitchen makes me feel like a Titan, like I’m literally taming my life. And there is no meal that has made me prouder than the one I made a few days earlier to celebrate getting an agent.

I roasted an entire chicken. I followed the recipe step-by-step, rubbing the skin with butter, sticking my hand inside the cavity and stuffing inside a lemon and vegetables and sprigs of aromatic herbs. It felt like I knew a secret every time I opened the door to baste the bird. From the outside, it looked like a normal bird. But inside, there was this feast going on. This infusion. And how could you go back to eating plain, rotisserie chicken from a deli after you’ve cooked one in your own oven?

But would Adam get that? Would he agree with me when I told him how important it was to be able to cook for myself, regardless of what my mother taught me about women being enslaved in the kitchen. Once in front of him, would I be able to hold onto my own voice, state these words? Would he tell me that he’s proud of me, celebrate this new side of my being, or would he merely endure it? Would he cook
with
me, become the sous chef to my executive chef?

I hand Ethan back his photograph, not trusting myself to speak. But of course, I don’t have to. My face says it all. Damn brother killing my authoring buzz.

A little voice calls
at
six a.m.
on Saturday. “Aunt Rachel,” she begins, solemnly stating each word as if it is the most important message she has ever had to convey. “You forgot to take me with you when you went to pick up the dish.”

“Henny Penny? What time is it?” I ask.

“Mommy and Daddy are still sleeping,” she admits.

“You should be sleeping. I thought you weren’t allowed out of bed without an adult coming in the room.”

She ignores this fact and repeats her message. “You said you would take me with you.”

“I will,” I say, sitting up in bed, now fully awake despite the hour. Shit. I left the dish back in the store in
Brooklyn
. It is probably gone by this point. “I just haven’t gone yet.”

“What about today?” Penelope suggest brightly. “You could come out here and make udon noodles in your udon noodle dish.”

It is difficult to get frustrated with a voice that is this cheerful despite the early hour. I promise to leave the apartment within the hour and come to breakfast. “Mommy can get us whole wheat pancakes from Flipped!” she promises with undeserved excitement.

I debate calling Gael, asking if he is up for an early morning date to Park Slope so I can introduce him to my sister and show him off. See the orchids at the
Brooklyn
Botanic Garden
. He has been noticeably more reserved since the wedding disaster, as if it was a major turn-off to watch your girlfriend behave in a crazy manner after seeing her ex-husband, have a breakdown at a wedding, and then confide that a roach is why she filed for divorce. Just imagine how quickly he would have run if I had brought up The Dating Diva’s blog. Gael, and I have only had sex once since that night in the bar, during which, we barely spoke.

Which makes me set the phone back down without dialing.

I take my time getting out to
Brooklyn
, the sun fully rising as my train passes over the river. The buildings start sparkling, the water shimmering as they reflect the light and the icicles hanging under the bridge. I pass back underground, the darkness rocking the train until I almost fall asleep waiting for the doors to reopen in Park Slope.

I hold my coat closed as I walk up the street to Sarah’s apartment. I can see Penelope’s face pressed to her window, and it feels so nice to see someone watching for me, caring about when I arrive, that I give a small wave and look around to see if any of the stores are open so I can duck inside and bring her a gift. A bar of organic chocolate, a book, a shoe horn.

My sister is now awake and buzzes me into the building, and Penelope greets me at the door, two dolls in hand because she would like to recreate our earlier Julia Child storyline at the dollhouse. “I forgot to pick up my dish,” I explain to Sarah, glancing at a Styrofoam delivery case holding a small pile of gritty, grey pancakes in the kitchen.

“Unfortunately, Penny has a creative movement class at
ten a.m.
and then Japanese lessons after lunch, followed by a nap,” Sarah says. “I’m not sure today is a good day for paint-your-own-pottery.”

“No, I just have to pick it up,” I say, removing the ticket from my pocket. “It’s ready in the store.”

“It’s a happy dish,” Penelope explains to her mother. “It’s for udon noodles.”

“I needed a serving dish,” I finish.

“Well, we can walk with you to the store before the class so Penelope can see it,” Sarah relents.

She goes into her room to wake Richard and get ready, and I check the ticket for the store’s opening time. I settle onto the floor in Penelope’s room, and she sits down so close to me that she is practically in my lap. She laughs and falls onto the floor, playing silly for a moment, which is a nice change from the Penelope I usually get when my sister is around.

“At creative movement, we put our feet in the air like this,” she says, flailing her legs in the air and narrowly missing my cheek bone. I grab her socks and lower her feet back towards the floor.

“Do you do somersaults?” I ask.

“Only if an adult is watching,” she tells me. “’Protect your neck.’”

“When I was little, we did somersaults down a hill. Better to pick up speed that way.”

She stares at me with her wide eyes, disbelieving that someone would so foolishly risk their life for fun.
Oh sweet Penelope, when you are older, I will tell you about drinking games and dizzy bat and truth or dare
, I think to myself.

“What else did you do when you were little?” she asks.

I think of the most benign life possible. “I read books and played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and ate whole wheat pancakes.”

“Just like me,” she says proudly.

“Just like you,” I repeat.

“Aunt Rachel, I missed you.”

She says this not as a guilt trip or because she wants something, but as a simple declaration of fact. I was here and then I was gone and now I’m back; and in between, she missed me. She had hoped I’d come along for one of their panini jaunts, but I wasn’t in Park Slope, and in turn, she missed me. I know that I am grinning like an idiot when I tell her that I missed her too, even though it isn’t quite true. Even a four-year-old is better than I am when it comes to honesty, with stating her heart.

Sarah pauses in the doorway to Penelope’s room, watching us with her coffee mug in hand. “Mum says that you said that you wanted to host Passover this year,” she comments.

“I do,” I agree. “No more take-out from
Jerusalem
’s Catering. I’m going to make turkey and a brisket and a kugel—the whole thing.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything, but she purses her lips in such a way that she clearly conveys that she thinks cooking is a waste of time.

“I guess you’ll be back at work then,” she says.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do about that yet,” I admit.

“I thought you were planning on going back to graphic design at the library.”

“I was, but now that the agent is shopping my manuscript, I’m thinking about seeing if I can make writing my job for a few more months. Maybe start trying to get freelance work at a magazine or something like that,” I say, pulling this idea out of thin air. Being with Sarah is at least good for exercising my creativity.

“Do you know what you need to do?” my sister begins. But for the first time ever, a considerable feat considering that these lectures began during our high school years, I hold up my hand and answer the question for her.

“I need to stop thinking about what I need to do, and just do it.”

This is a completely reasonable answer, one that even Sarah can’t argue with, and yet because she doesn’t know exactly what I intend to do, it leaves her squinting and gaping for her next piece of advice.