Life From Scratch (5 page)

It’s not as if his own socialite mother ever slowed down from her busy schedule to toss a few steaks onto the grill for Adam’s family so I’m not sure where the domestic desires stemmed—certainly not from childhood.
 
But learning to cook became a way to recreate myself—something I had never done before.
 
I’d defy my mother’s brainwashing and Adam’s unspoken accusations about not being homey enough with one, single act.

So
New Jersey
was where my cookware rested until several months following my divorce, when I went to collect it so I could scramble my own damn eggs.

After we had coffee and bagels, my mother asked why I had brought two deflated suitcases with me. There was a fearful tone to her voice, as if she was bracing herself for me to request moving back into my childhood bedroom.

“I’m just going to take back some of my old wedding gifts to
New York
. The stuff in the basement,” I said.

On second thought, moving back into my bedroom seemed more sane. My mother had been holding her breath for several weeks as I talked about redefining myself with a new career. I think she secretly hoped that I would announce that it was law school for me after all.

“Are you talking about the cookware?” my mother questioned. “Your father and I were talking about donating that stuff. Give it to a family who needs it.”

“
I
need it,” I told her.

“I really don’t understand why you’re bothering with that.” She couldn’t even bring herself to call it
cooking
. She left dishes in the sink where my father would get to them later. It was one of the tradeoffs between his love of the earth as an environmental lawyer and her insistence on rejecting any tasks deemed “housework” as an escapee from the 1950s and overworked immigration lawyer. If they weren’t going to choke the landfills with paper plates and plastic forks, Dad was going to have to take care of the dishes. My mother did not touch dish soap.

“I’m bothering with it because I can’t afford to eat out every night anymore,” I explained as I started following her towards her office.

I wanted to add something snide like, “I’m not a big fancy lawyer like you,” except I knew that would only take us into a discussion on how I could
be
a big fancy lawyer like her if I only applied myself. In her world, 35-years-old was not too old to return to the classroom and get a new degree.

I went into the basement by myself and filled my bags with salad spinners and frying pans and tiny saucier pots. I left behind the tagine, knowing that certain cookware was out of my element. At last minute, I threw a tube pan into the mix—an angel food cake pan that came with a recipe card called The Anniversary Cake, to be eaten on the first anniversary. I crumpled up the card and tucked the bakeware into my bag.

The Cuisinart and the standing mixer were too bulky and heavy to fit in the bags. But I wanted them. I stomped back upstairs, dragging one of my suitcases behind me. I found my father in the kitchen at the sink, scrubbing a dish before he turned the water back on.

“Any chance you could drive me back into the city?” I wheezed. I motioned to the suitcase. “I have a lot of stuff I want to bring back.”

“Oh, cupcake, I’m working on a brief right now.”

“It’s Saturday,” I pointed out. “You’re washing dishes.”

“After this, I mean. I’m working on a brief this afternoon and then your mother and I are going out with the Perlmans.”

Just as I didn’t know how to say it to Adam, I didn’t know how to remind my father that I am just as important as a brief. That I’m part of that environment he protects—a living, breathing human. Instead I accepted his apologetic shoulder shrug and walked through the house to find my mother. She was sitting in front of the computer, reading the
New York Times
both on the screen and in paper form simultaneously.

“You have to go online to see the comments,” she explained.

“Why not read it all online?” I asked.

“I can’t stand the computer. I need to hold my newspaper. Smell the news.”

“You would think Dad would have convinced you to cancel your subscription by now,” I said. “Chopping down trees. Bad for the environment.”

“I recycle,” she insisted. “Are you heading out, pumpkin?”

“Actually, I was going to ask you to drive me into the city. I have so much stuff to take back and I can’t really fit it all into the bags. It’s really heavy.”

“I can’t, honey. After I finish the
Times
, I’m getting back to work.”

“And then you have the Perlmans,” I finished for her.

“Right, the Perlmans,” she agreed, relieved that I wasn’t pushing the issue.

“Can I borrow your car?” I finally pleaded. “I’ll drive into the city and then drive back and take the train back in.”

“I don’t see why not,” my mother told me. “As long as you’re back before we leave for the Perlmans.” She beamed at me as if she was so proud of my self-sufficiency. One needed to be self-sufficient when surrounded by those who treasured paper over people.

That was months ago,
but I hadn’t been brave enough to attempt angel food cake until recently. And, of course, once I decided to try making it, cake flour disappeared off of every shelf in
New York City
.
 
This was not the first store I had traveled to in search of baking ingredients.

I lean against the wall and take out my phone, opening Twitter so I can complain about Zabar’s lack of flour choices.

“I think it is merely a strange coincidence, this city-wide disappearance of cake flour,” Arianna admits, nuzzling the top of Beckett’s head. He twists around to try to grab the ends of her honey-colored hair.

“Blech!” he exclaims in Beckettese.

“I couldn’t agree more,” I tell him, hitting send.

We walk back out into the damp, cold afternoon, which is slowly bleeding into evening. I can see my breath in the air, and Arianna fusses with Beckett’s hat, tying the strings underneath his chin again. He swings his little legs against her stomach as he hangs from his carrier. They’re always together. A unit.

Even though he was created with sperm that came from an anonymous donor, it seems as if all of Beckett’s features come straight from Arianna. Her narrow, blue eyes; her stick-straight blond hair that looks like it benefited from some obscure Japanese straightening treatment; and her thin, straight nose have all shown up in miniature on Beckett. They share the same smile down to matching dimples on their left cheek.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I nominated you for a blogging award,” she says as we walk down the subway steps, trying hard not to knock our bulging shopping bags into the other riders.

Arianna knows how much the blog has grown on me, how much pride I take in the relationships I’ve built through the site or the comments I get on my posts. I turn my head slightly so she can’t see my huge, slightly-embarrassed grin.

“Er . . . what sort of a blogging award?”

“I don’t know. It’s called ‘the Bloscars.’ I saw a post about it on one of the fashion blogs I read. I nominated you in the food category.”

“Well, there’s no way I can win,” I tell her. “I mean, my blog is about frying eggs, not making soufflés. Probably one of those big-name bloggers will win.
Pioneer Woman Cooks
or
Smitten Kitchen
. People who can really cook and have a million readers.”

“You have a million readers,” Arianna insists.

“I have like twenty readers. Maybe thirty.”

“How do you know?” Arianna says.

“Comments! I get twenty to thirty comments on a post.”

“Maybe you have more people reading and not commenting. Haven’t you ever read a blog and not commented?”

Er . . . like
The Dating Diva
? But that was because I thought I had nothing to say. Or I thought I had a lot to say and had no clue how to say it. I hadn’t found my voice again; but now that I have, I expect that everyone who reads me probably comments at least once.

“Anyway, Rachel, you have
loyal
readers. They love that you share all the stuff about your divorce. And love life,” she hurriedly adds.

“One date with Rob Zuckerman does not constitute a love life,” I sigh, stepping onto the subway platform, bypassing a woman mumbling to herself.

“Give it time,” Arianna promises.

That night, I Google
the Bloscars and immediately see hundreds of thousands of hits including the main site. I scroll through the categories and see Arianna’s nomination for my site, under Food Bloggers. Seeing my blog name makes my heart start pounding, and I cover my mouth to hide my smile even though I’m alone in the apartment.

There is a small box next to her nomination that you can check in order to show your agreement with the nomination—the point, of course, is to help the award-givers separate the wheat from the chaff. Blogs that receive more nominations probably deserve a second look. After I click it, it informs me that I am the sixteenth person to nominate the site. There is no additional information on who the other fifteen are or where they came from.

I am about to shoot off an email to Arianna when someone knocks on the door. I instantly know it is my brother, Ethan. He is the only person I know who would rather hang around outside waiting for someone to give him access inside rather than use the buzzer. It all goes back to his love of shocking me.

I open the door, and God bless the asshole, he has arrived with a bag of cake flour. “You bitched about it on Twitter that you couldn’t find any. I brought this one over from
Brooklyn
.” I hug him, crushing the flour against his shirt.

“My angel food cake!” I exclaim, taking the bag out of his hands. He shrugs his shoulders and starts rummaging through my refrigerator for leftovers. No one in my family can cook.

These are the things you should probably know about my brother. He is thirty-two going on sixteen. He has the self-righteous indignation of a teenager coupled with the irresponsibility of a first-year, pot-saturated college student. And he is brilliant—smarter than my brain-surgeon sister and lawyer parents combined.

He is, as these types always are, redeemed by his quick, wide smile which divulges the sweetness and thoughtfulness with which he conducts our relationship. Take, for instance, the time he returned to my old apartment to pick up all of my books when I didn’t feel like facing Adam. He carried those boxes up and down three flights of stairs for seventeen consecutive trips. That is love; that is redemption.

For the time being, he is a photographer. I say, “for the time being,” because this career was preceded by stints as a carpenter, a first-month medical student, a dishwasher, doorman, and amusement-park mascot, and it will be followed by something equally unusual such as being someone’s butler. He’s smart, but he’s bored easily and doesn’t think it is remarkable that he can add seven-digit figures in his head instantaneously. I think he gives my mother more stress than I do. At least they can write me off as a talentless failure; with Ethan, they need to contend with wasted brilliance.

Just to be clear, when I say “photographer,” I mean that he is wholly unpaid and working on a coffeetable book featuring photos he’s taking at Starbucks and Mudtrucks in
Manhattan
.
A coffeetable book about coffee spilled on tables.
Which means that until it sells—which it probably won’t—he never has any money. Our parents cut him off a long time ago. He doesn’t ask me for cash because he knows I’m trying to eke out my savings to last for a year. Instead he bothers our sister for rent money and comes over to my apartment to raid my refrigerator.

Feeding Ethan is the closest thing I have to a stint in mothering.

“I have some salsa and chips. I made the salsa myself,” I tell him, taking the chips off the top of the refrigerator.

“Is it any good?” he asks, bringing the bowl towards his face to sniff at the tomatoes.

“No, Ethan, it’s terrible, so I saved it and offered it to you.”

“I had an idea today.
 
Do you know what you need?” Ethan asks me. “You need to have a dinner party. You’ve never had a dinner party.”

“Adam and I had dinner parties,” I say defensively.

“You had other couples over and ordered in from somewhere. It’s not the same thing. Look at all the things you can make now. Eggs. You could make fried eggs for everyone. Or salsa. You need to socialize. You’re spending too much time communicating with people online. People you can’t see. People who may actually be a sixty-year-old man in
Kansas
pretending to be a thirty-something cook in
Vermont
.”