Good Enough to Eat

by Stacey Ballis

  I pull into the parking lot of my gym, and am immediately irritated that the only parking spaces are at the opposite end from the entrance. Because lord knows that just because I’m about to work out for forty minutes doesn’t mean I want to walk an extra fifty steps if I don’t have to.

  I grab my gym bag out of the trunk and take a deep breath. In less than an hour it will be over and I won’t have to come back till the day after tomorrow. Bolstered by the thought of not having to exercise tomorrow puts a little pep in my step and I head in to get it over with.

  “I think that is the last of it,” Nadia says, dropping a large floral suitcase on the floor and collapsing on top of it.

  I laugh. “The last of what? Two garbage bags, two suitcases, a backpack and a sleeping bag? Not exactly a lot of stuff.” Nadia was able to move out of Janey’s and into my apartment in one trip in her battered ancient orange Saab, and three trips up the stairs. I take out more garbage in a week than the entire scope of her worldly possessions. I think she is grateful that my spare room was already fitted with a pull-out couch, or I imagine she would have been sleeping on the floor.

  “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.”

  RISOTTO

  I hate those books where the heroine faces loss and desperation with a total lack of appetite. Because when my husband announced that he was leaving me for my former friend, when he admitted, with not nearly enough regret in his voice, that he had been sleeping with her for nearly two years while I toiled at the gym in an effort to save my own life after full days of school and finally opening the store . . . all I wanted was food. The binge was epic. Five pounds in ten days, junk food and takeout, anything fried or salty or sweet that I could get my hands on. On the eleventh night of my abandonment, sitting in my huge living room surrounded by Andrew’s art collection, I broke down. I sobbed until my sides ached and my cheeks were chapped. And when I was spent, I took a long hot shower, and then went to the kitchen to cook for myself. I focused on deep, slow breaths as I chopped an onion and grated Parmesan. I heated the chicken stock, and stirred the rice, and watched as the grains that were separate and distinct joined together, bonded, became a unified whole. I was undone, unconnected, but at least dinner came together. I stirred in the cheese, some parsley, some lemon zest. I ate it all, cradling the warm bowl to my bosom like a life preserver.

  “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.

  Strangely, I’m not at all resentful of the store. I don’t blame it, even though I know now that the reason Andrew’s good buddy Jeff told him to keep everything in my name was because he knew that Andrew was sleeping with Charlene, and that if he left me, half ownership of the store could have made him liable for half of the store’s expenses or debts in a divorce settlement. That the only reason he was so supportive of my buying a fixer-upper and spending endless hours on-site stripping floors and restoring the tin ceiling and supervising installation was that it kept me distracted and exhausted, the perfect combo for a guy who was stepping out on his clueless wife. It would have been so easy to place all the blame, at least for my cluelessness, if not for the ruination of my marriage, on this place and the time I invested here. But I’m proud of what I have accomplished, proud that we are here, and hopeful for the future.

  “Hey, Skinny, should we get the rest of the food out?” Kai comes over and places a delicate hand on my shoulder.

  “You go,” Carey says. “We’ll hang later.”

  Kai and I head back into the kitchen, where the platters and trays are set up. Grilled vegetable skewers with a lemon dressing. Beef tenderloin, roasted medium rare, sliced thin, with a grainy mustard sauce. Orzo salad with spinach, red onion, and feta. Dilled cucumbers and pickled carrots. White beans with sage. Saffron risotto with artichokes and chicken. Mini pavlovas and poached pears and poppy-seed cookies.

  “It’s a great party, Mellie Mel,” Kai says, sprinkling chopped parsley on anything that he can reach.

  “I really couldn’t have done any of this without you, Kai, you know that. I have no words to properly thank you.”

  “I’ll tell you a secret, Melanie. You saved my life. I owe you, not the other way around. I was a silly little twink at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago, was only there because I couldn’t get into a decent college, and at least had some skill
s from hanging out at my grandmother’s restaurant as a kid. And then my folks disowned me when I came out first quarter. I was living with Phil, who hadn’t anticipated that the boy toy he picked up at Sidetrack would show up with a suitcase two months into the relationship. I knew I didn’t just want to be a little housewife. I was so scared and defensive, but you looked at me like I was something, like I was a force to be reckoned with, and you made me see that part of myself. You were so good that you made me want to be even better than you so that you would still look at me like that. When we graduated, I was stuck. Phil and I were so great, and had fallen into a nice routine that neither of us wanted to let go of, but the only places that had the fine dining sensibility I like all wanted someone full-time, a million hours a week and home at two in the morning. This job is everything I want, and the fact that I get to do it with one of my best friends is a daily gift. Don’t ever forget that.”

  The tears swim in my eyes as I look at this young man, young enough almost to be my son, and I see the respect and love in his face.

  “Don’t streak your mascara!” he yelps, throwing me a side towel.

  “I love you, Kai. Always.”

  “I love you too, Ittie Bittie. Let’s feed the people.”

  We take the platters out to the crowd, setting up the buffet, milling around, refilling glasses and accepting compliments and well wishes. People wander in and out, the platters slowly emptying, the glasses filling the wash sink. Before I know it, most of the guests have straggled out, and I am sitting with Kai, Phil, Delia, and Nadia, surrounded by the detritus of a good party.