Kai goes into the back and gets a bottle of Krug he and Phil brought, and pops it open. He fills our glasses.
“A great party!” Phil says.
“A great year!” Kai adds.
“Cheers to that,” Delia pipes in.
“To new friends,” Nadia offers.
“To lots of life in our living.” I raise my glass and clink around the table. We all drink, savoring the light sparkle on our tongues, and I completely understand what that famous monk said upon drinking his first-ever glass of champagne, “I’m drinking stars!”
“Nadia, will you escort our fearless leader home?” Kai says. “Our gift to you, we are cleaning up!”
“No way.” I shake my head. “This place is a wreck, I can’t let you do that!”
Phil laughs, running a hand through his short dark hair. “Way!” he says. “You go home and relax, and let the three of us take care of it. We want to. Besides, with this whirling dervish at home wreaking havoc in the kitchen, I’ve become a really good dishwasher.”
I was so prepared to hate Phil, way back when. I was so protective of Kai, and wondered what this man eleven years older than Kai was thinking, and worried that he was using my young friend. When Kai came rolling into knife skills class five minutes late, clearly still wearing the clothes he had been wearing the day before, and regaled me with the tale of the handsome man who had wooed him with frothy frozen drinks and hearty, if somewhat off-key, renditions of show tunes, I laughed at the easy fun of his hookup. But a few short weeks later, when Kai came out to his family and was summarily dumped on the street and chose to land on Phil’s doorstep, I was worried. A one-night stand, no big deal if everyone is safe and in it for fun. A couple months of fun, also no big deal. But a boy of twenty, just out of his parents’ house for the first time, adrift without family, is easy prey for an older Svengali type, especially a Svengali with money. And then what happens if things go south? I was fiercely protective, tried to get Kai to come stay with me and Andrew, cautioned him against being overly reliant, emotionally and financially.
And then I met Phil.
Phil is so kind and wonderful, and so clearly in love with Kai, not in a desperate or possessive way, but loving him with an amazing openness. He credits Kai with bringing depth and joy into a life that was already full and rich. He has never tried to change Kai, but revels in who his lover is; the manic energy, quirky voices, club fashion, and frenetic activity level. Despite the age difference and financial discrepancy, they feel to me at all times like equal partners, perfectly balanced, and at ease in each other’s love. He is a dear man, and I can see that he and Kai and Delia have been planning this for a while. So, even though it goes against every control-freak cell in my body, I acquiesce.
“You guys are the best. Thank you so much for everything.”
“C’mon, roomie. Let’s go home!” Nadia says, handing me my coat and purse.
“Get out of here, gal, or it will be time to come back and open up in the morning already!” Delia swats my butt. I hug her, and Kai and Phil, and Nadia and I head out to my car.
“That was so amazing, Melanie, really. All those great people. Are you happy?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of overwhelming, you know? So much has happened in this year, good and bad and great and awful, I’m just trying to get my head around it all. Thank you, for your help these past few weeks. I know it has been crazy.”
“It’s the best job I’ve ever had,” she says, playing with a pink strand of hair. “And the best roommate too!”
I laugh. “Well, that is a dubious honor considering your history, but I’ll take it.”
She laughs, and we sit in companionable silence on the short drive home. I park the car, and we head into the building, stopping to get the mail. Bills, junk mail, the ubiquitous 20 percent off coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond, which never fails to excite me, despite the fact that one seems to arrive every other day. And something from the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Jewish United Fund, forwarded from my old address. Nadia heads straight for her room, always desperate to check her e-mail the second she gets home. I drop my bag on the table and open the JUF letter.
Melanie—
Don’t know if you will remember me, but I was in your class at UPenn, and we took Arthurian Lit together Junior year. I was the other fat girl in the back row, and we used to buy those bags of Gummi Worms and malted milk balls at the union and share them during class.
Anyway, I’m now living in D.C . with my husband and three (!) kids, and doing some volunteer work for the local JUF chapter. I saw the article about you in the Penn magazine a few months back, and was so amazed at all you have done! I was frankly thinking about the gastric bypass surgery, since I’m still heavy, but your story inspired me, so now I’m working with a trainer and a local nutritionist and having some sllllllloooooooooooow success.
I’m chairing a fund-raising luncheon for the local women in a couple of weeks, and my keynote speaker just informed me that she is having a family emergency, and cancelled on me. So I had a great idea (I hope!). Would you be available to come to D.C. from March 23-25? Women, especially Jewish women, in my experience, seem to have such issues with body image and relationships with food, and just reading that article about you and the way you talk about food and cooking and your body and your health was so inspirational to me, and I know it would be amazing to have this group of women hear from you, so I was thinking we could do a combination of you overseeing the cooking of the lunch, so that we are eating your best and healthiest recipes (I have a great local caterer who you could work with), and then you could be the keynote speaker!
My budget is $1,500 for the honorarium for the speaker, and then $1,000 to oversee the menu and food prep. And of course we will pay for your airfare, hotel, and per diem. The event is at 11 a.m. on the 25th, so if you could come in on the 23rd to meet with the caterer and be sure that is all set, then you would have the rest of the time to play in D.C.!
Anyhoo, I hope you are available. Give me a call and let me know. It would be so great to catch up!
Yours,
Rachel (Klein) Morris
202- 424-3776
Holy shit. Over two grand for one weekend. It would be so great to have a little bit of a cushion back since the great condo assessment debacle. Twenty-five hundred dollars would pay off a quarter of the loan I took from the association, meaning I could pay that off in just under eight months instead of a year, and nearly halve the amount of interest I would have to pay on what I borrowed. But it would also mean four days away from the store. I haven’t missed a single day since we opened, and can’t imagine what it would be like to be gone, or how I would manage it. But I also haven’t had a vacation since I started culinary school, and the idea of a few days in D.C., especially on someone else’s dime, is enormously tempting.
“Whassup? You look funny,” Nadia says, floating back into the living room, having changed into a pair of shorts made out of vintage men’s pajamas and a T-shirt with a picture of Cookie Monster on the front. Her calico hair is pulled up in a messy bun, and she looks about sixteen.
I hand her the letter. She reads carefully, chewing the inside of her lip and swaying from foot to foot. Then her face breaks out into a grin, her dancing eyebrows jumping straight into the air.
“That is AWESOME!!! Holy fuck-balls, that is like ridonculous money! You must be so psyched.” She throws her wiry arms around my neck, and hops up and down. Then she stops. “Why are you not whooping? This is hugetastic. You should be whooping! Whoop, my elderly roomie, whoop!!!” She grabs my hands and starts to swing me around.
I have no idea what to do with this girl, but her energy is infectious, and before I can even think that I look completely stupid, or that it is totally unbecoming of a woman my age, I start, indeed, to whoop.
CHICKEN SOUP
Chicken soup was the only thing I ever remember my dad cooking. When my mom was pregnant with Gillian, Dad’s chicken soup, from his great-gra
ndmother’s recipe, was the only thing Mom could keep down for the first six months. Sometimes with rice, sometimes with noodles, sometimes with matzo balls, clear golden elixir that sustained my mother and burgeoning sister. He was a big believer in Jewish Penicillin, and used to joke that the baby would be a rabbi and singlehandedly bring our family into devout Judaism and away from our heathen, unobservant ways. My mother would try to laugh around her omnipresent nausea, saying that she would happily, officially convert if the baby would just give her some relief from endless puking and heartburn. I didn’t really understand much about their banter, but I knew that there was something special about the way they talked to each other, something completely safe about being in the aura of their love.
It’s a miracle I made the plane. All my travel instincts seem to have left me, so by the time I finished giving Kai and Delia all the instructions for the store, and Nadia every possible piece of information about the condo, Wilbur had been waiting for me for nearly a half an hour.
“Melanie, if we don’t get a move on, you’re going to miss this flight. I can’t fly over the traffic you know!” Wilbur has been taking me to and from the airport for more than twenty years. He was recommended to my mom by a friend, and he used to come pick me up at the airport when I came home from college. When I moved back, Andrew and I would hire him for both business travel and vacations. He is ageless, except for the white that has infiltrated his tight curls, has a voice made for radio, and an amazing laugh. He’s always either just returned from Vegas, or planning his next visit, and nothing makes you feel more home after a long trip than seeing his smiling face as the town car pulls up.
Wilbur did manage to avoid most of the traffic on the way to O’Hare, despite eternal construction on the Edens Express-way, and a small accident near the exit to the airport. But I forgot in the long time since I traveled how tedious the process can be. I had preprinted my boarding pass at home, and checked my luggage at the curb, so at least I didn’t have to deal with that, but the security lines were interminable. Everyone in front of me seemed to be first-time travelers, not wanting to remove shoes, not knowing about packing liquids in a Ziploc bag, juggling laptops and endless small children. By the time I got through security, I had less than thirty minutes till my flight, and of course was in the farthest possible gate. I walked at top speed through the terminal, arriving at the gate just as they were calling my group number, and got on the plane.
Settling in, I realized something sort of exciting. I was sitting in coach, and the armrests weren’t digging into my hips or trying to ride up, and I didn’t need a seat belt extender, and when I came down the aisle I never felt like everyone was looking at me thinking, “Not here, not next to me,” or desperately not making eye contact, as if pretending someone isn’t there will prevent her from sitting next to you and invading your personal space with her bulk.
But this time, people saw me, and didn’t look away, and one man, a sort of cute guy who reminded me in a weird way of a professor in college I once had a crush on, even smiled at me. I was so shocked I almost dropped my carry-on. I had walked at a trot from security to the other end of the airport, but I wasn’t breathing heavy or sweating. I think about how many times I spent the first thirty minutes of a flight waiting for my heart rate to slow, waiting for the perspiration to stop. I remember having twin bruises on both hips from long flights with unforgiving armrests, spending flights leaning half into the aisle to avoid encroaching on the person in the next seat, being clipped in the shoulder every time the cart came past. I have to remember to tell Carey about this the next time we chat.
You’d think with all the excitement and adrenaline and nervousness, I’d have a long, tedious trip, but blissfully, sleep came shortly after takeoff, and didn’t leave me till we were landing. My idea of a perfect flight.
Rachel had sent a car for me, and after retrieving my luggage, we went to the Four Seasons. Apparently one of the JUF board members is friends with the general manager and gets great deals. Frankly, I couldn’t care less why I’m at the Four Seasons, and instead am just totally ecstatic to be here. I used to take luxury hotels for granted when Andrew and I traveled. Actually, I used to take luxury in general for granted, but no more. You’d think it was my first time the way I run my hands over the little bottles of products in the bathroom, open the minibar and take inventory. I’m meeting Rachel for dinner later tonight, so for now, I unpack, run a hot bath, strip out of my travel clothes, get into the thick robe, and slide my feet into the monogrammed slippers.
I think I would like never to leave this room. Audrey Hep-burn can have breakfast at Tiffany’s, and think nothing bad can happen to you there, but for my money, I’d rather have breakfast at the Four Seasons where there are thick robes that finally fit me, free slippers, five-hundred-thread-count sheets and a brunch buffet with a guy frying up mini doughnuts and dipping them in the icing flavor of your choice. Because if something bad can happen to you at the Four Seasons, I can’t for the life of me think what it could be, except having to leave.
I look at the bath. I think about the store. I turn off the water, and pick up my phone.
“Dining by Design.”
“Nadia, it’s Melanie. How is everything there?”
“Hey, Mel, can I call you back when the firemen leave?”
“WHAT?! What’s on fire?”
Nadia laughs. “Nothing, silly. The local firehouse just finished a job that interrupted their lunch, which apparently won’t still be edible when they get back, so they are here picking up a replacement meal. I’ll call you right back.”
My heart eases itself back out of my throat and into its rightful place behind my rib cage.
I sit on the side of the tub, and in a couple of minutes my phone vibrates in my hand.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Sorry about the heart attack. But they bought half the case, so we are having a good day!”
“Glad to hear it. Everything else going well?”
“No problems. Kai and Delia are bickering, I’m working the counter, and we’re getting some good random early spring weather, so the snow is melting away. How was the trip?”
“Fine. Uneventful. So you’ll call if anything . . .”
“Melanie, it isn’t brain surgery. It’s food. We’re fine. Don’t think about us. Just have a great weekend!”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Okay, thanks, Nadia, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bye, roomie!”
I let the robe slide off my body to the floor and gingerly get into the tub. My throat is tight, and my eyes sting. I’m not sure why I’m upset. You’d think I’d be relieved that everything is going so well back home, that I’d be proud of my merry band for keeping the home fires burning (and not actually setting anything on fire). But something about being here and clearly not being needed back there is disconcerting, and makes me sad. I let my body completely submerge, feeling the hot water seep into the follicles of my hair, try to get into my eyes. I float underwater, feeling the amniotic sense of being totally surrounded by warmth and wetness, and try to make my brain unclench.
“MELANIE!!!!” Rachel yells out the open window of her enormous SUV. I wave to acknowledge that I see her, and walk slowly toward the car. I hoist myself up into the passenger seat, and turn to face her. Her round, smiling face is haloed in wild dark curls, blue eyes shining with excitement. I’m immediately transported back to college and indeed vividly remember sitting in the back of a lecture hall, studying Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and passing bags of candy back and forth with this cherubic woman.
“Hi, Rachel. Thanks so much for inviting me to come, it is such an honor.”
“Pish, forget all that! Holy shit, you look AMAZING! I’d never recognize you. It must be so great to be thin.”
I think about this, careful in my wording. “I feel really good, healthy.” Since I began my program, my mantra has been health and not size. I was never trying to get thin, it was never about
how I looked, and so when people compliment me on how good I look, I always remind myself why I did this by replying with how I feel.
“Well, I don’t know about healthy, but you look hot! I’m jealous as hell.” She pulls the car into traffic. “I’m taking you to my favorite place for dinner. Hope you’re hungry! I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a girls’ night out. I just told Scott, he’s my hubby, you take these monsters of ours to McDonald’s like a good puppy, and frankly, I don’t care if they get baths, just as long as they are sleeping by the time I get home! I’m going to have a nice dinner and a cocktail and pretend that I don’t have crow’s-feet that start at my neck and three Tasmanian devils under the age of five that are going to wake me up at six in the morning.”
Now I REALLY remember Rachel, the bright personality, the constant stream of words, the sharing of thoughts and stories and opinions. I remember liking that she carried the conversation so I never had to. It’s a little overwhelming at first, but comes from such a genuine place, not that self-centered talking at you of a narcissist, but more a gush of information she wants to share to bring you into her world. She chats about her husband, a wonderful guy who showed up right when she had given up on men, about her kids, two planned and one, oops, whom she clearly dotes upon. She had been in marketing research before the first baby, and is now a stay-at-home mom, which she likes better than she imagined.
We get to the restaurant, a little hole-in-the-wall place that feels like someone’s living room, with a limited authentic Italian menu. We order a bottle of prosecco, antipasto to share, a small pasta course, and then a whole roasted black bass to split.
Over a shared dessert of zabaglione and fresh berries, and glasses of sweet Vin Santo, she asks about Andrew.
“It’s my biggest fear,” she says, taking a small dainty sip of her wine, and patting her mouth with her napkin. Fatties like us are usually very careful in public about manners, not shoveling food in, gently cutting bites, and chewing thoughtfully. True or not, when eating in front of other people, we feel watched, judged, and while we may overeat, we sure as hell aren’t going to be slovenly about it.
Good Enough to Eat Page 7
