“I forgot about that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“What do you need? BESIDES mashed potatoes.”
“I need to forgive myself.”
“For?”
“For making myself feel bad about my weight.”
“Because?”
“Because my weight doesn’t matter, only my health matters.”
“And five pounds isn’t scary because?”
“Because I can fluctuate safely within a five-pound range, which can be affected by everything from water retention to stress and because I know that my body naturally wants to be at a healthy weight and to eat things that are good for it, and as long as I pay attention to my hunger level and finding balance, my body will naturally maintain its healthy weight.” The basis of our work together, the reason it was and ultimately is, successful.
“Get back to the gym, remember to eat regular meals, and for goodness sake, articulate whatever you need to express to Nathan to ensure that he is a good partner for you where food is concerned. Ask him to meet you at the gym and work out together. Ask him to check with you first before making executive decisions about meals. I’m not a couple’s therapist, I can’t speak to the other trust issues, but when it comes to your eating and exercising and things related to your body and your health, I can tell you that any relationship that doesn’t support your process and allow you to deal effectively is not going to be successful.”
“I know. Thanks, Carey.”
“Do me a favor. Don’t get back on the scale for at least a month. Try to get your focus back, to get back to some exercising. If in a month you check in and are feeling like the problem has become magnified, if you gain more, then we’ll come up with a more specific plan. In the meantime, you’re feeling a little bit adrift, so eat grounding foods. Root veggies, sweet potatoes, anything that grows with firm roots in the ground will be stabilizing. I know summer is peeking around the corner, but don’t be afraid to rely on some of the foods that are a little bit autumnal. There’s a reason you said mashed potatoes and not cake. You need grounding. Let the ground foods help.”
“Okay, will do. Thanks, Carey.”
“You are very welcome. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Yep. Talk to you later.” I hang up the phone and stretch my arms over my head, feeling immediately better, immediately empowered, and immediately guilty about my tiff with Nate. And what is worse, I hate that not only did I pick the fight, but I did it on the day Andrew and Charlene fucking got married. Which means that for all my defensiveness about the Andrew issue when Nate and I had our first fight, obviously it is much more deeply rooted in my psyche than I realized. And once again, I didn’t tell Nate that yesterday was the wedding day, didn’t give him a chance to be extra sensitive to me. I didn’t even tell him that I gained some weight and that that dredges up a lot of shit for me, I just went for cranky and bitchy.
I head out of the office, and back into the kitchen, where Delia is pulling a tray of mini tins of peach cobbler out of the oven.
“Hey, D, that smells amazing.”
“Thanks, Mel. It’s one of my grandmother’s recipes, and I think I finally have it down. I never thought about how different it is to cook for selling instead of cooking just for dinner or for a party! Trying to figure out how to portion things, to make sure they travel okay, directions for how to reheat and serve at home. It’s crazy!”
“I know! I think the thing that is most difficult for me is finding consistency. When you cook at home, you add a little of this, a little of that, a pinch of whatever. But when someone comes to you to buy something they have bought before, they want it the way it was the first time, they want the identical experience. Imagine if you went to McDonald’s and suddenly the fries were fat steak fries with the skin on! You’d be so disappointed! So even though I can be tempted to alter a recipe, I have to restrain myself and put that creative energy into something totally new so that my customers know I’m not going to constantly change the stuff they like. And, of course for me and this place and not so much for you, I have to be sure that I’m really diligent about ingredients when I’m cooking. I can’t just add more oil if something starts to stick, because the calorie count on all my stuff is so precise. I have to measure very carefully or I will be accidentally sabotaging my clients.”
“I know what you mean about changing the recipes. Lucky for me, most of the stuff I’m cooking is stuff that has been handed down for so many generations that a field of folks would be spinning in their graves if I veer from their instructions!”
“Well, good to know that all your ancestors are keeping you honest.”
“It smells so yummy in here!” Nadia flies in, pink-and-blonde tresses in a messy plait flowing behind her like a tail on a kite. “Whatcha making, Mama Delia?”
“Peach cobbler, little girl. Still needs to cool fifteen minutes before you can taste.”
“Excellent! Anyone want tea? D, coffee?” she asks.
“No thanks,” I say.
“I’m good, sweetheart. Thanks, though.”
“No problem.” She makes herself a quick cup of tea, and bounces back up front.
“That child has the most ridiculous energy,” Delia says, transferring the tiny cobblers to a rack to finish cooling.
I head up front to check the case, which we restocked after the lunch rush, and still looks pretty good. Nadia is straightening the bookshelves where we keep the nutrition and health books.
“Hey, kiddo?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you coming home tonight, or are you at Daniel’s?”
“Daniel’s working late, so I’ll be home. Are you going to be at Nate’s?”
“Nope.”
“Girls’ night!” She grins.
“Sure.” I’ve been so uncomfortable with Nadia since Nate shared what he has discovered, that I haven’t spent too much time with her. Not that I’m actively avoiding her, but I am being extraordinarily careful about what I say and how I say it. So the idea of a quiet night at home with her is nerve-wracking. Especially since it’s the perfect time to come clean in a safe environment, and I haven’t the foggiest idea how she’ll react.
“I’ve been craving Thai food. Do you want to order in?”
“Yeah, that sounds great. Things look good up here. If you don’t need anything, I’d better get back to the kitchen.”
“Go, go, I’m fine. I’ll holler if I need anything.”
I pause in the tiny hall between the front of the store and the kitchen. Stuck between two places, between two mind-sets, seems to be where I’m living these days. Between wanting to be open to Nate and the possibility of the relationship, and not really trusting him and wondering if I’m ready to be so serious and committed to anyone. Wanting to be a good and honest friend to Nadia, and wanting to forget that I know what I know so that I don’t have to admit to my prying nature. Being excited about the new business ventures, the opportunity of the delivery service and the café with Delia, and being scared to death that adding the extra stress and time commitment and uncertainty is too much to take on at a time in my life when I clearly need to be very careful about taking care of myself physically. Part of me is very proud of myself for embracing change at this stage of my life, and a part of me is so angry at being forced to have a coming-of-age at forty, when my life should have been settled and comfortable. I take a deep breath and take a step toward the kitchen, toward having a purpose, toward control over what can be controlled.
“Hey, can I have some of this sherbet?” Nadia calls from the kitchen, having found the leftovers from my short time as an invalid.
“Please, have as much as you want!”
“Do you want some?”
“No thanks, I’m stuffed.”
Nadia reappears with a bowl, licking the back of a spoon. “Why is it that in a million years I would never think to buy sherbet, or to order it at the ice cream shop, but there is somet
hing so profoundly soothing about it, and when I eat it I am utterly delighted?”
“I have no idea. But you’re right, the chances of me getting out of any ice cream store without something in the chocolate /caramel/peanut butter family is slim to none, but there is something about a bowl of sherbet that satisfies on a much deeper level.”
“It’s because it has sherbetude.”
“Sherbosity.”
“It’s sherbeterrific.”
“Sherbetacular.”
She giggles at the silliness of it. “So, are we going to watch a movie or are you going to make me watch some Cold-Law-Without-a-Trace-of-Order-Case?”
“Are you making fun of my TiVo selections?”
“Not I. I’m too full of sherbetliciousness.”
“I thought maybe we could talk.”
Nadia sits bolt upright on the couch, and puts her bowl on the table. “Am I in trouble?”
“No, honey. You’re fine. You’re better than fine. But I might be in a little bit of trouble.”
She sinks back in and fixes her rapt attention on me, her voice full of concern. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve done something that isn’t a very nice thing to do to a friend, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it right.”
“Is she mad? Your friend?”
“She doesn’t know, yet. I want to tell her. And I want to make amends, but ultimately I don’t know if my apology will be enough.”
“Well, you can only try.” Nadia shrugs, playing the sage. “The rest is up to the universe.”
“You’re right about that. So here goes. A little while ago I had an opportunity to find out some information about your past. And even though I knew that, for whatever reason, you weren’t ready to trust me with your history, and had been pretty clear in your own way that it wasn’t up for discussion, and even though I knew that a good friend and a good person would not take that opportunity, I wasn’t that strong, and I let my curiosity take control of my better nature. I don’t know why you didn’t want me to know about where you came from or what you’ve been through, but I do know that I should have respected your privacy, and waited for you to share yourself with me in your own time and at your own pace. So I wanted to tell you that I know, and that I’m so, so very sorry for violating your trust and invading your privacy.”
She is white, her dancing eyebrows in a straight line over eyes that have gone a deep forest green. Her voice is steady, but her hands tremble. “What do you know?”
“I know about your mom, and what happened to your dad and that you were raised by your grandmother. I know about the marriage and dropping out of college and the drug bust and the jail time. I know that you lived in four or five cities in as many years.”
“I see.”
“I also know that none of it changes what I think of you, or makes me respect you any less, or makes me care about you any differently.”
“Really? And what is it that you think of me, exactly? Or should I guess? I’m flighty and irresponsible and have really bad taste in men and I’m easily led.”
“Oh, sweetie, I think you’re only twenty-four and you’ve been through a lot, and you are a remarkable young woman.”
“I’m not so young, Mel. I’ve lived too much to be young. And you don’t really mean young, you mean immature.”
“I most certainly do not mean immature. I think you’re extraordinary.”
“Some charity case, some broken little girl.”
“Not at all. I think you could use some stability in your life . . .”
“I see, a mother figure who isn’t a religious extremist from another century or an old woman saddled with the only proof that her deadbeat crackhead son ever existed? A place to live that isn’t someone’s couch or the bed of a married man or a criminal? I mean, I know you clearly want a better boyfriend for me, someone who isn’t weird and different and quirky. As much as you disapprove of the ones who came before, it’s obvious that you think Daniel is somehow not significantly better than any of the assholes who I’ve been with. Maybe I just need some career direction, a bigger job under your watchful eye, more responsibility in a place you can back me up when I fall. So you can fix me.”
“Nadia, I’m so sorry. I don’t think those things, I really don’t. I think you’ve had a rough time of it, I think you’ve been sent more than your share of difficulties, and while I’m very ashamed of how I know what I know, I’m not sorry that I know it, because it’s a part of who you are, and I care about you. And you shouldn’t be at all embarrassed about any of it.”
“Really? So I shouldn’t be embarrassed by the fact that I dropped out of college when the married professor I was sleeping with knocked me up and then made me get an abortion so he didn’t lose his wife or his job? I shouldn’t be embarrassed that I spent four months being a full-time personal slave and source of cruel amusement to my cunt of a cellmate so that I at least didn’t have to become some other woman’s unwilling sex toy? I shouldn’t be embarrassed that when I went to stay with my cousin in St. Louis I got drunk at a party and was date raped by his best friend, or that I ended up with Barry because the girlfriend I was living with in Minneapolis kicked me out when she caught her husband spying on me in the shower when he thought she had left the house?” There is fire in her eyes. And tears in mine.
“Oh, Nadia, I didn’t know any of that.”
“Then you should ask your spy or private eye or whoever for your money back, because you only got part of the story. He should have told you that when my grandmother died I went to find my mother, who told me that I didn’t exist and that I was making the whole thing up and that she had never had a child before she married her husband. He should have told you that I have two little brothers and three little sisters who don’t know I’m alive and who I will never know. For someone who is poor enough to need to take in a lost wastrel like me for a pittance a month, it seems a very odd way to spend what little money you have. You’d have been better off just kicking me out on a hunch and losing the free hours of help at the store.”
“Nadia, please. I know it’s hurtful and that I have broken trust with you, but I swear, I didn’t pay anyone, I didn’t go looking, the information just presented itself and I was an asshole and accepted it.”
Clarity registers on her face. “Nate, right? The ultimate researcher? What, am I going to be the subject of a film now?”
“I can’t excuse his behavior. I know that your secrecy about your past concerned him, he thought that if he checked up on you he might be protecting me in some way or saving me from hurt. The first thing he found out was about the imprisonment, and that really scared him, and so he kept digging. I wish he hadn’t and I wish when he told me he had found out some stuff that I had told him to not tell me, but I didn’t. But mostly I wish that you had nothing to find, nothing you wanted to hide or forget. I wish that you had an idyllic childhood with a mother and father who loved you and took care of you, with siblings you got to know and love. I wish you had a life filled with nice boyfriends and safe homes and people who were good to you and friends who didn’t let you down. I wish that for you now. For you to have a life from now on that helps to make up for all the crap you’ve been dealt. And I want to be the kind of friend who you can trust and lean on. I know you’re hurt and angry and you have every right to be. But I hope that you’ll give me a chance to make it up to you.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Are you at all willing to try?”
She looks down at her hands. “I don’t know if I can answer that right now.”
“Tell me what you need, what I can do to start making it right?”
“I’m going to leave. I’m going to go to Daniel’s for a couple of days, and I’m not going to come into work for a couple of days. I need some space, some time. I’ll call you when I’m ready to talk.”
She gets up off the couch and goes down the hall to her bedroom. I sit, sickened and sad, tears flowing d
own my cheeks, wondering what kind of person I am that I could be capable of damaging the trust of someone I care about in no less a violation than Andrew perpetrated against me.
How did I get here? How could I, who loves to think of myself as a good person, come to a place where I could hurt someone as badly as I’ve been hurt? What would have been worse—to spend the rest of my life harboring the secrets and pretending I didn’t know, or coming clean and possibly losing her? Nadia moves at a swift pace through the living room, not looking at me, and flies through the front door.
I want Nate.
I want to eat.
I want my mother.
But I don’t feel worthy of any sort of comfort, not the comfort of a man’s arms around me, or the comfort of food. I need to feel this pain, I need to accept the punishment of disappointing and hurting someone I care about, I need to own my anguish. And so I sit on the couch to settle into the reality of the mess I have created for myself and the deep chasm I have opened between me and the friend I had no idea I needed so much.
BACON
There is no single food that affects people as deeply as bacon. Bacon appeals to our basest desires of meat and fat and salt. It elevates everything it touches, transforming a burger into a celebration, taking simple lettuce and tomato and making them more delicious than any salad vegetable has a right to be. Bacon is the ultimate polyamorous food, loving everyone equally, eggs and pancakes, sandwiches and salads, meats and vegetables, mains and sides, savory and sweet. Bacon on grilled cheese? Delicious. Bacon dipped in the maple syrup from your French toast? Sublime. Watch a breakfast buffet, and see where people consistently overindulge. I bet it will be the vat of bacon, which sends its smoky siren song out to everyone.
I’m numb for the first day after the big fight with Nadia. I feel completely isolated. I don’t want to tell Nate, since he will probably feel bad about his part in it, and also think me dumb for telling her in the first place. I can’t confide in Delia or Kai, because I can’t open Nadia up for any more hurt or prying, and lucky for me the two of them are so focused on developing a menu for the new café and getting all their ducks in a row for the closing, that they don’t really notice that Nadia isn’t around and that I am subdued.
Good Enough to Eat Page 20
