Life From Scratch

by Melissa Ford

  But he doesn’t, and that fact makes me type even faster.

  Meatloaf is something everyone loves. It's like a really good third date—things feel comfortable and familiar, but each meatloaf is a little different, so it has a kick that keeps you alert. I've wanted to learn how to make meatloaf for a while since I stopped shelling out $15 for it at Cafeteria (but I miss Cafeteria so much . . . those garlic mashed potatoes . . .) I've put it on my calendar. I've put the idea on the top of a shopping list. I've talked about it with Arianna.

  I am really good at getting excited to do something.

  I'm not quite as good at actually doing it.

  This morning, I opened up Mark Bittman’s cookbook, How to Cook Everything, and saw that he did not lay it out in black-and-white for me. He gave me choices. And choices are my downfall.

  He writes that while you can make a meatloaf from one kind of meat, meatloafs work best when you blend beef, pork, veal, or lamb. But how much? How much beef to how much pork (for the love, I'm not putting pork in my meatloaf) to how much veal? I mean, is it equal parts of each? Or double the beef and less of the others? And you can't ask Mr. Bittman, because it's not like he's a blog writer where you can leave him a comment with the question.

  And it's hard to put on your big-girl panties and trust your instincts. It's easier to just keep putting off making the meatloaf.

  So what would you do, blog readers? Admit that while you really want to make meatloaf, it's not worth pushing your personal boundaries as it comes to making meat decisions? Take Mr. Bittman's recipe to the butcher and ask the butcher how he'd divvy up the meat ratio? Please tell me, sweet Internets, how would you go about blending beef, veal, and lamb if you need it to total two pounds and didn’t want to waste money on using up meat on an inedible meatloaf?

  Chapter Eight

  Chopping the Parsnips

  Practicing her own version of positive thinking to distract me from the looming nervous excitement about my second date with Gael, Arianna tells me that she wants to plan a great party for my quickly approaching thirty-fifth birthday. A woman cannot be sad, she figures, over the idea of turning thirty-five and earning the cursed medical title of “advanced maternal age” if she is eating really good food in an expensive restaurant, especially after the sparse restaurant life I’ve had since the divorce. She holds out a copy of Zagats coupled with a recent article from the New York Times magazine detailing the hippest new spaces to eat in the city. It’s like a drug dealer offering a sample.

  “I figure a restaurant is the best place for your birthday party,’” she says, adding another name of a restaurant to her growing list. Beckett watches us from his highchair, squeezing cubes of sweet potato between his fingers. I scan the possibilities, noting that most of them are well out of my budget range. “Built-in activity,” Arianna adds. “Who do you want to invite?”

  “You,” I tell her.

  “Do you want Ethan there?”

  “Sure, Ethan. Which means you should also invite Sarah. And Richard.”

  “And Penelope?” Arianna asks, her pen hovering over her list.

  “No, they should get a babysitter. Maybe make that clear in the wording if that’s possible? Um . . . and put down Gael.”

  “Gael Paez?” Arianna says in a terrible Spanish accent that sounds more Madras than Madrid. “What is the Spanish equivalent to ‘Ooh la la?’ Is he coming over tomorrow?”

  “We’re cooking dinner together,” I tell her, stooping down to mop up the orange mess that Beckett has dribbled on the floor. He laughs and bangs his hands on the tray, sending a spray of tuberous vegetables into the air.

  “Six people,” Arianna says. “I’ll get a reservation for six. Ooooh, what do you think of Butter? We always read about Butter on Page Six.”

  “Do you want to bring someone?” I ask.

  Arianna stares at Beckett and then looks down at her list for a long time. “No, I don’t need to bring anyone else.”

  I wonder if Arianna is lonely, if all of the talk about Adam and Gael has been difficult to hear. I try to imagine the situations reversed, how it would feel if Arianna was dating a totally hot Spaniard while still longing a little over her ex-husband. It sounds downright annoying, when I put it in those terms. But there doesn’t seem to be a delicate way to ask her if being alone bothers her. I vow to stop complaining, to just date Gael and not dissect the relationship so much and try to forget Adam altogether. I had a nursery school teacher who used to always chant as she passed out stickers at the end of the day, “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”

  And that seems to be as good a philosophy as any to live by.

  I sit down at the computer, the proposal book turned upside down on the desk with the pages fanning out. I am supposed to be writing an overview of the book, but instead, I am clicking over to the website for the restaurant Arianna settled on. This must be how parents feel when they’re given the promise of free babysitting and a night out. After nearly ten months of mostly home-cooked meals, I am absolutely salivating over the idea of eating in a fine-dining restaurant, with real cloth napkins and pats of butter.

  Arianna goes for a dark horse; a “molecular gastronomy” restaurant where they serve a single grape and call it a “Teardrop from the Sky.” I’m a little dubious to give my sole outing to a trendy restaurant over to a newcomer, but beggars can’t be choosers, and I feel badly asking Arianna to pick Le Bernardin when I peruse the prices on their menu.

  Arianna chose the restaurant mostly because it’s so brand-spanking new that the owner offered her a special tasting menu at half the price of the normal prix-fixe menu. Arianna mentions that she might have let slip that I’m a food blogger with one hundred thousand readers each day. She promises me the restaurant will be hot. Full of movie stars and models all slurping down the same emulsified concoctions.

  Before I can get to my big night out, I need to think about all the nights I spent in, waiting on the sofa for Adam, because I still have to work on the proposal. I want to get it to the agent as soon as possible. Before she forgets that she sent me that first email, since she hasn’t yet sent me a second.

  I grab a handful of pretzels and look at the notes I’ve jotted on the inside of the how-to-write-a-proposal book over the last few days. I try to think about what I would have wanted to read immediately following the divorce. Or what I would have wanted to read while making the choice to leave Adam.

  I would have wanted something comforting. Like a meal of roasted chicken and potatoes. Something your mother would make you (or, in the case of my mother, something she would order for you). I would have wanted a book that told me that everything would be okay in the future, even if everything is not okay now.

  Because things are okay for me now, right?

  I set my hands down on the computer keys and let them rest there lightly. Is it right to encourage someone to take that first step, even knowing that you feel miserable after the fact, that divorce is like having a limb severed from your body? That I felt lighter without the diseased portion of my body while simultaneously mourning the loss? That divorce was really really really painful whereas sitting on the sofa every night waiting for Adam to come home was merely miserable? That I spent a lot of time asking myself had I done the right thing or wondering why I hadn’t demanded marital counseling (as if Adam would have taken time out of his work schedule to squeeze that in). When there isn’t abuse—simply unhappiness—is divorce the right answer?

  But the answer is “yes,” because even if I was miserable those first nights alone in my Murray Hill studio, it was better than being miserable in that old space. With Adam, it felt like there was no room for movement and change, but here, anything is possible. Perhaps nothing will happen, but anything could happen too. And lives need possibilities.

  I start typing out an introduction, something that is the verbal equivalent to the hot cups of tea Arianna made for me those first nights alone. I acknowledge the awfulness of the pre-divorce
state, the frustration with your partner, the agony of signing the papers. I don’t make empty promises, but I do offer hope. I tell my old self—my ten-months-ago self—that I don’t need to fix everything all at once. That it’s okay to be sad, it’s okay to take a night or two or three to feel sorry for yourself. That sadness isn’t a dirty word. In writing the introduction, I also tell this advice to the “me” right now. This could really be it, the chance to set things on a new path, meet a new person, build the life I want to be living at thirty-five.

  I type all afternoon, only pausing to run out to the grocery store before the early evening traffic and pick up all the ingredients I’ll need for tomorrow’s dinner with Gael. I return to the apartment and pour myself a bowl of cereal to eat in front of the computer, so I can keep typing. It is an amazing feeling to watch all the words pour out of me and see the page counter at the bottom of the screen grow.

  As scared as I was to start, because I didn’t want to fail, writing the proposal is the easiest thing I’ve worked on in a while. It’s time consuming, but it isn’t like the first time I caramelized onions and stood over the pot, terrified to move from the space lest they burn. I may not be a natural in the kitchen; I may need to work hard between the sink and the stove to put dinner on the table. But writing the proposal is simple. It is like popping bubble wrap; it is satisfying and straightforward. Just as one bubble leads to the next, each section leads to another until, around four in the morning, I crawl into bed, fully depleted, with the proposal and first chapter of the book neatly waiting for their first edit on top of my computer.

  My head is foggy, like I’ve been existing in a different pool of time for the past twenty-four hours. I don’t know if the act of writing completely agrees with me right now. It is as if I have indigestion; as if I’ve been gluttonous with words to pour out an entire book proposal in the course of a single day. I spend the next day editing my words, tweaking and twisting and changing and deleting. I sit on the sofa and twirl the end of my hair around my pen, composing future book signing table chat in my head: thank you, thank you so much! I’m so glad you loved the book. What? You’re a television producer, and you want to make a sitcom about my life? Sure, I’d love to do lunch and talk.

  Before Gael comes over, I run downstairs to pick up the mail: a few bills, an invitation to an old friend’s open house for her new apartment, coupons for a local pizza place. The open house invitation is in the shape of a house even though Laura has moved into a new apartment. She is someone I used to work with back at the library; a fellow graphic artist who kept pictures of her cats framed on her desk. She is the type of person who always has her office supplies lined up neatly in her drawers and all of her computer files marked with properly capitalized file titles. And, at the same time, she can drink everyone under a table and often tells stories that end with her panties missing. She is a study in contrasts and a poor chooser of invitations.

  I muse for a moment about going to her party. She hasn’t seen me in months, has no idea that I’m about to be the most famous author in the entire world or that I’ve landed myself an extremely attractive Spaniard. The last time she saw me, I was mascara-streaked and packing my desk. It would be fun to catch up and hear what’s been happening at the office since I’ve been gone. But I am terrible with parties. I never want to go; always feel awkward while I’m there. I throw the invitation into a desk drawer and keep working, bringing the proposal into the kitchen so I can cook and edit at the same time. I edit until I hear Gael’s knock on the door, and then I shove the pages away in a drawer.

  He hands me a bottle of good Spanish wine when he enters the apartment and gives me a quick, friendly kiss on the mouth. We have already settled into the hello kiss stage that follows the goodbye kiss stage. I take this as a good sign.

  “It smells good,” he tells me, peering into a pot where I’m browning the chicken. “What are you making?”

  “What are we making,” I correct. “Well, I wanted to make you something Spanish. So I went for the most obvious dish.”

  “Paella,” he says, motioning to the bag of rice on the counter. “With seafood?”

  “Er . . . no. With chicken. It may not be the most traditional paella. It may sort of be very similar to a risotto recipe. But it’s Spain! This is a taste of home.”

  “My mother makes paella with rabbit,” Gael admits. “And chorizo.”

  “Well, this is not your mother’s paella,” I purr, hoping that I sound sexy when I say that. The point of tonight was to make him horny and grateful for me bringing Spain to him, not make him think of his mother.

  We fall into an easy banter as I drain the chicken on paper towels and sauté the peppers. He sits on my counter and pours me a glass of wine. He pops a CD in my stereo of some Spanish rock group. I don’t understand one thing they’re growling. There is something easy about being with Gael; he doesn’t take himself too seriously, never appears to be in a rush. Even this meal, I can’t tell if he is hungry and eagerly anticipating it or annoyed that he has been invited over for dinner and it is still being prepared. He just exudes an air of relaxation, as if it doesn’t matter if he eats the meal in the next few minutes or in the next few days; it is all good.

  I become braver the more I drink. I slide my pan into the oven and turn around to face him. I take a step forward, tilting back my head, and slosh some wine onto the floor as I kiss him. He tugs lightly on the hair he has gathered by the nape of my neck. I have not kissed a man like this in many years. It has been too long since I’ve last had sex in a kitchen.

  The buzzer goes off, and we pause so I can take the paella out of the oven. Gael takes the opportunity to remove his sweater. I push my hand against his chest, bringing him down to the floor, away from the steamy oven, almost on the living room carpet. I haven’t adjusted my shades for this occasion. The whole of New York City may be enjoying our show.

  I roll onto my back, guiding him on top of me. He is even easy-going in sex, pausing to murmur things to me or stroke my cheek. I want to tell him to hurry up before I lose my nerve, but he is taking his time, making things last. He gently pulls off my jeans and runs his finger over the inside fold of my knee.

  I undo his zipper, and he asks me if I’m on the pill. I try not to laugh, worried that he’ll misunderstand and think that I’m laughing at him. You don’t need to pay for birth control if you’re not having sex. He shyly pulls a condom out of his pocket, apologetic for assuming that we’d somehow end up on my floor, half in the living room and half in the kitchen, my panties discarded underneath one of my bar stools.

  He slides off his own jeans, and they land beside mine. The empty legs of our pants lie entwined near their owners. I am about to have sex with Gael Paez, an incredibly attractive Spanish man with droopy eyes and a lopsided smile. Almost as if he is reading my mind, the corner of his mouth turns up in its charming asymmetry.

  And then I look down.

  This is my first time with an uncircumsized penis. Which shouldn’t be a big deal, except that it is. It nods its way up to me, looking just this side of not-quite-right. I mean, it’s sort of like a veggie burger—which looks like a hamburger and yet, there is also something about it that screams out its difference from any burger you’ve eaten in the past. Mrs. Gestlemann, my third-grade Hebrew school teacher, tsks me from inside my brain. “Rachel, honestly. Didn’t I teach you about the chuppah? And the ketubah? And not to taste unkosher beef?”

  But didn’t I once say that the point of this year was to get myself an entirely new life? I learned to cook for the first time in thirty-four years. I’m writing a successful blog and working on a book. I kill my own spiders. Isn’t having sex with an uncircumcised penis the last great frontier I need to conquer? I can be the sort of woman who has sex with non-Jewish, European, uncircumcised men. Like this, non-Jewish, European, uncircumcised man; an olive-skinned, cinnamon-smelling man with a soft accent, slowly rotating his fingers over my inner thighs. I moan in spite of myself.
r />   And then the decision is made, the deal done, check it off the list, because he is in me, and we are moving together. He is darkness and corners and sound and something beneath the cinnamon . . . photo chemicals and wool and the memory of detergent. He is rough and slow and cautious and racing. I orgasm slightly before him; it doesn’t take much. It has been so long since I have had sex that someone probably could have accidentally brushed up against me at Zabar’s and gotten the same response. He is slightly out of breath as he pulls out, and we lie next to each other, the scent of the completed paella washing over us.

  I never know what to do after sex. I mean, after sex with your husband, you talk about the people you bumped into during the day or a particular bill that came in the mail or something you saw on the television. Ordinary stuff. Everyday stuff. But sex for the first time in years with someone who is barely one step up from stranger? It feels like it requires special words; poetry read over the incongruent rock music that is still pouring out of the stereo or proclamations of a sort. Instead, after a few moments of silence, Gael grins and then gets up from the floor. He points at his condom. “I’m going to remove this thing, okay?”

  Maybe I’m a bit disappointed, but I’m also relieved to slip back on my clothes, wash up at the sink, fiddle with the paella pan. To have the pressure removed to mark the occasion. I spoon the rice into two bowls and place it on the table.

  “Mi amor, it smells wonderful. I’m starving.”

  “Thank you,” I say shyly, watching him sit down at the table as if he has just conquered a country. I slide into a chair myself, suddenly uncertain about everything. He has seen me naked. He knows the paths on the inside, their counterparts on the outside. It feels like we should be very intimate, except that we don’t really know each other all that well. I awkwardly shovel some rice into my mouth to give me a reason not to talk and wonder what I just did.