by PE Kavanagh
Our lives settled into an ease, lubricated by frequent separations and our own passionate immersions into our careers. When we were actually together, it was nice enough. Jeff was interested in and supportive of my life, our families got along quite well, and we never lacked for anything. Perhaps I didn’t notice how little intimacy there was, as I was so absorbed and fulfilled by my work. My dream was expanding, and the world was accommodating. I was being touted as one of the next generation of great chefs. There was talk about creating a signature restaurant. Just for me.
Things began to change between us after Lola was born. I never realized how much I could love another human being until my daughter came into my life. It made the feelings for my husband even more painful in comparison.
Being her mother should have been the easiest job in the world. Lola was a gift of a child, so easy-going and beautiful. She had this other-worldliness about her, like my brother Danny did. Lola had been his favorite song.
I was equally mesmerized and terrified by this tiny creature who was now mine to protect, torn between wanting to be with her every moment, and wanting to be living my dream life as a chef. Neither part of my life felt right anymore – my time at the restaurant was tainted with an urgency to be with my baby, and my time with Lola would leave me with rising anxiety about my ability to be a mother, my leaving behind the only thing in my life I had ever been really good at, and the impossibility of how I could possibly do everything that was being asked of me.
The internal battle raged every time I had to leave her, but every night (or morning as it happened on occasion) I would come home to my baby and know that it was all as it was supposed to be. At least for a few hours.
In a strange role reversal, she became my source of solace and comfort. She had this intuitive sense that told her exactly what to do and say. Sometimes I would feel embarrassed to be the weak and needy one, but had to accept that that's how it was for us.
I wanted it all to work, although the unlikelihood stared me right in the face. The crazy hours Jeff and I were tied to were not conducive to the round-the-clock care a baby needed, and tensions built quickly about our respective responsibilities. Jeff was taking on more and more at the hospital, and even traveling to train other doctors and speak at conferences. He was proud of how well he was providing for our family, even if not in person. Although my culinary star kept getting brighter, it didn’t mean any fewer hours for me either.
“It’s time for you to leave your frivolous career behind and stay home to take care of our child, Monique,” he eventually said.
That’s when I stopped speaking, so overtaken by betrayal. Jeff grew more and more insistent, my suffering apparently not a consideration. How could I leave the only thing in my life, other than my daughter, that filled my heart with joy? Yes, it was an enormous amount of work, and yes it brought in nearly no money and was very stressful and time-consuming. But it was my life. It was how I defined myself - I was a chef, before anything else. How dare he demand I leave my career?
He grew louder and I grew silent. He grew larger, and I shrank into my two unsatisfying worlds of mother and chef.
Silence became my husband’s lover. A lifetime of meticulously chosen words, and a short period of incoherent raging, left me mute. No need to wonder what happened after one screamed so violently that the voice failed. Silence, of course.
Whose hand is over my mouth, I wondered, powerless to move my mouth with an inexplicable case of lockjaw. Being incapable of complaining also meant no oral sex. He would suffer for what he had done.
By not speaking, I could bear the dishonesty. By feigning agreement, I would keep the peace. By locking my jaw, I could stop being force fed his chilling torment.
Silence cooked for him, silence slept with him and silence hung on his arm, right alongside the Rolex, neither making even a tick.
Maybe I had used up my quota of words. A bit soon, I thought, but not impossible. Or maybe, by using words like weapons, which I had done with so many others, I had broken some covenant and been banned to the land of the speechless.
Be seen and not heard, resurrected from childhood. Silent AND deadly.
How much venom could be produced with a wordless gaze, a tight-lipped grimace, a rigid backed response? A nearly fatal dose, I came to understand, without the need to bare the fangs locked behind the prison of my mouth.
Everyone could see the cause of this strange symptom, the locking of my jaw. But I dared not even think the thought – my life was sealing my lips shut.
What would I have to admit, about my own part in the tragic farce, to say – “He did this, and I let him?”
Silence was the price for security, the counterfeit for connection, as valuable as any of the constant lies. Whether spoken or not, dishonesty was our secret code.
I would win this one. If shutting up and shutting off were the rules of engagement, I would be the silent victor.
“You won’t talk to me,” he would say. No shit, I thought, and that was that. I won the round, again.
But he changed the rules, so quickly I could not veer from the strategy to manipulate him into acquiescence. I rounded the bend to find that he had left me, emotionally.
Unable to bear the hypocrisy, or the silence of lies, he stopped playing mid-game, took his heart and left. The only pleas were silent as I realized it was my own hand over my mouth.
When lies are all you tell, what is the value of your word? When the truth is too hard to bear what is the value of your life?
Does silence burn in the consumption of rage or stand at the doorway to ecstasy? Who holds the barometer, the perfectly precise gauge of ‘rightness’ by which to assess the opening and closing of one’s mouth… the opening and closing of one’s heart?
Fill the hole with whatever is around to keep it busy, or seal it so tightly for no trespassing, I told myself. Breathe, moan, whisper, cry, scream, laugh. But speak not or forever hold your peace.
In a rare moment of courage, when the rift had grown enormous, I began to plot my escape from the marriage. Jeff had already commenced his next relationship, with no concern whether I knew or not. Not sure how I would manage financially or as a single mom, but I could not take the hostile environment in my own house and the slow crushing of my dream.
The whole process with the lawyer was much easier than I thought. As I was about to secretly file papers, Jeff and I had an unexpected reconnection, courtesy of a wine-tasting at my favorite vineyard and an especially soft energy from my husband. Our sex life had dwindled to almost nothing since Lola’s birth, partly because of the changes in my body and the exhaustion, but mostly because of our toxic relationship. I considered myself nearly asexual during those years. No desire, no thoughts, no interest.
Our lovemaking had been beautiful that night, reminiscent of the early days of our courtship. We were in no rush, as Lola was at a friend’s house, and neither of us had to work in the morning.
We took our time and rediscovered each other. Things between us got a bit better after that. I noticed that he was more helpful around the house, less denigrating about my work, and even kinder to our daughter. My fantasies turned to the rebirth of our marriage, the return of the life I thought I wanted.
It all shifted again when I realized I was pregnant. No way could I handle another kid, now that Lola was in preschool. I’d been looking forward to greater independence and more time for myself, if even just to sleep. No possibility for that to happen with another baby on the way.
I panicked and withdrew again. Jeff reverted to his previous coldness and disdain. We fell into our old patterns like a hole in the road. I waited a very long time to tell him I was pregnant, even to the point that strangers began to notice. I was too far along to do anything about it. I just kept willing it to go away and at the same time, knowing somehow that this baby would save me. It would prevent me from continuing down this path of a loveless marriage and self-hatred.
When I told him I was pregnant, he
barely changed expression, as if I had just announced we were having lasagna for dinner. He nodded and said, “Great. Maybe we'll have a boy this time,” then went back to what he was reading.
I thought the crack in my heart would be irreparable. I didn't mind anger or other strong emotions, but apathy was my kryptonite. I felt my face burn and my heart shatter. Part of me wanted him to be furious. To rail and cry about the absurdity of bringing another human being into the farce of our marriage. Part of me wanted my transformation into a mother again to create a shift for him, back to the man who wanted me so deeply, and cared.
There was no way I could be in this marriage one minute longer. But there was no leaving now. What would I do? Move into a shelter? I could not support myself with my work, at least not the way we had been living, and I could not put in any more hours with a small child to take care of. I didn’t want to assume that Jeff would take care of us, financially, given his feelings about the situation. I had heard too many horror stories about divorces going terribly wrong.
Claire was born in the middle of the night, after everyone was already exhausted from a challenging day of labor. She came out of me like a lion, full of roar and fury, the scream impossible not to hear.
It was much harder than with Lola, and made worse by the fact that everyone had said that the second would be so much easier. I resented Jeff’s presence during the birth, but he seemed insistent on staying. My body was trying to birth a baby and my heart was trying to flee from everything I’d created. The man I no longer loved or wanted to be with. The prospect that I would have to leave my world of cooking. And yet another life in my hands, when I was making such a mess of the one I already had.
Holding Claire in my arms, I found a source of strength that transcended my exhausted body and beleaguered mind. That night, after cradling my new baby girl, my second daughter, the mother bear arose. I knew I would not raise my girls in a house of mediocrity, lovelessness, or powerlessness.
“I’m not doing this anymore. I’m leaving. With the girls.”
Jeff held his newborn daughter and cried, knowing the inevitable had just happened. We spent the next several days in a peaceful silence, enjoying the short time as a family that would soon dissolve. I appreciated the quiet and the lack of conflict or interrogation. Little did I know that Jeff had been plotting a full-scale attack. He would do anything to prevent me from leaving, either kindly or not.
He offered me anything I wanted. Separate rooms, money, time at a prestigious cooking school in Europe. All I wanted to do was leave, but he would not have it. The break-up of his family was not on the very specific agenda for his life.
The divorce raged on for five years, while Jeff tried to find any means to pull me back in. He knew better than to play the child card - he loved his daughters and knew that he could never take them away from their mother. For this, I was eternally grateful, even though I didn't know it at the time. This would become the thread that eventually rebuilt our relationship as co-parents and friends.
My emotional departure was mirrored by his physical one, as he moved on to his next relationship. That act, painful as it was for me, was the first sign that the divorce would actually happen, which had been unclear before then.
When I was finally free, I had to completely undo and redo my life, alone with the girls. Restaurant hours would no longer work with my abbreviated family and I had very little money to hire a round-the-clock nanny. My dearest friend Emile, the man who knew everyone in the culinary world, found me a job at a national food magazine, as a writer. He knew I had been writing informally for some time, and enjoyed it.
The move to journalism would solve all the problems - a steady paycheck, stability and best of all, hours that work with raising two young children. Without even thinking about it, I said yes. Exuberantly. It was the answer to my dreams.
I went off to my new corporate job happily. It was the solution I had been searching for, without knowing it existed. It kept me in that world I so cherished, utilized my writing skills, put food on the table and me at home with my kids. I could not believe my luck.
The divorce became final, by default, as it happened in our state, on an anticlimactic day. I told my sisters and poured myself a beer. It had been an extremely long and bitter road. I had lost nearly everything - my kindness, compassion, perseverance and self-awareness - but I still had my beautiful girls. And the strength to wake up another day and do it again. In the scheme of things, it could have been worse. Not much, but some.
This is where we’d ended up. Making our way back to a place of respect, and even love. Without him, I never would’ve had these human beings in my life – my beloved girls. My heart ached for the loss of his father. And mine.
The girls and I hunkered down in our own processes of hurting and healing. We talked about all the grandparents they’d lost, and how it made them feel. I didn’t even pretend to be the strong one, my own grief relentlessly rising to the surface like a thousand tiny bubbles.
Chapter Six
Vegas, Baby
Even with Emile’s help, it was a tough road back to the kitchen. I swallowed my pride a hundred times, as chefs I could out-cook with both hands behind my back decided I wasn’t good enough. Or too old. Or too constrained. I was worse than old news – I was no news at all.
I got my first yes in the most unlikely place - at a hot new restaurant that had just lost two kitchen staff that week. Their desperation was my salvation, and the chef agreed to take me on as an apprentice. There was no money, of course, but the experience would get me back in top shape in lightning speed.
I worked at the magazine during the day and spent a few evenings every week at the restaurant. None of the kids working beside me had ever heard of me, but my skills came back quickly. I resisted saying, “Do you know who I am?!” about a thousand times during my comeback.
In the moments when I tied my apron, and unrolled my knife bag, I felt alive again. All the chaos – prep chefs busily working in the back, produce delivery people in and out, even the business guys yelling about the books in the office – faded into a distant hum as I found my own rhythm. All I heard was the sound of my knives against the sharpening steel, the whoosh of the gas ovens catching, and the sizzle of my creations. I began to know joy again, in a way that I had forgotten for so long.
A new me was emerging. I couldn’t help but sense that there were more surprises to come.
No one, however, was particularly surprised when Nora got nominated for a national science award, but the fact that she offered to take us all to Las Vegas for the ceremony made us jump up and down like game show contestants. Lizzy was finally moving past her morning sickness and wanted to go, maybe as her last hurrah before she got too big. We promised to fund as much spa time as she needs. Nora forbade Sam from coming and dubbed this ‘girls’ weekend’. I was sure he was disappointed but there was no changing Nora's mind once she decided something.
Nora had gotten us adjoining rooms at the hottest hotel, and planned the entire itinerary around enjoying the best restaurants and clubs. The schedule was packed, with very little time for actual sleeping. I knew I would need multiple outfits per day.
I was excited. Maybe more than I should have been. I didn’t care that the chef at the restaurant was annoyed about my needing time off. I didn’t care that Jeff was questioning why I needed to go to Las Vegas. I didn’t care that I had nothing cool to wear.
I hadn’t been out in a big way for far too long. I spent so much time going through my closet trying to find something acceptable (in Vegas terms) for the long weekend that Lola declared we had to go shopping. I wanted to be a little bit racy, but not ridiculous, for a woman of my age.
As I scrutinized myself in the dressing room mirrors, I acknowledged that I was doing okay. I’d let my hair grow a bit longer, so that it was easier to tie back for the kitchen, and my face didn’t look quite as drawn as it had recently. There was a rosiness underneath my skin that looked good, I had to
admit.
My body had settled into a 40-something combination of strength and curves, which filled my clothes in an attractive way. Even if everything else was a wreck, I realized I still had those legs. The ones that made buying pants off the rack nearly impossible, but were undoubtedly my strong suit.
Lola noticed me looking pleased with myself.
“You are really beautiful, Mama. I like when you’re this happy. And this is definitely a step up from your jeans and sweatshirts.”
“You’re right, sweetie. Thank you for helping me.” I never thought anyone noticed my wardrobe, but my daughter apparently did.
“You should get dressed up more often. All these fancy clothes look so good on you!”
“Well, maybe one day I’ll have a fancy life to warrant all these fancy clothes.”
“I bet you will Mama. I bet you will. Now try on the stack over there. We’ve got lots more to do.”
The shopping trip was fruitful - I put together several great outfits, even bought a celebratory pair of shoes. It wasn’t clear how I would actually walk around in them, but for those few moments that I was able to stay upright, I was going to look fabulous!
The day finally came, my luggage filled with little black dresses, sequined stilettos and cherry red lipstick. Yes, I was going to party, as well as make some high profile connections. Vegas had become a culinary Mecca up there with New York and Paris, and with Emile’s interventions, I was set up for VIP treatment wherever I wanted to go. Nora was suitably impressed. There might not have been sleep in our schedule, but at least we were going to eat very well.
I realized how long it’d been since I last travelled as I moved in slow-motion through the airport. Everything was new and interesting. Even the crowds, unhappy people, and rude workers didn’t rile me. I was wearing my I am going to Vegas grin, nearly as big as my head. I made sure I began on the right foot by getting decked out for the flight, and I was pleased I did. It didn’t matter that it was only a few hours – still an opportunity for me to show up as the fabulous babe I was going to unveil in the lighted city. This was the beginning of my grand coming-out party.
