Measure of Love

by Melissa Ford

  Paulo gives us a prepared speech about the simplicity of Italian cooking, extending the final word of every sentence as if it is a ribbon he is curling around a package, a gift that he is waiting for all of us to open. I wonder if he’s just a chef, or if this is one of those profession-based strippers. I went to a party once in college where a girl hired a police officer stripper to dance for us after he put us all under arrest. I discreetly look at Paulo’s jeans to see if there’s a chance that the side seam is made out of Velcro.

  We begin cooking baccala alla vicentina, spinaci con pinoli e passerine, and budino di ricotta for dessert. Emily pours us glasses of chilled white wine while Paulo gets us started on the cod, instructing Sarah to melt the olive oil and butter over medium heat. She raises her eyebrows at me as she spins the dial on the stove.

  “Emily,” Paulo tells her as she pulls a stool over to the counter. “Why don’t you drain the anchovies? Ladies, I have been soaking the anchovies for you in milk for the last few hours.”

  “Oh, no thank you,” Emily says politely. “I’m just going to watch.”

  “She doesn’t touch fish,” Lisbeth explains, bringing the container of milk-infused anchovies to the sink.

  “You don’t have to actually touch them,” Sarah mutters.

  Paulo sets up Arianna and me to begin work on the ricotta cheesecake. Insofar as baking, it’s fairly innocuous, and we throw the ingredients into the main bowl in no particular order. Maybe other bachelorettes are so drunk at this point in the evening that Paulo needs to come up with something simple for them to make through a Cosmo haze. Maybe he keeps it easy because he knows the average thirtysomething New York woman is not going to have the patience to tackle profiteroles.

  I do the measuring, and Arianna stirs the mixture delicately, folding the ricotta as she would a swatch of chiffon. I need my best friend right now more than ever. I have never been more stressed, more unsure of what to do. I felt more confidence in my decision to divorce than I’m feeling now, and I’m not sure how I should process that. I need to talk it out with my best friend, preferably over drinks on her sofa. I watch her bring the silicon spatula through the mixture, dragging a trail through the batter. The old Arianna would have taken this opportunity to unload her afternoon with Noah, but the new Arianna avoids making eye contact with me, watching instead the candied orange zest disappearing into the cheese and liquor. I wonder if I misunderstood what I saw today, if it wasn’t an ending at all.

  “Hey,” I say lightly, deciding to give her an opening. “Do you think Noah could get us tickets to the Nightly again this winter?”

  “I don’t know,” Arianna shrugs. “I don’t really talk to him anymore.”

  I pause with one of the egg whites over the rim of the bowl, the viscous liquid trembling on the edge of the ramekin. “You don’t talk to him?”

  “I haven’t in weeks,” Arianna snaps. “Someone made me so profoundly uncomfortable with how she judged my friendship with him that I told him I didn’t want to hang out anymore.”

  She watches the egg white as I tilt it into the bowl with a plop. My heart is pounding, and I want to pick up the glass bowl of ricotta filling and slam it against the counter. I want to overturn the stools and kick the oven door and throw the handfuls of spinach that are waiting to meet the pine nuts and raisins onto the floor. I want to call her a liar, make a scene, jump in a Zipcar and drive out of the city, away from everything, not even stopping at the Canadian border but instead driving through the checkpoint in a Thelma and Louise-like moment, except that I’m all alone in this scenario, cruising through the Canadian wilderness until the car runs out of gasoline in some godforsaken field populated solely by moose. And then I’d just start my life over from scratch, living with the moose sans Internet or friendships or marriages.

  I want to wind back time, I want to be back in college, I want to crawl under the straw in the barn and never come back out.

  I excuse myself and go into the bathroom, a small two stall restroom where a waitress is dreamily washing her hands in the sink. I slink into one of the stalls and wait until I turn the lock before I let loose a silent cry, an open-mouth wail without sound, my eyes screwed tight and the skin stretched taut against my forehead, immediately producing a headache. The door to the bathroom opens and closes, and I let two or three sobs escape, pressing a balled up mess of toilet paper against the skin under my eyes.

  In the movies, there’s always a window in the bathroom that the heroine can crawl out of to escape, a dramatic portal to starting her new life. Whoever built this bathroom certainly didn’t have distressed thirtysomethings whose lives are imploding in mind. Even the background music is too quiet to mask the sound of crying, a breathy singer crooning “All That Jazz” in Italian. I take a few deep breaths, knowing that I have about three more minutes before someone comes into the bathroom to drag me back to the ricotta cheesecake.

  My phone buzzes against my leg, and I take it out of its holster, forcing myself to look at the top email, a forwarded comment from my blog to my inbox. The phone has been buzzing all day, and I’ve been ignoring it all day, though not turning it off as a punishment, a continual reminder that there are a lot of people cranky with me right now. The comment is from a fellow divorcée who keeps a popular relationship blog, and I hold my thumb over the screen, revealing only a few words at a time until my hand falls away in disbelief.

  Rach, saw the news on Twitter that you’re engaged again to your ex-husband. I’m sure you’re going to write about it here, but I wanted to wish you congratulations. These sorts of stories give me hope that love has the possibility of returning again. That maybe the rest of us will find it again too.

  I open my phone’s Internet browser and bring up my blog, scrolling down to the bottom of the comment section on the top post and skimming the messages that have been pouring in all day. At quick glance, scattered here and there are a few of what I suspected—scathing remarks about how I have no clue what real divorce looks like—but the vast majority range from genuine excitement and well-wishes to wistful hope that the same thing happens to the commenter. I am dumbfounded to see the support and wonder how I could have been so off from predicting how people would react based on that first email.

  After the initial moment of relief, my stomach starts to twist against itself, as if it’s a wet towel being wrung out over the sink, the white wine churning against the stomach wall as if looking for its own window. The wedding just became ten times more real, ten times more binding, ten times more enormous. I am stuck now, with the whole world knowing that Adam wants to marry me, and if I duck out now, they will know that I am the reason everything ground to a halt. I realize, too late, that the reason I never wrote about the wedding is that nothing feels real lately until I put it into words, hit publish on the blog, and send the thoughts out there. Now someone has made this wedding—which felt practically ethereal, made out of air and cloudy ideas—concrete, grounded, known.

  It is really, really happening. If I let it happen. Adam has left the ball in my court.

  But rather than continuing to panic, I can feel my heart rate slow down, another surprise. It is really happening, and I’m okay with that. Suddenly permanence doesn’t sound like a dirty word, nor does marriage sound like a trap. Adam is right. We haven’t repeated our past bad habits yet, and maybe, if we’re mindful enough, we will be able to keep this course for the future. I love Adam, who makes dinner for me despite the fact that we are in a fight, and he doesn’t know how to cook; who takes care of me even after breaking his heart on the subway platform.

  Ownership. It isn’t quite as scary when I think of it using Allison the Twitter Tornado’s point about self-hosted blogs from the reading. To the outsider, all relationships look like relationships. But to the insider, there is a difference between the permanence afforded by marriage or a domain name purchase. People are willing to take differ
ent risks, to put their heart out there. To prepare a chicken stir fry even when it isn’t clear that your fiancée wants to proceed with the wedding. Perhaps that is what Lisbeth has been fighting for all along in getting the right to marry. It’s not just about how the rest of the world sees you, but how you approach your own partnership.

  And then I realize with horror that Adam is currently at home wondering if I want to marry him, this person who I’ve wanted to protect from my own anxiety so I can’t hurt him by messing up this relationship again. I’ve left him at home, alone with a copy of the New Yorker and all his thoughts.

  It’s suddenly imperative that I get out of the restaurant at once, windowless bathroom be damned. I need to get home, tell him everything I realized in an Italian restaurant bathroom to the sound of an Italian singer translating popular American showtunes. The door to the bathroom swings open, and I can hear the click of heels across the tiled floor.

  “Rach?” Emily asks, and I can hear the swish of her hair as she bends down to check that it really is my three-inch black boots under the stall door.

  I flush the empty toilet and pause for five seconds, coming out to join her at the sink where my sister is trying to add some volume to her hair by shaking her fingers through it.

  “Everything is in the oven, and we’re just learning some knife skills from Paulo while we wait,” Sarah informs us.

  “Knife skills,” Emily says. “Rach, you don’t know anything about that.”

  “Not a bit,” I say back.

  “Whose idea was this?” Sarah questions.

  “Arianna,” we answer simultaneously.

  “Christ,” Sarah mutters. “It’s like she doesn’t even know you.”

  Emily squeezes my upper arm, both to comfort and gird me so I’ll follow her back into the kitchen. Since no one else knows how much I’ve been struggling with the idea of the wedding, and I’d sort of like to keep it that way, the fastest way out of this party involves taking a few mouthfuls of cod.

  Lisbeth is standing at the cutting board, hacking apart an onion while Arianna watches as if she’s fascinated. I’m not sure Paulo has encountered such a sedate bachelorette party, and he finally uncomfortably suggests that we retire to the dining area where he can serve us.

  “But we haven’t finished making the spinach!” Lisbeth points out.

  “No worries, no worries,” Paulo tells us, his hand on the small of my back while he guides me toward the door. “I’ll finish it off and bring it out. Relax, drink some wine.”

  We sit down in silence, and Lisbeth tries to lighten the mood. “So I brought this candy necklace for later. You’ll have to walk around the bar and ask the guys to bite off a piece.” Her voice trails off as Emily stares at her. “What? I got the idea from Googling bachelorette party ideas for straight girls.”

  “Lis, I’m not asking strangers to eat my necklace. Actually, I’m not feeling that great. I think I might go home after this.”

  “You can’t go home!” Lisbeth says, snatching a scrap of paper out of her purse. “We still have to play ‘I Never’ and go on a scavenger hunt.”

  No one answers. We all play with our place settings or unfold our napkin or fill our glass with more wine even though we haven’t consumed more than a sip or two since our last refill.

  “What about having fun?” Lisbeth tries again.

  “I am having fun. Really. This has been great. I just . . . I need to get home after dinner.”

  “You’re not really the bachelorette party sort,” Emily tells me charitably.

  “Well, I want the whole package,” Lisbeth announces. “Bridal shower, bachelorette party with penis cake, big white wedding.”

  “Penis cake?” Emily sputters. “You don’t even like penis on a person.”

  “I think it’s amusing in cake form,” Lisbeth informs her. “Kitschy. And I want dirty fortune cookies.”

  “Adding it to my bridal duties list,” I promise, thinking about how I much I’d rather be home on the sofa right now, watching bad television with Adam. If it’s not too late.

  ADAM IS EXACTLY where I left him on our bed, the New Yorker magazine crushed underneath his shoulder and a plate with a half-eaten slice of pizza threatening to tumble off the blanket. I set the plate on the floor and shake him awake. It’s only ten o’clock, but it feels so much later.

  I crawl into his inadvertently open arms, curling up against his side with my head on his chest. He doesn’t open his eyes or pull me closer to him, but he also doesn’t push me away. The light in the room shadows his eyes, and I run my index finger lightly over his lashes, down his cheek bone, across the valley over his lip, finally resting on his chin.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper. I close my eyes, so I don’t know if he has opened his. “You were right. I am assuming the worst of Arianna. Maybe because I’m angry that things have changed with me and her. Or because it confirms the fears I have that all relationships are destined to change over time, to end up some place worse than where they started. I don’t know why I think that.”

  “I didn’t write about it on my blog because I wasn’t ready for it to be real. Nothing feels set anymore until I write it down. You said you wanted paint instead of sand, but I saw getting married as cement instead of soil. But I don’t now. Adam, are you awake? I don’t now.”

  I can tell from his breathing that he’s listening to me. I creep my arm over his chest like ivy, wrapping around him, making him mine. “You were right. I stopped communicating the first time around because I was so angry about spending all of my time waiting. And here you were, making sure I didn’t leave you a second time by giving me exactly what I wanted. All these months, I thought I didn’t know what I wanted myself. But tonight I realized that you just got to the answer before me.”

  “I want to get married, Adam.”

  I open my eyes, but Adam’s are still closed. I feel him work his hands down my back, pressing lightly on either side of my spine, until his fingers reach the hem of my shirt, and he starts sliding his hands upwards again, taking off my shirt as if he is carefully removing the rind of a clementine in one continuous spiral. I help him by shifting my weight off my arm, and he brings the fabric over my face, a momentary darkness, and then I am back in the soft, heather grey of night time in New York, the only light entering the room streaming in from the signage outside, reflected neon.

  He tucks his face into the crook of my neck, where it softly curves into shoulder, and he breathes me in, the lingering smell of white wine and the sweetness of the ricotta cake. He nibbles the skin, eats me gently as if I am dessert, something he wants to savor. I take off his shirt, and we lie, skin to skin, not even kissing yet, his chest sleep-warm.

  I brush his hair back from his face, tugging it lightly when it slips between my fingers. And then I bring my nails against his scalp, making small circles over his skull until he smiles in his half-sleep, hums his lips against my mouth, bringing my jeans down to my knees so I can work them over my calves, peeling off my socks at the same time. He unbuckles his belt, sliding off his cords, letting them drop to the floor like the end of a yawn.

  He rolls me onto my back, but I squeeze his hips with my knees, flipping him against the mattress as his eyes fly open. I climb on top of him, still kissing him, his hands cupping my breasts, playing with my nipples. I move down his body, pausing every few seconds to stroke and tug and lick and suck, my mouth moving over his arms, his belly, onto his thighs and back up until he gasps, and that is when I pull him into me, rocking on top of him as if we are going somewhere, as if we are moving, as if we are traveling past all the prior moments in our relationships, revisiting them like flicking through photo albums, until all the pictures fall away, and we are left with just the dark grey of the night, the growls and moans, the smell of his sweat, the sweetness of cake.

  He finishes first, and I rol
l off him, lying on my back while he brings me to orgasm with his hand. My entire body clenches and shudders, and he pulls his hand out as he pulls me close to him, pressing my face to his chest while my body sends off a few aftershocks.

  “I don’t trust marriage,” I whisper. “But I trust us. And if you’re still offering, I’m ready to hold your hand and make this jump, to believe that we will remember everything we learned from the divorce and somehow not repeat the same mistakes again. I am ready to let myself be yours, to know that I won’t break you if I let you be mine. I want to make a promise to you, so that you know how deeply I have let you back into my heart, how I will never let you go again. And I will take every second you’ll give me.”

  “I do,” Adam murmurs.

  I snuggle into him, and we fall asleep like that, waking in the middle of the night to find our pillows, pull up the blankets, close out the neon outside.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE FIRST CLUE I get to how my day will go isn’t the weather—which is a crisp, bright November day—or waking up before my alarm clock goes off, which buys me additional time with the Today show even if I lose out on thirty minutes of sleep. The first clue comes when I slip my feet into my favorite pair of black, backless slides and discover that the lining has become creased right underneath my big toe.

  I take off the shoe and try to smooth it out with my thumbnail, but the ridge remains in place. I go back into my closet to try to find a different pair of shoes to wear, but nothing else goes with this outfit as well as my slides. I decide to wear them anyway, trying to convince myself that it really isn’t that annoying as the fold scrapes against my toe with each step.