The Wife of Reilly

by Jennifer Coburn

  “You’re new to New York, aren’t you?” I joked.

  “I am new to each day,” she responded with some self-satisfaction with her response. “Let me begin again. Welcome to Cooking Without Recipes.”

  “You don’t have to start over on our account,” I offered. “There’s no need to make everyone else go through your intro again,” I assured her as we made our way to the stovetop next to Chad and Daniel. Sophie was at the planetarium with Devy and Oscar that day, and said there was no way she’d ever cook without a recipe anyway. Her mother used recipes. Her grandmother used recipes. “What the hell is wrong with a recipe?!” she asked as she declined the invitation.

  Gita continued. “You arrived exactly when you were supposed to. If the class hears my words more than once, it is as it should be.”

  Shit, let’s hope no one else shows up late or we’ll never get past her endlessly looping introduction.

  Gita inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. She bowed her head down and hummed lightly. “Welcome to Cooking Without Recipes,” she smiled.

  Definitely not a New Yorker.

  “I have cooked many meals,” she continued. She looked around the room and inhaled again. Then she smiled for another ten seconds.

  “Many, many fine meals,” Gita said.

  Never mind that dinner is served somewhere between midnight and three a.m.

  Jennifer shot us an embarrassed look as if to apologize for suggesting the class. “They ought to call this class teaching without an agenda,” she muttered.

  Gita continued as if she were sharing great prophecy. “These many, many fine meals have been prepared without recipes.”

  By this time Chad was tapping his index finger against the countertops and shifting his weight from one side of his body to the other. He tightened his lips and gave Jennifer a wide-eyed look to let her know she’d pay for this mistake.

  “What is a recipe?” Gita asked.

  Chad looked like he was going to collapse in frustration. “She doesn’t even know what a recipe is?” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Recipe,” Gita said.

  “This is where you two came in,” Daniel whispered to Jennifer and me.

  After twenty-five minutes all we’ve established is that the cooking teacher has no idea what a recipe is. It’s a three-hour class! Do we get to cook anything or just ponder the meaning of recipes?

  Gita continued at the speed of philosophical honey. “Who would like to share with me their understanding of what a recipe is?”

  “Instructions on how to cook something,” Jennifer answered speedily.

  Gita inhaled again. She smiled so long and still, she looked like an animal in a taxidermy office.

  Gita, hello, are you there?

  “No,” she finally said. “Anyone else?”

  “Ingredients and directions on how to cook a certain dish,” Chad answered, annoyed.

  Gita tilted her head to the side and closed her eyes.

  “I think that one killed her,” Chad whispered.

  With her eyes still closed, Gita continued. “No, that is not the answer I am seeking.”

  We all looked at each other in shock. Both Chad’s and Jennifer’s definitions were exactly the right description of a recipe. What did this woman want from us?!

  “A plan,” I blurted out. “A recipe is a plan.”

  “Yes,” Gita snapped from her coma. “It is a plan, and yet our plans often fail us in life, do they not? We follow maps and still we are lost. We make business plans, then go bankrupt. We use recipes and burn our food.” Again she sounded as if she were Buddha on the mountain. I felt like raising my hand and letting her know that planning was, in more cases than not, very helpful. Sure, you could still get lost with a map, but usually it will get you to your destination.

  Gita took a deep breath and told the class that she would guide us through a process of letting go of our plan, in the kitchen and in life.

  Thank God! Finally some indication that she had an agenda for the class.

  “Let go!” she shouted so loudly that she startled Chad out of his daydream. “Release the plan!” she said with even greater intensity. I couldn’t help giggling.

  “You!” Gita pointed at me.

  Holy shit, not again.

  “Do you know why you laugh?” Gita asked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “That was not my question. I asked why you laughed. Are you aware of why you laughed when I said to release your plan?”

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, this time unable to control bursting into laughter.

  Gita stood beside me and waited for me to stop laughing. “Does letting go of your plan make you uncomfortable?” she whispered to me.

  “No.”

  Yes.

  “Maybe a little,” I admitted. “But that’s not why I laughed.”

  “Then why?” she asked.

  Can we cook now?

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “That is very clear,” Gita said as she returned to the front of the classroom.

  Jennifer raised her eyebrows in a she-told-you gesture.

  “When we let go of our recipes, we can tap into our natural cooking instincts. To cook is to nurture, and that is as natural as giving birth,” Gita said. “Do we need a plan to give birth?”

  “I had a birth plan,” one woman commented.

  “My question was do we need a plan, not did we use one to help ourselves feel that we are in control.”

  “I thought it was pretty helpful,” the woman said.

  Gita sighed as if she were surrounded by spiritual half-wits. Then she paused for one of her eternal moments and smiled.

  We’re Americans, Gita. Lighten up.

  Gita put the fourteen participants in groups of two and handed one person from each set a black cloth.

  Great, now she’s taking hostages.

  “Choose which one of you will wear the blindfold and be silent, and which one will be the guide. You will wear the blindfold,” she pointed at me. “You will rely on your partner’s voice to guide you through a process of cutting onions, mushrooms and green peppers, and grating cheese. Then you will mix the ingredients in a bowl with eggs and cook an omelet.”

  Incredulously I asked, “We’re going to cut vegetables blindfolded? What if we cut ourselves?”

  “Then you will bleed,” Gita responded.

  Then I will bleed? Then I will bleed, did she say?

  “Why would I want to go through the pain of cutting myself with a kitchen knife if it could be avoided by simply watching what I’m doing?”

  “Are you afraid of feeling pain?” she asked me.

  Well, actually, Gita, I am. Does that make me somehow less evolved than you? I don’t want to slice my hand open and be rushed off to the emergency room for stitches. How silly of me not to be more open to the spiritual enlightenment that can only come from cutting off my own finger.

  “Why do you assume you will cut yourself? Perhaps you will not,” Gita asked.

  “Odds are much better if I could see what I’m doing.”

  She smiled. “You are so right,” she said as if she were laughing at a joke I wasn’t getting. “Just do. I have bandages here for students who must cut themselves during the process.”

  Must cut themselves?! What process? It was a goddamned omelet, for Christ’s sake!

  How I wished Sophie were at that cooking class. If I so much as nicked myself, she’d slap a billion-dollar lawsuit against the Ninety-Second Street Y for having this wacko recklessly endanger unsuspecting cooking students.

  Sure enough, I cut myself slicing green peppers.

  “Owwww!” I shouted and lifted my blindfold.

  Gita placed it back over my eyes. “I will clean your wound and put a bandage on you. With time you will heal. Right now, though, we are cooking omelets.”

  Gita was clearly out of her mind, yet Jennifer and I continued cooking our meal as instructed. After I cracked the first e
gg, I dropped it on the counter instead of in the bowl. I realized I spilled the second one on the oven burner when I smelled the torched egg.

  “Wonderful! Wonderful!” Gita shouted as the class spilled vegetable scraps on the floor and dripped raw egg all over her countertops.

  At the end of the class we got to eat our omelets, which I must say wasn’t an especially rewarding part of the class. But Gita insisted that we eat every bit of the eggs we cooked blindly. “However these may taste to you, today’s omelets are the most delicious omelets you will ever eat in your life,” she proclaimed dramatically.

  I think not, Gita. My omelet has more blood in it than egg.

  When I returned home that night, I called Sophie and told her about the cooking class. “You’ve got to leave your business cards at the Y,” I told her. “Sooner or later, someone’s going to lose a finger, and with your luck it’ll be a pianist.” Then I cooked what was truly the best omelet I’ve ever made. And I did so with my eyes wide open.

  Chapter 22

  It was Sunday morning and I had four days to kill before leaving for Los Angeles. Jennifer and Adrian were off to see Sunset Boulevard. Sophie was spending the day with Oscar and Devy. The guys were on a weekend get-away to South Beach. And Matt was in France shooting the final scenes of Sour Milk.

  I had already visited practically every gallery in the tri-state area over the last few weeks. I had read every book on my list. I even scanned Reilly’s back issues of Men’s Health one lonely night.

  After Meet the Press, all that was left on television was the all-dolls edition of the Home Shopping Network, basketball, and Brady Bunch reruns. While flipping channels I came dangerously close to calling Dionne Warwick’s Psychic Friends, and if I didn’t already own a ThighMaster, I would have ordered one. I watched an old guy who was way too excited about something called the Juice Weasel. After that I actually watched the second half of a Flintstones episode.

  Since it was Sunday, I couldn’t even go to the post office to collect the last of the singles letters for Reilly, and take comfort in the fact that there were hundreds of women in New York who were even lonelier than me.

  The next call I made was my last resort.

  “Prudence, what an unexpected surprise.”

  “Hello, Father. What are you up to?”

  “I’m not up to anything, Prudence,” he defended.

  “No, I mean what are you doing today?”

  “I was going to go out on the boat this afternoon. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh nothing, I was just going to invite you in to the city for lunch or something,” I said.

  “That sounds great, Prudence. Do you want me to come in, or would you like to spend some time on the Little Mermaid? Everyone around here thinks it’s too cold to go out on the water.”

  “I get seasick, remember? You come to me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine. I’m just bored and thought you might want to blow a few hours together.”

  “I can’t think of a better way to blow my time, Prudence. Where do you want to meet? What would you like to do?” he asked. Already, he was too much for me.

  “I’m not sure. Why don’t you just swing by the loft and we’ll decide then, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  About an hour later, Father rang the downstairs buzzer and I rang him in. “Wow, this is some apartment,” he said, looking around.

  “You’ve never been to my home?”

  “Not inside,” he reminded me.

  “Oh, well come on in. I’ll pour a few drinks and we’ll figure out where we want to go.”

  “Can I sit in these chairs?” he asked. “They look like museum pieces.”

  “Aren’t they fabulous? Chad and Daniel’s friend Rodrigo carved this, and another local guy did the maple one. Sit, sit, they can take your best shot.”

  “Chad and Daniel are friends of yours, I assume?” Father asked.

  “Yeah, they own the gallery downstairs. Well, technically Chad owns it but, you know, what’s his is his and all that. So how’s retirement treating you, Father?”

  “It’s a little soon to tell really, but I’m looking forward to traveling. Did I tell you that Carla and I are going to Europe this June for a music festival of some sort? I really couldn’t tell you the name, but you know how Carla loves music.”

  “Um, no, actually I didn’t.”

  “Really?! She’s a classical violinist. I thought you knew that. She graduated from Juilliard, you know.”

  Carla graduated from Juilliard?

  “Carla graduated from Juilliard? Carla your wife?”

  Father laughed. “Oh yes, she’s really quite gifted. I think she would have been an outstanding performer if, well, you know. I don’t think she has any regrets, though. She loves being a mother, and teaching has been very rewarding.”

  “Teaching?”

  “Teaching. Yes, she teaches violin,” Father told me.

  “Wow, who’d’ve thunk it?” I said, chewing the celery of my Bloody Mary. “So how’d you guys meet, anyway?”

  “Oh Prudence, I don’t really want to rehash all this old stuff,” Father said.

  “Give me a break. I know you guys hooked up while you were still with Mom. Just tell me where you met her.”

  He sighed in concession and finished his drink. “Can I get a refill please, Pru?”

  “Can I get an answer, Father?” I said as I stirred my own drink.

  “Carla was an intern at Phil’s and I met her,” he said.

  “Phil? Chamber Orchestra Phil? Wait a second, did you say she was an intern?! Oh Father, that’s so Bill Clinton of you. You’ve got to be kidding. She was an intern?!” I said, bursting into laughter. Composing myself, I continued, “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, so what next? She comes up to you and says, ‘Wanna see my thong?’ How does it go from there?”

  I had somewhat mixed emotions over the fact that his story of meeting and falling in love with Carla sounded almost cute and romantic. His gaze left my apartment and took him back twenty-five years to a time when a spark plug of a young woman laughed at his insights, challenged his politics and made him feel young.

  He laughed remembering one of their dates. “One day we were on our way out to dinner after her music class and it was pouring rain,” he began. “We’re waiting forever for a cab like everyone else in the city. So along comes this Checker Cab and we’re thrilled because we’re soaking wet and starving and I’ve got to catch the 8:40 train back home, and this big burly guy runs right in front of us and grabs our cab. So I’m thinking, just let it go, there will be another cab. This guy looks pretty big and not like someone I want to mess around with. So then Carla gets right up in his face and starts in with, ‘What is it about you that makes you so important that you can have my cab?’ So the guy kind of laughs and goes for the door handle when Carla makes this insane face and grits her teeth. The she holds up her violin case and says to me, ‘Boss, this guy ain’t respecting you. Lemme open this baby up and show him why I’m called The Fiddler.’ ”

  “Carla said this?” I asked.

  “Not only did she say it, she had a perfect Godfather accent.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I didn’t say a thing,” he recalled. “The guy couldn’t figure out if she was kidding or not so he just told us to take the cab. And he apologized.”

  “Wow. Carla Gambino,” I laughed.

  Father’s grin disappeared only when he returned to the present to explain to me that his marriage with my mother had been in trouble for many years before. “I never wanted to hurt your mother, but our marriage was very empty. She’ll be the first one to tell you that.”

  “But you didn’t just leave Mom,” I told him, fighting not to let my voice flutter.

  “Well,” Father said, looking down at his shoes. “Carla got pregnant and I had to make a choice. The original plan was that I would stay with your mother until you went to college, but
then, well, I wanted to do the right thing by the baby.”

  Each word was like someone blowing air into a balloon in my throat.

  “It was a hard choice to make, Prudence. You’ve got to believe me when I tell you that. It was the toughest choice of my life.”

  “But you chose the baby over me,” I said, fighting tears.

  “No, I chose Carla over your mother. I didn’t think I’d have to choose between my children. I wanted you to be a part of my life, Prudence, but you would have nothing to do with me. I called constantly. Day after day, you got on the phone, said two words to me and hung up. Do you remember what those words were?”

  Sperm Donor.

  “Sperm donor. You called me a sperm donor,” he said.

  Still do sometimes.

  “Then you didn’t even call me that. You just refused to come to the phone. You wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “You should have tried harder. I was only twelve, of course I wanted something to do with you, you were my father. I wanted you to win me back, to make it up to me, to convince me that you still loved me, but you just gave up and disappeared,” I said, immediately regretting the disclosure. I wished this were the sort of thing Father could’ve figured out on his own.

  “You’re right, Prudence. I should have tried harder. Walking away for all those years is one of my greatest regrets in life. I am ashamed of how I behaved,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “I can’t tell you how many nights….”

  No, don’t cry. Please don’t cry, Father. Don’t look at him. Think about something else. The Juice Weasel is no ordinary juicer. Its high-speed blades help get the most possible juice out of every single vegetable, which means more nutritious vitamins for you and your family….

  “… was unbearable, but I’ve changed and grown a lot over the years and I want to make it up to you now. Can’t you see how hard I’m trying now?” His confessions pulled me like an ocean current, stronger than me and impossible to fight. As much as I tried, I couldn’t keep myself on the shore.

  “Yes, I see that you’re making an effort, but it’s very hard for me to trust you, Father. I can’t promise that I ever will. Do you know what it was like when I graduated from Michigan and everyone assumed Wally was my father? I didn’t correct anyone because how could I explain that you wanted to go on an Indian Princess camping trip more than watch me graduate from college?”