Out to Lunch

by Stacey Ballis

  19

  Nancy laughs. I can’t really blame her. “That is quite a tale.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “So the weekend was a bust.”

  “Not entirely. Brian was somewhat shocked by my outburst, and disappointed when I said I wanted to go home to be with my dog, but we talked on the ride home, and by the time we got back I think he got it. He ended up spending the night at my place that night, and we’ve been pretty good since then. I got us reservations for EL Ideas for Valentine’s Day, which is damn near impossible, and a place he has wanted to eat forever, and he was really excited, so I think it was ultimately a strengthening thing.”

  “So do you consider him your boyfriend?”

  “I consider him the man in my life.”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “No, it’s not. But it feels like enough for me, for now.”

  “And for later?”

  “I’m living in the moment.”

  “That sounds like a cop-out. But today I think we have bigger issues that it brings up.”

  “Like?”

  “Like this whole distance thing. You fight liking Wayne. You fought liking the dog. You fight getting committed to Brian. You’re keeping things at arm’s length, and I’m wondering why?”

  “I think I’m fine. I don’t just open up right away.”

  “You’ve known Wayne for almost a decade. You’ve had the dog for two months. You’ve known Brian for six years and have been dating for three months. These are not ‘right away’ situations.”

  “What can I say, it is what it is.”

  “Why do you think you keep having these panic attacks?”

  “Because someone I know refuses to hook a girl up with the Xanax.” I laugh, but it’s forced.

  “That isn’t an answer. When do you have them?”

  “They just come out of nowhere.”

  “I don’t think they do. I think they come when you are scared about being close to someone or something.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “You say they started when you were dealing with Aimee’s death becoming imminent, your very best friend in the world, leaving you. You told me you had one the first time you went back to the Library after she died, with your adopted family waiting to be kind to you. At Thanksgiving when Andrea and her mom reached out to say that you could lean on them. When Wayne called to say that the dog could have died. You don’t see a pattern? That you are scared when closeness is involved? That you’re keeping things at arm’s length?”

  “I really don’t.” Except that I do.

  “Jenna. I know that losing Aimee was, is, so very, very hard. I also know, or at least I infer, that your independence is hard won and protective. That you have always been insular. It was just you, growing up, with older parents who were loving but gave you as much space as your intelligence warranted, and in the process, made you very much a person who did for herself.”

  “And this is a bad thing?”

  “Of course not. Unless you use your ability to do for yourself to keep you from making strong connections to other people.”

  “Then how do you explain Aimee? I could not BE closer to someone.”

  “True. But you met Aimee and made that friendship everything for you personally. And your work took care of the rest. You seem to think that if you are weak, if you show vulnerability, if you NEED, that that makes you needy. Unlovable, maybe. But more importantly, I think you have not yet begun to scratch the surface of your loss of Aimee, and unconsciously are working very hard at not getting particularly close to anyone or anything else, because you can’t pile loss on more loss.”

  “Again, this is bad why?”

  “Until you address what it means to have lost Aimee, you can’t let someone else in your life who might leave you. It’s like refinishing furniture. You can slap another coat of paint on top, but it will bubble and streak and never be right. Or you can do the very hard annoying work of stripping away the finish that is there so that you can start clean, and fresh.”

  “Seriously? I’m getting furniture-stripping metaphors? At one hundred and eighty-five dollars an hour?”

  She smiles. “I’m redoing a sideboard.”

  “Thought so.”

  “I’d argue it still fits.”

  “I hear you. I don’t really know what to say about it, but I hear you. I don’t think it’s true, but you think it’s unconscious, so I can’t really be sure. I know I’m sick of the whole world waiting for me to fall to pieces.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Fall to pieces.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “BECAUSE AIMEE IS DEAD.”

  “And?”

  My voice cracks. “And she is the only person I can fall apart with. She is the only person who can put me back together. Because she is the only one who has ever known my secret heart and my dark places and my deepest fears and she IS FUCKING DEAD. I trusted her. I trusted her with everything I am and was and wanted to be. I trusted her with my whole heart and she promised to be here and she is GONE. I can’t lose it because she is the only one who could bring me back.” The tears are hot and fast on my cheeks. “Don’t you think I would have dearly LOVED to just go to pieces? I don’t have the luxury. If I let myself go to pieces, I’d never get myself whole ever again. Who is going to put me back together? My parents? They’re a thousand years old and two thousand miles away. Wayne? He might not be the devil I imagined, but he can’t remember to put the cake away; he’s going to patch me up when I fall? My staff? I love them, but they WORK FOR ME. I pay salaries, benefits, I know they care, but they can’t see me all broken. Brian too. Who, pray tell, do I really have? No one, that’s who. I am the most alone person in the world. But at least I know me. I know what I can do. I can take care of my dogs, and make sure the people around me are taken care of, but there is no one to do that for me. I know it, and it sucks, but it is what it is. I never got the people who get so angry that they sweep everything off the table to break into a million pieces on the floor. Because when they’re done with their fit, they are going to have to clean that shit up. My dog craps on the floor, I have to clean it up. Why would I crap on the floor myself, knowing I’d have to clean it up. I can’t break into a million pieces, because frankly, I don’t want to have to clean that shit up.”

  “And if Aimee were here, she’d clean it up.”

  “She’d clean it up. Or we’d clean it up together. Or she’d trick someone else into cleaning it up. And make it better. She’d make it fucking ELEGANT.”

  “And if you tried to get close to someone else, to let other people in, to like Wayne, to love the dog, to love Brian, they could also leave you, you could also lose them, and Aimee can’t clean that up either.”

  “Every guy who ever broke my heart, every bad grade, every client who yelled, every soufflé that fell, Aimee was there. When my parents moved away, when Jack left, Aimee was there. Now, no one is here. It’s just me. Me and my pain and my fear and my loss and my aloneness, and it may not be what I would have chosen, but I know it and I can handle it. Because I don’t really have a choice.”

  “What if you did?”

  “Did what?”

  “Have a choice.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Well, maybe I should just get on my magical unicorn and fly to this wondrous land of choices you speak of,” I say, snarkier than I intend.

  She raises an eyebrow. “Feel better?”

  “It was kind of a good one.”

  “Of course it was.”

  “Fine. You tell me. What fabulous choices do I have?”

  “You think about that, about the choices you do have. The ones that might help you find a safe place to land if you fall apart a little bit. And we’ll talk about it next time.”

&n
bsp; Sigh. “Okay.”

  “And Jenna?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Here.” She hands me a piece of paper. It’s a prescription for five Xanax.

  “Finally.”

  “Here’s the catch. That is the only prescription I will ever write you for those pills. You get five. Total. Forever. Use them wisely.”

  Figures.

  * * *

  When I get home, I walk the dogs and collapse on the couch for a nap. My outburst really took it out of me. When I wake up, it’s after six, and I’m ravenous. I go to the kitchen, and stare blankly into the fridge. Nothing jumps out at me. I wander into the Kitchen Library and look over the shelves of cookbooks. And there, on the bottom shelf, The Notebook.

  I pull it out, feeling the cool, soft leather. I take it into the kitchen and put it on the table. I turn the pages, watching my handwriting change, my tastes develop, my palate getting more sophisticated. I look at every page, reading my scrawled notes, until I get to the last page.

  I had forgotten about this recipe idea.

  Aimee’s Salad Bar Soup

  I’d been hanging out with Aimee in the hospice. We were talking about the perfect home-cooked meal. And she said her idea of the perfect home-cooked meal would be a hearty filling stewlike soup that didn’t require any work. The opposite of me. And I came home and couldn’t sleep and came up with this idea and wrote it down, and while I was doing that she was slipping into the pain that would require so much morphine that we would never have a lucid conversation ever again.

  I reach up to wipe tears away to find that my cheeks are dry. And then I get up. I grab my coat and head for the car. In ten minutes I am at the massive Whole Foods on Kingsbury. I go to the salad bar. I fill containers with carrots, celery, sliced onions, shredded cabbage, chopped tomatoes. Garbanzo beans and corn. Shredded chicken, peas, chopped cauliflower, and broccoli. Baby spinach leaves. Cooked barley. I check out, with my three salad bar containers, and head back toward home. I stop at La Boulangerie and pick up a baguette. I get home and don’t even take my coat off. I get out one of my big stock pots, and dump all three containers into the pot. From the pantry, a jar of Rao’s marinara. From the freezer, a container of homemade chicken stock. I don’t even bother to thaw it, I just plop it like an iceberg into the pot. Salt, pepper, red pepper flakes for heat. I crank the heat to medium, give it a stir and leave it. I dump my coat, and head upstairs. I get into a very hot shower, feeling my shoulders unclench in the steam. I get out, dry off and get into comfy clothes, throw my hair in a ponytail. I head back downstairs, pour a glass of wine. I set a place at the table, a French linen tea towel for a place mat, a single large silver spoon, both treasures found at Clignancourt market in Paris. I grab the butter from the fridge, and a half a lemon, a wedge of parm, the cheese grater from the drawer, the baguette. I go to the stove, where the soup is bubbling like mad, giving off an amazing smell. I give it a stir, a quick taste, adjust the salt and pepper. It will taste even better tomorrow, but it is still very fresh and delicious. I ladle out a generous bowl and set it at my place. A squeeze of lemon, a shower of grated cheese. I alternate between bites of hearty savory soup and thickly buttered crusty bread. I eat two bowls. Half the baguette. Finish the wine. And think, whatever else there is, this is good. And would have been just what Aimee wanted.

  20

  I hate Valentine’s Day.

  “Valentine’s Day is AWESOME.”

  Valentine’s Day is crap. It’s always crap.

  “Valentine’s Day is one of the best days of the year.”

  You just say that because there are presents involved.

  “Well, DUH!”

  It never works the way you want it to; someone is always disappointed.

  “Not me.”

  Sure, you always had secret admirers and doting boyfriends, and a loving husband.

  “And you had me.”

  Well, look how that’s working out for me.

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  * * *

  Aimee was always my Valentine’s Day backup. She sent flowers and cards and silly presents. She coached boyfriends and lovers. The few Valentine’s Days I ever liked, I liked because she orchestrated them. But let me be clear, it isn’t my day, it isn’t my holiday, and I never look forward to it, whether I’m romantically attached or not.

  Frankly I’d skip it altogether, but Brian made a point of asking me to spend the evening together, and it’s impossible to tell the guy you’re sleeping with on a regular basis that Valentine’s Day is “not your thing.” I offered to cook, which is the best expression of affection I can think of, not to mention keeping you away from the overpriced and underwhelming “special dinners” at local restaurants. But he hemmed and hawed and it became clear that he wasn’t so interested in eating in. I’m getting the sense that some of his foodie claims and interest in learning to cook might have been somewhat exaggerated. So I called in a major favor and got us the last two seats at EL Ideas, a very exclusive twenty-seat BYOB tasting menu restaurant that is about impossible to get into. Aimee and I wanted to go together since it opened, but she just never felt up to it. We used to have a dining adventure together once a month, picking a new restaurant or a wacky ethnic food to try; it was our girls’ night out, no Wayne to limit our choices. We ate the city, sometimes going superfancy, sometimes grungy and suspect, but always interesting and a great time to be together and talk life and dreams the way we always did.

  I haven’t been so excited about getting to EL, even though their reviews continue to be extraordinary and everyone I know who has gone just raves. Going without Aimee seems like kind of a sacrilege, but Brian’s been talking about wanting to go ever since one of the partners at his firm went and raved, and it was something I knew I could do, so I’m trying to put on a happy face. But I won’t lie. It feels weird. Things have been okay since our weekend away debacle, but not amazing. I feel like he’s losing patience with me, and I’m not really sure why, and I’m not really sure that I care. For sadly not the first time since we started dating, I have really been questioning his motives, his desire. I’m still not exercising, so I just keep getting doughier. Certainly not getting younger. Sometimes I just look at him with all his gorgeousness and wonder why on earth he is even bothering with me.

  And when I think these things, the Voix alternately yells at me for self-doubt, and tells me that I can do better.

  “You CAN do better. He? Cannot.”

  I thought you were all excited when we hooked up.

  “That was before I thought you were going to just hunker down with him in a boring little rut.”

  My ruts are the only things keeping me sane.

  “So be insane.”

  I’m having conversations with my dead best friend, which is as insane as I would like to get, if you don’t mind. I hear the food in the nuthouse is lacking.

  “Suit yourself.”

  I’m supposed to meet Brian at six at his place, even though our reservation isn’t until seven thirty. Which makes me nervous. The dinner tonight is my gift to him, it’s a very expensive meal, and you have to prepay, it’s nonrefundable, plus it’s BYOB, so there are the wines to deal with. I’ve actually spent significantly more on the evening than I would have on a physical gift, but I’m still awkward about the whole present thing. Considering the necklace at Christmas, I’m worried about his giving me something too big. Presents always made me uncomfortable, since I’m just one of those people who’s hard to buy for, and I’m always worried about both being disappointed, and worse, that I’ll show it, which I know is horribly ungracious. I like giving things, love it actually, but accepting them has just always been sort of hard, and it got worse when we started making serious money. Even before the big sale, when we were just making pretty high salaries, people would give me presents, and the idea that they would spend their money, usually on things I didn’t really want, when I could well afford to just buy the right thing for myself, it just makes
me tense.

  I like something homemade and simple. Something from your heart. Preferably delicious. Bake me cookies, make me jam or pickles. Bring me some fabulous ingredient or nibble you picked up in your travels. Cook me dinner. Share your old family recipes with me. Take me to a new restaurant or food market or equipment store I’ve never been to. Knit me a comfy scarf in a color you think looks good on me. Anything that is a genuine expression of your affection and doesn’t cost a fortune or require you to wrack your brain too hard or get stressed out. And whatever you do, don’t bring me candles or bath products.

  “You can’t have too many candles or bath products.”

  Wrong. I have a whole cabinet full of that crap.

  “I always gave you candles and bath products.”

  Which is why I have a whole cabinet full.

  “Oh.”

  Exactly.

  * * *

  Volnay is having a rough morning; it’s a damp dreary gray day, and her joints are stiff and sore, so I forgo the morning walk and just let the dogs out in the backyard for their morning business. Today I am taking Chewie to his third doggie day care tryout. The second place I tried last week also put him on the no-fly list. Something about getting out of his crate and eating the wooden gate for the small dog pen, causing a stampede of miniature pups, and turning the whole facility into the O.K. Pomeranian Corral. Apparently those little fellows can hide in a million places, and it took the entire staff most of the day to find and wrangle them. Sigh. Hopefully this new place will be able to handle him, because he needs a place to socialize, and I need a place to leave him when I go visit my folks for Passover in March. Wayne offered to take him anytime, but I think our tenuous friendship will survive better if I have trained professionals dealing with my ridiculous monster. But I am letting Wayne pick him up today and deliver him back to my place while I’m out with Brian. It will make my life so much easier to not have to deal with him, and Wayne seemed eager to help.