Life From Scratch (17 page)
No husband in the picture? You use donor sperm. Fertility problems found? You use IVF. No money for daycare? You just change your job around so you can work from home. Every solution looks simple, but I’ve learned from past experience with Arianna that while
she
may have the resolve to put plans into action, the rest of us are usually left with a huge, tangled mess when we dip our foot into solutions.
“And then who would buy it? People want to read about what Pioneer Woman is cooking. Or
Chocolate & Zucchini
. Who the hell wants to hear what I have to say about divorce or cooking or how to furnish a new apartment for under one thousand dollars when you leave all your furniture with your ex-husband?”
“There’s a blog called
Chocolate & Zucchini
? What a disgusting combination. Regardless, several million voters voiced their opinion that they’re interested in what you have to say. Not to mention your regular blog readers, which have now increased five-hundred fold.”
This part is true. I thought there would be a sharp spike and then it would drop back down to my usual three thousand per day, but it has remained up near one hundred thousand for several days, only fluctuating by a thousand or two each day and sometimes climbing above the original high that came on the first day of the award announcement. About one hundred thousand people are sitting on the edge of their computer seats, waiting for me to update my feelings on the lasagna I made.
“Listen, Rach, you have a great platform.
Of course
publishers are going to be interested in buying the book.”
“‘Platform,’ listen to you. Where did you even get that term?”
“The agent’s email, and then I Googled the term. But it’s true. Here, I have two hours before I have someone picking up their pants. Let’s go down to the bookstore, and I’ll get you a book on writing book proposals to celebrate.”
“Do you think buying a book would jinx it? I mean, she may have sent that email out and then changed her mind and will never write back. And I could get myself all excited, working on this proposal, and have it come to nothing.”
“Well, honestly, I think you should write a book proposal and try to sell it. Whether she ends up as your agent or someone else is beside the point. You have a good story and people love your writing and frankly, I think you need a new project. Especially if you return to the library when the money runs out. You’ll need to have something back at home to distract you—something that is entirely your own.”
“A baby. An ink-and-paper baby,” I say softly.
We both look at Beckett, who has returned to snuggling, and Arianna, not entirely pleased that the tone of my voice, veers towards wistfulness, grabs her purse and diaper bag before I can get too far down that path.
When I consider how my life looked before last week, it feels a bit surreal to be going to a book store to purchase a text on writing book proposals and to have someone possibly interested in representing the book. All the clichés are true. Beckett bobs his head up and down a few times as if he can hear my thoughts, and he wholeheartedly agrees.
Just wait until Adam sees me now, sneaky blog lurker that he is.
It occurs to me,
several minutes into reading the book on book proposals, that in order to write one, I’m going to have to lie.
I’m supposed to ask myself if I have something to teach my future book readers? If I
had
any advice to give, I would follow it myself. I haven’t really moved on, or seeing Adam’s
The author of the book on writing proposals asks me to answer this question: “Why are you the best person to write this book?”
If I answer honestly, I’m not the best person to write this book. At least not right now. Not while I’m still thinking about my ex-husband while on dates with potential boyfriends (especially those of the sexy, Spanish persuasion. If Adam is cutting into my thoughts while I’m with someone who smells like leather and cinnamon and sex, you know there is a deep problem.) Not while I’m driven to eat a pint of ice cream while I stare at Sitestalker wondering what Adam’s presence means. Not if I am considering, even for a second, to slip out The Box.
Which means I’m either going to have to lie in my book proposal, because I really want to get published, or I’m going to finally get rid of The Box.
The Box contains all of the sentimental stuff I saved from my marriage. The stuff you trot out when you’re already feeling weepy and you need that extra push to get you to a good cry. The Box came from a grocery store and originally held a case of crushed tomatoes; now it holds the remains of my crushed marriage.
I take it out from its hiding place in the back of my closet and set it next to the writing-a-proposal book. This feels like one of those positive-thinking moments, where, if you knew how to really channel
The Secret
, you could get rid of all these mementos that only make you feel like garbage and clear the way towards thinking up some really good fodder for writing your own self-help book.
I open The Box. There are photos—the worst sorts of photos: vacations, unposed shots catching a moment in conversation, outtakes from snapping a picture for our engagement announcement. In all of the photos where we are conscious of the camera, we are smiling, huge dental-commercial-like smiles. These were real smiles, times that we were really happy. The photographs taken towards the end of the marriage, the ones where my shoulders look tense or my eyes do not match my mouth, were all discarded when I cleaned out our apartment. I threw them out or left them behind in drawers so Adam could find my tense, fake smile when he least expected it.
The Box contains a smashed penny that he made for me in a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. It has an imprint of the Statue of Liberty superimposed over
Lincoln
’s head. We had stopped to get frozen yogurt on a drive down to
Washington
,
D.C.
I secretly thought I might be pregnant—my period was late and I was ravenous—but I hadn’t told him yet. Unprompted, he made me the penny while I was using the restroom, and when I emerged, he pressed it into my palm and said, “Lucky penny.” I carried it in my pocket until I got my period a few days later.
There is an old concert t-shirt in the box, a button that says, “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” a postcard from
Berlin
when Adam went there for a conference, and a ring purchased on
Portobello Road
during a trip to
London
. I take out each item and dramatically place them in a semi-circle around me, as if I’m performing a Wiccan love ceremony.
I ball up the concert t-shirt and throw it in the trash can. I grab a few chatty old postcards and toss them in too. But I’m not getting that cleansing high I had hoped to achieve, the one that I was going to translate into a “You can do this too!” message for the book. I fan myself with a handful of photographs and re-read an old shopping list.
Beer
Duck sauce (the one in the orange jar . . . do you know what I’m talking about?)
Cheerios
Roach killer
Shampoo
Toothpaste
And then, in Adam’s loopy script under my handwriting:
Things that make my wife horny: kisses on her neck, being fed strawberries, having her husband do the shopping so she better be ready for him when he gets home . . .
That was true. Having him take care of things did make me horny. Perhaps that’s why we had so little sex in those later years—he never had time to do the shopping.
I refold the paper and place it back in the box. I save half the photographs, the penny, and fish the t-shirt back out of the trash can. The box is about one-fourth lighter than when I began, and that seems good enough for now.
Maybe my book will be The
Anti
-Secret. How negative thinking and still mucking around in your past can actually be quite healthy and bring all sorts of good stuff your way. How you don’t have to let go and trust the process, but instead can do whatever you need to do to get through the day, whether it’s stare at your ex-husband’s office website for a few hours or keep a box of stuff in your closest that tortures you emotionally, or still keep your married name.
I start jotting down notes on the inside cover of my proposal book. How to be a good divorcee: (1) do whatever you need to do to get through the day. (2) don’t get rid of stuff until you’re ready. (3) find your voice and use it. (4) learn to love IKEA.
I decide to send another note to the agent even though she hasn’t answered my first one. I tell her how hard at work I am with the proposal, and how it will probably be finished soon. I send the note off before I chicken out and then sit down and start working on what I hope is the advice I need to hear in order to get over Adam once and for all.
Because the reality is that if he really missed me and was reading my blog for the right reasons, he would reach out to me. The Adam I know is keen on taking action, and the fact is that we’re still in the same city. His office is near my neighborhood. We still order from the same Hunan Chow (the deliveryman tells me this every time I splurge on dinner and he drops off my order.) If Adam missed me, he could pick up the phone and call me. He could send me an email. He could even hang out around my apartment and “accidentally” bump into me; ask me out for coffee to catch up.
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