Life From Scratch (27 page)

Penelope grins up at me, waving her doll against mine as a reminder that we’re playing house.
 
I move my doll back into the kitchen, making her open the tiny refrigerator while I continue my thought to myself.
 
I need to not feel so apologetic for my nervous breakdown after the wedding, but learn from all my mistakes with Adam and tell Gael what I need. Maybe change back my name.

I need to write my damn book and take my own advice and not feel any trace of nostalgia. I need to make my real life just as exciting and funny as my blog life. And I will start right after
The Real Dish
gives me my sunny, happy, hand-painted udon noodle bowl.

My blog’s first anonymously-left
comment slips into the inbox between a publicity pitch and a self-help newsletter. I wasn’t even aware that comments could be left anonymously, having dodged the harsh responses that plague bloggers writing about more emotional subjects. I mean, how much hate can someone muster for a how-to post on browning beef or musings on whether you need to use filtered water when cooking? I’ve had a few people tell me that I’m a pussy about baking, but they’re right, so it hasn’t exactly been hurtful. But now there is my first anonymous comment, staring up at me from my inbox, daring me to open it.

The comment was left on a post about adding avocado to fresh mozzarella sandwiches. Why would anyone hide behind an anonymity function on a post as innocuous as making grilled cheese?

“Sneaking bites of avocado?” the comment read. “I thought you didn’t like avocado.”

I quickly yank up Sitestalker and scan through the recent visitor activity, trying to match the comment to an IP address. I switch back and forth between the email to check the timestamp and the visitor log until I triumphantly land on a single possible visitor. One who happens to be from Brockman and Young. Adam!

The pride in my expert detective work quickly returns to fury. How dare he imply in a comment that he knows anything about me anymore? So what if I didn’t like avocado years ago? In the last few weeks I have tried it again and discovered that, when ripe, it actually isn’t bad at all.

People change
, I want to write back in all caps.

Instead of being a man and admitting at the party that he’s dating someone new and he reads my blog, he leaves an anonymous comment, knowing full well that I would check and figure out it is him. A coward’s choice.

It’s as if he believes that by reading my blog he has somehow bridged the chasm between us, knows something new about me. But all he knows is my catalog of recipes, a handful of opinions on
New York
restaurants or cookbooks, a few musings about my life before and after him. He doesn’t know the real me. Even Gael has a better sense of who I am in this moment.

Adam may have known my past, but he certainly doesn’t know my present.

After his anonymous comment, I squelch whatever small amount of doubt I had about my decision to put him out of my life for good, to fully close the door. He certainly won’t know my future.

I am really not a fan of birthdays. Like most people, I quake at the idea of growing old. Secondly, you can never plan something good enough to do, and even if you do have the most kick-ass plans, there is always a chance that something sucky will happen that day. I hate my thirty-fifth birthday even when I'm not being reminded by every women's health magazine that this is the date that my ovaries are shriveling up into dusty crumbs of womanhood. Even when it's not several weeks before my first divorce anniversary.

Arianna, God bless her little heart, has planned a fantastic birthday dinner at Quiddity, the new molecular gastronomy place in Tribeca. While I'm looking forward to trying freeze-dried grapes, it doesn't stop me from lolling about on my bed moaning out the infamous words of Prufrock: "I grow old, I grow old."

Instead of attempting the angel food cake again, I have embraced my pussiness about baking and bought a chocolate malt cake from Momofuku. Insanely good. Insane. I popped a candle in it and sang myself the birthday song a few days early. Just because I felt like it. I decided I need to leave goals for myself. I’ve accomplished so much at thirty-four—divorce, life after divorce, macaroni and cheese. Baking is a good thing to save for thirty-five.

Chapter Eleven

Trussing the Chicken

I invite Gael over for pre-birthday sex. Thirty-five seems like such a momentous age that it is worthy of a multi-day celebration. He rolls over in bed afterwards and looks at me. “You don’t look like you are turning thirty-five.”

“I don’t?” I ask, fishing for compliments.

“You look like you’re about forty, maybe forty-two,” he teases, and I punch him in the shoulder. “No,
mi amor,
you look like you are thirty, tops.”

“I wish I were thirty,” I sigh. “Life was pretty good at thirty.”

No, it wasn’t
, I remind myself silently.

“Tell me about thirty. What did you do for your thirtieth birthday?”

“I didn’t have a party. Adam and I talked about having a party, but we never pulled one together,” I say, staring at the ceiling. Even before my post-wedding breakdown, I felt awkward reminiscing about my marriage with Gael. I put myself in his shoes; I would never want to hear about past birthdays with his ex-girlfriends, but even knowing that, I can’t stop myself from talking. “We went to
London
.”

“That’s romantic.”

“It was. I mean, I know
Paris
is the more romantic option, but we went to
London
and visited all these places I wanted to see.
Buckingham
Palace
, the Tate. That was our last big trip. I mean, we did small vacations around
New York
, but we never went overseas again.”

“That’s sad,” he simply says in agreement.

“It is sad. I wanted to travel more, but after
London
, Adam could never get away. I wanted to go to
Australia
. I’ve never been there.”

“I haven’t been there either.”

“Next honeymoon,” I tell him as I stretch. “For the next one, I’m going to
Australia
. For a month. And I’m going to go scuba diving. I don’t know how to scuba dive, but I’m going to learn.”

“Do you want to get married again?” Gael says, and I notice that his voice has gotten more careful, more cautious, as if he is creeping towards a particularly hairy spider to get a closer look.

“Yes,” I admit, tucking my chin towards my chest so I can avoid looking at him. Even I know better than to look at a single man who is asking me questions about marriage. “One day. I liked being married back when it was good, and I think I could do it better next time.”

“What would change?”

“I’d cook,” I tell him, and he laughs. I glance at him to show that I’m serious, while not taking myself too seriously. “I would. I know it sounds like a small thing, but I want to take care of someone. I’d make really good food, and my husband would help me, and we’d both make excuses to leave work early rather than stay really late.”

The air in the room feels very heavy, as if we are Dorothy and Toto in reverse, moving from a world of color into the land of black-and-white. I lighten the mood by rolling onto my side and tossing my hair over my shoulder, looking demurely at him through my lashes. “And I’d wear a lot of sexy clothes. I’d cook in a merry widow and stiletto heels.”

And even though he laughs, even though he rolls me onto my back so he can have me again, for some reason, his face looks incongruent, as if his mouth and his eyes and his cheeks have all ceased to work in unison.

I decide definitively that
I like being a writer, like sitting in front of the computer for hours at a time, like the way my mug of coffee looks on my desk, like the numerous sticky note pads I have lying around the apartment in case inspiration strikes while cooking or peeing.

It’s a life I could definitely get used to living.

It doesn’t feel like real time, and it is easy to look up at the clock and realize that I have been working for ten or more hours and still feel like I could keep plodding forward, not because it needs to get done now now now, but because I’m actually excited about the work. I’m excited to see words form into sentences and sentences form into paragraphs, and I keep glancing down at the tiny reminder on my Word document to see how much I’ve written, how it would translate out to pages in a real book.

My official birthday therefore creeps up on me gently, even though I’m not a big fan of marking time passing. Even though I’m now officially of “advanced maternal age,” if I decide to attempt procreation. I am in a higher risk group for genetic issues. A higher rate of pregnancy loss. These cheery thoughts flicker around in my head like little birthday candles. Thank you, women’s health magazine articles, for the birthday wishes.

Arianna calls to say that she is on her way with croissants and coffee. Penelope calls separate from my sister and whispers the words to the
Happy Birthday To You
song into the phone, as if she’s worried about startling me into aging. My brother calls to see if he can bring over croissants and coffee too, but declines to join us when I tell him that Arianna already has it covered. He tells me he’ll see me that night at the birthday dinner.

I check email after I’ve showered; before Arianna arrives with breakfast. Last night, I put up a blog post about turning thirty-five, and my inbox is now clogged with thousands of well-wishers leaving comments. It’s easy to write the requisite “Happy birthday,” so even the lurkers come out of the woodwork. Nestled amid all of the emails is a single, anonymous birthday wish, laden with an enormous amount of hidden meaning:
“I really do want you to have a happy birthday today.”

I immediately file it within my email account so I don’t have to see it again in my inbox.

I will have a good day
, I decide,
with or without Adam’s blessing
.

Arianna shows up without Beckett but with a bag of croissants and two coffees. I take her over to the computer and search through my email to find Adam’s message. She reads it and shrugs her shoulders. “You have always known that he’s not willing to open up about his feelings. I mean, he wouldn’t even sit down and talk to you straight about the problems in your marriage.”

“Right,” I agree.

“Remember that time that you tried to plan a cruise? You thought that if you got him onto a ship, there would be few places where he could run away and do his own thing? You’d be forced to spend time together. And what was his response?”

Adam had refused to even look at the cruise ship brochure, sighing that he couldn’t believe I thought he could take a three-week vacation. “He wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Or the time you wanted to take him clothes shopping for new suits after he landed a major deal for the firm, and he couldn’t even explain to you why he wouldn’t give you one afternoon—not couldn’t, but
wouldn’t
—of his time. He was so secretive; he shut you out.”

Arianna sounds far angrier than necessary. She asks me if I’m going to delete his email or figure out a way to block him from leaving more comments, but I shrug my shoulders. I can’t imagine deleting it any more than I can imagine looking at it again. It’s sort of like The Box in the closet, resting in emotional purgatory.

“I would delete it,” she insists. “I wouldn’t let him have that power over me or leave reminders of himself in my space. Your blog is your space, Rach. And insinuating himself into it through anonymous comments, reminding you that he’s still around without actually connecting with you in a meaningful manner, is just a power play. You’re letting him have power by not deleting his comment from your blog.”

“How is that letting him have power? I think it’s much more powerful to leave it there and not react. Why are you so angry?’

“I don’t like the way he treated you. What if he was leading a double life? Had a girlfriend on the side? Didn’t you ever wonder?”