Life From Scratch (14 page)
One of the things I used to love to order was artichoke and spinach dip. It's so gooey and yummy. It is healthy love. It has to be healthy—right? I mean, it has vegetables in it and protein. It's green. Green things are good.
Since I no longer have the funds to go out and drop ten bucks on an appetizer (and before you start, I am not ordering that on a date. Are you kidding? Admit that I enjoy eating what amounts of green liquefied fat that leaves a stringy cheese beard hanging from below my lip? Attractive!), I thought I'd see if I had the skills and equipment to make it myself. Not that my hips need unrestricted access to artichoke and spinach dip.
So I Google the recipe and Alton Brown's smiling face comes onto my screen. Frozen spinach? Check (and thank you, Mr. Brown, for not suggesting fresh spinach). Frozen artichoke hearts? Check. Cream cheese for lovely smooth cheesiness? Check. Sour cream. Um, okay, not my favorite thing but fine. And then, like finding a cockroach in your salad, I let out an internal scream: MAYONNAISE?
There is mayonnaise in spinach and artichoke dip? There is
mayonnaise
in the dip? Why didn't anyone tell me? How could they let me put it in my mouth—on a chip no less? Were they trying to kill meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?
I hate mayonnaise. Hate it, hate it, hate it.
Further Googling brought me to recipes that did not contain mayonnaise, but here's the rub: how do you know if the spinach and artichoke dip placed in front of you contains my edible kryptonite? Obviously, in some situations you can ask, but how do I know if a waiter is telling the truth or if they're just telling me what I want to hear?
It made me really sad that there isn't a rewind button, a way to undo knowledge. Because I'm not sure I can ever eat spinach and artichoke dip again.
Chapter Six
Rondelle the Celery
Let me get this straight. Adam ignored me for the last several years of our marriage, never got home early enough so we could share the events of our day, and now—
Hell hath no fury like a woman once ignored, who is now receiving attention several years too late.
I can’t really explain why I’m so bothered over the idea of Adam reading my thoughts. If he wants to learn that I now know how to use the waffle maker we got for our wedding (and that my waffles are better than anything I’ve ever gotten in a restaurant; seriously, he’s missing out on the best breakfast ever), let him. The divorce is over and done with and nothing I’ve written up until this point can be used against me. Who cares if he knows that I missed him sometimes? If he knows that I have dipped my toe in the dating pool? Good, he should be up all night thinking about another man’s hands all over my body.
I am so over him.
Except a tiny voice in the back of my head coolly asks: “Well, are you?”
Yes, I am. I’m so over him that I’m dating other people. I’m telling complete strangers about my life, and they love it—three thousand of them love it. They think I’m funny and smart and . . . so yes, I am over him. I
think
I am over him. I think about him sometimes, usually when I least
expect
it,
and
sometimes
I
miss him . . . all of that is normal. So yes, I think I am over him.
I sleep on the fact all night, tossing and turning as if it is an uncooked pea hidden under the mattress. In the morning, I throw on some clothes and head out to Arianna’s to bitch about it in person. The point, I decide to make, is that reading my blog means that however distant, Adam is essentially involved in my life. And the whole reason we divorced was because he wasn’t part of my life. And frankly, he missed his chance to know me.
Someone is coming out of Arianna’s building right as I get there, so I slip inside, waving to the woman at the front desk, and jump in the elevator, taking it up the six floors to her apartment. The elevator doors open and I see Ethan talking to Arianna at her door. He is holding Beckett and standing in the open door jamb. They both startle when they see me, and then look back at each other as if they’re equally surprised that they’re there.
“Hey, Rach, Arianna asked me to come over this morning and help move some stuff,” he tells me.
“Oh,” I say, watching Arianna take Beckett out of his arms.
“I actually have to get going. Photos to take,” he tells me.
“Can you stay for a second?” I ask. “Because I need to talk about the fact that Adam has been
reading my blog
.”
I expect this news to elicit the same gasp that I gave last night, but they both stare at me a bit blankly, as if they’re trying to grasp why this news would need to be discussed, not to mention, delivered in person. I try again: “Adam? As in my ex-husband? The one who never asked me how my day was or came home before
and complained every time I suggested that we spent time with one another? Who flipped out every time I suggested we go on a vacation and actually relax with one another? Ringing any bells? Well, he was on my blog last night.”
Ethan shrugs but clearly gets the message that more is expected, because he turns and heads back into the apartment. Arianna begins to clean up the kitchen, setting coffee mugs and plates into the sink while Beckett gurgles at me from her hip. She sets him in the playpen with a few toys and then pours me a cup of coffee without asking first if I want any. She knows me that well.
I slide an enormous vase filled with chrysanthemums to the side and squint at them for a moment, wondering why she bought herself such an enormous bouquet of flowers.
“So I was playing around on the computer after I got home last night. I had a date with Gael,” I tell them, catching my brother up on this new development with his friend.
“With
my
friend, Gael? The one I brought to your party?”
“He asked me,” I say defensively, as if I hadn’t been attracted to Gael’s lopsided smile and droopy eyes.
“I just thought you might have told me first,” Ethan starts, but he’s silenced by Arianna.
“How was the date?” Arianna asked.
“It was fine. I’ll tell you about it in a second. So I was on Sitestalker, and I looked at the
“It’s a big firm,” my brother offers. “It could be anyone.”
“Anyone? Seriously? How many people do you think work until eleven or later at night and read cooking blogs in that office? Wait, scratch that part about working until eleven. But the part about reading cooking blogs? Lawyers do not care about mastering risotto. I don’t even understand how Adam found me.”
“Sweetie, your name is all over the site. Your
full
name. Google yourself—you’re the first entry that pops up.”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask, wondering why I hadn’t been a little cleverer with my sign-on name. Rachel Goldman is the most common Jewish name in the world. There has to be at least eight million Rachel Goldmans in
New York City
alone. I cross the room to Arianna’s computer and Google myself. Sure enough, my blog is the first, third, and fourth entry for Rachel Goldman. I wish I had known more about search engines and how Google works before I started the site.
I return to my coffee cup and stare at the layer of oil glistening on the top. “Assuming this wasn’t his first time on the blog, I think I’ve pretty much stated that I’m a complete loser and still miss him and think about him. So he knows all that, and yet he hasn’t reached out at all? I . . . ”
I
what
? I put my heart out there? Not directly to him. But it feels like I’ve been more open, more forthcoming than he has, and in return, he has gotten to bask in the fact that I haven’t moved on, while I have no clue how
he
feels about me. Except for a handful of conversations after our divorce, we haven’t had a phone call in months.
Which just makes him ten kinds of cruel.
It’s one thing when I stopped telling him about my dreams and wants a few years into the marriage.
It’s another thing to know that he has now
seen
what I’ve wanted in my own black and white words, yet he has still chosen to ignore it.
What’s the point in him reading my blog if he doesn’t care enough about me to actually reach out and let me know that he misses me too? Or if he doesn’t miss me, that he at least knows that I miss him. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, I mean, it would be equally cruel to call me and say, “Hey, Rach, I just want you to know that I don’t miss you, but I couldn’t help but notice how much you miss me when I was showing my new girlfriend your blog, and we were laughing about you.”
On second thought, perhaps I’d rather not receive a phone call.
Fine, let him read. I’ll just deliver him tasty morsels of how great my life is without him. My life
is
pretty great without him. I just had a wonderful first date with a gorgeous Spanish man—who is more endearing and attractive than Adam
and
has time for the Guggenheim. Gael may not have Adam’s brilliance, but he’s funnier than Adam was towards the end of our relationship. And he doesn’t read my blog without telling me, as far as I know so far, so that’s ten extra points right there.
“I think my next blog post has to be titled
Adam Goldman Has a Very Tiny Penis
,” I tell Arianna and Ethan.
“Don’t bait him, Rach. Just ignore him. Why bother communicating directly with him on any level—even snarky? I mean, really, would you ever want him back?”
I glance at Arianna and then at Ethan, as if they know the correct answer.
The Adam I left at the end of the marriage? Not a chance. The Adam from graduate school who brought me lattes while I studied and listened to me complain about my classmates and came up with nicknames for our professors? A little bit. I’d like that guy back.
But he’s gone, evolved, changed. And no, I wouldn’t want to be the old me again, waiting for my husband to come home, wearing a hole in the sofa across from the clock, gritting my teeth and hissing out hellos when he kisses me awake in the middle of the night. I wouldn’t want to be
that silent, lonely woman again.
As promised, Gael calls
that night while I am trying to master risotto. I hadn’t been worried about trying the rice dish until the cookbook mentioned that most people are afraid to attempt risotto which, of course, pressed my red, Terror Alert button. I’ve been told to constantly watch the rice, so I am constantly watching the rice as if it is a baby crawling towards all of my uncovered electrical outlets. I am nervously adding liquid like a bartender fearful that the belligerent drunk at the end of counter is going to ask for another drink.
It is very hard to concentrate on the rice when someone is speaking with a sexy Spanish accent in my left ear.
“I had a very good time last night,” he tells me. I can hear a camera clicking and rewinding in the background. “I’ve been smiling about it all day. One of my jobs asked me why I am so happy.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told her that I met a pretty girl.”
Oh my fucking God,
I
am the pretty girl.
All thoughts of Adam Goldman flit out of my brain like the end of a dust storm.
“What was the job today?” I ask, not addressing the fact that he has just called me pretty.
“A singer. She is a guitar player. She wanted head shots taken for her envelopes she sends out. What are you doing right now?”
I touch my hand to my messy hair, hoping beyond hope that he isn’t going to suggest that we get together right now. I have spent most of the day glued to an
Iron Chef
marathon, and my sweatshirt has the potato chip crumbs to prove it. I’m only attempting the broccoli risotto because it seems like the sort of carb you can pass off as healthy. My face is pre-period blotchy and greasy, my hair limp from lack of shower.
“Cooking. Broccoli risotto,” I add.
“I don’t want to bother you,” Gael says.
“You’re not bothering me,” I hurry to add. I don’t want him in my apartment, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to hold him on the phone. “How do people find you? You know, for jobs?”
“Some through the wedding work or my brother-in-law, Paolo. He is friendly. He walks up to people, just starts talking. And that is how I get a lot of jobs.”