I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti Read online

  Food wasn’t really Mitch’s thing, not the way it was with Ethan, but he expressed extraordinary fondness for everything I ever made for him. And I didn’t have to work very hard at all; even a simple spaghetti with butter (cook spaghetti until it’s al dente, swirl around a little unsalted butter, add a heaping tablespoon of parmigiano cheese, grind some coarse pepper on top), which is what I made for him that Saturday as a late night snack, sent him right over the moon. Mitch liked it so much that he licked the plate. He tried to hide this from me by ducking behind my shoulder to do it as we sat on the couch, watching TV while we ate, but I caught him and was probably meant to. He thought this was the most amusing anecdote in the world, a confirmation of his belief that he was a mere hayseed with no knowledge of how to behave in my commanding presence.

  He accompanied me to church the next morning and held my hand during the service. The weekend after that, I went to Miami for a book fair. I ran on the beach every day, thinking about Mitch and listening to the Strokes on my iPod. While I was there, he sent a postcard to my house. It said something about missing me, or so he says; I never received it. He said it was the most romantic thing he had ever done.

  From then on, Mitch stayed over at my apartment nearly every night. This was never planned. Inevitably at around nine o’clock I’d get a call from an unknown number; it would be Mitch calling from the cell of some other AA member (he went to meetings just about every evening, and he didn’t have his own phone). I’d be done with whatever drink or dinner thing I had that evening with another adult and ready to greet Mitch with his favorite ginger beer that I kept my refrigerator stocked with for just this sort of spontaneous (yet regular) occurrence. Good thing I broke down and signed up for cable. We would lie on the sofa and watch TV until late at night. I supported the TV part to get to the sex part, which usually happened at two or three in the morning. Every now and then I would get up from the couch to make us something to eat. His thriftiness must have been rubbing off on me, because one evening in order to utilize some week-old cheese and day-old bread, I threw together something I called mozzarella en carrozza and which Mitch, a WASP with no continental inclinations whatsoever, couldn’t pronounce.I figured thiswasn’t much different from grilled cheese and wouldn’t overwhelm his naive palate. It was another resounding success.

  Italian Grilled Cheese for Teenage WASPs

  Olive oil

  Italian bread, or even a French baguette (1 to 2 days old is fine), thinly sliced

  Mozzarella, thinly sliced (this may have been sitting around a couple of days, too)

  1 to 2 eggs (depending on how much you are making), lightly beaten

  Heat olive oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Make little sandwiches with the bread and cheese and dip in the egg. When the olive oil is hot, slip in the sandwiches (you may insert a toothpick in each for the cooking if you find they are falling apart) and cook until golden on both sides and cheese is melted. Press with a kettle or pot full of water to flatten (if you’ve used toothpicks, remove them when the melted cheese has glued everything into place and press them then).

  Yield: 1 loaf of bread makes 8 to 12 sandwiches.

  There was much to be said for my new and altogether different lifestyle. I adapted easily to the role of teenager, especially since there were no parents in bed upstairs while we writhed around on the couch. Having never dated a teenager when that would have been appropriate, I relished getting a little taste late in life of what it might have felt like. What a drag that instead of school, I had to get up and go to work in the morning while Mitch could lie in bed. He would watch me dress as he dozed. “You look like a substitute teacher,” he said, examining my outfit one morning. I was offended and brought it up in an e-mail later that day.

  “No, no,” he replied, “I meant like the substitute teacher that you lust after for the rest of your life.” He’d leave handwritten notes around my apartment thanking me for the previous night’s dinner or that morning’s coffee. “Everything associated with you is delicious,” read one.

  These little things made him worth the trouble and filled me with hope that it would work out between us and we could buy a little house together in Williamsburg. Yes, I’d even live in Williamsburg if that was what was required.

  Mitch spent his days in his apartment writing, though his career was at a bit of a standstill when we were together. His second novel, which was geared toward adults, was less successful than the first. A third novel, which had just come out from a San Francisco–based indie publisher, was about two teenage boys trying to get with the coolest teenage girl. I tried to persuade him to stick to young adult fiction, as that voice did come naturally to him. But Mitch argued—quite persuasively—that this meant giving up dreams of being the next John Updike, and he wasn’t quite ready to let go of those. Mitch wrote all day long, and he wrote fast; he had boxes of novels for adults in his apartment, but he couldn’t sell any of them.

  One was a novel about a thirty-one-year-old woman who was loosely based on me. She used the same toiletries I did and even wore the same kinds of shoes. She was a woman riding high in her magazine career and was much more successful than I. She was a hard-ass, a tough boss, someone who yelled at people and got everything she wanted. Things Mitch imagined I was but I was not and never could be. I helped him to get that one in the hands of a few editors, having a personal stake in the project, even though it wasn’t really me. No one bit.

  Mitch liked visiting me at my real-life office, not just for the free office supplies and books I’d give him, but because he was excited about my work, even if I didn’t have a car and driver to take me back and forth from it every day like that character he created. He was just as impressed that my job allowed me to talk to Harold Bloom on a daily basis, and what’s more, to be addressed by him as “little bear” (which is what he called everyone he was fond of). Not only was Harold the smartest, but he was one of the kindest authors I ever worked with. I first got to know him during my Ethan days, and like the father I no longer had, he was extremely concerned about Ethan not stepping up to the connubial plate. “A very handsome fellow and quite smart,” Harold declared in his deep, reflective, and just a tad British-accented tone, “but I fear he may be a mama’s boy.” The case wasn’t quite as simple as Harold supposed, but I was honored by his concern.

  Mitch supported me through two big career decisions. After I interviewed for the job I eventually took at Harper’s Magazine, he came over to my apartment and spent an entire day with me weighing the pros and cons of the move. While I was on the phone with various advisers, including Professor Bloom, Mitch scribbled down questions for me to ask. Later, when I considered leaving Harper’s for another magazine, I called Mitch, who was visiting his parents in Portland at the time, to agonize over the decision. There was no one better to discuss the dilemma with. Not that he was any less lost than I was over what to do, but he was as revved up as I was over the two phenomenal gigs I was forced to choose between. Mitch was totally there when I needed him for stuff like that.

  Eventually, he came to terms with what seemed to be his calling and even had a dream agent in mind for the crossover. He sent her a new novel he hoped she would represent. When she phoned him to discuss some qualms she had with the manuscript, Mitch insisted on a meeting. He sat her and her staff down and explained to them what they weren’t getting. They signed him on the spot. Did I mention he could be incredibly persuasive when he wanted to be?

  There was another time that Mitch departed from the role of hapless teen he usually played and resembled the man of forty-two he actually was. This occurred on Sunday mornings when he hunkered down with The New York Times’ “Mutual Funds Report” to see how his investments were faring. Though Mitch had no pending contracts when we were dating, he was by no means broke. He had a bunch of money in the bank from the advance, royalties, and movie deal from his first book. But instead of spending it, he invested it in mutual funds. How many men can introduce a gir
l to electroclash and the index fund? Seven years later, my Ladytron CD gathers dust and my Vanguard account steadily loses value. I’ll stick with the latter despite the current volatility. I may toss the CD; I never really liked it anyway.

  Mitch kept his overhead low, his rent was cheap, and his Brooks Brothers oxford-cloth shirts came from the Salvation Army (though he did spend on “tennis shoes,” as he called them; it was important to have the correct Adidas or Pumas). He would stop to consider any old shoes or clothing that neighbors left out on their stoops to give away (a brownstone Brooklyn custom) or those, most likely stolen from cars, that drug addicts sold in the Second Avenue subway station. I suspected he did this mainly to get a rise out of me, so I encouraged him. “Yes, those shoes do look really nice, go ahead, try them on,” I would say. When I wasn’t feeding him, he was at home eating hot dogs. One rare night I spent at his place, I made us a frittata with eggs and frozen peas from the bodega on the corner. Mitch said grace before we ate, thanking God for me and for his new agent.

  Frugal Frittata

  1 cup frozen peas (or fresh if you are lucky enough to have them—Mitch never was)

  Salt

  1 tablespoon butter

  1 tablespoon olive oil

  1 small red onion, chopped

  6 eggs

  Freshly ground pepper

  ¼ cup freshly grated parmigiano

  Fill a medium saucepan halfway with water, put on high heat, and bring to a simmer. Add peas and a little salt and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and set aside to cool.

  Melt the butter with the oil in a cast-iron or other ovenproof skillet over medium heat, add the onions, and cook until almost soft.

  Preheat broiler.

  Lightly beat the eggs, then stir in salt, pepper, parmigiano, and the cooled peas. Turn up the heat a bit on the onions and then add the eggs; allow them to set, then stir once or twice with a wooden spoon. Once the bottom is firm, put the pan under the broiler and cook until the top is golden, 3 to 4 more minutes. Watch constantly—with broiling, there are only a few seconds standing between beautifully golden and terribly burned.

  Remove from the oven and allow the frittata to rest for a minute or two. Serve in the skillet or flip onto a plate.

  Yield: 4 servings.

  I invited Mitch to spend Thanksgiving with my family in Connecticut. His only other option was to have dinner with a group of old men from AA. Or so he said. Mitch was expert at downgrading his friends, his family, himself, and most of the situations he found himself in. I thought it was a pose; maybe it’s what he really believed. He debated his answer for three days. Then he called, his voice shuddering with fear. “I want to come to your house for Thanksgiving.”

  Time to focus on yet another dilemma: what Mitch should bring my mother as a gift. I wanted her to like Mitch, so this was a dilemma for me as well.

  “She likes chocolate,” I said.

  “But I don’t know what kind to get.”

  I had Mitch come meet me at La Maison du Chocolat, which was across the street from my office. Everything at La Maison du Chocolat costs a fortune. In fact, the very idea of Mitch Smith standing inside La Maison du Chocolat makes me giggle, even now as I’m writing, but impressing my mother was more important than a few moments of discomfort for Mitch in a fancy French chocolate shop. It took a good twenty minutes of scanning the shelves before we found something suitable that was pretty but wouldn’t break Mitch’s fiercely protected bank: a big block of baking chocolate. Presenting it to my mother was another trauma Mitch couldn’t handle, so I did it for him as he stood by. I explained that it was very fine baking chocolate but that she could just break off a piece and eat if she wanted to, just as the saleswoman at the store told us. My mother was delighted. So was Mitch.

  ____

  At dinner, my family asked how we met.

  “I got this big crush on her at a party three years ago, but she didn’t notice me. When she had nothing else going on, she called me,” Mitch announced.

  Mitch didn’t much like following Ethan. He knew I’d wanted to marry my last boyfriend because he’d probed me about the reason for our split and I’d told him the truth. I’d also tried to tell him that Ethan and I hadn’t worked out because Mitch was my “destiny.”

  “I’m not your destiny!” he said. “I’m just the last guy left on the bench who gets called to the field because there’s no one left to play. ‘Hey, you, you’re short and you’re not the best player, but you’ll have to do,’ the coach yells. ‘Get out there!’”

  Truthfully, in those days the only time I thought about Ethan was when Mitch was acting out. Then I would think to myself, Thanks, Ethan, thanks for throwing me to the dogs like this. Yes, in the beginning I was thrilled to have Mitch to throw into Ethan’s face—the desire for vendetta does run in the Sicilian half of my blood, I’m afraid—but now I was discovering that Mitch could make me happy in ways that Ethan never could. The two of them may as well have been from different planets, with me adapting to each wildly diverse way of life while inhabiting their respective terrains. Mitch made me aware of the myriad things that Ethan couldn’t give. The sex, for instance: Not to say that Ethan and I didn’t have a fine sex life, we did; we had a fine sex life. But let’s just say that Ethan was squeamish in ways that Mitch was not. I am pleased that I got to experience the kind of passion I had with Mitch. Of course, I didn’t know what I was missing out on when I was with Ethan. But that’s just it: We don’t know what’s in store, so really there is no reason to get too upset about losing anything, not that you could ever convince anyone in the throes of loss of this, certainly not me, who moaned about Ethan months after our breakup.

  Mitch is the only man I ever dated who got jealous, or at least admitted to the feeling. I found this refreshing. I cringe at the thought of any of my boyfriends’ exes and ruminated often upon Mitch’s. I could tell Ethan every romantic detail of my getting together with Kit and he wouldn’t flinch. Mitch didn’t want to know the story, and he didn’t want to meet Kit. One afternoon, before a meeting with a prospective editor at my company, Mitch stopped by my office, where he noticed an e-mail from Ethan on my computer screen. He didn’t mention it at the time, but he didn’t call me after his appointment so I knew something was up. The next morning, he sent an e-mail telling me what he saw. “I was sitting across from my editor and all I could think about was: Why is that guy still e-mailing her? What is going on? Is she using me to try to leverage him into marrying her? She’s never said they still talked or stayed in contact. I tell her about all my interactions with my exes.”

  Ethan and I weren’t in touch. I just happened to run into him on the subway that morning and he wrote to apologize for being “a little out of it.”

  Even something as insignificant as parsley could set Mitch off. One evening, I was chopping a bunch, my twelve-inch cutting board teetering back and forth on my six-inch counter. The racket upset Mitch. He thought I was acting out anger directed at him. I had my share of reasons to be annoyed with Mitch, but I wasn’t just then, I merely like my parsley to look good.

  Barring the occasional noisy run-in with an herb, things were going pretty well with us through the holiday season. Mitch asked me to join his family at their vacation home in Mexico for Christmas. Though I’d spent a great deal of time with the Binders and saw it add up to nothing, I viewed this invitation as a sign of seriousness on Mitch’s part. I accepted immediately and didn’t allow myself to fret about the plane ticket, which, because I bought it somewhere close to the last minute, cost more than any I had purchased before. Mitch went home to Portland for a couple of weeks before Christmas and flew down to Mexico from there. I stayed in New York to eat lobsters and many other sea creatures on Christmas Eve with my family, then got on a plane at five a.m. on Christmas morning. By two p.m., I was lying on the beach in Mexico with Mitch, drinking Fanta and listening to Joseph Arthur on my iPod. The Smiths’ house, white stucco with a terra-cotta roof, was surrounded by flowers; be
hind it was a little bridge that crossed a canal and led to the ocean. Mitch and I had our own little suite downstairs with a private bathroom where lizards scurried around at night. The house was part of a community where a number of the Smiths’ neighbors from Portland had vacation homes. Mitch’s mother and father were there, as were his sister and brother-in-law and their two young sons.

  Mitch’s mother made a turkey from the Costco in Puerto Vallarta for Christmas dinner. It was a little dry, but the view of the Pacific Ocean I took in while eating it moistened it right up. I brought the Smiths a bunch of my mother’s Christmas cookies and a big box of chocolates from Jacques Torres that Mrs. Smith put on a shelf in the kitchen but never touched. Mitch said they were afraid of those chocolates, that, like Daisy Buchanan with Jay Gatsby’s shirts, they had never seen such beautiful chocolates in their lives. But that was all just part of Mitch’s act. Still, they never opened the chocolate, and I have no better explanation.

  The Smiths were vigilant about not drinking Mexican water. We used the bottled stuff for everything, even to brush our teeth. “And make sure you keep your mouth firmly closed when you’re in the shower,” Mrs. Smith instructed, sealing her lips tightly after saying it to demonstrate. Vegetables were verboten. So much for the wonderful street food I’d heard about; the Smiths looked at me as though I were crazy when I mentioned it. Mitch’s mother and sister enjoyed going to the outdoor market to check out the locals and the produce, but they never considered buying it. It never occurred to them that blanching vegetables in boiling water would make them safe for us to eat. Embracing my enterprising idea, Mrs. Smith bought string beans and potatoes, which I boiled and dressed with olive oil, garlic, and a little vinegar; we ate them with steaks that Dr. Smith had stockpiled in a giant freezer. He would mix us vodka-and-orange-juice cocktails—“toddies,” he called them—while I cooked.