I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti Read online

  ____

  Our relationship continued to focus on music. Ethan invited me to come and sing with his band. I had never really sung in front of anyone except along to the radio or CDs in the car, and here I was supposed to belt one out in front of Ethan’s friends, whom I had just met. A bottle of Budweiser from the six-pack we picked up beforehand helped relieve the tension, and my performance improved as the evening wore on. I took the mike and delivered brash statements with great timidity. I sang Madonna’s “Burning Up” (incredibly appropriate) and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” (less so). Ethan’s agility with the opening guitar line of the Beatles’ “And Your Bird Can Sing,” an incredibly complicated riff, was pretty hot. When we got tired of playing, we’d repair to some nearby pub for hamburgers and more beer. It was a successful enough pairing that we repeated the experience many times, always beginning with a beer and moving through our repertoire of rock and pop classics. The band seemed like a constructive solution to all my unrequited feelings. I had given up on there being anything more between us.

  But that may be because I somehow intuited that Ethan was about to come around.

  “You look nice for your date,” he told me in the elevator to the practice room. I had informed him that I wouldn’t be making it to our regular postmusic burgers that evening, and I could tell from Ethan’s voice that he wasn’t exactly thrilled about my assignation. Nor should I have been: Daniel Eisenberg, the guy I had been seeing, was to dump me over dinner that night, using a Liz Phair line to explain himself. “I’m a complicated communicator,” he told me. I wished he had simply communicated on the phone his wish to not see me anymore so I could have hung out with my band mates, rather than dragging me out for a meal I couldn’t enjoy eating while he explained to me the ways in which we “didn’t click.”

  I took that one way harder than I needed to, since Daniel and I had been out only a few times. But the combination of that marginal disappointment in the shadow of the Ethan situation just made me feel hopeless. Here was a man I had everything in common with, a man in whose company I was most at ease and happy and who gave me no indication that he felt any differently, and yet he wouldn’t or couldn’t be with me for some mysterious reason.

  It was laughable, really. And so I laughed myself into a day off from work and an extra therapy session. I laughingly made Ginia come over for breakfast to console me on Saturday morning, and then, with laughter, I accepted my lot. Love just wasn’t going to happen for me. I decided I was fine with it. It was Halloween. I put on the costume of acquiescence; my four-year-old nephew, Max, dressed as a Hoover vacuum cleaner. We went trick-or-treating, and then I called Ethan to confirm plans for later that evening. We were going together to a dinner party.

  “Helloooo, pumpkin!” I chirped when I called him. The greeting was authentic. I didn’t resent him, this was my life; it was okay. Before dinner, I met him at his apartment. I had never visited him there before. Interestingly, on top of the stereo was a pile of brand-new Stevie Wonder CDs. Could this have had anything to do with the fact that I had played him Stevie Wonder the last time he’d come over? He hadn’t confessed to liking him before. He threw them in his five-CD changer and hit the shuffle button. He explained that that was his way of taking in new music. I liked the idea, but I wouldn’t be able to execute it, working, at the time, with just a Sony Discman hooked up to components I’d had since high school.

  It was looking more and more like something was up with Ethan when he followed me to a party after dinner. It was already eleven-thirty, and he usually liked to be tucked in by midnight. We ended up sitting on the radiator in front of the window, talking to no one but each other, telling our stories of “the first time.” After that, Ethan, who usually just dropped me off on the corner, walked me to my door. There he spoke the most romantic words a man has ever said to a woman: “Can I come up to your apartment? I have to pee.” He lived only a few blocks away; that’s when I knew for sure that Ethan was looking for more than just the use of my porcelain.

  We spent half an hour looking at a book of Yiddish expressions I kept on the coffee table, a gift from my author Henry, who knew I was a Yiddish enthusiast. Ethan especially liked all the ones having to do with the tuches. I had to reach past the book to kiss him, but he did not resist. After we kissed for a song or two (Fulfillingness’ First Finale again, brighter days, increasingly imminent), Ethan stopped and held me for a very long time. His surrender was palpable. Even when we got into my bed together, I wasn’t convinced anything would happen, and now even I wasn’t inclined to force it. I put on a nightgown, albeit a conservatively sexy one. It didn’t stay on.

  “Unprecedented,” is how Ethan labeled what took place over the next four hours. I later looked up the word to try to extract further meaning from it. I did that with the word auspicious, too. That’s the one he assigned to Drovers Tap Room, which was where we met.

  Those words were bandied about over a breakfast of pumpkin-walnut bread that I happened to have left over from the consolation call Ginia had paid the previous morning when I was mourning the complicated communicator. How everything had changed in just twenty-four hours!

  Morning After Pumpkin Bread

  (Adapted from Vern Bertagna, Bon Appétit)

  ½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened

  1½ cups sugar

  2 large eggs

  1 cup canned pumpkin

  1½ cups self-rising flour

  ½ teaspoon ground cloves

  ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

  ½ teaspoon ground ginger

  ½ cup walnuts, chopped

  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  Butter and flour a 9-inch loaf pan. Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium speed until blended, then add eggs and pumpkin. Sift flour with the spices in another bowl, add to pumpkin mixture, mix in walnuts, and pour batter into buttered pan.

  Bake until tester inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and cool in pan for 10 minutes, then release the edges with a knife and turn onto rack to cool completely.

  Yield: 6 to 8 servings.

  Of course, a night together didn’t necessarily mean Ethan was mine. But the nine-month lead-up indicated this was not a man ruled by whims. The stirring display I witnessed on Saturday night betrayed some strong feelings on Ethan’s part. Still, as dreamy as I felt about what had occurred, I didn’t allow myself to be swept away by fantasies. But when Ethan called on Tuesday to see what I was up to that evening, I could think of only one thing: I wanted to make him dinner.

  I made a tangy risotto with Taleggio cheese and artichoke hearts. Much like love, risotto requires a lot of work and patience. That was all behind me with Ethan, at least for the moment, and I was ready to put in some vigorous stirs for old times’ sake.

  Risotto with Intricately Layered Hearts

  4 cups hot chicken broth

  2 tablespoons unsalted butter

  ½ small onion, minced

  1 cup arborio or carnaroli rice

  ¼ cup white wine

  1 cup canned artichoke hearts, chopped

  ½ cup Taleggio, cubed

  Salt to taste

  Freshly ground pepper

  Keep the chicken broth on the stove over medium heat.

  In a large sauté pan or Dutch oven, melt 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat and add the onion. Cook until onion is transparent, about 2 minutes, then add the rice and toast it with the butter and onion until the grains are translucent, about 2 minutes. Add the wine, stirring constantly until the wine is absorbed, then begin to add the hot chicken broth a ladleful at a time, stirring until the liquid is absorbed into the rice.

  Continue adding the stock and stirring the risotto until it is creamy and the grains are softened but not mushy. Begin to taste the risotto after about 15 minutes to check the texture, but more likely it will take 20 to 25 minutes of stirring vigilance. (Heck, you waited nine months for Ethan, what’s an
other half hour?) If you run out of stock and the risotto needs more cooking, use water warmed in the pot with the stock.

  When you are happy with the texture of the rice, remove it from the heat, add the remaining tablespoon of butter, the artichoke hearts, and the Taleggio, give it one more stir, test for salt, let it sit for a minute, and serve with freshly ground pepper.

  Yield: 2 servings.

  I was so excited that this relationship I had craved so long was finally mine that for the first few weeks I could barely sleep when Ethan was in my bed. I would spring up early in the morning, go straight to the kitchen, and start putting away the dishes from the previous night. Squeezing all the pots and pans into one cupboard made quite a racket. I apologized for the noise.

  “Actually, I find it comforting,” he told me.

  ____

  Ethan loved everything having to do with food and being cared for. Which worked out well, because once we were together I was overcome by a drive to cook beyond anything I had ever known before. I was jealous of Anne over all the amazing meals she must have made for him. I was haunted by thoughts of them the way other women might be troubled by visions of complex acrobatics their boyfriend performed in bed with previous girlfriends. Not that I didn’t worry about that, too. But still, cooking was mine. It relaxed me. It had become, next to Ethan, the most important thing. It was a way to make sense out of my internal chaos. There is logic and order to cooking. What you put into it has everything to do with what you get out of it. With love, it’s not so cut-and-dried.

  Ethan and I talked a lot about what we were going to eat. While a phone call asking about dinner had been grating to Kit, for Ethan it was a welcome break from writing. We stayed on the phone and disputed the pros and cons of various dishes for many hours, all paid for by my employer. Sometimes we’d decide to go out, but more frequently I turned to the computer, called up epicurious.com, and sought out recipes to suit Ethan’s mood. This salmon with lemon-tarragon butter became a simple everyday meal for us, though it’s impressive enough, when presented on a bed of lentils, to be served to guests.

  Tuesday Night Dinner

  These recipes serve 2 but can be doubled.

  Salmon with Lemon-Tarragon Butter

  (Adapted from epicurious.com)

  3 tablespoons unsalted butter

  Juice and zest of 1 large lemon

  Freshly ground pepper

  2 salmon fillets

  Salt

  1½ tablespoons fresh tarragon, minced

  In a small saucepan over low heat, melt butter with lemon juice and zest, remove from heat.

  Place salmon skin side down on a broiler pan. Brush with half the butter mixture, season with salt and peper. Broil until just cooked through, about 20 minutes (there is no need to turn).

  Transfer to plates. (Salmon skin will stick to the broiler pan. I always think I should save it to make sushi from this delicacy, but I never do.) Add tarragon to remaining lemon butter. Spoon over salmon and serve over lentils.

  Serves 2.

  French Lentil Stew

  (Adapted from Nigella Lawson, The New York Times)

  1 shallot

  1 clove garlic

  ½ stalk celery

  ½ carrot, peeled

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  1 cup French lentils

  ½ teaspoon dried thyme

  1 bay leaf

  1½ teaspoons salt

  Finely chop the shallot, garlic, celery, and carrot. It’s easiest to do them all together in a food processor if you have one. Heat the olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the vegetables and cook until they have softened (about 5 minutes), then add 3 cups of water, lentils, thyme, bay leaf, and salt. Bring to a steady simmer, then lower heat. Allow the lentils to cook for 20 to 25 minutes. When they are tender and have absorbed most of the water, they are ready to serve; if they are still a little tough, add more water and continue to cook until softened.

  Serves 2.

  Baby Arugula and Avocado Salad

  (Adapted from Levana Kirschenbaum)

  2 cups baby arugula

  1 small head endive

  ½ avocado

  1½ tablespoons olive oil

  1½ teaspoons unfiltered apple cider vinegar

  ½ teaspoon sea salt

  Freshly ground pepper

  Wash and dry arugula. Slice the endive crosswise into ¼-inch strips. Cut the avocado into ½-inch-wide pieces. Toss the above in a large bowl with the oil and vinegar, then add salt and a few grindings of black pepper.

  Serves 2.

  Ethan complimented the dinners I made in e-mails sealed with a kiss (SWAK, they’d say in the manner of fourth-grade girls signing one another’s autograph books; I loved that). He was as enthusiastic about me as he was about my food. In person he’d compliment my face, saying I had a “cute punim.” He was a more affectionate boyfriend than I would have ever dreamed he’d be, and what’s more, he was more than I ever imagined a boyfriend could be. He was the holy grail of boyfriends, a companion of the opposite sex who was as much fun and as easy to be with as a girlfriend—even better than a girlfriend because we got to have sex, too. Which I have never been inclined to do with a girlfriend, no matter how much I adore all of mine and even though I went to Sarah Lawrence, where everyone tells you you eventually will.

  There was no person in the world that I felt happier with than Ethan. He was the most important person in my life; he came before my friends, he came before my family. He drew me in and away into our own little world. I welcomed the separation. We had food, we had music, and in bed we had pleasure and laughter in equal measure. Most of all, we had misanthropy. We made up nasty little scenarios and songs about our relatives and acquaintances, none of which I can share. Trust me, they were hilarious, even if Ethan and I were the only ones who could understand just how funny they were.

  I will never laugh as hard as I did the night I made us too much soup. It was a cold winter Sunday, and I had just purchased a twelve-quart stockpot. I filled it with chicken and vegetables and herbs and finished it off with noodles and tiny meatballs. But it was just Ethan and me and those twelve quarts. Being my father’s daughter, I was a little concerned about waste, so I ate three bowls to Ethan’s two. We were having so much fun at the table that when the phone rang, I didn’t bother to get up to answer it. Later that evening, I checked the message. It was from Ethan’s friend David, a Manhattanite who happened to be in the neighborhood with his girlfriend and wanted to stop by. I cursed myself for not picking up the phone. They could have had some soup!

  Later, in bed, Ethan teased me about my fixation over this. We joked that he could take the stockpot, strap it onto a dolly with bungee cords, and share it with the guys at his MTV writers’ meeting the next day. As he ladled it out to them, he would enact a law that all of their girlfriends had to sign up for soup duty. “So, Rick, can I put your Ilene down for a potato leek?” he said in the voice of an old man from Brooklyn. The thought of Ilene Rosenzweig, a newspaper editor and design entrepreneur, who does have a domestic side but was in no way the balabusta I was, making soup for the writers’ meeting had me laughing so hard that I was gasping for breath as tears were pouring out of my eyes. I kept waking up through the night in hysterics thinking of that line. Ethan awoke to find me doubled over and clutching my stomach; then he started laughing, too.

  Ethan rarely left my side, even when it wasn’t dinnertime. When I got a bike, he bought the male twin of mine. He went to my hairdresser, Randall. We’d make back-to-back appointments—Ethan got his cut while I sat, with foils on my head, waiting for my highlights to take. “If you’re willing to let him see that, it must be love,” Randall pronounced. Even people who didn’t know us thought we made a perfect pair; when we ran into Henry having lunch with one of his exes, he later told me that she pointed us out to him, saying, “That’s a happy couple.”

  I brought Ethan along with me to book parties and dinners with authors,
where he tuned in to career dissatisfaction I wasn’t ready to face. “You’re hiding your light under a bushel,” he would say. I agreed, but I didn’t want to think about it. Instead, I sublimated my creative inclinations into making meals for Ethan. I didn’t want any more, or at least that’s what I told myself; I just wanted to be his wife. He could be the artistic one while quietly admiring all the madcap things about me, like that “What does it take to seduce you?” line, which, one evening, he confessed to finding the most adorable thing he had ever heard.

  Ethan even got a kick out of my mother’s nonsensical expressions, like “What’s new in the world of sports?” her typical greeting for him, and “Here’s to us, long may we wave,” her toast at every meal. It’s clear where I got my gift for strange turns of phrase. Because Ethan could appreciate and even contribute to the madness, he fit right in. I couldn’t help but find Ethan’s rich uncle—whose wife sent us to the supermarket every time we visited their Hamptons estate with an enormous shopping list that seemed to include the family’s grocery needs for the entire summer (everything from ketchup to toilet bowl cleaner to lightbulbs), then gave Ethan a hard time when he asked for reimbursement—somewhat ridiculous. But behind our lighthearted disdain for those we were stuck with from birth was a whole pantry of love and loyalty. Because Ethan was so devoted to his family, I wanted to become part of it and for him to become part of mine.

  Which meant getting on planes, lots of them. I went to Detroit, Tucson, and Des Moines. All places I had never visited before that I was perfectly content to see. Ethan was the first boyfriend whose family I ever met. I never went to North Dakota to meet Kit’s mother, which always worried my own, enough for her to gently prod every now and then, “Why haven’t you met his mother?” Here in marked contrast, I was thrilled that Ethan cared enough to introduce me to his sisters, cousins, nieces, and nephews. We saw many more members of his family than we did mine—we don’t really have a lot in common with our American first cousins, we have some second and third cousins in Pittsburgh we see every now and then, and a lot of cousins we are crazy about in Italy (most likely because they are in Italy). On those trips with Ethan’s family, I frequently ended up doing the cooking whenever his uncle, the macher, wasn’t taking us out. Word got around that I was competent in the kitchen, and while at first I jumped at the chance to impress his parents with improvised risotto primavera or impromptu beef bourguignon, I eventually got annoyed when everyone looked to me to take charge of every meal.