Five Things I Can't Live Without (21 page)

Once I got home with the groceries, it became clear that the plan hadn’t just been ill-conceived; it had been completely insane. That morning, I’d come up with what I’d thought was an image of myself cooking, but now I realized it was actually an image of me smiling while I garnished some impossibly beautiful dish. It certainly wasn’t an image of me sitting with a pad of paper for a half hour trying to get the timing of the different recipes down. How I would simultaneously cook the goat cheese tart and the charred tomatoes when they required ovens a hundred degrees apart, I still didn’t know.

At two o’clock that afternoon, I officially started cooking. The salad alone took forty minutes to assemble (ever so lightly steaming asparagus, chopping mint leaves, shredding three kinds of lettuce). Everything took longer and looked sloppier than it should have. I was running back and forth from one dish to another, consulting my itinerary, rereading the recipes, and trying to clean up some of the two thousand pots, pans, bowls, and kitchen implements that I was sullying in the process. It was four hours of frenzy and fury, and when Dan walked in, I was tussling with a goose—yes, a goose—and upon seeing him, I burst into tears.

Dan gently pried my fingers from the goose and looked into my face with great concern. Not the expression I had pictured when I set out that morning. “Sweetie,” he said, “what happened?”

“You’re looking at it,” I sputtered.

“Is it”—he searched for just the right word—”dinner?”

“Yes, it’s dinner!” I exploded. “It was supposed to be a four-course gourmet dinner made from scratch to show how much I love you. And look at it! This can’t bode well.”

“What do you mean, ‘bode well’?” He narrowed his eyes, almost imperceptibly.

“For us. Look around. This can’t be good.”

“You think
this
says something about
us
?” He pulled away from me abruptly and angrily strode around the kitchen. “You think the fact that you’re a lousy cook trying to attempt something way out of your depth says something about us?” I stared at the floor like a naughty child. “Do you?” he demanded.

“Well, I don’t know,” I nearly wailed.

“Well, I know. And what this kitchen says is that you are bored with your freelancing and you need to get a job like a normal person.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. Or at least, I wasn’t yet sure if it was true. I was feeling like Lucy to his Ricky Ricardo, and I didn’t like it.

“You’re not bored with your job?” He stared at me, pointedly waiting for my answer.

“I don’t know what I am! But you accusing me isn’t helping.”

“What did I accuse you of?” He looked exasperated.

“Of being a bad cook and being bored.”

“Are you not a bad cook and are you not bored?”

“I can’t answer all your double negatives,” I said sulkily.

Dan took a deep breath and was visibly trying to collect himself. “Are you a bad cook?” he asked, prepared to break the complicated ideas down into their component parts. I wasn’t used to him condescending to me; even when he talked me out of my meta-life, he never made me feel small.

“I’m not a good cook. But that’s the whole point. That’s why it was supposed to be a nice surprise for you.” Through my hurt, I felt the barest trace of pleasure at having found a way to be the aggrieved party.

He took a moment to consider. “I’m sorry I got so angry. You were trying to do something nice. But Nora, you’re bored. I don’t care about your cooking. It’s not about cooking or about us. You know that, don’t you?”

“No.”

He moved in closer. “You’re not happy doing the freelancing anymore. I wish you would just admit that.”

“Admit it and then what? Then what would you have me do?” I said challengingly. The egg timer went off, and I went to remove the tomatoes from the oven. Was that really how they were supposed to look? Dammit, there was probably one more step after the charring that I hadn’t factored in. But it was all ruined anyway. Everything was ruined.

“I’d have you admit it, and then together we can come up with a plan—”

“You mean I should settle, like you have.”

“I’m fine with my life.”

“Because you’re not like me.”

“Nora, you’re just like everyone else. And there’s nothing wrong with you being a freelancer. If you could accept that’s what you are, maybe you’d be happier. And if you were happier, I’d support it one hundred percent. Even if you never made a dime more, I’d support you in that. But this”—he gestured around the kitchen—”is a sign of some trouble with you. Not with us. With you.”

I don’t remember us saying anything more, though I can’t think how we managed to extricate ourselves from the stalemate. I guess we just stared at each other until one of us walked away. I know that we did eventually eat the dinner in silence. I had no appetite, but surprisingly, with the exception of the tomatoes (which I threw out rather than look at the recipe again), the food tasted fine. Not disastrous, just fine. I guess I was more comfortable with the extremes than with the ordinary. I would have preferred disastrous. This was anticlimactic food.

“I’ll do the dishes,” Dan said when we had eaten our fill. He gave me a wan smile and pushed away from the table.

“Thanks,” I said. I did appreciate the offer. There were a lot of dishes.

I took a long, hot shower, put on my pajamas, and cloistered myself in the bedroom. Dan took the living room. We stayed away from each other the rest of the night. When I passed by the living room, he looked up at me with the same smile he’d given me at

the end of dinner. No, we weren’t angry anymore, just separate.

I lay in bed much of the night thinking. The truth was, the profile business was over for me. I wasn’t having much fun meeting people anymore, I was saying the same things over and over again. I had nothing to tell Dan when I came home at night. It took me longer to get out of bed every morning and I stayed in my pajamas until the last possible minute.

Then it came to me: I was depressed.

It probably seems strange that this was such a revelation. In part, it was that there was nothing in my life worthy of inducing depression. I’d always thought of depression as something big and dramatic, a thick velvet curtain falling down. Instead, it was more like a gauzy veil. Colors were muted instead of vibrant. Lately there had been highs, but now that I thought about them, they weren’t nearly as high as they’d been just a few months before. When Dan and I had taken our coastal drive that past weekend, we’d stopped at a deserted beach and while I knew that it was beautiful and said so, somehow I didn’t feel it. But I didn’t want to let on. I wanted it to go on record as having been a great day for us. We needed a great day.

I took another sleeping pill, and when I woke up at six the next morning, I tiptoed from the bed, where Dan was still sleeping soundly. I shut the door as gently as I could and moved into the kitchen to call Kathy. I had never been so grateful for a three-hour time difference.

“Hello?”

“Kathy, it’s me,” I whispered.

“Nora?”

“Yes.”

“Speak up, okay?”

I raised my voice slightly. “Dan’s still sleeping and I don’t want him to hear.”

“What’s going on?”

“I just realized I’m depressed.”

“You just realized it?”

“Last night. I put all the pieces together and it turns out I’m depressed.” I glanced at the bedroom door to make sure it was still closed.

“I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“Say ‘go on.’”

“Go on.”

“I’m not as excited about anything as I used to be. I’m still walking around doing everything; it just doesn’t make me happy like it should.”

“I guess if you want to call that depression, then it is.”

“What do you think it is, then?”

“I’m just saying that there might be other explanations, that’s all.”

“What’s the difference what I call it? I need some help.”

“You’re right,” she said, conciliatory. “Like a therapist? That kind of help?”

“Maybe.” I poured myself some orange juice. “Or maybe I need to shake things up.”

“Do you have anything in mind?”

“Not yet. I just realized it last night. I thought you could help me come up with a new direction, something instead of the profiles. You’re good at that.”

“Nora, that’s too much pressure. You know I want you to be happy, but I just don’t know that finding you another career right now is the key.”

“I’ve tried the profile business for a while. It’s been fine. I actually made a thousand bucks the other night. For three hours’ work.”

“Wow, that’s great, Nora.”

“But it wasn’t.” I lifted one finger like a sleuth explaining how she’s cracked a case. “It wasn’t great. The guy was a real asshole. And that’s the thing, this is a service profession. So if I want to make money, I’ve got to work with whatever client comes my way.”

“No, you don’t. I turn projects down.”

“I’m not in a position to turn clients down. I don’t see how I’ll ever be in a position like that.” I took a long swig. “I think we should get back to basics. This profile thing, like I said, it’s fine. But I want to be a writer. Remember? Let’s brainstorm how I can be a writer.”

“Have you had anything to eat this morning?”

“I’m drinking juice right now. You’re not going to get me on that one twice.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll play along. What do you want to write?”

“Maybe I could be a ghostwriter. I was pretty good at meeting people and getting them to open up to me.”

“It’s a pretty tight market for ghostwriters.”

“But you’d help me navigate it. You could show me the ropes.” I waited for her reply, but she stayed quiet. “You’d help me, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I’d help you. I just think you should slow down and really think this through. Maybe you’re not done in the profile business. Maybe you just need to take it to the next step.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know. We can come up with it together.” Kathy let her last statement hang there; then she said gently, “I’m worried about you. Everything takes time. Especially with writing. It’s all a really slow build, and you’re showing signs of burning out right at the beginning. Do you know what I mean?”

Her voice was so full of concern and love that it stopped me in my tracks. I felt myself sag. “I know. I’m good at beginnings and endings, but I suck at middles.”

“And if you suck at the middle, then the ending could be coming way too soon. You know?”

“Dan thinks I’m just bored. He thinks I should settle.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Not exactly.”

“You know what this reminds me of? The immigrant experience. I read this article about how immigrants get depressed the second year. That first year, they’re just so thrilled to be out of their old country and so hopeful about what’ll happen for them in the new one that it keeps them going. But then that second year, they crash.”

“So what are the second-year immigrants supposed to do?” I asked.

“Adjust their expectations, I think. Make some realistic plans. Get some counseling. All the obvious stuff.” She was quiet, and when she next spoke, her voice had brightened. “I have an idea. Why don’t you come visit me next week? I’m sending a book off for proofreading, so next week, I’ll have a break between projects. You buy your ticket; everything else is my treat.” I was about to leap at the invitation when she added coyly, “And you could meet Matt.”

“Is he new?” I asked, startled.

“I met him last week. We were e-mailing for about a week before that. He’s amazing. I’m completely smitten.”

“And he is, too?”

“He is.” I could hear Kathy’s smile.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to pass up the chance to meet Matt.”

“We’d have a great time. A trip always helps pull me out of a funk, gives me a little perspective.”

“A little perspective sounds perfect.” I was smiling; then I thought of something. “I should probably visit my family. My mother would lose it if I came to the East Coast and didn’t see her.”

“She’d get over it.”

“No. She wouldn’t.” I continued to sift the idea of a trip in my mind. “It’d be nice to see Casey.”

“So you’ll come?” Kathy asked excitedly.

“As long as I can find a plane ticket for under a thousand bucks, I’m there.”

Like so many immigrants before me, I was going to New York, in search of a new life.

Chapter 14