I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (19 page)

Mitch’s Mother Is a Yankee Pot Roast

1 (3- to 4-pound) chuck or rump roast

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 carrots

2 celery stalks

1 medium onion

1 clove garlic

1 cup dry red wine

1 cup beef broth

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 bay leaf

A few sprigs of thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme

½ pound egg noodles

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Season the meat with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown meat on all sides, letting
it develop a good crust, about 5 minutes per side.

While meat is browning, finely chop the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic. If you have a food processor, cut the vegetables
into small pieces, throw them in, and give them a good whirl.

When the meat is browned, remove it from the Dutch oven, then add the chopped vegetables and a little more oil if needed.
Cook the vegetables with a little salt until they are soft and browned a bit, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the wine and broth, scraping
up the brown bits that have accumulated around the pot. Return the meat to the pot and bring it all to a simmer. Add the tomato
paste, bay leaf, and thyme, lower heat, and cover pot. Cook for 3 hours, turning the roast every 30 minutes or so for even
cooking.

When time is up, remove the roast to a cutting board and tent it with foil. Strain the juices from the pot and reduce them
in a small saucepan (you may add some butter if you like). Cook the egg noodles according to directions on the package. Drain
them, add butter, slice the meat, and serve over the noodles covered with sauce and sprinkled with chopped parsley.

Serves 2, with enough for sandwiches the next day.

Hot Pink Cake

(Adapted from the Hershey’s cocoa can)

For the cake

2 cups sugar

1¾ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cups cocoa powder (the better the quality, the better the cake; I am devoted to Valrhona, but Hershey’s is fine)

1½ teaspoons baking soda

1½ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, left out of the fridge for about 30 minutes

1 stick butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 cup whole milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter and flour two 8-inch baking pans and line with parchment paper.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. Add eggs, butter, milk, and vanilla and beat at medium speed for
2 to 3 minutes, until all ingredients are combined and the cocoa bits are smoothed out. Stir in the boiling water. Pour batter
into pans and bake at 350 degrees until a cake tester comes out with moist crumbs, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in pans,
then transfer to cooling racks. Wait until the cakes have cooled completely before frosting.

For the frosting

1 stick very soft butter

1 pound confectioners’ sugar

3 to 4 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

A little too much red food dye

Mix all ingredients with an electric mixer at low speed until creamy. Add more milk if necessary. The trick is for the icing
to be not too thin and not too goopy.

Something always goes wrong for me aesthetically when I make this cake, but it’s always delicious.

Yield: enough for one 8-inch cake or 24 cupcakes.

Our first real breakup happened after Mitch and I spent a day with his friend Francine, a hipster from Portland who was well
over the age and weight requirements for the job. Francine had come to New York to nurse her mother, who was recovering from
an operation. Mitch and I took the train up to New Rochelle to see her.

“Mom, Mitch is here!” Francine yelled to her mother in her sickroom upstairs when we arrived. “Say hello to Mom,” she commanded
Mitch.

“Hello, Mrs. Simon,” Mitch shouted dutifully.

We spent the day touring Westchester thrift shops, beginning with the Entenmann’s bakery store, where we picked up three boxes
of chocolate-covered doughnuts for a dollar each. Francine found a fantastic blue silk dress for me at the enormous Salvation
Army in Portchester. Then we went back to Francine’s mother’s house, where we drank coffee and ate doughnuts. “Say good-bye
to Mom,” Francine directed Mitch before she drove us back to the station.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Simon,” said Mitch as we walked out the screen door.

Mitch seemed unusually quiet on the train ride home, but I figured Francine had just talked him out. From Grand Central Station
we walked to the 42nd Street subway, the same station where Mitch and I parted after our first date. We found ourselves at
the iron fence where we’d kissed for the first time eight months earlier. We re-created the moment, then kissed some more
on the subway platform. When we got to my apartment, Mitch slumped onto the couch, tears in his eyes. “You don’t like my friends.”

“I was nice to Francine!” I said. “Didn’t I make a big fuss over the dress she found for me?” I did—it was a fantastic dress
and it fit me perfectly; I wore it until it shredded.

Mitch left the next morning; the box of doughnuts he left behind was the one sweet thing in a harsh week. I ate one every
morning. My mother always used to keep those doughnuts around the house for my family when we were little, but a box never
lasted more than a day, so I never knew that Entenmann’s chocolate-covered doughnuts ripen. They got more and more delicious
with every passing day.

After a couple of days, I got the usual post-AA-meeting call from Mitch, but this time he didn’t ask to come over; he wanted
to meet me for coffee.

I knew this was the end.

I checked out my face in the mirror before I left my apartment, wondering how I was supposed to look for such an occasion.
Does your makeup have to be perfect when you’re about to be dumped? On my way to Halcyon, a coffee bar/record store/vintage
furniture store (the most Williamsburg-esque place in my neighborhood), I felt like dead man walking.

Mitch was there first with his coffee. I got one for myself and then sat down. We made a little small talk, and then Mitch
launched into what I knew was coming. “I think we should break up,” he said, but he was crying while he said it. Then he launched
into happy memories: “I think of us going to a movie with a thermos of coffee in a tote bag,” he said as he wept.

“But why are you breaking up with me if it’s making you cry?” I said. “Obviously, there’s some depth of feeling there. I think
you need to come to terms with your need for me.”

“I know I have needs [
sic
] for you,” he whined, “and I’ve been trying, but I just can’t do it.”

I alternated between comforting him and trying to convince him that he could do it. I even brought up my dream of our little
house in Williamsburg. “You could use your money for the down payment, and I could pay the mortgage with my salary.” Is there
anyone in the world besides me who would introduce a phantasmagoric real estate arrangement into a breakup conversation?

There were no more doughnuts
and no more Mitch. Those first few nights, I would get into my bed and scream into my pillow in agony. In the daytime, I
would wonder where he was. On Sunday afternoon, I knew he’d be at a bar in Red Hook where he was scheduled to read. I wasn’t
allowed to go there. His places weren’t my places anymore.

But a party for our friend Henry was just as much my place as his. It hurt so much to see Mitch there that I ended up bolting
early to take solace in my sofa and a pack of American Spirit Lights (even though I hadn’t smoked for about two years) with
Ginia, who came with me to the party. My despair was premature. The next day, Mitch wrote to me, and we saw each other a few
days later. We were going to be friends. We went out and shared a tray of fruit and cheese, and being friends was fun; we
were getting along.

“Isn’t it much easier to be friends with me?” Mitch said when I left him at the subway.

Yes, it was. My despair over our breakup had been replaced with a quiet contentment over our newfound status. Then one night
Mitch came over to watch TV after one such date, and the next thing you knew he was trying to kiss me. “What are you doing?”
I said.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

It was impossible for us to be friends. Friends with benefits, on the other hand, continued for another year. I took him to
a dinner where his hero, John Updike, spoke; he took me to Mexico again. But whenever I felt some glimmer of hope that maybe
things could work out between us, Mitch would shoot me down. One day I got an e-mail that went something like this:

Hey G,

I know we hung out and had sex or whatever, but I don’t feel like having a girlfriend right now.

M.

I wrote:

I do not wish to speak to you ever again.

I pretty much kept my promise. Okay, maybe we slept together once a year or two later. And we are occasionally in touch now.
In the time that we weren’t speaking, Mitch, who didn’t want a girlfriend or whatever, got married. He also got a lot of books
published and another movie deal. He didn’t grow up, but that might be a good career move for him.

I
’m going to marry that woman” was all I needed to hear. I had seen him stretching and preening before our softball game, but
really, you couldn’t miss Marcus, his white hair sticking straight up, his Wayfarer eyeglass frames, his Kermit-the-Frog green
sneakers. He was a man well into middle age, with an arty style that made him someone I might consider, though actually I
wasn’t considering him until I got wind of the fact that he wanted to marry me.

It was the first time in history that
Harper’s Magazine
won a softball game against our perceived literary rival,
The New Yorker,
and our scrappy team (dressed in our own T-shirts and hats, as opposed to our opponents decked out in logo’d garb supplied
by their corporate owner) was in a great mood. As public relations director, I took the opportunity to boost internal morale
and show the competition what terrific sports we were, by offering to buy both winners and losers drinks on my expense account
at Tap a Keg, a bar not far from Central Park. Marcus was sitting catty-corner from me at the bar, talking to Elizabeth, one
of our editors. I was across from them, eating popcorn and talking to the summer interns. Marcus kept looking over at me,
smiling, waving, and mouthing, “Thank you,” while toasting me with his beer. When I got up to mingle, Elizabeth told me that
he was asking about me. “Who is that woman? I’m going to marry her,” he reportedly kept saying over and over.