I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (24 page)

T
he Marcus episode scarred me. In fact, with all due respect to Saint Francis, I felt as though I had been marked with the
stigmata of bad experiences. I was embarrassed at the office because everyone knew about Marcus, and now (through my own reportage)
everyone knew he was gone. Certainly no one cared one way or the other, but we can’t help believing that people are way more
focused on our lives than they actually are. I winced at the memory of parading him around the office, so proud of the wrinkly-scaled
catch I had brought home from the softball game, and how the whole thing played itself out before everyone’s eyes.

I didn’t have to impose a moratorium on dating this time: I was left with post-traumatic stress disorder and was much too
damaged to consider it. Even the men who were my friends bothered me. My solution was to seek attention just from those I
knew were truly off-limits: “The only men I want to be friends with are gay men, married men, or priests,” I declared to Ginia.
The jokes were too easy—she refrained from making any. And she agreed that there were a lot of ex-boyfriends and boys whose
connection to me was ambiguous hanging around: Kit was living down the block with a woman he would eventually marry and divorce;
Henry, the author I had once kissed and who had fixed me up with Mitch, lived around the corner and would come over every
Saturday morning for coffee and toast; even Ethan’s familiar address would appear at the top of my e-mail in-box from time
to time. All these men who couldn’t or wouldn’t give me what I was looking for were taking up space in my life. Following
tenets more New Age than Christian, I got rid of them all in order to free that space for new things.

So I turned to the church I had discovered just before Marcus knocked me off track, and I dated Father Joel, albeit in an
utterly chaste and Vatican-sanctioned way.

Joel is a priest who was, at that time, in his early thirties. He studied at Oxford and is proficient in Latin and ancient
Greek, not that that would affect my dialogue with him in any way, but it pleases me to know people who are accomplished.
Joel wears little round silver glasses, and he looks as if he stepped out of
Brideshead Revisited
(the PBS miniseries, not the film). I met him at a new members dinner, where I confessed to him that I had not gone to confession
for twenty-eight years. I joked that I was tempted to give the sacrament another go, but only if cocktails were involved.
Joel promised Manhattans if I told him my sins, and he kept his word—only we imbibed them not in the confessional, but at
a nearby bar, where we smoked and drank and got a little too tipsy. From then on we stuck to red wine, which we drank regularly
at Bacchus, a bistro equidistant from my apartment and the church, whose French owners had a lax attitude about the city’s
smoking laws. Joel and I sat for hours after dinner, drinking coffee, smoking, and talking. Joel fantasized about doing missionary
work at the restaurant, bringing the French staff back into the faith. “Ah, France, the first daughter of the church,” he’d
say with a sigh. He would convert them one espresso at a time.

I always wanted to be friends with a priest. The vocation, to me, seems more alternative than anything the modern world can
come up with. There’s nothing quite as out there as giving it all up (or most of it) for God.

As you may have surmised, the church I go to isn’t the dreary parish that many, including me, associate with Catholic churches.
It is tastefully decorated, the choir is world class, and Sunday Masses are packed with people who aren’t just making grocery
lists in their heads or killing time before the big game. There are four priests, each one terribly attractive in his own
way: Joel, with his dry wit and sharp intellect; Mark, a handsome Australian in his early fifties, who is more heartfelt;
Dennis, whose style is a little pop psyche, which I’m all for; and Anthony, who just entered the priesthood and is full of
earnest goodwill and insight. Every Sunday, one of them offers an illuminating perspective on the faith, and most times it
manages to coincide with whatever is on my mind that week. It’s a great respite from city life. On the best days, I can get
lost in meditation (rare, but it does happen). I’ve been in and out of church all my life, but when I found this place, I
knew I was staying. To anyone who would listen, I berated myself for not finding it sooner. “You found us when you were ready
to find us,” was Joel’s reassuring reply. Maybe. Maybe I’ll find that other thing when I’m ready, too. Maybe I’m not as ready
as I think I am. Still, I was having my most satisfying love affair in recent memory with that church. I couldn’t stop talking
about it. I told every Catholic I knew who went to church (a small number) and tried to reinvigorate a few who fell away.

Besides Sister Mary Virginia, who once locked me in a closet in second grade and told me she was going to leave me there all
weekend, my memories of Catholic school are good. From first to eighth grade, I was educated by cloistered nuns who wore habits.
Sister Aimee, my first-grade teacher, was a classic example of what the life of the spirit can do for you, best-case scenario.
She was smiling, beatific, wise. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, but let’s not hang that on celibacy; with all my
sexual freedom, I too am an incurable nail biter. My high school nuns were more worldly; they wore civilian clothes and were
passionately political—their main concern was the situation in Nicaragua; they played guitar and sang songs in praise of the
Sandinistas. We fasted for Oxfam, then spent the evening in the monastery making soup and baking bread. The school offered
classes in existentialism; we read Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus.

The church gave me a progressive education, as it banished the occasional loneliness of my childhood. That’s why I keep going
back, even though I am a slave to carnality and probably have no right to be there.

Fed up with just about every man except Jesus (and even he confounded me), and without any seriousness of intent, I imagined
becoming a nun. Usually, though, my daydreams tended to view this calling as a temporary position: I would enter a convent
and write a memoir entitled
From Sex and the City to Nun
, and it would be a huge best seller. Naturally, it would end with me falling in love with a handsome young priest and both
of us shaking off our holy orders. No, I just couldn’t give up hope of finding forever love. Call it faith, if you will, I
just can’t lose it.

Still, I was in no way at peace with my lot. I couldn’t conceive of why God would bless me with such well-honed domestic skills,
then deny me a family to share them with. I was in my late thirties, I wanted to have a real home with a real kitchen where
my husband and I would host my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, for holidays. I was stuck, living in the same apartment
I’d moved into with Kit almost fifteen years earlier, with the same tiny kitchen. Then, like a good Catholic, I said, “Fuck
it. I’ll accept my life as it is.” I would host Easter in the apartment I had, however imperfect the setting or situation.
If this is what God gave me, I would operate within His parameters.

Lent was a breeze. I abstained from sex. Which was a joke because even if Catholics were permitted to have sex on any day
of the year before marriage, there was not a soul on God’s earth who wanted to have sex with me. But that was okay; the enlightened
nuns who educated me always said it was better to do something good for others than give up some silly thing like chocolate
for Lent, which didn’t do anything to make the world a better place. I would cook Easter dinner for my family, I would be
cheerful about my life, and my positive spirit would reverberate clear to the Middle East.

Kit came over and helped me move my farmhouse table from its little niche to the center of the living room after I apologized
for being out of touch. (He’s used to me being a freak—in fact, “freak” is practically his nickname for me—and he always forgives.)
I bought an additional table from the Salvation Army and put them together to make one long table that transformed the bulk
of my living space into a giant dining room. I spent weeks planning the menu, settling on a first course of homemade gnocchi
with a simple sauce of tomato and butter, followed by the requisite leg of lamb. I made the gnocchi the weekend before and
froze them, then spent every evening of Holy Week transporting supplies to my apartment. I loved opening the freezer and looking
at the gnocchi tucked away in Ziploc bags; their shape, formed with a fork and my thumb, was absolutely perfect. I attended
services for Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Saturday I bought lilies and tulips and daffodils. I couldn’t help but feel the
joy that reflecting upon Jesus’s death and resurrection is supposed to make you feel, which you may have to be educated by
nuns to fathom.

No Nookie Gnocchi

For the gnocchi:

2 russet potatoes

1 egg

1 teaspoon salt

Pinch freshly grated nutmeg

1 heaping cup flour, plus extra flour for dusting

Salt

Freshly grated parmigiano

Freshly grated pepper

Put the potatoes in a pot with enough water to cover, bring to a boil, and cook, partially covered, until they are just tender,
35 to 40 minutes. Remove the potatoes to a cutting board and peel with a paring knife as soon as you can stand to touch them,
then run them through a potato ricer or food mill, spreading them out on a cutting board to cool completely.

Mix the egg, salt, and nutmeg. Form the cooled potatoes into a mound and pour the egg mixture into it. Begin kneading the
potato and egg mixture with your hands, adding the flour a little at a time, being careful not to overwork the dough.

When the flour is evenly combined with the potato and the dough is only a little sticky, divide it into 4 pieces. Roll each
piece into a long, narrow tube like a garden snake and slice it crosswise into soft little pillows, each ½ inch wide. Rest
each pillow on the tip of your thumb and impress it with the tines of a fork lightly dusted with flour, creating a ribbed
surface for the sauce to cling to. Keep a bowl of flour nearby to dip the fork into, as it will become tacky—or better yet,
keep some extra forks nearby.

Add the gnocchi about 10 at a time to a pot of salted boiling water. When they rise to the top, they’re done. Remove them
to a serving bowl with a slotted spoon or spider and continue to cook in batches. Toss with the sauce and serve with grated
parmigiano and freshly grated pepper.

Yield: About 6 dozen.

For the sauce:

(Adapted from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking)

1 (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes

½ cup (1 stick) butter

1 medium onion, peeled and cut in half

1 tablespoon sugar

¼ cup red wine

1 teaspoon salt

Put all ingredients in a large saucepan over medium heat, bring to a simmer, then lower heat and cook for 45 minutes, stirring
occasionally. Remove onion before tossing sauce with the gnocchi.

Over this period of celibacy, I became a cooking slut; I would do it wherever and whenever anyone would let me. I volunteered
to be the chef for parish council meetings and member get- togethers at church. When my friends Lucinda and John had their
first baby, I went over to their house and made spaghetti and meatballs for the exhausted new parents.

The benefits to them here were obvious: a home-cooked meal, an extra pair of hands, adult conversation. The benefit for me
was time with their baby. Oddly, I find that time with other people’s children thoroughly fulfills my maternal desires. I’m
not overly concerned with bearing a child, and the fact is that I most likely never will. Without a stable relationship, I
can’t even fathom the idea—to me it’s like worrying about where you’re going to put all that money before you even scratch
the lottery ticket (and romance, to me, seems about as precarious as winning the lottery). Children were definitely included
in the life I pictured with Ethan, but when I lost Ethan, it wasn’t the prospect of children that I felt was brutally torn
from me, it was the prospect of a life with
him
. If I find another man to love, I may want to have his babies, but I know it’s probably too late. Somehow this scenario doesn’t
haunt me. I can’t say how I’ll feel ten years from now, but for the present I consider being spared that regret a tremendous,
albeit unexplainable, gift. In the future, should the desire seize me, I’ll consider science or adoption.

My visits to John and Lucinda have become regular monthly events, and no matter how many creative suggestions I come up with
for other dishes, they always insist on the meatballs. I don’t mind. I can make them with my eyes closed.