When I don’t see anything like that in the first layer, I kick through to the next one. I settle for the clothes with the fewest wrinkles and drop my pj’s on the floor, on top of the methodically arranged clothes.
What am I going to tell my former neighbor about what’s happened in my life?
Nothing, that’s what. I don’t have to tell her a thing.
I drive to her house, and we sit on the floor with our babies in our laps.
Snack: coffee, black.
Exercise: She asks how Thad is and I burst into tears and spill the whole story, starting with how good the raspberries and chocolate leaves looked on the cake I was going to bring her the rest of.
“I don’t even know what I did wrong,” I say.
“He’s having an affair,” she says.
“He’s not that kind of man.”
“Does he have a penis?”
He does. I admit he does.
“Then he’s that kind of man.”
I had no idea she was so bitter about men. Our friendship has been one of convenience more than resonance, and we’ve never talked much about our lives. I refocus the discussion on how hard it is to live with my parents—the TV shows, my mother’s questions, the fifteen-year-old who’s taken up residence in my brain. Even the cigarette hole in the couch cushion and the imitation whipped butter.
“It sounds petty,” I say. “But they’re driving me nuts.”
I drive back to my parents’ house and let Rosie finish her nap in the car seat on the living room floor while I watch the Food Channel.
My lunch is supposed to be an open-face tuna sandwich—two ounces of water-packed tuna mixed with one tablespoon of nonfat mayonnaise and another tablespoon of chopped nonfat celery, spread on one slice of whole grain bread browned in a nonfat toaster, followed by half a juice-packed canned peach.
Either my mother or the diet fairies have actually left me the ingredients for this. I plonk them on the counter, stare at them for a long time, and put them away. I don’t seem to be hungry.
Lunch: just the tiniest bit of red wine; salty crackers made in a gritty, formerly industrial city in northern Ohio.
Exercise: I nurse Rosie, then turn on my parents’ computer and try to create a resume while Rosie sits on my lap whacking at the keyboard.
She misspells my name.
I delete the resume, rock Rosie to sleep, put her on the bedroom floor for a nap, and go back to the resume. I misspell my parents’ street.
I call an old friend who Thad liked to say has a low-level job with a high-level corporation and ask what I should say about the time I took off work after Rosie was born.
“Gee,” she says. “I’m not sure.”
Well, she wouldn’t be, would she? She doesn’t have a baby.
I feel smug about this.
I feel envious.
I feel lonely.
I walk to the bedroom and watch Rosie sleep.
I feel love.
I cry.
I force myself back to the computer and correct as many misspellings as I find. The misspellings I don’t find, I leave. They won’t make any difference because no one’s going to hire me anyway.
This, my guru says, is a self-esteem issue. List three reasons why someone should hire you.
One: I’m breathing.
Two:
Never mind, my guru says. One’s a good start.
To show her how grateful I am, I check my meal plans for the rest of the day and make a grocery list. Dinner is Turkey Caccia-nonfat-tore (mix ½ cup of tomato juice, 2 tablespoons of chopped onion, 1 clove of garlic, ½ teaspoon each of basil and oregano, and 1 tablespoon of Vaseline; pour over 3 ounces of nonfat turkey breast and bake); ½ cup of cooked noodles; ½ cup of shredded newspaper; 10 golden raisins.
Rosie wakes up and I shop for dinner, but the diet fairies have run off with my grocery list so I buy pork chops.
While I’m putting away the groceries, I find a box of prefabricated stuffing. The instructions on the side tell me to use margarine, but I substitute unsalted butter and pretend this redeems what I’m doing, then I cut a gash in the pork chops, pack the stuffing inside, and bake them in the defatted juice of one diet fairy.
When my mother gets home from work, she says, “I’m still capable of cooking, you know.”
“I thought since I’m here and you’re working and all, it might make sense,” I say.
“Just so you know you don’t have to.”
I say, “Mom, I’ll go nuts if I can’t cook.”
“Well,” she says, “I don’t suppose I mind so much, but you know how your father is about food he hasn’t eaten before.”
“Don’t worry about a thing,” I say.
She leaves the kitchen and I relax muscles I didn’t know I’d tightened.
She comes back to the kitchen.
“I’ll leave you money for our share of the groceries,” she says.
“Mom, I’m not paying rent. The least I can do is buy groceries.”
I say it like she made me mad.
Now that I mention it, she did make me mad.
“I didn’t suggest it to insult you.”
She says it like she’s insulting me.
Dinner: stuffed pork chops; baked squash; fresh green beans; Weight Watchers ice cream that I found in the freezer.
Exercise: My father points to the squash on his plate.
“What do you call these things?” he says.
My mother goes into watchdog mode.
“Delicata squash,” I say.
“We got any more of them?”
I put the last piece on his plate.
“The secret,” I say, “is to squeeze lemon juice into the cavity before you bake them. It makes them sweeter.”
“Huh,” he says.
I sense that I’ve lost his interest, and Thad’s absence stabs into me. He liked to know about his food. I could do something his friends’ wives couldn’t, and that made him special.
Everything was a competition with him, wasn’t it?
I don’t have to answer that question. Nobody can make me.
I leave Rosie with my parents so I can drive to a nearby coffee shop and meet Thad. The boy working the counter has a pierced lip, bleached hair, a bar code tattooed on his arm, and no wedding ring.
Snack: coffee, black.
Exercise: I wait for Thad.
Thad’s late. I try not to think this means anything.
When Thad shows up, he doesn’t ask if I’ve been waiting long, he just sits across from me and folds his hands on the table. I notice that he doesn’t have a wedding ring either. I hide my hands under the table, remove my own ring, and slip it into my purse.
“So—” I say.
It