I set Rosie on the floor and reassemble the sandwich.
Snack: ½ grilled part-skim mozzarella sandwich on multigrain bread with sliced tomato and dust bunnies, which have reemerged from wherever they went to hide while I was washing the floor. Dust rolls are full of fiber and not the least bit fattening. They contain healthy bacteria that will boost my immune system, which is more important now than ever, because I have a baby to take care of and I pass my immunities on to her.
Exercise: I look at Rosie and say, “Mmmm.”
I make a multiple-personality grocery list, half dictated by the me who’s on a diet and half by the me who’ll cook Thad’s birthday dinner for tonight.
And don’t think of it as a diet, my own private guru says. Diets are temporary. Diets are self-denial. What you’re engaged in is a Life Journey, a profound alteration in your lifestyle. You’ll be losing weight the Natural way. You’ll be—
Got it, I say. Lifestyle. Journey. Starting point. Natural.
She gets huffy at being interrupted, but she leaves me alone to finish my list, which—I can hear this just under her silence—she disapproves of. She wants Thad to Lose Weight the Natural Way too. As far as I can tell she hasn’t seen him—she doesn’t know if he needs to lose weight or gain it—but she doesn’t care. This is a belief system. You don’t have to be fat to commit to it.
What I want, on the other hand, is for Thad to know nothing about my diet. I want to lose weight so naturally that he’ll forget I ever was a pudge. I want him to start running his finger across my shoulders again when he walks past, just because he likes to touch me.
I can’t remember when he last did that.
I buckle Rosie into her car seat and drive to the grocery store. On the way home, I phone a neighbor who also has a baby.
“Can I ask a really big favor?” I say, steering with one hand so I can hold the phone to my ear, which I shouldn’t do with Rosie in the car, or even without her, but it’s only this once and I’ll be off in a minute and I’m not driving fast.
I explain about Thad’s birthday, the dinner, my diet—“Okay, it’s not a diet, it’s a—you know, one of these non-diet things, with, like, stuff I don’t eat and—listen, do you suppose you could watch Rosie for a couple of hours? I should have thought this out ahead of time, but I really want to make him a nice dinner. We need some good time together, and I would be so—”
“Of course.”
“Grateful. I’d be so grateful.”
I drop Rosie off at the neighbor’s and carry my groceries in. It feels odd not to have Rosie in one arm—kind of lonely and off-balance.
It also feels free. Light. As if I’ve lost weight already. I’ve been planning this dinner all week and want to give it my full attention.
Step one, then: the cake.
In the double boiler, I melt half a pound of bittersweet chocolate imported from Belgium, which I’ve been saving for a special occasion. When the last island of solid chocolate gives itself over helplessly to a liquid state, I stir in unsalted butter, and they wrap around each other like lovers. I would drown in them willingly.
More than willingly: ecstatically.
I pour in crème de cassis. I’ve never used this before, and it’s gorgeous stuff, jewel red and glowing as if it were made of light.
While that cools, I whisk egg yolks and sugar until they’re a pale, sexy yellow, then stir in the chocolate mixture, followed by flour, ground almonds, and salt. When I fold in the egg whites I’ve beaten until they’re stiff, the batter looks like velvet.
Or like sex.
Okay, not exactly like sex, but it does make me think about sex.
Everything makes me think about sex.
Which shouldn’t surprise me, really. It’s been a while.
I set the cake in the oven, melt white chocolate and brush it onto some small, perfect leaves I picked in the backyard, and I balance them in the refrigerator. I melt more chocolate for the frosting, stir in more butter, and watch them wrap around each other like—can’t I think about anything else this afternoon?—lovers. I sweeten it with raspberry jam imported from the shores of a loch somewhere in Scotland and add vanilla, although with the jam I could probably leave it out, then I whip in a bit of cream and imagine painting Thad’s belly with it even though he doesn’t go for that sort of thing.
Maybe I just haven’t found the right way to suggest it.
I cover the frosting and leave it at the back of the stove, where it’s warmest, so it won’t harden while I run across the street to pick up Rosie.
She flaps her arms at me and coos.
I pick her up and say, “Are you Mama’s gorgeous baby?”
She says, “Mmm ba ba ba ba.”
“And I missed you too.”
I thank my neighbor and carry Rosie to my kitchen, where I put a fingerful of frosting on her tongue and one on my own.
Snack: 1 fingerful of chocolate frosting.
Exercise: I say, “Mmmm.” The frosting tastes of raspberry jam.
Rosie says, “Mmmm.” True, she follows it with “ba ba ba,” but she did say it. She has my genes.
Before my guru has time to scold, I swear I’ll take the leftover cake to my neighbor first thing in the morning to thank her for watching Rosie.
My guru keeps her opinion to herself. Or maybe she’s out again and doesn’t notice. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Hurt, I think. Or relieved. Possibly both.
I take the cake out of the oven and put Thad’s potato in, and I set the cake to cool in the refrigerator while I nurse Rosie and wash Rosie and walk Rosie and lower Rosie into her crib. I put clean sheets on the bed, turn down the corner on Thad’s side, and arrange candles in a romantic configuration on the bedside table.
By the time I’m done, I’ve completely seduced myself. How could he not feel the same way?
I check the frosting, which I should have made later, but it’s still spreadable.
My food plan says I should eat Italian chicken. This doesn’t come in quotation marks and is three ounces of boneless, skinless chicken breast marinated in nonfat Italian dressing and fried in nonstick spray oil. It sounds godawful, but I want to do this right. And my guru says it’s natural, so it must be okay.
I open the package of organic, free-range chicken breasts I just bought, and I override all my instincts. In other words, I pull the skin off one and marinate it in chemically enhanced nonfat Italian salad dressing, which I also just bought. It smells like the kind of industrial residue that’s responsible for lowering the reproductive rate of the North American frog, but my Life Journey guru told me to eat it, and it is part of a recipe, so my guru must have cooked it at least once and eaten it and lived to write about it.
That means it tastes better than it smells.
I wonder if eating it kept her from reproducing.
I wonder if I really do want a second child.
I rub Thad’s chicken breast with olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, and basil, and I cover it so the smell of mine won’t contaminate it, then I put them both in the refrigerator while I toast cubes of French bread with—aw, c’mon, it’s only a very little bit—unsalted butter, oregano, and basil. I toss these with romaine lettuce, set them all in the refrigerator, and peel the real leaves out from under the chilled white chocolate, leaving unbelievably professional-looking white chocolate leaves. This is the first time I’ve tried this, but I’ve seen it done on the Food Channel.
I frost the cake and decorate it with the white chocolate leaves and some