Food Therapy

Lately Ive been waking in the middle of the night feeling lost and disoriented and more importantly, aloneon the left side of the big iron bed. Yes, it is the very same bed that was forged for us as a wedding present by the squarely built Italian man whose name I never could pronounce with the gusto it deserved. Lets face it, the bed was all wrong from the beginning, just as the marriage would have been had it happened. I suppose after all this time, I should be grateful that you had the foresight to see that and to stop me from a certain future of discontent. To this day I am convinced that your exit should have been more dramaticwouldnt it have made sense that the passion at the end matched the passion at the beginning? But then again, I also thought that I could learn to love the mournful music that is fado, of memory beyond sadness. The bed stands as the only piece of real furniture in my dimly lit apartment save for the barnwood table that I paid too much for. One half of the bed is piled high with cookbooks and legal pads scrawled with measurements and notes and ideas, a search for flavor profiles meant to turn the world upside down. Chocolate, flavored with sinful spices that will surely bring tears to the eye, or beer infused with amber threads of sweet caramelthe very randomness of the search quiets my desire for abstract order. A sweet, a savory: textures and flavors in oppositioneverything and nothing is complementary. It doesnt really matter, I remind myself, this exercise in futility. We never would have made it, I remember you saying, and I would have believed you were it not for the room-reflecting tear that rolled down your softly speckled cheek. Now fully awake, I turn the clock face so that I am not reminded of the less-thanadequate number of REM-sleep hours that I have collected, and roll out of bed, displacing only a few of the high-gloss, fully illustrated books. This is a technique that I have perfected: Where once I would land on the floor, wrapped in flannel or 300-count cotton, now I twist the covers with me and stand, mummy-like, waiting for the applause from the crowd. It never comes. The trick, you see, is to take it all on in one movement, a fast roll similar to a successful pull of the tablecloth from under a full set of china, I practice saying this aloud, in case I am ever interviewed, and all the details of my life suddenly become important. The kitchen lightbulb is out again. The coil bulbs last three times longer, I remember you saying. I fumble for a new bulb, drop the night sheet, push a blue milk crate filled with mismatched Stangl Pottery cups and saucers under the light, and step up, reaching for the overhead fixture. The bulb flickers on. The coils never seem quite bright enough. The early morning chill causes me to shiver and I reach for the sheet. I take a few wraps around, up and under my arms, before I grab a leather belt from the top of a pile of clothes heaped in the corner. Two notches in, there is barely enough leather to fit back under the loop. I pull it one notch tighter before I let it out altogether, throw it back on the pile and reach for the kitchen twine, which I wrap around and around my waist, feeling much like the pork tenderloins I used to make for us on Sunday evenings. The

whole ordeal reminds me of the summer, you in your ill-fitting shorts pulled tight with rope through the belt loopsMy Tom Sawyer look you would say. The kitchen is warm and inviting despite the dark sleep-deep world beyond the windowshade. I have always set my roots first and most firmly in the kitchen, no matter where Ive landed. Sometimes, when Id moved into a kitchen that was still outfitted, I would spend hours unearthing family histories in cupboards and drawers. The idea of a junk drawer fascinates mefull of twine and butter stamps, citrus peelers, scissors and mallets. I remember when I first came across a shrimp de-veiner in one such drawerI ate shrimp every night for a week just to perfect the technique. Your own kitchen was packed full of family platters and odd pot-and-pan assortmentsmany that you rescued from the church bazaar for quarters and dollars. It was always a glorious treasure hunt for me. I remember how you would stand so close to me in that outdated kitchen as I prepared a stuffed chicken or stirred a big pot of warm, cinnamon-spiced apples, your smile so genuine as you embraced the domesticity. Ill admit that I often think the worlds problems can best be solved with a good home-cooked meal, or, at the very least, that ours could. Why didnt you come after meconvince me that it was wrong to end our relationship? For days I waited for the call. I had anticipated it with dread and relief, as I might have anticipated an HR managers words. Hed hand me a bankers box and tell me to pack my things...and relent: Give me that! Youre not going anywhere. We need you, how would this place ever run without you? A burst of cold hits my face as I open the refrigerator door. I reach past the orange casserole dish a quarter-full of past-its-prime rice pudding and lift out the yellow bowl, covered loosely with a threadbare dishtowel. I delight in the memory of my grandmothers molasses bread, rising in this very bowl. I remember her hunched-over frame and remind myself to stand up straight. In the bowl the dough is cold, yet easy to roll out on the countertop. I place a cup of currants in a blue dish and pour a generous amount of coffee liqueur over them. Plump up, little ones, I whisper, and then as an afterthought, I pour an inch or so of the flavored liqueur into a mug, the foundation for a cheery morning brew later on. Butter melts in the small pot on the stovetop. I lift it off the flame and look within, losing myself in the changing swirl of color from yellow to brown. I take the pastry brush you remember the oneit loses a strand or two with every use yet I dare not rid myself of it for fear of some silly, you would say, kitchen superstition. The warm butter meets the cooled dough, keeping its distance by refusing to soak into the pastry. If only I could perform that trickkeep my distance, cool and collected, instead of falling so miserably vulnerable. I administer a few shakes of cinnamon and watch as it melts and darkens into the

butter; sprinkle the handfuls of now-plump currants and add a covering of brown sugar just to the edges, before rolling the sweetly studded dough length-wise. How many times have I prepared this little pastry? I say aloud. I surmise twenty or thirty years multiplied by two or three occasions, before I abandon the calculation for the belief that I have been doing it since birthits that familiar, that delicate. I mix a good amount of honeyfrom the farm down the wayand more brown sugar, eschewing standard measuring tools in favor of until it looks and feels right. I once translated old recipes; I never quite understood why they almost never had exact measurements on the faded note cards or tattered loose-leaf papers creased with age and use. Now I knew. The cooks and bakers and moms and aunties had been doing it forever and had deleted from their memories the exact measurements. Funny that I struggle to cling to the details of our life togetherthe way you insisted on leaving the milk in its plastic container when you placed it outdoors on the wooded edge of your propertymake the animals work for it, you saidor the way you would triumphantly recite from memory a line in a poem, as if you alone had successfully rescued it from obscurity. But as time passes the familiarity fades and as much as I try I no longer can read the yellowed pages. The mini-muffin tins, probably no longer available in a world of super-sized everything, are given a melted-butter wash before I ladle in a teaspoon of honey and place a couple of pecan halves in their middles. Then I nestle a sliced round of dough in the bottom, easing the active dough into the honey. A few more swipes of melted butter across the top and they are ready for the oven, which sheds some welcome warmth around me as I open its door. I sit and wait, sipping spirit-heavy cold coffeemy preferenceand gaze into the dark recesses of the tiny apartment. Piles of books and CDs, baskets that hold everything from outdated insurance cards to miniature, found objectsa plastic dinosaur, a woodpeckers spotted feather, an old toy harmonica, a sand dollar. I loved to look at your collectionsfilm containers of coins, a piece of leather saved for a homemade slingshot, a years-old card from an old lover. They told about you, or at least about a moment in your life, and upon seeing a random collection of boxed BBs (so-called after the size of a birdshot pellet, you once told me) I could not help smiling. I have long ago given up hope that you will call. But truth be told, I would still welcome the sound of your voice. I had let you know me. It was hard but slowly I trusted and opened like a flower and let you know the world that is me. Not always clean or pure or perfect, the Me contains irreverence and strong opinions and bursts of noconfidence, but its me and you had me convinced that I was always enough. The kitchen window is a brighter grey, as dawn approaches. I hurry to shed my Project Runway-inspired sheet and from the closet choose something red for the upcoming holiday. A quick brush of my hair, still showing not many white strands, and a smudge of lip-gloss applied before I return to the buzzing kitchen timer. I remove the trays to a gust of heat, quickly flip them and watch as the sweet treats tumble out, dripping with sugary

goodness. I still consider it a culinary miracle when something on the bottom ends up so deliciously on top. I remember the first time I made the sticky buns for youa Thanksgiving holiday with your family. You were so proud when I handed them to our hostessShe made them herself, you announced, a little too insistently, I thought. Still warm and gooey to the touch, I pile the buns on the white platter with a rosy, flowered rimI remember taking it from your hands with glee, another of your finds from a Saturday-morning sale. I have no doubt that these tender pastry bites will be a hit with my co-workers at the television station where I have worked since I moved away from you. You had insisted that it would be a good move, and somewhere in my heart I knew you were right. The buns have never failed me. And yet they are so yeasty-alive it amazes me that in all the years of making them, not once have I been disappointed. Even the first time. My mind wanders to the first time we met. Of course, wed met accidentally over several first times, and it wasnt until later on that I felt that rush of excitement whenever we crossed paths. Maybe I should have kept my distance. You would say that is exactly what I should have done. My warm plate in one hand, I pluck a coat from the hook by the front door and step out into the cold. Inside, I hear a phone ring. I stop. Turn. Listen. It rings again and again, the tone fading in and out of my memory. I turn to put a hand on the door and as I do, the ringing falls silent. No worry, theyll call back, I say to no one in particular. But you never did, did you?