How had she let that happen? How had she lived in solitude for so long? Some of her friends were still getting invited to bachelorette parties in Cabo. They felt like teenagers, but they were merely people who had waited to be frozen. Waited until they were themselves.
Some of her old friends hadn’t even been married yet—which wouldn’t have been worth noting if she wasn’t suddenly, so suddenly, about to be divorced.
And what would happen if she just opened up to all of these women?
It seemed like there was too much to say all of a sudden; how to explain the past ten years of her marriage realistically, after not complaining in all that time, so they’d understand this sudden end. But it wasn’t possible. These weren’t the kind of people she had shorthand with. Even now, thinking Margo was grieving over some long-lost love, they all made nervous, short movements, like unsophisticated robots.
“Yes, we understand,” said Susi, when the agreement was stilted and minimal.
Everyone present mumbled some form of agreement with Susi and pitched in to clear the dishes or find another tidying task, but Margo insisted she could do it herself. “It will help me focus on something less painful,” she said, hoping that was an argument that they couldn’t refute. “I’m really sorry.”
It was a clumsy, long, apologetic goodbye from everyone, and it took way longer than she would have liked. Finally, everyone left. At least everyone was happy to take home a small box of appetizers. Margo had sprung long ago for a restaurant-size pack of those brown envelope-style to-go boxes.
Either her cooking or her lie was good enough for them to take it, and right now, either felt like a win.
Margo went back to the sunroom and drank every one of their remaining drinks—not even giving a damn about every gross backwash story she’d ever heard—before sitting down next to the fatty artichoke dip she’d initially been careful to park on the table farthest from her seat so as to avoid eating too much. Now it was a free-for-all, and she ripped pieces right off the baguette, rather than using the delicate little serrated knife she’d left out for that purpose.
Her marriage was over.
Her book club was over (it wasn’t like she could play the role of widow forever, and she definitely couldn’t admit she’d lied on top of further confessing her marriage was over).
The champagne was quickly gone.
Her real estate hobby had never really paid that well to begin with, but it certainly wasn’t going to earn her enough for a good lawyer, and there was zero guess as to what she might get in alimony as an able-bodied thirty-three-year-old, never mind that she had no marketable skills.
What in the world was she going to do for “fun” now?
Chapter Two
Margo
Two weeks, four showers, merely four changes of yoga pants, and one talk with a lawyer later, the idea came to her. It appeared from nowhere when she pulled the Shun chef’s knife out of its block.
I could just kill myself, Margo thought, always having a flair for the dramatic. It would be so fast.
She’d almost majored in drama in college but her parents had convinced her it was a useless major that wouldn’t lead to any profitable career options, so she’d settled for taking a few classes as electives and had instead majored in the equally useless, but somehow more respectable, English literature.
Of course she couldn’t stab herself. If she were going to kill herself, and she definitely wasn’t, she’d find a much less painful way to do it. What she really wanted was for the pain and insult of rejection to go away. The emptiness to be filled. The gaping uncertainty about everything suddenly and the way it mixed with the previously unacknowledgeable dissatisfaction that she now had to focus on, even though it made her feel terrible too.
The dismantling of her future. From a solid—if frightening—boulder into rocky shards of rubble that blocked her every move.
If she were gone suddenly, there would be no eruption of grief. Just a suburban rumor mill fueled by tap water gossip.
She considered the knife again, strong and solid in her narrow hand. She really should have killed Calvin with it. À la Chicago. He had it comin’ . . .
That would have solved all of her problems neatly.
She looked at the blade of the eight-inch Shun DM0522 chef’s knife she should never have sprung for. It was new—razor sharp, as she got all of her knives sharpened frequently and professionally. Like all those As Seen on TV ads—Margo’s knife was sharp enough to cut through an empty Coke can!
Though who’d willingly do that to their blade? (Or their fingers when it came time to pick up the shredded can and throw it out.) The knife shop in town where they sharpened for two bucks an inch.
This knife had cost sixteen bucks to sharpen.
Calvin wasn’t worth wasting that sixteen-dollar sharpening on.
No, turns out she wasn’t the murder or the suicide type.
She was just another divorcing woman, leaving her twenties in the dust behind her, without enough money, without enough self-esteem, and without enough energy to start over.
But she did have a superb knife.
And that could take her a reasonable distance toward some satisfaction, if not happiness. Culinary satisfaction.
The prospect of eating a huge plate of tender-tough noodles with bright Tuscan tomato and shaved Parmesan was extremely appealing. She literally couldn’t imagine the last time she’d made something decadent in this house because she was always so worried about Calvin’s needs.
Damn it, it wasn’t fair that she’d had to worry about his needs so much when he clearly didn’t give a damn about her.
She put down the knife and went to the beautifully organized pantry she took so much pride in.
She was pained deeply and suddenly by the idea of cooking anything for herself. Dicing, kneading, pounding meat—even the aggressive promise of emotional release sounded like too much energy. She’d have to draw too much from an empty well.
The tears were slow to come by now. The ache came. The pain was there all the time. But the satisfaction of tears was growing elusive.
Her eyes blurred on the shelf full of collected spices.
Malnutrition and misery sank her to her feet, and she slammed against the door, then reached for her phone.
Out of habit, she opened Instagram.
She was faced with women her age who had taken a nosedive into the Mommy-identity, and girls from her past posting fancy cocktails at trendy restaurants.
Speaking of moms.
She tapped the “favorites” button, then “Mom.” She held the phone to her ear for one second before hanging up. Good God, she didn’t even know what time it was. So instead she went to her cookbook collection to pick out just the right recipe, no matter how much energy it drained from her.
She knew which book she was going to pick. She knew it was always Marcella Hazan’s. But she took the time to linger over the spines nevertheless, like she was perusing high school pictures of old friends.
The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Oh, what a pleasure that was! Mollie Katzen’s handwritten and illustrated recipes that recalled some glorious time in upstate New York when a girl with an appetite could work at a funky vegetarian restaurant and jot down some tasty favorites between shifts. That one had the Pumpkin Tureen soup that Margo had made so many times when she first got the book. She loved the cheesy onion soup served from a pumpkin with a hot dash of horseradish and rye croutons. And the Cardamom Coffee Cake, full of butter, real vanilla, and rich brown sugar, said to be a favorite at the restaurant, where Margo loved to imagine the patrons picking up extras to take back to their green, grassy, shady farmhouses dotted along winding country roads.