A soft tapping of rain starts up again. The Pattersons give up on raking leaves from their sugar maple that’s shedding early this year. They laugh at their attempt to spend the gloomy Sunday in the yard, and with a shrug of defeat, Al Patterson puts an arm around his wife as she shields her head with her hands and rushes inside. How I long for Liam’s hand on the small of my back for any reason at all. If he were here, he’d comment on how illogical it is for them to rake before all the leaves have fallen for the season. There’s a small window between the end of fall and the first snow, and he’d always plucked out those few days, like feeling the rain coming in one’s bones, and timed it perfectly.
I rescue the paper from floating down the gutter. It’s bloated with rainwater, but I take it inside and lay out the swollen pages on the kitchen table anyway. I’m relieved not to see my face looking back at me; maybe enough time has passed and they’re finally on to the next life to ravage with speculation and statements of “alleged” involvement. At my desktop, a chat bubble blooms on my screen. It’s Ellie, and although she means well, the sisterly concern she tries to communicate with daily check-ins is becoming exhausting. There are only so many times you can circle the same conversation and get nowhere. She’s sorry for my loss. I know she is. She wants to make sure I’m eating. She encourages me to work.
Her intentions are golden, but it will take a shift into vodka gimlets before I breach that tired conversation today. I ignore the bubble asking me how the weather is holding up, and I try to do a little work.
Since taking a leave of absence from my practice, I still communicate with a few patients who didn’t take the news of my time away very well. Paula Day is suffering from stage four breast cancer and no matter my own hardships, I would never abandon my weekly video chat with dear Paula. Eddie Tolson’s panic disorder exploded when I explained I’d be away, so I chat with him now and then. In my private practice, I’ve pretty much kept on anyone who wildly protested my leave, but most of them took my referrals quietly and sympathetically with the promise of my speedy return. I respond to a few emails, but it’s hard not to think of Liam. It’s hard to concentrate on anything else.
I click on a folder on my desktop titled “Liam.” I’ve kept every email and photo, even the everyday notes he used to leave around the house that I took photos of because I thought they were so sweet. I uploaded them all to the computer over the years: “Sorry I drank all the almond milk, I’ll pick up more tonight,” taped inside the fridge; “Meet me at Luigi’s at 7?” on a stick-it note on my car. It’s silly to keep such mundane remnants, but it was all part of our evolution together.
I never wanted to forget, even when he was here, the swoosh at the top of the L in his signature or the inside jokes we exhausted. “Hardy Har” scrolled at the bottom of dozens of these old notes, a secret, stupid one-liner, just between us, which we’d stolen from some long-forgotten TV comedy sketch and made our own language. I cherished each one. All of the photos and instant messages strung together; this was our life. Even our ranting text arguments—I never deleted those from my phone. Now, the pettiness of them fills me with shame.
I scroll through some of the last photos of him—of us. His work as a food and wine critic meant the lion’s share of our photos were at restaurants. We’re pictured together, with that stagey, for-the-camera pose, sharing a Scotch egg at a gastropub, or taking giant bites of lobster rolls off a pier in Cape Cod. There’s a short video of him explaining why romesco sauce can go on darn near anything. I click to play it even though I’ve watched it countless times. I took the little clip with my phone at an Italian place in New York that I don’t recall the name of, but I remember so clearly the drippy candles and the Dean Martin song playing in the background.
We’d taken a cab there right from the airport to make our reservation on time, so we were dressed too casually for the place, and we’d had a few Makers Mark and sodas on the plane to celebrate a television spot I’d gotten. It wasn’t like him to drink often and certainly not before he reviewed a restaurant; I guess that’s why I love this clip. Just thirty-two seconds of Liam preaching the utilitarian nature of romesco sauce with a dot of it on his cheek, slightly buzzed.
My face has become rinsed with tears before I notice, so I close the folder and graduate from wine to vodka and turn a house-flipping show on TV to fill the silence. After a couple of miraculous and seamless home renovations, I pull on a wool coat and start my daily work. I print a hundred more missing persons posters from my office printer and head out. I look at Liam’s face on the poster. It’s a photo we took at Sapori Trattoria last year. My face, along with the veal scaloppini we shared that night, are cropped out. I thought it was the clearest photo of him I could find.
Today I’ll just go to shops, hang them inside restaurant front windows so the rain doesn’t dissolve him.
TWO
THEN
On a bitter February night, I came home to find Liam in the kitchen in socks and sweats, the table covered with takeout boxes that looked like carefully wrapped gifts. They each held different desserts and dishes from the French restaurant that he’d written a rave review about the week before.
“Try this.” Liam handed me a glass. I took a sip and handed it back. He looked surprised. “You can’t tell me you don’t like it.”
“It’s too sweet. Ugh,” I say, rejecting it as he tried handing it back to me.
“This is a tawny port. Forty years old.”
“It tastes like a rancid fruit pie.”
He smiles and pours my glass into his own.
“More for me,” he says. “So this is a ‘no’ for your book launch party then?”
“You’re cute.” I smile.
“I am?”
“Yes, you’re treating this party like a wedding. Are we going to taste a sampling of cakes next?” I say, picking at boxes on the table.
“No. But there is a Pots de Creme I figured you’d at least want to try. The owner of Le Bouchon is practically falling over himself at the opportunity to host it, so I thought I’d take advantage of that.”
“Free Pots de Creme. How could I say no to that?” I placed the port he was holding on the counter and wrapped my arms around him, kissing him. “Thank you. For being so supportive.” He kissed me back. I rubbed my hands together, eyes wide. “What flavor?”
“Mocha.” He opened a box and grabbed two forks. I was so grateful that he was embracing my new book and getting used to my new role in the spotlight. Since my first book (Starting Over: Life After Abuse) had done so well, I was asked to appear on many shows for guest spots until landing a weekly advice slot on a talk radio program: Someone’s Listening, with Dr. Faith Finley.
It wasn’t fame exactly, but locally I guess you could say it was. It was a bit overwhelming to be recognized here and there, to be invited to bourgeois cocktail parties and black-tie dinners where I would often be asked to speak. Liam was the one who was used to that role—the feared and respected critic whom every chef in town went to great lengths to impress when he sat down at their tables. He supported my success, but I can’t help but feel that he missed the way it was before, when he was the gatekeeper to charity dinners and Bears season tickets and all things social and exciting. I was the quiet academic and he was the charming foodie, revered for his swift and honest opinions on everything from the authenticity of the latest taco truck to James Beard Award–worthy restaurants.